Why Your Architectural Drawings Feel Flat and How to Fix Depth

If you ask yourself this question, it is probably because you are drawing everything with the same importance. If all the lines are of the same importance and if all the surfaces are drawn with the same importance, then there is no hierarchy, no distance, no space. An architectural drawing should always convey depth, otherwise, even the best proportioned building will look flat. And the way to achieve this is not by drawing more, but by establishing a hierarchy of what you draw and how you draw it. One of the best ways to achieve depth in your drawing is to think in planes rather than in lines.

Establish what is in the foreground, what is in the middle ground and what is in the background. For example, a door is not just a rectangle, but it also has a certain depth, it has a certain portion of the frame which receives more light, it has an interior that is behind. So you draw first the wall (foreground), then you step back and you draw the frame of the door (middle ground) with a slightly darker tone, and then you draw the interior of the door (background) with reduced contrast so the interior feels farther away. The point is that you are creating different layers in your drawing.

Another common error is that you draw all the edges of the surfaces with the same importance. If you do that, then there is no way to tell what is in the foreground and what is in the background. Instead, you should let some edges disappear or draw them with less importance, especially where two planes meet in a soft way. For example, if you are drawing a wall and the edge of the wall which is closer to you is also the edge which receives the most light, then you probably don’t need to draw that edge at all.

Or maybe you need to draw it but with the lightest pencil you have. But if you are drawing a slab and the underside of the slab is in the shade, then probably you need to draw that edge with your darkest pencil. By playing with the importance of the edges you are telling your viewer where things are in space. Another thing you can do if you want to create depth in your drawing is to draw only the shadows. Choose a small portion of your drawing and draw only the shadows.

With only one pencil. Without paying attention to the drawings. Without paying attention to textures or details. What you want to do is to forget about the lines and to pay attention only to the shadows. Then you can introduce the lines little by little, always keeping in mind that they need to serve the shadows, not the contrary. Probably you will realize that you were including way too much information in your drawings and that they were too flat because of that. Finally, you can practice this every day. Spend five minutes observing a real corner where light changes across surfaces. Notice which edges appear sharp and which disappear.

Use the next five minutes to sketch only two values, light and dark, without worrying about precision. In the final five minutes, refine one area by adjusting line weight to match the light conditions you observed. Do this every day and little by little you will learn how to create depth in your architectural drawings. To sum up, you need to create hierarchy. And the best way to create hierarchy is to make decisions instead of acting out of habit. You need to decide what is more important and what is less important. What can you draw with a stronger pencil and what needs a lighter pencil.

A column in front of you is probably more important than a wall behind. So you can draw the column witha darker pencil and the wall with a lighter one. That is how you create depth. And that is how you create nice architectural drawings. With time you will get used to this way of observing the built environment and you will realize that in reality this is what is happening too. This is how columns and walls and buildings create space.