Transcripts
1. Intro: Hey Ron, you're here. I'm an artist's
graphic designer and urban sketcher who enjoy
sketching on location. Welcome to another
urban sketching cost. This is an intermediate court, which means you will need to know the basics to drawing from observation or
urban sketching in order to get the most
out of this cost. This is the scene
we will be drawing. I'm actually
recording this intro about two years after
I meet the tutorial. So many things have changed
around here such as the colors on the
building in front of me. I will provide you with several reference photos so that you can choose whichever you prefer
to use for practice purposes. In this course, I
will teach you how to break down a
complicated scene into smaller and more manageable
art so that they can draw it more
easily and with pace. I will teach you how
to create the line up, what to draw, what not
to draw, how to paint, color, mixing, adding shadows, and adding more details to touch up the scene to make
it look more lively. Urban sketching is actually
about sketching on location, but in this course I'm
using a reference photo because it's easier for me
to teach. For my students. I highly recommend the sketch
on location because it's more enjoyable and you get to learn urban sketching faster. Urban sketching is not
just about the art, but it's also about
being on location. Being present, so that you
can enjoy what you see, what you hear, the sights, the sounds, the
weather, everything. All right, let's head
over to the first lesson.
2. Before we sketch: Short lesson. I want to give you some quick tips when
you are outdoors, when you're out and about
looking for places to draw. If you are in an
unfamiliar place, always be mindful
of your safety, such as when you're
crossing the road, look out for vehicles, be careful of your belongings. And when you're looking
for places to draw, try not to sit in
front of shops that may open later and
affect their businesses. Spend some time to walk around
the neighborhood because the first location that you see may not be the
best location. And try to find a
shady spot to draw, because swing takes time. So you really want to be comfortable when
you are drawing, especially when you're
outdoors drawing. Flooring, the
neighborhood is part of urban sketching and
it's part of the fun. Remember to bring enough water, especially if it's really hot. You don't want to run out
of water because you can drink the water and you can use the water for water color. While there is so much
construction going on around here, try to avoid sketching near places that are noisy because
it's quite unpleasant. If you want to learn more about on location tips for
urban sketching, I highly recommend you check
out my beginners costs, which I will link to in
the description below.
3. Art supplies I'm using: Let me talk a bit about the colors that I will be
using for this tutorial. I will be using this creamery
pavements, watercolor set, and the colors I'm using are this mid yellow
or cool yellow. This is Y 151. I have this warm yellow. I may use this,
this is a warm red. This is a cool red. I will
be using Venetian red. This is an opaque color. If I need to paint and show off the lines
beneath the water color, I need to dilute this. I will be using the three blues. This is cobalt blue, deep B 74. This is some version
of cerulean. Either B 35 or 36. I cannot remember
exactly because I've not used this palette
for a very long time. This is probably
Cobot Te Blue, PG 50. I will also be using
Theo Green to mix with either reds to produce
a very dark color black. I can produce a black
using Cobot Blue, but this is an expensive color. If I mix dark colors using this, I will be using a lot of this. I want to save some money. I use at Green to mix with the ribs instead
to get my blacks. And there is burnt
sienna which I can use to mix with the
blues to produce grace. The paper that I'll be using
for this sketch will be the Durant ink Tense paper
that's made with 100% cotton. The texture is co press this fountain pen here is the la fountain pen
with a Zoom nip. Which is a nip that can
produce a thick line.
4. Blocking out the composition: Take a look at the
reference photo. So this is a wide scene. If you want to draw
everything you would have to draw on a double page today, I am going to focus
on this area instead, because I want to
have more light. So the light source is actually
coming from this side, and this area of the
building is under light. And by focusing on this area, I can get most of the
building under light. And this side of the building
will be under shade. This will be the
composition we will use. There are two main triangles. I want to include one
here and one here. I want to make sure
that those two are in. Here is the side of the shop
house that is under light. I try to visualize how
the scene is going to look before I put pen on paper. And here I have my
fingers to help me get the sense of the size needed to draw this part of the shop house that is
facing directly in front, facing directly the camera. Let's draw here like this. I'm going to start here with the first triangle and then have this look
down like this. This will be the
second triangle. Make sure to get angles right. This is about 45 degrees. There is some perspective here
that goes down like this. You also may notice the roofs, they are in this angle. All the roofs here for all
the individual shop houses are flowing. This angle, we can
actually draw it like this and maybe go down
all the way here. We can have this
part come in here. Okay? Here, I made a mistake because this angle should
be the same as this angle. But don't matter, we can still fix it or can
we? I'm not too sure. Anyway, let's continue. Sometimes if you think too much about your mistake, it
can stress you out. We will try and fix this later. Let's draw the things that
are easier to draw First, let's draw this vertical
line all the way down. I want to leave some
space at the bottom. Don't have the line go all
the way to the bottom. This is pillar here. This is the first floor. The pillar actually
goes all the way up. This is the line that divides
the first and second floor. And we need to measure
the angle here. I think it's something like it's almost
horizontal, but it's not. So it's like this, the line at the bottom,
it's almost horizontal. In fact, I think it's probably horizontal because
when I took the photo, my camera was really
low on the ground. So the vanishing point is
very low on the ground. And this line is very close to the vanishing
line or the horizon, so it's almost horizontal. But we don't draw that first. Let's, let's divide the shophouse into
different sections. We have one pillar here. There is actually
this pipe here. I'm going to use the pipe
to divide this building. Okay? There is one pillar here. Let's give the pillar
some thickness. There is a signboard here, and there is another
pillar here. Let's give the pillar
some thickness. So this pillar actually will continue all the way up here. This line that I'm drawing, this is the underside
of the roof. This pillar below will
continue upwards like this. Maybe there is another pillar here that is quite
close to this pillar. This will continue up, then the line will just go out and fade out
to this section. Here I have used tape to
tape up this section, so later on where I paint, I can remove the tape. And all this area will be like, this area will have a sharp
edge which will look nice. Okay, so let's proceed
to the right side. This is where the
mistake is. All right? So in this case I am going
to draw the thing is I am not able to see the
top of the roof here due to my camera being low on
the ground looking upwards. But since I made this mistake, I am just going to show the
roof like this. All right. Yeah, this is how we can cheat. If you're drawing
this on location, obviously it's going to
be a bit more difficult. But since we are drawing
at home, the thing is, I've drawn shop houses like
this for the longest time, So I know how the
shophouses will look. If you draw similar
subjects for a long time, you draw a lot of them. You will have this
muscle memory. You will just know
how to reconstruct the whole subject that
you're drawing very easily. That's great, because sometimes
that memory can help you. Let's draw a pipe here. It goes down like this. The pipe will be drawn
with very thin lines. We have this banner
here like this. The line that divides the first floor and
the second floor. This line is tilted
down like this. I'm going to draw
the back first here. The line here will
not go all the way down because there
are some cars here. When you're drawing,
always try to have overlapping elements
in mind before you draw. And there is a lamp post there, which I'm going to draw later. Let's continue to
draw the shophouses. I'm going to divide this area here into
different sections. I can divide it according to the first floor,
second floor, I can divide it vertically according to the
different shop houses. I think I should do
the vertical divide. I'm going to divide here, this will be one pillar
that goes all the way down. It seems like there are about
1234 shop houses there. Maybe I draw the bottom
of the roof here first. We can draw like, wow, it's actually not easy because there are so
much details here. Let me just divide this
part here and divide 123. It seems like there are three, but there is this lamppost here. I may want to draw
the lamppost first. The bottom of the
lampost will start here. The top of the lamp
post will end here, align to this point here. I know where to start
and I know where to end. It's easy for me to get the correct height
of the lamppost. Now that we have this in front, we can continue to draw
the shop houses behind. There is this sign board
here that is behind. This is the line that divides. It seems like there is
another pillar here, another sign board here, that goes all the way down. And we can give this pillar some thickness and this pillar
some thickness as well.
5. Adding line details: Notice how the different
segments are starting to appear. Here we can draw some windows. It's not easy to draw those windows because
they are so small. Okay, when you're
drawing this area, be very careful, bear in mind
the overlapping elements. These windows that I'm drawing, they are in perspective. At some details to suggest
that they are windows. Let's continue to divide 1.2 The windows here
are not opened, let's just draw vertical
rectangles for them. There is a water pipe
that links to the roof. When it rains, the rain
will go onto this drain here on top of the roof and
go down into this water pipe. You will see a lot of the
water pipes beside the roof. There is one here. Okay? Here, let's put more signboards. This line here, this
is not a good line because this line seems to continue here when
in actual fact, that line should actually
start from here. In this case, I'm going
to leave it as it. Let's draw the roofs for
the white building here. Continue down. Let's
draw the windows. The shop houses here
are very compressed. We can draw them, the front, to be
very compressed. The windows here will be
represented by vertical lines. We have another window here, and there is a lamppost here. The height of the lamp
posts will end here. Let's draw it like this curve, and then like this, there
are some cars in front. So we don't draw the
lamposts all the way down. Let's draw the
building down here. And draw the car
that is in front. I'm going to have
this car like this. The important thing
about drawing the car here is to make sure that they are drawn
at the right size. If they are drawn too big and it will seem like the
buildings are too small. But if the cars are
drawn too small, it will seem like the
buildings are too big. So everything you draw will affect the illusion that
you're trying to create. Okay? Cars are boxes. So when you're drawing cars, just draw the shape. We'll do, okay. We have overlapping
cars here, some wheels. And now that we have
this overlapping cars in front buildings, we can continue to draw
the buildings behind. These are the sun sheets
that are at an angle. There are some signboards here, The sun sheet here. At this point in time, sometimes when I'm drawing, if there are too many details, I may actually get lost. For example, the
sun sheet should be beside the vertical signboard. But it seems like I have
drawn the one shop unit away, which is all right, it's
not a critical mistake. There is a motorbike
parked here, so I want to draw
that motorbike. But is it a motorbike? Actually, it's not a motorbike. I thought it was a motorbike. Anyway, let me just draw
that motorbike or a bicycle, there are people, the people, there's actually one person
crossing the road there. The person is about the same
height as the car here. Let's draw the person here
when I'm drawing the person, so when I'm drawing the person, I'm actually using the height of the car that I
have already drawn. This is the thickness
of the pillar, some sign box here. For all these little details
I will be drawing with final lines for all of the lines that contribute
to the form of the subject. Like the pillars, all those lines that contribute to the physical form of the subject, I will draw them
with thicker lines. The box behind will be drawn
with smaller or finer lines. At this point in time, the shape of the shophouses,
it's area there. All you have to do is to. Add the details like the
windows into the scene. This part here will
be the easy part. After you have drawn
the big ships, adding those details will be
easy, relatively speaking. If you've drawn the big
ships inaccurately, all the details that
you are drawing will also not be accurate. Unfortunately, it's important to get the big shapes right. I may have made
another mistake here because I've drawn the bottom of the pillows a bit too high. So let me just draw this thin line across to
represent the ground. You can see the ground
is actually here, but I've drawn the pillars
a bit too well, high up. Let me try and correct this. Okay, I think it
looks all right. Okay. So let's continue to draw the elements behind
on the first floor. These are actually just shops or restaurants selling things. There are a lot of
signboards showing the food, showing the menu, the
prices for the food. Here, I'm just going to
draw like really quickly, there is a traffic light here. Let's draw that traffic light. It's a bit difficult to see
from the reference photo, but it's actually there. If you're drawing on a location, you will be able to see
all these details very easily because your eyes are way more sensitive compared to
what the camera can capture. There is a person here holding
a camera, taking a photo. Another person here about
to cross the street. Adding people in the scene will make the scene
appear alive. And also those people will give you a good idea how
big that scene really is. This is the traffic light, a green sunsheet behind
a traffic light box. Sunshetoer. Sunshet here, windows here. The windows are open like this. The frames, I mean the
metal bars for the windows. Some of the metal bars
are white colors. Later on when I paint, I will paint this area
black and then use the white jaw pen to draw
those white metal bars. Okay, so this sketch is
slowly coming alive. There is a hydro
fire hydrant here, red color fire hydrant, and some cones on the ground. So those are the little
things that will add more life to your scene. Okay, this is pretty,
the completed sketch. Just look around your
sketch and see what are the things you may want to add. Things that you
may have left out. The roof here from the photo, you won't be able to see
the top of the roof. But here I made a mistake. So I actually drew
the top of the roof. So in this case, I
actually wanted, I want to divide the roof
into like different sections. Okay. Like this. Okay. Yep. Let's draw the lampposts all the
way down to the bottom, and all the lines here
down to the bottom. And this is the
completed ink sketch. We have some mystics, but if the person looking at
a sketch has photo memory, yep, he or she will
be able to spot the things that are off. But it's a sketch, it doesn't really matter if it's that accurate or inaccurate. The point I was drawing
is to have fun, I had a lot of fun
sketching this. It's very satisfying to see sketch appear and come to life. Let's add some dots on the
ground for some details, for some extra textures, maybe some dots here
on the roof as well. For some textures. Later on after the
ink has dried, we can paint this
with water color.
6. Adding colours: First thing I want to
do is to wet the sky so that I can paint the blue, the blue that I'm using. I will try to find out
what this blue is. I've not used this palette
for a very long time, so I can't really
remember the colors. This looks like
cerulean blue to me. This blue here, that looks
like a PG, 50 Cobot. Te. Okay, for the sky
that is further up, I'm going to paint
it with darker blue. For the sky that
is further down, I'm going to have it
with a lighter blue. I'm going to wash my
brush and try to pick up all this excess paint here because you can
see the water dripping. So I have to work
really fast, okay? Okay, we can add some
clouds at this stage. Maybe we can use this to pick up certain white areas
to create like clouds. This will be solved here. The granulation from the Three
blues is really beautiful. I think it's okay. Maybe we can lift the colors
later for the clouds. Next up, we'll paint
colors for the shophouses. There is green here. This is too much green. I need to add more water to dilute this. This is not good. This is I need to add more
water to dilute this. Here on the right side, it looks like it's a Rosana. Is this Rosana? I think so. I can use this to paint
the buildings here. I think this looks nice. Some of the signboards
here are yellow. This paint doesn't
look 100% transparent. So I have to dilute
it a bit more to make it look
more transparent. I can add this color here. Maybe use this
color to paint some of the skin tones for
the people there. The blue that I was using
earlier for the sky can be used to paint
the sunshade here. Here, this looks like a fellow green. I'm adding all these spots of colors on to the areas
that need those colors. This whole area here
seems to be of white. I mean, even without a shadow, there is this very light, pale yellow color, which you can paint with a
very light orange. Or Rosiana, I'm
going to paint with this light orange
or Rosana color, just over this whole area here. Just to give it some color, I will leave this
banner here white. Remember to leave
certain areas in your scene white so that
you can get the contrast. I'm going to leave this white. I'm going to leave
the ground white. Or at least the ground where it's not under
the shadow white. While the wash is still wet, I can add in or charge in
some additional colors, but this may not be
obvious later on when I paint the shadows on
top of this side. Going to use this to
paint here as well. The green from this part
actually continues all the way down because the
pillar goes down. Let's paint that green as well. I'm not being
particularly precise, my sketch is loose, I'm not painting
within the lines. I'm just trying to get in the mood of painting
fast and loose. Next up, I want to
paint the roofs. Roofs will be yellow
and red, or orange. For that, I'm going
to mix a warm red while the wash is still wet. You can charge in either
more yellow or with more red to shift
the colors around. Oops, this is opaque. This looks too opaque for me. The thing is, I've not used
this palette for a long time. I don't remember which
are the opaque colors and which are the
transparent colors. This looks opaque to me. Now, if you're using opaque
colors, they are not. They're not as great when
it comes to using them. With line drawing, Painting
over line drawings. So you have to dilute
them a bit more. I think this looks fine. Using this warm red, I can paint all the elements, like the cos here being red, we see there's a red car here. This car here is red. Some of the signboards
here are red. We can just some colors, red here and there. Maybe the sign
boards here are red. Actually, the signboard
here is yellow and red and orange. Next up, we are going to paint the window frames here with
this Phoenician red color, or brown or burnt umber. If you are using and Phoenician
red is an opaque color, you will need to
use like a lot of water to make the
color transparent. Or you can use either Earth
colors that are transparent. You can use permanent
brown P PBR 25, but use a lot of water. Because PBR 25 is
highly tinting, you have to understand
the colors you have in your possession
before you paint them. It would help a lot because
right now as I'm painting, I'm having a lot of difficulty because I've not used the colors in this particular set for
a very long time. I don't know how they
actually will behave on paper because I don't even remember what some
of the colors are.
7. Adding shadows: Now we can paint the shadows. I will mix the shadows
using Cobot blue deep, which is B 74,
with burnt sienna. If you don't have
Cobot blue deep, you can use French ultramarine, ultramarine blue,
or just one blue. Or you can just try mixing your own shadows using
the three primary colors. I'm going to use Cobot
blue with burnt sienna. Let's paint this area here. This area here
will be in shadow. You need to use a transparent
color to paint over this area because you still want the underlying
colors to show through. Make sure this triangle
here is by light, but everything below
is just in shadow. Also, you may want to
paint a small area first, just to see how dark that shadow is before you paint
over the whole thing. Like what I'm doing here. Okay, here, make sure to
get the shadow shape right. Don't paint over areas
that are white with shadow as you may have to work
a bit faster otherwise. So what you're painting has dried and you paint
over a second time. You will see hot ages
where the any high ages. This is the part where you
have to be careful and look at your reference
photo very closely. Very important not to paint over areas that are
supposed to be white. The cast shadow will be here. The cast shadow will follow the perspective of
the shop house. This is in shadow as
well as the top of the building here and the bottom of the shop houses. The parts that are
underneath the sun shade, those will be in shadow. And we can use this wash here to paint some of the shadows on the ground cast by the
tree across the street. You may have to switch
to a smaller brush to paint the smaller
areas more accurately. Basically, to paint the
shapes more accurately, always look at your
reference photo to see how the shadows look, to see where the light
is, where the shadow is. This sign board is
in shadow shape. Actually, this whole
part here is in shape. The sign boards
are lit by light, but the first floor
are all in shadow. Front of the vehicle
also in shadow. I have accidentally left
out the window here, which should be painted
with this brown. I'm going to draw
the metal railings here with black lines. There are two ways to
draw the metal railings. You can have this painted black and then use the white
job pen to draw, or in this case here I am
using black over white. This is the window, the bottom here or the bottom of all the shop houses
are really dark. You will definitely want to make small ultra marine and bring
sienna to paint those areas. Or you can use thalo green
and red to paint those areas. This is thalo green and red. Those areas make those
shapes stand out. This part here will be
black or close to black, basically, a very dark shaped. Later on we can draw the metal railings with the
white chill pen here as well. Painting shadows
can be quite scary. If you get the shadows right, your scene will
really come to life. But if you get them wrong,
well, just practice. I don't really get the
shadows right all the time. Now, when you're
painting the shadows, you can also paint or not paint certain areas
to create certain ships. For example, here, I can
choose to maybe paint this area here just to create this area here that
is not painted. That's why sometimes I
may draw ships like this. To help me remember not to
paint over those areas. I also want to use this very
dark mix of yellow green and warm red or cool red
to paint the blacks here. There's this thick black
line that is below the shop house here as well. It goes all the way
to the right side. This black line will go
all the way to the right. You can use this black to paint whatever that is, just black. I can use this to paint
the windscreen of the car and the
bottom of the car. The shadow beneath
the car is close to black windscreen of the car. I can use this black paint here. This black can be used to
paint the lamppost as well. The light source is coming
from this direction. The lamp posts will be lit
by light on the right side. You have to paint the shadow
on the left side like this. If this is too dark at
some water to dilute it, paint it all the
way down like that. I see this lamppost. It's casting shadow here
onto the sun sheet here.
8. Adding details: Next thing I want to
do is to splatter some Venetian red
onto the ground. In addition to the black dots
that I already have there, I also want some colored dots. I do this by brushing
against the clip here. To create those colored dots, I'm going to add
some warm pyro rid to have the small colorful. Okay, done. Next, we can use the white gel pen
to add details like the metal Ls here here. So this is going to
create visual interest. We have light again, whereas most of the other
parts of the sketches, it's just dark against light. You can also use the
white how pen to suggest lights in
the restaurants. You can use or draw
horizontal lines to represent fluorescent lights
which are horizontal. Just add a little bit of
detail here and there. Next I have this Posca
light green marker to add this traffic light here, which is showing green. The white will work well a
mid values or darker values. Those are darker colors. Like darker ink colors will work well
against light colors. Let's have some yellow here. The Posca markers are
extremely convenient. These are also opaque. So you can paint
colors very easily. If you use water color
yellow to paint over, the chances are
it's not going to look that great unless
you're using a man color. There is a green street
sign here and I'm going to pin this banner with some red because there
is some red on it. It's some advertising banner. There is some text
on it as well. Let's have some yellow too, and some text at bottom. At this stage, the sketch
is considered complete. You can add some details to areas that you have left
out or missed accidentally. If you look at our
sketch and you don't know where
else to add colors, that's the point where you
can stop adding details. Now it's time to remove
the tape that I've pasted. This is just mat surface
tape, scotch tape. This is how the completed sketch looks painted with cam pigments. Some of these areas
here are lit by light that I've
accidentally painted over. Here's a closer
look at the sketch. The sky is a mix of three granulating blues
and the shadows here, cobot blue, dip
with burnt sienna. I really like the texture
of Cobot blue deep. But PB 74 is an expensive color. Maybe you just want to go with ultra marine or
ultramarine blue, which is much cheaper,
more affordable. This area here is shade, and this area here
on the right side, is under sunlight, even though the ground
is supposed to be gray. But if it's lit by light, you can actually
just have it white. This lamp post here, unfortunately, is too thick. It should just be represented
by a single line. This is a mistake. So these are the
details on the windows, details for the windows. As you can see, it's
difficult to make out all the little windows, or the menus, or the signboards
for the restaurants here. But the shadow shape is most important to
create the illusion that this area is under light
and there are cast shadows. This line here,
this is white open. We have three vehicles
here on the right side. If I were to sketch
this on location, chances are my sketch
will look even more loose than this, may have even less
details compared to this. But because I'm
sketching at home, I have the luxury of
time and the comfort. I find myself drawing a bit
more detail and painting. How should I say a
bit more carefully? By the way, prior to
making this tutor, I actually wanted to
draw the wider scene. Actually, I started
drawing this. I drew the lamppost first to mark out the positions to
divide the different areas, but I got the proportions wrong. You can see here this lamppost, it's very close to this part
here with the triangle. But for my initial sketch, I drew this lamppost
like too far away. If you want to draw accurately, you have to be like
really observer, Be more careful, especially
right at the start. Because if you get
your proportion wrong right at the start, even if it's just a
few lines on the page, everything will be
thrown off later on. Anyway, I will still
complete this sketch. Maybe I will draw from my imagination because I don't want to waste
these two pages. It's very important to
get your proportion right at the start. If you are unsure. You can always use pencils
to draft out all of those lines first to help you. Because after you draw ink
and paint with watercolor, those pencil lines, they will just disappear into
the background.
9. Goodbye: That was a rather long
sketching and painting session. I hope you have learned
something That's basically the workflow that I go through whenever I am
sketching on location. And how loose or how
detailed my sketch will be will depend on how much time I have when I'm
sketching on location. I hope you have
enjoyed the course and don't forget to leave
this course. A review. Thanks for watching. Thanks
for following along with me. See you guys in the next course.
Teoh Yi Chie, Sketcher, watercolour lover
