Service Road

There is a service road in between Howe St and Granville St. We see out of our apartment window, when looking to the east. It is an important service road to me because later this week a truck will rumble down this way to bring us our clothes, many possessions, and most of my sketchbooks.

I know I took almost exactly an hour to draw it, because I also made a timelapsed video. Scroll below to find it.

This is an interesting perspective scene because of the dynamic between roofs and higher level surfaces and the road. It was fun to consider the perspective challenge in this way. I began, as I most often do, at the top left of the page. Then, I decided to go downwards until the first electric lamppost. From there I leapt across the service road to lay down a skeleton of the parking lot. From there I went back upwards to throw in two more buildings.

After drawing the cars on the street, I came back to the left side of the page to pull the other buildings down. Again, I leapt across the service road at the electric lamppost. I zigzagged going down this way, to make sure my perspective matched on both sides. It is less important to get the perspective precisely correct with such drawings. It is more important to be consistent within the page. The page is your universe. It can have any rules you like, and the audience won’t mind. But the rules have to be consistent. Inconsistency of style is the only sin in making art.

In any case, here’s a video of the whole drawing. Enjoy!