Travel Sketching Essentials: An Urban Sketching Course

Find a door or window you like, view it as a straight-on elevation with flat horizontals, measure proportions with your pencil to sketch, then draw the face of a building.

Carry a minimal set of materials for on-location sketching—Pentalic Aqua Journal, a 0.5 mechanical pencil with soft lead, kneaded eraser, clips, and an architect's triangle. Build the sketch in light construction lines, measure with the pencil, layer detail, and emphasize perspective and composition, sometimes adding a few figures for scale.

Explore the convergence principle in perspective drawing, where parallel lines like rails or road edges appear to meet at a single distant point, guiding accurate sketching of buildings and trains.

Master how the horizon line, or eye level, anchors vanishing points and converging lines in street-scale sketches, using foreshortening to identify eye level and the presence of two vanishing points.

Learn three eye level views—aerial, eye level, and worm's eye—and how vanishing points on the eye level line establish perspective and space in sketches and photos.

Master one point perspective by drawing from an elevation view with a perpendicular line of sight to create a single vanishing point, where horizontal lines converge toward eye level.

Learn to ease into watercolor as a beginner by building a simple color wheel from three primaries, mixing to warm and cool colors, while managing water for transparency.

Distinguish shade from shadow and learn how light interacts with surfaces in architectural sketching. Practice mixing cool and warm purples and simple palette techniques to depict light, shade, and shadow.

Apply one-point perspective to interior architecture by identifying an elevation, establishing eye level and vanishing point, and building a believable space from simple shapes, beams, and details.