Castle Drawings

Start the shading work from whichever part you like. I did it from the top right tower.

Since this is a pencil drawing, use a piece of paper under your right hand (karate chop part) that directly touches the drawing paper, not to smudge the drawing.

See that the roof tiles on the building right under the tower are wavy shaped, so make wavy lines to create more realistic drawing.

In similar fashion, shade the rest of the buildings. Be careful however, while shading the roofs. Roof tiles should be pointed out. You can smudge them by cotton swab later but the shape should indicate that it is a roof. Your drawing will look much better.

The gate still remains white; we shall shade it in next step. Notice however, that the sunlight is coming from the right side. Therefore the shade of the entrance gate part is visible on the turret wall on the left.

Similarly the diagonal shadow cast on the turret on the right side of the gate. Guard rails on the left side of the road were probably built recently. You can draw them but need not if you don’t want.

It is good to keep in mind that most of the castles are medieval architectural objects, which are usually complex for several reasons. Castles were usually built on the top of the hill - mostly rocky hill.

Such terrain does not provide much building options so the builders had to utilize every possible piece of ground or rock. They could not adjust much the ground; instead they had to adjust the shape of the building complex.

Yes there are plenty of castles built on the flat land and these castles were probably built in more or less symmetry and, thus they are easier to draw.

Many of castle drawings that I would like to introduce to you are medieval, top of the hill built buildings. You can find these castles in many places throughout Europe. Many of them are only ruins but you can often find a rest of the original majesty in the ruins as well.

When we draw architectural objects like castle drawings, we usually decide where the sunshine or the daylight source will be coming from. In this case it is from the upper right corner.

This is something you can easily get accustomed with. Based on the daylight source you will know how to shade the castle’s buildings. Very simple ideas about how to shade any object are in warming up exercise section.

Click on the images to enlarge and see how I worked out the parts of the castle. I used simple strokes (as usual), crossing or lining up on each other to get a darker tone.

When you draw the roof pattern, just shade the roof first and then with sharp pencil, make crossing lines resembling to the roof tiles. Draw these lines gently, they must look almost like a shade. A good example of roof tiles is the gate-roof on this castle It should look like this or better.