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We are very lucky to have a post by Darryl Cunningham today. Darryl, whose regular strip has recently started appearing on the Forbidden Planet blog, is an illustrator and cartoonist who specialises in very detailed cityscapes, so writing about buildings seems the obvious choice.

Darryl writes: I don’t know how to teach people to draw buildings, but I do know how I draw architecture, so I’ll simply describe my approach.

It’s very easy to find yourself overwhelmed with the sheer detail of the the world when sitting down to draw any aspect of it: be this a landscape, a portrait, or even a still life. The trick is always to look at things simply and then add on as much complexity on as you wish afterwards. Way back when I was a teenager, I noticed when looking at Robert Crumb’s cartoon work, that his often complex background cityscapes weren’t much more than oblongs with smaller oblongs drawn inside them to represent windows.

So to start with, don’t worry about perspective, distance, shading, or any kind of detail. Let’s look at the basics the way a child would. Draw not from life, but out of your imagination.

In the second drawing, all I’ve done is draw a series of cubes, on which I’ve added oblongs for windows. If you can draw a cube, then you can draw a basic building. Add further cubes and what you’ll get is a street. Keep adding and you’ll have a town. Basic ideas of perspective will guide you as to where you can place cubes, be it in front or behind.

Note how the shading adds solidity to the buildings. Distant buildings in the background can be flattened out, reduced to being mere oblongs again, as distant objects tend to lose their three dimensional qualities. A building’s details can be drawn on to the basic cube architecture. Towers, gables, windows, and chimneys, can all be added, as much or as little as you like.

It’s really not rocket science. Don’t be overawed by drawing. So often the blank, white sheet under the pencil will freeze your mind. Just draw a line, even if it’s the wrong one. You can always change the drawing later.

A set of my drawings, all using these basic techniques, can be seen here.

I hope this is the start of an exciting and regular departure for Draw Anyway. If you have something to say about drawing in the Draw Anyway style, and you’d like to write a post or series of posts, let me know. There is no payment, but the site’s profile is growing all the time. I will happily offer an inbound link to your site, and the Draw Anyway readership will be yours for the day.