How to Draw Japan

About this book

> 100 SUBJECTS. 6 STEPS EACH. 600 STEP-BY-STEP DRAWINGS. THE ANCHORS NEVER MOVE — THE BUILDING RAISES ITSELF. > > A castle keep stacked like a wedding cake of tile and plaster. A vermilion torii that is mostly emptiness. A five-story pagoda of roofs. A fire lookout tower, a sake brewery with its green cedar ball, a watermill, a lighthouse, a brick station with a clock for a face. > > Scenes fail without architecture — and Japanese buildings have shapes the rest of the world does not. This book fixes that the honest way: one fixed blueprint — centre line, ground line, ridge top point and half-width locked from Step 1 to Step 6 — while every building is raised from ten master massing shapes (keep, hall, pagoda, torii, gate, tower, house, longhouse, dome, bridge), its structure, the feature that gives it its name (shachihoko, spire, clock, lamp room, sacred rope, bell, cedar ball, chimney, waterwheel), and its detail. Nothing moves between steps — so the building you start is the building you finish. > > Inside: 20 castles & fortress buildings · 20 shrines & their buildings · 20 temples & their buildings · 20 town, village & working buildings · 20 famous landmarks & modern classics. Every subject is named in English, Japanese and romaji — this book is also a walk through the words of Japanese architecture. > > And after every subject: a practice page. Trace the faint design, then draw your own version in the empty frame. 100 subjects, 100 practice pages. > > Every building in this book is a generic design — no real castle, shrine, temple or station is copied, and no crest or signage is drawn — so every building you invent with this system is completely yours. All you need is a pencil and an eraser.