Buildings Aren't That Hard After All, I Guess

Buildings have always been a bit of a challenge. Not just for me. I feel like there's this list of things that artists have problems drawing early in their career: hands, buildings, clothing wrinkles, women, and women that aren't hot.

It isn't drawing the building itself that's the issue. I have enough knowledge of perspective to make it look alright. It's just that I don't know what stuff to put on the buildings to make them look like specific buildings. You know, houses, places of business, public services buildings, etc. I've been blessed to have been able to live in a house all my life, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what to put on them to actually make them look like a house or, more specifically, a home.

What do the roofs look like? Where do the gables go? What kind of windows go where? How many windows go there? When does asymmetry look good? When does it look bad? When do building materials switch and where does it look natural? When doesn't it? What makes a shop look like a shop? Or like a grocery store? Or like a cafe? Or like a fine dining restaurant? Or like a library? Or like a bookstore? All these and more are questions that would bounce around my head whenever I wanted to draw a building.

To remedy this, I made a board on Pinterest full of pictures of buildings ranging from cityscapes, single buildings, and more. I studied them, trying to pinpoint very general shapes or "rules," so to speak, of what they made the buildings look like. I did straight-up copies off to the side of this, but that was to get the feel of what I was doing. After that, I used the general principles I picked up to make up my own buildings. There's a row for family homes, one row for townhouses, and one (unfinished) row for shops. As small as these things are, the creation of each one is rather tedious, or so I felt.

I like them. I think one of the main reasons I used to not like my buildings was because I didn't know what I was doing or what they were supposed to look like. But with ideas of very specific parts I can put wherever or not put in at all, I know what I'm doing. It's like having a create-a-character system in my head. There are a limited number of specific options available, but the combinations available are where I can really make some unique choices.

It demystified the process for me. Of course, drawing the buildings at different angles might be an issue, but that's another story. I might actually do an illustration with buildings. I feel like it would be a good exercise in patience.

Thanks for reading~

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