Introduction

This tutorial explains stylistic elements of gothic architecture and gives some tips on how to approach drawing those elements individually.

This tutorial does NOT provide a step-by-step walkthrough of drawing an entire gothic cathedral or something similar.

My hope is that these tips will provide you with the building blocks that'll in turn enable you to put together something greater than the sum of its parts.

 

(All photos used in this tutorial belong to me, therefore I do have permission to use them in my tutorial)

The greater picture

There is not one gothic architecture style. It was common in different parts of Europe over multiple centuries, with differences emerging both over time and the different countries.

 

However there are some commonalities that are generally attributed to gothic architecture, and those are the ones I will focus on in this tutorial.

 

One of these things was that gothic architecture was typically commissioned by the church and had the goal of communicating some philosophical ideas of man's relation to god.

High buildings with lots of ornaments pointing towards the sky communicated the idea of a god above.

 

I won't dive too deeply into the philosophical background, but it's a useful reminder in my opinion: if in doubt, just add more upwards pointing shapes.

The architecture was also grandiose, far from the minimalistic buildings that we might have become accustomed to in modern times.

 

Looking at a gothic cathedral (depicted here: the Toledo Cathedral, Spain) it's hard not to be impressed by the sight - and also a bit intimidated if coming at it from an artists perspective.

 

There is just so much going on, how is one supposed to make sense of all this?

The first step when trying to make sense of complicated structures should always be to simplify the form.

This can be done by trying to identify more primitive shapes that surround the 3D structure...

...and/or by simplifying the silhouette (the 2D shape we are seeing in the picture).

Now the goal of this tutorial isn't to reproduce a photograph, but to learn techniques that help us think up a structure of our own.

Level of detail

So let's approach the problem from the other direction: Instead of trying to simplify a complex shape, let's think about how we could complexify a simple shape.

 

For our example we're starting with a simple cube.

This very primitive shape is what I'll be calling the 1st level of detail going forward.

 

A simple shape that hopefully is easy for you to imagine and draw in 3D space, allowing you to correctly place it in perspective.

The 2nd level of detail is a modification of this shape, be it by adding or removing other simple shapes.

In this example I indicated that I'd cut off some corners of this box, giving it a new unique shape.

 

The shape has immediately become a lot more complex, but when thinking about how to construct this shape, things are still very straight forward.

The 3rd level of detail doesn't modify the shape, but adds detail to its surface.

The object as a whole now looks a lot more complex, but all we did was basically to select a primitive shape, add or take away other primitive shapes to/from it, and finally add some primitive 2D shapes to its surface.

Each step should be very easy to replicate - as long as one uses these three steps of complexifying the object.

We don't have to stop here though. If the object still isn't complex enough for our liking, we can simply select one of these new primitive shapes and repeat the whole process.

This process can then further be repeated for the new shapes we added, and so on and so on.

This way we can make any simple object as complex as we want it to be.

Arches

One of the other features of gothic architecture are the arches used everywhere.

The church wanted their cathedrals to look larger by removing as many load-bearing walls as possible, which meant that the weight of the structures above had to be distributed somewhere else.

Tall columns and arches were the solution.

A good way to remember the specific shape of these arches is to imagine them as inverted string with a weight attached at the lowest point.

 

(Sidenote: this was actually how architects back in the days calculated the shape of these arches. Miniature models of the cathedrals were built upside-down and small weights proportional to the load above each arch were added to the strings representing the arch, resulting in the optimal shape to distribute the weight)

To construct the shape of the roof you start off with the columns which are intended to bear the weight of the particular segment of the roof.

The next step is to find the midway points between each adjacent column and draw the arches between these pillars.

The last step is to repeat the same thing for the columns diagonally across.

Windows & Tracery

Another feature of gothic architecture was to make the interior look bigger by trying to break through the outer walls, installing as many windows as possible.

Since any window effectively removes part of a load-bearing wall, it was important to shape the windows in forms which allowed a good distribution of the weight.

 

The two best shapes that achieve this are a simple circle and the already mentioned arches.

In many cases it's easy to just think of windows as "arch cutouts".

Since we already discussed arches in the previous section, I'll focus on the other prevalent shape, circles, here.

If we take a look at these large round stained glass windows, they can look a bit overwhelming at first glance. There is just too much going on to make sense of it.

 

Thankfully we have already learned how to deal with complex structures: we just have to simplify them.

One property we can observe in this window is the two-axis mirror symmetry. Meaning we can flip one half of the circle along these lines, and the smaller circles on the other side would overlap.

The other type of symmetry we can observe is rotational symmetry. Rather than flipping the circle, we can rotate it around its center and perfectly align the smaller circles.

 

Symmetry immediately makes drawing such a complex structure a whole lot easier, especially since Clip Studio provides us with the tools necessary to draw using symmetry.

Select the ruler tool in the sidebar (shortcut U)

Select the Symmetrical ruler from the list of sub tools.

Change the number of lines, then select the center of your drawing layer.

Drawing just a small number of circles will immediately result complex structures similar to the window we saw in the photo earlier. Adding small elements such as triangles in the gaps between circles makes the whole thing look even more complicated.

Thanks to the symmetry ruler we have to draw only a very small subsection of the whole thing.

 

(also I'm aware there is no 6th step, I accidentally misnumbered the 7th step)

The tracery in various arches appear similarly complicated.

But on closer look, they often appear to be just combinations of arches and circles, both features that we have already discussed!

Analysing this tracery via the level of detail technique discussed earlier, we quickly discover that this complicated structure is basically just repeating, ever smaller arches with circles on top.

Buttresses

Sadly I do not own any pictures of buttresses which I could use in this tutorial, so I suggest a quick look in your search engine of choice.

Since I don't have any photos to illustrate what I'm talking about, sketches will have to do.

 

As I discussed earlier, three of the main ideas of gothic architecture were to build tall structures, to remove as many load bearing walls on the inside as possible and to use as many windows as possible to give the appearance of an especially roomy interior.

Obviously doing so came with its own structural challenges. The higher a building, the higher the load weighing down onto the walls below, the less load bearing walls, the less walls the load would be distributed on, the more windows in the walls, the more load was concentrated on small areas of the wall, increasing the stress on the structure.

By adding structures on the outside of the building this weight could distributed/counterbalanced, making the building more stable and enabling some of these architectural features on the interior even possible in the first place.

To add these buttresses on the outside, it's best to imagine an arch intersecting the part of the wall would normally bear the full weight of the building above.

Instead of drawing the full arch however only the outside part of the arch is put in place.

The last step is to use the techniques we talked about in this tutorial to add ornaments to this arch, to make it look more complex.

Because in the end, that's what ornaments are: added unnecessary complexity.

Final words

Arches and levels of complexity added on top of each other - if there's anything you should take from this tutorial it's those two things.

Arches aren't exclusive to gothic architecture, which makes it useful to understand just how they work.

And the approach of layering complexity upon another in various levels of detail is a technique that isn't even limited to architecture, but appears everywhere, be it trying to draw organic objects, landscapes, characters, etc.

 

I hope you guys were able to learn a thing or two from this tutorial of mine.

Thanks for reading :)