How to See and Use Perspective for Urban Sketching

1. Intro: Hello and welcome to this course on urban sketching, how to see and use perspective from the real world. My name is Kill and I have been urban sketching since 2009. In this course, I want to share with you the tips and tricks to sketching perspective. Now, this is not a beginner course. This course actually complements the other beginner courses that I have already made on perspective and urban sketching. If you are a beginner, I highly recommend you check out those courses first before you watch this. In this course, I will talk about one point perspective, where all the diagonal lines converge to a single managing. I will also talk about two point perspective where there are two vanishing points, one on the left and one on the right. And how you can draw such scenes, such complicated scenes, more easily. I will also teach you how to draw perspective where there are no obvious vanishing points, such as these windows or that building in the background where you can't actually see where the lines converge to any vanishing points. Reference photos are provided in this cost. When you are practicing with the reference photos, focus on drawing the out lines. Do not focus on drawing the detail. For example, with this particular see, first thing I will do is to try and find the Sal point Sal points. Next, I will use list lines or pencils to mark out the composition. At this stage, what I really want to do is to make sure I get the pens. Make sure that I get the perspective. Because at the early stage, if you get the perspective, perspective for all the details will be formulated. It's very important to make sure your perspective is accurate and point. Here's another example where I will put for the wrong perspective. The bunion point is marked. The perspective for the building on the left side is wrong because you can see the typing line is 45 degrees. But it's actually much steeper in the real world. And the perspective for the building on the right side is also long. Because you can see it's much steeper, but in the photo, it's lunch maybe 45 degrees. If you get the perspective wrong at the start, all the details will have the wrong perspective. For example, if you want to draw the windows. Now all the windows will be drawn one perspective because the perspective for the big ship is wrong. And that's why all the ships within the big ships do not spend more than one or 2 minutes during the drafting stage. Now, if you want to develop your sketch fully, yes, you can spend however much time that you need. But don't spend too much time during the drafting stage. Just focus on the structure, the outline, but not the details until later on. Now if you need even more drawing exercises, you can check out the full tutors that included as bonus materials for this course. When you're practicing, try to get the perspective to look right, to look correct at the start. Also, I have a favor to ask of you. Do leave this course a review so that other students can know whether this course is any good. By the way, I'm actually here in Chinatown, Singapore. So let's head on to the first lesson where I show you around this neighborhood. 2. One Point Perspective: This first lesson, let's talk about one point perspective. In a scene where there is one point perspective, there is only one vanishing point. Usually before I start sketching, I will look for that vanishing point, which is usually on the horizon, on the eye level. To find that vanishing point is very easy. We just take a look at where all the diagonal lines converge. Look at where the roofs are pointed to, where the lines on the brown are pointed to. The vanishing point is somewhere here. I don't need to find out where specifically that venting point is, I just need to know which area that venting point is located. Now that you know where the vanishing point is, you can draw the diagonal lines converging to the vanishing points. With that knowledge, and also with observation drawing techniques, when you know where the vanishing point is, you can draw those diagonal lines more accurately. For example, if you know the vanishing point is somewhere here, you can draw the diagonal line pointing to the venting point just by using that knowledge. You don't even need to use observation drawing techniques, which you should use obviously. But you can use observation drawing techniques just to check and see whether your sketch looks accurate. One thing about one point perspective is you can actually shift your sketching location. For example, if I want to see more of the buildings on the left side, I can stand here closer to the wall on the right side. This way I can see the windows on the buildings more clearly. I can also see the side profile of the people walking, the tourists. And I can see this shop, this restaurant here on the ground floor. It's not open for business yet. Now, if I move to the other side, I can get another view. I can get the view of the shophouses on the right side, I can see the shops are not open yet. I probably will not choose this particular composition because there is no activity. Try to choose composition, or a view where you can see activity which will make your sketch look more lively. Also choose a composition where you can provide more information. So this would be a good view to sketch because we can see more people. We can see details on the wall, we can see the windows, we can see buildings in the background. We can also see some shops. And if the shops are open, it's great because we can see people shopping at the shops. We can see even more activity. You can also use one point perspective to direct people's attention. Right now you can see all the diagonal lines, they are pointing at my head. If you want people to focus at a specific area, just have all the diagonal lines pointed to that area. Here's another example of a one point perspective scene. I am recording this video with an ultra white angle lens. There is noticeable perspective distortion. More specifically, the vertical lines for the buildings near the edge of this video are actually cited at a slight angle. Now the vertical lines are perfectly vertical in real life when you're sketching on location. But if you actually sketch from a photograph, just note that there will be camera lens distortion. Can you find the vanishing point for this scene? Sometimes it may not be easy to find out where the vanishing point is, but the general technique to finding where the vanishing point is simple. Just see where the lines are connected to. You can use the edge of your sketchbook or ruler or a pencil to find out where that vanishing point is. That vanishing point is somewhere. One thing you can do to improve your perception or understanding of perspective very quickly is to just go out and have a walk. And just look at the perspective, the buildings around you. And try to understand how perspective work. Try to find out where the vanishing points are. And try and figure out where the horizon or eye level is and see how the world works with perspective. If you're sketching by the roadside, always be mindful of traffic conditions because safety always comes first. This is another one point perspective scene. And we can see the diagonal lines, they are all pointed to the end of the road there towards where those tall buildings are. It's quite busy in the background, nothing stands out. If you want to draw a scene like this, I will probably recommend you use thicker lines for the buildings in the foreground and lines for the buildings in the background just to create some contrast. Do know that all the cars parked along the side of the road are also affected by perspective. When drawing cars, it can be useful if you use pencil lines to mark out the diagonal line that goes to the vanishing point for where the wheels meet the road and also for the top of the cars. When you draw the cars, you can draw them between the bottom diagonal line and the top diagonal line. This one point perspective scene behind me is way more interesting compared to the one I showed you earlier. Once again, we can see diagonal lines pointing to the end of this street. And at the end of this street we have a very tall yellow building, which is much taller than all the buildings that I'm standing beside right now. This creates a nice contrast. We have a tall building beside short buildings. And we have very nice space here that separates the tall building from the shorter buildings. And we have the diagonal lines pointing to the center to make this the center of attention. This is a good scene to sketch because I can include the colorful red building here. And I can see many shops with activity on the ground floor. Now if I move across the street to this side, the building on the left is not as interesting because it's just white. Also, the tall yellow building in the background doesn't look quite right when it's just inside the red building and there is no separation. It's difficult for me to see the structure of the yellow building. When it comes to sketching, you should always walk around to look for the best composition. Don't just settle down at the first pot R. So those are the most useful tips that I have for you when it comes to drawing one point perspective. In the next lesson, we'll talk about two point perspective. 3. Two Point Perspective: Welcome back. I'm still at the same spot When it comes to urban sketching. You should choose the best composition to tell the story. For example, if I choose this one point perspective scene, the highlight is the tall yellow building in the background. However, if I move to the site here, I can use this two point perspective to talk more about the area instead of just focusing on the tall yellow building. So this is a two point perspective scene. There is one venting point on the left, another venting point somewhere on the right, which is outside of the frame or of the pitch. It's important to find out where the vanishing point is because it's so helpful. The venting point on the right side is somewhere here on the right pillar. Now that I know the vanishing point is here, when I draw the diagonal lines, I can just draw the diagonal lines to the vanishing point. It's so easy, I don't have to rely only on observation skills to measure the angles. Note that the vanishing point can change depending on where you are if I move to a different location, if I move here, the venting point is now somewhere here and there is a vision point of the Po left he. When it comes to sketching perspective scenes, I would recommend you move to the site where you can see more details on the side of the building. Let me very quickly show you how I will approach drawing this scene. I'm actually drawing on the ipad, but my process workflow is the same when drawing on a sketch book. This is a complicated scene. I will want to use a pencil to mark out the composition first. That's the tall yellow building in the background. If it's not tall enough, you can make it taller. And find out where the vanishing point is. The cross is the vanishing point. Now that you know where the vanishing point is, you can draw all the other buildings and have the diagonal lines go to the vanishing point. This is the drafting stage where I try to figure out the composition. The diagonal lines for the buildings on the left side are incredibly challenging to draw based on observation. Because the, the roof lines, they are at a very steep angle. So it's not easy to draw, but if you know where the vanishing point is, you can draw those step lines very easily. Just have those lines point to the vanishing point. We have some buildings on the left side. There is a truck in front of me, which is here. Make sure you have the ground line, the curve pointing to the venting point as well. We have this building on the left side. Once you are happy with the perspective that you see, you can ink your sketch with more details if you make any mistakes at this stage, you can always correct the mistakes because you're either using pencil or if you're drawing digitally, you can just erase very easily. Do not draw too much details during the drafting stage. The most important thing during the drafting stage is actually getting the perspective right to look accurate enough. If your perspective looks off the start of the sketch, then the perspective for all the details will be off for the sketch. So it's very important to get your perspective to look correct, to look right at the start of the sketch. If you're on a street and there are no root junctions, then you are limited to one point perspective. For example, right now I'm walking on the street. I can't choose a two point perspective scene because I'm not at the corner of the building, I'm not at a root junction. I'm just on this street which is a street street. In the next lesson, I'll talk about horizon and eye level. 4. Horizon and Eye Level: Right, let's talk about the horizon, which is this horizontal line where the sky meets the ground. And you can usually see this at the beach, near the water, beside the sea. In an urban setting, the horizon usually cannot be seen because the horizon is usually blocked by buildings, traffic, people, trees, mountains. We usually don't see horizons in urban city scapes. How the horizon works and how it affects perspective is very useful because it can help you draw more accurately. The first concept you need to know is diagonal lines that are affected by venting points will be horizontal at the horizon. If we look at this scene, which is actually a one point perspective scene, this applies to two point perspective as well. We can see the venting point is somewhere around there. Because we can see the diagonal lines, they all converge to that area. Venting points are always on the horizon. This is the horizon line. For diagonal lines that are above the horizon line, they will tilt down. For diagonal lines that are below the horizon, they will tilt up because remember the vanishing point is on the horizon. The diagonal lines will always be pointing to the horizon. If we take a look at this building on the left side, we can see diagonal lines pointing down and diagonal lines pointing up because the horizon is somewhere between these two lines. Now if I move down a few steps down the staircase, you can see that this line now is now perfectly horizontal because this line actually coincides with the horizon. On the horizon, all the diagonal lines will be horizontal when you're drawing, when you're sketching, and there are elements on the horizon, lines that are affected by vanishing points. You should draw them horizontally as I move down the steps. I want you to pay attention to how the angles of those lines change. Right now, the horizontal line is on the horizon. But if I move down the steps, this horizontal line will be above the horizon. This horizontal line will start to tilt this way. Let me move down the steps right now, and you can see how the angle of the lines change. This is how the horizon and vanishing points affect perspective. When the horizon line is high, it usually means you are higher above the ground. In this case, I'm actually on the third floor looking down when the horizon is high. You can look down at all the details at the ground level, you can see the crowd. You can see how many tourists there are stretching all the way to the back of the street. When you're on the ground level, the horizon will be low. Since your eye level or the horizon is low because your horizon is low, most of the diagonal lines will be pointing downwards. Now you can move the horizon even lower by squatting down to move your eye level even lower. Now you can see the diagonal lines. More diagonal lines are pointing down. This is actually the usual height that I sketch at when I'm seated on my portable stool. This angle you can see that the awning actually blocks off some of the windows. We can't see the details and the windows. Now if I stand up, this is, I would say, the typical touristy level that tourists used to take photos at. This is not a very nice perspective when sketching, I usually prefer to have a lower angle draw from a lower angle because I don't want to see too much of the ground because there is nothing on the ground, there's nothing interesting on the ground. I try to minimize the ground by moving viewpoint down so that I see less of the ground and more of the buildings. Now that you have the knowledge of perspective, the knowledge of venting points and horizon and how to change or move them, you can use that knowledge to change the way you view the world and also change the way how other people view the world. For example, if you want people to see more of the ground, just go high up so that you can see more of the ground. If you want people to see more of the details of the windows, just move into a position where you can draw all the details of the windows or the side of the buildings. Another very important thing about the horizon is it will affect how you sketch people. For example, right now I'm standing, I'm about 1.8 meters tall. At this height, at my eye level, it coincides with the eye level of all the people you can see, all the heats that actually coincide at this eye level, which is actually the horizon. Now if I move down, if I change my viewpoint down, now I'm looking at the ways level of people. Notice how the horizon is now lower. The horizon coincides with all the ways, all these people. Now if I move down even lower to the ground level, to the ends eye, my eye level will be maybe 1 centimeter above the ground. My eye level will coincide with the shoes of all these people. This is a very important concept because when you draw people according to perspective at this level, for example, make sure you draw all the weights at this level. And you can draw the body here and the legs here. This. But as you move up, you have to make sure that all the hits coincide with the eye level. Let me show you how the horizon line affects how you sketch P. Let's say I'm standing because I'm standing. My eye level is high, so the horizon is high. This is the eye horizon, which is high on the pitch. I'm going to draw a person here, that's maybe me. That's my hit. We have the eyes there. We have the body, the legs. Remember earlier, I said the eye level will coincide with all the body parts. In this case, my eyes will coincide with all the eyes of the people. If we have someone standing further back, that person will look smaller because the person is standing further back, but the eyes will still be on the horizon. As you draw people, just make sure the same body part, in this case the eyes actually coincide with the horizon. You can draw them big or small, doesn't matter. Just make sure the eyes are on the horizon in this case. Okay, let's say I am now seated on the ground. Because I'm seated on the ground, the eye level is lower and maybe I'm looking at the waist of the people because now I'm lower, I'm looking at the waist of the people. That means all the ways of all these people will be on the horizon line. Once again, I can draw like this. This is the wait, the bottom of the T shirt and we have the head like this. And we can have hands as well. If you want to draw a person who is standing in the background who is quite far away. Same thing, the wait should be on the horizon. Another person standing between person one and person two. The wait again will be on the horizon. And we have the legs you can draw on people walking as well. Sam, the waist will be on the horizon. This is how you use the horizon to draw people. You can draw someone really tiny. Same thing was has to be on the horizon. Let's say now you are at a high elevation and your eye level is here. So the horizon is here. And the horizon no longer intersects the body parts of people that you see. When drawing people from a high elevation, you should find out where the horizon is and do not draw people above the horizon. For example, in the scene, the horizon is actually here. When you draw people, don't draw people above the horizon, the perspective will be off. Let's say I'm drawing some people from the stairs that I'm at right now. That's the horizon line. It's quite high because I'm high up on the steps as mentioned earlier, do not draw people above the horizon. These are people in the far background and sometimes I just use dots to represent them. We can have many dots to represent many hits. We can have some bodies as well as the people move closer to you, just draw them bigger. Draw from observation. All right, it's very important to draw from observation so that you can draw more accurately for people in the background. I'll just suggest them, instead of drawing details for people in the foreground. They are bigger, so you need to add more details. The important thing to take note here is the spacing between people. This spacing. So this spacing is very important to create the illusion of perspective. So try to get the spacing correct. Another thing to note is people in the foreground will always intersect or overlap people in the background like this. This will create the sense of perspective as well. Try and find out where the bodies will intersect. For example, if I draw someone in the foreground like this, another person is in the background. Maybe the bottom of the shirt is intersecting with the elbow or the elbow of this person. So you can draw it this way. This will also help you draw people at the correct position and also with the correct proportion. You don't actually need to know perspective in order to draw from observation. However, knowing perspective can really help you draw more accurately and faster. The knowledge of perspective is really very useful for urban sketchers. 5. Drawing Windows and Tall Buildings: This lesson, I'm going to give you some tips on how you can draw windows and tall buildings with perspective in mind. The first tip is try not to draw windows or buildings in general from the front, because the perspective or the scene will look flat. Try to draw windows and buildings in perspective. You can see the windows on the right, They look more dynamic, they look less flat. Let's start the sketch by drafting out the perspective. Make sure you get the perspective to look accurate at the start of your sketch, because that's going to affect how your windows look later. This is the general perspective. Remember, try not to spend too much time at this stage. If you can use pencil so that I can erase your lines if they are not accurate, I have the big shape out and now I'm going to divide the second floor from the third floor. Keep dividing your big shapes into smaller and smaller shapes. At this point, you may also want to add some structural details. For example, the signboard on the left side. Now that I have blocked out the big ship and I have four smaller ships, I can draw the windows within those shapes. I'm going to draw the windows at the top floor. First, I'm going to mark out the general shape of the windows first as well divide the windows into two, have some decoration at the top. Now, when you are very comfortable with the perspective and the perspective looks accurate, you can proceed to ink your sketch with more details. Now for the windows at the bottom, you can see the perspective is quite dramatic. Same thing. Use a pencil to mark out the perspective. First, divide the windows into smaller and smaller shapes and add more details. When you have no idea where to add more details, that's probably the stage where you can stop adding the details. Make sure that the windows aligned from top to bottom or from bottom to top because windows are always stacked. And make sure the pillars are also aligned properly from top to bottom in a straight line. At this stage, you can ink your drafting lines and add more details. Now if your perspective is wrong, if your perspective does not look accurate at the start, then the perspective of the windows will look off. If the perspective at the start just redraw. Because you did not spend too much time to create the drafting lines. You can redraw very quickly. Also, during the drafting stage, you may discover some mistakes that you make. That's a good way to quickly find out mistakes so that you can redraw to avoid those mistakes. Now that I have drawn the windows, I can draw the smaller windows by the side. When you're drawing windows, always keep in mind the perspective, all right? Always have an idea where the lines are going to tilt, whether they are going to t up tilt down to the horizon. The second tip is if you cannot count the windows. Don't draw all the windows, you just have to suggest the windows instead. Now let's draw this tall building with all the windows. As mentioned earlier, if you cannot count the windows, do not draw all the windows for this particular building. We can see the windows are horizontal. That's the idea we want to portray in our sketch. Let's see how we can draw this two point perspective scene. Now the vanishing points are actually outside of the scene. For this sketch, we actually have to draw with observation techniques. Let's start the sketch by drafting out the basic perspective. First, let's draw the shorter building at the bottom and make sure you draw the angles accurately. Next, we have the taller building on top. And make sure to draw the angles accurately as well using observation drawing techniques. Now in the reference photo, the vertical lines are tilted, but in real life, the vertical lines are actually perfectly vertical. Next, we'd have to draw the right corner. The right corner of the building actually aligns to the halfway mark of the tall building. With that in mind, we can draw the right corner. I'm going to start here. I'm going to place a point there and join this to the. Shape, or the line that I have already drawn and draw down like that. And there we have it, the tall building. Now to draw the angles of the horizontal windows, we can use the line at the top that we have already drawn the line at the bottom that we know where it is. With these two lines, we can divide the building into smaller and smaller section. I'm going to divide the building into half like this. Half again, half, half, half, half, half. Just keep dividing the angles that you have just drawn will be accurate. If you rely only on observation drawing techniques, it's challenging to draw all the individual lines at the correct angle. By using this technique, you can draw tall buildings with accurate perspective. Okay, let me show you, let me show you another example. Let's say you are drawing a building with this perspective. You're looking down at this building. We have the top line and we have the bottom line. Same principle or concept applies, Divide the building into half, half, half, half. With this technique, you can draw the angles of those diagonal lines accurately. The most important thing here is to make sure that the angle for the top line and the bottom line are accurate. This will apply to the bottom building as well. Once you have these two lines accurately drawn, you can divide this building into half like this. To separate the top floor from the second floor, You can divide the building into different sections. This is how you would draw a scene like this with tall buildings. If you look on the left side of the building, you can see there are several big yellow blocks. And on the yellow blocks there are some red words. Same thing applies. Same concept applies. Try and divide the shapes. This, okay. Now you can draw the red words. Try and divide the shapes accurately. Try to draw the outlines accurately. Now, if the perspective looks off at the start of the sketch, re draw, if you use a pencil, you can always erase. I can see my perspective is a bit off, but in real life it actually looks like this. But due to camera distortion, the line is actually more tutored. Anyway, just draw from observation, and if the perspective looks off, just redraw. It's always good to start out with a pencil if you are a beginner, if you're not experienced. But once you are more experienced, you will be able to draw more accurately and go straight in. Let's say I want to divide the windows now with the yellow blocks on the left in mind. Same thing. You can see this section here. This is about, I would say, one unit which is divided into three units. For the right side, it's also going to be divided into three units. Just join the lines like this and divide the shapes again. All right, divide this into half, and divide, divide, divide, divide, divide, and divide. This is how the sketch will look now, even though this sketch does not have lots of details, but it actually looks good enough simply because the perspective looks accurate enough. So those are the techniques that I use whenever I'm sketching windows and tall buildings, especially when I cannot find or see the vanishing points. When you are practicing, I have to emphasize again, try to draw the accurate perspective for the drafting stage, for the building first before you draw the details. Because if the perspective is not accurate at the start, the perspective for all the details will not be accurate later on. 6. Slopes: Lesson, I'm going to give you some tips on how you can draw slopes and buildings on slopes. When it comes to drawing slopes, the slope usually has its own vanishing point. And the buildings will have its own vanishing point as well. In a scene like this where there is a slope and buildings beside the slope, there will usually be two vanishing points. If you extend the diagonal line for the slope all the way up, you will see the vanish point is somewhere around here. But if you extend the diagonal lines for the buildings, you'll see the vanishing point is somewhere around here, which is lower than the vanishing point of the slope. When it comes to drawing a scene like this, what's most important is to find out where the slope ends, where the slope intersects the side of the building. The most important point in this scene is actually this point here, where the end of the road intersects the building. And also this point here to draw the diagonal lines, you can just measure the angle. Just stretch out your arm, lock your elbows and measure the angles. And remember the angle before you draw them on the page or on the paper. The angle for the roof here is particularly challenging to measure the angles. Once again, stretch out your arm, lock your elbows, and measure the angle. You can see this line is tilted in this direction. This line is tilted in this direction, and this line is tilted in this direction. Try to remember the angles before you draw them on the paper. For scene like this, try and find out where the function points are. Find out where the end of the slope intersects the buildings at the end of the slope. And draw the big shifts first. Just create the drafting lines first before you draw details. Now I'm at the top of the slope looking down. Let's see. We can use the same drawing techniques to draw from the top of the slope. If we extend the diagonal lines for the slope, the vanishing point for the slope is somewhere around here. If we extend the diagonal lines for the buildings, the venting point is somewhere around here. The venting point for the buildings is higher in this case compared to the venting point of the slope which is lower. I would say the same principle applies. Try and find out where the end of the slope intersects the building on the left side. And measure the angles of the slope. And draw the big ships first. Draft out everything with pencil first. Very loosely to get a sense of whether the perspective looks right or accurate enough. Right, let's see how we can draw the scene with a slope and building by both sides of the road as usual. Draw the big ships first, try to measure the angles as accurately as you can. There is a horizontal line here, because this horizontal line coincides with the horizon. If we extend the top line for the roof and the horizontal line, we can get the venting point, the VP for the building on the left. This VP may or may not be the same venting point for the buildings on the right. Now I'm drawing the buildings on the right side, the yellow building on the right side. The bottom of the yellow building on the right side is actually taller than the bottom of the building on the left side. Next, we can draw the slope. So it's very important to find out where the slope intersects the building, whether it's intersecting on the left or on the right. At this stage, you should be drawing with pencil or drawing on a drafting layer. If you are drawing digitally. We also have, we can see this curve here at the front. Now when drawing this particular scene, I want you to pay special attention to the shape of this road here. Yeah, try to get this shape to look accurate because that will really help to make your slope look more accurate. Once you're happy with the perspective that you see, you can then we'll add more details to your sketch. If the perspective looks off, looks wrong, just erase your pencil lines and redraw again. Trying not to spend too long. Try not to spend more than 1 minute or 2 minutes to drop out the perspective, because you just need like one or 2 minutes too quickly. I get a sense of whether or not the perspective looks right. This is how the scene will look before developing it more. When it comes to drawing slopes, you will have to rely a bit more on observation drawing techniques, because the vanishing point for the slope and the vanishing point for the buildings do not coincide. Now if the vanishing points coincide, you can just draw all the diagonal lines to the single vanishing point. But in this case, the VPs, the vanishing points for the slope and buildings are different. So you will have to observe and change the angles of the line and more specifically, find out where the end of the slope coincides or intersects the buildings. This scene behind me is particularly challenging to sketch because one road goes down, the road goes up. I'm going to provide you with a reference photo, and you can try and draw this scene with the reference photo. When your knowledge of perspective cannot help you sketch, you will have to fall back on drawing with observation drawing techniques. For example, with this scene, you would have to find out where the roads intersect the building on the right and also on the left. You can use alignment techniques to draw the road on the left and on the right, find out where the horizon is, that's where all the lines are horizontal. Find out how the lines cute. Also, use alignment techniques to draw the corners of the buildings. Draw the big ships first before you divide the ships into smaller and smaller ships to draw the windows and other details. One thing that I have learned over the many years of sketching is if you want to improve fast, it's not just about practicing. You also have to understand the concepts behind what you draw. If you combine the knowledge with practice, you can improve much faster. 7. Bonus video: Chinatown Night Sketch (Part 1/2): Hello everyone. Welcome to another sketching tutorial. Today we are going to sketch this night scene of Chinatown. Night scenes can be quite challenging because the light comes from the lights and not from the sun, so there is no shadow. In order to portray the depth perspective, you really have to be good at drawing, at capturing proportions. I don't usually sketch night scenes because I work at night. So I don't usually go out at night. This photograph was taken a few days ago while I was out with my family at Chinatown. Singapore, Chinese New Year is coming and very crowded. I took this photo for you guys so that we can sketch together. If I were to sketch this on location at this particular time, it would be impossible because I was standing on the staircase and there is just a stream of people walking up and down. It would be impossible for me to get a good spot to even stand and draw. Let's take a look at the scene. We have some perspective lines going into the distance. This is where the finishing point is. Somewhere inside this red banner here. Notice the people, as they are further away in the background, they become much smaller. Take a look at the size of this head here. All the size of this head is almost the same size as the T shirt that this guy is wearing. As we move into the background, you can see the become smaller and smaller. We want to capture the diminishing size to portray the sense of death. We see some lights here. The lights, they are bright against the dark background. I may use the white Jew pen later on or the posca, opaque markers to write or draw over the black. We have some lights here as well. Neon lights. The sky, it's dark. Hopefully by painting the sky black later on, you can give you a sense that this is a night scene. You can download this reference photo in the video description below. The first thing I want to draw is the pillar which will go to the center area around this area. I don't want to put it close to the pitch gutter. This is the other pillar which is further to the right side. When you draw something like this, get a sense of this rectangle. I can draw the roof now based on the reference photo that I have. The roof here is actually cropped off. But I wanted to draw the roof to give it a sense of the top. Let's draw the other pillars. Now, the smaller pillar will be around here. Bottom of the pillar will be around here. Yeah, because there is this vanishing perspective line that goes to the banner here. Maybe I should draw the banner first. It will be easier. I'm going to draw the banner here. I can draw the pillar here. Let's continue to draw. As I'm drawing, I'm continuously measuring where the vanishing point is. All these pillars that are behind the top will all align to the banishing point here as well. On the left, on the right side, this is the top. There is a horizontal beam. I may want to draw the horizontal beam. You can see these pillars. They are more spread out. This pillar here, it's about one third compared to this. With here, I want to put it one third here, and the vanishing point is here. The bottom is going to end up somewhere around here. This is me using perspective knowledge to draw the bottom of the pillar, this third pillar from the right side. This is about one third compared to the wave here. I can draw that. Now, this sketch is pretty sketchy looking right now. You can see I have overlapping lines here where I shouldn't have just continue drawing the pillars. It doesn't really matter whether or not you get the number of pillars right. Just as long as the pillars look like they are in perspective, we can see the perspective line going into the distance here. The blanching point is here, 123, we have the escalator here. There is the escalator here and there are people on the escalator. Now let's draw the stairs. Continue drawing the stairs. Now what I'm doing right now is actually to draw the big shapes to get the framing the composition. For challenging scenes like this, you may want to use a pencil, but I'm going straight with ink to save time. You see this part here. This is actually going to the perspective point as well, because this is parallel to the ground that people are working on. This part here, this is about, say, this angle. When you draw an angle that is quite challenging, stretch out your arms, lock your elbow, and measure the angle and draw it. Now, this line, this line is not parallel. In real life, it's parallel. But when you're drawing, you should draw it in a way that this part here is thinner and this part here is more spread out because of perspective. The vanishing point for the two lines is different from this two line. Because these two lines, in real life, they are actually sloping downwards, but these two lines are parallel to the ground. For lines that are sloping downwards, the vanishing point will be different from those that are parallel to the ground. Let's go here. Remember, two lines are parallel to the ground. If you don't want to measure, you can actually just use your perspective knowledge and draw those lines to the vanishing point. This will be very accurate, but for this line here, this is almost almost horizontal on the page. I'm going to draw it like this and like this. All right, now let's draw the buildings in the background, the shop houses. Let's start from here. This point here. This is, this is the, so I'm not sure what, what's called the extension where the sheet comes out. It starts here about two fifths of this height here. So it starts here. And it will, and I'm not sure where it, anyway, it doesn't really matter where it ends, because this line here, this is parallel to the ground. It shares the same perspective difishing point as this line here. You can actually, with the help of the finishing point, just draw the line like this. You don't even have to measure the angle. If you know perspective, I can draw. There's a cut here. There's a cut here, which is somewhere in the mid point, if I use this as a reference. Yeah, there is another cut here, and this is where the signboard is now. The signboard will go up to almost half of this. The signboard will start here. It comes down here for the top of the shophouse. Same thing. We can draw those lines to the banner. Now I see inaccuracies right now, because I probably drew this too high up. Because if I were to draw the mid line here of the shophouses, it's going to, now in the photo, the line is perfectly horizontal. I'm going to cheat a bit and draw it tilted slightly to the vanishing point, because I have already set up the vanishing point. If I were to draw the line horizontal right now it's going to look a bit weird. So now I have the shop houses on the left side. I can divide, divide the shop houses into smaller and smaller part, individual sections. So we have one part there and one part here. Another part here seems okay. As, as the shop houses move into the background, this front will be more squished and shortened. You have to draw. Smaller and smaller. The distance between each lines will be smaller and smaller. Now we just have to fill in the details. I can draw the windows later on. Let's draw the people on the street. For the people on the street, I'm going to, let's extend the pillar all the way down to the ground. First, the pillar is going to stop somewhere here, midpoint here. And we have this, okay, the person that is here. We need to make sure that the size is in relation to this pillar. Here. We can continue to draw all the details later on. Now I just want to draw the big ships first, the shop fronts. Make sure the lines here, they go to the vanishing point. There is another person here. Now, when drawing people from a high elevation, when you're standing somewhere higher and people are lower than you, make sure to pay attention to the shapes that you are drawing because there is going to be a lot of foreshortening and we can draw this person here. The heat of this person is going to be quite big because this person is closer to us. We have another person here. I'm going to align him about this and this area here now because I'm using a wide angle lens. The people that are closer to me and people that are to the extreme edges, the left and right edges, they are going to look like they are stretched. That's the perspective of the lens, not in real life. For the next person that's here, the T shirt is about the same size as the head, this guy is walking down. Now this is a bit challenging if you are drawing on location life, drawing people walking down the steps will be challenging because they are always moving. The trick is to wait for people who are maybe not moving as much and draw those people first. For the bottom of the T shirts, they will not be horizontal because of their perspective. Most of the time, the bottom of the ****, they are actually curved like this, because of perspective. For the right side of the shop house, the pillar starts here, almost at the bottom of the pillar. We can draw this pillar here, goes up. Now this line, in real life, it's supposed to be horizontal, but in the photograph it looks horizontal. It is horizontal. I can just copy it like that. This will go all the way to the top stops here, the top of the shop houses will go to the vanishing point. So we can draw this like this. There are some windows here. I can see some windows here. You may not be able to see properly from the photo, but in real life, if you were to be sketching on location, your eyes will be able to see all sorts of details. This wide angle lens, it's creating a lot of distortion. Okay, this part here again, we'll go to the benching point. We can draw this line here. It looks like they are selling the shop, selling a lot of things In front, I want to draw some people as well. In relation to the height of this pillar. Here, the main structures, the pillars, the diagonal lines, they are almost complete. Now I can just fill in the details. By the way, I'm able to draw things that I cannot see because I've been to this place for me, I'm always in Chinatown. I'm quite familiar with how the structures actually look, but you guys wouldn't know how it looks. So you have to follow the photograph. Okay, so for the following section, I'm just going to time lapse this video because it's basically filling in the details. One thing to note is when you are drawing pillars on the ground, for example, we have a dis pillar here. The bottom is horizontal for people that are facing you versus those that are not facing you. Here's how I do it. I can, this is the body, for example, and this is the head. This would be a person that is looking away from me. If I introduce a face like that and the front, this would be a person who is facing me. This is a person facing away. If I have the chest area, this would be a person facing me. For people that are really far away, you cannot just draw dots. This is simplification. You can use dots to represent all those people who are so far away. All these people are on the stairs. So I can draw some horizontal lines. Now for the top of the stairs, the line will be parallel to the ground. This line here should go to the vanishing point on the banner. So it's going to be like this. Yup. So if you want to have some perspective going on, this is the completed sketch that took me around half an hour to 45 minutes. This was run pretty quickly because this is just an, A five sketch book. If I were drawing on a much larger piece of paper, it's going to take me more time. And if I really concentrate and focus on the details on getting the alignment, the proportion right, it's going to take me even more time. How much time I take to draw is dependent on how much detail I want to add. And also ultimately, the size of the paper that I am drawing on. Sketching on location is very fun. When I took this photo, there were actually some dances here. That's why you see an opening here. If you're drawing on location, you can really remember the atmosphere for me. I'm drawing at home. So the only thing I can remember would be me creating this tutorial for you guys. But if you're drawing on location, your experience will be totally different. I just remember that this shelter actually extends all the way up, because this shelter covers the whole decade. I do need to extend this further like this and have it cropped off right now. It looks, it feels more right to me. In the next video, we will color this sketch with watercolor. 8. Bonus video: Chinatown Night Sketch (Part 2/2): Hello and welcome back. Now we are going to color this with water color. This is going to be quite challenging because I don't usually paint night scenes. The colors that I'll be using will be Hansa yellow, medium, pyro red, and flow blue. But first, I'm going to use up the existing colors that I already have on my palette. So I can always reactivate dry water color. I don't want to wet them. I will be using Posca markers as well. This will be used to draw the lights. My strategy here is to paint the colors first and over with the gray and finally with and then we'll use the Posca markers to draw the lights. Now I'm just painting the people. We'll paint with the primary colors first and then mix the secondaries using the primaries I've just painted using all the primary colors. And now I'm painting the sky black. This is mixed with thalo blue and pyro red. You can get a really dark value color using color mixing with these two colors. If you find a black dark enough, you can add more thalo blue. Now as the, as the semicircle beams go into the distance, the gap between the beam, the sky will become thinner and thinner. You see here in this portion here, it's bigger. But as it goes into the foreground, the gap becomes smaller and smaller. That's perspective. Things in the foreground will become smaller. One thing I noticed is a lot of people are actually wearing black or grays. This type of things, you probably will not notice unless you are observing them. I'm going to paint the grease and then paint with the black. This part is actually the tedious part because there are so many to paint while painting. All the people here, I want to create contrasts. I'm going to have some colors against white, colors against black. Basically to have the color contrast against each other. You will need to have a brush with a very sharp tip in order to paint all these details. The paint will dry lighter. To make it darker, I have to go over it with the flu blue and pyro red mix. I'll be painting the hair and all the black T shirts with this mix. For the gray, I'm going to add the three primary colors together bit by bit. Don't add too much paint or else the greases are going to look very dark. Use a lot of water to keep the wash light. There are some light sows coming from the sides, from the left and the right side. When you're painting the pillars, the white support structure, make sure to paint on the right side of the pillars. The stairs look like they are brown as well. The pillars here, I can paint with this color as well. Yep, I've already run out of paint. That's why you need to mix a lot of paint. You need to use a lot of water. So the buildings behind, they are darker. So I need to mix a darker gray. But let's paint the lighter grease first. This part here, this is darker. I can use the mix to paint the grace here as well. I need it to be a bit more reddish. Now, the light here is actually a soft transition, so let me work very quickly, because I want to use my tissue to get that soft transition. Oops, this is really dry, so you can see the hot edge there. Let me try again. You have to work really fast, wash your brush very quickly, or have a clean brush stand by a clean brush and then fade. This will be much easier compared to compared to using just the scroll brush. Let's try again this time around. We will paint this, make it darker with the clean brush fit for this part here. This seems to be darker. Let's have this big wall here that is darker. This whole part here. Let me just overlay paint over this whole building here, leave the highlights areas in the black. I'm going to make them darker. I want to make the windows darker as well. Very quickly wash the brush and feed. I want to make the stairs a bit darker. This part here, the top will be light. This part here will be darker. And the steps themselves will be Mu D. Let's paint the side. This is a mix of the three primary colors and the steps. There are certain areas that are much darker, so we need to paint over those areas. Such as this part here. This part, everything has dried. So now it's time to add some details. The lights using the white pen, white the post gun markers. We have some lights, reflections on the glass. There are actually some tall buildings in the background, but you may not see it in the photo. I'm just adding some windows for the buildings in the background. For this part here, I'm going to add some more details. Now, if you are using pen over water color, make sure to turn your fountain pen to the opposite side to draw with the really fine lines. Because when you have ink over water color, the lines will tend to be thicker. But if you turn the fountain panel over to the other side, it doesn't move as free inflow isn't as good for the bottom here. I need to add those grills. Now the grills, they actually follow the perspective. Make sure that they are pointing those lines, they point to the vanishing point. For example, if you take a look at this window here. If I were to draw the grills, I will have to make sure that the lines, they point to the finishing point. For the windows. Notice how the angle of the lines they change. And now the lines, they are pointing downwards. Now I'm using the white quash to add some details back. This can be used for correction as well. Now the Posca marker, this is not as bright as fluorescent. I may need to go over another time to make it more opaque. The thing with these markers is you have to use them quite often in order to get the ink flowing. If not, sometimes they may actually dry up even though you kept them properly. Okay, I see the problem here. This should be the background. Should be much I'm going to pin this. In fact, I think I messed this up, so I'm going to just paint over the postcar state and just make this really dark so that when I draw over with the postcar, it's going to look right. Meanwhile, let's move over to the next signboard. All right, now the yellow ink, it's flowing much better. I can use the Posca markers to add some details here. Maybe this is a gold shop selling jewelry. I want to add some reflections for the yellow lights at the top here as well, and some red light reflections of the red lights. Let's try again this time. All right, now the ink is flowing much better. You see the contrast. It's now so much better. I wonder what the shop is selling. If you look close at the light, you may actually see that we all the colors are actually beside the white. It's a bit difficult for me to do this with the white open. Let me try the Posca marker. It's very difficult to replicate the glow of the light. I'm almost done here. I think I just need to add a bit more contrast to differentiate the vertical pillars against the shop house. So I'm going to see what's going to happen if I paint. This is way too dark, so I need to add a bit more water just to create a contrast. Let me wash the brush and fade it away. Now I see a bit more contrast. Same thing applies here as well. It will be good if you can do it right the first time. Because oftentimes when you go back to correct your mistakes, the more colors you add later on, sometimes it's going to make it worse. Okay, I think it's slightly better. So this is the completed sketch. You can actually go in and add more details. Put some dots here and there with the Posca markers. They add a bit more live. They make things look a bit more exciting, more interesting, especially in the background. You can add some dots in the background. All right. A few things I learned from painting this sketch. The glow of the light. It's quite difficult to wrap it if you want to fit the colors. It would be good to have one paint brush with the color, another paint brush with clean water, so that you can fit the colors very quickly. Using the clean brush and paint using the colored brush, here's a closer look. Now, the windows here in the photograph, they are way more vibrant brighter because of the light. Mine looks a bit more pestile like. These are all the people on the street. This is way more colorful compared to what I have in the photo because most of the people are actually wearing gray, dark blues, or black. But when you have more colors, it actually makes the scene look more lively. It's almost Chinese New Year. Think adding the colors, it adds more appropriate touch, more appropriate feel to the sketch. These are all the colored dots that are added. That's the escalator going down into the train station below the ground level. This is very far back in the background, so you don't need a lot of details. All right, thanks for watching this tomorrow. I hope it's helpful. See you in the next video by. 9. Bye: Thanks for joining this course. Do send me your sketches so that I can give you critics on how to improve. And other people can also look at your mistakes and learn from them. Because the mistakes that we make during sketching are usually not unique. Anyone can learn from anyone any mistakes. All right, before you go, I want to ask for a favor. Do leave this course of review so that you can help other students know whether this course is any good. See you guys in the next course. Hi.