Drawing Lesson 23, Part 3 – Architectural Drawing

Rendering Shades in Architectural Drawing

Video Lesson Description

In this video lesson you will discover how to depict three-dimensional shape of an Architectural Drawing by rendering shades in graphite pencil.

Architectural Drawing – Rendering Shades of Corinthian Capitals

According to the traditional Architectural Drawing approach, shading starts from the darkest areas. The darkest areas would be the casted shadows and under-planes of the Architrave and abacuses.

We start pencil hatching of the architectural drawing with delicate parallel strokes. The direction of the strokes follows the shape of the shaded objects in this architectural drawing. Cross-hatching is used for deeper tonal volumes.

Areas of the cast shadows, on the right side of the capital, can be shaded with pencil strokes covering several architectural elements simultaneously. This unifies the tone, and visually unites the capital in a single object.

The combination of shorter shading strokes for smaller details, and longer strokes for wider areas, gives a vibrant artistic appearance to the architectural drawing.

In this architectural drawing, we keep gaps between strokes even in the darkest areas of the drawing. This ensures that the artwork stays fresh, and shows the texture of the carved stone.

Several layers of hatching and cross-hatching build up the value of tones in our architectural drawing. We will come back to the same areas of the architectural drawing several times during the shading process.

It is better to progress with the shading in such a way that, at any given time, the architectural drawing would look like a full and complete piece of artwork. Good architectural drawing can be stopped at any time and look complete, if unfinished, which may have been the intention of the artist.

The column on the right hand side has the shading rendered in more details, and with deeper tones, to give an illusion of the aerial perspective. Objects in the foreground should be given more attention when shading the architectural drawing.

Great art starts with a great drawing and practice will help you master your fine art skills.