More Drawing Tips and Techniques (Sketchbooking 3)

1. Introduction: Hello, my name is Tio, and welcome to the third course in this sketch booking series. The first course was an introduction on how you can use a sketchbook. In a second course, I showed you some mixed media, art, and supplies. In this course, I want to share with you more tips, and techniques when it comes to sketching. Basically, the things that I've learned over the years, such as making mistakes, simplification, using perspective, composition, proportion, light and shadow, color mixing. Some of these topics actually deserves a whole course on its own. I do have dedicated courses on, for example, color mixing, and perspective. If you want to learn more about those topics in depth, or in detail, you can check out those other courses. In this course, I want to give you an introduction to some of those drawing fundamentals on something that you can use to improve your sketches. You can download the reference for those provided to follow along with the lessons, and don't forget to live this course a review so that you can let other students know what you think about this course. Let's get started with the first lesson on making mistakes. 2. Making Mistakes: In this lesson, we're going to talk about making mistakes. Don't be afraid to make mistakes because making mistakes is part of the learning process. For beginners, making mistakes usually come from the lack of confidence or your technique or even the tools that you are using is not suitable for the paper. Let's take a look at some of my early sketches from 2012 and 2013. This is around 3-4 years after I picked up sketching. Here the color mixing isn't that great. One way you can learn about color mixing is you can go back and redraw the whole scene and just recolor the scene just to test out different color palettes and color combination. This is a sketch that I drew during a gathering at my friend's place. This was drawn in a cafe. The more you draw, the better you will get because you got more practice, and also the more mistakes you make, the more and the faster you will learn. This is a mistake that still haunts me to this day. This sketch was drawn at a life figure drawing session. I used pen, ink, and watercolor for this. I probably completed this in 30 minutes. I didn't just draw the nude model but I also drew the other artists in the room. Some were using watercolors, some were using oil, some were using charcoal, and some using pastels. After I completed this and I looked around, I could see all the other artists still working on their art and I realized that life figure drawing is probably hard for me because I tend to draw really quickly. After completing this sketch, I didn't know what else to draw, but at least I learned that I don't really enjoy figure drawing. That is the thing with art. You can try different things. Go for art sessions like this to find out more about yourself, find out about the style that you like, the tools that you enjoy using. Here the mistake is actually this line. I cannot remember why I drew this line, but it's obviously a mistake because this line was drawn where the line shouldn't be drawn. It could be because I was impatient trying to draw really quickly and I accidentally added a stroke. What this taught me is, try to be more patient, concentrate, observe and draw what you see. Don't be too impatient. To this day, I still cringe when I look at this sketch and I just realize I did not draw the eyes for this model. It's fun to look back at these old sketches to see how you have improved over the years. This sketch was drawn on location and I was looking at the front of the buildings and the perspective is quite flat. If I can actually draw this again, I will probably walk around that area to look for a better view because right now it's very flat. Here I was testing out some Kuretake Zig markers and I found out the ink was water-soluble, it's not waterproof. I prefer to use waterproof ink, so this mistake happened on this sketchbook which I'm actually using to test out composition, to test different supplies. I'm actually quite glad to make this mistake here rather than on my more expensive watercolor paper. Here I use a lot of vibrant colors. I realized that if you use too many vibrant colors, nothing will stand out. If you want something to stand out, you can make certain areas more colorful and the rest of the other areas less colorful, so you get contrast from colors. Here I was trying to come up with different designs for jugs and I tested different materials like pen, ink, watercolor, color pencils, gouache, or pink markers and also I tried out different designs. Making mistakes here is part of coming up with a better design. Also through this process, I also found out what type of materials that I enjoy using the most. Here are some sketches from the earlier course, and I was mixing and matching different media just to see what works and what doesn't. Making mistakes here is part of the exploration process to find out what works for you and certain media will work better with each other or one and other compared to others. For example, with pen and ink, it looks well with watercolor, but pen and ink doesn't work as well with pencils. In this lesson, we are going to make some mistakes on purpose. We are going to make several quick sketches of this building to identify possible mistakes that we may make before we draw or paint this in greater detail. This is the Basilica of Superga in Turin, Italy and you can download the reference for that provided. I'm going to start by drawing a rectangle to represent the page. I'm going to try out different compositions. Let's draw this triangle here. Actually, I shouldn't say try out different compositions because we are working from a reference for that. The composition has already been decided but if you were to draw this on location, you can actually walk around the area to identify or to find out what are the better views for this particular building because depending on where the sunlight is coming from, the best view will change. Here I'm just trying to draw this building in a very simplistic style. Here I identified a problem. I have run out of space at the top. By identifying the mistake at this stage, later on, when I'm drawing this in greater detail, I can avoid making the same mistake. That's how making mistakes can help us improve our art. At this stage, I can actually just stop because I found out I ran out of space. Let's draw another rectangle here to draw the same subject again. This time I'm going to draw it a bit smaller so that I can fit this subject onto the page. Once again, I'm drawing the same thing. This time paying more attention to the height of this dome here. Perhaps I want to draw the top first so that when I draw the top, I will draw inwards and I will not run out of space later on compared to me drawing from the center upwards. Again, when you are doing these quick exploratory sketches you can identify all these possible mistakes or challenging things to draw. Things that you need to pay attention to when you are making your actual painting. Here I may have run out of space at the bottom. It looks good now because I'm able to fit this building onto the page. For sketches like this, you don't need that much detail. What I'm trying to do here is actually to see whether or not I can fit this building onto the page and also see if I have managed to get the perspective accurate. For this sketch, maybe we will just focus on the dome itself. I will not draw the bottom part. I'm just going to draw this particular section here, just a close-up on the dome here. I just realized I ran out of space again. That is all right. Here, I'm testing to see whether or not this composition will work for me. Let's draw the window here and here. The dome is actually cropped off. If we are going to draw something like this with our more detail watercolor sketch, it may not look that rate. It's good to spend just one minute to test out your composition here rather than to spend half an hour to an hour later on to find out that this composition or this view doesn't work. There are a lot of columns here for this part of the building. When you are drawing, you can also identify or find out how many columns they actually are and also the distance between each column, because they are not equidistance apart. There are other columns behind the columns that are in front and there is some perspective going on. When you're drawing this, you can get a good sense of the proportion for the columns, where the columns should be placed. This will really help you avoid making those placement or proportion mistakes later on. You can see the sketch, it's actually more detail compared to the earliest sketch, and here again, ran out of space again. It seems like running out of space is a common issue that I'm facing here. When I'm drawing, I need to make a mental note to myself to actually draw smaller or use a pencil to mark out the top and bottom boundary and draw the details when within rather than drawing from the center out to the edge of the peach. Next thing I want to do is to use this gray and black colored brush pens to test the contrast. For the photo, I can see the sky is blue, so maybe I want to make this a gray wash perhaps. Maybe for the other sketch, I'm going to leave the sky as white just to see how it looks. This is actually to test out contrasts. Later on, when I paint with colors, I will need to create the same level of contrast. Let me see what color this is. This seems like a darker gray color, so let me just paint over the darker areas like the shadows here and the grass here, and also the trees here, the back. Drawing a sketch like this is not going to take more than five minutes. I can see some orange color for the beauty, so maybe I can use this light gray to represent the orange here. There are some shadows on the right side of the column because the sunlight is actually coming from the left side. Here, I'm not sure if I should add the sky. Maybe let me add the sky and see whether I can get some good contrasts with the sky against the dome here, and it looks all right. [NOISE] When I paint with watercolor, I just need to make sure that I have good contrast with the dome against the sky. Next, I'm going to make the trees much darker here. I can see some trees here as well, and the shadows here seem to be quite dark. There seems to be a really dark shadow there, some shadows here, and also on the ground. This looks all right, so I'm going to create another wash here. This is not dark enough.. This is black. I made a mistake here. Never mind. I actually put the cap on the wrong brush pen. Let me switch to this darker gray brush here. What I'm trying to do here is actually to paint the same building except leave the sky white just to see how it looks. It seems like if I leave the sky white or with a really light colored wash, later on, I will get that there are contrast. This is the watercolor sketch that I painted after making some quick sketches, not this but in this particular sketch book. With this sketch, I found out the column should continue from the top all the way down. They should be aligned vertically. Same applies to the window here, to the window beneath. Here, you can see this window is slightly misaligned to the left. It should be directly beneath this window here. By making the mistakes here, I avoided making the mistakes here on this sketch. When you are looking for mistakes in your own sketches, you will definitely find some mistakes, so don't be too hard on yourself. Even for this sketch, which I drew and painted after making several small town near sketches, there are still some mistakes. For example, this area here, if you look at the photo, there is a much larger lit area, but here I've painted the shadow area too big. This is a mistake, but you probably wouldn't know this is a mistake unless I tell you it is. Anyway, when it comes to hand-drawn sketches, there is a lot of leeway. Because it's hand-drawn, there is going to be imperfections, and that's part of the charm when it comes to creating sketches. What happens when you are drawing and suddenly you make a mistake? Should you correct the mistake or should you leave it alone and start on a new page? Sometimes it depends on the mistake. Sometimes you can make the mistake first by fixing it. Some mistakes are actually not that important. For example, let's say there are six windows on this row but maybe I've only drawn four. This is a very minor mistake unless someone has a reference photo to compare, or unless someone actually knows the place or the subject that you're drawing, he or she is not going to be able to identify the mistake. I may draw an extra balcony somewhere because I lost concentration and added this structure here which shouldn't be there, I will just leave it alone. Even for this balcony, you can see I have this unwanted line on the latch, and this line is not exactly at the corner. For the next balcony I draw, I will remember my mistake and try not to make the same mistake again. Now it looks better. Sometimes I may just leave the problematic area alone and draw somewhere else first and continue drawing. Hopefully, when it joins back to the mistake, that mistake will be less prominent or the mistake would just disappear into the background. Or sometimes I would just leave the mistake alone and draw a totally different subject somewhere else on the page or just redraw the same thing again this time without the mistake. A sketchbook is a place for you to explore. It should be a place for you to make mistakes and learn from your mistakes as well. Some mistakes are easier to correct and some are not. For example, with watercolor mistakes, such as mistakes when it comes to mixing the correct color, depending on the color that you use, you may or may not be able to scrap out the color and paint again. However, if you do screw up out the color, it's going to affect the paper quality and subsequent wash is not going to look as nice. Here, the mistake is that skin tone is way too orange. To prevent myself from making this mistake again, you can actually write down the name of the colors that you've used to mix this color so that you can avoid using the same color mixes in the future. Let me show you a few more mistakes. This is actually more vandalism than mistake because while I was drawing this, my two-year-old daughter was holding her marker and forcing her way on the pitch, which is why you see all this squiggly marks here and there, everywhere. I like this two pages even though it looks like crap, because I enjoyed art making process with my two-year-old daughter, and here as well. Even though this looks like nothing, it's just rubbish. I do remember this sketch very fondly because of my interaction with my daughter. Sometimes when it comes to making art, it's not about the art but about the actual process, about the time, the fun that you had when you were creating that piece of art. This is my two-year-old daughter, the one who vandalized my pages. You can actually keep a sketchbook just for making mistakes, just for exploring ideas and another sketchbook for more proper beautiful sketches. The more mistakes you make, the more you will learn, the faster you will learn. Making mistake is just part of the art making process, the learning process as well, so don't be afraid to make mistakes. 3. Creativity: In this lesson I want to talk about creativity. Creativity is something you can actually learn, so you can learn it by creating something, by making something, you can learn from books, you can learn from other artists, other creators by studying their workflows or their art, and everyone is creative in their own way. In the art or visual industry, it's quite common for creators to think of themselves as not being qualified, or their work is not as good, now, all this self-labeling and self-doubt is actually not important. The most important thing is actually the creation process. Creativity is the byproduct of the creation process. If you don't create something, if you don't make something for yourself how do you know that you are not creative? If you have been following along with the classes, the lessons, and the drawing exercises so far, I'm pretty sure by now you know you are a creative person, just by looking at the drawings that you already have in your sketch book. Now let me talk a bit more while I draw something, you can find inspiration almost everywhere even at home, so I'm going to draw this box of toys that belong to my daughter, it's going to be a really quick sketch , nothing too fancy. I just want to draw with my colored ink pens that I've grown to really love. Let me just switch to different colors after I've drawn with black ink. Here I'm not thinking too much, I'm just drawing what I see. We have some patterns here. I'm going to use my artistic license to change the patterns. Let me switch to a different colored pen to draw these little hearts here. You can learn a lot from your own drawing process. This is learning by trial and error. You will make mistakes, but you will learn. The more you draw the better you will get because you're going to get more comfortable with the creation process. Your lines will appear more competent as well, and when your lines are more competent they will look better. This color is not great on white paper. Let me make a mental note of that myself. The thing with learning from trial and error is it can be a slow process, but it's a very crucial process because you have to learn about yourself because you have to learn what you are good at, what you are not good at, what you can improve and what are the things you can change. Learning through trial and error is crucial. However, you can actually learn faster if you learn from other artists. For example, I've got learning certain painting techniques, you can spend weeks or months to discover new techniques which have already been discovered by painters a long time ago. We can actually save a lot of time just by learning from other artist that way. There is a limit to how much you can learn just through trial and error which is why I like to look at the art books from other artists as well just to get inspiration. Sometimes when you are looking at the art created by other artist you will also think about how you can actually create that piece of art. One thing you can do to be more creative is when you are drawing, try to change things, try to vary things. For example, if you're using pen, maybe switch to pencil, if you are using a lot of colors maybe just switch to using a limited color palette, and just do different things each time just to change things up. You will discover in the process different ways of achieving the same results or just different ways of doing the same thing. Here I've drawn this same box again, this time with pencil and I intend to paint this with watercolor. This has drawn very hastly. It's one thing to visualize something in your mind and create it on paper and to see the actual results. Sometimes the result may be the same as what you visualize, but sometimes it may not and it can result in happy surprises. The thing is sometimes you wouldn't know how the art is going to look until you have created that art itself. You may not know whether a certain style would look good or not until you see it on paper. All you have to do is to test out the different concepts or ideas that you have on paper and see how it actually looks. This is the creation process. It's a fairly a wonderful feeling that you will get when you see your beautiful artworks appear on the page. Right now as I look at these two sketches, I can see that I prefer the watercolor one because of the shapes, the shapes are more obvious, and solid colors are just more eye-catching compared to just the line art. You can draw the same subject over and over again, but very different things each time, so here I've varied supplies that I used, I could also try and draw this with maybe gouache instead of transparent watercolor, the look will be very different because with gouache it's opaque so the line art is not going to stand out or it's not going to be as important compared to the shapes and colors. Drawing is just one of the many creation or creative process. Creativity can apply to sculpting, flora design, textile design or even T-shirt design, certainly graphic design. Here I have letters with sharp corners, maybe for these few letters here I want to have rounded letters. That's a sharp corner as well. Let me make the corners round. All these are lines. Let me try and vary the letters again, this time by adding maybe some colors to some of the letters. Let's paint this and see if it looks good. This looks nice. Let me switch to a different color. When I paint there is a lot of oops because things happen, even when you draw the same subject over and over again there are many things you can change, you can change the tools and the supplies you use, you can switch to using a different technique or instead of drawing the whole box here, for example, you can focus on a specific area or just zoom in to draw details. Here's something I saw recently. Now portraits in the art world is very common so how can you make your portrait stand out? In this case, the artists actually used stones and pebbles to create this portrait instead of the usual dry media and paint. This stands out because it's very different compared to other portraits. It's made with stones and pebbles that we find on the street. There is this element of surprise, and when people look at this they don't expect art to be created using stones so it makes this portrait very memorable, and you can see there are so many examples of stone portraits. That's where people get inspiration by looking at the art books from other artists. You can learn a lot from books as well, these are just some of the many art books that I have, I have art books for inspiration as well as instructional art books. When it comes to learning from books or video tutorials or art courses it's very important to not just consume the content, but also try to find things that you really like, find the art that you like and recreate that art. Creativity is the byproduct of the creation process, so go create something. You are going to learn a lot from the creation process. Everyone can learn to be creative, however just remember this, before you can be creative you have to be creating. 4. Simplification: In this lesson, I want to talk about simplification, what to draw and what not to draw. When it comes to drawing, we don't have to draw everything. Sometimes it's impossible to draw everything maybe due to the limited picture size or maybe we just don't have the time to draw everything, or sometimes we may just want the viewer to focus on certain areas so we add more details to those areas and we remove the details for the less important areas. Sometimes it comes down to artistic choice. Let me show you how to simplify your drawing. Let's use this reference photo for our drawing exercise. You can download this photo to flow along. This is a photo of a building with many windows. There are a lot of details in the background. We can see all these small windows in the background as far away due to perspective. When we take a photo, the photo will just capture everything. But when it comes to drawing, we don't have to draw everything. When I look at a scene like this, the first thing I would do is look for the main subject. In this case, it's very obviously the building. Then I look at the background. Is the background important? In this case, it's not that important compared to the main building. Also, we can see due to the perspective, this part of the building seems to be in the foreground, whereas this part of the building seems to be in the background. When we draw, we can try to include more details here and not draw all the details in the background and we may not even need to draw all the windows. Generally speaking, if you cannot count the windows, don't draw all the windows. This is going to a very simplified sketch because I just want to talk about the process of simplification. I won't go into the details of drawing details. Here I'm trying to measure the height of the building. Let me just put this vertical line here, another vertical line beneath. This is the base of the building and this part here is maybe two units compared with this. Let's draw this here. What I'm doing here is to draw the big shapes first, then we can view in the little details. If my sketch does not look very accurate, it's because I'm drawing really fast. We have the front of this building here. Next, let's draw this side. We actually have quite a number of cars parked here. Maybe I want to just draw our car here just to give this sketch a sense of size so when we have a car or people walking on the street, we know what the sizes for those little objects are. Immediately just by comparison, we know how big the building will be. Let's continue with the building. This is the part where I can start to simplify because I may not want to draw the buildings in the background or this part of the building that's in the background. I'm just going to draw the shape, but I am going to leave out the details. Also, I'm going to add a few more cars. My cars are extremely simplified. This is the building in the background. You can see it. There's not much details. This actually continues all the way back and the photo actually just stops there. I'm just going to leave my lines open like this. Next, I'm going to divide the buildings into different sections so that I can draw all the windows. We have this part here, it's a big oops, because the perspective is totally off. This line here is actually tilted in this direction but I actually drew it in this direction. Anyway, I'm going to use my knowledge of perspective to try and fix this. I can count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, five windows or let me just draw the one in the center first and put two more on the side. There are windows aligned vertically. For the buildings here on the left side which are in shadow, I'm just going to draw maybe the outline of the shape of the buildings. I am not going to draw the windows or maybe I can just draw a few windows. Maybe I should just draw a few windows and maybe there's one here, one here, one here, one here, and one here. There are four floors. At this stage, I can actually just stop drawing the windows. For someone who is looking at the sketch, he or she will be able to fill in the details himself or herself because these are actually repeating patterns so even if you don't draw everything, the person looking at the sketch will get a sense that this is repeating so all the windows are supposed to repeat. That's just one way you can simplify by not drawing everything, by leaving out some of the details so that the person looking at the sketch can fill in the details themselves. Next, I'm going to draw all the windows on this side. I'm also going to add more details to the doors and windows here on the front, on the ground, I'm also going to add some people. My people are very simplified. I'm just drawing their shapes. My people are just made with dots, rectangular shape, and two lines beneath for the legs. Next, I'll continue to draw the windows on this side of the building. I count 12 windows and the windows are actually not evenly spaced. Let me just try and draw the 12 windows and see if I can actually fit 12 windows in this space. Let's draw the window here first. This is one. The windows are not evenly spaced. This window is further apart compared to these three windows which are closer apart. The next window is further apart. Then we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I've only drawn 11 out of the 12 windows and it's fine. Unless you are the architect who designed this building, you are probably not going to know that I missed out on one column of windows. Here I'm just drawing really quickly. [NOISE] For elements that are in the foreground, you should definitely add more details, but as the element or your subject moves into the background, you can actually skip the details if you want to. I may be drawing buildings here, but you can apply this simplification technique to other subjects as well. For this part here, it's going to look a bit weird if we just leave it as totally blank. What I want to do is to actually include some windows. Just a few windows will do, not all the windows. I'm just going to include a few windows here and maybe I will keep this diagonal shape here. I'm just going to leave this blank. Maybe I'll add some little details here as well, but that's it. I'm going to stop here. I'm not going to draw the windows anymore. I will, however, continue to add more details to the main building. At this stage, I will consider this sketch complete. I can add more details if I want to but I can also choose to stop right now. Personally for me, when I don't know what else to draw on the page, that's the point where I will just stop drawing. The same would apply to painting as well. For this quick sketch, you don't have to paint over everything. I'm just going to paint over the top of the building here. The brush that I'm using is actually quite small for painting this huge area, but since I'm already using this I'll just keep using this. The problem with this small brush is if you paint with multiple strokes the strokes will be obvious, whereas if you pin with a big brush the sky or this shape will appear to be continuous. You won't be able to see the individual strokes. I've painted the top of the building together with the sky. I'm going to mix this ultramarine with some shadows for the buildings here on the left. I have this nice shadow that contrasts with the building and I'm going to use this same blue to paint the windows. I'm working really quickly. Next, for the buildings in the background, I'm just going to leave it as it is. For the bottom here, I'm just going to paint it with a very light wash or rose. Just like that. This is almost dry now and I'm going to just add some more depths of colors to create more details. Next, I want to add shadow areas down here and here just to make it much darker. With that, I'm going to use ultramarine with burnt sienna or some earth color to make this darker. Does this look all right to me? I think it looks all right. It looks fine. Could be better. This is just a really quick sketch. Maybe I can add some pattern to the windows above. This is actually quite fun. I will consider this sketch to be complete. It's just a really simple pen and ink sketch with watercolor without any details added to the buildings in the background. Let's work on another sketch. This is a photo of Times Square in Manhattan, New York City in 1919. This is a black and white photo. We don't have to focus on the colors, we just have to focus on drawing the details or not drawing the details. I like this photo because it has a very nice silhouette of the buildings against a cloudy day. Also, you can see the buildings in the background. They are faint. They are not in detail. They are washed out. When we draw, we again draw details for the buildings in the foreground. We draw details where we want people to see. For this sketch, I'm going to start by drawing the tall Times Square building there first. This sketch is challenging in the sense that the prospective is challenging. I'm just going to draw this building in front first. I would just want to get the height of this building right. You can see in the photo, there are many people on the streets. You won't to be able to draw all of them because it's, in this case, impossible. I've already drawn the main Times Square building. I'm going to just divide the building into smaller and smaller sections using vertical lines. I will not be drawing the individual windows because there are just too many windows to draw. Maybe I'll just draw one or two important windows to remind me of the side that has windows. But I don't have to draw every window. For the buildings in the background, in this case, I'm just going to leave them as shapes. I will not be drawing any windows on them. I will just be drawing the shapes of those buildings. There is one here. There is this building with a little tower. I'm not sure if I can call that a tower. A little structure that comes out like this. I will draw that. This building is actually also considered to be in the foreground. I will want to draw some of the windows in details. But for the buildings that are behind this building, I'm just going to, again, draw those buildings with shapes. You can see this building that is behind is just a block, a three-dimensional block. For this building in the foreground, I'm just going to draw some windows. I feel like maybe I can actually just stop right here. I can just stop right here. I don't even need to draw the windows on the left side. I may want to include a few windows here, just to suggest that there are windows here on this side. When we simplify, what we're actually trying to do is to find some ways to suggest details. This is done because the main building is actually this Times Square building here and there's a light there at the top. For the people on the street, I'm just going to draw them with little dots like this. There are a few structures which I want to draw. There are also a few vehicles. We can identify the vehicles by the rectangular tops. But here what I really want to do is to just use dots to represent all the people on the street. Maybe there's a bus or a tram here. This is a really old photo, let's just continue to add the dots. I may need another line here because there's too much space there. I may want to add some little vertical lines to represent windows and just continue to add dots to the sketch. We want to add more details to this part here. [NOISE] Now, sometimes when you want to simplify or you don't want a certain area to be too obvious, draw those areas with much thinner lines, if possible. In this case, I'm holding my fountain pen more vertically to draw the little details. For this Times Square sketch, I want to preserve the shape of the silhouette of the building. I'm just going to paint the buildings with this mix of primary colors, blue, yellow, and red. Very neutralized color. I'm going to leave certain areas white, so that those white areas will be able to stand out. I want to paint this here. This part at the bottom is going to be gray except for the tops of the vehicles and structures. When painting something, I just make sure that the shape is strong. It's very recognizable. For the windows, I want them to be white, so I don't want to paint over. Basically, I'm just using a really limited color palette to paint this. Maybe I can have a small billboard sign here which is represented in white. I also want to have some white here for the windows and maybe for this window as well. This is coming along very nicely. For this building in the background, maybe I can have a billboard behind as well. This is how the sketch looks. Even though the photo showed a lot of details, you don't have to draw all the details. It's really up to you how much details you want to draw. Sometimes it's good to have white space on the page because it can make your page feel less busy. It can also make your subject stand out against the white space. In this case, you can see the colors against white. But here, this building, it doesn't stand out that much because here is just this big color shape. Perhaps if this is white, then the building may stand out. When you try to fill your page all the time, it can make your page feel very busy. Sometimes it's really nice to have white space just to let the viewer's eyes rest or let the viewer fill in the details themselves. 5. Composition: In this video, I want to talk about composition. Composition in simple terms is just how and where you place your subject on the page. You can also think about it as how you frame a particular scene. Composition can be quite important when it comes to storytelling because with art, it's always about what you show and what you do not show, and depending on what you show, you can actually change the perception of the person looking at your art. For example, here I have a digger and drawn on this tablet. I'm using a tablet because I don't have to draw this digger repeatedly to show you different compositions. Based on this view that I'm showing you, it seems like this person is hard at work, trying to remove some rocks in the foreground. The focus here is actually on the person and on this digger that he is driving. However, if we are to zoom out to see more of the scene, now the story is different. It seems like it's going to take a few hours for this guy to clear all these rocks whereas in this scene, it's only going to take this guy may be an hour to remove these few rocks here. By changing the composition, you are actually changing the story. This could be a scene at a construction site and we only see the digger and the rocks here. Now, if we are to zoom even further like this, now the focus is no longer on the digger and no longer on the rocks. You get to see a lot of space, and if you actually have some background drawings, maybe it's some buildings in the background or maybe it's just an empty piece of land, the focus is now on this solid and digger in this vast expanse of space. The story again is now different. Or maybe in this scene as you zoom out, there are actually other diggers that are around. Maybe this is not the only digger that is around. Maybe he has some other colleagues who are also working nearby. If we are to zoom in like this, it would seem like he's just working alone. But if we actually zoom out, we can see that there are other colleagues at work. This is a busy construction site. But if you only have this view, then you cannot tell how busy the construction site is. Composition is quite important and you should always think of composition before you start your drawing. You have to think about the story that you want to tell, what do you really want to tell the viewer who is looking at your sketch, or what do you want to tell yourself when you look back at your sketch. When you're sketching, you can actually make several small thumbnail sketches just to test out different compositions. Now I'm going to draw some rectangles to represent pitch sizes. Let's see if we are working with a wide format rectangle, you can draw the scene like this. If you have a scene like this, it's going to feel like there is a lot of whitespace wasted, but sometimes having much space can be good. Again, it really depends on the story you want to tell. With a scene like this, for example, it seems like this person has a lot of space to work with. He can drive his digger all around this space. However, if we are to draw this subject or this scene much larger on the pitch by cropping out some of the rocks here, it's going to be a tighter scene and focus is going to be stronger because the subject is fueling the pitch. The subject takes up a huge proportion of the pitch, so the focus is stronger. We can just do like really quick pencil sketches just to test out the composition. Let's say our sketch book is a portrait sketch book where you open up and it looks like this. If your subject takes up just a small portion of the page, you can see the focus and emphasis is no longer on the subject. In this case, it's actually on the space around the subject. Some compositions will work, some definitely not going to work. For example, if you are just drawing this on a vertical pitch, I'm not sure if this composition would work. It could work. It could also show that this digger is working with a lot of space. The working environment is very spacious, it could work. It really depends on the story you want to tell. However, in this case, the subject or the scene is actually more suited for a wider aspect, wider pitch. Because you can see it's a white scene, it's a white subject. This is something you could have drawn on location, or you could have drawn this from your imagination. If you're drawing this on location, you can move around the scene to choose your composition to tell your story. If you're drawing this from imagination, you can also do the same thing. In this case, you can actually just move the rocks around the scene just to tell different stories. If I move the rocks here, for example, maybe the guy hasn't started work yet because he is quite far from the rock and we anticipate based on this scene that he's going to walk on the rocks very soon. Let's say I'm working on a vertical pitch again, and this time I want to put the digger at the top of this vertical page. It's going to feel like the focus is now actually on this base here because again, the digger is not taking up a lot of space. It feels like it's claustrophobic. The space is very tight because this scene is actually supposed to be a white scene, but we have chose to draw this on a vertical page so it feels really tight. It's like something is off. There is some tension, and you can even make this even more claustrophobic by again, changing the composition. There are actually many rules and guidelines on how you can create good composition, and there are several books just written on this topic alone. The most common rule is actually the rule of thirds. This is a rule that is also used in photography. Let's say you have a page. You can actually divide a page into this three-by-three grid, and all you have to do is to place your main subject at one of the four intersections here. Here I actually have the digger at this top left corner and the rocks at the bottom left corner. This actually, on this rule, this thing actually creates visual interests. What you should avoid is to place your main subject just right smack in the middle of the page. Sometimes it can work Sometimes it definitely works. For example, let's say your focus is the digger. You can obviously place the digger right smack in the middle of the pitch because the focus is on the digger. So it can take center stage, it's all right. But if there are other elements in the scene, that's when you have to think about how you can compose or frame your scene in a better way to tell a better story, a clearer story. Let me show you another example. This is a sketch drawn on location inside this cafe, and I could have chosen different compositions to tell different stories. In this case, I chose to draw the whole interior just to show how cozy this cafe is. I want to show all the books that are on this shelf. There are a lot of details, a lot of elements in this cafe. However, if I were to just focus may be on a selected area, let's say I just want to focus on the front here, the entrance, there's actually not much focus because there is no focal subject, there's no main focus, there's no main subject. So the focus will be lost if I were to just choose this particular scene. Let's move down. Let's see if I have selected to just draw this section here. We have a person seated that on this sofa, maybe reading a book or checking his or her phone. If I were to draw this, it could create a perception that this cafe is not very busy, there aren't many customers because it's just one person seated on this single chair here and there are so many empty chairs around. So it could create a perception if I chose to show you this scene. However, the actual scene is this. It's quite a crowded cafe, it's a popular cafe, and there are actually a number of customers in the cafe. There's actually this group here of friends chatting among themselves. They took up all the chairs here. Also, we have this bigger composition. We can get a sense of the space of this cafe. There are actually several sections. This front section here where the entrance is, there are some paintings hanging on the wall. This is the section where the sofas are the seats are served, and this section here we have the plastic wooden chairs here, the seats are hot, and this is where the books are. So by choosing different compositions, you can tell different stories. Let's say I want to focus on this group of friends here who are chatting. Now, it feels like the cafe is quite tight. It's claustrophobic because we are zooming in so close to all these people here. We don't know how big this cafe is, so it could be a really tight, claustrophobic cafe. We wouldn't know because this is the scene that I choose to show you. As you can see, composition is important and composition will apply to all types of hand-drawn or hand-painted art, such as landscapes, architecture, interior, still life portraits. Basically, anything that you create on paper or Canvas can be made better with good composition. Here are some good books on composition that I recommend, should you want to learn more about composition. 6. Sizing Your Subject: In this lesson, I want to show you how you can size your drawing, so that it fits properly on the page, so that your drawing is not too small and there is too much white space. Or your drawing is too big and you don't have space to draw anything else. This is the reference photo we will be using. There are a few techniques that you can use to size the subject you're drawing on your page. The way I usually do it is to find a top and bottom boundary of the biggest subject that I want to draw. In this case, it's this tall building in the background. The top edge is actually here, and the bottom is somewhere here. But there's this additional building in front, so the bottom is actually here. I usually would mark out the boundary on the pitch, so when I draw, I just need to draw within the boundary. In this case, I will not run out of space. Let me show you how to do it. I'm going to leave some space here on the left for the building that's in the absolute foreground. I'm going to mark out the top boundary here with my pencil, and bottom boundary here for the building that's in front, that triangular top building that's in front here. I can see there is this horizontal line here. I am marking up the boundaries with very faint pencil lines. This is one I have. It may not be clear, but after I ink the drawing, it's going to be much clearer. Now, when I'm drawing a location, sometimes I would just keep the penciling stage because I'm already quite used to using this particular technique. Let's draw the top first. Make sure to draw the diagonal line at the right angle using observation skills. We can draw the extension at the top and add a small extension. Now, after making a few drawings, you will know your tendency when it comes to drawing. Do you usually draw bigger than usual or do you usually draw something that's too small? After you find out your tendency, you can then adjust your drawing to account for your tendency. Say if you're always drawing too small, then draw slightly bigger. If you're always drawing very big, draw slightly smaller. This midpoint here, is actually the corner of that triangular roof, and I wanted to draw that triangular roof here. I'll come down here at the bottom. This is the bottom boundary of this building. There is a lady here. I'm going to draw that lady later on. Let's continue to draw this building here, on the left side. At this stage, you can see once you have fitted your main subject onto the page, everything else is going to fit onto the page, and if they cannot fit onto the page, it's all right. You can let them be cropped off the page because those are not the main focus of your drawing. The main focus is actually this part here. You need to fit your main subject onto the page. All the rest of the buildings, the rest of the background, they are not as important. Here, I'm trying to fit the rest of the street, the rest of the buildings onto this page after I've drawn this. Let me just draw this little window here, another window here. The head of the lady is at the midpoint of this height here, so the lady is actually wearing a hat here, and bottom, the dress is actually here. When we draw, we need to make sure that this height is in proportion to this height. It is very important to actually make sure that you get the right size drawn at the start of your sketch. For example, if you have drawn this house too small than the lady, then all the other people will have to be drawn smaller in proportion to the house. If you have drawn your house too big, then everything else is going to be drawn bigger. Everything that you draw right at the start of the sketch, that size, you have to get it right, so that later on, whatever you draw, you can draw those other subjects relative to the size of whatever that you have already drawn at the start. Now, one way to practice this technique is not to draw, not to include too many details, just draw the big shapes here first, to get a sense of the size, to get a sense of how you can use this technique. This is what we have so far. After drawing this, the rest of the sketch is really easy to draw. You just have to continue drawing or filling the space. You can use this technique to draw any other subjects as well. Next, let's draw some human subjects. This photo has a square aspect ratio and this composition was used because the photographer wanted to include this notice in the photo. These two ladies and their children take up a much smaller portion of this photo. For my drawing, I actually want to focus on these two ladies and the children sitting on the steps. Once again, I want to find a top and bottom boundary. There are two key subjects here, this lady here and this lady here. So the top is actually here and the bottom boundary is actually here. But there is also the top and bottom boundary for these two ladies. When I draw later on, I'm going to draw elements in the foreground first, in this case, I'm going to draw this lady here first. I need to make sure that I size this lady at the correct size. If I draw this lady too big, then this lady here in the background will have to be drawn much bigger, and you may run out of space. It's very crucial to size this lady at the correct size. Let's go back to our sketch book. The space that is taken up by the lady is actually in this rectangle. [NOISE] A thing like this. The space taken up by all the human subjects is actually in this squarish shape here. For this sketch, I may actually want to include the staircase on the left side and also on the right side. Let me just mark out the top of the head here first. I also want to mark out the height of the head relative to the height of the body. It seems like the height of the head is about one fifth of the total height, so it's going to be somewhere here. That's the bottom of the neck. I also want to mark out the general shape of the body and legs here, and for the second lady, which is seated here, I want to mark where the hands are. The hands are actually above the head of this lady here. I just want to mark out the hands and where the head is for this second lady. After I mark out the general shape, the top and bottom boundary, the important elements like where the face is, where the hands are and degeneration of the body, I can start to draw on this sketch. Try and follow the contour of the lady, don't be too caught up with getting the right features in this exercise, what we're trying to do is to focus on getting the size right. I want to draw the hands here. One quick way to drawing people is you can draw the head and draw the hands, and if the person actually moves, if you're drawing this on location and the person actually moves, you can then connect the hands to their shoulders or yourself later on. It's actually quite difficult for me to see what's the details here in this shadow area. There is a purse here, we have this dress that comes down slightly and we have the legs. The width of the leg is almost same as the width of this section here from the hand to the edge of the truss, so when we draw we need to make sure that we get the correct length, the width. I can't see the details here very clearly. It doesn't matter, we'll just draw what we can see. It seems like the shoes are merged together, it's not very clear from the photo, so let me just draw something like this. I'm just going to place the nose here and the eyebrows, just to put some features here. The features are not that important, it's the size that we want to get. Next, we can draw the second lady here, which is seated on top, I may want to place or draw the hands first, the hands are actually slightly above the hair of this lady here and the hands are above the purse of this lady. Notice that when I'm drawing I'm thinking off the positioning, so let me just draw the hands, make sure the hands are at the correct size. Let me draw the other hand, drawing hands is difficult. If you're drawing this on location, just focus on observing, capturing the lines that you see, but don't think about it as you are drawing hands, think about it as your drawing her lines, drawing the shapes. Next, let's draw the face for the second lady, the size of the head is similar to the size of the head here. The head is about one head away from the hands, so what I'm going to do here is to just draw the head like this, and we can see is on hair, that's it. After that, we can just fill in the rest of the body. After you have drawn their hands, it's really easy, you just join hands to the elbows, to the shoulders. For the bottom of the dress, I want to place it here. The bottom of the dress to the hand, I'll say it's one unit here, and this is one unit. We need to make sure that they're sized correctly. The dress has some really beautiful folds that you can draw to create three-dimensional effect. There is a small hand here belonging to the little girl on the right side, I had forgotten to leave the space for that hand. Next, I want to draw the feet, this feet is directly beneath the head here. Let me just draw that, my shape is a bit off and I think it's all right. Next, let's draw the children on the left side. The head for these children is lower compared to this head here, and it's to the left side of this head here. Let's draw a smaller head here for the kid. Again, the focus here is really on cutting the size, don't be too caught up with getting the details. You can redraw this photo over and over again to get the details. On next, I want to draw the other kid seated on this side, the face is also smaller, let me just put small eyeballs here. That's the nose and that's the mouth, is this the hands of the kid? I think so, I'm not sure if my shape is correct or not. Let's draw the shoes here, there is one shoe here, the socks here. The socks are directly beneath the left each of this kid here, and we have the shoes. In the photo, the shoes are actually behind this code here, so my placing is off slightly. Also notice I'm actually drawing the socks and the shoes first rather than continue to draw from here, because what I'm trying to do here is to draw at the boundary and draw towards the middle. Sometimes I will just jump around in my drawing, by drawing from the boundary towards the center, it makes it more difficult for you to run out of space. My socks are not looking exactly like socks. Maybe these are just shoes. For this kid here, I'm just going to leave this area here undrawn. I don't want to draw this because I cannot see the details here in this shadow shape. Next, let's draw the features on this mom here. Let's put a smile on her. This is not a portrait, so I'm just using a very cartoony features here. Next, let's draw the kid here on the right side. The shoulder is almost horizontal and the elbows here and their small hands are here. We can see the feet here. Notice that I'm drawing at the bottom again, the base here, the boundary here and just join this up like this. I am not able to see the other feet, so I'm just using my artistic license to add the other feet. Let me add some more details to this clothing that this little girl is wearing so that it looks more detail. Now that the main subjects are drawn, you can then fill in the details for the background, the staircase. For this particular drawing, you can also mark out the staircase first, use the staircase as some framing to frame your subject within the frame so that you wouldn't draw your drawings bigger than what it needs to be. That's another way. Just draw the staircase. This is rectangle here. I think I may have drawn this too far into that left side. Yap. This line is not vertical, it's at an angle, and this line is almost vertical. I think it's all right. Let me just create more space here. There is this metal real thing that is here and we have this staircase landing. Very difficult for me to see what is here. This lady is actually leaning against the staircase here, the side wall here, so I've drawn that wall too far on the left side. But it's okay, we make mistakes sometimes. We have another line here and I can draw the steps here. As the staircase goes into the background, the steps will become smaller and smaller, and also the width will become smaller and smaller. What you can do here is you can actually draw the right boundary, in this case I'm drawing the right boundary. Again, after you have drawn the boundary, just draw into the shape, into the space there. I'm definitely messing up right here. The photo, [inaudible] a photo? There is. We have this line that comes down here and there's this staircase that is here like this. [NOISE] We have some railings here, metal railings. I'm just scribbling some shapes here that I see, it may not even be the same design from the photo. The main thing here is to make sure you get the angles right. This angle, this line here, this horizontal line here is not horizontal, is tilted down slightly and this line here is tilted up slightly due to perspective, so you need to get that perspective right. When I'm drawing, I'm always thinking about the angle of the line, is it going up or is it going down? Here, I'm just drawing some details. [NOISE] I'm drawing the big shape first and filling in the details later on. Notice how after you have drawn the main subtract here, you can fill in the shapes, all the other details later on and they will fit properly. They will fit correctly. This is the completed sketch. Very loose, very sketchy. I like it a lot, even though there are mistakes, but I still like it. I like how sketchy this sketch is. Maybe later on I will erase the pencil marks. This is how I think about sizing when I am drawing. Draw the main subject first, find a top and bottom boundary. If you are unsure, you can always use a pencil to mark out a top and bottom boundary. You can also mark out some important areas, important points for reference in your sketch. In this case, the top boundary's here. The other important point is actually this corner here for the triangular roof. Here I've drawn the phase to help me locate, to compose the scene. I've also drawn the hands first to basically tell me position of the other elements. I have provided you with additional photos you can use for more practice. While you are drawing, focus on the sizing, the proportion, that placement. Don't worry too much about the details, focus on sizing, proportion, and placement. After you have drawn the big shapes, then you can fill in the details later on. 7. Light and Shadows: In this lesson, I want to show you how you can use light and shadow to make your sketch look better. Light and shadow can be very useful because they can make the subject you are drawing, look and view three-dimensional instantly, it can provide more information to your drawing, it can make your drawing look clearer and easier to read. Let's take a look at this reference photo. This photo was probably taken on a very cloudy day and there is no obvious light and shadow. With this scene, if there is light and shadow, we will be able to get a sense of the time. Also, with light and shadow, we will get a better sense of the physical form of the buildings in the background, and also for this statue in the foreground. This is the sketch I drew of the scene you saw earlier. Without a light and shadow, it's difficult to separate the foreground element, which is this statue from the background. In this case, you can actually use a thicker lines for the foreground elements and the inner lines for the background elements to create this sense of depth. But if you are using the same line, it's going to be difficult to see what is in front and what is behind. Let's see what's going to happen when we paint or add some shadows to this scene. I'm going to use water soluble graphite to paint the shadow. I'm going to have the light source coming from this direction, so we are going to have some cast shadows on the left side. This is a very quick and easy way to add shadows. Usually do black and white sketches to test out my composition. Okay, so we have some shadows on the ground as well. Because the light source is coming from this direction, we can paint the buildings here as well, and we can add some shadows on the ground as well, some long shadows. Perhaps, it's during the evening time, so the shadows are very long. With the shadows on the ground, we get more information, we can guess what time it is. The statues are, well, in this case, quite dark. Because the statues are so dark, it's difficult for me to see what I was drawing. There are actually two people here, one is on the horse and one is actually standing beside the horse. While I was drawing, I didn't realize that there were two people. Anyway, let me just paint this statue black. This what am painting here, this is actually not the shadow is just that the statue is black or in just a darker color. I also want to add some shadows to the bottom here because this part actually extrudes out, so there will be some casts shadows beneath. With this shadow that you see here, the person who's looking at this cash will be able to tell at a glance very quickly that there is something protruding out, that is casting shadow beneath. Let's put some shadows here as well, just a very thin line of shadow. Here you can see the shadow is quite thick, so that means the thing that is protruding out here is quite big. However, the shadow line here is very small, so it suggests to me that maybe there is no protrusion, but there is actually a small gap between this part here and this part here. For this part of the building, I can add some shadows as well because this is facing away from the light source. The roof here is dark, so let me just pin that. This is not a shadow, this is just a roof being dark, and also the roof top here is also dark, so let me just paint this darker. On the ground, there is a shop with this awning here. This is probably going to cast some shadows on the ground, so I can just paint some shadows here to make this whole area darker. It's very settle but it provides this additional information that there is this awning here, and I can have the shadow come down at this sharp angle. This scene is now easier and clearer to read, thanks to the shadow effects. You can see this white area here, there is nothing. However, if I paint some shadows here, immediately you get this impression that there may be a building or something on the right side casting this shadow. That's how shadows can give you more information. When you are painting shadows, makes sure the consistency is there. What I mean is, all the shaded areas should be in shadow. If you take a look at this side here, which I did not paint over, this part is not facing the light source, so it should be painted with shadows, so let me just paint this. If you fail to paint all the areas in shadows, then it's going to break the consistency or the believability. For this statue, I'm going to add another layer, just to mix certain areas darker, even though this statue has a very dark color. It's in black and white actually, photo, but there are still areas which are darker, so I want to paint those areas to create this additional sense of depth, to make this statue look more three-dimensional. This is how you can use light and shadow to make your sketch look three-dimensional very quickly. Here's another sketch I drew with the help of another reference photo, which was also taken on a cloudy day. Here I want to show you how you can mix shadows using watercolor. Now you may have a box of watercolor with many colors. My recommendation when it comes to color mixing, especially for beginners, is to just stick with a limited color palette. Just choose one yellow, one red, and one blue from your box and use those three primary colors to mix all the colors that you need for your sketch. This includes the shadow as well. Let me have my water color box here so they can see how I mix the colors. With yellow and red, let's choose this one, red, you're going to get orange, and when you add blue, it's going to become darker. Let's have the light source coming from the right side again. This side of the building will be in shade and they will cast some shadows on the ground. If you want beautiful looking shadows, try not to mix your shadows completely here, and then mixing well. Let the colors mix on the paper. Let's maybe paint the side of the building first. Here I've just painted the side of the wall and the wash is still wet. When the wash is still wet, you can actually charging another color, just to shift the colors around. You can see I've just added some red to the wash. You can only charge in color when the wash is still wet. By not mixing your shadows, your colors completely in the mixing well, you can get very beautiful watercolor washes that have color transition. Let's see, what do I want to here? Okay, we have the light source coming from the right side, so I want to paint some cast shadows on the ground. When you paint a large area of shadow, make sure you have enough paint, you don't want to run out of pin halfway. Here you can see I have this little gap of unpainted area that gives me the impression that there is this gap between the building and sunlight can go through. Let's have some shadows here beneath the shelter. This is the power pole. This building here is dark, so I want to paint it in this shape. This is not a shadow, this is just a building darker. While the wash is still wet, I can paint in this additional color to shift the color around. This is the shadow beneath this roof here. This building is quite tall, so I want the shadows to be much longer. It may even go across the street. Now, it's important to pin this whole wash in a single wash. Don't wait for it to dry and then paint a second layer. You will see very hot each line on that way. While the wash is still wet, and you paint, you can get very beautiful color transitions. Let's say it's evening time and the shadows are very long. The shadows are so long that you can actually see the cast shadow on the side of this building here. Maybe this shadow is so long that it's casting shadow on the side of the building here. It's going to look like this. This part here, it's not painted with shadow, so we suggest to as that this part of the building is actually on a different plane, it's not facing the same side as the walls that you see here. I can also paint the buildings here and background. As you can see, the colors that you use in this case is actually not that important. You can go on to add other colors later on for the buildings, but this is just a very quick way for you to practice creating shadows, painting shadows. The roof is not in shadow because the light source is pointing at a roof. However, I'm painting this shade here because the roof is dark color. I can use this watercolor brush to add more details. Maybe I can use this to paint the windows as well. Remember what I said about consistency. Here you can see this lit area here. The light seems to be coming from the space between these two building. However, there is no light here and you can see this wall is actually lit by light. If there's actually space between the two buildings, there should be a wall here that is lit by light. If there is inconsistency, the sketch is going to feel or look a bit weird. In this case, I may want to correct this sketch by painting this area with white wash. This is correction. Before you paint it's better to take a few minutes to actually plan all your sketch to see what are the areas that you should not paint over, because when you make corrections like this, it's not going to look as nice. White paint is not going to look the same as paperwhite, in his case, paperwhite still looks better. Try to avoid painting over white areas if you can. The other area I want to point your attention to is this shadow edge here. If you take a look at the reference photo, you can see this part of the beauty is actually curved. If it's actually curved, the shadow edge should not be sharp. Now, when I look at this sketch based on this wash, it suggests to me that the wall here is perpendicular to the wall here on the right side. If you want to create the illusion that this area is actually curved, you would have to create some gradation here for the shadow. The edge here should not be sharp. Let's see if this mistake can be corrected. I'm going to add some clean water here. Basically what I'm trying to do is to paint the shadow, to extend the shadow over here slightly and have the shadow blend into the white of the paper. Let's use the same shadow wash that I have earlier. As mentioned earlier, you should always try to paint your wash with a single wash. Here I'm painting a second layer. This second wash is going on top of the first wash, it's not going to look continuous. You can actually still see the edge there. This color is also not the same as the earlier color because I actually ran out of the earlier wash, so I had to re-mix or mix this color, try and mix the color in, so it's not going to look the same as the earlier wash, which is really nice. But now this is what I have, it doesn't look that great. Also, when you paint over your initial wash the second time, it's going to affect the vibrancy of the earlier wash. I'm not sure if this is good enough. This is what I have. I'm going to use this tissue to soften the edge to try and create this illusion that this part here is actually curved. This side here is actually curved. I'm not sure if I am able to create that illusion here. It's definitely easier to paint the shadows with the help of a reference photo or paint shadows on location. Now, if your reference photo doesn't have any shadows, and you try to create your own shadows, you may not be able to get the angle of the shadow or the length of the shadows right. That's the challenge when you create your own shadows. In this case here, I'm not sure if my illusion of this curved edge or curved corner actually works because this part of the sketch is actually on the right side. If I fit the water color here, it looks as if I'm trying to fade the watercolor, not because of the curve edge, but because I'm at the edge of the pitch. Painting shadows can also make your subject look more crowded. For example, with this earlier sketches of vehicles, you can see some of the vehicles, they have shadows beneath. Shadows don't always have to be black, they can be black, or they can be some darker color, but you can also use colors like vibrant colors for shadows. When you have shadows beneath the vehicles, it makes the vehicle feel crowded. It shows that a vehicle is on some surface, it's on the ground. But if you don't have shadows beneath, you can make it seem like the vehicle is floating in space, it's not on the ground. Not all subjects require shadows though, for example, if you are drawing or painting food, fruits, vegetables, sometimes you may not want the shadows because you want the colors to appear more vibrant. Even if you want to add shadows, you should not add those very dull shadows. You can add colorful shadows, in this case a colored wash as a shadow. 8. Light and Shadows bonus lesson: Let me show you how to mix shadow colors with watercolor. So here I have three cubes, painted with yellow, red, and blue. I'm going to mix the shadow color for yellow. To make it easier for you to mix colors, just stick with three primary colors. Just choose any yellow, red, and blue and use those three colors to mix your shadow colors. So I have a yellow cube here. To mix the shadow color, I would just mix the three colors together and paint over the yellow. Let's add the shadow to the yellow. I'm going to have some water in this mixing well here. Just add a tiny bit of paint. Don't add too much paint. Just see how vibrant or how strong the color is before you add more paint. I'm adding some red here, and I also want to add some blue. These are the three colors that I use to paint the cubes, and now I can use this wash here to paint over the cube here. Now for this to work, make sure that your cube is already dry. If your paint is not dry, the colors are going to blend and it's not going to look nice, it's going to look very messy. Here I've painted the shadow's side for this cube. I'm going to have a sharp edge here that comes down like this. You can change your shadow color to whatever color you want just by adding more color into the wash. You don't have to add more water. You just have to add some color into the wash. You can have it red or you can have it blue. It's up to you. Try to minimize the number of colors. Try to stick with a limited color palette. Otherwise, your colors are going to look very messy because there's just too many colors. Here you can see I've used too many colors. If you mess up your color mixing, don't worry, just draw your cube again and draw more cubes so that you can get more practice. Once you have mixed your colors, you may want to write down the names of the paint you used and also maybe the proportion of the paint you used to mix the shadows. In the future when you see the shadow color you like, you can remember the proportion of the paint you used because you have written it down. Next, let's paint the shadow color for this cube. I have already mixed color. I'm going to have more blue for this. Is this too dark? It looks like it's too dark. It looks all right. But I've mixed the colors to complete in the mixing well, that's why this wash is kind of dark. I think it looks all right here, except this part here which should not be painted, this should be white. So I tried to correct the mistake, but I cannot lift the colors completely. I may have to clean my brush and wet this area here to see if I can actually remove the paint. So this is one way you can correct a mistake, but whether this will work will depend on the paint you use. Certain paint will be very staining, as in the pigments will go into the paper so it would be impossible to scrape out the pigments because they are inside the paper. I guess it looks all right. Next, I'm going to use the same shadow here to paint over the ultramarine. Maybe I can have a bit more red here. Oops, too much red. That's why I tell you to not add so much paint in the first place. This is definitely too much red. If the color that you see is not the color that you want, so in this case, there is too much red, what you have to do is to just add more yellow and more blue to neutralize this. So if I add more yellow here, it's going to turn orange. But I've also added too much water, so it looks like I'm messing up this wash here. The right amount of water to use is quite important. Not to worry, we have a few more cubes here. So let's see what will happen if we paint the shadows while this cube is still wet. For the shadow color, I'm going to use pyrrol scarlet and ultramarine. The thing is when wash is still wet, when you paint the edge, the color is going to go over the edge, which is why I tell you to paint the shadow wash the second layer after your wash is dry. This is a pyrrol scarlet with ultramarine. This looks nice, but I've used too much ultramarine here, so the red is actually lost. You can have a green cube as well mixed with yellow and blue and for the shadows, I'm just going to add some red. This is not dark enough because I did not wait for the paint to dry. If I add more water now, the water or the shadow is going to spread into the green. Here I have an orange cube. To paint that orange shadow, I'm adding some blue and perhaps I've added too much blue that's why it's turning green here. So these are now dry and let's analyze the colors and the shadows. If you have a lot of examples painted, you can very easily compare and see what are the shadow colors you like. In this case, I actually prefer the shadow here because the shadow here looks like the shadow of yellow, whereas here it still works because I have this layer of color painted over the yellow cube. This shadow is interesting in the sense that there are color mixes within the shadow shape, so it looks nice as well. For these two cubes, they are painted in red, but here I've used more ultramarine. For this shadow here, I have used the mix of the three colors, which is why the color here looks brown. Here I would actually prefer this shadow color because the shadow is more vibrant, it's more colorful. It looks more interesting. Here we have a blue cube with orange shadow. I actually like this part here. I think this looks very much like the shadow of blue. However, when the shadow comes out, when you see the cast shadow, it doesn't look harmonious side by side. For the last two examples, the shadows are not very clear because you don't get the sense of light and dark. It's just different colors. When we talk about light and shadows, we are actually referring to the contrast created by the light and the shadow. Here we actually have more of a color contrast rather than light and dark. Here the color contrast is not that obvious. Here we can see very clearly that we have something that's lighter and this additional layer makes it darker so that we have good light and dark. These are the colors, the mixes, and the shadows you can get by just using three primary colors. There will be some limitations when it comes to using unlimited color palette. So the limitation here for this particular color palette is it's difficult to mix a vibrant green. If you want to have a vibrant green, I will probably swap out French ultramarine and use pale blue instead. For beginners, I highly recommend you use a limited color palette because when you are mixing with too many colors, it can get very confusing. Certain colors will work well together. There are certain color combinations that work really nicely together to produce very colorful or vibrant mixes or very beautiful grays or neutrals, and you have to find that out yourself. You have to discover which are the color combinations that work best for you. 9. Mixing Colours: In this lesson, I want to teach you the absolute basics when it comes to mixing colors using watercolors. More specifically, how do you get the colors to work well together and how to mix vibrant colors. You may have many colors in your watercolor box. However, you don't need to use that many colors. My recommendation is to just choose three primary colors and stick to using those three colors to mix whatever colors that you may need. If you are a beginner, when you try to mix colors, we have so many colors. It can get confusing very fast, and you also want to learn much about the characteristics of each specific color because each color actually has their own cooks. In this box I have, there are three yellows. This looks like an orange, but it's considered a warm yellow. I have five reds, and this looks like a purple or a magenta. This can be considered a cool red. These are warm reds, and this is like a mean red. I have two blues, one cool blue, federal blue, and one warm blue, French ultramarine. I have some other convenient colors like raw sienna for mixing skin tones, federal green, so that I don't have to mix greens with yellow and blue. I also have some oeuvre colors. When I mix colors, I would just choose three primary colors and stick to using those three colors. For example, I may choose, Hansa yellow medium, French ultramarine, and this warm red. Occasionally I may need to paint with purple. You cannot get a nice vibrant purple by mixing them this warm red and French ultramarine, so I may add a little bit of magenta or this purple color here. But since I've already chosen these three primary colors, I would use these three colors for the majority of the painting. All the colors that I use, that I may add later on, those will be used in much smaller portions. Sticking to using a limited color palette will make it so much easier for you to learn color mixing and understand the colors more thoroughly. How do you mix vibrant colors? Let's say you want to mix a vibrant orange. The easiest way is actually to choose primary colors that are close to the orange. In this case, you should choose a warm yellow and a warm red. If you want to mix a vibrant green, you should choose a yellow that has this cool bias or green bias and you should choose a blue that is cool in terms of color temperature or has this green bias to mix that vibrant green. For purple, you should choose a blue or a magenta or a red that is close to looking like a purple. If you choose the wrong colors for mixing, you may not be able to produce the colors you expect. For example, in here we know blue and red would give us purple. However, if you choose the wrong blue and a wrong red, you won't be able to get purple. For example, let me use this warm red here and I want to use this phthalo blue. You can see, I don't have a purple here. When you have a warm red and phthalo blue, this is the color you get when mixing. You can see the trace of phthalo blue here. After you test out your color mixes, it's good to write out the name of the color. I actually don't know what's this red because I have left that red in the box for too long and I forgot the color. Doesn't matter. It looks like a warm red to me. Warm red with phthalo blue. This is how it looks. You write down the name so they can remember the mixes. To mix a vibrant purple, as mentioned earlier with the help of the color wheel, you should choose a blue that is really close to looking like a purple. This is French ultramarine. It doesn't look like a purple, but on the color wheel it's actually close to a purple. Next, just choose a magenta or a cool red and you will be able to produce this very beautiful, more vibrant looking purple. Same thing, just write down the name of the mix on the paper so that you won't forget the colors you used. This is with magenta. Actually, I can not remember the name of this color as well. It looks like a [inaudible] purple. It could look like that. I really cannot remember the name of this color. Let's say you want to mix a vibrant green and you choose a warm yellow and French ultramarine, this is what you are going to get. This is new gamboge, this is the warm yellow and when you add ultramarine to it, you can see this green here, it looks very muted. This is the wrong combination to use when it comes to mixing of vibrant green. To mix a vibrant green, you have to use a cool yellow, cool in terms of color temperature, and a phthalo blue. Here you can see this green. It's very vibrant, more vibrant compared to the green you saw earlier, mixed with new gamboge and French ultramarine. Now, let's mix a warm orange, a really vibrant orange. This is new gamboge with warm red. This looks quite vibrant to me. If you want to mix a dull orange, again, just use colors that are further away on the color wheel. In this case, I'm using this yellow and maybe this cool red here. Now, sometimes the colors you use for mixing may give you surprises. In this case, actually I have no idea what this red is, but when I compare this two, both orange, they look vibrant enough for me. If I remember correctly, this red could be rose madder permanent. You may notice I can't remember some of the colors I have in this box. There are a few reasons. Some of the colors have not been used for very long time and I forgot what those colors are. This is not the primary box that I use for painting. I actually have another water color box that I usually use. There are just too many colors for me to remember what some of these causes are. If you have many colors and you want to remember what those causes are, I highly recommend you paint out the color swatches on your page so that you can remember the colors. Well, it's nice and convenient for you to have so many colors to use and to choose from. The thing is you don't actually need that many colors. All you need are the right colors and the right color combinations. Now, let's paint these sketches that I've drawn earlier. If you want to a paint over the same subjects, you can use reference photos I have provided to draw this. Let's start with the plant first. Unless you are going for realism, there is no need for you to mix the color to match the exact color that you see in real life. We know that the plant is green. All we have to do is to use a yellow and a blue to mix the plant. In this case, I'm going to use Hansa yellow medium, and phthalo blue. Notice, I actually painted the yellow first on the paper. I'm doing these so that I can have the water color mix on the paper. Sometimes you don't want to mix the colors completely in the palette. When you see color variations, it will make your wash look more interesting. I just paint this green part first. Next, I want to wash my brush completely to make it completely clean before I paint the red. For the red, I'm just using the color straight from the pen. If you want to get the most vibrant colors, you can use the colors straight from the pen. But sometimes when you use the color straight from the pen, the colors can be too vibrant and too glaring because in real life, colors are not that vibrant. Here I want to add some new gamboge here to get some variation so that it's not just red. We have some orange that blends into the red. Let's have a red here as well and some taps of red here as well. Maybe some orange. Let's put some water into this transparent vase. The blue that I used earlier, that's phthalo blue. Let's use the same blue. In this case, I want to make sure that the initial wash has actually dried. Otherwise, if I paint over the plants, the colors me actually blend. This is the same blue that I used to paint the green earlier. Here's the second sketch that I painted and you can see the colors here are all over the place. The colors also not that vibrant. The problem here is, I chose the wrong colors to begin with. I chose Hansa yellow medium, French ultramarine, which actually works well together. However, I have added this purple magenta, which doesn't work well with the other two colors. That's the result. If you choose the wrong colors at the start, it's really going to mess up your sketch. Next, let's paint this swing. I'm going to use the color that I don't like, which is the purple or magenta color that I used earlier to paint the sky here. I'm going to have this blend into some rose color, like the rose madder that you saw earlier. Then I'm going to fit this color into the white of the paper. We have to do this with a clean brush. I think this looks all right. Once the colors are set on the paper, I'll try not to disturb the wash again. We'll wait for this to dry while we work on some other sketch, so next I want to paint this, I want to paint some skin tones. To make skin tones, you can use raw sienna or yellow ocher and mix it with a little bit of red. Here, I'm testing my color mixes on this side. Just add a bit of color, just add a bit of red, don't add too much red, otherwise, it makes me become too red. Here, I have this beautiful skin tone. If you look at the reference photo, this lady is wearing a dress that is lavender or purple in color, but I already have purple on the side, so in this case, I just want to maybe have this in orange, because it would compliment the purple very nicely. You can brush here. This is color straight out from the pan. I want to add some red, just a light wash of red, just to maybe make some of the areas more interesting with this color blend. For the hair, I'm going to use a new gum brush with that red that you saw earlier and mix it with some ultramarine and see what we have here. I think this works, so let's paint here. I'm painting the hair using a limited color palette. The hair looks red to me, but it's okay. We have to contrast of the light against dark. Next we have a photo of this buildings in the far background. We have some green here in the foreground, and some flowers. For this sketch, I'm thinking of whether I should use the warm red or the rose madder color. Let me try rose madder. Let me try this color. I think it looks all right, it looks fine, it looks good. I can use this to paint the flowers as well. You can have more paint and well, less paint, more water, to make the wash look interesting. I'm going to have some depths off colors in the background as well. Next, let's go back to the swing. I'm jumping all over the place because when you paint watercolor, you have to wait for the paint to dry, and while waiting for the paint to dry, I usually work on something else first. This is the purple that we used earlier and to mix the black, the much darker color, I'm going to use maybe this yellow here and see how it looks, and phthalo blue. If it's too green then, you should add more red to it, or purple in this case. Does it look to green? Let's test it. Actually, I should be testing this on a scrap piece of paper, but let's just test it and see how it looks. I think it looks all right. You definitely need to use the purple that you used earlier to mix this color. I just realized that there are some lights here which are supposed to be in white, I accidentally painted over the glowing white lights earlier. This is the black that we can get. This is not exactly black. To mix a black, you can mix three primary colors together, but depending on the primary colors you use, depending on the three colors you use, you may or may not get a true black, but most of the time you don't want a true black, like a black black because it's very boring. What you want is to have a color that is dark enough to represent black, but you can still see some colors within the black. That type of black would be nice. I think this works. Next, let's jump back to painting this area here, so for the green here, I'm thinking of using hansa yellow medium and French ultramarine. Let me just test it at the bottom here first and see how it looks. The green does not look that great, so let's stick with hansa yellow medium, and phthalo blue. Once again, I have more hansa yellow on the paper and I'm going to add some phthalo blue. I'm just painting the leaves, the greens, this part here is not dry yet. There will be a lot of oops moments when I'm painting because I'm quite impatient. Sometimes I just can't wait for the paint to dry before I go in with the second layer. That's why there are a lot of oops moments. Here you can see the contrast of the red, the rose madder, against the green and it works really nicely. Some of the greens will be really dark and to mix the really dark greens, we can mix this green with the rose madder color that we used earlier. For this sketch, I'm still using three primary colors hansa yellow medium, phthalo blue, and this rose madder, so this is the mix of the three colors. This still looks too green to me, so I may want to add more rose madder to make it even darker. You can see once I add the rose madder, it becomes much darker now. I will want to use this to paint around the shapes, the flower petals. This will create more contrast. Here you can see the color contrast, we have green against this pink or magenta, but here we have the light and dark contrast. There are different ways to create contrast. When painting, be sure retain the shape of the flowers. Some of the white looks nice, so I'm just going to leave those areas white. The last thing I want to do is to paint some shadows over this area. Let's have the light source coming from the left, so we have shadows on this side of the wall. This is a mix of hansa yellow medium with the rose madder color. I think it looks all right, I just need to add some more green behind. Make sure the wet paint don't mix together. This green as you can see, it's too blue, so I need to add a bit more, yellow, a bit more hansa yellow. By using just this three primary colors, you don't have much to think about when comes to color mixing. You only have three colors to choose from, which makes color mixing so much easier. The last thing to do is to write down the names of the colors that you have used, so that you can remember the colors in the future. If you see the color mixes or the combination you like, you can reuse those colors again. Out of these sketches, this is the one that I do not like because the colors are very dull, very washed out, colors are not vibrant compared to other sketches, and I even wrote the name of the color wrong, so I have to cross that out. I like this, even though I've used just magenta and rose madder and phthalo blue, it still works. It can work if you use a limited color palette and this, the skin tone mixed with raw sienna or yellow ocher, with red, and this is hansa yellow medium with a warm red. Here, this color combination of hansa yellow medium, phthalo blue, and rose madder is similar to this color combination. The only difference is here I've used warm red, here I've used cool red. This is rose madder, and that's probably pyro scarlet or pyro red. This color combination also works. You really have to find out the color combinations that work for you by exploring all the different possible mixes with the colors that you have in your watercolor box. All right, to conclude, using a limited color palette really helps to simplify the color mixing process, and I highly recommend you test out as many color combinations as possible using the colors you already have to discover what are your favorite color mixes because not all color combinations work well together. 10. Perspective: In this lesson, I'm going to teach you how to think of perspective, and how you can use perspective to make your drawings look more three-dimensional and believable. I won't to be able to cover perspective in great detail in such shorter lesson. I'll just be covering the absolute basic fundamentals of perspective you should know. If you want to learn more about perspective, you can check out my other comprehensive course on perspective for beginners. Let's start with some basic rules of perspective. Perspective we will change depending on your viewpoint. For example, right now I'm standing in front of my table, looking down, and I can see top of the table and the front of the table. If I were to squat down, now I can see the bottom side of the table. If I were to move to the right side of the table while standing, I can see the top, the front, and the side of the table. Depending on where you are looking at the table, the perspective will change. There are two ways to draw this table. You can draw this from observation, or you can draw this from imagination by constructing this table using the rules of perspective, which is what I'm going to teach you. First thing I want you to do is to draw a horizontal line on your page using a pencil. The line will be about one-third of the page away from the edge. Just draw that horizontal line with very faint of a minimal pressure. Now this horizontal line is the line where all the vanishing points will be. The vanishing points are the points that affect all objects in space. Let's place a dot, maybe here on the page. This will be the vanishing point. If we are drawing boxes, we're going to be drawing a lot of boxes and rectangles. Let's draw a rectangle first. All the diagonal lines will point to the vanishing point. Let's draw this diagonal line to the vanishing point and we have another diagonal line here to the vanishing point. Let's close this up and let's draw this diagonal line, two-dimension point as well, and close this up. Now we have a block in perspective. If we have our rectangle here, we can draw the diagonal line to the vanishing point as well. If we have a block right up here, we can draw the diagonal lines to the vanishing point as well. As I am drawing, you can see I am using this movement, you point the diagonal lines to the vanishing point. For this particular block that I'm currently drawing, the horizontal line is actually behind the block. This is one-point perspective because there is only one vanishing point. Let's say I want to draw the table that I showed you earlier. Let's draw the top of the table first. This edge here will point to the vanishing point. This line here will point to the vanishing point. We can close up the top of the table. Let's give this table some thickness. We have the legs of the table here. We have legs behind as well. For the legs behind, they are also affected by the vanishing points. If we draw this imaginary line to the vanishing point, the bottom of the leg should be around here. For this other leg, the bottom should be here. This is our table from earlier. We have this connector. This connector will also point to the vanishing point. You have to draw that diagonal line to the vanishing point. Now let me show you two-point perspective. As the name suggests, there are two vanishing points. Let's place the other vanishing point here. Now I want to draw this block, this rectangular block again. Let's draw it at the same height. This time we have the bottom line here pointing to the vanishing point. Next we have the line here pointing to the vanishing point as well. For the other side of the cube or this rectangular block, it's actually not a cube, it's a rectangular block, we have the diagonal line pointing to the vanishing point. This can be an office building with a lot of windows. It can be an office block, for example. All the windows on this building will be affected by the vanishing point. When you draw all those windows, you have to draw the lines pointing to the finishing point. Let's have another rectangular block here, a flat one. For this flat rectangular block, we have the diagonal line here. This one will go here. This will be here. That diagonal line will be here. This line here will also point to the finishing point on the right side. This line here will point to the vanishing point on the left side. Now we have this floating rectangular block above the horizon line. Next, let's redraw this table now using two-point perspective. We are going to draw the top of table first. Let's draw the long edge here to the vanishing point on the right side and the short edge will go to the vanishing point on the left side. We have the other long edge here and the other short edge of the table. Let's give the table some thickness and we can draw the legs. For the other leg, we need to find out where the leg will end. If we draw an imaginary line to the vanishing point, it seems like it's going to be somewhere here. I made a mistake here with this thought, but the leg is actually higher. For this leg here, let's draw the bottom edge here first. It's like this. We can draw the leg like this. Again, we can have the connector here at the bottom and the connector here at the bottom. Here we have a table and perspective. This is the very basics of perspective. We have the horizon line, and we have all the vanishing points on the horizon line. Let's say I have another chair here, which is placed at an angle from the table. The vanishing point for this new chair is going to be different compared to this table. However, the vanishing point will still be on the horizon line. This will be the vanishing point for the chair. Let's use this vanishing point and maybe this vanishing point for the new chair that we are going to draw. Let's draw this chair here. That diagonal line will go to the vanishing point. This line will go to the vanishing point. This is just a very simplified chair, so this diagonal line here, this is the top of the chair. This will go to this vanishing point, and this line will go to this vanishing point. We have the legs, make sure the legs end at the correct distance away from the edge of the chair here, and we have this chair, this leg is behind the table. We have another leg here. Using the help of this VP, the vanishing point, we know that the leg should end somewhere here. I've just marked out two sets of vanishing point. We have VP and VP2. If the objects share the same vanishing point they are going to appear parallel to one another in the space. For example, if I draw a cabinet here beside the table, and this cabinet shares the same vanishing point as the table, and it will look as if this cabinet is placed beside the table. It's parallel to the table. You can see these two lines, they are parallel. How can we use perspective in our drawing? Let's take a look at some of our earlier sketches. For this sketch here, which is of this very tall building, the vanishing points are here and somewhere here, they are very wide apart, very far apart, and if we are to draw this on-location we don't need to know perspective. We can just draw all these angles from observation by measuring them. However, is going to be quite challenging to get the angles accurate. To help make your sketch more accurate when you're drawing this on location, you can find the vanishing point, and when you draw those diagonal lines you just have to point those diagonal lines to the vanishing point. You don't have to measure the angles individually. This will make it easier and faster for you to complete our sketch. It's also going to make your sketch look more accurate. For this building, the vanishing points are also quite far apart, in this case, outside of the pitch. If I draw this from imagination I would have to visualize where the vanishing point is outside of the pitch, and when I'm drawing this I will always be thinking about the vanishing point and how I can join the lines, draw the lines to the vanishing point. There are two sets of vanishing points for this particular scene. One set belongs to this building here, and the other set actually belongs to this building in the background. We can see as we point the diagonal lines they will converge somewhere here. This is one of the vanishing points for this side of the building. Let's look at this doodle that I drew in an earlier course. For this standalone building, there is actually no perspective because when I measure angles here you can see these lines are just horizontal, and for the diagonal lines here, these two are horizontal, this points down, so the perspective of this building is not very obvious or there is just no perspective at all. Now I'm going to redraw this using perspective to show you the difference. Generally speaking, if there are two vanishing points, they are usually quite far apart. If you draw a subject with two vanishing points that are too close together the subject to your drawing will appear very squashed. Before I draw the two-storey building, I want to draw the horizon line first, and in this case, I want to place the horizon line nearer to the bottom of the pitch. The horizon line remember is where all the vanishing points are. The horizon line can sometimes be used interchangeably with the eye level. If you place the horizon line nearer down the pitch, it will mean that your eye level is quite close to the ground. If you place the horizon line near the top of the pitch, it would mean that your eye level is very far away from the ground level. It can mean that you are at the top of a tall building, for example. In this case, I want to place the horizon line near the bottom here and I'm going to extend this horizon line to the left side here. For this two-storey shophouse, I'm going to have one vanishing point right here, another vanishing point right here. I've placed a vanishing point quite far apart, and I'm going to have their vertical line, each of the building here. Let's just start drawing straight away. By having the edge of the building here and the two vanishing points here, I will see more of the front of the building and less of the side of the building. Let's draw the top. Let's draw the big shapes first before we divide this building into two stories. This diagonal line at top will go down like this. Make sure this line points to the vanishing point, and we have the second floor here. Make sure this line points to the vanishing point as well. All these angles are actually different. If you measure the angles, they are actually different. They may look very similar when you look at the drawing up-close, but when you look at the drawing from far away they are actually different. Next, I wanted to draw this extension, this line here, because this is something that protrudes out. This line here will actually go to the VP here, and this will come down. We have this little extension here, and I did not allocate enough. I actually drew a line here, which should not be the case. Anyway, let's continue. This line here will go down here. I should have used the red pencil to mark out this and leave this white. Anyway, let me continue. This angle is already wrong because it's pointing at the wrong vanishing point. It should be like this. If you draw the wrong angle when you have already placed your vanishing point, it's going to look weird, the angle is going to look off if you draw the angle inaccurately. Let's draw this side here pointing down, another wrong angle. Let me just switch the VP to this point here since I keep drawing the wrong angle, now we can draw this vertical line down, and we can draw this diagonal line to the VP here. This line here will go to the VP as well, and there is this awning here. This awning will go to the vanishing point on the left side. We can draw another [inaudible] here and this will be the base of the building. This line will join dimension point on the left side. Now that you have the big shapes drawn, you can actually just fill in the details. It's going to be way easier. Let's draw the windows for example. Let's divide this rectangle into a few blocks and for the windows we've pinned. Once you get the perspective, right for this shape or the details within this shape will follow the same perspective, so it's going to be much easier. You have to draw the big shapes first before you draw the details. [NOISE] Let's draw an air conditioning unit here that comes out. This air conditioning unit will go to the diagonal lines, would go to the vanishing point and this diagonal line here will go to this vanishing point. Everything you draw in this scene will be affected by a perspective. Let's continue. This line here will go down to the vanishing point. I'm going to use some corrections to correct this. Should I correct this line to erase this line? Maybe I don't need to, but I do need to erase this particular line here. I'm only doing this because I am not going to be applying watercolor over the sketch. If you do this, the watercolor is not going to work well over the white. That's why it's good to have some drafting lies on your pitch first before you ink it. Let's say there is this sign that comes out on the right side, so this sign is going to look like this. This diagonal line will go to the VP on the left and this will go to the VP on the left as well and this diagonal line here will go to the VP on the right so that we can have some thickness for this signboard. We can write the letters here. Oops, I spelled that incorrectly. Let's draw another window here and this window has this blind. It has this blind. We have this window in the background and we can draw the [inaudible] here on the awning. We can place some plants on the ground. When you are drawing the lines near the vanishing, when you're drawing lines near the horizon line, those lines you see this line here. Those lines are going to be horizontal, so this line is going to be horizontal. If you draw the lines higher than the vanishing point, for example, let's say there is a vending machine here, then this line here is no longer horizontal. This line will go to the vanishing point and this line here on the right side will go to the vanishing point on the right side. This line will go to the VP on the right side. Here we have a vending machine. Let's say there is a trash bin on the right side. Let's place a trash bin here. This line here will also be affected by the VP on the left side and this line will be affected by the VP here. Place a lot of wheels for the trash bin. I'm going to draw the interior of this shop as well. This will be the edge of the wall, the ceiling and the wall inside. There are some shelves and the shelves will also be, let's see, am I doing this correctly? This line should be like this. This line should follow the top of the ceiling, We can have some shelves inside. There are some items on the shelves. Everything you draw inside the shop should follow the VP on the left and on the right side as well. Let's have another shelf here. This sketch is almost done. I just need to add some details. If you want to practice perspective, you don't have to draw so much details. You can actually just draw the blocks. Just practice drawing the block so that you don't have to waste time drawing all these details like what I've done. This will allow you to get more practice with perspective rather than practice with drawing details. This is the sketch that I have. Let's put a window here on the right side and make sure the perspective line, the diagonal lines go to this VP on the right side. All these individual lines here are all affected by perspective and you have to draw them pointing to the VP, the [inaudible] point on the right side. This is the sketch that I have and you can see it's more dimensional compared to the earlier sketch. The last thing I want to do is to add some values because this is now just all line art. It looks flat, so I'm just going to add some black to create contrasts in certain areas to make some of the areas thin out. The letters now are not very clear. Let me just make this whole thing black and write or draw the letters with white later on. Maybe a touch of color with this sketch may make the sketch look more interesting. This is Posca opaque marker. With light and shadows, tonal values, contrast, perspective, you can get your sketch to look three-dimensional and more believable. This is how this two-story building looks now compared to the earlier sketch without any perspective, and it doesn't look much better here. 11. Bye: So far we have filled up 3/4 of this sketchbook and that's quite amazing. I hope you have enjoyed this course as well as the two earlier courses. Feel free to share me pictures of your sketchbooks if you want any critiques. I can give you suggestions on how you can improve your sketches. Don't forget to leave this course a review and see you in the next and the last course in the sketchbooking series. Bye.