Drawing Architecture: The beginner's guide to drawing and painting buildings

A comprehensive and practical guide full of advice and inspiration for anyone wishing to capture the beauty of the urban landscape.

The wonderful thing about drawing buildings is that, wherever you travel around the globe, you will never be short of subjects to inspire you. From the most elaborate of Renaissance cathedrals, through to the humble garden shed, you will always be able to practise your skills and learn a few techniques in the process.

This hands-on and inspirational book will encourage you to meet the exciting challenges of drawing and painting buildings using a variety of media and a wide range of techniques, including pencil, pen, graphite powder, watercolour, water-soluble pencils and Indian ink. As you work through this book, you will look at materials and their qualities then move on to explore how to put these materials to best use when drawing specific types of building. You will be led gently through levels of learning, with easy and more challenging exercises progressing your knowledge and developing your skills.

As the book is divided into discrete sections, you can dip in to a particular type of building that you wish to draw, and use the information and illustration provided, while extended teaching exercises take you through the way the author approaches composing and completing a drawing. Fully annotated paintings, working drawings and extended projects reveal how each effect was achieved.

Detailed artworks in a range of styles and media are thoroughly annotated to demonstrate key techniques and important details and there are invaluable exercises for understanding perspective, negative and positive space, tone, choosing details and constructing large-scale images.

The book includes thorough studies of a wide range of different architectural styles, from town houses to rural cottages and barns, from churches and classical architecture to continental cafes and street scenes. Taylor's exquisite drawings and paintings demonstrate the quality of the results that can be achieved by following his helpful guidance and advice.