28 Flower Shop Drawing Ideas of Corner Florists, Flower Carts and Paper-Wrapped Bouquets

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Flower shop drawing gives you the best of two worlds on one page: a building with character and flowers that forgive almost any brush stroke or marker swipe. Every corner shop, cart and market stall has its own personality, and once you start noticing buckets of blooms on a sidewalk or a cat curled up among the stems, you will want to draw every florist you pass.

Below are 28 scenes pulled from flower shops and carts around the world, ordered so you can start simple and work up to busier compositions. Grab your fineliner and markers, pick whichever shop speaks to you most today, and get drawing.

Start your flower shop drawing series with the classic corner shop, since it teaches the whole formula you will reuse all week. Block in a simple rectangular storefront with your fineliner first, keeping the door and window large, then add a row of buckets lined up along the sidewalk before any flowers go in.

Work the building in pencil-light fineliner, then switch to markers for the walls, working light to dark so you can still see your guide lines. Fill the buckets with loose clusters of color, rather than individual stems, because trying to draw every flower separately is where this one usually goes wrong.

If this is your first time blending alcohol markers, test your two greens and three floral colors on scrap paper before you touch the real page, so you know how they layer. Keep buckets at slightly different heights along the curb to suggest they are real containers, not a flat pattern.

One tip for today: draw the shop facade a full size larger than feels natural, since a cramped building makes the whole scene feel tight before you even start on the flowers.

Palette: Coral,Lemon Yellow,Leaf Green,Warm Grey

Move from the shopfront to a close-up moment: hands wrapping a finished bouquet in brown kraft paper on a countertop. This is a great second drawing because it is mostly about shapes, triangle of paper, bundle of stems, a few loose blooms peeking over the top.

Sketch the paper cone first in fineliner, leaving it open at the top, then draw the stems bunched inside before adding flower heads above the fold. Color the paper in warm tan marker with a slightly darker line along the folds, then bring in your pinks and corals for the blooms, saving a sliver of white paper for shine on the ribbon.

Hands are the part that trips people up here, so if you are not confident drawing fingers yet, crop the frame so only a wrist and the edge of a sleeve show, with the bouquet doing all the talking.

Swap the brown paper for pale pink tissue if you want something less rustic and more wedding-shop in feel, which only changes one marker, not the drawing itself.

Palette: Kraft Tan,Blush Pink,Coral,Sap Green

A flower cart gives you a more compact subject than a full shopfront, which makes it a relaxed one to draw after the first two. Picture a small wheeled cart, round or rectangular, piled with buckets, sitting on a stretch of cobblestones.

Draw the cart body first, keep the wheels simple circles, then build the cobblestones as a loose grid of small rounded shapes rather than a perfect pattern, since real cobbles are never even. Markers go on the cart in one warm wood tone, the cobbles in cool grey, and the flowers last in your brightest colors so they pop against the stone.

Eye level matters here: sit the cart slightly below your own eye line so you are looking down on the cobbles a little, which reads as a street view rather than a floating object. If you want more of this kind of street composition, the flower bouquet drawing lessons cover similar ground-level framing.

Today’s tip: leave a few cobblestones uncolored entirely, just outlined, to keep the street from feeling heavy next to the bright cart.

Palette: Warm Wood Brown,Cool Grey,Coral,Lemon Yellow

Shift your focus upward for this one: a shop window framed by rows of plants hanging in pots from the top of the frame. It is a good chance to draw foliage without a single flower, which is its own kind of practice.

Draw the window frame as a simple rectangle first, then plot evenly spaced dots along the top edge for where each hanging pot will sit. Let the trailing leaves vary in length so the window does not look like a row of identical plants, and vary your greens, olive, sap, deep forest, so the mass of foliage reads as many plants rather than one green blob.

The usual mistake is making every leaf the same shape and size. Break that up by mixing pointed leaves, rounded leaves and a few trailing vine shapes among the pots, and let a couple of them hang lower than the rest.

If you want a quicker version, draw three or four pots instead of a full row and let the window glass suggest the rest continues off the edge of the page.

Palette: Olive Green,Sap Green,Deep Forest,Terracotta

Bring in some pattern now with a market stall sheltered under a striped awning, buckets of blooms arranged across a wooden table underneath. The stripes give the whole drawing instant rhythm without any extra effort.

Draw the awning shape first as a simple triangular or curved canopy, then rule in your stripes with a straight edge if you want them crisp, or freehand them if you prefer a looser market feel. Color alternating stripes in two contrasting markers, red and cream or green and white work well, then add the table and buckets beneath in a lower, calmer palette so the awning stays the star.

Measuring trick: count how many stripes fit across the awning before you color any of them, then keep that count even on both sides so the canopy does not look lopsided once it is filled in.

One swap, if stripes feel fiddly today, use a solid canopy color with a scalloped edge instead, which still reads as a market stall.

Palette: Brick Red,Cream,Coral,Sap Green

Give the shop a resident for this drawing: a cat curled up asleep right among the buckets of flowers, as if it has claimed the warmest spot in the shop. A sleeping animal is one of the kindest subjects to draw because the pose stays perfectly still.

Start with the cat’s body as one soft oval shape, tail wrapped around, then build the buckets around it afterward so the flowers frame the cat rather than competing with it. Keep the cat’s coloring simple, one base marker with a darker version for shading along the back and tail, and leave the belly and paws lighter.

Fur texture is where this one can go wrong if you try to draw every hair. Instead, use short flicked fineliner lines only along the edges of the cat, chin, ear tips, tail end, and let the marker color do the rest of the work.

For more practice drawing relaxed cat poses before you add the flower shop setting, the black cat drawing ideas are a good companion session.

Palette: Warm Grey,Charcoal,Coral,Sap Green

Add a human moment now: a girl walking out of the shop almost hidden behind a bouquet far bigger than she needs. The joke of the oversized bouquet makes this an easy one to have fun with.

Draw the bouquet first as one big rounded cluster, then fit the girl’s figure in afterward, arms wrapped around the base, only her head and legs showing past the flowers. Keep her figure simple, a coat or dress in one flat color block, and let the bouquet take up most of the page so the scale joke reads clearly.

If figures are not your strong suit yet, simplify her further: a plain silhouette shape for the coat, a simple oval for the face with no features beyond a smile, and let the flowers carry the detail instead.

Try shrinking the shop entrance slightly behind her so she looks closer to the viewer, which pushes the sense that she is walking straight toward you with her prize.

Palette: Coral,Blush Pink,Mustard Yellow,Navy

Take the shopfront idea further with a Parisian flower shop, known for its painted green facade, gold lettering and flowers spilling out onto the pavement. This one rewards a bit more patience with the architecture.

Draw the facade first with straight fineliner lines, keeping the proportions tall and narrow rather than wide, since Parisian shopfronts tend to sit snug between buildings. Color the facade in a deep bottle green, add simple gold or cream lettering across the top panel, then let flowers in your brightest markers fill every ledge and bucket along the front.

The gold lettering is the part people avoid because it feels like calligraphy. Skip actual letters if you prefer and draw a plain gold rectangle sign instead, which still reads as a shop name from a distance.

Quick version: draw just the doorway and one window with flowers spilling around it. The fuller forty-minute version adds the whole facade width and a striped awning above the door.

Palette: Bottle Green,Gold,Coral,Blush Pink

Zoom right into the workbench for this still life: a counter scattered with ribbon spools, a pair of scissors and a handful of loose roses. Still life compositions like this are forgiving because nothing needs to move or act.

Arrange your objects in fineliner first, overlapping the ribbon spools slightly behind the scissors so the grouping feels natural rather than lined up in a row. Color the ribbon spools in two or three coordinating colors, keep the scissors metallic grey with a thin white gel pen highlight along the blade, then finish with roses in warm coral tones scattered across the counter.

Overlapping is the trick that saves a still life like this. If every object sits separately with gaps between, the composition feels scattered rather than arranged, so push the spools and roses to touch or overlap at least once each.

If you do not own a white gel pen, a thin strip of untouched paper left white works just as well for the scissor highlight.

You Will Need

• white gel pen

Palette: Dusty Rose,Coral,Metallic Grey,Sap Green

Stay at the workbench but change the mood: this time it is all greenery, eucalyptus stems and twine laid out ready for bundling, no flowers yet. It is a quieter composition that leans on texture rather than color.

Draw the eucalyptus stems first, a loose diagonal branch with small rounded leaves alternating along it, then add a coil of twine beside it as a simple spiral shape. Color the eucalyptus in muted sage and silvery blue-green rather than a bright true green, which is what makes it read as eucalyptus and not generic foliage.

Dry brush texture with your marker, dragging it lightly over the paper so some grain shows through, works well for the twine’s rough surface and saves you from drawing every individual fiber.

Next time you draw this bench, add a pair of garden shears or a small notebook with a pencil tucked into the spiral binding, to suggest the florist just stepped away.

Palette: Sage Green,Silvery Blue-Green,Kraft Tan,Warm Grey

Float the whole shop onto water for this one: a tiny flower shop built into a canal boat, flowers spilling over the deck railing into the water’s reflection. The water gives you a built-in excuse for loose, relaxed color work.

Draw the boat hull first as a long shallow curve, then build a small cabin structure on top before adding flower boxes along the railing. Color the water in horizontal streaks of blue rather than a flat wash, leaving thin white gaps between streaks to suggest ripples and a faint reflection of the boat’s color underneath.

Light direction matters here. Decide where your light comes from before coloring the hull, then keep the water’s reflection of the boat on the same side as the shadow, which is what makes a reflection look convincing instead of random.

If full reflections feel tricky, a simpler swap is to show only a few wavy color streaks under the boat rather than a mirrored shape.

Palette: Canal Blue,Kraft Tan,Coral,Sap Green

Give sunflowers their own moment: a cluster of tall buckets packed with sunflowers standing right beside a shop door, the blooms nearly as tall as the doorway itself. Sunflowers are satisfying to draw because their shape is so recognizable with so little effort.

Draw each sunflower head as a center circle surrounded by pointed petals, varying the angle of a few heads so they are not all facing straight forward. Color the centers in a warm brown with tiny dark dots for texture, then layer two yellows on the petals, a base lemon with a deeper gold along the base of each petal for shadow.

Measuring trick: compare the width of one sunflower head against the height of the door before you draw the rest, so the scale of flower to doorway stays believable rather than oversized.

One concrete tip for today: tilt at least two of the sunflower heads downward slightly, since real sunflowers rarely all face the same direction in a bucket.

Palette: Lemon Yellow,Deep Gold,Warm Brown,Sap Green

Change the season now: a flower shop dusted in snow, its display switched over to winter berries and pine branches instead of the usual blooms. The contrast of cool snow against warm shop light is what carries this drawing.

Draw the shopfront and snow-covered awning edges first, then fill the display with pine sprigs and clusters of small red berries rather than full flowers. Color the snow in the lightest blue-grey rather than pure white, saving actual white paper for the brightest snow highlights, and let the shop windows glow in warm yellow to contrast against the cold palette outside.

If you enjoy this cooler, festive palette, the Christmas flowers drawing ideas carry the same mood into more winter arrangements.

Quick version: just the window display with berries and pine, snow dusting the sill. The longer version adds the full shopfront with snow piled along the doorstep.

Palette: Blue-Grey Snow,Berry Red,Deep Forest,Warm Yellow Glow

Step up to a bigger project now: a florist mid-task, attaching flowers to a tall wedding arch frame. This is a busier composition, so give yourself the full sitting rather than rushing it.

Draw the arch frame first as a simple curved structure, then plan where the flower clusters will attach before coloring anything, marking loose circles along the frame as placeholders. Build the florist figure smaller in the foreground, reaching up toward the arch, so the scale makes clear just how tall the structure is.

The usual trap here is covering the entire arch evenly in flowers, which reads as flat and busy. Instead cluster blooms more heavily at the base and top corners, leaving some bare frame showing through the middle, the way real arch displays are built.

If a full arch feels like too much today, draw just the top curve with flowers cascading down one side instead of the whole structure.

Palette: Blush Pink,Coral,Sap Green,Cream

Slow the pace back down with a quiet counter scene: a finished bouquet sitting in its wrap, a small handwritten tag attached, waiting for whoever ordered it. Nothing else needs to happen in this drawing, which makes it a calm one to finish in a short sitting.

Draw the bouquet wrap first, a simple cone or cylinder shape, then add the tag hanging from a loop of string at the base. Color the wrap in a single soft tone, cream or dusty pink work well, then bring the flower heads above the fold in two or three colors so the bouquet still feels fresh rather than flat.

Leave the counter surface almost bare around the bouquet. A busy background competes with what should be a simple, still moment, so a hint of wood grain with just a few lines is enough.

If you want to vary this one later, swap the wrap color and tag style each time, a single prop can carry a dozen different moods with small changes.

Palette: Dusty Pink,Cream,Coral,Sap Green

Bring a dog into the scene now, standing proudly by the shop door with a single flower held gently in its mouth. A simple standing pose keeps this one quick, while the flower adds all the personality.

Draw the dog’s body first in a basic standing stance, then add the flower stem crossing its muzzle before refining the face around it. Keep the coat color in one or two tones, a warm golden brown with darker shading along the back, and make the flower the brightest color in the whole drawing so the eye goes there first.

Eyes and nose are where a dog drawing can go wrong fastest. Keep them small and slightly soft rather than sharply outlined, and the expression reads as friendly rather than cartoonish.

For more relaxed dog poses to build confidence before adding a prop like the flower, the dog pencil drawing ideas are worth a look.

Palette: Golden Brown,Warm Brown,Coral,Cream

Give one flower the whole window this time: a shop display packed entirely with ranunculus, layer upon layer of tightly curled petals in every shade of pink and coral. Ranunculus are a satisfying challenge after simpler blooms because the petal structure is more intricate.

Draw each ranunculus head as a tight spiral of small curved petal shapes building outward from a dense center, rather than trying to draw every petal as a separate careful line. Color from the center outward, darkest at the core and lightening toward the outer petals, which is what gives ranunculus their characteristic layered glow.

The mistake most people make is drawing petals too large and too few, which turns a ranunculus into a generic rose. Keep the petals small and numerous, even if that means simplifying the outer edge of the flower into a soft scalloped outline rather than individual petal tips.

If the full window feels like a lot today, draw three or four ranunculus heads large and close up instead of a full display.

Palette: Deep Coral,Blush Pink,Pale Pink,Sap Green

Narrow the scene down to one small, tender moment: a little girl reaching up to choose a single rose from a bucket of many. The focus on just one chosen flower against a bucket of others gives this drawing its quiet charm.

Draw the bucket of roses first, loosely packed stems with a few heads turned different directions, then add the girl’s figure reaching toward one specific bloom, her hand just touching its stem. Keep her figure simple and her expression soft, a small smile is enough, so the rose she is choosing stays the visual focus rather than her face.

Scale is the trick here: keep the bucket roughly waist height on her figure, which reads naturally as a child-sized reach rather than an adult-scaled bucket she happens to be standing near.

If figures still feel like a stretch, show only her hand and sleeve reaching into frame from one side, which keeps all the charm with less drawing.

Palette: Rose Red,Blush Pink,Sap Green,Cream

Switch things up with a modern twist: a flower vending machine standing on a city sidewalk, its glass front stacked with small bouquets ready to dispense. This is a fun change of pace after so many traditional shopfronts.

Draw the machine body first as a tall rectangle with rounded corners, then divide the glass front into a simple grid of compartments, each holding one small bundled bouquet. Color the machine casing in a bold flat color, red or mint work well, and let each compartment’s bouquet use a slightly different color combination so the grid does not feel repetitive.

Reflections on the glass front are an easy way to add polish quickly: a few diagonal streaks of white gel pen or left-blank paper across the glass suggest shine without any extra drawing time.

One swap if you do not want a full grid: draw a shorter machine with just four or five compartments, which still reads clearly as a vending machine.

You Will Need

• white gel pen

Palette: Mint Green,Coral,Lemon Yellow,Charcoal

Draw a detail rather than a whole scene this time: an ornate iron shop sign shaped like a tulip, hanging from a bracket above a doorway. Signage like this is a nice small project when you want something you can finish in under half an hour.

Draw the bracket arm first, a simple curved rod extending from the wall, then build the tulip shape at the end of it using clean, slightly rounded petal forms rather than realistic botanical detail, since this is meant to read as metalwork, not a real flower. Color the ironwork in a single flat dark tone, charcoal or deep green, with a thin white gel pen line along one edge to suggest the shine of metal catching light.

Quick version: the sign alone on a plain background takes ten minutes. The forty-minute version adds the stone wall behind it and a hint of the shop window below, giving the sign real context.

Vary it next time by shaping the sign like a different bloom, a rose or a daisy reads just as well as ironwork.

You Will Need

• white gel pen

Palette: Charcoal,Deep Forest,Warm Grey,Gold

Look upward again, this time inside the shop: bundles of dried flowers hanging upside down from wooden ceiling beams, a common sight in shops that lean rustic. The muted, faded colors here are a nice contrast after so many bright fresh blooms.

Draw the beam first as a simple horizontal plank, then hang several small bundles from it at slightly different lengths, tied at the top with a short loop of string. Color the dried flowers in dusty, faded tones, muted mauve, soft rust, pale straw, rather than the bright fresh colors used elsewhere in the article, since that faded palette is what sells the idea that these are dried.

The texture trick for dried flowers is light dry-brushing: drag your marker lightly over the paper so some grain shows through the petals and stems, which mimics the papery, slightly rough surface of dried botanicals far better than a smooth fill would.

If you want a simpler version, hang just two or three bundles instead of a full row across the beam.

Palette: Dusty Mauve,Soft Rust,Pale Straw,Warm Grey

Bring the flowers outside the shop again with a delivery basket, full of small potted plants, left waiting on a doorstep. It is a small, quiet scene with just enough story to make it interesting.

Draw the basket shape first, a simple woven rectangle with handles, then fit several small pots inside it, each with a different plant shape poking out, one tall and spiky, one round and bushy, one trailing over the basket edge. Color the basket in warm wicker tones with a crosshatch pattern of darker lines for the weave, then vary your greens across the different plants so each pot reads as its own species.

The doorstep itself does not need much: a single step edge and a hint of a door frame behind the basket is enough context without drawing a whole house.

One concrete tip: let one plant lean slightly against the basket’s edge rather than standing perfectly upright, which makes the whole arrangement feel like it was just set down rather than staged.

Palette: Wicker Brown,Olive Green,Deep Forest,Terracotta

Head to Amsterdam for this one: a narrow canal-side flower shop with buckets of tulips lined up in every color along its front, tall and gabled like the houses behind it. The gabled roofline is the detail that makes this shopfront unmistakably Dutch.

Draw the stepped or pointed gable roofline first, since getting that silhouette right is what sells the setting, then build the narrow shopfront beneath it before adding rows of tulip buckets along the ground. Color the building in a warm brick tone, then fill the buckets with tulips in as many different colors as you like, red, yellow, purple, pink, since real tulip displays are rarely limited to one shade.

If you want more practice with this kind of tall, narrow shopfront proportion before tackling the full gable roofline, the flower vase painting ideas are a gentler warm-up with similar architectural framing.

Quick version: draw just the gable and one row of tulip buckets. The longer version extends the shopfront and adds a glimpse of canal water at the base of the page.

Palette: Brick Red,Tulip Yellow,Tulip Purple,Sap Green

Draw the inside of a shop appliance for once: a tall glass-doored florist cooler, packed with rows of roses kept chilled and fresh. The glass surface is the real subject here, since it changes how everything behind it reads.

Draw the cooler frame first, a tall rectangle with a visible handle, then fill the interior with rows of rose stems in buckets, slightly simplified since the glass will soften their edges anyway. Color the roses first, then go back over the glass area with a very light, almost translucent grey-blue wash so the colors behind it look slightly muted and cool, the way anything behind real glass does.

Light source matters a lot here: if your light comes from the left, put a few diagonal streaks of reflection on the left side of the glass using a white gel pen or left-blank paper, which instantly sells the glass surface better than any amount of extra detail inside.

If a full glass wash feels tricky with markers, a simpler swap is a few thin diagonal white lines across the cooler front to suggest glint, skipping the tinted overlay entirely.

You Will Need

• white gel pen

Palette: Rose Red,Blush Pink,Cool Blue-Grey,Sap Green

Return to something small and calm after the cooler: a miniature bouquet, just a few stems, standing in a glass bottle beside the shop till. It is the kind of detail a florist adds for herself, not for sale, and it makes a lovely quick drawing.

Draw the bottle first, keeping its shape simple, a slightly tapered cylinder with a narrow neck, then add just three or four flower stems rising from it at slightly different heights and angles. Color the bottle with a thin, mostly uncolored glass look, just a pale blue-grey tint along one edge, and let the flower colors be the brightest thing in the small scene.

Keep the till or counter behind it extremely simple, a straight horizontal line and maybe the corner of a cash drawer, so nothing competes with the little bouquet.

This is a nice one to vary: try it next with a jam jar instead of a proper bottle, which changes the whole mood from shop-chic to kitchen-windowsill in one swap.

Palette: Pale Blue-Grey,Coral,Blush Pink,Sap Green

Catch the shop at its very first moment of the day: a florist reaching up to open the metal shutters as early sunrise light spreads across the street. The warm light is what makes this drawing feel different from the daytime shopfronts earlier in the list.

Draw the shopfront and half-raised shutter first, then add the florist’s figure reaching up toward the shutter’s handle or pull-strap. Color the sky behind the shop in a gradient of warm sunrise tones, soft orange low near the rooftops fading up into a cooler lavender, then keep the shop’s own colors slightly muted compared to a full daylight version, since early light softens everything it touches.

The place this scene often goes wrong is making the sunrise glow too intense, which competes with the shop itself. Keep the brightest orange confined to a strip near the horizon and let it fade quickly, rather than saturating the whole sky.

One concrete tip: add one single long shadow stretching from the florist’s feet across the pavement, since a strong early morning shadow does more to sell sunrise than any amount of sky color.

Palette: Sunrise Orange,Lavender,Warm Grey,Coral

Bring two figures into the shop for this one: a couple standing close together, considering a bucket of blooms between them, one pointing out a particular flower. Two figures interacting is a step up from a single figure, so keep the poses simple to manage it well.

Draw the bucket of flowers between them first as your anchor point, then build each figure leaning slightly toward it from opposite sides, rather than facing straight at the viewer. Keep both figures in simple blocky clothing shapes, one lighter coat color, one darker, so they read as two distinct people at a glance even from a distance.

Overlapping is useful here too: let one figure’s sleeve or shoulder slightly overlap the other’s, which makes them feel like a pair standing together rather than two separate drawings placed side by side.

If two full figures feel like a lot today, crop the frame at the waist so you only need to manage shoulders, arms and the tops of their heads, with the flower bucket doing most of the storytelling below.

Palette: Dusty Pink,Navy,Coral,Sap Green

Finish the list with the busiest scene of the set: an old truck, bed packed with buckets of flowers, parked at a farmers market with a small crowd of blooms spilling over its sides. Save this one for when you have your longest sitting of the day, since there is more to fit in than any earlier idea here.

Draw the truck body first, keeping its shape slightly rounded and old-fashioned rather than boxy and modern, then build the flower buckets up and over the truck bed’s edges so blooms spill outward on every side. Color the truck in one bold flat color, faded red or dusty blue work especially well, then let the flowers use your widest color range of the whole article, since this scene is meant to feel like abundance after so many smaller, quieter ideas.

If the full truck and flower spill feels like too much for one sitting, draw just the truck bed section with its wheel and let the flowers fill the rest of the frame, cropping out the cab entirely.

For more ideas on combining architecture and florals once this one is done, the flower bouquet drawing list is a natural next stop.

Palette: Faded Red,Dusty Blue,Coral,Lemon Yellow

What to Do Next

Pick whichever shop caught your eye first, whether that is the sleepy cat among the buckets or the sunrise shutters, and start with a light fineliner sketch on smooth marker paper. Keep your first markers testing on scrap paper nearby, then work light to dark and let the flowers be the brightest thing on the page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What markers work best for flower shop drawing?

Alcohol-based markers work best, since they blend smoothly on marker-friendly paper. Start with a small set covering pinks, corals, yellows and two or three greens, then add greys and browns for buildings as you go.

Do I need to draw the whole building every time?

No, a close-up detail like a counter, a bucket of flowers or a hanging sign works just as well. Cropping tight on one part of a shop often finishes faster and still reads clearly as a flower shop scene.

How do I keep flowers from looking too busy in a shopfront drawing?

Group flowers into loose color clusters rather than drawing each bloom separately. Vary the heights and angles slightly within each bucket, and leave some buckets simpler than others so the eye has somewhere to rest.

What is the easiest flower shop idea to start with?

A single bucket of flowers beside a plain door or a small bouquet in a bottle is the easiest start. Simple shapes and one focal cluster of color let you practice the blending before tackling a full facade.

How do I make a flower shop drawing look less flat?

Use a darker shade of the same marker color along one edge of buildings and buckets for shadow, and leave small strips of white paper for highlights. That light-to-dark layering is what gives the shapes their form.