How to Draw Buildings: A Step-By-Step Guide for Beginners With 10 Projects

by Ian Sidaway

Aimed at absolute beginners, this essential guide provides the technical tricks of the trade—the “building blocks”—needed to portray structures from country churches to city skylines. All it takes is 10 easy and fully illustrated lessons to master linear perspective, proportion, and composition, and to capture the texture of materials such as brick, stone, concrete, wood, glass, and steel. Draw a simple weathered wooden bungalow using graphite pencil. An old-fashioned church, with corner lines that converge at 2 vanishing points and different elevations, makes the perfect subject for illustrating 2-point perspective. Bring color into the picture in an image of a brightly painted Italian fishing cottage. Other demonstrations focus on architectural details, combining tools and techniques, and more.

Genres: Art

80 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

Reviews

[Visnja Zeljeznjak · Rating 3 out of 5]

This instruction manual has one big advantage and one big disadvantage:
- On the good side, the instructions are clear and precise, making any beginner competent to accurately draw the building that is the subject of one of the eight exercises in the book. These early wins are necessary to keep with the drawing habit.
- On the bad side, some of the exercises are so uninspiring and boring to draw that I had to skip them. I just could not be bothered to draw an entrance into a bakery. I would say that 25-35% of the exercises were boring. The remaining were either OK or great. I realize I probably missed on some important drawing lessons, but I am confident I will learn those with more interesting subjects (Youtube tutorials are great for that).

Having said that, I went on and borrowed another book by the same author (How to Draw Landscapes). I could probably write the same review for that other book (some landscapes are more inspiring than others). In the end, what matters is this: How to Draw Buildings is the first book I ever got on the subject. It made me draw more, and it helped me improve and gain confidence. It probably deserves more stars than I gave it, but three stars says 'this is a good book'. However, presenting inspiring subjects to draw is IMO an important part of any DIY instruction book.

[Elizabeth Matthews]

Focused on buildings. Purchase this book for school.