This drawing is a study of the main door at University College, which is the centrepiece of the University of Toronto downtown campus. The door itself is set a ways back from the main facade of the building, with a series of ornamented arches, each smaller than the last, stepping back from the main facade to the wooden door. The door is flanked by three columns on either side set on a diagonal. I thought this entrance would make a great subject for a shadow study, as the shadows would show the depth of the stepped arches, whereas without shadows they might appear to be on the same plane. It was a major technical challenge to plot out where the shadows would fall. The light rays are assumed to be mutually orthogonal at 45 degrees (imagine a box with a line going from the top-front-right to the bottom-back-left). Their paths, as they encountered all the various parts of the entrance, were meticulously plotted over several months.

Nick Shinbin

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My current body of work, called Toronto Gothic, is a memorial for my father and an homage to Toronto’s rich collection of Gothic Revival architecture. My dad was a draftsman, and to keep his spirit close to me I’ve been learning manual drafting methods and applying them toward drawing images of Gothic Revival buildings in the city from angles they’ve not been photographed from and without any obstructions to the view. I detail them in ink with the objective of achieving as much realism as possible.