Transcripts
1. Welcome to Guanajuato!: Hi, I'm Amy Stewart. I'm a writer and I'm also an artist. And when I travel, I always take my sketchbook and draw all the places I've been. So right now I am in Guanajuato, Mexico, which has got to be one of the most beautiful, colorful cities in the world. And I'm going to show you the basics of what I do when I'm out sketching for fun on vacation. Um, in this class, I will show you the art supplies that I take with me. I'll show you how I set myself up to draw so that I can really be anywhere and make a sketch. And I'll walk you through the very simplest kind of travel, sketching that anyone can dio any beginner. And that is a real straightforward facade of a building or a landscape. So let's get started
2. Your Project : for your project. We're gonna draw this building, which I can see from my rooftop here in Guanajuato. I'm going to give you a photograph of it that you can download and work from. But I also encourage you, Teoh, use your own photographs or go out into the world and just draw something in your neighborhood for practice. What I mean by a facade is that we're looking straight on at the building, so we don't have to get into the rules of perspective just yet. And it makes it a lot easier to do even if you're beginning artist. But I'm also going to give you, uh, an image of a landscape toe work from because of the exact same principles that we used for a building facade we can also use for a landscape.
3. Sketching Supplies: Okay, let me start by showing you what supplies I take with me. And you've got lots of flexibility about what kind of art supplies you want to travel with . And I'll give you a list in the project. Resource is with lots of options. So my main sketchbook is this is a mole skin mole skin. Wolski May. I could never figure out how they want me to pronounce it. It's a watercolor sketch book. And, um, let me turn it right side up so you can actually see what I do in here. So this is a nice size for me to carry fits in my bag. It's pretty lightweight, but the papers good and thick so that it can handle lots of water color, other drawing, um, surfaces that I might bring with me sometimes all bringing a little set of watercolor postcards. If I really want to travel light one day, maybe I won't carry my sketchbook, and I'll just take thes instead. And another one is if I really, really want to travel light. Let's say we're out for a long day walking, and I just don't want to carry anything at all with me I'm worried about my bag. Getting too heavy than a little tiny paper journal like this and a ball point pen is all I'll take, but you'll be surprised at what you can accomplish with just those simple drawing tools. Here's I was sitting at a cafe and I drew a little picture of a lamppost, and then I just drew a little picture of the park around the cafe where we were sitting. So even something like this will totally work for drawing now. The next thing I always bring with me is a good mechanical pencil and an eraser. I use my pencil just to make the very light outline of what I'm gonna draw to make sure everything is in place, whether I'm going in first with pan or watercolor, and I like thes mechanical pencils with the clicker on the side and HB leads, which are the very lightest leads, they don't leave a lot of mark, and they're very easy to a race. The other thing for an eraser is that I bring these need herbal gum erasers with me because you just can shape them and turn them inside out and get a clear side to them, and I keep those. And I keep those in one of these little plastic cups just because these erasers air sticky and they can get kind of gunky and get all over everything for pens. If you're just getting started, you might want to just use regular waterproof pigment drawing pins, and I'll give you a list and a bunch of options for those. They're great. I love him and I traveled with him for a long time. But then I got sort of hooked on ink, and now I travel with a bunch of different ink pens. This is a carbon platinum ink pen. It's a Japanese pen. It's easy to find these. It's got a nice, fine tip, and it's just Ah, um, it's got a little cartridge with waterproof ink, and what I love about this is I can travel with extra cartridges rather than travel with a bottle of ink, which would be a kind of a big mess and something I wouldn't want to have to worry about getting through TSA with liquids and gels. I also love this Lammy Safari fountain pen, which again comes with a cartridge. But in this case, I am filling this cartridge with my own ink. So this is Ah, little plunger. I just drop it down into the bottle of ink and twist and draw more ink up into it. So because I'm relying on bottles of ink for this, I, um I just travel with a couple of them, and when they run out of ink, they run out of ink because I'm just not going to take a bottle of ink with me. But again, the waterproof ink that I'm using is platinum carbon, waterproof ink, the same stuff that's in here. It just needs a converter to use it in this type of pen. Another pin that I love is this sailor few day pen, which is technically kind of a calligraphy pen. It has a bit nib so you can get Finn lines or thick lines, and this one also has one of those little converters. So I fill this up with the same black, waterproof platinum carbon ink, so those are some options for pens. I also like to travel with a Sharpie because I find I just draw a little differently when I have a Sharpie in my hand. for some reason, but this does bleed through paper, so it's kind of not so great for whatever is on the other side of your paper. I also take a regular ballpoint pen with me just for when I'm writing just ordinary writing in my travel diary. That way I'm not using up my fancy Inc. And, um, this is kind of my secret weapon. It is a pin tell pocket brush pin, and it also comes with cartridges. It's waterproof black ink, and it has this beautiful brush tip that gets you some very nice effects. And so I always use that. So those are my basic pins, and I just take a few extras of those just a have if I run out of ink. So let me just I'm gonna pull out kind of my supply of extra pins and talk about a couple of those. An extra Lammy safari, an extra brush tip in this someone is something you don't have to fill with ink. It's just a basically a marker, but it's got that nice soft brush tip that the pin tell pocket brush has, and you'll see in a minute why I like thes so much. I also these air kind of fun. These are also brushed tip gray pins, and they could be cool for making shadows. This might be more than you want to do your first time out, but I'm just showing you literally everything I bring with me. Okay, that's what I've got going on for pens. Now what about the paint? There's a lot of different kinds of pocket size, um, pallets that you can take with you, and I have finally gotten down to the very smallest one. This is made by a company called Art Tool Kit, and it's the size of a credit card. I fill these pans with my own tube watercolor paints, and I'll give you a list of what I travel with. But everybody's different about what they want to travel with these little pans air magnetized. So it's easy to pop him in and pop him out and switch out your colors. So happy something that super lightweight is really helpful now. As faras brushes go, I like to travel with ease Esko to travel brushes because the tip is protected and you still have a nice handle. But I also use this these water brush. It's a small brush, but this is filled with water. Sometimes I find that not so easy to work with. I find it hard to control the water if I'm squeezing it out of here. But it's nice to have a little extra water in a pinch in case you need it, and that leads me to a few other vital things that you want. When you're out sketching, let me show you what they are. I always travel with a little plastic ruler that's got markings on it, because I can use it to get straight edges and use it kind of like a T square to make sure that I'm lined up with the edge of the paper. If that matters and it doesn't always, I'm not wedded to perfectly straight lines. But once in a while I find I really want that. I bring a couple of binder clips to clip down the edge of my pages and then last but not least, um, you're definitely going to need some water for your water color, so I keep my watercolor or my water bottle in a plastic Ziploc bag, just in case it spills inside my bag, which honestly, has never happened. But this is just a little travel sized container of liquids, and that's what I keep water in for by paints. Um, and I walk around with this empty so it doesn't weigh too much, but I can fill it up anywhere. There's always water, and this is just a little spray bottle to spritz off my watercolor palette to get the paint's wet and ready to use. So those stay in a in a little bag, and then I also need where to go. I also need something to just brush off my, um, paint my brushes with. So I travel with just a little bit of cut up. Washcloth, basically, is all this is. You can also use paper towels. Some people cut off the toes of a sock and keep a stock on their wrist and use that, but you're gonna need something to wipe it off with. That's everything. So next up I'll show you a little bit about how I manage all these things when I'm out and about so that I can draw any where I am
4. Setting Up for Sketching on the Go: What I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna show you my set up for how I handle all my art supplies when I'm out and about sketching, You know, I like to be able to sketch anywhere I am and not always have to be looking around for a bench or a table where I can sit and spread out my art supplies. It also happens a lot that you're out and about and you want a spot in the shade. And the only spot in the shade is really just a spot where you had kind of stand and sketch . So I've kind of worked out this system and I'll show you how it works for me. I traveled. This is my bag that I travel with. It stays around my shoulder, and it's just important to find a bag that's big enough for the supplies that you're going to carry with you. Plus maybe your cell phone, your wallet, a couple of other little things. And so I carry this with me all day, every day and in it I've got my sketchbook, of course. And I'm just going to walk you through my set up and show you exactly what it looks like when I start sketching. First I pull out my sketchbook and then I've got this soup. So I've got this little bag this little bag has, Ah, my pens and pencils and supplies in it. And so the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get out my binder clips so I can hold the page open. I'm gonna get out my eraser. I'm gonna get out my mechanical pencil. Here's my other binder clip, and I'm gonna get out the pens that I know I'm gonna use in a little while. So, uh, I may not use all these, but I'll get out my platinum carbon, My very thin desk pin in my Lammy safari, which is kind of a medium size and my pen tell pocket brush pin, which is a thicker brush pin. So let's just say that these are the ones I'm going to use today. So I get those out and I just put him in the pocket of my bag so they're easy to reach. So this is how I'm gonna be when I'm drawing. When I'm done with that, I'm ready for watercolor, and I have to kind of switch my supplies around for a minute. But that's OK, cause sometimes the ink does take just a second to dry. So I can just, um, took this under my arm and I'm going to put away my pens and pencils that were just in the outside pocket of my bag. I'm gonna go ahead and get out my pencil bag and put those away again because I'm not going to need him again. The reason I keep everything so contained like this is that if I have to move quickly, I don't want art supplies spilling all over the place. I want to know that everything is kind of ready to go. I'm gonna get up my pain. I'm gonna get out my I'll get out my water brush and I'll go ahead and get out the other brush as well, because I haven't really decided yet which ones I'm gonna use. So now those air going in the outside pocket, I'm putting all this stuff away. The last thing I know I'm gonna need for water color. Is that washcloth to clear off the brush? So here's what this looks like when I get going I take out my palette, and it's small enough that I can clip it onto the pages of my book. Now there's other types of pallets that you might end up kind of holding in your hand. But for this one, I can just clip it on, and I've put it right on top of another drawing I've already done. Honestly, if I spooled little paint on the other one, I'm not too worried about it. It's a travel sketchbook. It needs to look like someone was actually here making sketches in real time. But actually it almost never happens. So this is clipped on here. So when I'm ready to start painting, I just get out my brush and I've got my rag, which I might just hold in this hand. And I'm dipping into my watercolor bottle, which is right down here on my bag, and I'm dipping into my watercolors and I'm painting and that's it. That's how I do it. So let me also mention that I work this way. Even when I'm sitting down. Let's say I'm in a train station waiting for the train, and I'm going to do a quick drawing or even I'm in a restaurant. I'm just waiting for my food to come. Gonna do a little quick sketch. The reason I do this whole method of keeping it all in the bag is that if I have to get up and go quickly, let's say the train arrives or, you know the food comes. I don't want to have my art supplies scattered all over the place because I know I will lose something. The other thing is, it's good to keep everything in your bag and keep your bag zipped up. I'm not too worried about pickpockets wherever I go. Oh, are just things somebody reaching into my bag. But this is a good way to keep everything secure right on your body, Um, zipped up so that you only have out the stuff you're actually using. Okay, so that's how I do it when I'm out and about. But now let's get into the actual drawing
5. A Nifty Trick for Measuring Proportion: I'm going to demonstrate these drawings back home in my studio so that you've got better lighting and you can really see what I'm doing. I did film a little bit of a demo about one principle that I want to explain to you, but the audio was bad. So I'm gonna explain it here in my studio. Um, but I might show you a little clip of the video of me demonstrating it, even though we can't use the audio. And that has to do with how to use proportions to measure. So try to pretend that this picture is the actual view. And that I'm standing out on the deck you might hear in art class is that if you hold your arm out straight and you stand in one place, you can make measurements and use those measurements to get that proportions of everything right on your page. And that's fine. But it can get kind of complicated, cause you're sort of counting over. Maybe this building is, you know, three pencil widths wide and two pencil wits high. But then you have to translate that in your book, Teoh. Well, but I don't have three pencil wits wide. I've only got one pencil with here, So now I've got to break this down into Well, maybe it's this and it's 123 across and too high, and you're like, Now that's too big. It's more like this 123 It can get complicated when you're measuring every little thing in your seen that way, however, you are in luck because you're drawing in a small space, and probably your drawing is literally exactly the size of your pencil. Here's my pencil and here's the Here's the book I'm drawing in so you can see how I can really use this for pretty direct measurements, and I'm gonna show you how to do that. You're not gonna hold your arm out straight. The reason they tell you to hold your arm out straight is that your arm is always the same length and you can go right back to that same distance instead. What you're gonna dio again? Imagine this is the real seen and done, not a photograph, as you're just going to sort of move your pencil in and out until you've really got it in about the right size. You want it to be on the page. So let's say in the end of my eraser cap to the end of the rubber grip, there is where I want this toe, Um, the building to fall. So I can Okay, I can remember those measurements, and I can go to my book and I can see how that will fit on the page. I'm gonna make a little mark there for where the beginning of the rubber grip is. And then I said the beginning of the eraser caps are I'm trying to kind of do this one handed here so I can demonstrate it to you. So that's where my house fits. And every time I go back to measure something, all I have to do is move this around until I get that one measurement in place. There it is, right like that, And, uh, and I can use that as a measurement. So now how tall is this house? Well, let's see, from the bottom of my eraser to the top of the little clip is about how tall it is. So now I can go from the bottom of the eraser to the top of the little quip there. That's about how tall the building is, and I can start to put my drawing together by measuring proportions like that. All I have to do is make sure that every time I go back to measure, I get that one first. Big measurement right, which was along the bottom of the house, the rubber grip on one side and the clip on the other side. So it's just a cool way to do direct measurements, but there's a way to be even more direct about it. Let's say you're working with a real small notebook that's even smaller than your pencil. You can actually use your paper directly as a measurement and make marks directly on your paper and hold that up and use that as your guide. You can do the same with landscapes, so I could let's say I was looking out my window and this is my beautiful view. Um, I can also figure out kind of all right, Well, let's just say that I'm gonna do the whole length of the pencil here. So also, what I need to remember is that on one side it's halfway down the tree and on the other side. It's, um you know this. Let's say this little white bush right here. So let's say that's my pencil length. So then I can just turn it and say, Well, how tall is everything? Okay, so the grass goes to about where my pencil clip starts to get a little thicker, and then the mountains go to right before kind of the end of the clip. So again, even with a landscape, I can use my pencil to do the same sorts of measurements. All right, The tree is about halfway up that clicker button, so it's great to have a tool like this that has a lot of little marks on it that you can really use. And as long as you get your initial measurement right again, get it in the same position it was before and try not to change the distance. Then you've always got a way to measure the heights of everything and Teoh, just make sure you get the proportions generally where you want them. I hope that makes sense. I hope that's helpful, but let's get into the actual drawing now.
6. Step 1: Pencil : Okay, I'm looking at this building facade, and my first step is gonna be to just draw out a space for this on my page. I like to leave a little white space around the edge. I think the drawing looks cool and it leaves me some room to write. So let's say this is gonna be my shape now. I'm not going to do everything in this picture. I'm not doing the hills in the background. I'm not doing a lot of this stuff in the lower foreground. I'm just going to draw the building. And the nice thing about a building facade is that you're looking straight on at it, so you'll have a little easier time just working out the shapes. So I see this kind of lower bit where the yellow is. I'm gonna put that in. I'm really just thinking out loud as I'm doing this first bit. This is where the the little tile roof is. It's That's basically a square. So again, we're always looking for our squares. There's another square up here where the upper half of that building is, and then there's this longer orange wall, which is really kind of the whole point of this bay. Ning. I love that orange wall. So there is that big orange wall and I'm really working this out, figuring it out, my drawings very light and very loose. And I might decide. I think I'm actually in danger of deciding this right now that I'm gonna go off the edge of the boundaries I set for my drawing. This is that yellow bit that's in the foreground. And then there's all this white stuff. It's a shame that it's all white because it's a little bit harder toe kind of know what exactly is going on here, but whatever, that's fine. We'll figure it out, comes down here like this. So when you're doing a thing like this, you're just drawing big containers that everything goes in your not getting into really the details at all, because that can all happen in pen. And I might just erase some of these really loose, sketchy lines. Just toe focus myself on what's really important here. But I haven't put in any details. I've just established the big shapes, and once you get one thing right, like once the square is right, everything else lines up with it. I know that this thing lines up with the top of that thing. I know that this thing here is about the same size is that thing. So once you fix a couple things in the right place, the question is always just what? How does this fit with this while this thing is longer than that thing and it's also shorter, and in that way, you know, I can see that like, Well, here's the edge of the orange thing in this white thing that comes out from it extends out quite a bit. That's why I decided I was gonna have to go off the edge of where I'd set my drawing. And this is why we do it in pencil again. I want you to remember that a racing does not indicate that you've made a mistake. Erasing is part of the process, is how we figure out what it's gonna look like. There's, um, this sort of roof line that comes at an angle right here with a little water tower underneath it. Little water tank. I'm not sure I'm gonna include all that, but I'll leave it there for now.
7. Step 2: Pen: once these major shapes, Aaron, you can be pretty quick and free with your drawing. I'm going to start with my platinum carbon pan, which is a very fine tip and just I'm really just doing the very lightest, loosest kind of drawing I can so that I can raise my pencil. The whole goal of this is to be able to quickly erase the pencil and move on. Uh, I like to get rid of the pencil marks. I'm not really a fan of having the pencil under pen, so, um, I don't need to worry too much about getting this exactly right. But why not? I'll go ahead and try. He's kind of complicated. Little roof lines can be sort of like that again. You can see this is really very boosts and almost whimsical. And I'm just trying to get enough of the drawing in that I can erase and get rid of thes pencil marks. Oh, and I'm gonna show you if you don't want to use a fountain pen than what I would start with is a thin little, um, drawing marker. This is a 0.3. It's also quite fine, so I'll just show you what that's like. Hello. You can see it's about the same kind of fine line, huh? This one has. I was just using it, but it seems toe I kind of want to dry up a little bit. Normally they wouldn't, but it actually takes a little more pressure. And I forget that cause I don't use these as much anymore. But you do sort of have to sometimes bear down a little bit more with him. So I'm just getting these major shapes and position. And that's enough that I can go ahead in a race. I try to work from left to right so that my hand doesn't smudge. Normally, my hand isn't resting on the paper, but if I go in that direction that I'm less likely to smudge the ink. And if you are working with Riel Inc. It does take just a second to dry. Really? Not long. But if you're not sure, just hold it up to the light and look to see if there are any little shiny bits where they're still wet ink on the page. But in this case, I'm used so little ink that I wasn't too worried about that with these need herbal erasers , you can either sort of wiped the way I'm doing. But you can also go like this, and that will pick up quite a lot of pencil. But I like getting rid of the pencil lines. I think it immediately makes the drawing have this wonderful lightness to it. And, uh, real sort of simplicity and fluidity. All right, so that's it we've done are very lightest work. But now I'm going to come in, and now I'm really paying attention to detail. So now I'm really drawing, like I have a structure here that I can work with. So now I'm doing things like I'm just gonna go in and I really like the lying on that. Um, see here, this could be a little straighter, couldn't it? I don't use rulers. I'm not too worried about getting everything perfectly straight. But occasionally I really want toe really want toe, be a little more accurate, and I will pull out a ruler and try to line things up with the edges of my paper. So this is the stage where you can put in some detail, so I'm just kind of lightly noting these, uh, this tile roof. The tile roof is very distinctive, and it It kind of says Mexico to me. So I definitely want toe include it. But I'm not trying to be real symmetrical and accurate with it. Everything here is supposed to be pretty, pretty casual and quick. Try to make single lines. Try not to do a whole bunch of scribbling sketch sketchy lines. They can be. They can be pretty distracting. I do want to note that kind of blew border around there, so I'm gonna get into get into that a little bit. There's thistle. There's thes columns going up right next to this that are white, and I'm not gonna worry about that. I'm gonna come down here. I like the way this roof line goes. There it is. It comes out to here, comes out that way, comes back this way. There's a little rim Getting these little rims in can really help it look less cartoony and just just a little bit more realistic. Let's see. Let me think about this. I want to draw the shape that that, um, white part fits in. And then there's a orange. There is a little bit more there. And then this orange bit that sticks up has just a little bit of Ah, you can see the side of it there. I'm gonna put that there so and I see that there's a little bit of more of the building there that I hadn't really made note of when I did my initial drawing. And I want to get this water tower. I love these water towers. They're called tea knuckles in Mexico and they're very distinctive and everybody has them. So being able to put these on this really shows us where we are and it's sitting on some kind of structure, and I honestly, I can't see it so well, even looking at the at the picture and when I was there in person, I couldn't see it so well. So I'm not gonna actually bother about making that too accurate. And they've always got these pipes coming out of them that are kind of overflow valves. And I want to put that in. Let's see, there's a line right here because this is actually ground level. This is all gonna be a little bit hard to convey in a very quick sketch, but we're gonna gonna give it our best shot, and then this comes down. And there's this kind of weird roof that I I couldn't decide whether I really wanted to include it, but I've decided I'm going to. So I'm gonna put that there and here and then this other di knockoff right here. Just gonna leave that there. Oh, and I forgot. Come back. Get these two doors in. They do have little window sills with flowers. It's very sweet. I might be able to do something with that. So this is the basic drawing again, using a fine point pen. But now I'm gonna come in with a more of a medium tip. This is my Lammy safari and it the new cabinet is called fine, but to me it seems really medium. And here I am, just looking for darker, uh, what is darker. Everything has kind of a light side in a dark side. So, like this trim the side underneath is the dark side thes windows. It's over here. I'm just looking closely at where the sun is hitting and I love being able to draw when there's bright, obvious sunshine and bright obvious shadows because that's where you really get a lot of drama. I'm just gonna add in some darker lines over my lighter lines. So this is sort of my second passed in my second pass. I'm adding a little more depth with darker lines and by using different line weights, you're adding drama and you're just adding interest. This is the dark side of this shape. There's a little bit of darkness where there's kind of a cash shadow. Uh, under that the Dean Akel is darker on this side, and I'm gonna just kind of reestablish that shape. Haven't done these stairs yet. Let's meet each shing on having to kind of rethink this a little bit cause I was ignoring the stairs before. But we need the stairs, don't we? So I see the diagonal line that comes down. That's the underneath part of the stairs, and then we've got a light orbit. This comes down straight, whiter bid. This comes down straight. I'll do most of this with pain, but at least I've got something to go in there for the stairs. There's a darker, shadowy bit right under there, and then there's this little bit of trim along here, and I'm deliberately making this kind of an uneven line because it's like the edge of it. And it's sort of looks like stone work a little bit. And I love when I can make an uneven line that really shows like their stone or there's Brick or there's just something different happening there, dark in that up a little bit. I can see a darker edge under there and then this whole thing I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get into all that detail. I really want to just convey the general sense that there's a structure there of some kind , but I really am not focusing on it too much. So you're not gonna be super clear on exactly what this is, and that's OK. It's just like this is just one more shape here. And really, what this whole drawing is about is this awesome orange building and kind of the light in the shadows. All right, so that's it for my medium. Oh, and I meant to show you a little bit of this, using the using a thicker marker. So this is the 00.8 drawing pin and I should have gotten this out a minute ago. But I'll just sort of show you that you can also get a good fine. I've been a good, solid dark line using this and it's faster to dry and then, sir, cheaper. And you can find him anywhere. I love the flowing nous of ink, but, um, there's no reason why you couldn't use one of these as well. So now we're gonna get right into my favorite thing, which is the pin tell pocket brush pin. And this gives you very loose Flowy Inc with a brush tip. I love doing windows with this. You'll see why in just a second, you can get kind of a neat effect of light hitting it without it, uh, being like a super solid black. There's also a cast shadow under here. So I'm going in and I'm emphasizing everywhere I see an actual cash shadow. So these air, my darkest darks generally shadow shapes and I just love being ableto really calls your these big black shapes really call your attention, Teoh what you're seeing here. But I also like how sort of loose and, um flowy they are, and I'm just adding them everywhere. I see cash shadows, even though I have a paint color that I can use for that as well. I'm not necessarily putting it everywhere. I see the color black. So it's not so much about getting every dark color. It's more about shadows and just wait, like just showing the weight of things. Even though this Tanaka was white, I'm gonna go ahead and make it black like the other one, because I like the repetition. I like that. Your eye goes back and forth between them and there's gonna be a cash shadow here. But again, I'm just I want to call your eye over here, really want you to see that. And then here these stairs, which are really I was very careless with the stairs. I want you to notice I didn't. I spend a lot of time thinking about this. I just sort of got in there and got some lines that se stairs. But I kept it very quick. Um, maybe some of this under here again, I'm just looking for where The shadows Where the dark bits. And actually, I might kind of just make these look like windows. You see how just by mushing in that black color. It kind of the kind of readers Windows you think of. Windows is maybe being blue, like the sky that they're reflecting. But getting a dark color in there totally works. Okay, Now, uh, this kind of ink has to dry. Had I used a soft brush marker. This is the Faber Castell Pitt art pin. Soft brush. It says SB had I used this. When you find a place to use it now, this dries so much quicker. So again it's cheap. It's disposable. It doesn't have quite the same lovely brushy line, but it's pretty close. As you can see, you can get really fine with it, but you can also lay down something pretty thick. So that's your other option. If you don't want to get into fountain pens right now, I use one of these for years, and I was totally happy with it. So that's that's a great option. I'm just gonna continue toe work with it a bit, and also these basically take no drying time. That ink I just put down with my pen tell pocket brush pin that does take a little bit of drying time. And while I'm just kind of giving it a second to dry, I'll also add this comes with a cartridge that you just snap in. You can see my cartridges getting quite low, but it's easy to travel with ease their sealed up so they're not gonna leak. And you could just pop a new one in. So I do love thes. All right, we can get into some color now.
8. Step 3: Watercolor: one reason I'm getting into the skies because if this ink hasn't totally dried, I don't want toe. I don't want to smear anything. So the sky seems pretty safe to me up top there. I can keep it away from this darker markers that I just put down. And also I want my sky color to be very clean. So I'm using Cobalt blue, um, civilian blues. Great. This is Cobalt. Thio will work a little of this in. It's a greenish a little bit more greenish, but skies tended Have that. Sometimes I'm ignoring the clouds and what I see behind me there and I'm just gonna put down a very fast, quick, clear blue sky. You don't even have to do this. You just leave this white. I mean, really, it's about them. It's about the cool building in the orange color. It's not so much about everything else around it, but just to give you a sense just so you can see what it would look like very quick and loose. Uh, as you go up into the sky, the sky color can be more intense. So if I wanted to, I could add a little bit there and just let it work its way down to split it, blend naturally, which it will. And now I'm ready to get into the actual image here. And this is Naples yellow. And unfortunately, I always get other colors in my Naples yellow. So it looks a little green right now because it looks like I accidentally dips, um blew into it. But Naples yellow is a wonderful sunshiny yellow. That's great for traveling because it just looks like the color of sun hitting a stone building. And I'm gonna work the tiniest bit of permanent rose into it to push it just a little bit pink just like that. And I'll put that up here. I'm ignoring the way that there's kind of this yellowish paint right around these, But around these two windows on, I don't kind of need that. I'm gonna bring it down here. You notice that these are in shadows the same color, but it's in shadow. But I'm gonna show you in a minute what I do with that shadow. And that's really the only place I see that color. So we're done with that. I'm gonna do my orange next. You know I'm gonna switch down to a smaller brush. This is such a small painting switch down to a smaller brush. This is pie RL. Orange just happens to be right about the color of orange, that this thing is painted, which is great. So I'm going in very rich and very vibrant. That's the whole point. We're in Mexico and beautiful, bright colors. It's nice to have some variety in it, even though it is really bright. Just because you can get the feeling that it's faded in the sun. Here's the shadowy side. I'm gonna show you something cool I'm gonna do with that in just seconds. You want this sense that it's faded in the sun that it's something that was, you know, painted by hand and has some age and some patina to it so I can come along like, see how that this ran into that? I'm cool with that. That's totally fine. I can come along with a paper towel if I want, and just sort of mess it up a bit and messing it up a bit just gives it this kind of faded sun kissed look. All right, um, I will draw in this pattern, I think. But I'm gonna I'm just gonna wait. I'm going to see how the rest of it looks before I decide about that. Now, a lot of this is white, and I'm gonna be leaving it white, but let me see where else I want to get in some color. I'm gonna take some yellow Oakar and also some new GAM bows and kind of mix those together to get a rich yellow. That's gonna go right there. You see, I'm being really quick and careless and just getting paint on. Normally, this would go even quicker if I wasn't also talking. But you get the idea. No, I want to do that roof and I'm gonna actually just start. I think I'll start with some of the same yellow, but just with a little transparent red mixed in, give that a minute to dry. Then I'll come back with a little bit deeper, more vibrant color in just a second. Um, and everything else is white. So what I need to do now is get into some shadow color. So I have this wonderful color. Daniel Smith makes this color called Shadow Violet, which I love. It's a really beautiful shadow color that can go right on top of whatever your painting. And I like to mix it in with other colors that are in the painting. Just Teoh change it a little bit and unify it with what else is there in particular? I've got this sky color and I'm gonna mix a little bit of extra blew into it. It's making to go a little bit purple and that's awesome. Shadows shadows are purple groups That wasn't completely dry yet. Let's see, What can I do that is totally dry? This is always a thing when you're working, quit cause that you're not waiting for paint to dry And so you're forever having to kind of look around and see. All right, what has dried? What can I get, Teoh? What's gonna take a little longer? This is all in shadow, so I'm gonna just bring all that down that looks like it's in shadow. And then the stairs have this cool shadow pattern going that I had already suggested with this darker color. So bring that down. Those look vaguely like stairs and I love it when I can do one of these really interesting cash shadow shapes because I think this really emphasizes the sun in the shade, so that's very cool. Now I need that to hurry up and dry. Well, that's happening. I've also got This is one of these cases where I have to hope that the paint dry. So that's the shadowy side of that structure. That's the Onley, vaguely perspective, the thing we're doing because I am looking at it a little bit on the side. So I did draw that in. Then this comes right here. That just really helps it seem like it's a bright, sunny day, and then it's time to deal with these. T Knock it. So let me for tea knuckles. So let me first get Excuse my Spanish. Let me first get the shadow on that. I wanted to be a pretty deep, dark shadow, this one. It's casting a little bit of a shadow sort of. Underneath. Put it right there. Now, uh, this thing is black, and I didn't do too much of that black with my Comptel pocket brush pin because I wanted to do it with pain because pain will be a little bit more transparent and I'll just feel more like watercolors. And now I'm coming in. I've got some Daniel Smith neutral tent. Oh, my. I'm just pretending that this is black, remember? So I'm just gonna come in. It's tricky figuring out how to do a thing that's black, and it has a shiny reflection on it without just over doing it. So I'm not gonna over think that I mean to me, that sort of reads is what it is now. Hopefully, this is dry and I can go back in and deal with this shadow. Let's see. Yep, that's good. So this Soc I had put down the color that the wall is actually painted, and now I can just drop the shadow in on top of it because it's transparent, so you can still see the color underneath. I realized I never did get around to doing this little bit, so I'm gonna mix up some orange and some transparent red. It is orange, but it's not as oranges that I sort of don't want the two of them competing with each other . It's darker down here, but in that and then when that dries, I'll come in and add that little bit of blue? No, I've got a lot of great colors already mixed up here. So I'm just gonna put something in here for these flower boxes, and then I'll come in and put some flowers in there in just a second. A little bit of transparent red. I can kind of This is wet, but that's good, cause Aiken to drop in some of this color and let it move. Let it do what it wants to dio. There's a lot of variety there. I really like that. Oh, we're so close. There's just about done. Let me see. I'm going to get just some ultra Marine. I'm just going to use bright ultra Marine straight out of the palate. I'm gonna see if I can just I could have just ignored this or painted it the same color or something else, but it's kind of fun to try to do it, and the colors are bleeding together, But, um, I'm cool with that. This is supposed to be sort of quick and fun. And so there you go. I'm gonna take a little of this yellow ochre and just put it down. Here is well, just so that it's not this distracting white shape. And there's my ultra Marine bleeding into it, so I don't know, maybe not. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea. There it goes. That's all right. And the last thing is, I was undecided before about whether to draw in these little the little design in the stonework up here. But I think I'm gonna go for it. And I'm not drawing the white part because the papers white. So instead, I'm doing little who knows how this is gonna look, Honestly, im just winging it here. I'm doing little black circles to indicate the center and not the white circles themselves . Maybe it's not going to read is exactly the same thing, is what you're seeing. But it does show, you know, there's a pattern here and again. I'm just, um, using my until pocket brush pin, trying to keep everything in a straight line. But I didn't draw this out in pencil first. I didn't overthink it. I'm just really trying to very quickly and loosely suggest that there is a pattern there, and that's all I'm going to do for that. Um, okay, that's pretty much everything. Um If you want Teoh, add writing around it, you know, make a note of where you are. That's the only kind of thing I would add at this point. And I'm not gonna do that in this drawing. I am an ad, that little edge cook. I'm gonna make these a little bit more intense groups. See, There you go. Ink is still wet. I add a paint. I wasn't thinking. Pay the price. All right. I'm gonna stop right there. Oh, wait, wait, wait. I did want to add in these flowers, and I think this is dry enough, so I'm gonna drop in some yellow, and then I'm gonna add green on top of it by putting their by putting the yellow in first. I'm letting it seemed like some light is hitting these flowers Now, I would have to wait for it to dry pretty well to get actual color in here. Like to get actual little red flowers. It's gonna It's gonna bleed and run otherwise. But that's how I would go about that if I wanted to wait for everything to drive. So there it is. There you go, folks, for your first urban sketch
9. A 10-Minute Landscape: I also want to show you how to do just a very quick 10 minute landscape. And the reason I'm showing you a landscape along with the building facade is that they're more similar than you might think. In both cases, you're just looking to kind of establish the major shapes. And, uh, you don't need to think a lot about perspective. You're looking straight on at it. So I'm gonna draw this little outline because it's nice to leave some white space around the edge of the papers. The story to define the edges, my drawing. And then I'm gonna go in here and put in the grass. I see this mountain range. I'm doing this very lightly in pencil. In fact, you know what? I'm gonna do it a little darker so you can see it, But normally this would be very, very light. So there's a grass. Here's mountain range. There's a tree over here, and I'm just drawing like a container for the tree to go in. I'm not even really thinking too much about exactly what that looks like. So are big shapes or the sky, the mountains, the grass and the tree. And I'm not gonna bother with pen. I'm gonna go straight into water color. And I think landscapes kind of lend themselves to that. You really don't need a lot of obvious dark lines in a landscape. I'm gonna start with the sky. Now, the trick to doing a little watercolor sketch and doing it quickly is to kind of work around the issue of needing to wait for the paint to dry on the page. You know, if if you have ah, one area of watercolor and you run another bit of water color into it, they can bleed into one another. But when we're working this quick, we don't have time to wait for anything to dry. So I'm gonna actually start out with a pretty dry mix of paint to begin with. I'm not doing a big wet wash right here. You can see I'm being kind of fast and careless. I'm going right into my tree. I'm going right into the mountains because I know I can paint over that, And I'm not worried about getting a lot of variety in the sky color. It's just cobalt blue. You can also use to really in blue, and I mixed a little bit of cobalt teal in it because there is just the tiniest bit of kind of a green color in the sky, sometimes depending on the light. And it's usually more intense up near, uh near the top. And as you get down towards the horizon, the colors a little lighter. So that's good. That's all we're going to do for that, and it'll dry pretty quick. But while it's drying, I'm gonna go down and do an area that doesn't touch it. Which is this grass down below and for the grass? I'm starting with a very bright green, which is Hansa Yellow. I mean, not pray green, bright yellow, Hansa yellow and, um, again just putting it on real quick and kind of dry. The idea is to show that some lights hitting it. So I really want this sense of sun and then I'll take a little stab green while it's still wet and let that work its way in. And I'm just letting it do what it wants to dio. So I'm doing this while the papers still wet enough for it to move around a little bit, and that's really all. I'm going to do for the moment. I'll come back and focus on that grass a little bit in a minute. But now let's think about the color of these mountains. Mountains off in the distance there, bluish. So we know that up close. They're the same colors is our foreground. Here there's a lot of green. There's a lot of yellow, but as they move off into the distance, they seem to turn blue because we're looking at them through the atmosphere through the sky , which is, well, blue. But I don't want it to be the same. Blue is the sky because it's obviously not so. I'm dip dipping into my ultra marine of dipping in this impression. Blue, just to get a different color of blue colors, are also more subdued as they go away from us, and you can kind of exaggerate that effect, and it will make it more obvious that this is something happening off in the distance. So I've got my pressure in blue. I've got a little meridian going into it to make it kind of a greenish blue, but I also know that there's some purple out there and again dropping a little purple in is a good way to sort of exaggerate that effective mountains off in the distance. So I'm just gonna get a little bit of a Liz Aerin over here in the corner, and I'll be able to work this in with my blue and get a nice purple. But it's just sitting there for me, and I'll have it in a minute, okay? I'm pretty sure my blue sky is dry by now. So I'm gonna come in and start of just put in these mountains. Really? There's two mountain ranges that overlap. You can see that right here, but I'm not gonna have time to really show that difference. And that's okay. I'm gonna let it go right into the tree, because again, I can sort of paint over that. It's OK to get some of those darker blues in there again. I'm working real fast, get just a little more color. It's nice if the color changes a little bit. It's nice to have some variety, so I just add it in a little bit of extra ultra Marine impression blue just a just to kind of show some differences there. And, um let me see about this? The lizard now, Yeah, I'm just letting a little purple work in a swell and that's really it. That's what I'm going to do for the mountains. Pretty much, I think I will come in and I'll just sort of mess up this ridge line because I want a sense that there's trees way out there. I don't want it to be too smooth of a line. All right, that's good. That's all I can do for that. I really need to be switching down to a smaller brush for some of these details next. So I'm gonna look at the foreground again, and I see this line of kind of grass. That's right. Here, let me put that in. And then there's another line of that darker grass that's right out here. I don't want this running into my mountains, which are still wet, so I'm just gonna really just sort of noting that. But I'm gonna have to come back to it in a minute when that has had a little more time to dry. And, um, there's these shrubs right here, these kind of shrubby shapes, and it doesn't really matter whether it's a shrub or whether it just sort of reads us, um, some grass in the foreground, But it's nice to have a little more detail in the foreground. It's pulls your eye there, and it gives a sense of depth. If you could see some more details in the foreground and les in the background, this is a little transparent red, which I'm just dropping in here, bringing these darker colors into the foreground also because we are pretty close up. But I'll drop just a little bit of that transparent red out here in the background as well . I got some things I want to work in in front of the mountains here, but again, I'm just waiting for things to dry, and I'm even gonna because I'm trying to get this done kind of quickly. I'm even going to sort of pick up some of the water along the horizon, just help it along a little bit. There's quite a lot of just smudgy watermarks here in the mountains, but I'm good with that. I mean, it's sort of it looks like it's off in the distance, and I like that there's some variety to it. I think everything is dry enough for me to get into my tree now. So I'm gonna take just as I did with the grass. I'm going to start by doing this green thing, this green plant e thing. I'm going to start by doing it with some yellow and you can see I'm going right over the blue sky. But this time I'm using new Gambo Jai because I see kind of a richer, deeper, warmer yellow in this tree, and I'll just work that in and then come in with sap green again, and I'm just dropping it in and letting it move. I don't want this tree to be too detailed. I don't want you to be so distracted by crazy amounts of detail in this tree that you're not just looking at the landscape overall. So I'm just looking at the tree and I'm seeing that trees kind of have these darker areas and lighter areas to him. And you wanna you want to show that without getting too crazy, detailed about what you're seeing? So this needs to sort of that I can see that this needs to dry for a minute before I do too much more so I'm just gonna leave it alone for a sec. While that's happening, I'm gonna go focus on these smaller trees that I see along the horizon. I think this gives it a nice since in depth and sort of pulls you in. There's a house on the horizon there, too. I'm not gonna worry about that house. I'm just gonna make little shape. So I did new GAM bows for the trees and then I'm again dropping in sap green along the base . There's more shadow down near the bottom of trees, and generally it's lighter near the top. And you can see that there. And I'm gonna take a tiny bit oppression blue and drop it in here to it'll make it darker. But the blue also sort of sends it into the background a little bit. It makes it clear that it's something that's happening off in the distance, which is good. So I got that. And then I'm just gonna kind of suggest more little trees out there in the distance. Some of them can be green. Some of them can be maybe more orange. But they're way out there. You're not supposed to really focus on him, just showing that there's more vegetation off in the distance. And while I'm still waiting for my, um, trita dry a bit more, I'm gonna just come back in the foreground and suggest a few little blades of grass, but not too much. I don't want to get too crazy with that. I'm also my 10 minutes are almost up. So if I were out doing this for real, and I knew that I had to meet my friends for dinner and I needed to finish real quick, I'm dipping into Daniel Smith's neutral tent, which you can mix with any other color, and it'll darken it without really changing the temperature too much. So I'm trying to bring some more darks in the thing that every beginning painter struggles with is value the lights and darks. And that's where all the drama is. And if you're painting, seem kind of flat and uninviting and un interesting, probably the thing you're struggling with his value, and if you take a black and white picture you're painting and look at it, you can probably see that you're sort of missing some really dark darks and some really bright brights so I'm bringing in some more that neutral tent and just a little more transparent earth again. I'm just trying to suggest that there's this little shrub kind of shape in front. I'm gonna blend it right into the tree that's behind it. So those don't look like very separate shapes. And real quick, I'm gonna show you a trick if you don't have neutral 10 or another dark kind of black like that on your palate. If the paint is wet, you can also just take Inc and kind of just drop it in and it'll move. It's not It's, uh, a little too dry along the horizon there, but it'll move and just create a kind of a darker, shadowy shape. Just with the ink. I'm gonna come in and force that with my brush, force it to move a bit. You can see that I've kind of just made a darker Ah, darker shadow happened right there. And you can even do that with ah, pigment marker, a drawing marker like that. So I'm just gonna draw a little bit and then move it around. There you go. You get just a little bit. These are waterproof So the, uh, they are gonna dry quickly, and they're going to resist moving around too much and water, but you can get a little bit of that effect from, So there you go. That's what we can accomplish in 10 minutes. And the whole idea is to just very quickly capture where you are and what you see leave a little space around the edge so that you can draw. I mean, so you can write some of your observations and be able to just pick up and move on to the next thing.
10. Final Thoughts: Okay, that's it. Through the magic of video editing on back here in beautiful wanna Watteau here is the sketch that I did right here on site, standing here on my terrace. Please push your projects. I would love to look at him. Let me know about any questions you have and definitely let me know about anything. You're struggling with Indiana. Unanswered questions. Any challenges with doing travel, sketching and keeping a travel sketchbook while you're out and about Because there's gonna be a lot more to come from me on this subject. Thank you so much for coming with me to wanna Watteau, and I'll see you again soon.
Amy Stewart, Writer & artist
