As much as I love putting together the content, the best bit is definitely reviewing the work done and preparing my feedback post. I am quite blown away by ALL the sketches done for the first lesson of SketchingNow Buildings.

I am going through everyone’s work and compiling my comments for my feedback post due out tomorrow night. I think that this first lesson is going to break my record for content – it’s going to pass the 20 page handout limit! It is so wonderful to be able to have this format to share my ideas in an in-depth way – it’s the background skills needed for all the tips in my upcoming book on fast architecture sketching. You need the basics before you can speed up!

The first lesson contains a series of exercises based on the three ways of visual thinking from my Foundations course (Feeling Edges, Abstracting Shapes and Constructing Volumes). The exercises are a combination of working from photos and then going out on location, and this week’s theme is churches/religious buildings. The exercises are designed to stretch people’s observational skills but it’s great to see them having fun sketching complex buildings. The sharing of work and commenting in the classroom is already fantastic. Here are a few random snippets:

Enjoyed this much more than I would have prior to this class. Was an excellent exercise making you aware of relationships and I found it fun. Forgot the inner critic as I was working through and remained positive whilst drawing.

I felt happy with this sketch. I mainly stuck with one line, and I like the life and energy this gives to a drawing.

I really like the idea of getting to know a building through drawing it. I had that in mind when sketching this, and it reminded me that I didn’t have to be perfect.

Loved doing this exercise and the way the volumes pop out once the shading and shadow is added.

I am surprised at how well the shapes worked. I really did not think the negative one would look as the church, but it does. A wonderful lesson in less is more!

Constructing volumes – this really helped me to get an idea of the different parts of the church – without getting lost in the gothic details.

I think these lessons are meant to challenge and help us focus our skills.

Love the simplifications of these exercises. It’s like a warm up for the big event/draw.

It’s so much better when you can see everyone’s work, not in order to compare but to learn and grow. I just love this course.

It’s also lovely to see a personal interpretation of the concepts by my great friend Suhita – here.

Anyway, as completely inspiring and encouraging all this is for me as the teacher, I have  got to get back to work. Have a lot of images to review and then put together my comment – not to mention putting the finishing touches on Lesson 2. I’m pretty excited about this one too, where we will get super practical – adding and subtracting volumes, thicknesses and depths and my personal favourite, leading edges!

Finally, a reminder: this is the only time I will run this as a weekly course with teacher interaction. It’s not too late to register for SketchingNow Buildings – click here for more details.