Line and Wash | Urban Scenes in Watercolor

1. Welcome: Hi, and welcome to the Skillshare class where together we'll be painting urban scenes using a lion wash technique in watercolor. My name is Avraham. I'm a professional illustrator, and I've been giving classes both online and in person since 2016. This class is going to be a relaxing, meditative process as we focus on the relationship between ink and watercolor, where the goal isn't architectural perfection, but capturing the feeling of a location. In each of the scenes we'll be painting, we'll start off by defining the major structures with a waterproof marker. This acts as our skeleton. By establishing the architecture and perspective, first, we take the guesswork out of the composition. It gives us a secure foundation. Once the structure is set, we bring in the watercolor. This is where we add life and character to the scene. So whether you're a seasoned painter or picking up a brush for the first time, this process is about finding joy in the marks that you make. So if you're ready to capture urban scenes as beautiful line and art watercolor paintings, I'll see you in the next lesson. 2. Materials: For materials for this class, we don't need so much. We need a marker. I recommend getting one like this by sakura, which is waterproof. However, for this class, this is a brush version and I don't have the hard tip one. Actually, I'm going to use this brush by Fudenasuca by Fudenosuka which actually is not waterproof, but we'll be careful to not apply too much water and it should be fine. Besides that, we need a watercolor brush. I'm using this four round that I have and or paints, you can use whatever paints you want. This is a set of Daniel Smith, the essential watercolors, which I've used for many paintings. For this class though, we're going to use a very simple set that I got that has just some basic colors and we can just mix on here. I'm going to show you how you can achieve really amazing effects with a simple set of watercolors, but you're totally welcome to use a professional set if you want. The last thing is watercolor paper, and we can use I definitely recommending paper that is 300 grams. This is cold press watercolor paper. But for a class, I'm going to be using the little sketchbook that I got, which is 230 grams and hot press paper. The difference between hot and cold is that this is very smooth surface as opposed to the cold press, which has a bumpier texture on it. If you see this exactly, slightly bumpier texture, it has a bumpier texture. But I'll be doing the work in here and you can see you get really nice effects, doing watercolor with ions sketch. I see it was on on sketch work here. Hold on a second. It's like over here, this page is line and wash, and then this one also. So it's totally fine using something like this. We're going to be painting in this book, but you're welcome to use whatever type of paper that you like. Besides that, we need some water for our painting to activate our brush and paint. So we'll be using just pool of water here. Then lastly, I always recommend having some type of paper to dampen dry your brush or paper as needed. That's really it. Let's get started with our first painting. 3. Regensburg: Initial Sketch: I'm going to start with the biggest shapes which are the bridge is the biggest shape over here. It goes from about here. Let's see. I have to figure out how high do I want the skyline to be and what's the foreground? The foreground is obviously going to be a lot more important. Let's go from here, which I see the wall is and it goes across something very gentle. I coming from the side I'm going reduce how much of the wall is too from here, comes down. Until around here we have our first of our folded umbrellas. Let's put that in here. Umbrella goes like that. Flares out a little bit more. Underneath the umbrella, you have a table circled table shape and this other part of a table here and something a little lower bench, I suppose. This has a leg. This has a leg. And here, Okay. That's number one, then we have next to it here, another of these umbrellas. Actually, I want to put it in the underline of our bridge. I see. Let's put that in this. Give a sense of width of this thicker part. Okay. This one let's be here. Flares out. Look at that. We have a person over here. Sleeve and a big jacket to the table with the chair that she's sitting on. And another chair over here. It's a large table. I said it's a leg a little flower pot on top. This nice. Then we have over here another guy hidden behind slightly hidden over here. To. And there's the flower pot on her table. Like that. Okay. I'll put in a few more of these umbrellas here. Actually it goes a little bit higher than what I drew on his head, but well just draw it like this. I'm putting this one actually intentionally higher, they should be at different heights. It's good to come down here or polether polls a table chair over here, the lines Like that. I forgot to draw on this one, too. These defining lines. Like that. Okay. At this point, we can draw in one of the arches, I think we have coming like this. And then we have another guy over here. The table. Another chair here. This chair is predominant. We'll see very well. Details like that. Then we have here a large another large umbrella. M. Home. Then over here, we have one more of these arches. Then anything else over here, we have this bottom part a little bit of wall. Some more tables and just odds and ends here. Another plant. Then from the top of the wall, we have the we'll finish this one coming down a little bit, into the foliage that's coming from the side. That on the top, we have these, I guess height warning symbols. One height warning symbol here, another one over here, and a third one over here. I have a line down and a line. For the top, we're going to put in a little bit of the architecture up here so we have these buildings. The light spide is like this and it comes off with a roof top here. Then we have another rooftop there with a Spire, I think that might be called. The window window. Like that. It's a larger roof. We have another building just behind over here. It's a little higher. Like this. It's got its own few windows. Then a much larger spire here. Like that. A little build a building that's showing up behind. Then we have some trees. Put in a window here. We have a window here as well, and one more over to the side. Anything else you want to do? I want to hint to the texture. We have the inner side of the bridge. It's going to look like this. That's what the inner side is darker area, the texture, the texture of these bricks look like this a little bit. And we have a similar one on a wall that's closer to us and larger All I think that's our string point for our painting. 4. Regensburg: The Watercolor Wash: Start by wetting the palette of a few of our colors, red. I'm not going to use all of them, but just to activate them a little bit. As you see, I'm not going to do the blue, the black here. But blue, yes. And we'll start with the sky. For the sky, first, just wet my brush, get lots of water on it, write down along the sky area, this and then dip into the blue, dip into the blue like this and lightly touch in a few areas like this and wash my brush off. Now just float the brush into a few different areas here to pull the paint. Okay. Like that. That's the sky, just like that. Well, at that dry and we'll move on, I think now to the bridge area. For the bridge, we have to mix the correct colors, something light, a little bit yellowy brown. I'm going to take some yellow put in here to make the brown, I'm going to I like to use the brown so much. I'm going to take red here and a little bit of this green, green green, make brown, hopefully. A dirty color. I want to line that up with a lot more yellow. Mix it together, I get a little orange into it, too. Just a touch. Be very light with lots of water on that brush, and put that in for a first pass. So here. I'm going to do the underside as well of the bridge because that's going to be a darker version. So it doesn't matter for to get even darker. Then I'm going to take a little white, I suppose, and add it in for the lighter half up here. A little bit more white and touch a few places in this area of the bridge whereas some colors, different colors, bricks and stones. Okay. I want to even more white mix in with what we have over here and do the side. Like that. Okay. Let me just a little bit for the umbrellas as well. It seems to be the same type. So I'm just continuing throwing on lots of white here just so it has a little bit of color. Like it's white, but the brush is dirty, so it's mixed with what we have on it and it gives this feeling of texture and shape. Giving space for things. Like that. Here we are. These are all the white areas here. Wash up the brush. Let's see about getting in. I want to do the red areas of the tables and the people and fill in the people and then back and darken in some areas here. To do that. To do that, let's first get in, make a really rich red. Different mixing area here because this red is pretty little blue, I think from here in the past. Is the touch of that blue. Way too much blue. Wash it off, dry the brush, get more red and now we have red and mix in with a little bit of other color we have here. For this, it's a pretty dry brush, you can see also. So will be very, very rich color. So just put in here. This space for the way the railing come around. I'm angling my brush try I get really thin lines here. Okay. But there's a table. I don't think we draw any more chairs here. Doesn't look like it Hold on. We have a white chair over there. Throw a little bit another chair. Like that. So those are chairs. Over here, we have a chair? Let's go add in one more chair while we're at it. I see here behind this, we have a chair. A drawing the sheep. Okay. From that chair. I think that's all of our most of our red. There might be a little bit drops here and there. But let's move on to the people. We have a lady here. She has that yellowish hair, a little brown. Her hair looks maybe like this so discolor. More yellow. Okay. And on the back has much darker hair. So they almost black. If I'm a black, I like to mix this red and green because these come up with a really rich color. That's almost gray. So it's not your typical brown, say, it's looking pretty brown thug This kicks I like that. Then add and wants to here a little bit in her hair here as well. Okay. Perfect. I'm going to wait for this to dry a little bit and in the meantime, do some of the chairs and tables. The tables and chairs, tables are a light yellowy brown color, go back to our yellow here. I think is white in it too. It more brown. A lot more white. Brush up a wetter here. I think this is looking like our co we want. There's a leg over here and more tables over here. Like this and then something like this. Then I do want to add a touch more yellow. While I'm doing the polls. It'd be a little yellower. Great. So to do this leg over here so it's good brown and come back to here then this leg here, I forgot also some help. Wonderful. Now, this color here, I think we could all use in the top. It's a little bit pinker. Let's see if I can put in a little bit of red from over here. Let's see what happens there. Wonderful. I think those are all the as we here. At this point, the underside of the bridge is nice and dry, so I want to darken that up and I'm going to do that by mixing some of that darker um brownish black color by mixing these two colors together. If it gets nice and dry, the brush or very thick the paint. The brush gets nice and thick, so we'll have really rich dark color in here. Okay. Okay. May be going to another pass in a little bit. We'll see. Let's do some of the people sitting here. So she's wearing. We need some blue blue and orange are not really working together, so let's just clean up the pallet a little bit. It's good. Get some blue. Um, let's start with his darker suit. We can always light it up afterwards. For her. So he's dark blue here. Okay. That's him. And then we have a white. We can do her jacket, some more white. I say, I forgot to do another chair. So put that in. But Okay. I want to just swirl around and wash off the brush and then pull the colors a little bit, like we did with the sky. Just touch. Okay. Now try to get some red again for the front part of the chair. Y. It's over here. In a little bit of greenery now, we have the um, Let's add a little potted plants we have that orange. So I'm going to just clean off the pale over here. All right. We have some nice bright green. It's just a pure green, the lighter green with maybe a touch of yellow. We'll put some green shapes in here. All right. Had it over here. W's tap in green. Like this. We also have some green up here. A little more yellow. Yellowy green. So that part. We'll have down here. This table. It's nice we're distributing the green in a few different areas, so it doesn't seem overly concentrated in one area. That's also a nice side benefit of doing this. I see there is a little bit of green in the background here. So there too. Now we're going to add in some extra texture to this darker green and dabbing that in a few places shadows under the leaves and whatnot. Mostly I'm doing that in the larger areas in our small little branches, little plants on the tables, we don't have room for that. But over here we do. Yeah. Okay. Now I want to get a nice strong orange for the potters pots underneath. So it's orange with a little bit of touch of brown, it looks like. So we have this color here, so we'll just mix those together. A little over brown. All right. Here we go. One there. My brush is really dry right now. I'd be nice to get a little more water on it. But I'm afraid that dilute the color too much. I'm just going to use the color what I have here. I think it's enough. I remember we have other guy over here to do. It's add in him and he's darker blue. But we can make him almost purple. I see we to do the purple on her front of her sleeve here. We can do both at the same time. We do a purple here, a watery purple, it's not so dark. Actually, I want to drive the brush a little bit. So nice to drive the brush like this to get rid of some water. Now when I paint, it should be a little darker. We're not. To go. Here we are. Good. Now, let's do him get some more blue and purple. Mix that together, make it darker dark bluish purple, colorful back. And I'll drive him. Okay. Okay. We're almost done. I just want to throw in a lot of, um, I guess, the ground and a little bit more for the buildings in the background. So it's us clean off our pallet mixing palette over here in green. And we're going to build up some of our um the pavement. So for our pavement, I'm going to mix up again this red and green. To be a sort of a neutral color and water, nice and loose. Then I can put here. I'm going to do hopefully this way. Pulling the brush this way to seem like the direction of the tiles. Okay. And all that some darker. The back here, it's also slightly darker. I'll even put some on the lower part of the bridge because I see til a little bit darker in this area for some reason. Different type of stone maybe. Okay. Anyway, so Math's good like that. We get darker now and we'll do the tops of these spires, whatever they are. More of the red and this darker green to be more concentrated mix it well, and then I get it really this darker color. I know red and green makes brown, this particular red and green, it's not this type of green. If I can maybe use these greens, I get more brown, but I find that this other ones a nice um the colors tend more towards gray and this palette, which I don't mind at all. Actually, I'm going to take the same gray that we're using here and darken another pass over here. I might have to do something also under the other awning arch. Let's mix more of this. I'm trying to get instead of being tend towards the greener color than the red. I see it's a little darker at the bottom half here, so we'll just add darker like that. And light color for the top of this. Okay. Almost done. We need a little bit of brown for his face over here. This person. Think that. Then a dark let's see. We have the rooftops over here. So this first one is a little bit it's a redder color, I take this orange that we have here and push it towards red. Coming out the other side. Yeah. All right. And what here's adding that chimney to forgot earlier. That Like that. Okay. And then we have a darker brown for it. Let's do this for roof this roof thing. It's a little bit more. Let's try to get this color. You like that? A little more brown. Okay. And then what do we do for the windows? Pretty dark. W one though has a little bit of a blue tint to it, almost like the sky. I'll take this blue, purply blue that we have here, and Do I like that? Actually, I think I want to do the lighter blue we had actually in the sky, see if I can fix that. Add some water and lift it out. D. Okay. Draw of the brush and pull out the blue just a little bit. Okay. Great. And I I some really dark area for the windows. So for my dark, I'm going to go back to my these colors. As you can see, I don't really ever use black. Um, I have build up to black using multiple layers or something. Like, that's pretty dark. That looks like a nice black. I didn't use any black there. So here, this window, it's a few times. Okay. Extra layers and passes on it, and it gives it this personality that you wouldn't get if you were using a flat black. H Good. I do want to darken this a little bit more. I do par of it to show a depth. Last thing. I see something else, but one thing I see I forgot about are these warning signs here. This is a little bit of red on this side. Darker red by more pigment on the brush. We have this side of the sign. In the middle, a fresh really well. That very bright yellow. And there we are. 5. Rome: Initial Sketch: Starting by defining the walls on the left side. We have the rooftop is over here and it starts to curve in a little bit come down a little bit this part of the page. Now it starts china as street comes towards us in this perspective. Around over here is the archway. So try to indicate that using some faint lines, you know, not solid and a little bit of the contours of the archway indicate the stones that extend out through these small lines. The bricks on the wall, you know, they're not they have their own shape and contours, try and match that a little bit, and it continues to come down until it meets the street around here. And then I think it's a step area maybe. And on the other side of the archway we have larger bricks it's closer to us. And they come up and make it a little bit more of an in and out shape. Now, there's a pipe or something that runs along the edge of our picture. So drawing that. Again, I'm using this broken line. So more of the stone shapes and indicate the perspective as it recedes into the distance and how we can go fill in indicate a few details that are here I don't know it's air conditioner or some awning thing. Some of the other hints and indicating things that are in the background, belonging to too many details. So now now we finish that of the street. Let's uh draw in this light that is not illuminated right now, but it's there, and then the pole underneath it and how it connects to the building. This is a very careful metalwork. I'm not being so precise, but it's interesting, uh, you know, shape and curves over there. Indicate the inside of that light. Now we can go and there's the buildings in the distance that show up behind that light and come closer to the viewer. Move the paints out of the way so I can get my hand down without being bothering. And here's this part of the building like in like the gutter. It's a large dark shape that I have to paint in later, and then we have more of the buildings as it comes closer. Here's where the building one building ends or some hard I just try to paint what I see or draw what I see here. And here's another doorway arch. And the bottom has that type of angle, and this is the other side of the archway. Now for the person here, I'd like to make her a little bit bigger, more prominent in the scene because I think it would add to the photo or our painting, if you could see her take more of a prominence. So drawing our shape. Where her hand is by her head. As she holds a phone. And this is where her bag is going to be. And the other side of her body. Okay. And now, bottom of her dress or jacket and her pants indicate that she's walking one leg and the other and the shoes. Collar area or something to indicate where the head and the top of jacket separate. Her hair, Okay, I think that looks pretty good for her. Now we can draw the background a little more. There's another archway behind her. I have to play with, you know, invent a little bit since we changed the picture, but I think we're doing okay with this. More doorways or windows. Just things that would show up in the street scene trying to indicate them. The street turns slightly away as it gets to distance and some more small doorways and windows over here. You know, not too precise, just indications. Here we got this larger window. Another one. Okay, so that's the perspective of that. And I see this thing darker, maybe it's a thing in the middle of the street. I always put that in there and indicate the texture of the couple stones here. A little bit more in the background. Just a few touches here and there. Don't want to go overboard. When we're filled, we have a lot of blank space in this area over here and we can add in a little more detail about some of the beams and structure. And maybe you can add just a little more dimension to the doorways. Indicate where it's a little bit darker. All right. I think it's a good starting point. 6. 06 Rome Watercolor Wash: We're going to start some of those last time and just white and activate our palette. A few colors here, green so you don't be at all. Well, actually, might make that gray again over here. Let's do it anyway. And we're going to do the same sky technique here by putting down lots of water here. That's very heavy water. Now I'm going to touch my brush to the blue and just drop it in. It's a lot of blue there. A lot of water. It's going to dry very light afterwards. We'll see. Start off my brush, soak up some of that. I'll just leave it. I'll just take this part there. Soak up a little bit. Fine. Now let's go and let's do the cobblestone area. It's could be this light yellowy color, some yellow. Sorry, cobblestones are not yellow. The clstons are at the background over here. Let's do that. We have the buildings behind over here this yellow, touch of orange to it. So it should be a little bit damp and color. We have this maybe where the sun is hitting it or something. Here, there. Like this, beautiful. I see it a little bit sunlight where there's lighter yellow over a few places. Now, we'll do the ground. For the ground, the red and green. I'm dilute that a lot. Very dark rich color here. I'm going to add a lot of water. Okay. So now I put down, it's more water. Here. Fast and fierce. Now we're laying down all of the ground here. One thing I would do see is I'd like to connect that sunny area down all the way to the bottom, so I'm going to just collect a little bit more of the color that I had leftover here and get it to touch the meet. Perfect. Now that we're going to We'll do I guess the reddish color on this side of the building. It's red, but it's a little bit muted. We'll take a little of that dark color that we have here and mix it in more red. Here's a dirty red color. We'll see how that works. Pretty accurate, I think, that's good. And then it's a little bit more brownish, the color that's afterwards. We'll get some brown. Its some yellow to it as well. That may be the color that we have over here. It might be a little darker brown in that bub we'll start with this. Okay. Save that. To make it a little darker, I think I need to add in that green. We'll take this this darker element to it. So we'll just put this on top. We'll see. Green color as definitely darker value. So that's good. I can even water down the brush some more and run it over a few areas here and there. Do you see anything here? Okay. So you have this side. Now I go and we have actually a little over here. More of that yellow on this side here. Right. See my color is not as accurate this time, hopefully it'll be okay. What I want to do is actually show where we have greenery here. Let's put that in. And we can also add in some more window above it. Okay, so I'll be the window. Get some nice light green by mixing the yellow the sky. I'll just top it in a little bit. Okay. Then we can put in more darker dirty red beneath it. Maybe it's called orang two. I want to darken that. Yeah, it's blue. Now we have a color of the underside here. I wash off my brush, right off a little bit and then just pull the color a little bit nice just clean color here and mix it all together a little bit like that. All right. That's that part. That's nice. Good recovery. And do you want to have a little bit more of the? It's like a darker red. I'll take some red and mix in with this dark color we have here. It's not dark enough. Okay. Fine. And let's go try doing the lady. So she's also wearing a very red dress. Okay. Here we are?'s dress. Now, after that, we can add in her. Her bag has that brownish color, like a yellowy brown. Clean some space over here. Okay. Now, I think we should do for her when dries odd and more for the lines. In the meantime, we'll do her pants, which are very dark black color. And as you know, I don't really like to do black, so I'm just going to mix a very thick mixture of this red and green. That looks. Perfect. So the same dark colors on the doorways. Okay. The windows. Same idea. Her hair is also this dark color, so I guess we'll blend it together. I like that. Then we have the doorway over here. A little water to my brush, and that should make this a little lighter color. Same thing over here. And who's that color gray over here? Shadow underside of this awning thing. It's actually much darker this one, but we'll do a second pass maybe with it. Okay. I'll add some dirty white, whatever this is going to come out to be and put it over here. That's too dark. So let's go clean it up. A water. Just really, uh wash it out a little bit there. So looks like that. That's fine. On this side, actually, that color might actually work pretty well it was going over here. I was going to throw in a little this colors happen over here. Paint this side. Just nice and easy. Okay. Get some darker color for the inside part here. It darker even. To a lighter gray this part. Like that. Then over here we have a bar, the beam that comes down. Then we have more of this lighter color a few of these things here. I think the bar has a little of a blue tint to it. Touch that in. Okay. And in the circle for the lamp, which is off so it's a little bit dark. Had a little bit of blue in it. Gentle blue, and then we add in this darker gray. I think that's fine. And, um, I think her shag is now dry enough that were put into these lines. That. And for her face, we're going to try getting some skin color. So I'll go to. Let's clean this palette off the mixing area. Okay. And for the skin tones, we're going to take a little bit of red and yellow. A touch of blue. Very low. Let's see what that looks like here. I don't know what yellow may be. Okay. Looks like I got two hands up there anyway. All right. Fine. Anything else here? I think we could add in a few more lines. You know, doorways and whatnot. In this we can add over here or something. Awning one more time here. And this also need to be darkened a little bit. Let's cop this one more time also. Here a little bit darker in the middle. Just put that back in and maybe into the shadows that are on this T shouldn't be red. They should be more tend towards the green, just add that in this hopefully it'll Here, that way. Now I've covered up the red part of it. That's good. And then fan it out just a little bit so it's smoother. Yeah. All right. So I think that's it. 7. 07 Thank You: Thank you so much for taking this class with me, and I hope you have a fun, relaxing experience as you painted urban scenes using the line and wash technique. I'd love to see what you made, so please remember to upload your artwork to the project and resources section, while be sure to give it some love. If you enjoyed this class, I'd really appreciate it if you left a review. It will enable a class to reach more students. And if you post your work on social media, I'd love it if you could also tag me on Instagram at Natural Designs so I could give it a like. Lastly, please follow me here on Skillshare to be notified of future class releases and other exciting announcements. Thank you so much for watching. I look forward to seeing what you create.