A Beginner’s Guide to Sketching Buildings & Landscapes: Perspective and Proportions for Drawing Architecture, Gardens and More

Engineer and architect Yamada, the author of multiple sketching and design books in Japanese, here guides new artists and those in the beginning stages of sketching buildings and scenery. Readers are taught how to identify the basic shapes and lines that undergird even the most complex architectural features or landscapes. Focusing on the critical first lines of a sketch, Yamada emphasizes the importance of finding the convergence (or vanishing) point where straight lines meet in the distance; this enables artists to determine the size, components, and proportions of any scene. He also gives advice on creating interesting compositions by incorporating close-up and distant elements and dividing sketches into different zones to fit any size of paper. As for sectioning the sky from the ground in compositions, the book references ratios, but this highly technical discussion may lose readers who are less mathematically inclined. However, the example sketches and the book’s highlighting of critical lines representing the center, horizon, and points of convergence make the concepts clearer.