Drawing Architectural forms Building Layers On Black Paper 17th October

Building layers on black paper 17th October 

As Friday was the last time looking at architectural forms, we were given a task of producing a sort of final art work by the end of the day. Before we started we were shown some different ways artists have drawn buildings, as well as the materials they used. We could then develop some new ideas on how to look at the building we were drawing, and understand we don't have to follow the photo we had.

We were sent off to start. In my head I already had an idea of what I wanted to do as I'd taken an good photo of the outside of Lichfield Cathedral. As I looked at the photo, I found the angles and all the lines interesting. It would be a challenging drawing with all carvings, windows, and the spiral right in the centre. However, as I had not yet done a drawing of the outside of the cathedral, it would make a nice change.

I decided to draw on black paper as the white would make the drawing stand out. All the details would also allow me to create many different tones. I grabbed a pencil and started lightly mapping the outline. When I started drawing, I realised this was a good exercise for perspective. With many lines going to different vanishing points, I had to make sure they were all correct before I started adding white onto the paper.

It took longer than I thought to map out the sketch; there were so many columns to draw. I took out my white pastel pencil and went around the outline of the Cathedral first. I then took some white charcoal and filled in the sky by pressing hard at first, then pushing upwards, gradually getting lighter closer to the top of the page. The white sky now made the rest of the black page really stand out.

I added some highlights with my pastels, keeping the white lines sharp because I wanted the texture of the paper to come through. As I worked my way down the paper, I added a bit of black to the darker areas to create more contrast. This worked well because the paper wasn't a very dark shade of black. One of the hardest parts was drawing the windows. There were so many and as they were leaded, I had to draw them carefully without making them look too 'messy'.

Unfortunately I didn't get to add all the detail before calling it a night. I would have to finish this off another day. However, I was very happy with what I'd done. It was a big improvement compared to last Friday.