Sketching in Architecture
Hey guys! We’re back this week with a post talking about the importance of sketching, how to get better at sketching and the different types of sketches you can use to translate your ideas into visuals.
Why sketching is important
Sketching is one of the most fundamental tools available to us as architecture students and architects. It’s a tool of communication, expression, analysis and exploration. We use sketching to understand our world and to test how we can reshape our world through our designs and proposals.
An image is truly worth a thousand words, and is one of the reasons why graphic communication in architecture is dominant over words. Practising your sketching daily can represent your ideas more powerfully to an audience, clients or even help you put your vision down on paper. It’s arguably the best way to get a sense of the space you’re analysing or trying to imagine, which is what we try to create as architecture students.
Sketches, however, are not perfect. They are not meant to be perfect, polished or finalised. The difference between a sketch and a drawing is that with a drawing, you have an end goal and a finalised vision in mind, to some extent, of what you are trying to reproduce. With a sketch, you are working something out, or testing design features, either in isolation of each component like a detail sketch or as a whole project. Alternatively, it helps you to understand your chosen site or case study building more deeply than if you were to simply photograph what you see.
We often get told to practice sketching everyday, but when you’re not in the habit of doing so already or you’re not used to expressing your visualisations on paper, it can be tricky to know where to start. Here are some starter tips to help you break the ice of drawing on a blank sheet of paper.
Start in the Middle
This is a tip that I (Linda) personally use whenever I have a creative block and struggle to express myself on paper. Starting in the middle of my page gives me space to build around my sketch as well as get over my tendency to want to conserve the crisp white paper and not ‘waste’ it on a drawing I’m not proud of.
Master the Fundamentals
Sketching is a skill, which means that anyone can get better at it over time by mastering different techniques and features of what makes a good drawing. Whilst we mentioned earlier that sketches don’t have to be perfect or incomplete, bearing the following points in mind can help you to communicate your ideas more clearly and make the quickest and roughest sketches make sense.
Stop Reaching for your Rubber
You will tend to want to rub out an incorrect line whilst you are sketching but in the sketching stage of a project, there is nothing that predetermines what is correct and what isn’t. Go with the flow and try to not reach out for your rubber. This won’t apply for every case but majority of the time the rubber is what is preventing you from progressing in your sketch. If you want to start off new, don’t rub out what you have and move onto a clearer segment of your page or begin with a brand new page.
Composition: the way different elements work together in a drawing
Perspective: drawing something from selected viewpoints to give your sketch or drawing depth and communicating three-dimensional qualities
Proportions: getting the scale of your subjects right in relation to other parts of the drawing
There are a lot of things to master to improve your sketching and drawing skills which you’ll only get better at over time. However, if you get these right and construct your sketch early on, even just briefly, you’ll find expressing your original ideas and even capturing what you observe in front of you will come more naturally and you can do this with ease.
Constraints
If you feel overwhelmed and you don’t know where to start or what to capture in a sketch, constraints can give you a direction and a goal to help you get your pen or pencil down to paper. This tip is especially useful for observational sketching.
Isolation: reduce what you see or what you imagine down to basic elements. Try focusing only on the outlines, or the shadows and highlights, or the textures of your sketch. This way, you’ll practice capturing certain elements and master those more quickly, as well as get used to the idea of communicating the most important features of your subject.
Time: whilst the idea of sketches not having to be perfect can be relieving, at the same time it’s just as daunting when we are told that all of our visuals matter in architecture, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of being a perfectionist about our work. Time constraints force us to be decisive in what to capture and finish a sketch regardless of its flaws and imperfections.
Framing: when you’re faced with a beautiful scene or architectural masterpiece, you’ll be tempted to try and draw everything. However, selecting a certain detail or selection of what you see can make your sketch cleaner and more focused. You can also get creative with framing and use your surroundings to shape the part of your sketch that you want to get down.
Switch up your Selected Medium
Challenge yourself to experiment with different mediums. It can be tempting to constantly use the same tool that you’re comfortable with, but sometimes it’s not the most effective medium to communicate your ideas. For example, a charcoal stick takes less effort to produce and tweak strong bold shadows than a normal graphite pencil can. A set of markers can help emphasise different colours, highlights or shadow tones to recreate a certain mood or ambience that an achromatic sketch wouldn’t be able to. You might discover a new favourite medium that compliments your expression. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new methods.
What you can capture in a sketch
Now that you have some ideas on how to get started with your sketching, here are some things you can sketch to explore architecture.
Light and shadow
Light is such a significant and important design element in architecture and can be used to create a dynamic ambience in your space. Shadows give subjects in your sketch depth, and the balance between light and shadow can create strong moods in your drawings.
Materiality and Textures
The way that different materials come together makes a difference in how people feel in a certain space. Mixed media can help to capture this effectively.
People
The relationship between people and the built environment is something that we as architects and students have to consider as we design. Capturing where there’s a higher concentration of people compared to other places makes you think about how that space has been designed to attract people to certain areas compared to others and why.
Detail
Ornamentation can reveal how the small things make up a building or a scene. Drawing out structural details forces you to think about how things work and come together, an example of how sketching can be used as a form of analysis and a learning tool.
Positive and Negative Space
Experiment with capturing solids and voids, or positive and negative space in your sketch. In particular, there’s a good opportunity to explore positive and negative space in urban designs and how this affects how people interact with the built environment.
That’s it for this week’s post guys! Hopefully this has been helpful in encouraging you to sketch more frequently, as well as informing you on the different ways you can quickly capture architecture.
If you have any questions on sketching, feel free to get in touch with us through our email at . Don’t forget to follow our Instagram page @archidabble, where you can comment on our posts on any tips you want to share, or DM us with any questions you have. We also post weekly Instagram content on Mondays which you can follow up on and stay tuned for.
