Hi Tom here and in this weeks Circle Line Art School video I'll show you one way
to draw the Gherkin, which is a famous building in the city of London, it's
famous I guess for its unique shape and its beauty, it's based on the shape of a
fir cone, the building was designed by the architect Norman Foster, so the first
step in this drawing is to draw a tall dome-like shape, just a loose sketch
using several lines, we don't need to try and get it perfect straight away, we just
need to find the lines that we need, it's a sort of elegant curve of a dome that's
what we're looking for, slightly pointy at the top, next we can draw an
ellipse towards the top, an ellipse is just a squash circle circle seen from an
angle, now we can add a series of flowing lines from our ellipse at the top going
towards the right-hand side of the Gherkin, these lines need to be sort of
flowing in a natural way, again we can just sketch these lines as they curve
around this sort of three dimensional surface,
so they're like a curved line on a curved surface so, as long as they look
something like it I'm sure they'll be fine, but they all need to sort of go
together in the same direction, they are series of double bands which sort of echo each other,
once we have a set of curves then we can add more curves in between them, now we
can repeat this process, but this time the lines of the curves can go from the
top ellipse towards the left, the left hand side of the Gherkin,
they should make a series of diamonds, a bit like fishnet stockings, as a pattern
over this shape that we're creating,
now we can erase some of the lines that we no longer need,
we can also draw with the eraser, to emphasize the angle of the curves that
we're drawing on the building,
next we can add a few details at the top and double up the criss cross lines,
for this drawing I'm using a 4b pencil and also a mechanical pencil which can get
to a sharper point, we can now add a series of more ellipses going around the
whole form of the Gherkin, again we need the top part of the ellipse as we're
looking up at this tall building, but sometimes it's useful to draw the whole
ellipse, the whole squash circle, but then just use the top front part of it,
in this drawing I think the more times that we can repeat the shapes that we
have already drawn the more it will hopefully look like a big building with
lots of small details,
so if the details are very large it's not going to look like a large building,
but if the details are really tiny and quite sharp and they vary in tone
then it will look like something that's large, but further away from us, the
viewer, once you think you have enough shapes wrapping around the Gherkin, then
we can start to add some tone, for this drawing I want the facets of the glass,
as it's a glass building, to look like they're capturing the light that's
shining upon it, so I want to draw a range of tones of light and dark areas
across the surface of the Gherkin building, to draw different tones just
change the pressure you apply with the pencil when you draw,
each of the diamonds in this drawing can be divided into a grid of smaller
diamonds, into six or nine perhaps smaller diamonds, to get a sense of light
and dark it is, I think, fine to have some areas sharp and other areas of the
Gherkin building more blurred,
we can use the edge of an eraser to mark out the highlight on this drawing a sort
of vertical line going through the middle of the building, maybe towards the
right a little bit but we can they use an eraser to mark that out,
now we have, I think, perhaps basically finished the Gherkin building, more or
less, we could add some more buildings at the base of the Gherkin, there's a small
church on the right with a tower and then there are some other buildings to
the left, which we can just make up and they're all going towards the left and
they all sort of overlapping behind each other, to make, that will help them make
that like they're going away from us and then all the horizontal lines of the
building can just slope towards the left, to give an indication of some form of
perspective, so they look again as if they're going away from us,
so these are quite big buildings, but compared to the Gherkin they're very
small buildings,
once we are satisfied with the buildings that we have in the foreground
we've got a big space on our page on the left and another big space on the right,
so in these areas I'd like to add two more buildings, close up, showing their structure,
the first building on left is going to be part of the famous Lloyds building by
the architect Richard Rogers, so to draw this Lloyds building on the left, start
by drawing a vertical line and then we can divide this up
horizontally to make a sort of ladder shape,
the gherkin was designed with ecology in mind, using, reusing heat, those sort of
things and the Lloyds building I think was designed more to show the workings
of the inner part of the building, putting them on the outside, so it's a
sort of got an honesty to its form, it's not hiding how it works as a building,
it's in plain view, next we can choose an angle for the
diagonal line that we're gonna need on the ladder shape and we can use this
diagonal line, the same angle, for every other rectangle, now we can draw a
series of ellipses on the left, of this block for a sort of exterior stairwell,
once these sort of tin-can shapes are drawn in on the left, we can add some
exterior drainpipes on the ladder like parts of the building,
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now we can erase some of the lines that we no longer need on the left and it is
time to draw the last building on the right...
the building that we'll put here is another building which is close by to
the Gherkin and it's called the Willis building and again it's by the architect
Norman Foster, to draw the Willis building start by drawing a straight
vertical line on the right and then we can draw a series of curved lines going
up from this vertical line towards the right-hand side of the page, the facade
of the Willis Building is a concave shape, it goes inwards and it's a glass
wall which reflects the tones from the nearby buildings and interacts with the
shafts of light which get caught between the buildings,
now we can add some shading to the Lloyds building on the left, a dark flat
tone on the base of each of the shapes,
we can also add some softer shading on the buildings at the base of the Gherkin,
we can continue this soft shading, this light shading, on the Willis building on the right,
with its simple curved structure...
the last few steps in this drawing are just to add some a few more tones and
some smaller shapes, some smaller details,
we could add a simple tonal sky in the background as well,
a few clouds as it's London,
thank you very much for watching this drawing tutoria, l my name is Tom McPherson
and I post a new video every week on my youtube channel Circle Line Art School,
please subscribe to keep up to date! Thank you for watching and see you next time...