Introduction

Hi! My name is Maddie, I am primarily a fantasy artist, and one of my favorite things to draw is Gothic architecture.

 

Today, I'm going to show you how I draw fantasy Gothic architecture inspired by the real thing. More specifically, we will be looking at arched Gothic cathedral windows, like those found in Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, and other Western European cathedrals of that era.

I have broken up this tutorial into two videos to keep their length reasonable. The first video covers common shapes in arched Gothic windows and how to put these shapes together into a window design sketch. (Steps 1 & 2) The second video covers my personal methods for taking a Gothic window design from sketch to finished art piece. (Steps 3, 4, & 5) The text below is basically a transcription of both videos.

Step 1 - Research and Reference

Since we are basing our final window design on real Gothic cathedrals, we need to begin by looking at actual Gothic cathedral windows. I'll show you how to break down some of the shapes in these windows using some reference photos I took on a trip to France years ago.

I highly recommend also going out and gathering your own reference images if you can, or using something like Pinterest to collect many different reference photos for drawing from. Just remember not to look at only a single image, you always want to look at a variety to get the best ideas from each.

 

So, here we have several examples of Gothic cathedral windows. If you look closely, you'll notice that there are a few basic shapes that occur in all of these windows.

 

Part of what I particularly like about drawing Gothic windows is that because they use repeating shapes, we can easily break down this super complex looking design into much more simple pieces, and then replicate those pieces in different ways on our own window. Thus, we can make a totally new, never seen before window that still looks like it belongs on a Gothic cathedral. In fact, if you practice finding and making these shapes often enough, you can get even more fancy fantasy windows in your drawings.

So what are these main shapes? Well, the most obvious shape is, of course, the outside frame shape. This rounded arch top with a pointed peak. This shape is part of what defines this window as a piece of Gothic architecture. In fact, the name for this type of arch is a Gothic Arch.

This does not mean that all Gothic arched windows are the same size or ratio though. There are many variations, short and wide, tall and skinny, etc, but they all have that characteristic arch at the top, and an extended rectangular shape at the bottom.

 

In addition to the outer shape, arched Gothic windows typically have a lot of decorative elements within that arch shape from the top 1/2 to top 1/3 of the window. And this, in my opinion, is where the design gets really fun.

The designs in these top arches are typically the most complex and most individual parts of any Gothic window design. Luckily, they too can be broken down into simpler shapes that repeat themselves throughout a design. And there are even some arched Gothic windows that are pretty simple to begin with.

But then, how do we break down the more complex Gothic window designs? Well, let's start with the biggest piece, we only have to draw one half of the window. Almost all Gothic arched windows will be vertically symmetrical down the middle.

Thus making many of the shapes within the design symmetrical as well, like more pointed arches, circles, and the ever popular clover or trinity pattern.

This design has many variations within Gothic architecture in general, and arched Gothic windows in particular. For example, there are variations where one or more sections has a pointed arch rather than a round one.

And from that shape, we can get even more exaggerated shapes, like the one I like to refer to as the “ghost”.

There are many different shapes that can be found in Gothic windows, sometimes even within the windows on the same cathedral, but each individual window will usually only have a few of the same shapes repeated in it. Take some time to study what kinds of shapes you can find in your own reference and pick out the shapes that you like the most. In the next step, we'll look at taking these shapes and making our own window design with them.

Step 2 - Ideas and Sketching

As we saw in our research and reference step, there are a number of shapes that are often present in Gothic cathedral windows.

These shapes are part of what will distinguish your Gothic window from other styles of window. Of course, now is also the time to expand beyond the shapes present in real world windows if you so choose. Just keep in mind that the more different you make it, the less “Gothic” your window will look.

 

Now, remember that symmetry we talked about earlier? Here's where it comes in handy. If you have a version of Clip Studio, you should be able to go ahead and pull out the symmetry ruler from your rulers tab. This will allow you to draw a perfectly symmetrical sketch, and line art, while only doing about half the work.

 

If you have another art program, you may or may not have a symmetry tool, but you can probably still only draw half the design at a time. You'll just have to copy + paste and mirror the design while you work so you can see how both sides look together.

 

So, once you have your line of symmetry down, let's start by creating the basic Gothic arch shape. Don't forget the point! You can use a line tool or hold shift to make straight lines on the bottom rectangle.

 

Now that we have our outer guideline, we can start to fill in the decorative shapes at the top of the arch. I usually start by marking where I want the decoration to end, and the long bottom portions of the windows to begin. This bottom section of the Gothic window is most often divided into 3 sections, though the number can vary from 2 to 5 or more depending on the overall size of the window.

 

For now, let's start with 3. You can go ahead and mark off those 3 sections so we know where to connect to them later.

Next, we'll divide the upper section under the arch into smaller pieces.

 

If you look back at some of the reference images, you'll notice that most Gothic window decoration consists of the shapes we looked at before fitted together almost like puzzle pieces. The smaller shapes, like the clovers and “ghosts”, are fashioned into even larger pieces, often resembling flower petals, more pointed arches, and the like.

 

I personally tend to like more of the flower petal type shapes, so that is what I'll be adding to my window here. Keep in mind that these shapes now need to be relatively large, because in a minute we'll be adding in all the smaller shapes.

 

And don't worry about getting everything right the first time, I usually do 3 or 4 sketches for a single image before I can settle on any one design that I like. Plus, the more you practice these shapes, the easier they'll be to make.

 

Now that we have the larger shapes in our window, it's time to fit in our smaller shapes that we studied before. Try to repeat shapes as you go, as I mentioned earlier, many real world Gothic windows use the same shape more than once in their designs.

 

Keep in mind that there's no right or wrong way to draw these pieces, and if you get stuck, go look back at your reference for a shape you liked. Try and incorporate that shape into what you already have, or make a new outline if it doesn't fit.

 

If you are adding this window to a larger illustration, now would also be a good time to sketch out the window in the scene, or use your transform tools to place your sketches together in perspective (if necessary).

 

Whenever you are happy with your sketch, you can go to the next steps to follow along with how I usually render out illustrations, or you can go ahead and finish the window in your own style.

 

Step 3 - Lineart

These next few steps I'll show you how I usually render out finished pieces. Obviously, this can be done in many different ways, and will vary depending on your preferred methods and the illustration you are using your Gothic window in.

 

Personally, I start by creating a clean line art layer on top of my final sketch. This basically means tracing over my sketch for the most part. Sometimes, if there are pieces of the sketch where I haven't worked out all the details yet, I'll go back in and sketch some more before lining, but other than that, it's pretty straightforward.

For this particular piece, I ended up using a combination of the Turnip pen, which is my go-to for lining in Clip Studio, bezier curves, and the line tool for straight line segments.

 

You can, of course, draw everything by hand, but I find that to get a bit tedious. Especially in places like the frame where I need to keep a relatively consistent width all the way around the window.

While lining the window shape itself, I also added some decorative ivy to this piece. I chose to do the ivy without lines to keep the focus on the window design.

 

Adding lines to anything automatically gives it visual importance, our eyes want to focus on the things that are emphasized by having outlines around them. Thus, removing the lines from a visual element allows it to recede into the background, or feel less important, visually.

 

For the ivy, I used a leaf brush to populate the decorative ivy vines. This too can be done by hand, but I also like the randomness of the brush method.

 

For those of you that are drawing along with me, or would just like another foliage brush, I've included a link to a free download of the brush in the description.

 

The ivy leaf brush is available for free through Clip Studio Assets here:

If you look closely, you'll notice that there are two aspects of Gothic windows that I add in this lining stage that I did not sketch out beforehand.

 

First, I added more definition to the decorative elements at the top of the arch. In most Gothic windows, the decorative pieces are made of stone and layered on top of a layer of glass, both inside and outside. These stone pieces are most often beveled so that they curve outward from the surface, if you look at an image of a Gothic window at an angle, you can see how 3D they really are.

 

The smaller lines I drew in between the existing lines are to represent this shape, and you'll see during the shading section how they help give the piece some dimensionality.

 

Second, I added the leading within the glass pane part of the window. These are the lines forming edges around the stone elements and a diamond pattern in the middle. There are many different variations within the glass parts of Gothic window designs, often they are done with stained glass motifs or repeating patterns, like the diamond shape.

I personally prefer the simpler glass designs, so that I can focus on the elaborate top, but there's certainly no reason you can't add more complexity into yours!

Step 4 - Shading and Color

The way I typically shade images starts off with a multiply layer. This multiply layer will be my base shading layer, it establishes the general direction of the light source for the scene, and any textures present on the object being shaded, like fur, hair, dirt, etc.

 

I begin by flooding this layer with a shadow color, usually medium or light colors work best. I will then start to erase the shadow away from whatever surfaces the light will touch. This is, of course, dependent on where the light source is positioned in your scene and the shape of your object(s).

In this case, I chose to put the light in the top right of the scene (though I did most of the shading with the canvas flipped). You can see that I paid special attention to the window frame and detailing during shading, because a lot of the 3D surface, or dimensionality, of the frame is defined by where the light does and does not hit it.

After the first shading layer is done, I add a second multiply layer for the deepest shadows. This includes shadows cast by other objects, like the ivy vines, and the nooks and crannies of the frame. Basically anything that is facing away from the source of light, or where the source would be blocked by something else.

The last stage of shading, though it's a little out of order here, is a layer set to overlay on which I paint the highlights. I usually use a very light, mostly desaturated color for highlights, but in this case because of the way I was painting the piece, I went for a more bright saturated orange.

 

Pretty much any spot where the light hits first is highlighted.

Speaking of light, I noticed in looking at my reference collection that I particularly like the photographs where the glass from the Gothic windows strongly reflected their surroundings. Something that made many of the windows look like they were reflecting another world.

 

Thus, I thought a bright vibrant orange sunset reflection would be a great way to paint up this window and make a spooky season appropriate image.

 

Given that a lot of Gothic cathedrals were built way before mass production, all of the glass panes (that haven't since been replaced) were originally placed into the leading formations by hand. This means that although most of the glass reflections were accurate, every so often there are panes at different angles, reflecting different amounts of light.

 

To mimic this, I went in and painted a lot of the major reflection colors slowly, purposely varying the amount of color I laid down in various spots and occasionally erasing some areas as well.

 

I achieved most of the final glowing look for the sunset reflection using a few layers set to Add (Glow) with orange, yellow, and pink colors painted on top of each other.

After deciding on the spooky sunset theme and colors, I also decided to change the ivy leaves to a more autumnal red brown color. I did this using the Tonal Correction > Hue/Saturation/Luminosity slider under Edit, since I wanted to keep the color variation in the leaves.

 

Shading on the leaves was done similarly to the shading on the window. I used the base leaf color as the shadow, drew on a slightly lighter leaf color for basic shading, and an even more vibrant light to mimic the sunset oranges and yellows present on the glass panes. Since the leaves are a secondary accent piece to the window, I did not worry about being as precise with the shading.

At this point, I was pretty happy with how the shading and coloring looked, and decided to move the piece onto finishing touches.

Step 5 - Finishing Touches

Personally, when I'm drawing I tend to find that I almost exclusively focus on creating and finishing each object or part separately. I complete the line art, then the shading, then the coloring, etc. And while I try to take in consideration how the whole piece will look when finished, the separate pieces do not always merge as well as I'd like.

 

This is where finishing touches come in! The goal of this stage is to look at the piece as a whole and tie everything together with extra shading / highlighting, color overlays, and smaller details like light glows or dust motes that bring a little extra life to a piece.

 

For this image, most of the extra shading and highlighting I did was accomplished on a single overlay layer, using bright yellow orange to accentuate the light, glowing parts of the image, and a darker navy blue to push the shadows.

 

I also added some correction layers to bring up the brightness, saturation, and contrast in the overall piece.

I also decided to add some extra little spooky touches, as if there were will-o-the-wisp or little bits of magic floating around the reflection of what I pictured as a dark forest.

 

And with that, my Gothic window is now complete!

If you've read this far, I appreciate your dedication, and I hope you enjoyed the tutorial!

 

If you have any questions about Gothic windows or drawing in general, feel free to ask in the comments here, on YouTube, or my social media linked on my profile.