Free drawing lesson

How to draw city patterns and textures

For beginners · 40 minutes

Brick walls, tiles, roofs and fences look scary because they have hundreds of parts. The trick: don’t draw the whole surface, draw a patch and let it fade out toward the edges. Six samples on one page, and you will spot them on any street.

What you need

Sketchbook (a clean page)
Pencil
Fineliner 0.2 and 0.5
Eraser
Ruler (optional)

Step by step

1
Module and rhythm
Every pattern is one part repeated in a rhythm: a brick, a tile, a board, a roof tile. Divide the page into six cells. In the first one draw a single brick and two repeats of it: that is your module.
2
Brick
Draw the courses as slightly loose horizontals. In each next course shift the joints by half a brick. Draw bricks only in the middle of the cell, and toward the edges make them sparser and smaller until they dissolve into the paper. The eye will finish the rest.
3
Tile
Tile joints run straight, so a ruler is fine here. Draw a grid of squares and hatch every second one for a checkerboard. Decorate one tile with a small motif and leave the rest plain.
Lessons like this one, step by step, are also in the SketchMap Atlas app: Home → Art courses & workshops. Open this lesson in the app
4
Wood boards
Boards are long, narrow modules. Draw parallel lines of different widths and put the joints in different places. For grain use a few thin lines along the boards and a couple of oval knots, only near the edges and in dark spots.
5
Roof tiles
Roof tiles overlap like scales. Draw a row of arcs, put the next row between the arcs of the previous one and let it overlap a little. Add thin hatching under each row and the roof gets volume.
6
Grille and colour
A fence is a rhythm of verticals and the gaps between them. Draw two horizontals, place bars at even intervals, and give a few of them points or curls. Then add one thin colour to each sample. Keep the sixth cell for your own pattern: cobblestones, mosaic or balcony rails.