Perspective 'scribbles'

As we will be looking at perspective this week in my sketching architecture classes I thought I better do a little warmup. Sketching from an architectural magazine - in some ways I find this harder than sketching on location as I don't engage with the building as well and I have to deal with distortion from camera lenses. Sketching from magazines and books is an important part of the design inspiration sketchbook that all architects are supposed to keep - something I have had many start stop attempts at doing regularly.

But getting back to perspective - I have my own simplified approach which I will share with my class… and it is best to do perspective setups slowly and carefully.(ie. if one believes in doing setups and I know some people have a hard and fast rule against that)  But I am not in that mood tonight so I went very quickly.  I do want to do some more without any setup at all but I thought some of you might like to see my red line setups as it explains the process a little better.

These drawings were done in a few minutes each. I am using what I call my 'design sketching" style - very rapid fast confident line - confident in its start and stop but it is not always in the exact 'correct' position and so I reinstate when I need to. These are totally exploratory sketches. I am exploring the design of the building as I draw it.

I am really looking forward to sharing my thoughts on perspective with my classes this week…I am really hoping for a dry Thursday and Friday morning. I have found the perfect building with great lighting… but there are some other good things to draw if it does rain.

Architects Sketchbooks

As I have mentioned earlier, for years I have tried off and on to keep a sketchbook dedicated to interesting buildings, details etc that cross my path so that I can absorb and maybe use (reinvent etc) later in a project of my own. I am also a bit of a magazine/book junkie which has now morphed into an architectural blog junkie (archdaily etc)... is there any one else out there like me? What do we do with all this visual stimulation... do we absorb any of it?
Today, I got my latest copy of Houses magazine so within 30 minutes I had flicked through it and drew a few sketches and (of course) splashed a little bit of watercolour over the top.
I haven't done this for a long while and I was very pleasantly surprised to discover how quick and easily I was able to do this sketches... ie. all my on-location sketching (particularly when on a crazy holiday) is certainly helping my ability to sketch quickly in any situation!


Last year, I tried getting to the office early to sketch these 'inspirational' sketches - I started in my personal daily sketchbook..but I go through them so quickly that I would never have them to refer to at my desk in the office.

Then I tried them in my daily work notebook (which is a moleskine with the thin paper...I kept that up for a number of weeks... but the paper isn't really what I love using...)

So I am trying my A4 size sketchbook dedicated to architectural sketches(which is what I used today)... and I think that this would be a good lunchtime activity (if I am not going out to sketch people!?! hey!)

Just for the record, these are early attempts at keeping such a reference/inspirational sketchbook. These sketches were done 10-15 years ago - on A3 cartridge paper and coloured with WC pencils. Done as research for the second house that I designed... I spent the WHOLE day looking through magazines and books to produce this... so labour intensive! It is amazing to look back and see how my desire to add colour and make images (rather than just scribble notes) was there back then!

SO... to all my architect friends out there who sketch on location do you sketch reference/inspirational buildings/details... what do you sketch them in/on and do you have any to show me????? And what do you do with all your magazines....