Christ Church Deer Park

Christ Church Deer Park is located on Yonge Street, north of St. Clair in Toronto. I wanted to be able to show the church without anything blocking the view. I started by going to the Toronto Archives and taking pictures of the original architectural drawings, then redrew them to scale at home. Using these I figured out a geometric scheme I could use draw the elevation plans for the east and south facades, based on some research I did using Gothic Cathedrals and Sacred Geometry by George Lesser. I used these to recreate the elevation drawings to scale, then detailed them in ink from various reference photos I took. These are shown below.

After making these scaled elevation drawings, I set out to make a view in perspective, which showed these two facades. There were no reference photos to use from the angle I wanted, and even if there were the building would be mostly blocked by trees. So I chose an observation point and a horizon line, and manually put the scaled floor plan into perspective. Then, I used my scaled elevation plans to add the third dimension. Once the building was drawn in, I started drawing in the bricks and all of the features of the building – windows and doors, trim, etc. When that was complete I started outlining everything in pen, and then went in to do the detailed rendering. The next couple of pictures show how that looked.

As I was rendering in the details I also wanted to add the shadows. I chose a position for the sun that would cast some nice shadows back onto the building and its various components. I used some reference books on perspective drawing to figure out how to cast shadows on complex geometric shapes. I put a sheet of tracing paper overtop to make sure it would work before I drew anything on the actual page. Here is a picture of the process.

That basically allowed the picture to be completed. I added in a border as well, to show off a few features of the building. Then I learned to write gothic blackletter script with a calligraphy pen and added the name. Here is the final image: