People: Intuitive Sketching with Watercolor

1. Introduction: Would you like to learn to draw human figure, but find the subject too complex and intimidating? Do you want to add human figures to your landscapes or urban scapes? But hesitate to do so in case they don't turn out right. In this master class, I will show you how to easily sketch people without years of studying anatomy and proportions. This will be an intuitive process where we will use such skills as sight measuring and additive sketching to create human figures in perspective and in motion. My name is Sina Anis. This is my master class, people intuitive sketching with watercolor. The main goal of this class is to improve hand eye coordination. And super important skill. I will show you how to eyeball the proportions and angles to capture the three dimensional object on paper. In this case, it will be the walking people. But after this class, you will be able to sketch any subject that you like. In this class, we will be using watercolor without a preliminary pencil drawing. All we will need will be sketching paper on brush and one color watercolor. This fun exercise will improve our control skills and ability to balance the paint and water mixture, which will mean better water color skills in general. This exercise is also a great warm up before a painting session. If you pick a subject and sketch for about 05:10 minutes, then when you start painting, you will feel a lot more confident and it will be easier to create. I guarantee that without further delay. Let's get started. 2. Painting supplies and reference: The paper doesn't really matter. You can use your sketch book if you want. I'm going to use Bristol. It's just kind of thick, smooth paper. Anything you have will be good. I am going to use just one color of water color. This is mineral violet by halbe. A brush or two. I have a couple of my Asian art brushes prepared here. I like them because also if I wet them, they come to a really nice point. Even though they're kind of old and worn. I stain them with inks, but it's alright, it doesn't matter. So you want something flexible and pointy. Just if you have a good round brush or something like that, it will work. We will not be doing a preliminary pencil sketch, but we will need a pencil. I'll show you why we're going to draw the horizon line and I'm going to use a marker. This is just a permanent marker with the chisel tip. I like that one. You can do thick lines or thin lines with it, basically Sharpie. I have a Sharpie here too. We can use a Sharpie or something like that. And we're going to do some, a little bit of work with opaque white ink or gas, whatever you have available. A good option, I got all these for free from unsplash and I just combine them together so it's easy to see. And you can see it on my screen. So here's our reference and without further ado, let's get started on sketching our people. 3. Figures in perspective: How to create perspective when you sketch people. The interesting thing is that all the heads of people, when we're looking at a crowd, let's say, and you can see it really well in this photo. There is some camera **** distortion. But basically all the heads of the people are on one line. Let me bring it a little bit closer to the camera because we're looking at people. Our eyes are on the same level as people's eyes. If we're standing, the heads will be on our eye level. Obviously, people are taller or shorter, approximately the same level, but depending how close or far away from us they are, the legs will be at different levels. That's what creates perspective when you sketch a crowd. When you sketch several people, if you start moving the heads, you just making people taller, shorter. But if you move their feet, where their feet are, you paint them closer or further away from you. Does that make sense? You will see it when I start sketching. I'm going to start with individual figures. Let's start with this couple. To make my task a little bit easier, I am going to sketch that level where the heads are going to be. Use a ruler. Just put a little pencil line there. Another important thing before we start that, I need to mention some people feel a little intimidated painting people. I know it's a complicated subject, like the human form is pretty complex, but we need to forget about that. That's human figure. We need to look for shapes, right? And that's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to look at the shapes and try to recreate them on paper, simply and in a very abstract manner. And I'm going to start with the head, and then I'm going to use that head that I will sketch as reference and add everything else to that head. And you will see what I mean in a second. So let's get started. He's wearing a hat, so I go from side to side. I'm not trying to sketch like his head and then, you know, I'm not thinking, these are the shoulders, this is the arm. I'm working with a shape, so there is a big shape here. Let me stop for a second. Like I said, I started with his head. That was my reference shape, right? I don't have anything on paper, so I need to start somewhere. I started with a head and I made it this size. My next step needs to be adding this shape to this shape, and making the right size that I have something on paper. Let's evaluate. If this is the size that I sketched, I can tell that maybe this needs to go out further. Then this shape needs to be wider, this side needs to be wider too. You see, it's not that I know what size to make things. I constantly evaluate what I'm doing in relationship with what I already have on paper. There will be shape here, evaluating the angles and the distances, and creating shapes in relationship to other shapes. Okay. So this is my first, the interesting thing about also that I noticed because usually the light comes from above somewhere. The sun is above our head, the top will be lighter. And then it, you can even see it in the photo, see how he's getting darker towards the bottom. It always helps to make the figure look more realistic and more relatable if we do that with paint on paper. Just a little bit of second layer here. Okay? And let's paint the other. I'm not going to say figure the other shape. I already have something on paper here, so I need to paint this shape in relationship to this one, right? It's my life is already getting a little bit easier because I have something to go by, something to relate to. Feet are probably the hardest to get right, especially in angle when people are walking away from us. The less you do, the better. Just don't go into details with the feet and you'll be fine. Sounds counterproductive. People can guess everybody has feet, so people know they're there. Now I have this shape, I need to paint the head in relationship to this shape and make it hopefully the right size. I see that, you know, this shape needs to be wider. Now that I'm evaluating the result, I can add a little bit here. Okay, so this is my first figure. Wasn't too hard, was it? The important thing, I'm not painting like the head and here's the shoulder and here's the central line and I divide it into ads. Right? Like we were taught in the art school. I'm just looking at the shape. I'm evaluating how tall it is, how wide it is, if the top, the head is this size or the shoulders wide enough. So just working abstractly and looking for distances and angles, right? Let's be in the dog. You know, it's a shape too. Kind of fun little shape here. What else can we do? Let's do another shape. Here's this girl with a backpack. Let's paint her. Now I will show you that theory about putting all the heads on the same level. So I'm going to put her here and I'm going to start approximately at the same level. She has kind of hair blown in the wind in every which direction. Let's do her shoulders, her head a little bit bigger. Here's her backpack, again, looking for shapes, looking for distances, and not putting in too much detail, especially on the bottom. Her feet are unfortunately kind of cut off, so we need to just hint at something. It's usually not a good idea to try to invent information, it's probably not going to work. So here she is. So what happened here? Her head is approximately on the same line I made her very tall. I raised the top of the head a little bit, but her legs are coming lower, right, than this guy's legs. And what does it look like? It looks like she's closer to us, right? So this is what I was talking about, the perspective. So the heads will all be approximately on the same level. So we can tell this guy is tall, his wife is shorter than him. And the girl is tall and she's closer to us. And these people are walking kind of in front of her, right? So they're further away from us. So that's how we create perspective when we catch people. If you have a one point perspective of a street or something like that and you want to liven it up and add some figures. So keep this in mind, that's how you would do it. If you make the legs lower, people will appear closer to us. You know, if you want to paint them further away, you will just make the legs at a higher level. With the street, it will be a little bit more tricky because you will have to make those people proportionate to the architecture. But you know nobody said that perspective is easy and it will all come with experience. Let's do another one. There's this girl with the umbrella. So the photo is kind of a little dark, but you have the reference. I'm going to paint her, I think I'm going to make her kind of in between these two people, right? So I will need to make her about this tall. Let's see how this works out. So the umbrella will be above her head, but I'll make her a little bit than the people, the umbrella and her hair is sticking from underneath it. And I'm going to paint. Just throw on a shape, like I said, we can always make corrections, right? We can add a little bit, just rough something in. She has this bag in her arm, here's her elbow, and here's the shape, the coat. So you see, I'm not trying to be precise from the very beginning because that will be very hard to do. I just feel my way around the figure and then if necessary, I make corrections. Yeah, this is giant foot. Let's make it a little slimmer even though she does have big shoes on. Okay, and now let's find some precision. Let's give her darker here, so we can see the umbrella casts a shadow on her right. There will be slightly lighter shape here, and there will be the top of the umbrella. Okay? Okay, So here's another shape that we created, so we can tell that she's kind of in between these people and this girl, right? Because that's where her legs end. I have a little bit of room here and I think an interesting thing to try guys, will be to paint these kids. Now we have people that are actually shorter and to make them realistic, if we put their heads on this level, they're going to be either very far away from us or they will look like adults, right? It's not going to work. So if I want to paint those kids next to this woman and make them look like her kids legs need to be on the same level as hers. But the heads will be lower, right, because they're short. Let's try it and see if this works out. I don't know how tall I want to make them, but something like this, there will be independent kids. I'll make the walk maybe hand in hand with each other. Kids proportions will be different, of course, from adults, but we don't care. We're painting shapes. We're not worried about calculating the proportions or we're not thinking about anatomy or anything like that. We're just painting shapes. Here's the little girl makers dark, maybe make crore dark. Okay. So here are the kids and let's see where it looks like they're walking. They're walking next to this woman, right? And you can tell that because they're shorter. They're kids, they're not as tall as the adults. Okay. So that's how we will paint the kids. 4. Sketching a crowd of people: Okay, so here's our crowd. If we look at the heads, like I mentioned, they look a little bit, that line looks warped. I think it's actually camera **** warping. The photography used obviously a wide angle **** to capture all these people. We can kind of do the same thing if we wanted. I will draw the line of those heads right here and let's give it a gentle warp. It doesn't have to be super straight, that will make it more kind of natural looking. There are some people that stand out like they're closer to us so we can try to capture them. They're also walking kind of at an angle diagonally, right, so there's a lot of stuff going on, but let's see if we can capture it for our exercise. I'll just start with this figure on the left. And actually let's start with this figure in the center. And so we can start from the center and go left and right. Again, trying not to concentrate on details. She's carrying something in her hand, capturing those proportions and putting the feet in the right spot will be especially important for a crowd, right? So then we will create realistic crowd. We need to watch where the feet are and where the heads are. Okay, This is one, then I'm going to do this guy, he's closer to us, maybe slightly larger head and it's hard to capture, to do the faces. I just don't do them either because we just don't have the scale is not large enough to show faces. This guy will be, feet will be at a lower level. Of course, it's a candid photo and everybody was in motion. And sometimes people's poses look a little funny, awkward, maybe hands somewhere, but it's okay. We can also add stuff or take stuff away. Do whatever we need to do for our purposes. I'm going to do this. Yeah. See, she she's pointing with her hand, which is fine. Okay. Now that we sketch the key figures Right. That we see in the reference, we can fill it in in between. So that's what I wanted to show you, how to do that crowd, you can treat the rest of the people as one shape as well. Because when you sketching, you're not going to do like every single figure separately. We need to simplify somehow. But because we know how to create the proportion and how to create the perspective, it's a lot easier for us now to show something that there are some people down there, see how I'm connecting it all together, and there will be some people here. Just another minute, and instead of just three figures, I have a whole crowd going on here. Let's said some people behind this lady. There's a figure here. I think you see my point, right? By moving the legs and making people further and further away from us, that way we can create the perspective. What color will be tricky to use alone for these exercises if you're having a little bit of trouble like mine is with this crowd especially is becoming pretty messy. We will go to markers, the couple guys walk in side by side. Let's just do this little group with the distance, the last ones, and we will move on to markers. Almost everybody is wearing pants. A lot of opportunities to paint people in skirts. But if you go to Sp and just put in people crowd and search box, you will find a bunch of photo free photos that you can use for practice in this last guy. 5. Adding shadows and background: If you wanted to turn this into a sketch, let's say a couple of things we can do. Let me show you real quick, I'll use this brush. First of all, shadows will really help us to create even more interest and volume in the painting. Shadows are always good. We can also do something like this in reverse. Of course, it's hard to tell who is who and which shadow goes where. But we can do something very quick and abstract here, because this is one point perspective. This is the perspective point where all the lines converge. We need to go in this direction on this side, okay. We can very quickly do something for the hint at the surrounding area. I'm not even worried about showing buildings or anything, but just something real quick. You see, I'm already getting more or less finished sketch. I will need to use my marker to work on it some very quickly and very easily, I created a beginning of a painting, right? Let me set this aside. Let me work on the first one here. We can do the same thing. Maybe some shadows when they're coming towards us. Little looks really nice. You can even pull some paint out of the figures. We can give them a horizon. I don't know, maybe there are trees or something in the distance. Just creating some atmosphere, some visual interest in this skitch. And you will understand why I'm trying to do this in just a second. Paper towel is interesting to use because you can do a little more texture with it. Right? I often kind of blot things with a paper towel. 6. Adding linework and highlights: I think line and wash is a very suitable technique for this makes our life a lot easier, right? Watercolor eating details with watercolor can be tricky. Not so much tricky, but it takes a bit of time. So if you're out somewhere sketching, or you're just practicing, I would do the initial shapes with brush because brush gives you a lot more freedom and it requires a little bit more control on our part. Because we're controlling the bristles, we also have to control paint and water. But after you did this, it's a good idea to take a marker and just go over your sketch one more time and give it a little more precision that will train your eye to go from overall shape to more detailed view. So my recommendation would be to grab a marker and go over your sketch one more time. All right, let's work a little bit on precision of our photo. So the thing with line to keep in mind, we want to show the darkest elements on the figure. The sun is coming from above and you can clearly see, especially on this figure because it's all black. Like on top of the head there is the light. And on top of the shoulders and on the arm here. So we don't want to put the black line there, right? We most likely even will need to use our opaque white or white marker or something like that to add those highlights to give our figure even more volume. So the dark lines need to go in the darkest areas. So most likely kind of underneath the form or in the places where the two forms touch and form a dark accent. So something to keep in mind. I know it's very tempting to just go around the figure and add the black line everywhere. But it's not going to work because that's not what the figure looks like, interrupting the line. A better. We're going to make her talk on the cell phone. She's gesturing at something, but it doesn't look natural. See, I wanted to draw a line here. But this is the surface that gets a little bit of light. I don't want to put that dark line there. And this can be all dark. This is fine, because this doesn't catch any light anymore. Okay. So you see just a couple of lines and I'm getting a lot more precision and it looks a lot better. Let's do this one looking for dark shapes, leaving some things to imagination to viewers, discretion, the people in the distance. First of all, the lines, if we want to give them a little precision, the lines need to be a lot lighter. But maybe we can even leave them as just watercolor because they're further away from us. We don't see the details, details here. This figure is closer so we can work on it a little bit more. This is the time when we can actually make some corrections. If we messed up the scale or something like that, we can fix it a little bit. Somebody walking behind there, this figure is all in light, so I'm not even going to touch it. Let's give this a little precision in this case, okay? And the people, I guess they can be, can touch them up a little bit just to finish up our sketch. And if your figures start to blend with the background a little bit, just grab some opaque white. I'll show you just a couple of breast strokes. If I start adding highlights, you will see a huge difference. See when I started in the highlights, the first of all separated from the background and they became more three dimensional. So this will be a couple things we can do to make the sketch more finished. All right, I can work on these guys for a second. Let's just do the highlights on the guys. If I add a bit of a little bit more information right on the guys, shoulders on the hand. Even without the marker, we can, we can achieve more volume by playing with light and shadow. Okay, so something like this, ma, the sketch, a lot more interesting. 7. Summary and class project: Hopefully you will agree with me. This is a fun exercise, very useful for hand eye coordination. Sketching people will help you to get over that reservation that maybe you have about painting. People, you know, a lot of artists think I need to study anatomy. I need to, you know, practice from a live model. Which is all great if you can do that if you have time for that. But to start sketching people and adding them to your paintings, or just doing maybe quick fun sketches like I showed you. Really don't need much. You just need to look for shapes, for light and shadow, and evaluate the distances and start somewhere and then build the shape around that reference point. I usually use the head, or you can go from the bottom. I think from the head it will be easier because that's position in the head on the same line. That's how we create perspective. So great exercise, but no preliminary drawing. Just do it freehand and that will give you the biggest benefit in practicing for the class project. Sketch individual figures or whole crowd working from the reference photos that I provided in the class materials, you can use any color of water color that you have. Any markers or even soft pencils and also any opaque white paint that you have to bring out the details. Just remember, work directly with the brush with no preliminary pencil drawing. This exercise is about freedom and not about details of precision. If you prefer, you can go out and snap your own photos and work from them and post your work in the project section of this class. I would love to see what you created. Please visit my Youtube channel to find more tutorials, including ones on sketching and painting people in their faces. Examples of my art and links to my social media pages are on my website, Tamra.com Thank you so much for watching this class, and I hope you will check out my other classes here on skill share. See you there.