Drawing Colonial Buildings: step-by-step tutorial

How to draw old buildings without getting stuck in details and not being able to draw perfectly straight lines? This project gives a step-by-step tutorial for drawing old buildings freehand and to embrace imperfections. At the end tips are given to add textures to transform your drawing completely.
Let's go!

For this project I will use procreate on my ipad, apple-pen gen1 and the standard brushes provided with it. I will use procreate but you may very well use traditional materials as well. This will require a bit more planning since you can't move layers around to for- or background.

First have a look on the internet for pictures of some old buildings. My favourites were the colonial houses in Havana, Cuba...bright colours and lots of details.

A very restricted palette is used with three warm colours to emphasise the tropical climate, and black for drawing outlines and details. The background is given a beige to mimic a paper colour and to add to the tropical atmosphere. Also I will optically mix the colours using the multiply layer in procreate to create some darker colours as shown below. I could mix black in this way as well..
The process is shown below. First image shows the mixing process with 3 warm colours and black and below the beige background colour. Overlapping are the same 3 colours but swapped and their intersection will give the colours of the second row. Overlap with the second row will give the colours of the 3rd row.
The obtained colours are all shown in the second image.

Start by drawing a rectangle for each building. It doesn't have to be a perfect rectangle, drawing a little crooked adds to the charm. My rectangle turned out to be more of a trapezoid, but I stuck with it! I like to start with drawing in black or a dark colour so it's easier to see if you coloured everything and there are no gaps.

Fill the rectangle and erase the parts where the arcs and doors will be. Use the grid to make sure the height and width of the arcs and doors are about equal. Also pay attention that the arcs and doors are aligned vertically so you can later add columns between them. I also erased gaps between the pillars of the rooftop balcony. I changed the size of the pillars to even out the trapezoid shape of the building.

Finally, change the colour to the preferred colour.

Do the same of the other two buildings and draw them in separate layers. Pay attention to the placement and height of the arcs and doors compared to the other buildings. Use your first building as a reference.

Now the buildings are in place, it's time to draw the facade. I use the Technical Pen for these details because it gives a uniform line that doesn't change with pressure.

Using the arcs and doors as references, it's easiest to start with the balconies as they are right beneath the door openings. Shaky and crooked lines add to the charm so don't worry if the lines aren't perfectly straight...if all the lines are crooked, none will stand out eventually!

Don't draw all the details but give a rough shape. The columns have quite elaborate floral parts but represent it with some circles and shapes to give an impression. Also on top of the doors of the yellow building are a lot of details which you can represent with some simple swirls or curly lines.

Add a layer below the buildings in procreate and draw the doors and shutters there. In this way if you draw outside of the gaps in the facade, it will not show on the facade.

The Technical Pen is used for all the linework here as well.
Drawing the shutters is a bit tedious, so put on your favourite music while drawing.

The iron railings of the balcony have beautiful curls and geometric shapes. It's time to draw them next!

Add a layer on top of the buildings in procreate for drawing these railings. If you make a mistake, it's on a separate layer and doesn't affect the rest of the drawing.

The railings contain a lot of elaborate shapes. Simplify them. It doesn't matter if the shapes don't look exactly the same, the repeating pattern will drown the imperfections. I used a zig-zag line and curls for the railing of the yellow building. The railing of the other buildings are represented with some ovals and squares.

On a separate layer on top, a lantern is added.

Finally, a layer is added with a green shadow for the gallery, a dark green street and a cloudy sky, which is created by softening the edges with the smudge tool,

In the reference image, there are a lot of cars. Since I want to put the emphasis on the buildings, I will just add a couple of cars instead.

Start with drawing the shape of the car on a separate layer. I used the Round Brush for this. I find it easier to draw the shape of the car first and get the proportions right and then draw the outline on top.

Add a layer on top and use the Technical Pen to draw the outline and the details. You don't have to follow the shape exactly..it's just for proportions, lines will stick out and that's ok.

To finish it, use the background colour for the wheel base, lights and windows to make it stand out a bit from the background. You can use the eraser on the lower layers to get the background colour back.

To make the drawing a bit more alive, some laundry and plants are added.
Another layer is added and rectangles representing laundry are drawn using the Round Brush. The Technical Pen is used to draw plant leaves and on another layer the outlines are drawn.

The drawing is basically finished..no new elements will be added. Different tones can be used to draw shadows and make highlights, but we will do something different. Textures are used to give the buildings a weathered look...

For adding texture, first make a copy of the building layer in case something goes wrong. Set this layer to Alpha Lock so you will only draw inside the object and not outside of it. A tip for adding texture: make the object dark and add a lighter colour texture (or the other way around) this way the texture will pop out.

Select a texture brush, set the colour to the original building colour and swipe left to right, bottom to top over the object to fill it. Areas you want lighter, you swipe across more and for darker areas less so you will get some areas that look shaded. Try out different texture brushes to see which one will give you the desired effect and name the layer after the used brush so you can compare different textures later without forgetting which one you used. The brush I used is Stucco.

For the shadow in the galleries do the same thing: make a copy of the layer, set the layer to Alpha Lock, fill the object with black and select a texture brush (Stucco) with the building colour. This time swipe across to make a triangle as if the light enters the galleries under an angle. Change the texture brush colour to the shadow green and swipe the rest of the area but leave it a bit dark at the top to create depth.

The same procedure for the car except a different texture brush is used: Nikko Rull. It is a smoother texture brush better suited for metal surfaces.

Finally the shutters which is done slightly different since we will use the background colour. A layer below the buildings is added and a black shape is drawn behind the windows. Then the eraser tool is selected with texture brush Artist Crayon and the black layer is slowly erased leaving a film of texture on top of the background colour.

All textures are added and the drawing is as good as done. The only thing left is to look around the drawing if something is forgotten or looks weird.
For instance, I changed the colour of the laundry because some of it disappeared in the background. Also some background colour is added to the lantern and an antenna is added to the pink building because the laundry wire hanging looked weird by itself.

And this is the result! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!