Always scroll down to look at the finished drawing if at any point you are confused about where I'm going with one of these steps. It may help to clear things up for you.
The castle this is based on is a photograph I have of a castle on a river with some scenic mountains in the background. Looking at the photograph, I made a simpler rendering of the scene, and broke it down to these steps:
1. Draw a horizon line, and two other shorter lines as shown
The top two smaller lines will be used for the roof of the main part of the castle, as we will see in later steps. Draw lightly so that you will be able to erase these guidelines later! Do NOT draw too large...you need room for the rest of the castle and scenery.
2. Complete the main part of the building, by drawing the roof with two diagnonal lines, and then create the building as if you are making a box.
3. Next, we're going to add another building towards the back of the castle's main building. This building is drawn the same way. The front part of the roof leans in a little bit, so it is not a straight triangle. The building seems to sit on an angle. It will look better as we add more details.
4. As you can see here, I elongated the sides of the buildings to make them go beyond the horizon line, and I have added the first tower to the castle. I started by making an upside-down curved line and then a second line just below that one, somewhat smaller. Directly above those, about 2 inches up, and in the very center, I made a dot, and I drew diagonal lines connecting the end of the longer curved line and the dot on each side, forming the top cone shaped roof. I connected the two curved lines on the side, and then added the sides to the cylinder shaped tower. The bottom is also curved, below the horizon line.
5.Now we're starting on another tower. This is a great way to also draw a chimney.
Begin by making a point on the roof of the main building about an inch away from the end. On either side, make straight lines, one ending at the roof and the other extending beyond the roof line. Connected the point with the end of the line that went beyond the end of the roofline to start your tower.
6. Now, connect those two vertical lines with a diagonal line, forming the one side of the tower. Draw a third vertical line, just as long as the middle one, to the right of the middle line, and connect that one at the top and the bottom too, forming the front of the tower.
7. The next step is the roof for the tower. This roof is a pyramid shape. We'll start by making a dot above the tower. All of the points of the roof are going to converge on this Apex (look, you're learning geometry terms too! An apex is the point where the sides of a pyramid converge, at the top). We are going to draw the lines from the point to the edges of the tower, hanging over slightly to make it look interesting. Look at real buildings. Roofs rarely are flush with the sides of the buildings.
8.Let's start adding a little bit of detail to the buildings, just under the roofs. This makes it look more interesting, and is in keeping with the style of the building we are drawing.
We're also adding a new building to the side of the tower, starting first with three lines...the top of the roof, the bottom of the roof, and the bottom of the structure, which will be partway onto the roof of the main building, then we connect those lines to form a building as we did the others.
9. We're going to add another building coming off of the front of the main building. We will start, again, with two parallel lines for the roof, and one for the bottom of the structure. The bottom one will go below the bottom of the other building, so as to make it appear to be in front. sketching in the sides of the building, and diagonals to connect the front line to the front of the main building will add depth.
10.Let's put another tower in front of the main building, right next to that new structure we drew. We are going to draw it just like the other tower, starting with two upside-curves, one smaller than the other, then making a point directly above, and connecting that point with the two diagonals to the ends of the larger curve. Draw in the sides of the building, then a curve at the bottom.
11. Next, I've lightly sketched in some guidelines to allow me to better place windows and other details on the sides of the buildings. Notice how the curved towers have curved guidelines, and the lines on each of the other buildings are parallel to the roof lines, not just straight across. Make these light, as we will erase them (mine are only darker so that the scanner could pick them up.
12. Draw in your choice of windows, using the guidelines to help you. You can make them as fancy or plain as you want. On a curved building the windows will have a similar curve.
13.Let's ink in some details. I am using a Sharpie Ultra Fine marker. I use sharpies because they are waterproof, and I usually watercolor my pen and ink drawings.
When you draw in the bricks and shingles, you don't draw each individual. Less is more. There will be darker lines on the shady side of the building (opposite the sunlight), and less on the part that is facing the sun. Broken lines look more realistic than a solid line. For the shingles, I drew the horizontal lines, and then add dashes across them randomly. Look carefully. It is not perfect.
The most important thing is to make the shingles go in the right direction for how the roof is going. On the cone shaped roof, the shingles go around. For the pyramid shaped roof, they go in different directions depending on the side. This helps to show the viewer the shape of the roof.
14. I've added some landscaping details now.
In the background, as in the original photograph, I added some mountains, and I also drew in the shore, as the castle sits on an uneven shoreline. I drew in some rocks, and I squiggled in some bushes and plant growth. This is easily done by making small squiggles, randomly, over the area.
The shoreline is obviously not perfectly straight. A good rule of thumb is that anything man-made usually has straight lines, exact circles, etc. (such as the sides of a castle), but anything God made is often unique. There are no perfectly straight lines in nature. I used the horizon line we original drew in to gauge where to put my shoreline, and the "back" part of the river rests on it, however it does come forward, and come close to our castle, before running off the page in the front, into the foreground.
15. Finally, I added shading with some Prismacolor Gray-scale Markers. I love these. Again, they are waterproof, enabling me to go back in and add color with water color pencils or regular watercolors. They don't fade, either.
I explain more about using Prismacolor Gray Markers in my cartooning book. Start with a lighter gray (10% to 30% gray), and mark off the shaded areas, and gradulally use darker gray markers, to darken up the other shadows. To shade, think of where light would naturally hit a building, and shade the side without direct sunlight, as well as under the roofs, on the crevices of the rocks, etc.
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