The architect’s sketch journal is a way to visually think and create. There are no rules, no mistakes, and no need to worry about it being pretty or nice. The intent of a sketch is to quickly express your ideas, thoughts, or feelings and can be used to capture a moment, solve a problem, or just for fun. There are no mistakes in sketching, there is no need to erase a line. Sketching is a fun way to experiment with a marking tool and paper.
Page 1: We will start with our pencil and draw various types of lines.
a. Try drawing while pressing lightly, pressing hard, and varying with hard and light pressure.
b. Try drawing straight up and down, from various angles, and by slowly lifting up and down to create a staggered line.
Page 2 and 3: We will do a blind contour sketch.
a. Place your pencil on the center of your page and look at a small object near you. This can be a toy, an object on the wall, even a person’s face.
b. Now slowly try to draw the shapes that you see without looking at the paper and without lifting up your pencil.
c. Try to spend 30 seconds on this drawing.
d. Do this two more times with either the same or different object.
Page 3 and 4: We will do a contour sketch.
a. We will draw the same 3 objects, except this time while drawing you can look at your paper.
b. We still will not lift our pencil while drawing. Note: try to vary your pressure as you draw and use a thicker line to emphasize certain lines.
Page 5: Practice Human Scale
a. Architecture tends to be designed around the scale of a human. So we will practice drawing a scale figure.
b. The proportion for a human is 8 units tall, where 1 unit equals the height of a head.
c. Draw 8 ovals of the same size on top of each other.
d. Draw a horizontal line at 4 ovals up and 7 ovals up.
e. Now draw the outline of a human matching the example provided.
f. Using this as an example you can sketch many different scale figures.
Page 6 and 7: Basic Perspective Sketching
a. We will practice 1-point and 2-point perspective by drawing the inside and outside of a square cube.
b. To begin a 1-point perspective draw a square in the center of the page.
i. Then draw a dot in the center of the square.
ii. Taking a straight edge or ruler, draw a 45° angle from the corner of each square to the edge of the page.
iii. Now we will begin to add details in the space all vertical lines are straight up and down, and all horizontal lines will converge back to the center point of the drawing.
c. To begin a 2-point perspective draw a horizontal line, this will be our horizon line.
i. At both ends of the line draw a small x. This will be our vanishing point.
ii. Now draw 3 vertical lines with the center line being the tallest.
iii. Now connect the endpoint of the top and bottom of the center line back to the vanishing point.
iii. We have now created a perspective of a box, use your pen to outline this shape.
iv. In a 2-point perspective all vertical lines will be straight up and down, and all horizontal lines will converge back to the vanishing points that we created.
