The Chicago Federal Building was the largest capitol-type structure ever built in Chicago. Completed in 1905, it loomed above the streets for sixty years before being torn down to make way for the Kluczynski Federal Building (finished in 1975). It was the last of its kind in Chicago.

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I've just about tackled 1-point perspectives - but 2-point is a whole new can of worms. To work up confidence, I thought I'd practice by drawing real buildings first before moving on to 'building' my own. And since I've always been a sucker for old-fashioned Chicago architecture, I decided to try my hand at doing this study based on a 1950s photograph I found of the old Federal Building - although, of course (if you know what the real building looked like) I took certain... liberties with it. Like equipping it with a lopsided dome. Oh, and I was going to erase the guidelines after I was done, but then decided to leave them in because it gave the picture more personality. I hope, anyway.

It might interest you to know that this was originally drawn with a bunch of Faber-Castell Vandyke brown (student) watercolour pencils. (Chatroom regulars exclaim at this point: "So THAT'S what's been snapping every two minutes!"). Because I wanted a nice, old-fashioned sepia look. The only problems were: (1) watercolour pencils, however nice they may be for colouring, are *terrible* for drawing buildings (I destroyed two-and-a-half pencils doing this), and (2) for some reason my wretched scanner refused to scan this picture in colour, so I was forced to do it in grayscale. I'll be investing in better pencils from now on.