This has been in the works for literal months...for the first draft, I drew a building specifically for this tutorial, and it turned out awful, so I had to scrap it. >_<
Then I finally started work on a comic page with a building in it, and decided to just use that for this. But honestly, having that one image tied to two separate obligations just made it easier to procrastinate...fast forward several weeks, and here we are. ^^;
So the first step of learning to draw buildings is convincing yourself, conceptually, of what buildings look like.
I donât know if everyone is like this, but I personally have always had a hard time âbelievingâ buildings. âSo like, the building is just on the ground; like itâs just TOUCHING the ground with nothing in between??â Yes, actually; in many cases it IS that simple: put a box on the pavement and you have a building.
What helps with believability is all the stuff around it: plants, cars, signs, lampposts, garbage cans, etc. But weâre mostly gonna focus on the big box.
So youâre getting ready to draw the building. The first thing that I recommend you do is to streamline the process as much as possible by compensating adequately for your weaknesses.
For example, if you canât draw straight lines, FOR GODâS SAKE USE A LINE TOOL! Or get a ruler, at leastâŚthe inability to draw perfectly straight lines without assistance is not some kind of moral failing; PLEASE feel free to just make things easier on yourselfâŚ
There are other things you can do to prepare as well: set up a perspective grid, decide what specific kind of building you want to draw (âconvenience storeâ is a much less stressful concept to grapple with than just âbuildingâ) and what features it should have, and/or add whatever foreground elements are present so you have a reference for scale/angle.
If you feel like you need all the preparations, DO ALL THE PREPARATIONS. Donât get lazy; youâll thank yourself later.
Now all thatâs left to do is to actually draw the building. ^^; It took a lot of self-convincing, but in the end I decided itâd be best if I showed my own process as an example:
So here is my initial sketch. I drew it on paper first, because my eye for perspective is just better when I draw by hand (if you are a digital artist who struggles with perspective, you may want to try this...muscle memory IS a thing, yâknow, and if switching mediums for a bit will save you some frustration, by all means).
Notice how ridiculously simple it is. ^^; The big rectangles up top are supposed to be double windows that I couldnât be arsed to drawâŚbut thatâs okay. The point of the sketch is just to outline all the major parts, and make sure it all fits.
Time for the next step: so here weâve traced over the sketch and straightened everything out.
This is still kind of a sketch (notice I havenât filled any details in yetâŚ). The point of this step is to perfect the rough perspective from the initial sketch. And by âperfectâ, I mean make it the most logical version of itself. Be careful not to go overboard with your correctionsâŚdonât let GEOMETRY!mania take over!
So this goes out to all the other intuitive artists out there: GEOMETRY!mania is what I call the urge to make everything into shapes you can understand once you get a line tool in your hand. This isnât a bad thing: if you meant to draw a rectangle, you should definitely add a rectangle.
The problem arises when you donât actually know what shape you meant to draw, but assume itâs a rectangle, or a triangle, or whatever because that âlooksâ correct (spoiler alert: when you have a straight-line tool in hand, EVERYTHING âlooksâ correct). And before you know it youâve distorted the perspective of the entire drawing. =/
In technical language, Iâd say that this is probably because you have a higher-point perspective than you realize (for example, you intuitively sketched in 2-point perspective, but corrected it thinking it was just 1-point perspective on a slant).
I donât know how to solve this outside of just trial and error. ^^; If you feel you have a good handle on perspective, learn to just trust your sketch: trace over the whole thing first, then start looking for mistakes.
If you do not have a good handle on perspective yet, Iâd advise you to just grid it out. Even if itâs just a 2-line grid (they can help more than you think).
And overall, trust your gut. If the grid says you should do one thing, but you really think it makes the drawing look worse instead of better, donât do it! Go with your gut! Odds are you just drew the grid wrong!
Anyway:
Now Iâm adding details with blue (technical) and red (decorative~). This is a comic panel, so I have text boxes, too.
A little cleaning~
Finally, I collapse the drawing to one layer, delete the sketch, and monochromize (I also resized some of the lawn dĂŠcor, but I forgot to save that step separately). Doesnât look half bad, if I do say so myself. ;9
And now that that's done, here's a contradictory-sounding piece of advice: in 80% of the comic panels you draw, the buildings wonât really matter. ^^;
Hardly anyone is going to look at them for longer than half a second, you know? Getting good at drawing them is a good thing (I mean, that other 20% still existsâŚ) but a much more important skill to learn is the ability to throw some lines/shapes in the background that give the impression of a building being there, and moving on.
My comic Memor1n0 takes place in a city, so I've had to get into the habit of doing that:
If you inspect these backgrounds closely, they donât always make total sense. ^^; But at first glance, due to the division of the space, you see âbuildingâ, and for those panels, where the focus is clearly on other things, thatâs really all you need.
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Ooof, it's finally over. =P I dunno if this tutorial is particularly well written (it's kinda been stitched together haphazardly over time...) and the forum itself has been very uncooperative all day; I dunno if all the pictures loaded right...all that is to say, if you have any questions or tips of your own to share, as always, feel free. ^^;