Train Your Eye: Easy Method to Improve your Drawing and Painting Skills

1. Intro: This class is all about growing your drawing and watercolor skills to improve accuracy. These foundational skills are important for any kind of representational painter, so it's important to study as we continue our artistic journeys. So in this class, I'll show you some repeatable strategies for accurately painting from reference photos. I'll show you the classic approach of using a grid system to create a very accurate drawing. Next, we'll discuss values, which are the backbone of our painting and do a value study together with markers. Finally, we'll create a color strategy, and we'll use watercolor to paint our scene with accuracy while also having a bit of fun with color and texture. As always, my goal is to provide repeatable strategies so you can use your skills to paint anything you want on your own. So let's get started. 2. Materials: Just run through the materials really quick. We need some kind of paper to draw on. It could be anything. One pencil, probably a sharpener is good. And you're going to want to print your reference photo at a four inch by six inch ratio. You can use the photo that I've provided. It's already in that ratio. And you're also going to probably want a piece of transparency paper like this or tracing paper, anything you can see through. You don't absolutely need this because you can technically draw on the reference photo, but we're going to use this to overlay on top of our photo and draw a grid. So, yes, you could just draw straight onto your photo, but I like using this just in case I mess up the grid enough to change it. That means I don't have to reprint my photo. And it just makes it a lot easier. For this first portion of the class, we'll also need a ruler and a fine tip sharpie or similar. An eraser, and I preferred to kneaded eraser because it allows me to pick up a little bit of graphite without erasing my lines. A few gray scale markers. I like the ShinhnTuch twins because they have a big chisel tip as well as a fine liner tip, and you only need a few shades of gray, a white posca pen or some kind of white gel pen, and finally, a dark, fine liner pen with a small nib. 3. Learning the Grid System: The first thing I'm going to do is cut my transparency film just slightly larger than my photo. If you're drawing in a sketchbook, it's kind of useful to use the back side of the page next to what you're doing to tape your photo. Otherwise, you can just use, like, a loose sheet of paper or some kind of board. As long as this is going to be we just have to attach it to something. First thing, we need to secure our photo down. So what I like to do is you can use any kind of tape for this. I'll just put one piece of tape on the back because it doesn't need to be super sturdy or anything. And then for the transparency, because I cut it slightly larger so that it doesn't interfere with the photo, I'm just going to use teeny, tiny little pieces on the corner. I don't need to do the whole thing around, like we normally would for a painting or something. Even just that's fine. Next, we're going to draw the outline of our photo over here. I could have just traced it, but it's kind of good to get in the habit of getting accurate with drawing straight lines and just making your outline accurate. So what I typically do is, I mean, this is already a four inch by six inch photo, and basically, you need to copy that exact dimension over here. In the future, if you use a different size photo, which obviously you probably will, you just need to make sure that you use that exact size and ratio on your paper that you're going to be drawing on. I have coined a bit of space to play within my paper here, so all I need to do is make sure I draw the four by six inch within the center somewhere. What I typically do is just give myself at least an inch from the edge of the paper, so I will put my ruler down. Maybe I will do 1 " from the edge, maybe 1.5 because I have plenty of space. And then I'll just draw a line between those two points, and I'll do the same on the top. I think on the top, I'll give myself 2 " cause I have plenty of room. 2.5 " up there. One, two. 2.5. One, two, 2.5. And then connect those points. And then I can just measure over 4 " because the paper is 4 " wide. Connect those and measure down 6 " because it's four or 6 " long. I didn't quite center it, but that's okay. Use the top or bottom for notes or something. Oops. Make sure it's straight. There we go. So now I have my outline. And I'm just gonna darken it so I know exactly Perfect. And I kind of lined it up with my photo, which helps a lot. So you could even do this before you tape this down to make sure it's kind of aligned. And now we are going to draw our grid on our photo. And again, this is why I love having the transparency film because it's the smooth slick surface, and I like to use dry erase markers for this. So if I mess up, I can erase it much easier. First thing I'm going to do is draw the outline of my photo because I want to make sure that's very bold, so I definitely can see it. I'm actually going to use a red marker for this so that it stands out a bit against the dark photo. It might be a little bit light in the camera, but I definitely can see it really easily here. Now we have to decide how tight we want our grid to be. You could just use a very wide grid. So even just cutting this in half both ways, that alone can be really helpful, but I like to do at least a couple lines. Since this is four by 6 ", it's so much easier to divide up evenly. If you use a very strange size, it can be a little trickier. You have to do some maths, and I am terrible at that, so I always try to make it as easy as possible. You could sing centimeters or millimeters is even better because obviously you can get smaller increments a lot easier. But I'm going to be just using inches for this. So to make it really easy, we're just going to use 1 " by 1 " squares. And to do that, all we need to do is mark every 1 ", draw a little dot. I usually draw my little dot slightly off the outside edge of the border just so I am not interfering with anything that might be on the photo. I just realized that I am going to be closing the sketchbook in the future. So that means this is probably going to get rubbed or smudged. So I'm actually going to switch to a permanent marker because I don't want that to get moved in the future. However, usually, I'm not keeping this kind of thing in my sketchbook. I'm just using it, and then I recycle it later. And I'm going to keep this in my sketchbook for my own future reference. I like to do that with all of my paint along stuff. So let's switch. I got a really skinny sharpie. It's like a fine point sharpie, so that my lines won't be too bold. But sometimes I just use the regular ones. But I already did my little grid. So now I can just draw my lines. I did all my measurements. Actually, I should probably redo the outlines just so they're very, very clear. Okay, now we have our grid, and we can do the same thing over here on our paper. I'm going to use a very sharp point for this, so I can get really teeny tiny lines. And I'm going to draw very lightly because I don't want to worry about smudging this grid. 4. Drawing Part 1: Once we have divided everything, the rest is pretty straightforward. We are simply going to look at each individual square and draw it almost as its own thing. Right here, this square, there's, you know, the chimney, that's pretty much it. We don't really have any blank squares. There's always seems to be something going on in each one. But all I'm going to do is look at these exact shapes that I'll draw in the same corresponding square over here. Something that I do that helps me even more, or if you need to, you could divide each of these in half visually is what I try to do it visually. And I also try to think about mostly how big is this negative space to start out. So I think about how the chimney is not centered. It's off to the left. There's a little sliver of blue sky here. And most of this half is blue. It's just blank. So the chimney is off to the left, and down here, the brick meets almost the center line of the square. So I look at little visual clues like that as I draw in my square. So just to be as accurate as possible. At first, you don't have to worry too much about detail. Just draw, like, basic shapes. And then once you get the majority of things plotted out, you can come back and do even more detail. So after maybe I draw the whole thing, I would come back and draw some of these little tiles or little individual brick lines and things like that. But at first, I'm mostly just trying to get the overall painting laid out. This is something I did a lot when I used to do commissions because most likely it was something that someone wanted to be very accurate. And yeah, just really helps, especially with architecture. This is why I'm using that as the example today. I liked this image because it was a great example of when you're looking if you're at the bottom of a building looking up at a sharp angle, things are kind of skewed and tilting in strange ways. So something that helps me is I can hold my ruler up and match this angle of the building on the left. This whole edge is lined up with that entire building. At first, I maybe thought the angle was more like this, but in reality, it's more like this. And you can kind of see at the bottom of the page here, there is a sliver of the bottom of the building visible. So even just drawing that in right here, that can help. And now I know I have to connect this point to this point, and I can use my ruler to do that. If this doesn't feel like an extreme enough angle, it's probably because this top section, I did not draw perfectly accurate. So what I can do is this happens all the time, but that's why it's really good to do a small sketch of a building before you do a larger finished commission. There's always going to be something that catches you off guard. When I was doing more commissions, I would do at least two or three practice drawings like this to get really familiar with the structures. In the second square here, we have more chimneys. Like I said, sometimes it's helpful to visually break it in half, even more. And I don't even have to. Sometimes I'll just make a little middle point with my pencil there. So I know that's the middle point. And now I can kind of compare everything to that. I think that really helps whenever there's some extreme angles involved, because those can really throw me off. I'm not sure what it is about that. So this strategy is excellent for first figuring out kind of the proportions of the building, the angles. If you do this a few times with a few different buildings, you really get used to seeing things a little bit more accurately. Obviously, if you do it for years, you're going to get even better and better. And eventually, you won't even need the grid. But most of us aren't architectural students, and we aren't drawing buildings constantly. So this kind of thing really helps. So once you do your first sketch, your first attempt, you've probably learned a ton if you want to then paint it, I recommend doing this again. But when you draw your grid, your initial grid, do it very, very light. 5. Drawing Part 2: End up drawing your grid a little bit too dark, you can use kneaded eraser and come back with very light pressure and just lift it slightly. And that will kind of make it disappear a bit more. If you're using watercolor versus guash, that will also sort of dictate how dark you do your grid. With Guash, it's going to be opaque, so we can easily cover it up. But with watercolor, usually you don't want all these lines showing up. So that's another reason you would want to use very, very light pressure. Or use a less divided grid. So maybe less lines, maybe divide it in thirds or something like that. So it's a little bit less. But I think doing a 1 " by 1 " grid is even within that, there's still so much detail. So it really helps to do this at least a couple times to get used to it. I think it also makes it less daunting because instead of looking at this as a whole and thinking, Oh, my gosh, where do I even start? You can literally go square by square. And in this third square here, there's barely anything. And I think I only have, like, a tiny little corner of a window here. It just makes it more approachable. I think. And, of course, it's not even doing this, it's not gonna be perfect. But that really isn't the point anyway for most of us. I think we want to have a nice, accurate skeleton of our drawing. And then when we do our watercolor or our guash, we can have a little more fun and loose and painterly style. At least that's my strategy. But having a strong underlying drawing really, really helps. And then you can decide from there how playful you want to be with your paint. So this square I'm already going down into it. Slightly above halfway. There's a bit of an angle. If I try to draw this without this grid, I definitely will have issues with scale and proportion. Like, our eyes just can't see everything all at once, at least not the untrained eye. So if you're an architectural student or if you are doing tons of urban sketching and drawing buildings every day or all the time, of course, you're going to get more used to seeing the subtle angles and proportions. But just like with portraiture, I feel like it's one of these things that you need to practice constantly. And this is, to me, one of the best ways of learning how extreme some of the angles can be, or how just a tiny little shift in the angle or a tiny, little adjustment to one of the proportions makes a massive difference in the overall accuracy. Started to get really dark. I had to turn my other light on. One other thing that can help is to think about plot points. So if you think about this line here, the chimney pretty much intersects that in the center. So I know I have a little.in the center there, and then I come straight down and I see it intersects to the left there. So on this square, I can think, Okay, it's in the center, and then it kind of comes down to the left here. So I have two little plot points, and I can just connect those. It's kind of similar to doing the ruler thing, but a little bit faster the more you get used to it. And if you do this and you use really light lines later, you can see your whole picture kind of forming, and you can see, Op, this angle's really wrong. I can make a little adjustment, and it's not a super dark line that you have to mess with. That can be one of the frustrating things in doing this is you do your whole thing, and then, like, two squares won't exactly line up, and you're like, Wait a minute. How did that happen? And then you have to make slight adjustments. But that's exactly what teaches you about those proportions. Those moments of Oh, that's a little bit off. It's just like aha moment. Um, after I plot out the majority of my drawing, I'm then going to grab my grayscale markers, and we're gonna do the shadows. This is another great way to practice seeing and also just doing those value studies is really helpful before you jump into the painting. So for now, I'm going to maybe put on some music for you, finish drawing. If I think of anything else, I'll chime in, but let's see how far we can get in the next few minutes. Okay, I got 3 minutes into that and realized I do want to lighten my grid because I don't want to worry about that being super distracting in the end before I get too many of my detail lines in. I did draw it a little darker, specifically for the demonstration. But now that I've talked about it, I think it's okay to erase it just a little. Can still see most of it. And that's 'cause I did use I used a thin line, but I used a decent amount of pressure. So pretty much everywhere, you're still gonna see a little. But like I said, the initial pass of my drawing, I'm just focusing on plotting things out as accurately as I can, especially getting the major elements, like windows and doors and roof lines and things like that. I don't have to worry about any of the teeny, tiny little details. Like, there's little wires, and there's you can even see some, like, nails in the wall here and there, roughed marks. That's the stuff I'm ignoring, but I do want to make sure I get my major shapes. And one of the distracting things in this specific example is how this edge of the door lines up almost perfectly with this grid line. Because I'm not painting over this with opaque paint right now, I'm just going to be doing the markers, the grayscale. That can be really distracting. So it's especially important that I make that grid line really, really light. Okay. I've plotted pretty much the entire thing out. There's little details like the railing and the sign and the pipes and yeah, little things I can still add. 6. Value Study Part 1: I'm using my touch twin markers for this. I love these because I can get really bold marks with the chisel tip or really tiny fine marks with the fine tip. I do have a couple that are brush markers, but, um, I don't know. I just really prefer the chunky marks, overall, with markers. If you're brand new to markers, I highly recommend using the Tambo brush pens because the brush tip is a little more forgiving, and it does also have the tiny fine point. It's water based. It can technically be a little bit less finicky. It doesn't bleed quite as much. It still little depending on your paper. I think you can actually even water it down and move it around with a water brush or something, but I usually use these when I'm outside. They're a little bit lightweight, as well. They're a little less bulky. But yeah, when I'm in the studio, I love my touch twins. When it comes to deciding the values, I typically like to use maybe three to five depending on what I'm doing. I have more markers than I need. One thing that really helps is to make little mark make a mark or two on your paper to know how dark or light something is. So I'll go down the line from my lightest to my darkest. And then I can decide if I want to use all of these gradients, I can. Otherwise, I typically choose a couple. So maybe my really light one, the second lightest, I'll skip this one and go down to the dark dark. And then maybe at the end, I'll use the really dark one. The other thing is, when you layer markers, they will get slightly darker. So I use this color and then I let that completely dry and then layer on top, it will get a little bit darker. So I don't need to have every step of the gradient. Um, but it's really useful to have a couple light ones, and then maybe one or two dark ones. When I'm drawing with my markers, I always keep them in order so that I don't accidentally grab one that's the wrong shade. But I will always start with my lightest one. We have a decision to make about where we want our brightest brights to be because that'll be the color of the paper. So for this scene, I definitely will need to add some color to the sky because if you squint at the picture, you can see the sky is actually darker than the highlights on the building. So this part right here, this light gray section is lighter than the sky. So I'm going to use this. This is going to be white. And maybe I'll add tiny little touches of the shadow where necessary. But I'm going to use my light color in the sky that will make this building stand out the highlights of the building. Like I said, it is a lot easier to start with the light colors that you need. Oh, when you're doing markers, especially alcohol markers, I find that moving quick is good. Even though it looks streaky at the first few marks, if you move quick along, they kind of blend together as they dry. But when I do the sky or any kind of background, I typically try to keep all of my marks in the same direction, so vertical, or I would choose horizontal depends on the scene. So it's not going to be perfect. There are going to be a little bit some streaks here and there, but that's okay. We aren't focused on that the background. Now, that's my lightest color. The other shadows that I'm playing with are a little bit darker. So this is this shade here. So it's a pretty big jump. If I look at those two next to each other, that's a pretty big jump. I'm gonna use this deep shadow on the building and the stairs here and then stop and see, kind of assess the situation. Then I can come back and play with either the mid tones or the really dark darks. But when I look at the sky compared to this shadow color, it is a rather big jump in shadow, and my temptation is to use my next lightest one and just drop that in. But then I know from experience, it won't feel dark enough. So I'm going to jump down a few shades and use my number five. And I'm ignoring all the detail that I see. When I look at the shadow that's on the door, because it's overlapping the red, it feels a little bit lighter, so I'm going to ignore that just for now. Same with when it overlaps this white. I can use a lighter shade for that, but where the shadow overlaps this dark stone, it's very dark, and this whole section is going to be one chunk of shadow. I'm still using the grid to guide me along to know where the shadow is. So if I want, I can draw the outline of my shadow in, but I'm just going to eyeball it as I go based on what I see in each square. Oops. Sometimes I'll come back and overlap my marks to make them kind of bleed together. This is definitely a tricky reference. There's a lot of strange stuff going on. So I think that's pretty good, though. 7. Value Study Part 2: That dries, I can come back with maybe another layer and do the shadows on the stairs because there definitely is a difference between the top of the stairs and the front side of the stairs. Now that I have my pretty intense shadow there, I can kind of gauge where I'm at with the rest of the values I need. So when I compare this shadow to the shadow that's in that little window, it's pretty close. So I think I'll use it for that. There's also the underline, the undershadow on the edge of the roof and a couple deep shadows in the stairs. For the windows, I'm actually going to use my darker shade, my darkest dark because when I squint at it, I want there to be a visual difference between this shadow and this shadow. And I want the windows to feel a little bit darker and more recessed, whereas in here, I want there to feel like there's a little more light bouncing around. So even if I do think these look the same when I squint at it, I'm making the choice to have a little bit more light in here. So this is my darkest dark and just on the windows that are facing out this direction on the right side, using this dark dark. And then for this window that's facing slightly to the left. It's a little lighter, so I'll use a different shade. This paper isn't ideal for markers. It does bleed a little bit. So my lines are a little bit fuzzy. I have to take that into account when I draw these lines 'cause they do kind of spread slightly. But when I come back with my dip pen, I can get a little bit more fine detail. So for now, I'm just having fun making bold marks. Even if my lines aren't perfect, um, and my lines are a little fuzzy and maybe not perfectly straight in the exact spot they should be, I can be a little more careful with my dip pen. Going back to this shade, I'm going to do some of the darker details that I see that need a bit of chunk to them. Anything that is really, uh, tiny fine lines I'm kind of ignoring right now because I can do that with my dip pen. And this is more for marks that need a bit more that need a bit of presence, I should say. There's actually some shingles here I should have drawn. So I'm going to just do some loose, chunky marks with the roof of this one definitely is a little thicker. Okay, now I'm gonna switch to my mid tone. So this one is a little bit darker than the sky, but I still consider it a mid tone. This building over here is a dark gray, but it's not quite a shadowy, but it's definitely darker than the sky. So I'm going to fill most of it in. As a reminder, if there's anything where, you know, you paint or you draw your shadows and then later realize, Oops, that should have been a highlight. You can use a Posca pen. It's not the end of the world. The pipe here is one example. I could draw around the pipe or I can just come back with the Posca pen and do that. So that's in this situation, I think the posca pen makes more sense because otherwise, I'm trying to draw around a long skinny pipe there. I think it's a lot easier to just fill this in with nice, bold marks and then come back and do that pipe after. I may also need to do the L on this sign. I definitely will, actually, because it's lost now. The light on this bottom part of this building is pretty light. There's a lot of white, but there is a shadow. And because now this is visually separated from the sky, I can use my sky color in the shadows here and keep them really light, but it still will be it won't, like, bleed. It looks like it's fading into the sky. So basically, what I mean is I can use that shadow color here. So it's not pure white. It's really There is a bit of shadow there. And it'll make we can add more detail when we come back and with the Posca pen. But next we are gonna do we need some shadow on the chimney. Especially the right side. There's some shingles here, which are actually darker than the building. The Oh, yeah, I was gonna use a light color for this window. So pretty much that window and this side are the brightest part. This building the light is still hitting this side pretty strongly, but we do have some brick shadows here and there, and kind of a shadow that comes down underneath this on the roof line here. So I'll just drop those in. A lot of it is stylistic choice, I guess I would call it. And I could use a very light dry brushy effect on the bricks here. So maybe just a couple another reason I love the chunky marks. This is a very interesting architectural detail. It's like a curved Oh, now I can do the shadow on here with a lighter color. So I'm trying to think about the overall shadow shapes and not focus on detail. There's definitely some shadow on these steps. The actual material is pretty dark. This stone material, but I'm trying to capture the sense of light falling across it. So I don't want to make it all dark just because that is a dark material. Again, the style choices come into play. There's a couple details in here. There's a little doorway back there. The steps have a bit of shadow on the front of them. So this is the same color I already used, but because I'm laying it over it, it's much darker. Lots of steps in there. But the main the important thing is just to capture a bit of a sliver of light between some of those dark marks. Otherwise, it gets a little lost. It's definitely a darker shadow on the edges of this door and some, like, lock details there. 8. White Pen Details: Let's do the white posca pen before I forget. I like to do a little test on the paper because it always takes a bit to get it warmed up. Typically, I'll start my Posca pen by shaking it and just pumping the end because that's how you get the And then I can even test it on top of this to see if it's opaque. Okay, now, let's do the pipe. It's following the shape of the building for the most part. Can barely see it on here on this part. I want that dry and then come back with another layer if we need it. And if there's anything else that I think I may be made, if I, like, lost a bit of shadow, I can make adjustments now too. Um oh, there's a railing. That actually should have been a highlight. There's my grid. So kind of lost my grid a little bit here. So At this point, if I have anything that's a little bit inaccurate, I just have to go with it because obviously, I have my marker. Can't erase that. I'm just gonna catch some light on this edge. Just a little. Just a little sliver of white helps with that. And then we'll just do a little more here. And now that I have that, I can maybe do some more shadow slightly offset the shadow here. I really like the font on the bar sign. That's cute. I wonder what you call that. Okay, I think I'm pretty much ready. 9. Final Details: Okay, I just remembered that I have this dark sepia fine liner, and I love this color. It's a really deep brown tone. It's a bit warm. And since I used warm gray, I think it will be really nice. It'll be a good combination. So what I'm going to do is focus on, um, kind of defining some of these edges that got a bit lost. So especially because my markers were bleeding slightly since this paper isn't great for markers, I lost a bit of the sharpness on this roof edge. I can also use it to define some of the architectural details or stonework, but not like outlining every single stone, just a couple of them. And anywhere like in here, where this dark shadow kind of bleeds across all the surfaces, I can use the fine liner to get a bit more detail and find some edges in there. So I think I'm just going to start from the top corner and just work my way down just in case, you know, I don't want to smudge it. So up here, what we can do is get a kind of a nice crisp edge on this. I can also use it to very lightly indicate that there's stonework here. And in the end, I want the majority of my darker areas, my darker marks to be kind of here. That kind of draws the focus in. So up here, I may not do too much. I just want to get some of these edges that got a tiny bit lost. So this is where having the grid there still really helps. And like I said earlier, doing this a few times before you jump into a final commission is so helpful. And then as you translate from the photo to the drawing, this is what should guide you in your painting. You're you're learning how to make decisions, making it more uh, you know, taking there's no way you could copy every single detail. So translating what you see to your own drawing in the drawing, pinpointing the things you want to focus on, then using that to guide your painting. I hope that makes sense. So I'm just gonna capture the right edge of this pipe. Just now and then my line will be a little bit broken, which is okay. But because the pipe was very light, it was lost right here, especially. And the sign Once I do all of this line work, if there's anything I notice that I want to come back and, you know, add mark or two or shading or anything like that, that would be that's completely fine. I don't know what these little wires are for. I just assume it's the electrics for this. Just kind of make it up. Little bits and bobs sticking off the edge of the building. Now I can also use this as an opportunity to define the edge of this if it got a little lost. Very, very fine. And I can use marks for the stonework. I don't want to outline every single piece of brick or stone that I see in this drawing. S in the reference, I want to just hint at it, so I'll maybe do a couple horizontal and a couple vertical marks here and there, especially on the edge because that's a good way to define it. This building is kind of whitewashed here, so there's not a ton of lines in the brickwork. If that's enough detail for that side, let's come over here to the main building. So the the windows. I don't think it's necessary to outline all the windows, all the details, kind of pick and choose. But it's hard to see in the original photo. But on but right here, even though the shadow kind of creates this big shape along the whole side, between this little back building and this stone building, there is a line here. So I am going to add that because it helps define the building. And I need to make sure It is slightly angled. So it kind of starts where the about here where this back building meets this building. So that's it. That's just one little line that helps. And because it's a dark sepia, I really like how it's not overpowering my drawing, whatever I've already done. I can just use these little fine lines to enhance whatever I think needs. I definitely needs some definition on this railing. There's a little lock on the door here. So I'll add that. The center line of the door comes down about here. It's almost lined up with shadow. The door The sun is definitely coming from up here somewhere, casting the shadows down this way. So my darker marks, I start at least with drawing them under or on the shadow side. From there, I can then decide if I want to do anything more, like, on the highlight side. In terms of the brick work here, I'm just using my very fine marks to emphasize little bits of it. I'm adding this wire. I kind of like the scraggliness of this wire. Interesting architecture here. So, yeah, I think by now, I mean, I can definitely see there's bits of mine that are off. They're not absolutely not perfect. So, like I said, if I was doing this as a commission or really trying to get it super accurate, I would want to do this at least three times, probably. And that might sound tedious, but, I mean, if you're excited to draw something, that kind of homework, as I would call it, is it's a choice. Like, you do it because you want to do it. You want to do well. And each time you do it, it will get better, so there's that to look forward to. You could also try different materials, different mediums, use those first few tries as a way to decide what you want to use. Okay, so I'm sure someone's gonna have questions. Let me know in the comments if there's anything. But I really hope this strategy helps you. And if you're going on vacation or just you really like urban sketching and you're going to go out and do some of that, draw from life, but take some reference photos of whatever you're drawing, and then go back home and do it with the strategy. So you can see your life drawing next to this study at home and really to be able to critique yourself because you'll see, like, some of the inaccuracies very obviously. And that's not a bad thing, obviously. We all learn as we go. So, of course, there's going to be inaccuracies. That's part of it, and it's okay. 10. Enlarging the Grid: First thing we need to do is figure out how to enlarge this so that it stays in the same ratio. And a four by six inch drawing like this is a two by three ratio. So to keep that, I mean, you could figure it out if you're really good at mass, but I am not. So what I do is find calculators online. This is probably the best one I found so far the Bellevue Fine art Reproduction. They have an aspect ratio calculator on their website. So if you scroll down on the left here, we have a space we can type in our current dimensions, which is four, by six. And it shows your aspect ratio is two by three. Yes, we know. And on the right, it'll say the same thing until you type in what you want it to be. So if I want my short side to be 1 " bigger, like 5 ", I'll type five, and it will automatically adjust the next value so that I know my height has to be 7.5 ". And that will keep the aspect ratio of two by three. This makes it a lot easier so that you don't have to crop anything you've already done. And we can just do the grid and stuff afterwards, but we have to at least start with the same ratio. I'm using a block of the Bao hang Academy watercolor paper, which is a lot of fun to do practice on lots of studies. And what I'm going to do first is measure in at least 1 " from the side. So if I go 1 ", is that going to give me. This will give me enough space, and it will kind of center my box. So 1 " by 1 ", I'm gonna draw a line. And now I know I can measure over 5 ". And the other way is going to be 7.5 ". That's like about 1.5 " up from the bottom, 1.5 Now we just have to make sure this is 7.5. Something I find helpful if you don't love this side of art, like, the whole grid measurement accuracy side is to do this and then go take a break, maybe go for a walk or do something to clear your head because I find doing stuff like this gets me feeling a bit rigid. And when I go into the painting process, I want to feel a little more free. So I often need to take a little break between this and a painting. Next thing we need to do is to divide this up in the same amount of squares we used for the drawing. So if you look at your drawing, you see you have one, two, three, four squares over. So we need to divide this by four. And the same thing going up the other way. There's various ways you could do this. What I typically do is obviously I made this 5 " evenly, so I can simply five divide it by four. I mean, obviously, you can do that in your head, but I keep it very simple by keeping that number on the screen. And just doing all my measurements. So 1.25, that's one and a quarter inches. So pretty easy on this ruler, just one and a quarter, one and a quarter. And what I typically do is draw all my little measurement dots before I do the lines just in case I did my measurements wrong or something. It means I don't have a ton of lines to erase. But I can see that all lines up. Perfect. So now I can draw my lines. I'm going to be using very, very light lines for my interior grid. So extremely light pressure. And then once I do my drawing, I'm going to lighten these or erase them as much as I can with my needed eraser. Okay, let's see what the next the squares going this way are six, one, two, three, four, five, six, just double check, six squares. So now, because this is 7.5 ", seven point 5/6, 1.25, you'll get lucky sometimes. Someone really good at mass is watching this and is like, Do Sarah Okay. Just keep as accurate as you possibly can in the ruler in your placement. Really light lines. Barely see it. We'll go with it for now. At least I can see all of my little dots, my measurements just in case I need to do that. Redo that. And now I'm going to tape off my edges. He go. Okay. 11. Drawing on Watercolor paper: Now we've got everything taped off. Our grid is ready to go, and we are going to do the same thing we did last time and simply copy it square for square. And since we already made the effort to translate what we saw on the photo to our drawing, if you like how your drawing turned out, copy your drawing. I find that really helps because when you're looking at your photo, it's easy to get distracted by all the tiny little details and figuring out, you know, how you make that into the drawing. Once you have your drawing, if you can still see your grid, that is, if you can't see your grid, you could probably draw another one on top of it, or you'd have to use your original photo. But I can still see my grid over here, so I can easily copy that square for square. I definitely recommend using an HB pencil or something lighter. You don't want to have a pencil that's going to be easily smudge, especially we don't want to go too dark. So for this first pass of drawing, I'm just blocking things in very, very light pressure. It always takes me a little while to kind of feel loosened up and confident in my marks. So the first couple squares, I tend to erase a little bit more. Something that also might help if you're feeling a bit timid to make a mark is to use dotted lines or dashed lines. So rather than drawing each of your lines and trying to make them perfect, just dash. And then later, if you feel like it's an accurate shape, you can come back in and make it a little more solid. Such good practice for confidence, line confidence, and, uh, hand eye confidence, is that what you call it? Hand eye coordination confidence. No, that's a mouthful. That would be a really fun workshop name. Hand eye coordination confidence. So this is a moment where I'm looking at my reference photo because my grid is kind of lost right here in the shadow. So um, it's taking me a bit of extra time. To adjust my eyes. Back and forth. We don't have to draw everything perfect. Part of the charm of architectural rendering and especially when you're outside doing urban sketching, is that hand drawn feel. Some lines can be a little bit wonky and, like, a little bit wavy, and the evidence of the artist is there, and I think that's beautiful. But obviously, this is a whole different type of exercise. This is where we are training our eye and building that muscle memory and getting building a strategy really for when we do go out and paint from life. So don't worry if things aren't perfect right now. 12. Drawing Part 2: Sometimes as I go, like in this area where I have to do lots of little window details, I will erase my grid lines now and then draw those in so that I don't have to erase around my crazy little lines. I'll also erase some of the lines that are not really useful, like in the sky. And instead of using my finger to brush away the little eraser dust, I will use a big brush so that I don't smudge the papers quite as much. Alright. I've worked my way pretty much from the top down, and now I'm down here by the stairs, and it's probably one of the trickiest parts of the scene. So I'm just lightening the grid lines as much as I possibly can so I can barely see them just so that I can use them till the end, but they won't be visible. And since this is a very shadowy area, it's pretty much gonna be covered, but this one's a little lighter, so so, yeah, I can barely see that anymore. And I'm gonna keep my pencil extra sharp in this section because it's a lot of fine repeated lines. And I remember when I did the first drawing, it's easy to get a little lost. Um, if you're feeling a bit frustrated or nervous about not being able to get anything perfect, just remember that well, what is perfection, anyway? If you're trying to match the photo, that's a whole different story, but we want to tell a believable story. We want to capture the likeness of this place. And that actually does not require perfection. So right now, while we're doing the base layer of our drawing, like, plotting everything out, it's better to focus on accuracy. But then when we come back with our ink and our watercolor, we can be a little bit more free and loose and I mean, like I said earlier, to me, that's what makes it interesting is when you can see evidence of the artist in there. The reason I'm doing this first layer super super light is because I want to do my Sepia pen again in the final piece. So I will have these lines. Once I do my pen, I can actually erase more of this if it's still visible. But I need to make sure I don't go too dark now and, you know, when I erase a lot, this paper kind of slowly degrades, so I have to be really careful that I don't ruin the surface too much because I haven't even done the watercolor yet. So, for now, really, really light lines, and then we'll finalize everything with our CPA pen or whatever pen you want to use. Fountain pen could be great, but this paper is a little bit more textured than what I usually use, and I don't want to mess with any kind of pen that could leak or burp onto my paper. Like, fountain pens could technically do that. So, let's continue on. I've been very, very hesitant to draw anything dark, but that makes it a little tricky. I find that it's actually easier to just commit to a line and go a little bit darker than it is to draw something really, really light and then find it again. So all these stairs that I drew, I can barely see them. It's gonna be tricky to make sure I draw the correct one later. I find it a lot harder to do this part of the process than going from photo to drawing, going from drawing to painting. Well, I'm still doing the drawing, but for some reason, there's, like, added pressure whenever I use nice watercolor paper. Like, knowing that this is going to become the final painting just puts that extra pressure on. And so I'm a lot more reserved. If you're a bit nervous about the stairs, I'm actually realizing it's easier to start from this side of the stairs and move left because, well, at least when you look at the original. These are a lot more obvious, these big steps, and then you can see how they connect to the left side and then the left side going back up. But again, if you follow the grid and just draw grid by grid box by box, it should align or at least get really close. I think we're almost done. I just need to do the railings. I think my doorway is slightly off, but it still works with this drawing. It's just not absolutely perfect within the squares. But since I've kind of based everything else, like the stair, the steps, I'm gonna go with it because it still works. Well, this goes down one step. 13. Inking: Now you have a decision to make when it comes to doing the pen, the inkwork on top. You have to decide if you want thick ink lines or very, very thin. And that is going to change the final look of it. I find that using thicker ink lines always feels a bit more illustrative. Whereas if you use something that gives you really, really thin lines, you can be a little bit more painterly. You let the watercolor show through a bit more. Um, I like this kind of dark sepia color because it's not too black or overpowering. It's got a tiny bit of color in it. And even if you have something that's a little lighter brown, it could be really good for this. Um, but I've also used fun ink colors like orange and neon green, and they all have a different feel to them. So just choose something that you like to play with, and, of course, you can do this multiple times and see how it changes the overall effect. But I'm going to use this one again, just like it did in the last drawing. And I'm going to use really, really tiny lines to start out. And then if I see anything that could benefit from a bit of a bolder line, that's when I'll come back with a second layer of ink. So it is kind of more of a tentative approach, and you could also do the watercolor first and then do your ink lines. But since I plan to erase some of this to get it out of the way, I'm going to start with my ink. There are certain things that I'm not going to outline with my pen. These background elements here, I'm not going to outline. I'm just going to draw them slightly darker with the pencil so I can see them better. I'm not going to outline the chimneys, and I'm not going to draw in the brick work or the stone work that I did before. So the reason for that is those elements, I can tell the I can do better with watercolor than with ink, and I like having some things in the drawing in the painting that aren't outlined or drawn in. I like to have some things that are just watercolor. Um, yeah, okay. Kind of, oh, and last thing, of course, maybe this is obvious, but always test your pen on a piece of paper or, like, I have a little bit of space up here. Do a couple lines and see how to get your pen or the nib flowing on the specific paper you're using because if it's really, really textured, it's a lot harder, and you want to make sure it's at least gonna give you the lines you want. Also, this could be a really good way to test the waterproof aspect. If I put some water on mine, I can see that it doesn't move at all. And that was pretty much right after I drew with it. So some inks, you have to draw with it and then let it dry for like an hour or whatever, depends on the ink. Always do a test first. And one final thing with the pen is that I'm not going to use my ruler anymore. Now it is up to me. It is up to my hand to do all the work. Um, again, like I said at the beginning or earlier, I like seeing evidence of the artist. Every single line doesn't have to be perfect. And the more I use the ruler, the more stiff I feel, it also just gets me out of a creative mindset or away from my kind of free flowing artist mindset. And that's what I want to access when I do my watercolors. So I'm going to use my eyeball and my hand eye coordination to try to get things as straight as I can. But I know that not everything will be perfectly straight, and that is completely okay. So, here we go. Let's go just dive in. I always feel a little bit hesitant when I first do the first line. Just like with the pencil, I'm like, I got to kind of ease into it. By the end of this outline phase, I feel way more confident and I kind of just go for it. Um, I always err on the side of using less ink or less bold lines. So, because you can always come back and add more, you can make it more intense, but you can't undo it. Some of these really shadowy areas like underneath the roof and some of the windows and things like that are gonna be really dark watercolor. So my lines don't matter too much in those areas, but 14. Inking Part 2: Regarding the edge of the brick wall here. So this wall, actually, any of the any edge where you know it's made of stone or brick. I kind of did it here, but I will use a slightly broken line and try not to make it perfectly straight because it isn't. If you look really close, the stone, the edge of the stone is slightly jagged, especially where 2 stones meet. It will have, like, a slight indent. So that's a really fun way you can use your pen is to make that line a little bit less perfect. So I'm going really light first, and then I'll come back with any more solid lines if I kind of miss something if I went a little too light. But since we've done all that work with the drawing and making the drawing really accurate, now we can have more fun and we can decide where to make things really sharp and nice and where we want to leave things a bit more playful and loose. But now once I start getting these ink lines in, I can see how light my pencil was. I can barely see any of it on this section. So I may not even have to erase anything. We'll see. The fun thing about doing this part is that, you know, if you see a little bit of an error in your drawing at this point, you can do the correct version with ink on top of it. So if I see a line that's maybe a bit too off kilter, I can just make an adjustment with the ink and not have to redo the pencil and then do the ink. You know, it just saves a little bit of time and a couple steps. Oh, remember, I'm not going to draw this background section first. I think I'll do a little ink on this one, but not this guy. So that will show that that's behind. And the ink lines help bring them for the other lines forward. So just a very light version, though. And I'm not drawing my chimneys in. I said I was gonna do those with watercolor, making the edge of this chimney kind of rough 'cause it's all stonework. Oh. This doorway and the stairs makes me the most nervous. I may just draw these foreground steps with ink and leave these background shadowy ones as watercolor. And then if I need to, I can come back with any kind of deep line color, detail color. I think I've got the majority of the steps in the right spot. Um, so I'm going to do the railing and then assess the situation. I think that's it for the beginning. Oh, this window. I drew this one slightly larger. 15. Making a Color Plan: Now that we have everything drawn out and some ink on there, everything's pretty much ready to be painted. I've erased most of my grid lines as much as I can. I think the next best option is to swatch some colors that we think can represent what we see here. So what do we want to use in the sky? What color of brick do we think this is, the door, the shadow colors, things like that. For this one, I'll try to be pretty accurate to this, but I probably will have a bit of fun in the shadow colors because I just love that. To me, the shadow areas are where you can really play and express yourself or just let the watercolor kind of sing. So I'm going to use this little swatch card. For the sky, I think I'm going to stick with one of my classics, which is manganese blue hue, which is very similar to serleim. It's just a nice light blue, and I can dilute it down as much as I need to to lighten that sky. I'm not really going to be doing anything fancy in the sky or, like, big fluffy clouds or anything like that. It's gonna be pretty simple. For the building, it's kind of like a whitewashed, but it's also got a bit of beige in it. So I actually think buff titanium would work really, really well. So if we just swatch the buff, that's a nice beige color. We can also, like, really dilute it down. And lighten it a lot more water. I I I kind of lift some of that up, the really diluted buff titanium, I mean, it's probably barely visible in the video, but I can see it in person, but it's just super, super diluted, and it's kind of the perfect match to the beigeh color I see here, the very light cream color. And, I mean, anything white is obviously going to be the color of the paper. We're gonna let that show through. So I'm mostly speaking about anything that I see that's slightly tinted in the original. Um, for the door, I think I think I'm going to go with, like, an English Venetian red or actually have this color called Minnesota Pipestone Genuine. It's very similar to English red, I think, but it's very granulating, and it's a lot of fun. Or I think, actually, like a hint of quinacridone magenta with anything that's similar to English Venetian red would be really nice. So that would lean it towards pink. I think that still works really nicely with the rest. I mean, you could go even more red. I have a color called scarlet red, which I love because it's a nice earthy red. That could be a fun pop. So I may use a bit of that. A lot of times what I do with architecture in the shadows, I'll use ultramarine mixed with Potter's pink because it just combines into the most beautiful violets and depending which one you lean towards, it has so much character. And of course, the potter's pink is granulating. So you can either use something like that, or this time, what I'm going to do is go with ultramarine for I I do pure ultramarine, that's a bit too intense, right? So what I'm going to do is add a bit of bronzte genuine and gray it down a little. And it's also got a bit of granulation and sparkle in it, so it's really fun for shadows for playing with a variety. I also will probably touch in a bit of amthys genuine, which is purple. But it's a really deep, kind of grayish purple. I think it has a tiny bit of black in it. But these three, I'm going to play kind of between those. So the really, really deep shadows, I'm going to lean towards amethyst genuine. You could use any deep purple for that. For the lighter areas, I'm going to use somewhere up here, which is the ultramarine with a hint of bronze genuine. If you don't have bronze, you could use Burt umber or any kind of light brown color. And if I kind of dilute that and stretch it out, you can see in the lighter areas, I can still that color mixes really well into the lighter areas and leaves me with some really lovely textures. And so how you can utilize that is to just pick up some excess water so it doesn't drip off. In the areas that are a little bit lighter, you can put down a bit of pigment, but then drag a damp brush across the surface and lift some of it off. Or if you see how up here, the shadow is a little lighter and it gets really dark down here. So what I could do is put lots of pigment in here and then drag it with clean water, damp brush upwards along this wall, and it gets a little bit more diluted as it comes up. So I'll have a beautiful transition like this. And then on the second layer, we can come back and do any dark details we need to do. So for the first layer, we're going to use, you know, whatever shadow color you want to. I suggest doing at least one of these little test sheets where you choose your colors, and then whatever shadow color you use, knowing that you're going to do one layer of the shadow color and then do the darkest darks on the second layer. So you don't have to go overboard on the first layer. You don't have to get everything perfect on the first layer. We will be doing more than one layer. And on the shadows, so if I preserve my dark shadows for this area, anything on this side that's bright and sunny, I'm going to use lighter versions of my shadow color, so much more diluted. I could maybe lean towards the blue rather than the purple for those because the sky is reflecting off this wall quite a lot. So it's like a lighter shadow. And yeah, and then from there, we'll just keep adding in the detail like bark not bark textures, brick or stone textures and anything, really, any of these little details we see. The door shadow is actually more a very saturated version of the red that we choose. So where the sun hits the door, it's maybe something like this. But then the second layer where the shadow falls over the door, I would do something like that, maybe with a tiny touch of ultramarine mixed in. So it would be a darker version of the color. 16. Starting the Watercolor: So that's kind of the game plan. We're going to go with that and see how it goes. The fun thing about painting the scene is we can use color in either a more realistic way or a very fun, loose expressive way. And I like doing both. So if you want to really practice, you can do one scene where it's very detailed and we're being very careful with placement and then do another version you maybe use a slightly bigger brush or one that you can't control perfectly and get bigger, more expressive marks and kind of compare the two and see which one you prefer. Okay. So this is so this is we're going to be looking at the original photo, as well as our grayscale version. So have it somewhere nearby so you can quickly reference it. This will just remind you, you know, where you decided to put the darker darks and the bright whites and all that. And yeah, we'll just kind of bounce I bounce between these two when I go to paint the scene. Okay, so the first thing I'm doing is the sky, so I'm gonna get my blue ready. Just dilute that a little. And I like to tilt my paper, turn my paper so that the point of my brush is pointed towards any solid edge I need to paint against because it's a lot easier to control this side of the brush, this pointy tip as the hard edge than this side. So that's just my preference. Obviously, you don't have to do that, but I can get a much sharper edge that way. And I'm just painting around all of my edges. I'm gonna work pretty quick because, you know, as soon as it sets in the paper, it can start drying, and after that, I want to touch it as little as possible. If you have 100% cotton paper, you have a pretty good amount of time to play. But if not, if you're using the student grade stuff, the stuff that's not 100% cotton, it can be you got to work a lot quicker. Otherwise, you can end up with streaks or splotches and things you don't want. So one thing you could do in that case is to get the whole sky wet first and then drop your pigment in. Still working as quick as you can. But then you do have a little bit of extra time. Okay, so we have a very simple sky. It's not too dark, not too light. I don't suggest touching it after this point. I did notice I missed one little edge here. But the more you touch it, the more noticeable it's gonna be, you'll be able to see these marks, but at least I know it's gonna it's not gonna be a white mark. So don't do what I'm doing right now because you can mess it up. Another thing that I like to do sometimes, not always, but you can introduce a bit more pigment in certain areas. So this will kind of make it look like there's clouds, but they're gonna be soft and wispy. Anyway. Okay. That's enough of that. Not gonna touch it anymore. It is what it is. Something that I've seen people do is to continue painting that sky color, more diluted, though, into shadow areas. It depends how many layers you want to do. Like, I could do that for some of the lighter shadows that I see, maybe under this edge or on here. But I'm I wanted to approach this in a more step by step way, but I just wanted to mention that because, you know, if you don't want to just sit and wait for your sky to dry before you do the next layer, you could just continue right into your shadows. The only tricky part about that is, you know, if I painted this shadow right now against this line, the skyline, that would bleed into the sky, and it would not I wouldn't want that. So you'd have to be very strategic. You'd have to maybe work in here rather than anywhere next to where you've already painted, that definitely needs to dry before you touch the edge there. So I find it's just easier to wait. And if I'm outside, I am doing it mostly in one layer. So I will drop my sky coolor in. I'll I'll probably tilt my paper, which helps a little bit, and I'll start doing the rest right away, knowing that there is gonna be some bleeding, but not worrying too much about it. And then I come I try to let that dry, and then I come back in with my second layer, which is a bit deeper and more detailed. But it's a very different approach outside because it's usually working quicker. You don't have a hair dryer to let to speed it up. You just have to be kind of aware of your surroundings, is the light changing or is the weather gonna change and work quick, if you need to. Make you kind of come up with your own strategies to deal with that. Since we're inside, we have the luxury of speeding this up, so I'm just going to blast that with my heat gun and get it dry. Now that this is completely dry, I'm going to do my building color. I've got my little cheat sheet here, so I know how dark or light it is. Of course, I have lots of cat hair in there. But I'm going to avoid anything that I want to be bright white, so that if we look at our value study, we can find those areas. So the pipe here, I'm avoiding that. Some of the highlight on this wall here, the window that's facing kind of to the left here is white because it's got white trim on it. It's a little more shadowy on that side, but still has some white. Um, and, yeah, just little bits and pieces of this building, the side here are white. And in the value study, I left this mostly white, but I am going to tint it slightly because I'm going to have more variety of values in this painting. So I'm going to just start up on the left. And the roofs are going to be much darker, but I can easily paint over this color, so I'm not worried at the moment about leaving that. I've already painted over my pipe. Realized what was I just saying? But it's okay because it's a really easy to a really easy color to lift. I can even use a paper towel now to soak up some of that. And because the brick or the stonework has so much variety, it's okay if you have a little more pigment in some areas and that it's not completely even. In fact, I think it's better to have that. So now and then you can drop in a bit more here and there. I'm avoiding the Um, the roof on this one, just because I know it's gonna be darker, it's a little easier to paint around. The building back here is quite light. I'm going to use the beige color for that. It is a little watercolor dries lighter usually than what it looks like when it's wet, so it's a little tricky with these lighter tones to know, like, if it's light enough, basically. So I suggest, you know, when you do your test sheet, you can kind of see how it's gonna dry when you use a lot of water versus not. And the other thing is you can also drop just splotches of clear water into what you've done and let it just kind of bleed and flow. And that will also make some variety. Or you can come back with a damp paper towel, just make sure it's clean and kind of pick up little bits of it. And that will also add a bit of variety, which is perfect for stonework. This is such a light color that you can almost not even tell I've done anything there, but it will just subtly make a difference. I'm using a lot less pigment on this side, the sun is really hitting this side. And I'm gonna let the I'm leaving the windows alone for now because there's white trim on those, or at least this one and this these. And I'm painting around my red doors. I don't I have to worry about that with the red, the stairs are definitely a kind of grayish color, so I'm just ignoring those for now. Um, just got some. Yeah, I think that's probably okay. 17. Watercolor Shadows: Depending on how much you want to play with, like, expressive marks, you can already start that if you want. If you really want to have fun with textures and just letting things bleed and flow, just go for it. I don't want to stop you. I'm going to do that a little bit in the stone walls. So on this one, there's quite textured stone work. I'm using just remnants of my pigment from earlier, which is a bit of the browns and reds that I mentioned. So it's just, like, a warm tone, and I'm just dropping it in so it can dry all splotchy. And I'm also going to do that on this side. Since we're going to be adding some um, darker shadows on this wall, I'm not going to do too much. Oops. I I I drop too much pigment in, I'll just lift it with my paper towel. I'm not going to do too much texture on this wall. I'm just trying to use very light marks. It's already kind of dry, so I'm using a dry brush technically. It's like a dry brush effect. And also, when you're making your brick, any kind of lines you're doing, make sure they work with your perspective. So if the perspective of the wall is like this, you should do your line work of the bricks that way, too. This may or may not show up underneath the shadows later. We'll see. But just a bit of that. And on this wall, oh, one color that I should have mentioned that I love for architecture is lavender. So it's like, you know, classic lavender tone. But I usually mix it with something else or I like dilute it quite a lot because it is a bit power it's actually quite powerful on its own. So maybe I'll mix it with one of these or just really, really dilute it, and then I can use that. Next, I'm going to do the base color of the door, which will be one of my lighter reds. So whichever one of these I go with, that's gonna be the base layer, and then later once that dries, we'll do the shadows. Probably do the shadow of this and that at the same time. So first, let's make our mix. And I want to make sure it's pretty diluted. I don't want it to be too dark. I mean, again, it is going to dry lighter, but the shadow will definitely be much darker. So painting around the window. If we make this colour, kind of like a dusty red, I don't know what else to describe it. It just looks like a dusty red to me. Then we can it makes it feel like the sun is hitting it. It's a little bit weathered, the paint is a bit worn. So making it nice and diluted helps tell that story. And then later with the shadow, that intensity will come through a bit. Also going to do the base color of this wall, and the shadow will overlap this. What else? We have the sign here. I'm gonna use the same color, maybe just a bit more saturated. You could either paint around the L that's on the sign or do a solid color and then white posca pen on top. It's a little tricky. I think I did it. Kind of. Let's see. I think that's that's the only red. Oh, there's a bit of red in this little chimney. And these are also kind of red, but much more diluted. So very subtle red, like I guess it's terracotta. I didn't do a great job with making that line straight. Okay, so we're gonna let that dry. I'm trying not to be overly perfectionist with all of my edges. Typically, I am much looser when I paint, but like I said, I'm trying to show everything step by step and take it area by area, I suppose. I think next, let's fill in the stair color, the base stair, which is pretty gray. Kind of like a muddy gray. So burnt umber mixed with ultramarin makes a really lovely gray. And if you use a bit more burnt umber, it will be a warmer gray. If you use more ultramarine, it'll be a cooler gray. So for the base, I'm going to add a bit more burnt umber so it's warmer. But I definitely want to dilute it because I don't want the steps to be too dark and too heavy in the painting. And this might even be too, I think that'll be okay. Just carefully painting in And I don't mind at all if this bleeds into the red. Because it's so light, it won't overpower it. We're gonna have that strong shadow. And also, it's okay if there's, like, more color in one area versus another. Like, it's okay to be splotchy and messy in that base layer. We don't have to make it perfect. This is just the lighter version of the steps. Since we're waiting for that to dry, let's work up here because we have time. So I'm going to do my ultramarine with burnt umber again, but lean it more towards ultramarine. So that's a dark, cool gray. So that's pretty dark. And I want it to be dark because the roof is, like, a kind of a slate color. It's really, really deep. And if it dries too light, we can easily come back with more. We don't want it to be pure black or anything like that. It's just has to be a nice deep gray. It's a little hard to see on this one, but there is a bit of I'm gonna fill this tile in on this side. There's a slightly lighter version of this on this side. So I'm gonna keep I'm gonna let this dry, though, and then come back with a second layer. There's a bit of that darkness. Using a teeny brush now, there's a little bit of that Roof color here. I have such a shaky head. You know, I took a lot of care to do those lines and make everything accurate, so I don't want to ruin it now by just going too fast. There is a gutter here, and it's kind of like a white gutter. I didn't really draw it in. I figured I would just paint around it to make that show up. So when I come back on top of this wall with some textures, that's kind of when I'll make that shape. There's a little bit of a lip on this top edge where the roof sort of peaks over. I definitely simplified a lot of edges. Like, there's much more happening in this, uh, roof here. But I'm keeping it a little more simple. There's a little bit of some darkness here where the wires are. Under here. 18. Watercolor Shadows Part 2: I think this isn't quite dry enough, so I'm going to now do the windows, and for that, I'm gonna switch to some of my amethyst genuine and ultramarine to make a deep shadowy color, which is still a little bit blue, a little bit bright. It's not as dark as, like, the roof color we used. And on this side, I'm going to use a slightly lighter version of this. I lute it just a little, just like we did in the value study. The marker sketch, we used a lighter gray. Oh, almost forgot this one. Not quite so deep a shadow color for this. The same window color. Kind of more like that one. Even though this is pretty much hidden, from view. There's tiny sliver there. Now, we need to decide on the shadow color for this the upper areas of the building. The shadow color here is gonna be much deeper, but I think I mentioned earlier, I like to do maybe the sky color mixed with some of my shadow color for these areas. So maybe some of that manganese blue hue or just diluted ultramarine 'cause there's a bit more sun bouncing around up here and maybe the sky color is showing through a bit more. And I'm just using a dry brush so that I can get some textures easily. This side of the building, there's, like, a bit of, like, a edge to it, which seems shadowy, even down here. But in using a lighter bluish shadow for this, it's a I'm actually gonna make a stylistic choice and do a shadow for this pipe all the way down. Um, yeah, using a lighter blue shadow for these areas, it instantly separates it from the shadows that we're using elsewhere. Maybe lighten it a little. So dry brush now and then, I'll just kind of add a bit of rough texture. Even up here, there's Some of the brick work has shadow. And then I'll dab it with my paper towel, which also roughens it up a bit. So, yeah, I play a little bit with that. This one. And the same thing on the other side. There's more This face here has more shadow. It's still really light, though. I'm not going too dark yet. Now I'm just being careful not to touch anything. I did the windows because the windows are still gonna be drying. So I'm just trying to use a careful touch here and there. So I'm just still going with a dry brush texture. And I'm just sort of mimicking the shapes of the bricks, but not in any, like, obvious way. I'm not trying to make one solid line be a brick or anything. But lots of little marks like this kind of looks reminiscent of the bricks and visually gives us a little clue. On the little, like, ridges we have here, it's a bit of a warmer shadow, so I'm going to use my buff titanium with a little bit of, like, a tiny bit of the red and maybe a little bit of my shadow color for these. So it's like a warm shadow underneath these lips. Kind of messed that up. Starting again. Drybush is just your friend when it comes to brick texture. The siding here is kind of like a light grayish color. It might be the same as the roof, but the lighting makes it look a little bit lighter. There's some shadow on the, as well. There's some shadow underneath the window sills. There's right side here is shadowy. Just really look closely at the reference and find the edges of your shad where most of your lines are around the windows. I'm simplifying mine quite a lot. Just letting bits of white show through here and there. So I think we're almost ready for the big shadow. There's a bit of shadow under these windows. I'm using really light version of my shadow color on these. Interestingly, I think the windows in here may be trimmed with red because it looks to be there looks to be some red reflection happening. So if I take a bit of red and just use that, it's like a very light version, though. See how that dries. 19. Large Shadows: We want to be ready for this. This has to be dry. Definitely. Make sure all of this is dry. This is I haven't used much water in my shadows yet, so it's pretty fast, dry and fast. We definitely want a good game plan going into this. We want to know where exactly our shadows are. So if you need to, you can draw the edge of your shadow. I'm going to just be looking at the reference as I go, kind of winging it, but that's something I've done before is I'll just draw the edge of my shadow shape, which falls. I mean, we already did it in the um, block the gray scale. But basically, this is all one big shape, so I'm gonna paint it as such. When it overlaps the door, I'm going to stop at that edge because where it overlaps the door, we have a bit of a shift in value. And again, on the door itself, that shadow, I'm gonna make it more of a deep red, and then we can jump over here and do the shadows on these stairs. So first, we need to mix up enough shadow color. I'm going with ultramarine with my amthystGenuine. And like I said, I want to do the majority of the deep shadow here, but as I bring it up the wall, I'm going to maybe shift it slightly lighter so that this happens a bit of variation, but I still need it to be pretty dark up there, so I won't make it too light. Alternatively, I could dilute it first and then bring it down into the darkness, if you want to call it that. So yeah, let's just go for it. The moment of truth. So when I look at the reference, kind of Well, I'm just eyeballing everything, really. Now, as I get closer to the bottom, I'm gonna start touching in my deeper shadow. Oops. Splashed a bit. I guess that's fine. And I can also tilt it. I'm gonna go directly over this and my stairs. The stairs kind of have an edge or the shadow edge steps down in a way like that. I'm talking to myself. Talking myself through it all, really. Okay. So that actually might not even be dark enough. I'm just going to jump over to these steps and fill this shadow in. With the same color that I've got mixed up already. And if there's any other shadows that I want to kind of touch up or darken, now's my chance. Well, I have this lovely color all mixed up. Whoops sake. There's a bit of shadow in, too. 20. Watercolor Details: I dried that with my heat gun, so now I can just play. For the shadow that overlaps the door here, it's a lot lighter than what is on the wall here because it's, like, a slightly different angle and material. So I'm actually going to mix my buff titanium with that shadow color and just make it like a lighter pastel version. You could just dilute it really, really lightly and make sure it's not too dark and paint that shadow. Oh, down this edge. I just want to show that it's a little darker than this side. Okay. And I also need to mix up my door shadow color. So we'll go with my deeper red. It's not even that deep. It's just, uh, the Um, it's I'm gonna use my deep scarlet with a little bit of my Minnesota pipestone genuine only because I like the granulation in that. And, um, again, I could add a touch of, like, the blue or the purple to deepen it, but I'm gonna maybe just a little purple. Just a hint. And paint that in wherever I see the shadow. And the sign, I guess, is making this happen here? Sometimes it's fun to try to figure out what is causing certain shadow shapes. Pretty sure this little square here is from the sign up there. And now that that's in, I'm going to touch more of my purple and just hit this left side with it. Maybe the underside of the door here. Okay. No, not touching that anymore. What else can we do? Let's do some something I like to do is I'll take, like, a really deep shadow color, so it could be anything. I'll just use my blue and purple mix together again, 'cause that's a nice dark, maybe even a bit of burnt umber mixed in, so it's really, really dark. And I'll do any kind of little detail lines I see, so maybe add a bit more depth to the roof here. And this is where I'll be maybe a bit not spontaneous or loose. Well, yeah, actually, that's what I mean. This is where I kind of let my grip go a little bit looser, and I try not to be perfect. So maybe the roof the tile lines here. You can actually see more roof in this perspective than you can in the reference because I liked this having this black or dark area kind of separating the top edge. So I'm just trying to break this shape up a bit without being too perfect on any one spot. These are just some roof tiles. I mean, we spent a lot of time making it perfect, right? So you can keep it that way. Or you can loosen up a bit and just play a little. So, if this is dry, we can also do didn't mean to use that black. We can also make the shadow on this door. So the top edge of that and the left side of that. And we also have just, like, a hint roof there. Steps have a bit of shadow. So you can use this exact same shadow color you already used, but because you're glazing another layer over, it's going to show up and darken it slightly. So for these steps, the side that's facing us will be slightly darker. So I can just leave, like a tiny sliver showing through for the top of each step. And I'm gonna try to go quick. Dragging the brush quick. I find straight lines are easier that way. So I just wanted, like, a couple little slivers of the steps showing showing through. And then anywhere that I think maybe there's a crack in the stone in the cement or, um, yeah, just I can, like, just touch a tiny bit of this really dark color. Here and there. Especially on this left side. But even have cracks, like coming across this whole length. So I could do little tiny marks, tiny dots here and there, could even do a vertical one now and then. And you also have it in the door. So at the base of the door, there's a bit of a dark line down the center, which I kind of did with ink, but I don't think it showed up enough. So I'm just almost outlining that door again. And the lock 21. Final Details and Results: We still need to draw the bar sign. So let's get some of that red pigment again. Oops, because it is red. This is going to be tricky. Wow. Okay. Very shaky hand. I'll do. Yeah, and then there is, like, little rust marks on the brick here and there, so you could now and then add stuff like that. But usually what I do is, like, I touch it and then lift it slightly 'cause I always go a bit too much. Oh, the railings are red themselves. So just add a bit of color to those. I say red, but I mean, that kind of terractta red Oh, and we need to do the shadow of the um, railings. So Um, also, I should have mentioned, I actually, I'm gonna lift that up. Don't paint this railing until the stairs are dry. Mine started to bleed as I did that, 'cause I forgot. So I'll do that after. But the railing here does have a bit of a highlight on it, so I'm just gonna use my Posca pen for that because I didn't want to, like, stop the brush stroke, stop the flow, just to get that in. But if you're a purist, as they call it, if you don't want to ever use white Posca pen or white guash or whatever, you obviously have to paint around that, and that takes a lot of control. Just think about that ahead of time. Okay, so there's a little lip there, color. Bit of shadow here that I missed. Bit of shadow in here. Okay. There's so many tiny details you can keep adding. Um, you could even come back and add more brick textures in the shadows here, depending how yours dried, a flat brush like this is great for brick because it's already the right shape. Depending on the size, it could be the perfect way to get some quick brush brick marks. So it's up to you to decide how far you want to take these little details. You could keep going and keep going and keep going and just painstakingly fill in or take it to the level. I mean, to do some of these, like, final little brush details brick details, I'm just using the edge of my flat brush with a tiny bit of pigment and dry brushing that in. M Um, so the final bit maybe is just a bit of roughing up these steps. Actually, I missed a bit of shadow here. So I'm gonna do a little highlight on this railing. Oh, and we have to do the shadow of the other railings. So I'm just using the same shadow color I was using before, maybe a little lighter, more diluted and paint that in, which we kind of added to the line drying. You pretty much just want to have count however many vertical lines. You have and mimic that, um, and then the top one has to have a shadow, as well. These ones coming off of this are kind of angled here and there. So make sure it's dry before you do the posca pen because it will definitely bleed into your watercolor. And sometimes I'll also do little, like, uh, lines or dots on my windows or any like, maybe there's something metal on the roof, little speckles here and there. It can work really well for that. I think I pretty much preserved the rest of my brights that I needed. So I'm not really doing much with this. And I think that's pretty much it. So we are going to do the tape peel. Let's peel this and hopefully get a nice clean edge. Nice. I truly hope you enjoyed this class and that it helps you along in your journey of translating images to paintings. You can use this strategy for any image you have. I would love to see your results if you'd like to post them to the skill share class section. It's really fun to see the variety of results, especially when people use different colors and even their own photos. So please do share. So thank you all for watching and Happy painting.