DRAWING AND SKETCHING PEOPLE FOR PRESENTATIONS.

ARCHITECTURAL PEOPLE. 

Drawing People for Architectural Presentations.

 My last blog was a little piece on drawing people.

As a warm up exercise and as a simple outline technique for adding scale to architectural drawings and sketches. It has had quite a good reception so I thought I would add a little detail to the first steps of the template for the outlines. 

I have been ‘practising’ drawing people for many, many years and still feel I have a long way to go.... but I enjoy the journey. Adding age, movement, character, humour just helps to keep it fresh. However, when embellishing design sketches I tend to revert to the simplest outline. 

These are the steps I use to draw individual people. If your sketch is an elevation, section or perspective [at eye level] then draw all the heads of people at the same height, that is at the same ‘eye level’. This will be the same as the horizon line. You need to adapt your figures if you are drawings view is ‘worms eye’ or ‘aerial’..... 

 Below is an example of eye level being at normal eye level. Adding other views to your practice routine will add to your skills and confidence, but given most projections will be elevations and section, you will probably use more figures drawn at ‘standard’ eye level than any other view.... although Plan view [directly overhead] are useful as well. This is easy to achieve if you use strong shadows on your building and people. 

These groups are sketches where all feet are at the same level as opposed to all eye levels being at the same level. If you are above normal eye level you need to foreshorten the height to ensure the correct perspective. The higher you are, the more the foreshortening will be. When you are in Plan view the figures are as short as they get, as they to will be drawn as plans! 

 Scale is critical to give a ‘realistic’ representation. This seems like such an obvious thing to say, but remarkably difficult to achieve when you are setting out. Buildings need human scale. Your Architectural People need to reflect the ‘human’ scale. The average height of an adult male is about 1800 mm, a female, about 1600 mm. This should relate to your floor to ceiling heights. If drawing in perspective, making your figures taller and slimmer will make them appear more elegant. The more ‘stylised’ your figures are, the less you need to worry about conventions of human proportion. 

ARCHITECTURAL SKETCHES WITH AND WITHOUT PEOPLE

Experiment and have fun practising your drawings. When you put them into your architectural drawings, keep them simple. Remember, the star of the show is the design drawings.... NOT your people drawings. If your people are not right, leave them off your presentation drawings, but copy the presentation and practice people [trees, bushes, landscape, backdrops, etc] on copies. Keep drawing. It is almost impossible to get better at anything by not doing it. 

Most importantly, Enjoy.

May your paper never run out.