let's draw: Taipei 101

breaking down a huge tower in mixed media

This is a new series I’m hoping to publish once a month: a process post! Less story, more about how a piece was created and all the decisions I made to get there.

This first one here is a free preview for all, and the rest going forward will be for my paid subscribers.

I’ve been warned by Substack this post is Too Long For Email, thanks to many very vertical images I’ve included, so please click View Entire Message at the bottom of your email or open it in the Substack app or website.

Let’s draw Taipei 101!

February 11, 2024. Xinyi District, Taipei, Taiwan

One morning, I rode a city bike ride from our AirBnb to the base of the Taipei 101 tower.

It was a subject I had drawn before several times, back when I was in Taipei solo in 2018. It rained more or less the whole time I was there. Very different vibe (I wrote more about that trip in an earlier substack post).

Here is my most successful painting of the tower from 6 years ago, which I hated at the time, but it’s grown on me:

I remember sitting my butt down right on the sidewalk under a closed store’s awning to draw this view, because there was nowhere comfortable and dry where I could sit while also seeing it... suffering does not make great art.

The scale of Taipei 101 is really challenging — it’s just insanely tall, totally dwarfing all of the not-so-small buildings around it. Thanks to the 99 Percent Invisible podcast episode, I knew its 8 tiers had cultural significance, and its distinctive silhouette of stacked pagodas references traditional Taiwanese architecture.

In general, I maintain that no one is going to care if you make a building a few stories shorter than it is in reality, but this one is different. You have to get it pretty much right or people will notice. This is a special building.

For this attempt at Taipei 101, the skies could not have been clearer, and 6 years later I have a lot more experience. After biking around for a while looking for the view I wanted, I decided this one was it:

Why did I choose this view? First of all, there was a comfortable shady spot to sit! But the main thing that strikes me about it is how the palm trees intersect the building. Nature/architecture contrast, always great.

I also liked the 3/4 view — being able to see 2 sides makes for a more interesting view. Dimensionality! Also the vehicles on the road make for good scale contrast (and an excuse to draw scooters) — with Taipei 101 it’s alllll about scale.

10:51 am: A watercolor wash in 2 colors establishes the composition. It’s going to be very blue but warmer at the bottom. I’m trying to preserve a lot of white space, so I only painted shadow areas & some of the sky.

With a time limit of 35 minutes, I saved time by not doing any pencil sketching. But it’s very important to get the proportions of the building correct, so I did some sighting measurements¹ to get the ratio of height:width.

Using a gray marker, I mark where each pagoda top is. First I place the midpoint, and from there subdivide it with 3 more lines on each side. To exaggerate the perspective, the pagodas get smaller as they go up.

Now that I have these measurements, I can place in the other big elements (e.g., trees) of this scene proportionally. For example, the left tree tops only come up to the bottom of the 2nd pagoda, which you can see in the photo above.

About materials: I’m using just a few different brush pens & markers for the rest of this sketch. Their uniform colors contrast to the soft watercolor shapes, and also because they dry fast — I’m in a hurry. Limiting myself to a few tools will keep everything unified and force me to be creative with problem solving.

The paper is a 300gsm hot press from Potentate, a Chinese(?) brand of art supplies. A friend gave it to me. It’s aight.

About the timestamps: these are based on when I took the photo.

10:58 am: The hardest part is already over! Now I can start to make the building look more like a building: adding details and continuing the pagoda divisions onto the other side. Architecture sketching takes so much concentration!

The number of windows on the tower is mind boggling. No way I’m going to do all of that, but they are good to show scale. I speckle some in for texture with a blue brush pen, because the building is very blue.

Taipei 101 has a distinctive silhouette, so I define the right side: carving out those little notches of the pagoda stack.

11:03 am: Using the blue marker for the lit left side of Taipei 101 feels like it’ll be too much, so I use a teal Prismacolor pencil to add lines that reinforce the texture and perspective of the building.

This feels like a good tool to block in some of the surrounding buildings as well, since it’s relatively light in value & softer than marker. The stylized approach is nice for a fun effect and lack of detail helps to keep my time in check!

I noodle in a few more cars and stuff on the right side with the blue marker… it’s hard to draw moving traffic though.

11:05 am: Time to deal with this right side tree, finally. I block in its silhouette with the chunky side of the gray marker. I like how it helps frame the building, but it feels very flat.

11:11 am: To add a little more depth to that right side tree, I add some green pen in the darker parts. The color helps visually connect it to the other trees.

Finishing touches in the building: I add the white “T”s on each pagoda, but omit the corner caps — they’ll make it too complicated. Also in white, I make the crosswalk lines and attempt to make some light holes in the left hand trees. I’ve found this makes foliage look less heavy.

To finish defining the building’s silhouette, I refine the gray lines in the top area with the green pen. On top of the existing shapes & value it doesn’t really read as green, but helps to darken the tone.

The last (and worst) thing I do is try to blur out the watersoluble black marker lines in the trees & traffic with water. But the paper just pills up and muddies those areas. Oh well. It’s all about the tower anyway.

Call that done!

Here are the materials I used:

LEFT: “light green” vintage Prismacolor pencil, SEASON color brush in light green & blue, Staedtler marker in light tray, LINEPLUS 2.0mm calligraphy marker, waterbrush + not pictured white Signo gel pen — RIGHT: various watercolors in Art Toolkit palette & the Charlie Brush

That was fun! Did you enjoy this? Too many words? What did you think??

I just taught a local workshop the other day so I’m definitely in teaching mode now! This fall is going to be very education-focused: a soon-to-open online course, a 5 day art retreat in Portugal, and in October I’m teaching at the Urban Sketchers symposium in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

I’m also extremely excited for the 9 day workshop in Hoi An, Vietnam in April 2025… but it needs a few more people to sign up to run 🙃 Maybe that’s you??

• Eleanor

1. Here’s a video that explains the “sighting” technique. Thanks art school.