Squares, Retangles, and Proportion

I have several drawing books and I am slowly working through the exercises.  One recent purchase is Sketching from Square One to Trafalgar Square.  One reason for the interest in this specific book was that it talks about learning to see things as an artist.

On Wednesday night, I did the first set of exercises which involved drawing squares and rectangles. After that, the next set of exercises had you draw a square or rectangle and place additional squares or rectangles with specific proportions inside the original one.  It doesn't sound like much but the exercises and the author's text, helped me think differently (better?) about proportions and relationships between shapes and objects.

The next morning, I was in work-mode.  I hopped in my car, drove down the alley and stopped. Across the street was the front of a house.  I stopped the car and had to spend several minutes looking at the shapes of the windows, including the inside shapes made by the window frame and sash, their placement, and so on and so on.  It felt as though a light switch went off in my head.  All day, I was noticing windows on buildings.  At lunch, I noticed windows on cars in the parking lot. Today, I'm still catching myself noticing shapes and wanting to stop and evaluate how they relate to each other proportionally.

The book is 192 pages.  I'm only on page 28 and I can't wait to see what else I'll learn!!!

Here is the front of a small apartment building.  I would like to do a rough sketch of the windows and doors, using what I've learned from this book so far.