Drawing Made Easy: Observational Drawing and Watercolor Exercises for Everyone

1. Introduction: Drawing realistically from observation can be stressful and intimidating. I felt the same way until I learned some perceptual skills to help me see the world in a completely different way. Hello, welcome to my class. I'm really excited to be here with you, and I'm very grateful that you chose this class. I'm Barbara, I I'm an architect, still restoring monuments as a living, everyday, and by passion, I'm an artist and urban sketcher. I love going urban sketching outside. I actually wanted to be an artist always, but my parents told me it was not a real job so I chose to do architecture studies. The architecture studies were great, I did a lot of drawing and painting, but when I started working, computer took over and I stopped drawing by hands. After 15 years of working as an architect, one day my husband came home with a watercolor set, with paper and fine brushes and suggested I should start sketching and painting again. These first years I started sketching and painting again were really painful because I lost all my skills, so I struggled myself through tutorials, watercolor books, master classes, with water colorings and workshops, and it was stress instead of being joyful and fun and play, so that was not the good way to learn, I found. In this class you will learn five simple perception skills that will give you a new way to look at what you want to draw. It will take your observational drawing and urban sketching skills to a new level. It will also give you more joy and fun and take away stress of making a bad drawing, at least that's what it did for me, so I want to share it with you. As a class project, we will make two urban sketches, we will apply this urban sketching skills step-by-step, and in the end, we will apply watercolor to it in a simple and intuitive way to make it all come alive. I hope you have as much fun as I have. 2. Class & Project Overview: What is urban sketching? As I mentioned in the previous video, I love urban sketching. Urban sketching is an international non-profit community of artists who practice on location drawing. It was founded in 2007 by illustrator Gabriel Campanario in Seattle. He created this on an online forum which was called Flickr. Today, it's still on online forums, also on Flickr, but also on Facebook and Instagram. You can go and have a look, and they also have a great blog. I put in the comments. There is this manifesto for the sketching. You go and draw on location from direct observation, outside or inside, in a cafe or a view out of the window. You draw from direct observation, so not from a picture. Also you tell stories of your surroundings. When you start sketching something, you show your surroundings and tell a story, show the world one sketch at the time. I encourage you to read the rest of the manifesto on the sketchers blog. We go sketch outside in groups. It's a great challenge. You can learn a lot from other sketchers. There's a positive energy, it gives you just feelings to draw more. You get a lot of new skills that way to try new things and see other urban sketching materials. In this course, I want to show you the five perceptual skills of Betty Edwards that's I transpose to urban sketching. We will do urban sketching exercises. These perceptual skills from Betty Edwards made my sketching really more fun and joyful. I came to see things in a new way and it took away fear of making a bad drawing. I made this worksheet for you, and it shows the five perceptual skills of Betty. So there's the perception of edges, perception of spaces, the perception of proportions and relationships, and also perception of light and shadow, and the perception of the whole. We will go through them step-by-step in our urban sketching exercise. As a class project, I invite you to choose a scene in your surroundings for you to draw, to use this method. It can be outside real urban sketching or inside or view from your window or view from your home, wherever. Just choose a scene or tool and exercise, which means step-by-step these perceptual skills. Then please post your results online in the comments of the course so I can comment on them and other people can learn as well. Thank you and have a lot of fun. 3. Tools & Materials: Yes, welcome to the third video. I will explain now my materials, and different types of sketchbooks, and show you some examples of drawings in the sketch books and paintings. To show you the final projects, my type of sketching, and the possibilities to fire up your inspiration. Please don't be intimidated by these drawings. I will break them down in simple steps and show you my way of looking at the subject changed my life and quality of my drawings. This is little sketch book by Sennelier. I used it in the corona lockdown. It's accordion sketchbook. I like a lot these types of sketchbooks, because at the end, you have a really nice long piece of art. There are several types of these sketchbooks. This is a Sennelier, it's very short one, one meter long. Also Febriano makes one. This is one from Japan. This one is like three meters long. If you make this kind of accordion sketchbook, it's important to use harmonious colors all the way through the sketchbook. If you have the colors coming back from page to page, it will link all the pages together. At the end, you will have a nice long piece of art that you can easily expose, just like on the bookshelf. Another type of sketch book I used a lot since tens of years is this Watercolor Moleskine. It's a landscape Moleskine. This is one I use when I go to Venice. It's not full yet. When I go back to Venice, I just take that one with me and continue it. It's a thematic sketchbook. It's nice watercolor paper cold press Moleskine quality, and it has this nice pocket at the back where you can put stuff, and with a rubber band. This one is a bit old. The Moleskine also has this landscape A4 size sketchbooks. This is also again in Japan. Actually, this is not Moleskine, it's Seawhite of Brighton, but it's the same format as Moleskine with a rubber band and pocket in the back. This is one I took to Japan, and it is not full yet again. When I go back, I will take it. It has a lot of drawings which are in my book of Japan. You can also glue some real leaves in it and souvenirs. Then another type of sketchbook I like is this Saunders Waterford. It's square- sized, and it has this smooth hot press paper, which is very smooth. Then it also has the same square size with rough paper. It's this Saunders Waterford cotton paper. This is more textured paper. Also very nice paper, and it has these nice edges. As drawing materials for urban sketching, and the ones we will use in this class, it's not much, it's pencil. This is soft 2B pencil. Then there are some brushes. These are brushes I use to go traveling. This is very quite cheap brush. It's Escoda Perla series, and it's synthetic hair. Then this is also very nice brush. I also have it bigger size like this. This is a travel brush, and this is the non-travel brush, and it has these nice sable hair and diagonal, so you can have a very fine point as well as broad washes. I like it a lot. This is a Japanese brush from Pigment Tokyo shop. You can order it online, and it's very fine lettering brush to make nice details. This is also one I like a lot. It's a diagonal brush from Escoda, but the same synthetic hair, so it's much cheaper. You can also order it on the Escoda website online. Then I use also a lot this fine ballpoint pen. With a ballpoint pen, when you press harder, you can also make really dark lines. Then you can also make very fine lines. I like a lot to draw with pencil ballpoint pen. Make sure to use a waterproof ballpoint pen. These are watercolor palettes. When I go urban sketching, I take these pocket palettes. Its magnetic little pens that are glued in very fine aluminum box, so it's really light. It comes in this pouch. You can order it at arttoolkit.com, and Maria will make a pleasure to send it to you as soon as possible. You can change the colors if you like. Like you see it's magnetic. Sometimes I change the color. This is autumn palette I made. Then I also have these other palette with blues and greens, and my shadow gray with mixture of orange and ultramarine blue. I mix it blue paint, and then put it in the pan. I use these two beauties just on urban sketching. When I paint at home, I use a bigger palette. But in this course, I will use them. There are plenty of painting sights. When I go on for travel sketching like three weeks to Japan, I just take these, and when I come back, they're still quite full or low, I sketch everyday. 4. The Neuroscience Behind Drawing: Tricks to Tap into Your Right Brain: Welcome back. In this video, let me give you a quick explanation about how our brain functions and how to get into a beautiful drawing stage. Betty Edwards explains this well in her book. You can read more about it in her book. But the key to improve our drawing skills and to have more fun and joy in drawing is to learn how to see in new ways. To do this, we have to bring the right side of our brain into a beautiful state of focus. The right side of our brain is our intuitive, emotional, and artistic side. The left side is our rational side related to language. It's the analytical side. It decide who says you can't draw. Who says your drawing is ugly and you should clean the work instead, or maybe have some arranging in your house and make yourself useful instead of just playing around with drawing and painting. To make a good drawing, we need to make our rational side leave us alone. There are several tricks you can do to bore out your dominant side into dropping out of the task and leave you alone and just have fun in drawing. The first important thing to keep in mind is to try to be silent. Because the left rational side is also related to language. To quiet it down, it's better not to talk while you're drawing, and not to name what you're drawing because then you will judge your drawing. I'm not drawing a house, I'm just drawing a bunch of lines, vertical, horizontal, tilted lines. We will go more into detail in the next videos. The second thing you can do is to do a turn down task. It's a task that's in order to gain access to your right side of the brain, you will present your left side task. It will turn down to make it get bored, actually. First is flip it on its head. You take drawing, this is a Picasso. Actually it's like this. But you flip it on its head and you copy it upside down. I will put some other drawings for you to download to try this out. It's really great because then you don't see her nose and eyes anymore, but you'll just see a bunch of lines actually. Second exercise is to draw it blind. You take object like a leaf or the palm of your hand, and you do a blind contour drawing for at least five minutes. We will go through this exercise now. I encourage you to do it and to really try it for at least five minutes. It's like magic. Let's do a blind contour drawing. I went outside to take this leaf from a tree. It's a dry leaf, so it's very wrinkled. We want something with a lot of details and a lot of wrinkles. You can also draw just the inside of your hand with all the wrinkles, that works as well like this. The blind contour drawing means we draw blind. You don't look at paper and you don't worry about having a lovely drawing. It will look a bit like this. It doesn't look good, but it's about concentrating for five minutes to what you see, and you would draw what you see. You go approximately in what directions you see the lines are going, and you follow the lines with your eyes and at the same time with your pencil on the paper. You don't worry about how the drawing looks. Just follow all the lines and do this for five minutes. It's very relaxing. Just draw all the wrinkles and lines you see. 5. Warm up Exercise: Lively Lines: In this exercise, we will exercise our drawing line. To get a lively drawing, it's good to take good care of your line and do a lot of drawings to exercise yourself. Line work is very personal. I've collected some dry leaves which you can do the same to do this exercise, just go outside and get some leaves and make some drawings of it. The line work is very personal. Every line is valued. Each one has its style and one is not better than another one. You can also look at artist drawings to see how they do their line work and try to imitate them. That's also good exercise. The line work is very personal to each artist and you don't necessarily have to imitate my drawing line. It's not a question about talents. It's everyone has his own muscles in their hand and you will find your own drawing line with the more drawings you do. Like you trained yourself how to learn to write, you can train yourself how to make beautiful drawing lines like you like. You have to like your drawing. Let's go through some line work that can make your drawing come alive. You can already, when you draw, press harder when there's a shadow, and make lighter lines when there's more light in the drawing. You can just draw some leaves and exercise. I advise you not to lift up your pencil too much, otherwise you get a very interrupted line or some hairs. It's best to keep contact with your drawing subject, so you keep your pencil on the page and look at your object. I look 90 percent to the object and only 10 percent to the drawing. You can just for the fun of it also try different types of drawing. I take another leaf. I broke it. That doesn't matter. You can make a very bold line if you press a lot, you can make it very strong. It's more like Picasso. A very bold line. I press hard on my pencil. It doesn't matter if it's not totally correct, it's just to exercise different styles of drawing. We can make a broken line. This is interesting. I can go a bit back and forth. This is like a broken line. We can make a very pure line. I try a ballpoint pen, so I love to draw with this very fine ballpoint pen. A very pure line like the French artist, Ingres, he made very fine lines. I also like that. Just do the types of lines that you find beautiful. By imitating other artists, you can discover new things and challenge yourself. Otherwise, if you just don't look at what others do and you always end up doing the same. Nothing wrong with that as long as you have fun but you can challenge yourself to learn new things. Very inspiring to see how other people draw. This is a really difficult one, it's so wrinkled. It's a maple leaf. Such beautiful colors make me also want to make a watercolor of it later. There's some sticking out there. This is a very fine line. If you look up the French artist, Ingres, who made very elegant beautiful lines. Then there's also lost and found line I like to do as well. This is also a very challenging one. Just draw it on top of this. It's a continuous line. Sometimes you press harder. The line disappears a bit because I don't press too hard and then I make some bolder shadows sheath. Go and get some leaves outside and experience some different types of drawing lines just to exercise yourself, train your muscles, and to get some inspiration for the rest of the class. You only learn by doing, not just looking. Just grab a piece of paper and fill it with all different types of lines and try to discover your own drawing line. Another important exercise to do is to exercise crosshatching. You exercise crosshatching to make some shadows, and it's also an important exercise to warm up your drawing muscles and your mark making and to look for your type of lines. I encourage you also to look up other artists to see how they do the crosshatching. It's a way of mark making to make shadowing and it will make your drawing come alive. You have these. For example, like the famous artist, Matisse, he makes lines like this very fast. You can do crosshatching to make the lines also in the other way. You do them everywhere where there is shadow. Another way of mark making is doing like Van Gogh. He's doing like this curved marks. You can look up his drawings. I will put some in the downloads for you to see. You can make shadows like Delacroix, I'll take another leaf to show you. He also makes this marks like Matisse, but slower. You can look for your own way to do shadows. Follow the lines of the leaf. Have fun with this. There is no progress without action, so please don't skip this exercise. Post your drawings into comments so I can see them and so everybody can learn. Especially, have fun. If you do this crosshatching properly, you can have really great effects. Let's do some more Van Gogh. Just inspire yourself from what you like and try to do it, and experiment. I also like to do them in all directions. Don't be afraid to go really dark to make some nice contrasts. 6. The Perception of Edges: Hello. In this lesson, we will start with the first perception exercise, the perception of edges. We will look at what we want to draw as simply a bunch of lines. I'm going to draw the view outside of my window, my neighbor's houses. You can also draw something inside the house if you prefer, or go outside, real urban sketching. I'm not going to look at my neighbor's houses as houses with windows, but I am just looking at it as a bunch of lines, and that's makes it more fun to draw and less stressful. I'm going to draw a bunch of lines and I'm going to simply look in what direction the lines are going. If you need some help with that, you can use a viewfinder. A viewfinder is simply a piece of plastic with a grid on it. You can have this viewfinder from Betty Edwards' book Drawling on the Right Side of the Brain, or just make it yourself a sheet of plastic and draw the grid. You'll hold the viewfinder parallel to your face, and look through it, what you want to draw. So you can hold it closer or further away depending on what you want to see, but always parallel. This will help you to draw what you see in two dimensions, to draw it on two-dimensional sheet of paper. Let's start. I will start with the maple tree in the front garden. So I put with this maple tree the most important subject. Usually I just start with the subjects I find most important. The focal point of my drawing, and this edges of the trunks and branches of the maple tree are of course very organic. So it's good to make them really wobbly-like in nature. There are no straight lines in nature. Usually when people say they can't draw, because they can't even draw a straight line. I mean, that's really okay, there's not a lot of straight lines, not even in buildings sometimes. So try to make them really wobbly. Here's another maple tree which already lost its leaves. I like to make them in pencil because it makes organic edges. Try to look in which direction they're going, either with your viewfinder or by comparing them to other objects in the neighborhood. So press harder on the pencil where the shadows are and the darker lines. This makes a lot of variation in the lines. Then for the buildings, I use this fine ballpoint pen. So you can see the different techniques, and it gives a difference in texture in the drawing. Of course the vertical edges are vertical. This is the edge of the right house, so two goals, and this is the neighbor's garage. This is the story of my drawing of the view I have during this COVID-19 confinement. I'm very lucky to have this nice garden. So this is the edge of the roof. It's composed of several lines. Try not to lift your drawing or ballpoint pen too much, so you keep contact with what you're seeing and drawing. In what directions are the lines going? I'm not drawing house, I'm drawing a bunch of lines which makes it not so overwhelming as saying I'm showing a house. In what directions are the lines going? This is going down. This is vertical. This is vertical. A bit round top, and this is a bit lower. Then there's the top of the roof with the tiles. You can already draw these edges of the tiles. Don't worry if it's not totally correct. We are not a copy machine, we're just making a sketch. The edge of the roof of the neighbor is a bit different, we tilt it. I'm sticking out here. It's also tiles. I'm just growing organically the lines. I'm not saying okay, this is the contour of our first house. It's not very structured. I am just drawing like I want. This house is a bit more narrow and there's another little chimney. You can press a bit harder because the bottom is in a shadow. There's a window here. You don't even have to finish all your lines. These bunch of lines are suggesting a window. It's okay even if it's not totally finished, it's interesting and I will complete it. There's other edges of a another roof window. You can finish it afterwards with watercolor. A smaller one. Let's finish this here. Another vertical. Then it has two windows here with around edge. Another one here. In what direction are the edges going? Here is a large door, but I don't see everything of it because it's in the vegetation. There is a long window. If there are lines that you do not like or that are not correct, it doesn't matter even if it's not nice to have. Always can be quite frustrating, but just continue. Here's vegetation I added later. So I go back to a this left house. You should look for about 90 percent to the subject and 10 percent to your sketch. To really look in what direction the edges are outgoing, compare them next to each other. Where is the next edge? What do you think if you see this building as a bunch of lines? Does it make it more easy for you to use more vegetation? [inaudible] vegetation neither. Here I am close to the shutter, it makes a nice variation. It's good not to have all the windows the same. You have also a nice electricity lines that's interesting to connect the building together. Connects all these shapes together. Then there was this rainwater pipe. Other vertical edges. So no progress without actions. Make sure you make your first urban sketch exercise with drawing the edges, and after you've done that, you're ready to move on to the next lesson, which is another perception exercise with line drawing, where we'll exercise how to see spaces. 7. Space: Seeing What Lies Beside & Beyond: Hello. In this video, we will exercise the second perception skill. It's this one. In this perception skill, we exercise the perception of spaces. It's to learn to see what is in front or what is behind, so you have the spaces in this sketch with the trees. Then they're in front and behind is the scenery with the church and the houses. This perception skill also encourages you to see positive and negative spaces, which is a more abstract way to look at what you want to draw. You don't see overwhelming view with the church and everything, but you will see, do I draw the tree or do I draw the space between the trees and the buildings? I'm on my roof here and I will draw my neighbor's houses there. I will try to look, do I draw the lines of the windows or do I draw the spaces between the roofs and the windows? Do I draw the windows in the roof or I will try to draw the space between the edges of the roof and the window. Well, let's do it and I hope you will enjoy. I will draw the houses here. Try not to go too much to the edge of the page because that doesn't look good, and also try to leave some white of the paper to make the drawing breath. I encourage you also to remember the previous exercise of drawing the edges. We're drawing just a bunch of lines. I'm not drawing houses, I'm drawing a bunch of lines, and that takes some stress away. Also, it doesn't matter if the drawing is not very correct. You can also use your pencil to see in what direction the lines are going. Now, I'm drawing a positive space. It's the contour of this house, and so try not to lift your pencil too much. This is the edge of the chimney. It's a bit like this, approximately. Like this. It's going more or less 45 degrees. This is the positive space. I am drawing the edge of the side of the house. Now, the chimney. It's more or less on this height. Very weird. This one has this little two dots. I'll test some hole here. When you see shadows, push harder on your pencil, so you have already a darker line, which will already make your drawings come alive. Let's go back here. Between this top side of the roof, and this chimneys, there's this triangular space I see, so this is a negative space. Now, I'm drawing the edge of the roof, but I can also say I'm drawing the top side of the roof, space between the top of this window, this space. Now, I will draw this window in the roof. Here's another triangle. It has two windows. I'm drawing the edges of the glass. Actually has three. It actually doesn't matter if there's something missing. We're not going to give bad grades if your drawing is not correct. I used to destroy my drawing as soon as there was a window missing, but I got over it and since that, I have a lot of more fun when I'm drawing. Here's another window. Let's move on to the next house. Here's the tiles. We can make them later. The next house, there's again a chimney, and a triangular shape between the edge of this roof and the chimney. Let's draw that. There's this shape. This way, you can look for shapes which make you think in an abstract way of what you want to draw to make your left side of the brain shut up. You're having a lot of more fun. There's another window in the roof. Be careful to pay attention in which directions all the lines are going, and in that way, your drawing will be more or less correct immediately. Here are two windows. I'm pressing harder to emphasize where the shadows are. Again, here's a funny shape between the rooftop and this window. It's this one. That's the side of this other roof. Be careful not to make these kinds of lines and not to lift your pencil too much, otherwise you lose contact with what you're drawing. You should look for about 90 percent to your subject, and 10 percent to your paper. It doesn't matter if the windows are not complete because the eye completes them. It's more interesting if you leave some shapes unfinished. Well, depends of what you want to make as a drawing. I will make some tree here of nice autumn colors. You can also make this other house behind it. It's quite interesting to finish the drawing. It has these long chimneys. Weird. Actually, when there's something that is really too weird, I don't draw it. Otherwise, your drawing will look weird this side. I'm going to stop here. Otherwise, I'm going too close to the edge of the page. This is interesting as well. 8. Relationships: Seeing in Perspective & in Proportion: The third lesson is about the perception of relationships. It's about seeing perspective and understanding it and seeing proportion of the objects you want to draw. You have to find your basic unit to measure the proportion of the object you want to draw. You can also see them better and then trust your site and draw what you see. I will explain basic perspective rule, which is good to remember. When you're looking at something, you have your eye level. This is the horizon line which is talked about in perspective courses. I'm not going to give you a perspective course, there's enough of that, but simply think about your horizon line as your eye level. Then according to this eye level, you have what is above your eyes level and what is under your eye level. All the horizontal lines which are not in the same plane as which you see, for example, a door that is open. The horizontal edge on top of the door is going down and the horizontal edge down on the door under your eye level is going up, it's going to a vanishing point which is far away. Then also this measuring units to see the proportion of things is very important. The door will be, for example, half as wide as it is high and very important if you draw people, the head goes eight times in the total length of the body. You have the head and then seven times the unit of the head under the head, which is eight, except for children which have a bigger head compared to the whole body than an adult. Let's do a simple exercise. Make sure you do this exercise because it's very important for the rest of the course and to exercise this skill. Thank you. For this exercise find open-door or something, a piece of furniture in your home. Draw your eye level. Then just draw the open-door. So the edge of the door. Then that's the door frame. The door is open. This is the top of the door and edge from the bottom of the door is going up. It's going to a vanishing point which is far away. This is the width of the door. It's a sheet of wood actually, so try to see how wide this is compared to open-door. Open-door also is more narrow than if it's flat open, which then it will be simply a basic square. I have some wood panels in the door because it's old door. There's a little frame, there's a smaller panel. Everything that is under the eye level is going up. If you look through your viewfinder you see all that. You can look through your viewfinder. If I draw a grid here, you will see what is vertical and what is tilted. Don't worry about all these prospective rules. You can just look through the grid, and then you'll see this as well. You can just also basically apply the door handle. You can also basically apply the first perception skill, which shifts, in what direction are the lines going. 9. Light & Shadow: Introducing Watercolor: In this lesson, we'll talk about the fourth perception skill which will bring life to our drawing. It's the perception of light and shadows. Seeing things in degrees of values. As long as you don't bring shadows in your painting, you don't have any light. As soon as you bring shadows in sketch, our drawings will start to light up. If there's no sunlight the shadows are harder to see, so it's good to know that the natural light always comes from above, of course. For example, this tree above is light, and the bottom of the tree is dark. Also, the shadow on the ground is always attached to the tree. For the color of the shadow, I use a mixture of ultramarine blue and transparent orange which makes a nice lively gray. You can adapt the warmth of your gray, if you want to have it warmer, you add more orange, and if you want it cooler gray you add more blue, so that, in the summer the shadow's warmer and you can add more orange as you like of course, what you find beautiful. I also want to leave some watercolor tips, so this is specimen with shadows of the same orange and blue. You attach your shadows to the fruits, and to the leaves, these ginkgo leaves. Here I made the gray a bit lighter blue. I encourage you to experiment and play with watercolor. We will talk about this more in the next lesson with all the textures you can make. You pay attention that your shadows are attached to the object. We will add shadows now to the drawings we made before. Also, don't be afraid to go really dark to make the shapes pop out. Lets start. The light is coming from this direction, like this. I prepared my mixture in my pocket palette. I mix the colors of ultramarine blue and orange on the mixing side. Then I put the paints, still fresh, you paint in the pen. The light is coming from there. I use this diagonal brush like this on the side, to make a nice fine line. Also, the chimney. Here will be shadow as well. We will still add some extra shadow in the next step when we add the colors. If you feel too stressed, you can first test on a separate sheet of paper, but don't be too precious. You may also want to try different kinds of paper to see which paper you prefer. This is a hahnemuehle paper. There will be shadows also under all the window sills, and in the inside of the window, for light comes from there, see? Here will be a shadow as well. These windows pop out of the roofs so the shadow is on the other side. Always look carefully when you're drawing outside. Take time to observe. Here is the window shutter. There is extra shadow there. Drain pipe. During the day there will be also darkness inside the houses, but that we will do in the next step when we add the colors. Here, this is the lower house. There will be a shadow also on the facade coming from these houses. You see when the watercolor dries up, it gets quite light to. There's also this shadow, projects it's shadow from the house. It's interesting to add these shadows in the beginning of your sketch so when you add the rest of the colors, you don't lose the volumes. You see how the shadow was bringing immediately light into your sketch. In the next lesson, we will add the colors. Make sure you do this before, to finish this shadow before we move on to the next lesson. 10. Seeing the Whole: Part I: In this final lesson, we will add colors. We will talk about the perception of the whole and the parts in your painting. We will finish the painting with the colors. What do you want to tell with your painting? What is your focal point? For me, the focal points are these autumn colors in the front, and the houses of my neighbors are the background. But of course, I will put also colors in them, but I will make it a bit more strong or out the autumn colors. When you make warm colors in front, they will come to the front, and the cooler colors and lighter colors will go to the back, so the specimen will pop out to the front. I also want to encourage you to play with textures and experiment with washes. This, may be you can do on a separate page like I did here. For example, you make washes and then you splash some water in it. Then you will have like here also the granulation of your paint that will pop-out and create special fixtures. You want to play with that to make more textures in your painting, and to have something really happening in your painting. This is a wash I did, and while it was still wet, I dried my brush like this on a tissue, and I absorbed the paint like this and it took the pigment away, and it makes some light in the wash. Here, I made first a square with water, and I splashed different colors in it, and I also made spiral with some tube paints. This also creates special effects in the water, especially if you take granulation paint that granulates a lot like this. I made a strong line with a tube paint in water, and you'll see the granulation of the pigments flow out in the water. Here also are special effects by splashing different colors in a wash, and here I splashed some white paint in a brush. Maybe you want to play like that, so you get to know your paint very well, and then you can apply these special effects in your painting. Again, observe where the light is in your painting and then leave some white paper. I will use this pocket palette with autumn colors, that why I will splash some leaves here in front. I'll just take a lot of different kinds of brown and maybe make some of these. It's just a suggestion, you don't need to do it exactly like it just in real life. Otherwise, you just take a picture, just having fun playing with colors. Here on the right, are some bigger trees, oak trees, they have yellow leaves. You can also just make some colors drip down. I like the effect when you make the colors drip down. Then you can use a fine liner brush for the tree trunks. It's a lettering brush. Sable. Tree trunks are also gray. I should make them brown. They really look a bit weird. Let's do the roof. I made the roof bit wet before, so I don't need to do wet writing. Just suggest some tiles. You can always have a brush with just water by hand, so you can use water when you want. Also just draw the same red tiles, they are not really red, they're a bit brown. But you don't always have to do realistic colors. You can just make the colors you like, that's why we paint instead of taking a picture. This neighbor's house is red bricks. Try to have some variation in your washes. So don't make the whole wash the same. Otherwise it would to look flat. 11. Seeing the Whole: Part II: I make the top here darker than the bottom of the house on the ground floor because here is shadow, so it's darker. Here there's more light. Near the windows is also darker. Then when you leave it to dry, it will have some textures. Here is another window, but I don't draw it. Don't make all your windows the same, it gets boring. When it's light outside, the inside of the houses are dark. They're dark inside because it's light outside. But you also have colors inside because there's things happening inside. So don't make all your windows the same. I should have drawn the trees last because now I wet my hand in the wet paint. I usually just do first what I find more fun and what is my focal point. My focal point are the trees, so I did the trees before. Now it's a punishment, I have my hand in the wet paint. It's better, of course, to start painting from the top of the page. Maybe here is something pink inside. There is some variation. Also, you can make the glass the color of the sky because the sky will reflect in it. Just do what you like, put the colors you like. The window frames are white, so I leave them white. Here is dark. In here, some orange here. Just put the colors you like. This orange house, the quarts will look nice. They have white curtains. We'll leave that white, and this as well, because it's not so important. Let's do some sky and then we're finished. The sky was quite white, so I just put a lot of clouds that I leave wet, and get some blue. So there's clouds with some blue sky coming through. You also want to have some movement towards the houses. You can add just some water so it looks a bit like clouds. Add some turquoise. Add some turquoise here as well because it looks good with other colors. It's good to have colors that repeat themselves towards the painting. This is actually a white house, but it looks a bit too white, so I will add some titanium buff dirty so it's dirty white so it doesn't look too white. You can also go through the shadows. Also pink looks good. We'll have suggestion of white. This house is not so clean white like the paper. You may also want to make the colors go a bit into each other. You link everything together. You have all separate colors. It looks a bit like colored by numbers. It's interesting to have the colors flow into each other so it's not too clean. Before you move on to the next video, make sure you finish your painting and please share your work online. That's the purpose of urban sketching, to share and spread beauty, and so to show your world to the others, and also share your painting in the comments below this video so everybody can learn and I can see your painting and maybe give you some extra tips. Thank you. 12. Conclusion: Congratulations, you made it to the end of the class. I hope you enjoyed the class. I hope you will continue sketching and painting and making art. I hope also you got a different point of view in your observation sketching, and I especially hope you had fun. I hope you'll continue sketching and posting your sketchings online. When we draw, we are more present in the present moment and we enjoy it more and we live it more intensely. Like when I look at the drawings I made in Japan, I remember the smells, I remember the sounds, I remember the feelings I had and what I ate. It's a wonderful way to travel. It says if you traveled several times when you look back at your drawings. Please post your art. Also, you can follow me on Instagram to keep in touch and follow the Urban Sketchers. Really thank you for taking my class and please give feedback so I can improve myself. Keep on dreaming and posting your art to make the world more beautiful. Thank you. 13. Bonus Lesson! Let's Make a Second Painting: And downtown Los Angeles. According to the plot. Ok. Alto and tenor. And of course, though and the entire summer and pushes them too and gt in no time. And so the whole thing.