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How to Draw A Cartoon Building using rectangles

Instead of drawing a simple cartoon building, you will learn how to draw a complete city in this easy step-by-step drawing lesson. Of course, buildings will be very similar from one another and achieving this tutorial will be relatively easy, even for beginners.

You just need to know how to draw a few basic shapes like a rectangle and a square. You also need to be aware that using a few colors is all it takes to create a sense of depth in an illustration.

Step 1

Start this tutorial by sketching three rectangles in your artwork. Make sure that your buildings are high and that you are using at least two different shapes. Like you can see in the example above, both buildings on the left and in the middle are similar in size.

Step 2

Next, add a few more rectangles randomly. However, make sure that all new rectangles are not bigger than the shapes you added previously. It doesn't matter if there are empty spaces around your buildings. We will deal with those empty spots later on.

Step 3

Continue working on your illustration by adding windows to all rectangles. Once again, make sure that all windows created on buildings that are closer are bigger than the ones from buildings that are on the back.

Step 4

In this step, it's time to deal with those empty spots. Just add a few shapes to make sure that everything is covered, especially the spaces on the bottom of the illustrations. Since we are not creating any streets in our image, we want all the bottom of the artwork to be covered with something (buildings in this case). You can also draw a moon in the sky.

Step 5

Time to add some colors! Leave the moon white and add some blue for the sky. Color buildings that are close in white and the ones on the back black. All buildings in the middle can be colored in grey. Make the windows blue and you are done for this step.

Step 6

Finally, you can add some shadows effect on each window, building and on the sky. As for the moon, a little transparency effect should do the job. Buildings on the back can remain black while the bottom will be darker.

Great! Using only a few basic shapes and some simple color patterns, you have created a simple city (filled with a nice template of a cartoon building) that could make a nice background in a comic strip.

Nothing too fancy, nothing too complicated. Background in comic strips are often very simple and effective and this tutorial will help you create some cities that are cute and nice looking. More fun buildings can be drawn below. Enjoy! :)