Exterior Drawing: Leeds Town Hall - Entrance Gate

Initial Sketch

Apart from the clock tower, the entrance of Leeds Town Hall interest me the most due to the perspective of the gates. In my initial sketch I didn't focus on the single-point perspective and vanishing point which would affect how the pillars and stairs would recede into depth, however, with the help of my referential photo I was able to draw the perspective properly. The stairs are the factor which maintain the depth illusion, because with them the stone cubes that hold the pillars are able to follow the outlines. I focused the detail of the drawing on the door and used gold and black ink to color the patterns on the gate, but did not draw them in replicas. In other words, I drew my own patterns on the gate and the still above the gate, since I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to improvise. The color combination (brown in the background with dark yellow in the front) goes well with the gold ink, as it gives the painting a contextual application as if it is the hub of a king concealed beneath the pillars of a city in ruin, perfect for an Indiana Jones style story of exploration. Henceforth, the texture of the brown color adds to the effect of presenting the structure as a dated temple in ruination (Indiana Jones, again). I intentionally omitted drawing anything between the two borders above the door because too much detail focused in the middle would not have an equal distribution throughout the whole composition.The pencil shadowing creates a bridge between the black and the white, for there would be no gradient without it and the contrast of the two colors would create too big of a contrast that would go against the aesthetic of the de-saturated colors around the composition.