You’re planning a site visit or travelling overseas. You know it’ll be a prime opportunity to do some sketches, but you don’t know where to start. Here are some tips to get you started with sketching en plein air.
I’m Naomi, a designer from our Brisbane studio. I come from a visual arts background and always found joy in sketching, particularly on my travels. I’ve been keeping a meticulous travel journal since 2019, filled not with words but with pictures, a real visual diary.
I asked a few fellow sketchers in the studio – Associate Elliot Harvey, Associate Chris Wardle, and Student Abbey Greenwood – and together, we’ve put together a few tips and tricks to hopefully empower others to keep the art of architectural sketching alive.
The architect’s arsenal
The sketching toolkit – everyone has their preferences. I asked the team: what’s in your toolkit?
Naomi: A5 sketchbook, a 6B pencil, a rubber, sharpener, and a selection of coloured pencils (Prismacolour).
Elliot: A5 sketchbook (Royal Talens), black refillable ink brush with real bristles, black pen (Artliner), and 6B pencil.
“I like to use a toned paper sketchbook (Fabriano Quadrato or Hahnemuehle Cappucino) so that you can draw the brightness in a white pencil or brush (zig refillable are fun).”
Abbey: A5 notebook, markers of three colours, pencils, a thin fine line pen and a thick black pen.
Chris: A5 leather journal (Paper Republic) with different paper inserts.
“I tend to prefer 150gsm dot grid paper but want to try a darker stock to experiment with highlights in my sketches. I like using a coloured pencil to draft out initial shapes before I swap over to an Artline pen and I never erase the pencil.”
Medium matters
How do you pick the right tool for the job?
Know that the smaller your pen, the more likely you are to get bogged down in the finer details. Fine line pens or HB/ 6B pencils are essential, but why not embrace the power of the crayon or oil pastels. Using broad mediums is great for creating different textural effects such as dots, smudges or wide strokes. They particularly useful for warm up sketches. If you’re wanting to try drawing with charcoal, I recommend using charcoal pencil instead of the sticks, as they’re a bit more hardy and cleaner.
Elliot is a big fan of drawing with ink. He waters down the ink and carries it in a refillable water brush, which is a great way to try bringing a different medium on the go.
Tip: Buy cheap materials! Skill doesn’t come from how much you spend on pens. Why not try sketching with a highlighter. No matter what tool you use, practice makes perfect.
Elliot Harvie
Mixing it up with colour mix
While Architects love black, I think there is a lot to be said for sketching in colour. I recommend using a limited palette when sketching on the go with up to four colours in a drawing. A good rule of thumb is having a warm colour for highlights and cool colour for shadows.
Elliot always carries an earthy green, an umber, an oxide, an ochre and ultramarine (Faber-Castell Polychromos).
Tip: Blue or purple can make your shadows pop.
Naomi MacKenzie
Elliot Harvie
Zoom in
When sketching, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the details. Don’t forget that you’re allowed to zoom in. It’s often more impactful to crop your view rather than attempting to draw everything you see. Why not try drawing the building edge, a lamp post on the street, or half of a window.
“Focus on key forms, unique features or ‘moments’.”
– Abbey
“I tend to take a photo first and always ask myself, ‘what is it about this moment that makes me want to capture it? Am I in the best position, or do I need to move around? Once I’m happy with the photo I’ll often come back to it later and sketch it.” – Chris
Zoom in
– Naomi MacKenzie
Zoom out
– Naomi MacKenzie
Lovely linework
We’ve all been there – you’re sketching away and your tutor leans over your shoulder. “Architects draw in a single line,” she says.
‘Chicken scratch’ is what I call drawing with hard, short, and misaligned strokes. This is a perfectly valid place to start; however, If you want your sketches to appear more confident, I suggest doing light, longer and more flowy lines. Use this technique to draw the vague proportions before going in with a harder, darker and more jagged lines.
Naomi MacKenzie
Proper Proportion Prep
Proportions may be the most intimidating element for those getting into sketching. My advice is to practice by tracing. This helped me to lengthen my pen strokes, understand the distance between objects and figure out perspective.
Tips:
- Look at the shape and size of the negative spaces around objects.
- Look for the ‘intersection’ points of objects. For example, how far up the window does the sidewalk tree reach, in relation to the windowpanes?
- Use your pencil to judge proportion of objects against each other.
Naomi MacKenzie
Sketching helps with so many other skills as an architect; it helps you understand proportion and lighting. It can also help you notice small design details that you would otherwise have missed. So, next time you are out and about, bring your sketchbook along!