Today we did Buildings! At first I was going to call the class ‘perspective’ and then ‘architecture’ but in the end downgraded the title to the more friendly ‘buildings’.

My big idea today was “Perspective is not the most important point”…it is only a tool to help you see better. The more important skill to develop is the ability to see and distinguish between form, structure, detail and also to see and allow for edges and thicknesses (ok- that is a mouthful of a sentence). I managed to push my hard working class through 5 quick exercises in the studio including drawing Notre Dame in Paris – from a photo of course – in only 5 minutes!

I then took them out to tackle a very difficult gothic church on the Corso in perspective (with minimal explanation of all the ‘rules’ of perspective beforehand).

Once again I am blown away by what my class did today – everyone in the class! I do believe at one point someone did say “this is fun!”(maybe not during the on-location part!!!) The really important thing was today they all started to see the elements of St Matthews. Drawing gothic buttresses in perspective is not going to be mastered first time around but hopefully they will try again…and who knows they might nail it the second time!

Of course I drove them mad by saying during the exercises – see this is easy, this is fun… drawing buildings is fun isn’t it? Thanks everyone for putting up with me (you all know how much I love drawing buildings!)

A special note needs to be made about our unexpected member of the team on the Corso- Aiman who works as a security guard  joined in with the fun! This kind of interaction makes urban sketching so much fun!