Introduction: How to Draw Buildings From a Bird's Eye View

Hi y'all, I'm going to walk you through how I drew buildings from a bird's eye view. While we're all stuck at home, you're probably bored not being able to do the activities you did in the past. Maybe, you started doodling in your notebooks to help past the time. Maybe, you actually started to enjoy drawing, and want to go beyond doodling. Starting with a basic tutorial to start you off, learning to draw from a bird's eye view will help you develop an important subject/idea. A skill in adding depth, or a "3D" affect to your drawings. Hopefully, you'll have fun following me along in this instructable.

Step 1: Supplies

I don't want y'all to spend money, so the list of items I used in this walk through are items I already had.

  • A Pencil (I used a 0.9mm mechanical pencil, but a normal wooden pencil should work)
  • A sheet of printer paper (you can used any kind of blank paper, but everyone should have it due to work or school)
  • A ruler (It should have a side with cm, or inches if your working with bigger paper)
  • An eraser (I used a white vinyl eraser, due to it clean erasing)
  • Masking tape (I did this so that the paper doesn't move while I drew lines)

Step 2: Taping Down Your Printer Paper

To start this walk through, we'll tape our paper to a clean surface. You can have the paper in front of you "hotdog" style (like the picture above) or "hamburger" style (where the vertical side is facing you). I ripped four pieces of masking tape and set them at each corner of the paper.

Step 3: Drawing a Dot in the Center of the Paper

A dot doesn't seem like an important step, yet this will help you create the 3D affect in your drawing. I didn't measure the sides of the paper to find the exact center of the paper. If you like, you can do that. I guess where the center was and drew a dot there.

Step 4: Drawing Your Soon to Be Buildings

Here I drew two squares, and three rectangles. They should be a maximum of 4cm away from the center dot. You may place your squares and or rectangles anywhere around the CD(center dot). You don't have to label your shapes, I did so to better explain what I did. Remember, you can do this in inches if you have bigger paper. I drew these five shapes in these specific locations in order to cover all bases. This will be further explained in the next few steps.

Step 5: Connecting Your Shapes to the CD

Looking at square number one, shows you how you will draw your lines from your shapes to the CD. Number one and two had their line drawn in the exact same way. With two lines from your shape to the CD. These lines should be drawn lightly, since they will be erased later on. Looking at number five is what you should avoid. Such dark lines will be difficult to erase. For three and four, there should be three line drawn to the center. Taking a look at five again, if your not sure if you should draw a line. Make sure that your ruler can make a clean line from your square/rectangle to center. In the first picture, your drawing should like similar to mine.

Step 6: Drawing the Bottom of the Buildings

Take a look at the first picture. Here we're going to add the bottoms of the buildings. Looking at the same picture, you should draw the lines horizontally/vertically from the center. Number one and two were drawn in a similar matter. For number three, four, and five, take a look at the pictures to see how I drew the lines. They're horizontal and vertical to the square/rectangle. Once you done, your drawing should look similar to mine, take a look at the first picture.

Step 7: Erasing a Few Lines

In the second picture, I drew an area where you should use your eraser. Don't erase the CD yet, it'll be used in the next step. Within the area are the lines that are going to be erased. This will give your drawing the 3D affect we're looking for. After you finish erasing, use a smaller eraser (like the one at the end of your pencil) to cleanly erase the remaining lines. Look at the final picture to see what lines you should erase.

Step 8: Adding Detail to the Sides of the Buildings

We're going to add some detail to our buildings. In the pictures above, I spaced out the lines by 1cm to give them a clean look. I drew five lines from number two to the center. It's okay to draw past the bottom of the building to the center. You can erase them later. Number four and five were spaced out like number one and two. You don't have to follow the same step I did. Looking at number three, I decide to do it differently. The final look of the drawing should look like the first picture.

Step 9: Final Detail to the Roofs

I didn't measure the roof tops of the buildings, since it's difficult to repeat the exact same measurements. The pictures above should give you a general idea on how I drew them. You can even do something completely different from what I did. It's all up to you. After you finish with the roofs, you have finally completed the drawing. After this point, you are free to do whatever you want. You have free creative freedom to create whatever masterpiece you want to create, your only limit is your imagination. If you don't want to do that, erase the CD and remove the four pieces from the corners of the paper. And your done!

Step 10: My Final Drawing

This is what I did to my final drawing, this is here to encourage you to go beyond my steps. Thank you for following my instructable guide, I hope you had fun following me along. If you want to share your masterpieces to me, feel free to send them my way.