How to sketch in a cafe (intermediate urban sketching course)

1. Intro: And welcome to this urban sketching course where I will show you how to sketch in a cafe using pen, ink and watercolor. I'm an artist and graphic designer based in Singapore, and I picked up urban sketching in 2009. I use both digital as well as traditional media for sketching. Enjoy sketching outdoors, but sometimes it can be too hot to sketch outdoors here in Singapore. Sometimes I will head into a cafe just to escape from the heat and just to have a quick sketch. Sometimes I will be sketching with my friends as well. In a cafe, you can take your time, you can relax while you sketch. Let me show you the scene that we will sketch for this course and we will sketch from this view. I will walk you through my sketching and painting process. This is an intermediate urban sketching course, so you will need some basic knowledge on urban sketching in order to follow along more easily. If you are a beginner, I highly recommend you check out my beginner urban sketching courses first and I would recommend this particular one, how to sketch on location and urban sketching course. This cafe sketching course will have a sketch demo where I show you how to compose the scene, how to get perspective and proportion to look right, and I will show you a timelapse of how I actually created the sketch on location. Reference photos will be provided of course. As for tools and supplies, we'll be using waterproof ink and watercolor, and of course, you will need watercolor brushes and watercolor sketchbook or watercolor paper. There are many interesting cafes in Singapore, and I have planned to visit and sketch some of these cafes to create a series of courses, and I have planned digital sketching courses as well. So I hope you will enjoy this course and do share with me the sketches that you have created by following the reference photo provided or share with me the sketches that you have created in your favorite cafes. Now before we head over to the first lesson, I have a favor to ask from you. Making this course is not easy, so do share a review and share with me how I can improve my courses, and also you can help other students discover this course and know whether this course is any good. Alright, let's head over to the first lesson. 2. My cafe sketches: Let me show you some of the sketches that are drawn in cafes and restaurants. These were drawn with pen ink and watercolor and these were drawn digitally. I can use my watercolor sketchbooks or my tablets depending on what I have when I'm outside. I don't really enjoy drawing food, but I like to draw food. The reason why I don't enjoy drawing food is because it takes time to draw and after I've drawn and painted the food, the food will become cold so the food doesn't taste as nice anymore. But one thing that I found out with sketching food is if you use a small sketchbook, you can actually draw faster because you don't have to draw that much detail. You can draw digitally. In this case, you don't have to wait for the ink or watercolor to dry. You can paint instantly. For this sketch, my friends and I were having dim sum dinner for lunch at this coffee shop in Penang, Malaysia, and this was sketched inside a hotel restaurant. I didn't have much time to sketch, so I simplified as much as possible, coloring only the red chairs and the hair for the people. Was sketched inside a donut cafe, but I only ordered coffee. The nice thing about sketching inside cafes is you can sit there for a long time as long as it's not that crowded. If you have enough time, you can take your time to draw all the details. Sketching digitally can be quite convenient because you just power on a tablet, launch the app and you can start drawing and you don't have to clean up your watercolor. So this was drawn in a cafe where there is this artificial tree in the middle. And I really took my time to sketch this, so I try to add as much detail as possible. I try to look for interesting cafes to sketch. So this cafe has this pink theme, and on the ceiling are all the artificial leaves and plants, and this design or interior design is quite unique. Sometimes I like to draw people and maybe add some speech bubbles. And this was me sketching at an event with all my urban sketcher friends. All these people that you see at the table, they are all sketching. Once you have collected many sketches, it's actually quite satisfying to look at them, especially years later. Instead of doom scrolling while waiting for my food to come, I find that it's just way more productive to sketch something even if it's something really simple. Sometimes I would draw on my phone as well if I don't have my schedule or tablet with me and this was drawn with my finger and the app is concepts. This sketch was also drawn on location and I use pencil lines to create perspective lines and composition. I probably spend 30 minutes to sketch this, but I didn't have time to paint this, so I'm going to paint this sometime in the future. Anyway, as much as possible, I would like to draw and paint everything, have to complete sketch created on location because sometimes I may be too lazy to finish up at home. Regardless of whether you are sketching with traditional media or digital tools, it's just fun to sketch. In this lesson, I'm going to teach you some basic but important drawing techniques to help you draw more accurately when you're in a cafe, a restaurant, or in an indoor environment. Cafes usually have different layouts and the furniture placement is different and sometimes the furniture can be in this case, the table can be circular. Sometimes the tables are rectangular or square, the chairs can be circular or squares or there can be sofas. The techniques that I will teach you should apply regardless of how the interior of the cafe looks. 3. Basic drawing techniques to know: Lesson, I'm going to teach you some basic but important drawing techniques to help you draw more accurately when you are in a cafe, a restaurant, or in an indoor environment. Cafes usually have different layouts and the furniture placement is different and sometimes the furniture in this case, the table can be circular, sometimes the tables are rectangular or square, the chairs can be circular or squares or there can be sofas. The techniques that I will teach you should apply regardless of how the interior of the cafe looks. These are the two techniques that are important, perspective and alignment. When you are indoors, depending on how the room is laid out and what you are looking at, you may be sketching with a one point perspective or a two point perspective. Let's say you are sketching with a one point perspective, first thing to know is to look for the vanishing point. So usually on my sketchbook, I will mark the vanishing point with a pencil. And when I draw tables, I will have the diagonal lines go to the vanishing point like this. If there is another table by the side, which is let's say one table away here, the diagonal line will also go to divention point like this. It is possible to measure the angle of the table manually. But if you know where the vanishing point is, you don't have to measure the angle. You can just draw the diagonal line to the vanishing point and this is going to help you draw faster and more accurate. Oops, this lick is wrong. I'm going to teach you how to draw the lik later or the feet later. The next technique is alignment. Let's say there is another table here and the corner is here. I'm going to draw the horizontal line here and the diagonal will go to same thing, the vanishing point. And this diagonal line. This is a very difficult angle to draw accurately, but if you have the vanishing point, you can just draw it to the vanishing point. For the tables in front, I have the thickness. For the tables that are further away because they are further away, everything is smaller, so I may not draw the thickness of the table. So how does alignment work? When drawing this table, you can place this point, the corner of the table above the corner of this table. What I'm doing here is using alignment to place this table. I know the corner of this table is above this point here, so I place this here and I can use alignment to draw this point as well by looking at where this point is, comparing that to the table beta. Now that I have two points, I can just draw this. This point here, I can use it to compare it to this table if this table has already been drawn. But if this table wasn't drawn yet, I can draw this table now by comparing this corner here to this point here. That's alignment. The vanishing point is usually at the eye level. When you are seated down in the cafe, your eye level will be lower and if all the other customers are also seated down, the eye level will match your eye level. Eye level just means you should draw the eyes on the eye level. In this case, I can draw a hat here and have the e on the eye level. This. Another way to draw the person here is to use alignment technique as well. See where the head is when aligned to the table beside. Let's say there is another person who is seated here further away. Same thing, draw the eyes on the eye level. Like this. And the proportion will look arrect. This is a very basic one point perspective scene. Now I'm drawing another table. I'm aligning the bottom edge of the table to this table here. The bottom edge of this table is aligned to this table here because the tables are placed very neatly. They are parallel and I'm drawing the diagonal line to the action point. Okay. Now, if you're drawing a very white scene, chances are there are going to be two vanishing points. So in this case, there is one vanishing point here. And usually if the vanishing point is directly in the middle of your page, the other vanishing point is usually going to be outside of the pitch. But when you are drawing, those elements, in this case, the tables will still be affected by the vanishing points outside. So here you can see this line is perfectly horizontal. But for the tables that are at the edges away from the center, they are going to be affected by the finishing point somewhere at the far left or far right. You don't have to worry about this because you can start your sketch in the center, and as you move progressively to the edges of the page or your sketchbook, if you use alignment techniques properly, diagonal lines, those angled lines will appear on their own as you draw them. You don't really have to think about marking out the vanion point on the left or right and then draw just mark out the vanion point that's on the table and draw with the help of that and move progressively to the left or right edges. And the perspective for the left or right edges will just appear on their own if you are using proper alignment techniques. When drawing chairs, chairs are also affected by perspective. So let's draw a very simple rectangular chair. This is the top of the chair. It goes all the way down, and this is the feet of the chair. Have some thickness for the chair. This diagonal line for the chair will also go to the same vanishing point as the table because the chair is actually aligned to the table and this is a square chair. This chair will look like this. Some chairs are circular and those are a bit more difficult to draw. For this particular cafe, they even have the hexagonal tables. This table is very short. When you're drawing this table, depending on what you draw first, if you draw the chair first, the table should just be slightly taller than the chair. If you draw the table first, the chair should be shorter than the table. If you draw the table first, use the table as the reference to draw your chair. If you draw the chair first, use the chair as the reference to draw your table. Let's see how we can use alignment techniques to place the tables and chairs for this scene. I'm going to start by drawing this table first. And you can practice along. You don't have to draw something that detail. I'm just going to draw the table top first, which is a squashed oval. Like this. If you look at the table from the top, it's perfectly circular, but when you look at it from this view, the circle is squashed. I'm going to draw the table, the stand of the table, which comes out like this and the bottom part is actually circular. When you draw the bottom, have it appears circular. I'm going to place one chair here, which is at the mid point of this table here. This is the midpoint. One chair will be here. Another chair will be here, another chair overlaps the table here slightly above this chair. Another chair here behind the table. We have another table at the back. The table top is slightly above. So once I've drawn this, I can use the table here as a reference to draw the next table, which is slightly above here, and the stand will go down like this. And there is a chair here, another chair here, and there is another chair here. So this chair is lower than this chair. So I'm going to place this chair here, another chair here, which is one chair sit away from this chair, and here I can draw the hexagonal table if I want to. So I'm just using alignment drawing techniques. There is no perspective for this area here. I'm just placing the chairs using alignment techniques. When drawing the legs of the chair, one easy way is to know where the feet are relative to one another, relative to the top. So the bottom of the feed for this leg is here. The feed for this leg is here, so you can see it's here relative to this place, and this fit is here relative to here. There's a triangle here. This fit is here. To draw the legs of the chair, I find that it's easier to know where the feet is relative to where the top is. For example, the feet for this leg is here, this ft is here here and here. And for this chair, we can only see two feet because the other two legs are so it's here and here. I'm going to use alignment techniques again to place the feet. I'm going to place one of the feet here. Another fee will be here. One of the feet will be here and one of the feet will be here. Now that you have the fit place, you can actually just draw them to the top. Just join like that. Same applies to this chair here. Know where the fit is, and you can just join the top and how should I say, the bottom. Have the chairs overlap the table so that you can get some foreground and background thing going on. Chairs are probably one of the more difficult things to draw because there are so many of them, and if there are customers in the cafe, they are sitting on the chair, their legs may block the chair, which sometimes can be a good thing because when the customer blocks the view of the chair, you don't have to draw the chair. Some of the chairs have very irregular shapes, so those are really challenging. The main thing that you need when it comes to drawing is actually patience. You can apply perspective and alignment drawing techniques to almost any scene. For example, with this cafe scene, the vanishing point is actually here. The side of the countertop, will go to the function point which is here. There is a table here and this diagonal line goes to the unition point which is here. Now, sometimes the line may not coincide with the vanishing point, but as long as the line goes in the general direction of the vanishing point, the subject is going to look accurate. There's this tray here, this diagonal line also goes to the vanishing point. And for the chairs here, I use alignment techniques to draw or find out where the bottom is and just draw them. Generally speaking, when you are sketching outdoors or indoors, there usually is just one vanishing point and the other vanishing point is usually outside of the page. For this scene, the vanishing point is here and the other vanishing point is actually at the far left you can see the countertop is actually affected by that vanishing point which is at the far left. Advertising or the menu board here at the top, is also affected by that vanishing point. So even though you cannot see the vanishing point, you should know where that vanishing point is so that you can draw the angles of these lines more accurately. Even this chair, top of this chair is affected by that vanishing point. 4. Sketch demo: This lesson, I'm going to show you my thought process when it comes to drawing this scene and you can download the reference photo provided to draw the same scene in your own style. Let me go through the tools you'll need for this lesson very quickly. You will need watercolor paper or watercolor sketchbook. You need a pen with waterproof ink. Having a pencil will be useful for creating drafting lines. For watercolor, I'm just using six colors, azel yellow ochre, andro quint slot, a cool red. I can't actually remember what color this is. This is CBO Blue. But you can use French ultramarine and this is cerulean blue, but you can use allow blue. Welcome to another sketching tutorial, and this is a cafe scene. I was having coffee after lunch at this cafe specifically so that I can sketch this cafe. It's always fun to sketch in a cafe because it's comfortable. There are many things to sketch. You can sketch the countertop. You can sketch the people chatting and you can really spend your time and not rush. It's a comfortable environment for sketching. Now I'm going to talk about how I actually compose this scene and show you the timelapse later. So usually for a complicated scene where the perspective can be challenging, I will start with pencil first, and I'm going to show you how I do it with pen instead of pencil because the inking, it will be easier to see. This is the reference photo, which you can download from the video description below or from the attachment. This is actually a one point or actually a two point perspective scene. There is one vanishing point here, and it's always good to find out where that vanishing point is. Let's use this piece of paper to see where the vanishing point is. Just follow the diagonal lines. Okay, I may need two pieces of paper. So if I'm trying to find out where the vanishing point is on location, I'll just use my pencil or pen and just try and do this and see where the vanishing point is. So in this case, based on this photo that I've taken, the vanishing point is actually at the corner. Corner of this piece of paper here. For my sketch, I'm actually drawing this view. It's a more zoomed in view so that you can get close to the action so that you can see all the details more easily. If you draw this, you will get more of the surrounding. But in this case, I want to focus more on the countertop because there are many things here. At this cafe, I actually walked around to find the best seat and this view is actually all right. Okay, so we know the vanishing point is here. Another thing to note is this vanishing point will also be our horizon and our eye level. So all the lines that are at the horizon here will be horizontal. Okay. So let me just block out the perspective. And later when you watch the timelapse, you will see my actual process. The watercolor sketch actually took me about 30 to 45 minutes to complete, which is actually faster compared to drawing digitally because I feel like if I draw digitally, I can afford to spend more time. Sometimes I will be too distracted and spend more time to draw all the details. But with pen and ink, sometimes you just cannot fit all the details because there is no space and the space on paper is limited. Okay, so I'm going to actually sorry, I'm going to just draw the sketchbook page first because this vertical page is distracting me. This is the sketchbook page. And I will want to frame the scene first with this thing on the set on the side on the left side, and this on the right side. And once I have this in, and this in, I will know I will have space for this. So usually this stage will be done by pencil. So this will be the first line, and this will be the second line. Remember where the vanishing point is, you may want to mark this out with a cross. This will be in pencil of course, and now we can draw this down here. I think there you can see this little the line actually goes in slightly because of the shelving. Okay, I can draw this first. I can draw the paper first. If the valion point is not precise, it's okay. Later when you draw the diagonal lines, just make sure the diagonal lines go to the vaing point. You can see some boxes here. You can draw the boxes as accurately as possible and there are card bods inside the boxes. That's nice because we get some overlap, which will create some dimension. There is my head here on my back. So I'm drawing this very quickly just to lay out the scene. That's my water bottle. I can draw my back here and we have the second box. Try not to draw the details at this stage first. I'm just getting too carried away. Next, we find where the counter is. We have one big line here. This is a very long line. Try to draw the longest line first, and we have, let's say, the countertop. Yeah, we need the countertop. The vanion point is here. In this counter is actually tilted down at this angle because there is another vaning point on the left side and the vanton point is actually at the same horizon. When you draw the countertop, you should draw it at an angle. In this case, I can actually use the line here of the box to help me draw that countertop at the same angle because it seems like it seems like these two lines are parallel the side of the countertop actually goes to the vanishing point. If you want to measure this angle, it's going to be quite challenging. But if you know where the vanishing point is, you just draw it to the finishing point. And in this case, you can see my line here, it's actually it's too steep compared to this line here, which is more gentle, but it's okay because it still follows the rule of perspective because the diagonal lines will go to the vanishing point. Of course, if you are able to mark out the vanishing point more accurately, your sketch will look more accurate. Now we have this big line here. We can maybe draw this bottom of the counter, and there is a chair here, we want to have the seat here. And we have a table here. Now notice the corner of the table is here, just below the countertop here and there's a test here. So the corner of the table is actually quite close here. Yeah, here, this diagonal line will go to the function point, so you don't have to measure that the angle and this line will go to the venture point on the left side, which is outside of the pitch. In this case, you will have to measure this using observation. But I'm going to use I'm going to draw this line parallel to this chair here because they look like they are parallel. But in reality, they are not exactly parallel because the non sorry, the horizon is here. The horizon is here. So the lines will move down like this. You can see the angle for this line, this line, this line, and this line, they will all be different. But when you're drawing like this, with a closeup like this, sometimes it's okay to have some adjustment. We have the chair, Okay. Notice there are some uh, how should I say, unfortunate intersections. There is this line the support for the counter is a vertical line. There is this handlebar for the trolley that is holding the card box. This line intersects with the vertical line. This is this is going to affect clarity because we have two lines going into the same spot here. And also this line goes down and now we have line, sorry, one block here for the chair, one line here for the trolley, and a few more lines. All that is going to add to some visual confusion. Sometimes you can use your artistic license to move the lines away. So in this case, for example, I may just draw the handle bar here, away from the vertical countertop. Yep, so let's draw here away from the vertical countertop and have the trolley go down this yeah. You may also want to draw the there's a shirt here, so we want to draw that because shirt the T shirt merchandise actually overlaps the countertop, we draw that first. We can draw the bottom of the countertop, and it will start here at the middle of the T shirt, go to the bottom of the seat here. Start here and here. Once you know the starting point and the ending point, you just join the lines together. There is some thickness to the countertop. And for all these little items above, you will have to spend some time to draw them because there are so many. But the most important thing here is to maybe block out the areas where those objects will be. There is a tray here, so the tray will be somewhere here. We have some cups here for the straws, there are actually five cups. There is this triangular display board here with three levels of items Okay. By the way, when you are sketching all the little things at the countertop, please align them with the paper on the side. So here you can see I actually made a mistake. I've just drawn this much smaller, much, much smaller. Now, the top of display here is actually taller than the paper. When in actual, when you look at the photo, you can see that this top here is actually lower or at the midpoint of this paper. That's the mistake here. But this is still okay. You just in this case, maybe this is a huge display. But for the other items, let's try and draw them much smaller. This is the payment center, the payment machine. Now that I know I made a mistake here with pencil. All this is going to be drawn with pencil. I can draw this much smaller. Actually, for this part here, I may actually when I'm using pencil to draw all this out, I'm actually just drawing like this, like this. This is the coffee machine behind like this. There is this coffee machine here like this. Yeah. Just a few shapes like this to remind you of all these items here. Next, we have the coffee machine here. We have a circular thing here, so let's put it here. Now I want to make sure that this is sized correctly relative to the paper. So I'm going to place it here. This and just block out the scene part by part. Now, the back here is also important. This whole wall at the back. We need to draw. Actually, we should probably draw this earlier, but it doesn't matter. This is the side wall and this is the back wall. The sidewall actually goes down at this angle, and this will actually go to the vanishing point. When you draw this, just have it go to the vanishing point. The line will stop here, which is above the T shirt. I think this is okay, still above the T shirt. This line will go up like this. Because we don't know where the vanishing point on the left side is, we will have to measure this angle as accurately as possible like this. This will come down. This is the door to the kitchen and we have some, what's that? Display boards here. There's one big, small, small, small big. Okay. Notice I draw this big shape first, and now that we have this, we can actually divide this into smaller and smaller parts. Now, in my actual sketch, I actually did not get the dimensions for all this accurately. Okay. There is also this lighted sign here, which is actually the logo of the what's that? The shop cafe, which is here. So all this is still drawn with pencil, by the way. After this is done, you don't have to draw all the machines coffee making machines in the background and you can see there are so much details in the background. So what we want to do is we will just draw the front and just draw however much detail we need, and if we do not have space to draw the details, we can just leave them out. You know what? Since I am almost done with this sketch, I might as well just continue here. I'm drawing the side of the box. Note that the side of the box is light because the light source is coming from this side and this side is dark. Here you can see the countertop here is dark and here is light. We can see some shadows or reflections from the chair for the chair, just align them to the things that are on the countertop so that you can get proper alignment. Yeah, these chairs are actually quite difficult to sketch. The thing that is most difficult to sketch in a cafe, in my opinion, would be chairs because you have to make sure the perspective of the legs are correct. When you are drawing chairs, especially chairs with four legs, know where the legs will end. We have one point here, here, here and here. When you are drawing a chair, for example, we draw the top here, here as you are drawing this chat, know that if you draw the lik here, go all the way up here. The other leg will be here, place the bottom at the correct place, have it go up, place this leg place the bottom of this next leg at the correct place and have it go up, this at the correct place and go up. So now the chair will look sort of accurate with the correct perspective, and I can join the ls together with the metal beam as well. In my reference photo, there is no person here, but there is actually a person serving coffee. So based on what I see in my actual sketch here, you can see the head overlaps the the signboard behind. When you're thinking about drawing people, find out where the head is relative to the scene that you have already drawn. In this case, it's nice for the person to overlap the advertising board behind because you get that sense of foreground and background. You know that this person is behind the counter but in front of the board. So that is actually good in creating help making your sketch look more three D. Okay, so in this case, I'm just going to draw the lady here, whereas a cap, heat. She has a ponytail. She is working on the coffee and when you are drawing her working on the coffee, draw where the hands are first. Don't draw the arm. Don't draw other parts, draw where the hand is, draw the coffee cup, draw the hand posture. Because the hands will move very quickly. The arm posture, the elbows will move very quickly. So once you draw where the hand is, you can then connect the hand to the elbow to the shoulder. That is one way to draw very fast. Okay, now that we have all this setup in pencil, you can actually start inking it. Any mistake that you make during the penciling stage, you can try and remember them and avoid those mistakes again. When drawing things in the background, well, draw the biggest shape first, draw the biggest shape first, and once you do not have space to draw the details, just skip those details. Just draw the biggest shape first. Draw the little details, and if you are thinking of whether or not to add details, usually you can avoid adding those details. If you are thinking of whether or not there is enough space to add details or whether by adding more details, it will actually make the sketch look more busy, unnecessarily busy. That is the point where we can actually stop the sketch. 5. Sketch timelapse: Here is a five minute time lapse of the actual sketch that was drawn on location. Now, the line art took me around 20 minutes to complete, which was considered quite fast. Here you can see me use pencil to draft out the composition first and the sketching process is the same as what I have mentioned in the previous lesson. The main difference here is I have a larger drawing surface so I can afford to add more details. Here you see me draw the left boundary first. And I usually try to draw the boundary to create an enclosed shape so that I can draw everything within the enclosed boundary so that I can fit everything onto the page. And now I'm drawing the countertop. And usually for my sketches, I try to draw the longest line first. So for example, the left boundary is a very long vertical line. The countertop is an angled line. It's also very long. And there is another very long line for the menu boards at the back and also a vertical line for the wall on the right side. Now that I have these two long lines, the left line and the countertop, I'm drawing the details on the countertop. Since I have already laid out the composition with pencil, I have a good sense of how big I should draw the objects on the countertop so as to fit everything. Of course, when drawing all the little items, I'm actually still using alignment techniques to place those elements. Now, sometimes you may draw something and you realize that you have run out of space. Running out of space just means you won't be able to draw everything. For all the things that you cannot draw, you can just leave them out. And now I'm drawing the foreground element, which is the box on the right side. I have my head which overlaps the box behind. And as I am drawing the head, I'm just using contour drawing techniques, just trying to observe how the lines move, how they overlap. I'm drawing the chair, the top of the chair, and the diagonal line points to the vanishing point outside of the page on the far left. And now I'm drawing the two chairs in front of the countertop. I have only drawn the top, but I'll draw the legs later. Now one thing you have to note about drawing chairs is the top of the chair, the seat will be flattened depending on the perspective and how flat the seat is will depend on your eye elevation, your eye level. Try to make sure the seat looks flattened enough because that will give you the look, the correct perspective. And try to add people in the scene. If you are not comfortable, if you think you're not good at drawing people, try to have more practice and draw people more because the more you draw the more you will build up your visual vocabulary and soon you will know how big a person should be, how big the head is compared to the body, how long the arms will be, how the elbows bend. Once you have all that knowledge, you can use that to draw people. Quickly and more accurately. Adding people in your scene will make your sketch look way more lively. In this case, you can see there are two staff in this scene, two employees, one at the far left and one who is making coffee at the middle of the page. Now I'm drawing the background, which is the menu behind. Adding a little bit more details to create the rectangular frames. You may notice the menu board in the photo is actually black. So on hindsight, I probably should have painted the menu boards black and added the text with white, but later on, you'll see that I actually did not do that. Sometimes it's good to use or paint think in reverse. Thinking in reverse, having a lighter value over darker value can make your sketches, your painting look more interesting, way more interesting compared to just having darker or light values. This sketch is almost done and it's a pretty quick sketch. 6. Painting with watercolour: Now let's talk about the painting process. Now, to make color mixing easy and to achieve color harmony more easily, go with a limited color palette. Shown on the left is the list of possible colors you can use, and the first color that's mentioned is the color that I have in the palette. In this palette, I have Azo yellow, yellow ochre, traquint scarlet, quin crytal magenta, Cboblue tip, and cerulean blue chromium. So what I have in my palette is basically a warm and cool version of yellow, red and blue. And with only six colors, you will be able to mix many more colors. There will be some limitations with a six color palette. With that limitation, it will set you free from choice paralysis because if you have too many colors in your watercolor box, sometimes it can get confusing when it comes to choosing what colors to use for mixing. So here you can see me start by painting the bottom of the countertop, and I have used Cobalt Blue deep here, which is one of my favorite blues. But you can use ultramarine, which is a very popular warm blue color. Ultramarine is actually more vibrant compared to cobot deep. I'm using this color because I see the bottom of the countertop is gray. To mix gray with this blue or with ultramarine, you just add the cool red, magenta or rose, and add slight yellow and just tweak the proportion for the paint to get gray. And if you want to make the mix more blue, you just add more blue. If you want to make it more yellow, just add more yellow. If you want to make it more purple, just add more purple. And that is the beauty of using a limited color palette. There isn't much choice. So when it comes to mixing the color you want, you can only use the existing colors that you already have. And once you are very familiar with the six colors that you have, you will be able to work and paint much faster. So I'm trying to paint all the things that I see with the blue shade first, and I'm adding slide agenda to get the purple, you don't always have to follow the colors that you see from the scene. Sometimes you can use your own artistic license to change things up, which is what I usually do. Earlier I mentioned that I should have painted the menu boards behind the employee. Black. You can see me only paint the darker frame, but I didn't paint the menu black. I should have done that so that later on I can use white jaw pen to write the words on the black board. So when painting, it would be good to plan in advance, where the darker values should be and where you will want to use your negative shapes. Here, I didn't have much time to think. This is the first layer. Whenever you mix paint, try to use the paint that you have to paint everything that requires that color. Because if you miss out something, and later on you realize that, oh, this should have been painted with the first color and you try to mix the first color again, um, you won't be able to get you won't be able to mix the precise color that you used earlier. So it would be good to paint everything using the color that you have at whichever point in time so that you don't have to mix those colors again. Now I'm painting the wooden areas. Walls, the cardboard box with yellow ochre. Again, I'm just trying to paint the biggest areas first. I try not to paint the little details. Paint the biggest areas first and work on the details later. Because once you have painted the biggest areas, you can very quickly start to see your sketch will come to life. While the wash is still wet, you may want to charge in some extra color so that the flat color doesn't look that flat. And you can only charge in extra color if you are using good watercolor paper or if you have a lot of water on the paper. Try to use good watercolor paper because with good watercolor paper, the water will remain on the surface of the paper rather than being absorbed into the paper. When the water in the paint is on the paper, they will have the time to blend softly and smoothly and beautifully. If you are using paper where water is absorbed into the paper, the paint will be absorbed into the paper and the paint will be stuck and won't be able to blend beautifully. And after adding the yellow ochre, you can see me use the red to paint the top of the chairs. The photo actually doesn't show the red seats that clearly, actually, I can't even see whether that's the red seat. Anyway, I'm painting the sets red because I wanted something to be eye catching. I also painted some of the merchandise on the countertop with red. Now you can see me use or mix black again to paint the darker areas just to go over the darker areas a second time. At this point in time, you can see the wash or the paint. Everything looks flat because it's mid value. What you need to do now is to create more contrast. To create more contrast, you just paint a second layer, you can paint shadows, you can make certain areas darker. Try to have light, mid value, and dark values in your scene. That will make your scene look more interesting. If your scene only has light value, for example, the white of the paper and mid value taken up by paint. If it's just light and mid values, it's going to look very flat. It's not going to look very dimensional. Try to paint some darker areas as well and make it noticeably dark. Don't be afraid to add values. Make certain areas darker. What you really want is a good balance of light, meat, and dark values so that you can create contrast. Creating contrast is actually very important and something that I always think about we painting because with contrast, you will be able to guide the viewer to whatever you want them to see. Also with contrast, it just makes your sketch, your art looks better. Can create contrast with values, light versus dark, or you can create contrast with colors, desaturated colors versus saturated colors. You can see the red seats for the chairs in front of the counter, they look quite striking. That's because of color contrast. We have very vibrant red against the dull gray background and those really stand out. This sketch is almost complete and now I'm just adding finishing touches and painting areas that I have left out. And you can see me paint some pictures on the menu boards. I could draw the pictures with ink, but I chose to paint them with watercolor instead because I don't want the black lines to catch attention. So without the black lines, you don't have that much contrast, and that's something to think about. You don't always have to draw everything with black lines, especially for things that do not contribute to the form. For example, there are actually some white stickers on the cardboard box. So you may not need to draw the white stickers on the box. You can actually just leave those areas white. Instead of marking out those stickers with black lines. Now I'm adding some perspective lines on the ground to show the perspective of the floor, the tiles. Adding those perspective lines will also give you a sense of space, sense of perspective for this particular scene. Now you can see me add additional shade to the head. The light source is actually coming from the right, so I'm painting the left side of the head. And knowing where the light source is coming from is important because it's the light source and the shade that will make your sketch look dimensional. Now, when sketching in a cafe like this, the light source is coming from everywhere from all the lights around. So sometimes it can be difficult to paint the light in the darker areas. So sometimes you may have to use line art to make your sketch stand out more. There is a lot of white space at the top, instead of drawing additional details, I've decided to just paint the name of the shop at the top and always remember to write the date, time and place because you can refer to this in the future. This is the completed sketch with me just adding the final finishing touches. 7. Paint commentary: So this is the completed sketch. This is ultramarine with some cool red to get this color. This color is actually much darker in the photo in real life. So perhaps I could have made this darker, but it's okay, I guess. At least the black line is here to help frame the scene. So we the line here and the line here to help focus the scene. This is yellow ochre and you can see this line here that happens because some parts of the paint will dry faster to create the heart ache. There is another lady here. I would actually prefer to have the pace into the scene rather than face up, but I guess it's okay here. This is the display that I told you about. This is the coffee making machine. There is this piece of paper here, which you can see it is blank, but it's actually not blank. There are actually some menu items here, so I may want to add some menu items there. Yeah. Sometimes my paint will just overflow. You can see overlaps the paper. The paint of the wall overlaps the paper, and it's fine. It's a sketch. These are the cups that holds the straws, the spoon, and the sugar, cream, coffee cups at the top. Now for the display here, You can see I draw the black lines to draw the displays, but for the actual menus, I actually use paint. For physical objects, I try to draw with ink. But for objects that are on the surface, I will try to draw with paint instead of using ink. This is the black coffee machine which is not as black here. Probably should have painted this whole thing black. But I'm just going to leave this as it is. And you can see all the menu items. This is light against dark and this is light again sorry, dark against light, and this is light against dark. Now in the photo reference photo, it's actually all light against dark. So I'm using my own artistic license to change things around. If you do want to use light against dark, make sure you print, not print. Paint the background much darker as darker as this, so that when you use the white jaw pen, you can actually create more contrast which will make your sketch look better like this. Make sure the background is much darker so that the white can stand out more and give you that contrast. These are the coffee making machines in the background. These are cups. And as I mentioned earlier, if you don't have space to draw the details, just skip them. You don't have to draw everything. It's impossible to draw everything as well. This is the lady working on the coffee. I actually did not draw the hand properly here. If you look close, I do see the index finger go into the handle of the cup here. This is supposed to be the finger as well, but I probably should have placed the hand here. Now, it looks like she's trying to add something into the cup. This is yellow ochre. This is also yellow ochre, for the darker sheets as shown earlier, I just added some red and some ultramarin. Just a little bit of ultramarine. When you add ultramarine or CBA blue dip, you will see granulation like this. Based on what I can see here, there isn't much ultramarine because I don't see much granulation. There is some here. So here, just a bit just to make this area darker, just to make this whole area darker so that we can see the light source coming from the right side, hitting this box here, this is also lighter because light source is coming from the top this is my head and the light source is coming from the right. And we can see there is this tray here for keeping the cups and plates, the dirty cups and plates. I use this yellow ochre and the red mix to draw the lines and the chairs are red. Now for this particular palette that I have, it is not possible for me to mix a color that is black, something that's very dark. Uh, so this is probably the darkest I can get. And even if I add more paint, um, this is the darkest that I can get. Some colors are just not able to give you that extra dark value. So you need to know what colors you have and what colors you can mix from your existing colors. 8. Outro: Alright. This is the end of the course. Thank you for taking up this course. I hope you are now more familiar with using perspective, how you can compose the scene, how you can use alignment and propulsion techniques to create a more accurate sketch. Do share with me the sketches that you have created because I would love to see what you have drawn. And if you want to learn more about urban sketching, do check out the many other urban sketching courses that I have created over the years. Thanks again for following me. See you guys in the next course. Bye.