Mastering Loose Watercolor Painting: Streetscapes

1. Introduction: Welcome. In this class, we'll be painting to lose streetscapes in watercolor. Learning how to capture streetscapes in a quick, fun and loose manner is an essential skill at every artist should learn to master. Watercolour is the perfect medium that allows you to produce spontaneous and expressive paintings on the go. Streetscapes can be confusing to paint. With so much going on in an overload of detail, we can often get lost in our painting. In this class, I'll show you how to paint any streetscape easily by using layering techniques. Understanding light and shadow. Planning is crucial. I'll show you how to simplify buildings, figures, cars, and shadows into basic shapes. Getting those large components and accurately beforehand is essential for your painting to make sense. So join me in this class. You'll see just how easy it is to create these amazing street scenes in no time at all. 2. Materials Required: In terms of the paper I'm using, I'm using a medium textured paper. You can also use rough textured paper. The reason why I'm using it is because with landscapes, if you've got a bit of texture on the paper, you get these nice wet and wet effects easily. The papers and dry too quickly as well. You can allow these nice kinda sporadic areas where the brush skips over paper I find it's just a lot easier to work into rough or medium textured paper. So if you managed to get some of that, go ahead and pick it up. I've also used 100% cotton paper for this demonstration. Recommend that as well. And the reason being is that it gives you a lot more time to actually get in a lot of these effects. And pepper takes a bit longer to dry, so you can drop in other colors such as here, you can see I've done it in a few different places and get some nice different mixes as well. So you've also find with hundred percent cotton paper when you go over a region, again, it doesn't lift off that previous color. There is if you use something like cellulose paper or unidentified paper. So in terms of brushes, I'm just going to talk a bit about what I'm using. So I've got a few mop brushes and these ones, as you can see, they are sort of declining in size. This one I used for the larger regions and really depends on how large your painting. This is an A3 sheet of paper. I always like to use a large brush to get in these bigger shapes. And then as I start to work on smaller shapes, things like the shade here are swapped down to a smaller brush. Now these mop brushes are really good in terms of getting in those initial washes, getting enlarged shadow shapes cutting around because you can see you've got a fine tip on the end as well. So does let you cut around and also be able to paint a large area. So these are a few additional brushes that I use for this particular painting. I've got this one here, which is like a little round brush. Synthetic, really good for getting in figures in smaller details where you need some more control. It doesn't hold much water as you can see. But again, that's not the use of these brushes to get in small details in the legs. You can see there this figure, couple of brushstrokes. They're also use this little flat brush. And the flat brush can be good at outlining areas, say of the windows, something like that. Here. Here. Makes it just a lot easier because that brush is kind of shaped in that square sense. And so you get sharper edges and it's just a little bit easier too. Imply details. So that's about it for the brushes. And as you can see here, I've got my palette and lot of paints here. A lot of paints, but not gonna need all these for these particular scene. I've just got one of my primaries here. This is perylene red. I've got some yellow ocher, used a little bit of that for the background wash to, I've got some burnt sienna. And burnt sienna is great for getting in some of these buildings. I have some purples in there as well, a bit of black. So this here is just a bit of Luna or lamp black, which granulocytes. And here you can see I've got little bits of red. I've just useful the figures. There's not really many colors in here. I think I've got a bit of purple back there or blue back there as well. So it's limited palette. You seen the sky, I've got a bit of cerulean blue, which is this one here. So really if you've got your three primary colors, if you've got a red, you've got a blue, and you've got a yellow, even a brown on the side there. You can paint this all in very, very easily. So that's about it for materials. I sometimes go in with a bit of white gouache at the end. I haven't done it here, but a bit of white gouache can be good if you want to bring out some highlights of the figures 3. Melbourne - Drawing: Today we're gonna be doing this street scene here in Melbourne. This is a street called hardware lane, and it's quite a popular Street. All bunch of restaurants down there, mainly Mediterranean Italian restaurants. This is during the day time and I thought I'd do a street scene during the day time so that we can get some sharper sort of shadows. You can see the light source is coming from behind the camera and the shadows of the figure is going towards the back. And I'm really considering whether to keep him like that or to change it, to move it a little bit more on an angle to the left-hand side. But we'll see how we go. The first thing I'm gonna do is to put in the horizon line. And really I'm just trying to separate out where the sky starts and the ground begins. Looking right out the back of the scene. You can see those really small buildings out here. And you can really just mark in little, little guiding line about roughly whether e is, I'm saying, reckon it's about a quarter of the way through the page about here. So I'm just going to put in a rough indication of a line like this. Roughly the indication. Alright, and that's where there's buildings at the back going to be. And I'm going to follow this kind of, I don't know how you call this, but basically just the little silhouette of the buildings all the way in the back. And one of the most important things to remember with these scenes is that you're just trying to getting an impression. You don't want to, especially with the buildings at the back, pay too much attention to all the little details. But I do want to make it look boxy as I'm here. That's a sod oven in a building like that. Coming down there. Yeah. Okay. Go to building here in the back. You've got this really large building that kind of comes up just, just a little bit past the center point of the page. Maybe here. You can see it all the way in the distance. And I really want to, I'm thinking to myself whether I wish we'd just just create a bit of a silhouette for these buildings so that they're not too predominant here in the foreground. Okay, so just the side of this building now that we're trying to get in, okay. Like that. And just a larger sort of building coming in. Alright, let's see the slope of it as well. One of the most important things to remember is trying to get that perspective right and imagining a kind of a dot around here and all a bunch of lines just emanating from this dot. And I'm using that, for example, to get in this little edge here, this one here as well, this building. I'm just using that point. They're simple one-point perspective. There's some more a largest building here. Whole bunch of stuff on it. I'm not concerned as to getting into many of the details, but I know it finishes actually about halfway through the page. So I've gone a bit too far. I reckon though it doesn't quite matter. We will change it up anyway. Good. If I can reduce down these buildings and the side of touch. Okay. Again, we just changing things up a little and not getting too bogged down in all the little details you can actually see here. There are all these windows, facade of this building. And a little shade as well. As you can see, just a little shade of some sort like that. This will be great because it sort of helps you catch a bit of sunlight on those buildings in the back. You get more of them as you go closer than just a bit more visible. Of course, now we've got this enormous building that goes out of the scene all the way out there. And we'll bring this down forward a bit more. This is the side of the building here, of this building in front. You notice how they just all overlap with each other. A touch. Here, we've got again another one of these shades roughly about here. And I'm just following the the patent, the general pattern here. Okay, look at that. Quite similar, but this one's larger as we get closer to the front of the scene, we want to make everything Look a little bit larger. I'm going to emphasize that gap in-between as well. So we can get some more emphasis on like some shadows in here. There we go. There's even little bits of this bottom part of it coming down here of this shade. So you can see it a little bit off in the background there, but not too much. You can even see some umbrellas, some kind of cream colored umbrellas of here in the distance. And you see these often in Europe as well. And look at this large shape. I'm just wanting to get in this large shape here on the left, hopefully, with not too much trouble. There's so much going in here, but you've got to remember. This is just one gigantic shape that just goes up like that and disappears off to the left. Somewhere like this. Somewhere like this. Of course you've got this signage here as well. Not only that, but we've got a building here in the background. I nearly forgot about that. So this can be part of the silhouette. And I'll get in afterwards, just off in the background. Something over there. Let's try to make this side of this building more realistic here. I'm going to just bring that up. And you can also see that there are windows will come this side of that building. Larger sort of windows like that. They're here as well. That the lamp here, just to simplify it down, once again, little lamp that's coming in from the side of the scene. You can just see it, but it's not so apparent. Again, these windows I'm just following as we were putting in before, just this general line that we have coming up here. And it helps guide. I mean, these these windows are slightly off. I mean, it should be further down, but it's not a huge deal. Okay. There's actually a shade here as well, some little shade or whatever, something underneath there. I'm not so concerned on the little details, but you definitely can see windows. And not only that, the it comes into the scene like this. And then it gets smaller as we move off into the into the background as well. Okay. But that's a large dog or something like that here. The large door and a few little lines to indicate that is definitely a door. Here. Is this little square of something. It's a little heat is up there as well. But again, we're not getting bogged down and everything would just trying to get an, a general feel of this. Photo minus will just try to add in some little shadows here, even see what it looks like around this time. It's good also to play around with some figures. And you can see here I'm just adding a bunch of them and getting them to overlap a touch. Might be some just kind of walking into the scene or some standing okay. Around. And the big thing is to try keep them varied in different poses. Not getting too precious with with their legs and things like that as well, but making sure that there's enough variation, for example, might have someone here walking in to the right-hand side like that. Okay. So the legs are further apart. There might be this girl here standing on the side with the arms. Here. It looks like she's holding some kind of bag, just really roughly indicating that she's standing and facing towards the right. A touch. You can also indicate the hair and the direction where you put the hair and also helps to shape where the head is facing. You can see here is more on the left, head facing towards the right. These ones are straight in front of me. So we're just putting a bit of hair on the top like that. There's all kinds of things here that you just have to indicate. I don't want to draw on that too specifically, but that's like a little sign. You can see here there's like some little tables and things like that. So we'll have to indicate that later There's a waiter all the way in the back there. Just standing maybe with the arm out and someone seated at the table. So we're going to have to just indicate some tables or something here as well. Okay. People standing up, that someone else may be standing up here as well. Maybe it's another way to like that. Okay. So we're indicating we're not trying to get in a huge amount of detail there, but trying to get a bit of an indication of what we might have happening in this area. Okay. Bits and pieces off in the background like that. Just come down. That's like a separation of the building. Okay. Having a look around now, that's a good amount of figures, but I want to add another one here just closer. And the reason why is that it helps to actually draw the eye into the scene. If you've got a few different figures, different distances from the front of the scene. This is a large head look at that large head of the figure here. I've just made this one up. Could be carrying a bag like that. It's a little bit, actually, I'll reduce that down a touch. But we have a figure that's walking into the scene like this. This leg, right leg forward, left leg. Left leg kinda tucked behind. In front of the right leg. Okay, so you've got this sense of decreasing, decreasing size. That little dot that I've drawn there before, I'm just extending out some lines from that dot. And you can get these little perspective lines that stem from that area. Okay, give it a bit more. Dimension. Starts looking more three-dimensional. I don't like how this building is, so I could have put it modernized. Don't want to just maybe separate out the floors. But at the same time I'm going to perhaps change up some of these windows at touch. Make them look a bit more interesting. And perhaps similar to that one over there. Just change things up a little bit because I don't like those. It looks a bit like an office building and it probably the top of that building is probably an office building, I'm not sure. But something like these just makes it look a bit better in my opinion. So again, you don't have to worry about getting in the exact details making loop just like that reference photo. Often that reference photo needs to actually be changed around depending on what your vision is. And that's why I like talking about what mine planning and how I'm planning. You can understand that as well. And how to change things up. So that's more or less here, I think I'm quite happy with how this scene looks right now in terms of the sketch. So let's go ahead and get started on the painting. 4. Melbourne - First Wash: Now I've got a large brush here. You can use a really big mop brush. This is a goat hair brush that I got as a gift from a company. So I'm just going to be using this. And I think what I'll do is actually, I'm going to start with the sky first. Bit of cerulean. Let's get rid of that spirulina in the sky and very, very light wash of it. Okay, great thing about this brush is that you can get in a very light wash of color and pick up a lot of paint as well with it. So try to find yourself a, a, a large brush to do this, I'm working quite large as well. This is an A3 size sheet of paper. And I'm going to lift, just leave a few bits of white near the buildings as well. Just bring that across that we have it at the sky. That's all we need in there. These buildings. Also, I would like to put in maybe a little touch of blue in there indicating the reflections of the sky as well in this building. Like this, like this. This. What I'll do now is mix up a little bit of say, orangey, warm pallor. I want to drop some of this yellow ocher into the buildings. I don't really want it to be too vibrant though, so I've gotta be careful. Okay, so a little bit of this. Now, remembering that all this is going to probably I'm gonna go over the top of it after anyway. But the trick is really just getting in a little indication of the details of the windows and stuff like that. A bit of merging. But at the same time, I'm going to cut around some of the windows and getting some small details. As you can see, this is just a bit of yellow. I might pick up some of these other yellow here as well, That's better. A bit more brown. I've got a little bit of little bit of brown here. Just drop in some gray leftover on the palette. So I'm going to just work on these buildings, the windows and in a cut around the mid touch, as you can see. The great thing about this brush is that you tend to, because it's quite large, It's hard to actually get in everything accurately. And as a consequence, you have to just get everything in quite quickly and deal with how it looks. So what I'm doing at the moment, just getting in this side of this building, it's just a warm, warm color for now. Okay. Like that. And a bit of this orange color maybe for the top of this shade here. Alright, little drop of that in like this. The one to the right-hand side, I'll pick up a bit of red, bit of a warmer colored red or something like that. Okay. I'm keeping these pretty pretty light Here. Here. Good. Coming down. Again, just still adding in light colors. We don't want to get in any darkness in here just yet. Now, let's work on these booting off in the background, a little bit of brown and a bit of neutral tint. Just want to mix a bit of grayish color and merge, merge this building in a touch like that. And some more yellow. It's getting some more yellow into this background section And don't be afraid to leave in a bit of white in there as well. Okay? And the big thing to remember is like at this stage we're not even trying to get in any details, would just getting in the light, painting the light. Okay. Going a bit more subdued in the background, and also dulling some of the colors down. I love to mix colors as well so that we've got nice variation of, of, of what's happening over there in the background. I'm gonna get over into the sky there, but it doesn't matter. No problem. This brush just forces me to work a bit looser and sort of touch that paper less as well mind you, which I think is a good thing. So that I don't get overly occupied on things that aren't important. Around this window and this window here. These light washes are so crucial because they really bring together the essence of the scene. And then all you do opt, which is just adding the the dark bits. I'm going to cut around that lighter touch, leave a bit of something in there to indicate it. Alright. Notice how I'm just indicating. I'm not getting in all little details, getting too fast over everything. Here. We've got that window again. So cutting around that window a touch even here. Do it here. Here as well, like that. I'm just merging that all look at it and just merging it into that background. Okay, Let's leave a bit of white like that. Maybe. Come down some more yellow like this. Here. Here, bring that down, bring this one down. Here. He bid of darkness off here in the distance. As you can see, it's all slowly starting to come together. Thinking, what should I put here for the window? I might cool it down with a little bit of blue. I'm just under here. Not all of it, but just maybe some of it too. Yeah. Just a bit of blue or something or another in here. Okay. And then for the ground, its work around the figures first. So I've got, still got a lot of this grayish paint. I'm going to just pick up a smaller little mop brush like this. And this is perfect so that I can cut around the figure's a little, okay? And these little umbrellas off in the background, it's kinda tricky to see him now, but I'm going to just leave them as is. Okay. But this gray that I've got figure, I'm just going to use that to cut around and LDL, the underneath part of this building. There's also a little bit of purple that I've got in here as well. I'm putting some of that in there. Probably suggest if you're gonna do the same thing to go very lightly on the little bit of purple I've dropped in there. But because afterwards we're gonna go and do it in quite a dark color, cutting and cutting around the figures and that kinda thing. But for the figures, you can really bring out a bit of life in them by coloring in putting in touch of colors. For them see just very light colors because you want to indicate that they are in the sunlight. So this one's just a bit of red or pink or something like that. I've got a bit of this creamy color I'd found. This can be something for this figure, but of this creamy color mixed with blue. Here we go. Bit of color for that figure. This lady here, so standing by the side, she's got white shirt on, actually saw not fast about just leaving that one white, same with these other ones. Maybe this figure here we could put in a bit, a bit of reddish color for them. Bluish color for this one here in the background. That'd be afraid to just leave some of them as they are, as they are lighter or even just white. Now I'm going to continue all the way down and keep working on this and a bit more gray here Alright, yellowy, sort of gray color just to warm gray. These are all like some indications perhaps of tables and stuff like that here. Stuff running through this could be part of that song or whatever. As we get further down, I'm going to pick up the red, mix it in with gray and more red, maybe some of this carboxyl carbon. So it's quinacridone orange, but it can acridine orange for the ground. It's quite a warm, really warm color. Fibrin warm color, a bit of red and quinacridone, red, orange here for the ground I think would be great. Trying to find that right mix of it and between orange and red. And also don't want it to be too overpowering, which is tricky. I'm going to pick up this larger brush again, this is going to probably make it easier. Doll that down a touch as well so that we don't have too much vibrancy. And remember this ground is very, very light. So we need essence. We just want to make sure that we've got an indication of that color. But we don't want to over do it with the color saturation, running backwards and back-and-forth and grabbing some of these greyish coloured paint and dropping a little bit in there as well. Okay. Cutting around that figure there, the legs for that figure. Bring that across. Here. There we go. Just going around, just don't warm color. That's already is just a nice warm color for the ground. And making sure it's not too vibrant. But again, in the reference picture, it is fairly vibrant. Depends on what you want. For myself. I think. Just want to tread carefully here. Maybe have touches of vibrant seen in some areas, but I don't want it to overwhelm. What is happening. This scene. We get that it's slowly happening, slowly coming together. Sometimes you get a bit as spread. So you can pick up a tissue and just dab off some of those areas that have made a run into the sky. I'm not too fast though. Okay, good. Now I'll give it. Alright, so let's give this a quick dry 5. Melbourne - Second Wash: Alright, so we're gonna go in now and get in little details and mainly the shadows. Figure out what we're gonna do with this light source. So I really liked the light source and tons of it going slightly to the left, but I want to make it a bit more exaggerated. So I'm going to actually create a little bit more of those shadows running mortal left-hand side rather than towards the back. But let's see how we go. Now. Firstly, for the buildings, I want to pick up bit of purply color. Then I'm going to use bit of purple mixed with some brown, maybe a bit of black here. Okay, I just wanna make a cooler color, cooler gray color. Playing around and seeing what we can do. And I'm gonna go straight into this building. Let's just see how we go with it. I'm tempted to actually use this larger, this larger one. Get the job done faster. Let's just see what we can we can get out of this. That pretty dark. About, I'll say about 30% of this darker paint to 70% water. You don't need to mix as much. Painting when the color is so dark already. But all I want to do is just dark in this building a touch and leaving if possible, some of the previous wash as well. This nice sort of warmer color for the building off in the distance and often the distance. But, you know what I mean? Behind behind this wash. Don't be afraid to leave in some of those little specks of magic. And the main thing here is just cutting around those windows. It's tricky. This larger brush in a weird way makes it, makes it easier. Even though you've got less control. You're not tempted to foss. You just get it in. And it leaves some of that previous washing, as I was mentioning before, is so crucial. But there is a point where I have to stop using it because it's just becomes too difficult. And you sort of struggle. And actually on this side of the building, there's a lot more There's certainly a lot more light on it. So I don't need to imply that as much. Brown, purple, black mixed together. What else have we got here? Okay, better. The top part like that. See if I can get in some of these buildings as well. I'm going to leave that side, that right-hand side of that building in C, that, that'd be, they're just going to imply that there's just some light crossing over that edge of the building. And there's little bits and pieces touching the sky. Not touching the sky, but connecting up a touch there as well. And I'm just putting a bit of that gray like that. I'm going to swap over to the smaller round brushes is going to make it easier. You can see already. It makes my life easier. Okay, remembering that light source is coming from that right-hand side. I'm changing it up a little bit. The light source is more obvious, stronger. You could say. What I'm trying to do is find a solid shadow color. A solid shadow color and shape that just runs all the way across. Can you see it starts from here, comes down. Okay. Drop in some more color in here if you want as well. Okay. Comes down in here. Just that comes down and joins up with this back-end and shadows in the back like that. Okay. Coming down. This is all just one big shape. Just want to connect this up a touch as well like that. Maybe we could get a bit of shadow like thing coming across the back of that building one or something like that? They're coming down and cutting across this here. I'm just going a bit darker as I come down to the bottom area because I want some extra contrast for these lovely shaded, these little shaded areas here. So cutting around these little shades. That kinda taking my time with this guy and blood darker you make it around the edges of them the More More they sort of stand out due to the contrast. I'm really wanting to make them quite dark, but at the same time, making sure that I've still got some of that background color in the background. Wash and bits and pieces in here. I'm using just swapped over now to a smaller brush. This is a little too flat brush. One thing I'm really trying to do is get the silhouette of those figures in nicely. And someone who is sitting down at the table as well. It's very hard to tell exactly what's going on. But you can imply that you can have little bits and pieces. So that's a little sign or something here. Okay. That that okay. And then down like this. Okay. Just cutting around this little figure here. I'm just going to cut around that figure and create extra contrast. Trying my best to vary these tones so that we've got some darker ones. The darker ones, you notice they create sharpness around the figures and details. Just bring out details. Okay, Let's do the same thing here. See this figure there. Look, I'm just cutting around that figure. It's just quite, quite dark in the background. But I'm skipping bits and pieces. Skipping here in there. Over the shoulders and stuff like that. Okay. There's the table, there's little bits and pieces here as well. I'm going to have to indicate what this is. It's difficult, but just some verticals map perhaps running across in here. We indicate some of those tables or what have you. Okay. That some little verticals in there. Good. In these figures, you can just do the same thing. Cut, cut around them. I'm trying to just get this all in with one big wash. This is, in my opinion, I think this is the best way to do it. Watercolors. When you do a scene like this with too many washes, you lose track of the big picture. It becomes difficult to, difficult to create this fresh looking painting. The more you add color and layers over the top. There is the shadow that I'm going to just play around with now we can see the shadows of the figures kinda go towards the back. And I'm gonna just shifted a little bit to the left like this. So you've got the legs of these figures here because that can just create a bit of darkness here for the legs. That figure anyway. Maybe use a smaller round brush there and then have this carry over to the left-hand side like that. Just a bit of that leg there. I'll just soft enough sometimes with the paintbrush as you can see in my finger. Again, just working on that figure to get more more of a silhouette. By darkening the background. You've got this figure here just kind of walking and that again is another shadow shape here. Here. I'm just more angles on those shadows. Don't think of them. That's so well. That's better. Like that The legs, you can just join up. Notice how it's just the same color that I'm using, this same dark color to join everything up in the background. There's even a figure here that I put in. Maybe just standing here. Could be a waiter or who knows. That's also going to be a shadow or a large shadow. Okay. But as you can see, I'm being careful to not go over the top of that figure. In the foreground here. Cutting around the light. Okay. It's another one here. Legs together like that. Here's, Well, look, we can now get the same shadow shape kinda coming up like this and going up to the legs. There may be a bit more of an angle because that okay. Great. Now again, there is some type of shadow running through here for the buildings. I'm going to the buildings. It's basically the shade here on the ground and I'm going to, I'm going to attempt to put it in something like this. This is a shade that's outside of the scene, by the way, it's kinda towards that right-hand side. Okay, and I'm going to put that in like that. Just having a loop making sure that shadow run, runs in a similar way and fashionistas to the other shadows as well. Okay. You've got bits of light that are caught as well. So you just implying the darkness in there. Some more some more of that. Maybe the yellow and the orange. Mainly. If I can just extra darkness. Even underneath here should be a bit darker like that. So what I mean by just trying to make sure you're not putting too many layers in here. This stuff is all still wet so you can get away with it. That will look, seeing how that P is, whether I want to lengthen that out a bit more, make it more obvious. Shadow a bit more obvious. I think. I think we can be okay with that. I like that angle on it. Working away at some of this stuff. Now here in the background, I'm going to pick up a cooler color, just some, again, just that same old purply color. And that's really just a purplish gray. I'm dropping that into these background buildings. Here. I can leave in a little bit of light, could be a side of a building or something. It all in one wash off in the distance. So it just looks like a silhouette in there. Maybe some more blue, just a tiny bit of this cerulean in there. Okay. Kinda like a cool gray color. Darken that one as well here because that one line and you're done. I'm just going to add in a little. This could be like the side of the building. Those little balconies and stuff like that, that some of these apartments have just a little, something like that. Not much at all, but hopefully does the trick. As we move downwards, we're going to start again with some of these darker colors, purple, black, and brown. There we go. Little tiny bit of this, these shades, you can see them just come out a little bit and interact with the light in the background. Simplifying that down. I don't want to spend too much time there, but you can see some of them actually come out quite obviously. This forms a weird connection with the right-hand side of the scene. Can you see that connects both of them together? It's really important. This year is a little umbrella again that I hadn't realized, but it is there little white umbrella? There? Did you know it could be an umbrella? Anyway? Here we are working on this building now. And tricky thing is now making sure we've got a sense of shadow in these buildings. So underneath the shade, I'm going to grab some of that grayish color and line at the touch like that. And again, just darken it a bit underneath. We want to leave in a lot of the light on the side of this building because it is technically in facing the sun. The light source on the top right-hand side of the scene, just behind the camera. So I am taking special care here to make sure I've gotten some of these details. So for these windows, I can just drop in a bit or something like that. Not too big of a deal. Okay. I think that it's actually quite dark. Some of these shadows, I'm worried to go too dark. But we need to further down. And I don't want it to suddenly go dark, so I'm going to add in. So you can see just extra areas of contrast and darkness. And as we move down to the bottom, light source is still coming from that top right-hand corner. So again, these little bits of shadow are going to form on the ground here and connect up with the buildings. Just fussing about as to the how all views I want to make these, okay, but they need to be in here. They just have to be in here. That one's good. That but downplaying it a bit. Okay. That's one. And then we've got another one here, another one here. And running across the scene here as well, towards that right-hand side there, like that. And then look at that. And because we've left in the light on those figures, you can see them. Just pop out that light. Now we've got to join the shadows a bit onto the buildings. So this is what I'm doing. I'm just kinda dragging up a bit like this from the bottom of the shadows upwards to create some kind of some kind of impression that it's joining onto the building. Can't just exist there and not connect with the buildings. This isn't the only opportunity as well. Afterwards we're actually getting some further details too good. Here. We've actually got some kind of sign that's sticking out. It's tough to really see it, but like that. Now, these are just these things that you can indicate again on the buildings. These windows, for example there, this lamp as well. I'm just forgotten about that lamp here. Like that. Look just a simple simple little lamp. Probably can't even tell that it's a lamp in the first place. Okay. Again, just wanted to just get in a loose indication these windows, I don't want to sit here and get them all in. It's not gonna be to find it all. I might drag in some of these as well, like the, like that just emerge that building a bit more. There's a hard edge there that I want to just get rid of that. Okay. Okay. Let's give it a quick dry 6. Melbourne - Final Touches: Finishing touches, little flat brush. And I'm gonna go straight in and start putting in. Here there's a little bit of shadow, for example, here, just a light wash of color. They're light wash of color here. He's just the finishing touches. Little bits and pieces, really. A little bit of darkness, shattered forming on the top of that shade like that. Here. Might want to put that in that simplified down. Of course. There's other things as well, like the windows. I'm just really going to pick up quite a dark color. And this is just pure black and I'm also dabbing it on my palette. None of my palette and the tau as well. Okay. I'm just trying to get in extra contrast is bit of hair or something like that, or even in the background, you can start emphasizing extra bits of darkness. Extra little bits of darkness around the figures and what have you as well. Okay, let's have a look around here. I thought a little bit of extra darkness would be good. Okay, So just trying to bring out those final contrasts that will make up that scene. Okay. Blend them a bit more. Is the legs of this figure here. Thought I'd just finish that off. Attached like that. These tables and things, they're really, these are the, the dark sections of the scene. I'm putting in a bit of little bit of shadow around the windows as well. And even perhaps wonder if I can add some details to some of these windows as well. Let's try, for example, with little line coming down, loops like this. Just little marker I suppose for the edges of the window sills like this is a good idea. In my opinion too. It helps to just bring out the details and notice I'm skipping over the page, the paper a bit. I'm not getting in all the little bits and pieces in here, especially as we get to the edges of the page, because I don't want, I don't want the eye of the viewer to be too focused up there. I want, I want it to be more down here. And wherever you think, you could gain some extra contrast and detailing, drop a bit of that paint in here, there's something better, something in here already. That's a shade in there. The edge of these buildings as well. You notice just a touch of detail. From time to time. Look a little bit of building the side of that building just contrasting better. I can get into some details of like some windows here. Okay. Just off in the distance. I know they're not really there, but I'm going to put them in any way. And of course, the side of the building comes out here. And you can do this, repeat this pattern on the sides of the buildings to get in and indication of some windows like that. And working on a bit of that perspective by drawing some of those lines in running on the side of the building indicating the floors and what have you like that the trick is not to overdo it. You've got to be very careful. Here. I'm just touching go. And because you can see some of this in the reference photo already, just these little windows that pop out the sides of the buildings. You want to be spontaneous with them and dry your brush off a bit as well. While you do this. Essentially what i'm, I'm just dabbing it in there, letting the shape of that brush form window. So it does a lot of that work for me. This stuff in the background as well. You've got a bit of that for these little buildings and what have you. So You can do the same thing there. Okay. So have a look at this. One. Same thing goes. I'm actually going to have to put in a bit of extra detailing for these windows. They feel like they just don't look as detailed as the ones on the right. But look at that. I'm just going over the edges of it. Some of this stuff here as well, these little shaded areas underneath their touch a detail. The window or the doors here as well. Look at that just a little bit of this door frame or something coming down into the ground like that. Simplified of course. Simplified down here, here. Here, here. Okay, good. Extra stuff around here as well, like this, these little shades that crossover and I want to really emphasize that better. I've don't think I've done that as well as I could have. So I can go over that just one more time. Helps to draw that connection. And also bring forth spring forth the buildings here. Okay. Looking at the shadows and thinking they probably could do with the extra little bit of extra darkness in them. Don't normally do this, but I'm gonna go over the top of those shadows once more to dark and then a little bit again, just trying to bring some of that up into the building so that it makes sense. And some perspective lines that we had before, like running through the scene. This is what's going to help. I'm just going to grab a bit of paint and just dab it on to the ground in areas to create a little bit of this perspective like that. Running into the scene, just a bit of color. Not overdoing it of course, but something like that. Okay, look at that. Oh, these lines emanating from a center point that we specified earlier, roughly around here. You've got all these little breaks and stuff that pop out here and there, you can, of course indicates some of this better than how I have. Or you can just leave it really, it's no big deal. Okay. Connect some of this up as well. You really just drawing with that brush. Straighten out this brooding a bit. Just by adding in some darkness on the edge of it. In some areas, hair and stuff on this figures. Just dropping in some color. The top of their heads off on this helps. Alright, just turn these into some little birds because I've tripped some paint on here. So this is just a little trick that I usually do to disguise the drips and things, just turn them into birds. Nice sunny day in Melbourne. And that's it. I'll call that one done 7. Rainy Day - First Wash: Alrighty, So we're gonna get started on the drawing. And I've got this beautiful rainy day is seen. And I want to simplify this down to basic shapes. And first thing I wanna do is divide this paper wrap now round about the center of the page, I would say is weird. This building in the background finishes off probably a little bit further down, not just exactly halfway, but slightly further than halfway. So I can just go ahead and draw a little guiding line, as you can see like that. Cross the sheet of paper. And it doesn't have to be perfect, just get it in. And you can always readjust later. It's not set in stone. So now what we'll do is I'm going to have a look roughly at where this building in the back begins. And I think we can safely say it's a little bit to the center left. So if we divide the page in half, like this again, okay, so put the center point of the page and then just add a little bit here and little mark here. So there's the center here. And then mark here. That's about where I'd say this building in the background finishes off. And I can go ahead and start penciling in some small details. But again, I don't want to add in too much here just yet, just getting started to get a hang of where everything is. One of the things you want to keep in mind as well as to keep a bit of space at the top. You don't want these buildings to take up too much room. Between the top of the page and the top of this building. You want there to be a bit of sky peeking through the background. Over here you can see some Background Buildings like that. Just a simple background building Macau a lot I'm going and you can see this building to the left really start to come in on a sharp angle. You see Buddha, the rooftop like that, but it comes in roughly like this. Then it comes down. Let's have a look comes down like that. And we might extend this one out a bit further, like that, that building bits and pieces of this larger building there, the pillow. Okay. I'm not concerned of the little details, just trying to get in a basic sketch up these buildings, mainly a silhouette of these buildings, uninteresting Building here in the center as well. I'm just trying to get these shaping the side of that building like that. You've got this little billboard there, which I'm not going to emphasize too much. Okay. Comes down. You've got a bit of this side of the building running off to the right-hand side. This whole block just disappears off to the distance like that. And over here we've got a large building just coming up and touching the sky like that. Okay. There we go. We've got bits and pieces. Here is the bottom part of the building there. Then it just carries on all the way down like that. Little bits and pieces of the building. You've got some poles and pillars and things like that. Okay, so we've got a general indication of these buildings here in the background. I'm going to go ahead and start putting, penciling in this side of the building a bit more. Obviously like this. Following the perspective as well. This can be the side of the building like that. And we've got another one. Just coming in here in front. Doesn't matter. Not a huge deal. I think the big thing is just getting in some of these figures and especially these two here, which a walking you've got the head here, K of one of the figures. And I'm going to put in this rain jacket. They kind of puffy jackets. You can see like that pops out the bottom like a triangular shape like that lady there. And you can see the two little legs just sticking out at the base like that. Okay. Exist sticking out of the basin. I'll connect this up like that and just give a little indication of this kind of reflection here on the ground doesn't have to be perfect, but just something like that. I want to just use that to guide guide my way forwards later. Here's another one there. There. I think I've actually done the legs are lit to two tiny bit too long there. So I'm going to just redo that a bit like this. This looks a bit better Hey, that's shadow. I'm good. A lot of this, we're going to have to make sense of it later. Okay. These are roughly around the same height. I'm around there, so I just want that reflection to come off nicely. Okay. Yeah. We've got a few bits and pieces, but we could put in, for example, an umbrella here. No, it's not there actually, but I can just make one up. I get the umbrella stem coming down this maybe there's an umbrella here in front as well. There's figures, smaller figures that are just in distance and keeping, keeping them loose, nice and loose like this. And again, these will form little, little downwards reflections later. Okay, Go ahead of a figure. They're just putting it in this figure. There's a leg is another leg here. I get something going on later on. Okay. We've got some more figures. These Another Umbrella. Umbrella is just all all in distance. This one I thought I'd do heavier. There's another one there. Just umbrellas and you've got people underneath them and just walking. As you can see, just simple figures like that. I always draw the heads in first. Then I'll get the legs in afterwards and make sure their heads line up roughly in the same spots on the horizon line there. You've got all bits and pieces running through here. You've even got, even got a road here. And on the road you've cut, cause, of course. So now I can get myself in a few cars and just make it up. I know this car here is it's really hear the front, but I'm going to just put it in any way. Okay. That's a car. Looks like a car, doesn't it? There? In the back of them, they just start becoming squarish sort of shapes like that. That can be erode off there in the distance. And more umbrellas and perhaps figures. Now you can get another figure in here, just in the foreground. Like the school coming near to the foreground anyway. And umbrella like that over the top. Simplify that umbrella or a little bit like that. These are bus stops or something like that. It doesn't matter, just little squares of something. And you can see like these traffic poles and things just rising up in, disappearing off the side and having a few of these are actually really good in there. Okay? Now my main thing I want to focus on at the moment is now these buildings, especially this one on the distance. So I'm going to just detail this out a little bit more. Okay? That give it a bit more of a more shape and accurate accuracy. Okay. Really, again, it's not a huge deal. It's just trying to get in an indication of that, that building here in the background, because this is all just gonna be mostly a silhouette. Anyway, I'm going to color this all in the same, same wash or so. But little bits and pieces are going to help. This little bit of the building kind of pops off like that. And then you've got a little one that comes down like that. Even here you've got like a part of the building that comes out here, there and there. Part of that building. Something interesting because the shadows again, It's very, it's not so apparent. You can just see the light in the sky, essentially. The light in the sky and reflected down into the ground. So let's go ahead and start with the painting. I'm going to firstly pick up this larger brush, goat hair brush. And let's start with some warm colors. Go with touch of little bit of yellow. Want to make it too vibrant. So I'm using yellow ocher. Yellow ocher for this building here. We can loose. I'm keeping this as well. Yeah. We want to make sure this wash is mostly just water. I'm using probably ten per cent paint, ten to 20% paint maximum in here is popping that through. I'm having a look, see what else we've got. We've got a bit of brown here, so we can pick up a tiny bit of this brown and drop that in there. Unfortunately, I think there's a tiny bit of green in there that I've accidentally mixed into that brown. But mostly it's that brownish color. And I'm going through and just adding in that just that little bit of warmth into the buildings, into the background. Look at that cutting around the figures and keeping it nice and wet. Look how quickly you can get in those buildings just with a few little brushstrokes. Don't need much in there at all. And don't be afraid to leave. Some areas of white. Just helps create some highlights where you might need extra attention. Later on. Here we go. There's a bit more vibrancy here on that right-hand side, I'm just dropping in a bit of color, a little bit more of that, they're okay. And I love this brush. It just forces me to get all those details in with the least amount of PFOS and without overthinking things because this initial wash is just a simple wash of colors. We're not getting in any details at all, just quite abstract, I suppose. At the moment, this whole row set of buildings here on the left as well as you can see, very, very subtle. We're gonna get an another wash off the widths and I want this lovely warm color in the back to show through. Okay, let's have a look here. Then. It's just a large building and I put a bit of brown in here to brown ocher. Yellow ocher, brown ocher. It's just some warm color really cutting around. There's umbrellas and the figures as well. Okay. Like that. I'm going to go into the sky little and I'm going to get in a wash of hopefully some gray, grayish color, maybe a little purple mixed in there. To have a look at that. There we go. That's a nice grayish color like that. And I'm dropping some more of that gray and sometimes helps to actually wet the area a little first. I'm not too worried really about how these mixes round and that kind of thing. But keep keep a little bit of space between the buildings. See tiny little bit of white on near the buildings that helps. This is just a bit of gray that I've gotten the palette. You can mix this up yourself from using the leftover paints on the palette. So often I've got a bit of of my primaries, yellow, blue, and red, and not just mix them together. Okay. I got that. Just dropping that water, let it do its thing. And that at points I'll let it blend with the building, but at other points I'll just let it do its own thing. Here. Bit more of this dark cloud. I'm making the sky look at probably more moody than it actually is in the reference photo. But I want to make sure I'm not touching it too much. Just a few subtle brushstrokes like that trick. Okay. Okay. That should be good for the sky. I'm quite happy with that. I'm gonna go ahead and carry this wash down. Now I'm going to use a larger brush and really just make the bottom of the pavement. It kinda grayish color, maybe with a touch of yellow in there as well. Okay. Just to mirror the sky, the building, sorry, a little bit. So cutting around some of the figures and what have you and look at that and just dropping in this color, which is really just gray. Again, that I've picked up from the palette. And dropping that in a bit of purple and put that in there as well. Because that just cut around the umbrellas, cut around the figures. The heads of the figure is like that. The body. Okay. Maybe coloring the legs, it's no big deal. And here we have it just starting to move downwards, this grayish color. I think that in drag this all the way down, I'm using quite a large mop brush. And that helps certainly to get in this wash without too much faster at all. Okay. It's important to keep this wash pretty light as well. Light that. Maybe we can get some yellow in there as well. Just something. Can we get into this? Just flicking a bit of this paint, just dab a bit of that off. Some of it's gone into the sky. I just wanted to create some little inconsistencies in areas. Well, I can I'm good. Okay. So what I'll do now is we are going to start working a bit on basically the buildings in the background. We're gonna get pretty much that large wash of the buildings there. And then we're gonna go back in and do the shadows of the figures and a bit of the detail on the figures. But I think what works well firstly, is just to get in a light wash of some sort of color for the figure is just a bit of, a bit of darkness. And these figures do need to be fairly dark as well. So I'm getting a bit of purple here for this one. The left and then the one on the right, I'm just getting in a bit of that green color. Just a bit of this purple for the one on the left. Let's go for the one on the right, some more brown maybe here. Like that. Something like that. Little color, a little dab of color. You get these ones here walking around in the background as well. A little splash of color there. It doesn't matter so much what color you add in there, but what I want to do is just make sure that it's a bit of darkness for those figures. You've got a bit of these cars as well. Maybe the wind screens, dark, dark and like that. Just a little bit of that. Windscreen. Afterwards all get in the bottom of it better. The umbrellas, putting a bit of color for the umbrellas to light wash of something. Right? Great. So I'll give this a quick dry 8. Rainy Day - Second Wash: Now for the final step, we are going to get into buildings in the background. The details on the buildings to I'm going to work on these nice little reflections. So firstly, we need to make some color for the buildings in the back. I'm going to change it up and just use some neutral tint and a bit of purple in there to create a kind of a cooler color, cooler gray color to black and then a bit of blue, a cooler gray. And you notice it's probably about 50%, 50% water. I'm going to drop this in. Let's just see how we go. Oops, something that's gone into the sky, but be okay. And I like to also use smaller brushes at the same time if there's little details that I might have to indicate like this. Okay. Try to leave in as you can see, I've been trying to leave in a little bit of that yellow on the back of some of the areas of the buildings. But I'm also just trying my best to make sure I do this with as few brushstrokes as possible. Okay? Just a large silhouette, the building. You can see here also there's little bits of the windows and things which are covering parts of the buildings. So I'm just indicating bits and pieces of that. And you can see here in that right-hand side as well. And doing the same thing. Tiny bit of darkness and line work for that building there, as you can see. That drag that down and enter these little little bits of the windows that I'm doing here. So, so subtle, subtle, they're just drag that down. You know. The main thing for me is just creating this kind of darker silhouette in the background. As we move into the further back as well into the distance, it just becomes more lighter. So I've just started to blend that together a bit more like that. Okay. So we've got a bit of a lighter gray. They're all in the distance. You've got a few more of these little little windows and things. Over on the right-hand side. That's a little bit more darkness I find behind the figures might help. Okay. That dark area behind the cause. And you're just cutting around them. This you know, you're blending together at times, these wet and wet work and the bit of the dry brush work. Okay. I'm just adding in like a nice bit of a softer, watery shape of a shadow here or something. Okay. I can redo some of those window areas later, but I just wanted to have something like this here. I'm just soften off a bit of that part of the building it looking just to to live there. Okay. Remember this is all one big shape that I'm trying to paint this big area in the background. There we go. Just a little bit darker at the base. And then here we've got the building to the right-hand side. Just get that in. If I can get it in and just a quick little brushstroke like that. I should do the trick. We've got this one here as well, so simplify it down. I'm making this one darker as well so that it brings it forwards. Okay. To have a look, bring it down more like that. The little bits touching the ground If I can just get it to bleed in a bit to this area, that's nice. Yeah. Just like that. Just that background areas. Just wanted it to blend in better. You just, again, getting into some more of these side would heirs of the building or the dimensionality of the building. Okay. If I can get it in with a few little bits and pieces like this, makes things so much easier. Okay. It more blue, purple. Okay. Good. Large, large sort of shape here to the left. Or is this just part of this building shape coming down? Okay, good. Alright, so we've got the building's off in the background. General silhouette of those buildings. And I want to bring some of this down to the foreground to get the shadows and the figures. And so I'm going to just spray, spray this bottom part of the scene with some water. And here I'm going to grab myself again, this mop brush. And I'm going to pick up some darker paint, just purple and a bit of neutral tint again. And we'll just experiment. I'm going to drop in the legs of this figure like that. Really thick paint, very, very thick paint. And look at that. Got this kinda coming down and a bit of this reflection here. And a bit of the reflection there. This one here, downwards like that. These ones here. And if you find that it's not sort of spreading enough, just give it a bit of a spray again. Should dissipate, move downwards a little bit down the page. Just exaggerate that a bit more. That they come up into the legs. Got to just make sure I've got the legs in darker like that. Right. There we go and some darker ones then the legs. Okay. This is a little flat brush that I'm using. It's helping to just getting the general shape of the reflections. And you've got also these other reflections off the buildings as you can see the good that just this kind of darker reflections from the building up the top. So having some of those in as well as very well, I think it's quite crucial. Soften. And having some sharp bits in there is important too guys. So don't get rid of all the, all these sharp details. Of course, you've got these kind of reflection of this building up the top. So I'm going to just get a bit of that color in there. Shift this around here. Yeah. This larger building here to the right 9. Rainy Day - Final Touches: Let's go ahead and add some more detail and it's in pieces on the figures. Just mixing myself up a dark color. And again, just going to work on some of the details, all these figures and create more darkness especially. And the legs. If I can just get in better indication of the legs like this. This figure here, walking. And this is all dry brush now because that painted the previous washes dried off. Okay. There's a couple of lakes that this is a couple of legs here, like this. Okay, Here's another figure that just walking up here. We will have to bring some of this detailed back and work on. Again, just bringing back some of this, a little bit of a shadow here. The reflection, Sorry. Hey there another head of the figure. That then they're just putting in indications of details. Really. Some more figures out in the distance. Just getting a little indication of their bodies and joining it onto the legs here. And the distance and little something for their heads as well. A little just a little dot at the top there. Some of these umbrellas, if I can just, I can offer bit of a little bit of darkness on it like that. Softer touch. Here is another umbrella potentially. K holding onto it may be like that. Like that. She's just slowly bringing out some of these details. I'm putting some of the car like underneath the car because the shutter for the bottom of it, we use like that. We'll that car there. That car, they're good. Small little details for the buildings in the back. I'm just going to pick up some darker paint and just dab it in there like this. Get an a few little windows or something running through the back. Detailing on top of the building. Some more of these windows. Now the paper is dry and I can go in and get some of this in these buildings here to the right-hand side, just indicate a few windows here that just getting these kind of traffic or whatever That street lamp. One here. This building, we can just rejig it, just put in a few little, little kind of guiding lines running through and just sort of to indicate the details on the buildings. We something like that. Alright, we're gonna do some finishing touches now. And I'm going to show you something interesting that I picked up a little while back. And essentially you just use a little blade like this. This is just one of those exacto knives that you can get from the sharps box cutter, anything like that. Even a little pocket knife works fine. What you can do is actually use that to scratch over the top of some areas. For example, if I want to bring out a highlight on top of this car, I can use that knife to just scratch off a bit of the paper like this. Okay? Go over the top like that. And you can actually bring back a bit of the highlight there, not only there, but you can do it on top of the figures as well. So for example here. So let's just go back and forth and scratch off a bit of tiny bit of that paper. It does reveal, does actually lift, scratch off the top of that paper. But it just allows you to get in really crisp highlight news. That's one way you can do it. Another way you can do it is just by using a bit of white gouache. So for example here we've got just a tube of white wash, put it, pick up a little bit of that off the palette. I'm using a straight, straight over. You can do this sort of thing. Okay? This allows you essentially just to get in a little highlight. And I'd like to mix it with a touch of water as well, so it's not too not too thick. But you can get an over the top of areas like that. Let's put it in a bit more water through their little bit thinner. Here. The shoulders of these figures there, even on top of the the umbrellas, sometimes you will find a little bit of highlight here in this so I can just bring that out, kinda get the shape of that umbrella to come through a bit more even on the cars. Look at that just a bit of that white on top. Okay. I'm gonna tend to use this fairly sparingly as well. Okay. Then what I'll do is just pick up a little bit of darker paint. I thought what I could you do to finish this one off? It's just put in a few little lines running through the page like this. These directional lines that will just help creates sort of perspective. I'm imagining a point all the way there in the background. And with that point in time then creating a whole bunch of lines that run away. Or towards that point, that imaginary point. And it just gives the scene a bit more dimensionality, makes it look a bit more three-dimensional. Suppose something I do all the time, and I'm using some dry brush, pick up that paint, but I am drawing that brush off a little bit as well so that it doesn't overwhelm. Just skips over the page, gives you a little indication rather than anything. That's it. We're finished