Urban Sketching | Drawing What You See

1. Introduction: Hi guys, I'm Peggy. My work is known under the Pigeon Letters and I specialize in hand lettering and also in an illustration. Today I'm excited to bring you one of my favorite types of illustration, and it's called Urban Sketching. It's also known under a couple of different terms, landscape sketching, scene sketching, sketching outdoors. There's a lot of different terms because it doesn't always have to be in a busy city location. You can draw a residential areas where there's a row of townhouses, or there's a really cool setup of mailboxes, a really pretty scenery with trees out in the wilderness. It doesn't matter what it is that you want to sketch. It's the general idea. My favorite places are where it is bustling and there's a lot of energy because there's people around, and there's cars, and there's a lot of life that you can bring into your illustration just from what you see. I will teach you in this class some techniques to be able to grab that energy when it is passing you by really quickly. We're going to be going over composition, how to embrace your imperfections, and I can't encourage that enough. This is a really fun style that will force you to do that no matter what. It's one of the beautiful things about it. We'll be going over the physical movements as you're sketching that will create different techniques, and breaking elements down into shapes. There will be some quick tricks on how to draw things like trees, people, cars, water, reflections, things that you want to emphasize on. We'll be going over tools as well and then also incorporating watercolor into our sketch at the very end. I'm really excited to get started with you guys and I will see you in the class. 2. Example Sketches: Welcome to the class. I'm so excited to have you here. To get started with urban sketching, I want to show you a few examples that will give you an idea of types of areas that might trigger an idea where you want to go explore, whether it'll be a street that you like in your neighborhood, or perhaps a building in your city that you love, an area that you know is bustling often. Some ideas include, this is the slums of Caracas in Venezuela. It's got a lot of color. This next one is just a simple illustration of some outdoor boutiques in Seoul. Then we have the Ghats in Varanasi, which is located in India. There's so much character to these buildings and there's actually a lot that I left out, but it's still, I feel has so much to say and so much to look at. Here's a little alley and Athens in Greece, and I am a big fan of the way that the structure, as in how all of these buildings are such eye candy and these alleys make you want to walk through and explore them. Here is the public market in Seattle, Washington. This is a popular tourist spot, you see a lot of people here all the time, the scenery often changes, as you can see in this illustration, there's a couple of tents set up, and we have some people walking through, sometimes that outdoor space is utilized for other things. Places like this are really great to keep in mind when you're looking for an area that you want to go sketch. It can be a popular building that you know of downtown, and you can set up right there, you can sit down on a stool and grab your sketchbook. One thing I always recommend to is, even if you're finished with your sketch, snap a picture because there might be something that you want to return to later if you're looking at your sketch and think gosh, I wish I could remember what was in this corner, or how to finish a certain line. Then there may be times that you don't have a sketchbook with you, take a picture so you have a photo of that area that you like and then you can do it at home. The sketches that I showed you were all done based off of pictures. I wish I could say that I've been to all these places, but I have not. This can be on location and this can be from a photograph, which is what we'll be working with in this class as well. 3. Tools & Materials: The pens that I suggest are the microns and the reason for this is because they are permanent, are fade proof, waterproof. There is archival ink, so these are not going to fade and they're going to last you a really long time. The top of these pens show the numbers which are the sizes. The smaller the number, the smaller the tip is going to be. This is a 03. I want to show you what the 03 is in comparison to the 005, which is just under the 01, just for your comparison. You can see the bottom one is the 005. That's significantly smaller than 03. The higher up in number that you go, the boulder your lines will be and I stick to a 03 to a 05. I like to have the bold lines. I don't want them too thick, but I like to have them and up to where I can really see that contrast. I'm a big fan of contour drying. This is personal preference if you like those lighter illustrations and you want to have those with spear lines and you want it to look a little more realistic, go with the smaller sizes. If you want it to be more of the contour drawing that has a little more of that doodle effect in your sketches, go with the thicker lines. The thicker tip, upwards of 05 to 08. If you want to stick in the middle, which is what I'm doing, we'll be using 03 and 05 in this class. Other options you can use the Sharpie Ultra fine. I don't like to use those a whole lot just because they do put off a really strong odor that can give you a headache if you're using them too long. If you are sensitive, I'd stick with the microns they're foolproof. You don't have to have those though. You can use a ballpoint pen. The nice thing about ballpoint pens is that with varying pressure, you can get real light with those. You can also draw in pencil first, I don't like to, and here's why. When you begin with a pen, you are committed to everything that you're drawing, it has to be what you're drawing right now and that is what I love about urban sketching. If you want to begin with a pencil so that you can get an idea of composition, that's totally fine too. If you want to place things to shape them out, we will touch on that and I'll show you what that would look like. But really guys commit to the pen because this is a really fun journey. Then for a sketchbook, I would grab something that will handle Mix Media. What I am using is just the Mix Media by Canson, the pad here, this is a nine by 12 and it has some pretty thick paper. It's 98 pounds and it has a little bit of texture to it. It's thick enough to handle watercolor. If you use a lot of watercolor, I would go with the watercolor paper that's 140 pounds. If you use the Mix Media, do expect your paper to warp a little bit. I'm fine with that because I end up scanning my work and then digitizing it. That's totally up to you. A lot of them can handle Mix Media. Just make sure that it's at least 98 pounds and above because we will be using watercolor. In the next video, we will be going over how to map out and frame your composition. 4. Framing Your Scene: Another option to keep in mind is that if you're working off of an image or even in person, you can frame this however you want to. You can use your fingers this way. You can use a piece of paper that you have cut. For example, this would be a really great way to frame this, but you can move this around and see what it is that you're going to discover based off of the way that you frame it. You can also decide to take something and put it horizontally. For this image, there's a lot of things that would work really well, and so that's another thing to keep in mind, and you can really play with that. 5. Visualizing in Geometric Shapes: So when you're looking at an image, you're going to break things up into geometric shapes and this can be visually, but it's just enough to where you know exactly how you're going to map out your sketch and so this is the way that you can actually view things. For this example, we're going to use an image of Janitzio, Michoacan in Mexico and this is a really awesome image that I was drawn to. I love the colors and I love how the buildings are laid out and I love how much textures in here. I also like that this can be easy to overdo because there's so much going on and it's very busy even without people. For this one, we're going to focus on how to break these elements down to create exactly what we're looking to achieve. To begin, what you want to do is overall, just visualize exactly where things are. You're going to want an eye level and a vanishing point. As you can see for eye level, you are looking at about right here, also known as a horizon line. Then your vanishing point, as you can see, these stairs are coming down this way and this way. So you have to keep that in mind as you're illustrating. You want to make those gradual changes to make the dimensions believable. Then you'll see that the buildings have a similar effect where it comes down, down so your vanishing point is right here. Notice that it's also right about eye level. Now when you're looking at shape, there are other things to break down. For example, the buildings. Right here you see a rectangular shape with a little bit of a slant. At the right, you have another rectangular shape right here, another one right about here and then you've got these steps. Now what I want you to also see is how when they began they are wider and then they get much thinner and closer together as they go down and eventually you stop seeing them and then you just see these major breaks but overall it's just fine lines. That also gives you that depth of wind, stairs are going down and you see them why right in front of you and they get smaller and the distance. If you take a piece of paper and compare it, let's say you're working on a portrait size paper. You are going to see that you have this long area here. That's going to be a building. You have your stairs. The vanishing point is right about here. That's also about where our eye level is, so your stairs are going to come from the building, come from just above that corner. That's where your stairs are going to go. You have this rectangle for where this building is. It's almost right in the center, the one underneath that, it's following that vanishing point. This is what I mean when you're mapping it out. This is just visual, I wouldn't do this necessarily unless it helps you and you can do this in pencil and then erase it later. 6. Sketch - Trees: Let's talk about trees. This is pretty simple because there's not a lot of detail that goes into these. I typically have the same type of style for every tree, but there are options that you can explore. This segment is mostly just to introduce those to you so that you can get a feel for what they look like, and then maybe develop a style of your own just depending on what feels right to you. The first one, we'll start with the one that I typically go to, and it's really simple. It's basically just a bunch of loose lines that overlaps, so something like this. You can see there's not really a rhyme or reason to this, and then like so. Just a bunch of loose lines that overlap a little bit, and then just two straight lines down for a trunk. Another version of this would be to add shading. If you were to go in with some loose lines, and then let's say your light sources coming from up higher, and then your shadows are down here. There's a couple different ways you can do those straight lines, or you can just push in a little more of those loose lines here. Then you get the idea that there are some darker areas. Another tree that you can do is more of just a quick round shape like so. I wouldn't spend too much time making these look symmetric because you want them to be looser, and then just go straight up with a line here. Then just a couple lines branching off like this. You can also do it taller like that. You can change the shape of that, so it's just like an empty space. You can do it with the one that I like to do, empty space, line straight down, and then some branches in the middle. If it's like an evergreen or a ferred tree something like that, there's two different ways to do those. You can come down loose like this. You can have just some straight lines out like this, and then you can also the ones that come up like this. Those are some quick sketches. If you guys see, I'm doing these super fast. It's not something that you spend a lot of time on. Nothing is, but don't sit there and dwell on making this perfect because it's not meant to be perfect. Some other variations of these if you want to overlap like this, and then you have some more dimension in, you can add some darker lines. You can make those more horizontal. Darker lines in here like so, and then you can even add a couple more branches throughout. Details is up to you. These are just some ideas. Then if you move in to those bigger and fuller trees, and you want to show the areas and isolate them. It's just a bunch of shapes together, and then you can see that there's this open area right here. Just draw your stumper line through that area, and then you can have some joining branches here. You can do this with lines that are a lot, that are still like the squiggly lines, but they're much closer together. Have a gap here, and then a branch going into it. You can create some branches that are like peekaboo branches. Those are some quick trees. If you guys want to see these a little bit slower, just slow down the video, and you'll be able to watch that a little slower, so you could get the hang of it. I hope that helps for trees. 7. Sketch - Windows: In this segment, I want to go over windows. There are a lot of different window options. Although you are recognizing the ones that you're looking at, you may want to change them up a little bit. The real point of this is because I want to show you what to look out to feature on a window and what to leave blank. Something that I typically do is just your square and then you cross through, and that could be at an angle. Say you have an angle going this way and your building is here, your window is obviously going to be skinnier and along that line, and then like so, that's an easy way to do it. If it's head on, there are options. See how my line is imperfect, I'm doing that on purpose because my personal style, I don't like it to look so straight and sketched. I like it to be a little looser and more like a doodle effect. That's something to really keep in mind with your style and I encourage you to try both of those styles because it will give you a feel for developing your own illustration style. Let's say there's some brickwork all over this building, if this was a building, I would recommend doing some broken brick throughout here. Then trailing off into just some pieces rather than completing the whole thing, but do have those points come near the window. You can see how that adds a lot of character and I hardly did anything at all. If you want to add a curtain, they can come straight down like this. Then you can add the top of an overhang and then just have your curtain come down like that. You can have it so it's draped over. That's just an example. Let's say you have a window that has pulled lines, I do another one of these, if you slow down, that's when you have more control over. Its funny because I'm saying have more control over less control, but you really do have to push that in intentionally. Let's say you have a window, it's got frame around it. I would just do something like this, then it might have a windowsill. I would just do something real simple and basic, these are all just geometric shapes. Then for the pull blinds, you just have a line, create a little loop, you can add a pattern on here, you can add some shading, like so, and that is a very quick window. Another option, let's say you have one that has shutters. There's a window and you have a windowsill, and then your shutters can come out. They can come out flat, so they can come like this. They can come out at an angle, which looks like it's coming toward you. They can come out higher. I would stick with one of these two. I'm going to come slightly down, come down like this, down like this, and then add in just some of those quick lines. Depending on how close it is and how detailed I want to get with it, I might add that extra line, otherwise it would just be something simple like so. Then maybe if we have some bricks up here. If you have the smaller homes and you have a larger piece, just stick with something really simple. If it happens to be in a shape like this. If you want to make that an angle, let's say this is your building, just make sure that the bottom of the line follows the building line. 8. Sketch - People: Now moving on to people, this one is where it can get really fun, really interesting, simplified, more detailed. This is going to be something that you decide based off of your scene. If your people are really far away, don't overly detail them because it will bring them more to the foreground than you want it to. In theory, the depth is more simplified so that it creates that illusion a little bit more. People that are closer to you, more details, great. I'm just going to go over a few styles of body shapes, of accessories, things like this. If you have somebody that is just standing, what I typically like to do is just create an easy head. It doesn't have to be a specific shape. You don't have to worry about nose, eyes placement like that. You can if you're good at that thing, I'm not. So I stay away from it and then I do a small neck and it's just really fast. Then let's say this person is standing, facing away from us, so we're going to draw the backside of them. You don't want these people to be just standing straight like their arms are on their side or legs just open. You want them to look like they're actually interacting. These are things to take note of, especially if you're on location because they're going to be moving so quickly that you don't have the option to really capture a certain movement. Practice your people. If they are, let's say their arm is in front of them, and this will give the illusion of such longer jacket coming down and then it looks like maybe their arm is in front of them a little and then their pants come down like so. Then just draw some little lines for their feet, then I'll add a mark here for their shoulder and their back a little bit, then I can add some loose lines for hair. As you can see here, you can't really see what's going on with this person, but it's a person. I'm going to add some shadow on the back of their legs. This one is away from us even more so has more shadow. This one is closer and back, so it has light reflecting on it a little bit more. Another style of a person, if they're standing sideways, you can have their arm, let's say it's crossing so you're coming down, up and then have this meet and you have a little bit of an overlay right here. I did that a little too dark, but you can see the line comes down, comes up and then the overlap and this person, their shoulder will come up and then their head, and then we'll do some hair. All I'm doing is straight line down, another straight line down and a little bit of texture at the bottom. Fill that in if you want dark here, keep it open if it's light to bring their top in and a belt area. It's not straight down, it comes in a little bit more. It gives more of considering sketch, a realistic body form. Then we're going to have the pants, the backside come in just a little bit and then come down and this I will come straight down like so, little line for feet and then the back leg just talk to right behind there. Then you can shade this if you want to. I'm going to leave it just so it accentuates a little bit more. Then you have another person. Let's say you have a woman pushing a stroller. We will do a loose arm. That's like the arm shape. This side will come up, shoulders and then this will go straight down. So your top, and then your pants. I'm going to put this leg behind this one, and your stroller. I'm just going to go straight down and then straight back up. So it's like a V-shape. Then a little bump here and then one that's a little bit higher coming from the middle here. Then you're going to have your two wheels like so. Then put that head on there. I'm just going to do like a bun, and that's just going to be a quick circle here. Then you have someone with a stroller. You can see that these are super fast, not very detailed. Let's say you have somebody standing with some luggage. So we have a head here, some hair, he's going to be standing facing this way. Then you have to come out here, do your waist area, come in, and then have your arm. Then I'm going to push in some luggage so I have a handle two flaps that come down and then a curved rectangular shape. Have some wheels on here and then maybe a front pocket. Then I will have him just standing like so, this can be shaded, and that's it. Let's say somebody has an umbrella. Just come down quickly like this. She's wearing a dress. Arm down elbow backup, a fist, the handle and straight up. This arm can come down and then we have feet, feet, little head. She can have a ponytail. Add a little color, maybe a belt, and then your umbrella. I'm just going to do a couple of lines like this and then have a point here, and that will come straight up to the point. Then you can add lines here. Another thing to keep in mind with people is that in theory people are about eight head lengths long. For proportions, a lot of people will get this wrong and they will draw a person and then they have super short legs and it's not proportionate. So this is my person. Their torso area, their abdomen should be about three head lengths and then their legs are about four. So we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. You get the idea. So approximate. So we have, I'm going to do this, this way so you can see a little clearer, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So we have head, torso, legs, and that's your person. Let's say they're standing sideways, they have their arms out, and then their legs. So that's about a proportionate person. It makes a difference. Whereas let's say you had a person that looked like this, you're doing whatever they're doing, their legs are here. So this, the legs are not proportionate because, one, one, two, about two-and-a-half and then 1, 2, 3. So it's better, but it's not what you want. If you want to be even quicker than this, especially with crowds, where they're getting further away, the easy way to do this is to do a head straight across here, come down into a upside-down triangle, so a V, and then you can create a little waist belt, pants that come down, and then typically, just back into that general area. Then you can add just some quick arms, color, you can make a vest on somebody, and then just throw on maybe a hat, some hair. So you can see that those are super quick. It's just super quick pen lines, and honestly, that is what makes it a little more forgiving because if these were some perfect sketches, then they wouldn't look very good, because I can't draw people. But you might be able to better than I can. Hopefully this helps for those of you who can't draw people because I can relate. Let's say somebody has a shopping bag and they're facing toward us. Like a head, a little color, three-quarter sleeves come down, skirt, some legs, and then you have a shopping bag, maybe you have a purse, you're going to do a strap across, and a bag here. So see, these are super simple. Let's say it's a little curly hair, and that's it. Although it looks horrible, when you put all these people together, it makes a little more sense. I hope that's helpful. The next thing that I want to show you is what you would do in a sense of dimension, where you have people that are closer and then you have people that are further away. If you look at an image, they get smaller and smaller. The main thing to keep in mind is that you can make these people as big or as small as you want to, as long as their head is along the eye level that you see. Let's say you have a scene and you have some buildings over here. You have a sidewalk that comes out like this, and then you have some people that are closer to you, and then you have some people that are farther away. Farther away here, some buildings over here. So clearly, there's some depth and let's say that goes further. Your eye level wherever that may be, I'm going to say it's right here, is where the heads should be at. So if I have a person standing super close to me, I'm going to draw a head, maybe have a hat on, some hair here and I can just do some quick eyes, a mouth. See, I'm really bad at people guys. Don't look at this. But you get the idea. Then do a neck and then a shoulder that comes down, down, elbow area bends here, and then you can do a hand. I typically just do opposable thumbs. I don't do anything too crazy, just like this. Then a shirt like so, so that comes around the shoulder down, and then in front, and is going to stop. Then let's say they're walking, so their leg is in front, and then the other one is behind. Then just a quick shoe. If you made their arm too short like I just did, you can bring it out like this. Who knows what he's doing? But he's doing something. Then you can shade the back area here, you can shade behind his shirt. Let's say he's a tourist and he's got some binoculars, let's draw those here, and then put it around his neck. Maybe he has a backpack. I'm just going to do a straight line down, saggy, and up like this. Give him a strap that comes down, and then maybe a pocket right here and then a pocket here. Maybe he has a water bottle. That looks good to me. Okay. So there's somebody walking, and then let's say the next person is little bit further. But the thing to keep in mind is I want to do their head first. So I'm going to put them right here. So their head is here. Notice it's a little smaller than this guy's head, and well, probably a little smaller than that. Then you have some hair and then some hands. But their legs are what is higher. I'm going to protect that here. So you get the idea. I usually don't draw people this close, so don't make fun of them. Say they have heels on, so I'm gonna come straight down and up, and then out, and back in. So just a quick V, quick shapes like this. Then let's say that there are some people back here that are standing together. I'm going to draw two heads, some hair. They're facing away from us, so I'll draw the hair back like this. Then these are where I'm going to put in just those quick shapes. So a quick V, waistline, and then some pants. Then maybe some shoes stick out. I got some arms, maybe they're holding hands, and that's it. Depth-wise, so far, it looks like they are further away. Then let's do somebody a little closer, maybe right here, so their head is a little bit bigger, they've got a little bun. We have neck, collar. Let's do a tank top, maybe stripped, and then we have shoulders that come down. Opposable thumbs, some bracelets maybe, quick skirt, and then heels. Then maybe you have some people that are overlapping, so there's people even further away. I'll just do their head. You can go just above and just below this line. I'll just do them right here, just a little bit smaller. Notice how these are just squiggly lines. These are just people in the crowd. I hope that gives you a good idea. Don't judge my people. I'm not great at them. Did I say that? Okay. I hope that gives you a good idea. Just make sure that when you're seeing a lot of people, that you are staying along that eye level. I hope that helps you guys. 9. Urban Scene #1 - Alley Stairs: Now that we have a general idea of how I want to lay this out and where the shapes are and what lines to look for, we're just going to eyeball it. This is something that you can do in pencil but I really encourage you guys just to dive in with pen because it really adds to that organic element of your sketch. For this one, I'm going to use the micron 05 size. I'm going to leave an invisible one inch border around and then I'm going to draw my stairwell down like this. Then the other side isn't quite as slanted, but it does still go in a bit. We're going to bring that in here. Once I have that laid out, I can see where the vanishing point is right about here. Notice there's a canopy coming down right here about eye level. We know this is eye level because if you look at the photo, this just about aligns with the balcony on the left. I recommend always starting with eye level because then you're getting down exactly what you are seeing head on and then you can work down, or your can work up, or you can work in distance. That'll be really helpful too when we get into drawing people. But for now, let's start with adding this balcony in. It's going to be off to the left and it's about eye level. These don't have to be exact. Your measurements don't have to be perfect. We just want that general idea. If you can see where the balcony connects with the wall, there's a crease in the wall there, so I'm just going to draw that straight up like this. Notice that I went quickly, doesn't have to be anything fancy. Then I'm going to put in balcony. Then I'll go up and put in the canopy and then the boards that are supporting that. For the balcony, I'm just going to go about in the middle there, line straight out, and then it comes back just a little bit here. There's a rug that's hanging over. It's not too wide in depth because it's going away from us, so just eyeball that. If I'm this far out, it's about the same length this way as it is this way. I'm just going to drop this down here and then here. Really don't worry about these proportions too much as long as you are keeping your angles, because it doesn't have to be exactly the same as the photograph you're seeing. This is just an interpretation of the visual. I'm going to draw this bar straight down, create the bottom, and then draw the rest of these bars. Put some in here. These ones will be skinnier because they are going off away from you. Notice these are overlapping, they're starting to get messy. That's my illustration style, that's what I prefer and you can do that or you can make it cleaner, but there's really a fun part about keeping this more of a loose sketch. Then I see on the bottom, we have a base, so I'm going to incorporate that. Then you'll notice too the rug in the photo hangs over, it's not hanging over in my illustration. That's okay. Then bring this up. That wall stops about here. You're going to see a window. Just get that at an angle. There's a door. Then anytime that there's that darker area, I actually want to color that in a bit, so that you can see that depth. That's where that doorway is. You can do it a little in the window. I don't want to do it too much because I don't want to take away from the shape of the areas across here, but it can be pretty loose. Then you can see that there's some plants behind here. I'm just going to loosely draw some pots and just some overall. Notice these lines are just squiggly lines, they're nothing fancy. Now we're going to draw the overhang and what you'll notice is that the overhang actually is at a slight slant downward. I'm going to draw that line in, right about here. Then these boards will come out and then they're just going to slowly taper down. See how loose these are, you guys? Not going to do quite as many because my wall does stop here. Then I'll do this overhanging balcony, add a little bit of texture, and that's it for here. Then over on this side, this wall continues up and you have the option to add all that detail in right here or you can keep it blank and just add some color to show that there is something here, but you're leaving it to the imagination. This is another style choice. I'm going to bring this all the way down and I am going to draw this line and that comes at a slant. Notice that it's getting larger as it's coming this way because that's towards me, so it is showing that depth that it is going down. Then here we have a tarp. That is giving the illusion that, that is overhanging. Notice that my line comes through here. Just add a couple of lines in. All of a sudden, that line makes sense with the rest and it doesn't seem like it's just a straight line coming through, doesn't look like a mistake that way. Then we have a shop underneath here. You can see a table and a chair. These are things that you can pick and choose what you want to put in, what you don't want to put in, break these down into shapes. You can see the chair in reference to the pots, it is a little bit larger than our pot, so I'm going to draw just a square here. I'm going to draw a border around that and then I'll draw the back support. That's fairly easy because it's head on. Now the next shape is a square at a slant. You'll see that the base here is going to, in our vision be shorter than the front. Notice this line is slightly larger, comes off to the left a little more. This is following that vanishing line. Then match your lines up. Draw your base. Doesn't have to be anything pretty. Then your legs will just come straight down, line through here, and down here. Overall, simple chair and the table behind that shoots out. Same idea here. This part is going to be slightly longer. It's hidden behind the chair though, so don't be too worried about the dimensions here. You have a little tablecloth, comes down here, and then have your legs. Then this is another thing that you can either choose to put in a lot of detail here, if you want to emphasize this table area, just add little mark making lines that are just showing that there's something there but nothing too detailed because I don't want to draw a lot of attention to the table. After this, you can see a lot of displays behind it. I am going to put that in. You can see that there is an imperfect square here, so it's coming in toward the top. Keep that at an angle and then it's going to extend inside. Instead of drawing it all the way to the wall because it gets darker in here, I'm going to add that shading. Then it's just going to get lighter, so you can see that that's going inside somewhere. Then there's a wall that comes down here and then you have a table shooting out this direction. It's hard to make out, so this is something that I'll have blend in also. But there you see something is there. In these illustrations, these aren't things that you have to stick exactly to the photograph. You can improvise, make things work for you as you're sketching. Again, this is all about speed sketching, getting things done quickly, interpreting them the way that you see them. If you don't want to focus a lot of detail here, which I don't, it's a small area, my scene is going to be more elaborate up here. That's something to take note of. From here I see some photographs. I'm just going to draw along the vanishing line, just some squares that come down. They don't really make a whole lot of sense, have some overlap here, and it's okay that my lines go through. Then I have a table down here. I'm going to draw that out here. I'm extending it a little longer than it actually is because I don't want to do too much detail in here on that table. I'm going to draw a couple of lines through it so that that vanishing line makes more sense. Then along this tarp you can see there's another display. I'm just going to leave it as is. I'm not going to draw anything on that. Then coming off this building, you can see that we have this pretty intricate balcony and these are just shapes. Going straight across, stepping down, straight across, moving down if these lines aren't perfect, even if they are, I encourage you going over them a couple of times. It gives it some character. Then we're going to come straight down. Also please note that my balcony is completely in the wrong place. This was at the wrong angle, but I'm fine with it because it's going to work for my illustration. You'll also see that I dropped this down much further than actually is because I want that in my image. Where I cropped it was a choice, but then I also want it in my image. Those are examples of how you might be able to shift the illustration and shifts some objects. For example, there might be a really cool light posts that you want to put in your image, but it's coming off the frame, you can scoot that in. Those are some ideas. Then we're going to put in this base that we see. Then come slightly in and down. I don't know what this yellow thing is, but it looks like it could be a tap of some kind. So I'm actually going to make that look more like an actual tap. Then we'll add some strings to it.This is another example. This is the shape that I'm making up and adding some texture to. Then you can see it looks like these are some plants in here. Then if you look, you see this little gadget on the wall. Let me have some lines coming here a little bit of shading right here because you see the third colors a little bit different and then up here you see that there is a plant. It's difficult because you can't put it in the corner like it is. So you can put on the balcony, it will run into this other balcony. I'm going to skip it and instead I'm going to draw in this texture from this brick. This is pretty easy brick. They're not in the brick lay, so they're just some lines you can put in and then you can draw the pot and the plant that's on top of that. This is where I get less into detail because we're getting to the top of the page. I don't want get too involved here and I'm just going to do some mark making. We have a pot sitting down here. It's a little more curved and then it looks like a little flower. This is all I'm going to do for that. I'm not sure what that is. I'm going to leave that blank because I don't want to get too crazy with the detail. Then you can see that this wall comes up and then we have just inside, looks like a doorway. I'm going come up real skinny and then put in that shading. Then you can see that there is an overhang. It's a little more involved, but I'm going to leave that detail out the building right here then I add some shading. On this side, it's definitely more simple and I first want to point out that you see another line coming in as a vanishing point. It's not quite eye level, so it's down here and that's a pipe going through and then it runs into a canopy. The canopy is just across from the blue one, this one that we drew and so I'm going to do that first and then notice it's real skinny in our eyesight and it hangs over pretty far. Then that line looks like it's outwards like this. Notice how I put that straight on versus how I did do it where it's slightly to the right. That actually helps with your proportions. When you're drawing this up, this is unnecessary, but if you can pay attention to those small details and angles, it will help with your illustration. Then notice that it also has some fringe hanging down. I'm going to put that in here and then create the base of this where that begins. Now I'm going to draw the pipe that's coming and so that looks like it's starting about here. Then we're just going to draw that. That's a real wavy line, isn't it? My finger is in the wrong place. So this is a good example of making a mistake and being able to go over it. With these straighter lines, it's actually a lot easier to use your arm to do that sweeping motion. But no worries if you don't because you can always add more depth to some major lines anywhere else then it balances things out. It's a very forgiving type of art. Looks like this is some stonework, so this is a really cool balcony. I do want to emphasize it and it looks like it's going pretty far and it gets a little more narrow. Well, I'm actually going to start it right here. What I'm going do to start is just make this real jagged line here. Then I'm just going to start throwing in some stone looking top here. Then looks like this pipe is coming through here. This way gets skinnier, can't really tell, but don't worry because on the illustrations it won't even matter. Then as it gets further, these stones get really skinny almost to where you can't make them out. I'm just going to do some real flat ones and then have them get larger as they get toward me.This is throwing in that dimension and see that right here. Part of this building pops up just a rectangular shape and then you have a little canopy off of that. Looks like there is maybe some brickwork in here. I'm going to put it in whether it's there or not, and add some shadow here and then it looks like right about here we have a pipe that's going straight up and then it's meeting end of some beams. So I'm going to do that because this other pipe has a lot of lines in it. I'm going to balance it by continuing that. We may not know it's a pipe, but that's okay. Then we have this overhang. We have some of these beams are coming out further. I'm going to draw those in, and they're pretty close together in our eye view, draw that in, create those lines that you see, and then notice that, in our vision, the top of this, it's going to start here and it's actually going to just shoot straight up. Now, the way that this looks in the photograph is going to look different than it does in the illustration. In the illustration, it looks like what's happening is that this part of the building is actually going literally up and probably over. So don't worry about that, we're getting toward the top and it's just going to disappear. Then we have a subtle window, really really skinny from our eye view. So I want to put this in, but I want to make sure that it is skinny on our eye view. Notice that it's that rectangular shape on the bottom has a slight angle down the top, has a little steeper angle up, and then straight down again. We can't really see what's going on inside of it, but we do know that it's shaded. So I'm going to make that happen, and then I'm going to put a slight framing around it. There is a portrait, it looks like coming from here, and there's a ledge, I am going to draw a line, get it more narrow as it keeps going, and then put this ledge here. You can see that portrait's just coming off. So I'm not going to draw any detail, probably won't know what it is, but it does add to the overall finished product. It looks like this wall is brick. For this circumstance, because there's some brickwork here, I'm not going to incorporate it. So now you see a telephone wire coming from up here and down. This is going to help our vanishing point a lot, and when we put stairs in it, will also. But I want to put this and so what I'm going to do here, you can see that it's twisted, so I'm going to start here and I'm just going to get this wavy line, it starts out longer, and gets much closer together as it comes down. I'm going to have that all the way here. I don't know what's going on down here, but there's something going on down here that cuts that off. So I'm just going to put in just a rectangle, something's happening, we don't know what that is, but now we know there's something going on. Then I'm going to put the horizon line and where the water is, just above this part of the building and it's pretty still, so that's there, and then I'm going to draw this mountain range in the background, just come up, come down, up again, down again. You can see there's trees in here too. I'm not going to put these in, and it's because it's so far in the distance that you don't want to emphasize too much detail on the distance otherwise, it's not going to be as obvious that it's far away. So farther away from you. When working on vanishing points in that perspective, you want as little detail as possible. So what I'm going to do now is actually do another wavy line on top of it. There's not going to be a rhyme or reason to this, its just so that I can see that it's an actual wire because you can see that it's twisted. There's a way to do this to where it would look actually twisted. But I don't want to, because I think that it would be too much. So remember, to make it a lot closer together as it gets longer, and now that there's two buildings, you can see that there's something coming off right here. You can choose to incorporate it, you don't have to. I'm going to do it a lot skinnier than it actually is, but I do want it in here because I think it'll add a new aspect, and then you can see. I'm just going really narrow, and I'm going a little higher than it actually is because I want to see more of this background. You can see that in the image it cuts off and it comes down lower than the mountain range, but I want all that in here. So I'm making it higher, and then creating this roof, and then I'm just going to put that straight back and have it connect with this idea of a canopy here. It has some brick work on it because it's farther in the distance, I'm going to leave it as is, and then just add that overhang here, and then you can see that there's is, it looks like a weather vane and just create some lines. Moving down, we want to add these stairs there, we want to get rid of this line here. Notice that in the image, we have those vertical, well to us it's horizontal, but if we were straight on, they'd be vertical lines. I'm just going to fake some horizontal to us vertical lines in here so that it blends, and then leave this as is. Now, you can see that there are more displays down here, looks like maybe a long rug about right here, and then I'm going to swirl the top a little bit just so you can see that it's something that's rolled up. Then we have some stool or a table, I'm just creating straight lines, maybe a hat, so that's a curve, and then around. So I don't want to overwhelm you guys, but I'm just showing you so quickly because I want you to see that what I'm doing requires very little form. It's mostly just shapes thrown together, so you can get a general idea of what's going on. So notice there's a lot more under here, but it's also really shaded. So I am going to put in that shadow and then have it fade out. Then you can see where these canopies are connected to string or they're connected to bars. So this one shoots straight out from the building and I want these to be pretty dark because I want it to be obvious that they are connected. Then it looks like there's a string coming from here to this side of the building, so I am going to do that, but with the string, I'm not going to make it straight across, I'm going to have it at a slight curve. Then this one looks like it's also connected. I can't really tell where it's going, but it looks like it's up higher, so I'm just going to bring it up like this. Then this one too, I have no idea where this one's coming from, so I'm just going to create some lines here. For my steps, this one I want you guys to be careful with, because you want to make sure that you have the correct distance and don't overthink it, just create enough to where you know that it gets wider to narrower, it's going to give you that illusion. So notice that just underneath our eye level, the canopy area, you have a gap in the stair, I'm going to draw that here. Then from there, I'm going to draw them really close together, and I'm doing two lines for each stair, just like the red paint shows, close together but as I'm getting closer to me, I'm going to start spacing them out a bit more. So you can see, we're going to get wider and wider and wider. Then coming down here, the way that you're going to be able to tell that this is different is, we're going to add a little bit of texture, not too much, you don't want it to be interfering with this, but I'm just going to do some loose. See how these curved lines just create this loose stone effects. Here, I'm just going to create the same, you can skip some areas, see how it gets smaller, and then smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, and eventually it just becomes these squiggly lines. So that helps a lot with that depth as well. Then here, you can see about here we have another gap. This one's not going to be as big as this one, but it is going to exist, so I'm going to have it about here. The rest of these lines, I'm going to have them really close together, I'm not doing the double lines anymore, and then these ones practically run into each other. I didn't draw the persons sitting here because we're not on people yet, and I just wanted to give you guys an overall idea. So this area we can add, I think that I do want to add this overhang. So I'm going to go a little lower than it actually is, and I want to show off that shape of those beams because they are really cool. I'm just drawing what I see. So that's going to come up a little bit, and then you can see that there's another one coming in, and then just mimic the shape. So we're going out, up and in, out, see that it just creates and then straight in. Actually one coming in right here. Then I'll do one more right here. Then we have this overhang. See once you draw this like rectangular shape, in the middle just a little lower, there's a line. I'm going to put this in, and then underneath it, I'm going to shade it, and you can tell that that is underneath. So just a little dimension, and then we have this area here that has some cool texture. There's a big blank space here, and you can leave that for a color. I usually like to add a little texture to the walls. Nothing too crazy, just like four lines and call it good. Then from here, I am done with my sketch. That is it. See how long that took us, not too long, and it would take you even less time if you were not talking like I was. So hopefully, that helps to see like what types of things I want to leave out, what types of things I want to include, and how to look at a scene overall and pick and choose what to emphasize, how to lay that out, and how to look at vanishing points, and eye level, and horizon lines. In the next video, we'll look in to incorporating people. 10. Urban Scene #2 - Intersection: For this sketch, this is one that we're going to complete from beginning to end with our watercolor and I chose this image on purpose because there are some obstacles in the way, I'm going to show you how to move those around. It's perfect also because it's going to show you where people are placed and then some signs, some trees. I'm excited to do this one with you. In the beginning, always pay attention to what your eye level is seeing. In this case we have heads, all these people. You can see where all their heads align approximately on that eye level like we talked about, with the base of a building we have this area with a stoplight, and we also have one that comes up higher than that. There's some things there, but I want to start with eye level and the thing that's closest in proximity to me is this man. I'm going about just under halfway up my page. We're going to draw the shape of the back of his head, we have an ear here and then come down like this and then for hair, he has darker hair, so I just do some darker line throughout here. That seems fine and then he's got glasses. I'm going to do a line straight across, glasses. His head comes out here, have a chin, he's got a collar on, so I'm going to draw the collar. He's got a jacket, it's got a hood, I'm going to draw his shoulders in and these are not straight out. You want to slant them just a little bit and before they come down, his arm is tucked so it comes down and then tucks. The jacket part, let's start about here, comes out a little bit and then this part, same thing out a little bit and then comes in like this. We're going to draw the hood in. It looks like it comes out and then down and then back up. You can draw some texture in that and have his arm wrap in front, other arm wraps in front. You have his legs and I'm going to have those vanishing off the page. It looks like this one is prominent to us. He's standing straight out, I'm going to do this and then I'm going to have this other one come out like so, looks like there's some shading just right here. Then also in the front right here. I've got him and then I can draw some texture in his jacket a little bit. Something I want you guys to take note of with the lamppost, is it's cutting off some buildings behind it. Because I want this to fit a little bit differently on my page, I'm actually going to put the light posts on the right side of him. It looks like the bottom of this post is near the bottom of his legs, so I probably won't be able to draw that in, but I can do notice how it's wider toward the bottom and skinnier toward the top. The top goes all the way to the top of the page. I'm going to do long lines and you can do that sweeping motion with your elbow, with your full arm, you can do one with your wrist. I'm actually going to drag it down slowly because I want there to be some wrinkles in my line work. I'm going to have that nice and close to him about here and then come down and then down next to him like this. It's leaning a little bit, I'm fine with that, I think that adds character. At the top you can see that there are two lips. It comes in and then it looks like a little knob of some kind here. We have our stoplight, and that's very large in our proximity, so I have this rectangular shape that comes out. Then the lights themselves shoot. I'm going to start with the middle one, the reason why is so that I can get my proportions right. If I start here, I won't make it too wide or too small. If I start in the middle, it just gives me that reference point. I'm going to come here and here. This will be dipping up into the top line. I just do that with two other ones. It's got some stickers and flyers all over it. I'm not going to incorporate too many of those. I'm just going to have a paper that comes off here, maybe one here. You can see that there are some things on the light post, but it's not going to get too busy and I'm not going to draw the part that is on the other side, just because I think that it will be distracting from what I want my overall image to be. From here I have a building, you can see that where the vanishing point is, it's just off center of the page to the right. There is a tree behind here and that will get to clutter if a put it here. I'm actually trading the positions and putting the tree on this side. It's right above his head so it's not going to interfere. I'm just going to do some loose lines and then have a trunk that's vanishing. Then put in some depth toward here and that's it. You'll see when we add water color that the detail will work itself out there. Maybe have a little right here and then I have my building. We look at the top of it. It's technically closest to us, where it is on the photo on the page itself, it looks like it's about a quarter of the way down. The ending point is behind the tree and it looks like it's just above the center. I'm going to draw a line right here to give that dimension. I'm going to draw the corner, you can see the corner. It ends at about the middle of the page and then have that angle coming out this way. I did this line before I did the lamppost. I am going to just draw through it. This one is just about the middle of the other one in reference. I'm going to draw that rectangular shape and just draw some smaller lights. Then draw my post. It looks like we have that street that crosses, the curve comes out from the building about here. I'm going to draw it just about down here. Have it slightly taper. Then it's got some stickers, I'm leaving it alone because it is further away from us. Ideally, I wouldn't have drawn that line through here. I'm going to darken this just a little bit, I'll darken this one, I definitely want to darken this one because it's in our foreground. Let's draw our curve and a little bit more. We can see that we have this lip here. It probably gets a little more narrow as it turns. This building, notice that the line on the bottom is also hitting that vanishing point, so this line is going up, this line is going down, and this is a multi- perspective image. You have some doorways that goes along that same vanishing point. It doesn't follow this line, it doesn't follow this line, but if you look at the vanishing point here, you can see that slants down. See how that imaginary line is hitting that vanishing point. I'm going to draw my door coming down. Some shading that is darker and maybe some a little bit more toward the corner, so that you know that it's entering this side and it just gives a little more perspective. There are some windows on the top, you have to imagine that imaginary line right here. Then right here, they are getting larger as they come toward you and then you're going to come straight down. These are just those quick windows. It looks like you have some doorway here. I'm going to get that in here, get that shading. And then I can draw the part that is closest to us. So there's a lot going on on the front of that building. For my sketch, I'm not going to include it because I don't want that to be a focal point. I want my focal point to be more on the building to the left because I think it has a lot of character, and then on the vanishing point itself. So I am leaving this as is, and then I'm also going to leave out that building that's in the background. Well, actually, if you want to, you can have it disappearing right here and bring it out, slight angle down, out again, and then just down. That's all you have to do. You don't have to put in that crease. You can do it just at the top a little bit. But I wouldn't do the sign. I wouldn't even drag it all the way through. It just gives a little more dimensions. Yeah, actually do that. Then this curb closest to us, a good way to frame this is to look at where the curve ends in reference to this guy here. So if you go straight across the page, it is right under his jacket. So if you're measuring, you can see that it's about right here. Then, you know that it's at that angle and it's coming down to about here. So you can draw that curb along this angle like so. It's okay if it's a little bit off. There's your curb. Then you can do these lines that there are in the photo. It goes off the page about right here. So you want to make sure that angle is correct too. So in reference to the photo, it looks like it's ending about here. So my border is about an inch out, so that is where that will end. Then you have another post coming out here. It comes off the page. Just because my page is shrunken a little bit more than the photo, I am going to leave that out entirely, and then I'm going to scoot that building that we see over to the right, just a smudge. You have to be careful because you're looking at the curb that's on that side. You don't want that to be in too far because then the proportions will be off. So even though you're bending their proportions, do still be mindful of that. So you have a crosswalk and then it looks like the point of this curb is just to the right of the other one. So it's going to be right here. If you're looking at this imaginary line, it's going to be right in this area here. Then on the vanishing point, you know that it's right here. You know, you have a street, and so you want to bring that curb right about here. I'm just going to do a light line for now because I know that I have some vehicles and what now that I'm going to add. It goes off the page at a slight angle, probably a little further down. It may not make sense, but once we have the building in there it will. But you probably can see that my building is not going to reach the top. That's just something that happens as you're drawing. You'll figure that out that proportions will get weird, you won't be able to get to the top of things. When you're sketching, don't worry too much about this. Don't beat yourself up if you get those proportions wrong because it can actually look really cool. You can even shrink the building. So that's totally up to you. It doesn't have to be this tall, tall building. It can be something that's shorter, especially if you're not doing a specific landmark, like you're not intentionally doing the Eiffel Tower or doing something like the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Space Needle, where it should be more accurate. If it's just a building in a neighborhood or a residential area, you'll definitely have more freedom there. So I want to draw the main elements of this building. I'm not going to draw that post there. So I do see a tree. I'm going to have to get that tree in there first just with these loose lines. It looks like I went off the curb. That is okay because I will just have it reach lower. But yeah, make sure that that's on your curb. Then do some shading. It looks like it's down at the lower areas, the light sources, more above here. So my shading isn't here, maybe a couple areas throughout. This building will go off at an angle. It looks like just to the left of the corner, just barely you can see where the site is. Then about right here you have, it's like a group of bay windows, if you will, maybe tiny version of not a full bay window, but you get it. Then I'll do that, a line that's kind of straight across. So if we come up here, and then here, and that's like your entrance, move this door down, it's going to be a peekaboo because I'm shrinking it a little differently then what you see on the paper. Then I'm going to do a couple little reflection marks. All I'm going to do for that are just two lines and then two lines. There's another window here. A couple of lines. I want to make this more of an obvious entrance. So I'm going to get bolder right here, and then around the frame. The building goes off and follows that curb line. Above this we have these windows so I'm going to do a straight line down. Then this is going to peekaboo behind that tree. I do that quick little windowsill, not too detailed because it's further away from us. Then there it looks like there's a panel here, and then another group of windows. So I'm going to make that proportionate to the bottom one. Then these ones that are up higher look like they have more of an arch. So I'm going to draw the same windows, but just around them I'm going to have this tiny border with an arch. No detail needed. That's enough because it's in a distance. Then the top. Then you can see that the window kind of peekaboo's above that. It's a different style. Then I'm just going to assume that one is right here also, even though we can't quite see it. So I want to show you too. Notice that those bay-type-windows, you need to do a skinny line on either side and then have these lines at that angle. Which will give it more of the effect that is turning inward like that. This can be overwhelming on this side because there's a lot of clutter going on and you want to make sure that it doesn't get too busy, but it also represents it somewhat accurately. So I'm going to focus on the part that is protruding off the building. I'm going to, from here you see that from here, the building has that angle towards the vanishing point, the vanishing point being here. So here's your imaginary line like so. From here I'm going to put in this area that's protruding out of the building and then come straight down with it. Then straight down. Have those panels the same way you see them here, but just along the same vanishing point. So this is going to be different each way because we're going this direction. You want to draw the crease in here. We're actually going to end up editing the lines that are right here because you want those to come up so you can see that there is a bend that actually is popping out. Then we're going to draw balconies that are connected. So those look like they are along the same line. Then straight down, straight down. Then you can shade those in a little bit. Then along this line, straight down, straight down. Balcony shade that in a little bit. So it's like a square, and then a line, another line and then shade it in. So the square is a square to us and then the rest are angles and they're just connected. These lines will connect. It's okay if they're a little bit off. Then you're going to put those windows in there. So they're going to be a lot skinnier than the one that we did before because they are at an angle. So make sure that they're skinnier and that they're all following into that vanishing point. If they're not pleased, destroy it. That's fine. I'm not doing three of them because I don't want it to get too cluttered. So this is just a choice that I'm making to edit. The bottom looks like there's these larger windows. That's it there. Then you can see that there's windows here, but I'm just going to do these real skinny lines, because I know it's going farther away from me and I can't see as much detail. Then there's another set of balconies, so I'm going to do these smaller squares, and then just return that that looks better than it does. A little smaller square, vanishing point, smaller square vanishing point. You can see another area that's protruding, so have that come down, a lot skinnier. Then connect to the wall here. You can see there's a tree, right down here, so I'm just doing some really quick lines. There's one right here, that's a little bit bigger. There's a little area that has a peak. I'm going to have that come down, and then there's a roof on here that I'm going to put in. So these are slanted here, straight across and then slanted down, and then it connects to that peak. So it gives the idea that something's going on here and then just some quick lines. But that's all I'm going to do to that side of the building. Then I have to put in something here. You can see that there's another vanishing point, so it makes sense, and you can see on the image that it's downward, because there's a new vanishing point over here. So you can see as that's going, it's about right here. This is the area that you want to keep in mind as you are doing these lines. We're not going to do a lot of them, because I'm just going to have this fading off, and not draw any detail because again, my focus is right here. But I do want to put in the roof and I want to put in the panels, and then I'll just put in some really quick windows, and that's it. Now you can see that there is a building and it is going along that route. There is also some additional buildings down here. You can choose to put them in if you want to. I'm just going to do a quick line so I can see where it's going. Then maybe some quick tree lines that go this direction, and that's it. Then I have some cars that are coming from a distance and I'm going to do these quickly. You can see this van here. I'm just going to do a lopsided square that is little softer. So I'm going to come down, just around, and then up, and over. Then you can see that it comes back. It's back here, has this window, at a slight angle. Headlights. I'm actually going to have it reach further out. Then a little door, and then we have our wheels. That's all I'm going to do here, so nothing fancy. Just so you can see that there's a vehicle there. Then further off than that, you can see there's a car behind that. That's another eye level thing. This actually could've been better placed closer to his head, but we're going to make it our own eye level off of the vehicle. So right here, behind, there's a vehicle. I'm just going to do a round, oblong shape, some small tires, the idea of a window, and some headlights, and then maybe some depth there. There's some parked cars along this side. The bottom, maybe a grill coming up and back. This window here, some headlights. That's it there. Then maybe just the idea of some other ones behind there. You can see there's cars along this side. I'm going to leave that as is. I do want to draw the crosswalk. There's my line, so I'm going to do some dashed lines that connect. Then maybe make just a line just next to it so that it has a little more dimension. Then just one here, these are going to be slightly longer, because they're closer to us. Then maybe those lines. There's the idea of a crosswalk. We'll do one right here. It's going to be, let's say from right here to there. So crosswalk, vanishing points off that. They are a lot larger when they're closer to us. Then as we look at this part of the intersection, it does look a little bit bare in comparison, even though I didn't want to put that post in. But if you look at just a little after that, you can see that, there is a bike lock type of post, so we can incorporate that. So just draw two straight lines and then a little knob. Then that will go off, the same angle as the curb, and then just vanish, and then here. What I also want to add in is the stonework that's on the bottom. This doesn't have to be real intricate or small like that. Remember that when it's closer to you, it's going to be larger, and then as it goes further away, it'll get smaller. You don't even have to do the whole thing, if you just do it in sections, like we talked about when you add brick. Then it can just get bumpy throughout here. That's just some squiggly lines. Then you can see that that adds a lot to that corner. Then we can do a quick dashed crosswalk here. Then there are some train tracks that come through and I would like to put those in as well. That's going to be along this line here. So that's going to be real easy. Just drag your pen straight out, and then have this come behind, and then straight back. Then I'd also draw a line just next to it. This one go a little slower for it because you want to make sure that it is real skinny, and that it's not going to get to wide or lopsided because it is something that does want to be consistent. Then the other line, you don't want it to go too far into the intersection, and ours is a little smaller than the photo that we see, so we're going to bring it just about here. Then it's going to get more narrow as it gets further away from us. That's it. Then we want to also make sure that we incorporate those people. That's something you can do in the beginning. I waited because I wanted to get the building foundations in here. So the people, just to the left, notice that our guy's head here matches up with their head as well. So that's what we talked about on eye level, and you just want to make sure they're super small. We have a head here. It looks like we have a purse, we have a jacket, but these are just some quick lines. They don't make a lot of sense. Looks like our jacket is long, so our legs come out this way. Because there's a line going through here, I am going to darken her or his jacket. I'm actually going to make some hair. So there's a person there and you get that. Then there's going to be another one right next to them, with a longer jacket as well. Maybe have an arm coming down. That stance we talked about that just comes straight down, straight down, and then matching. Then you can see that that's another person, maybe put a hat on them. On this part, we can have this person walking, so they're going to be along that same eye level. It looks like they have a bun, and then bring an arm down, arm down, some jacket, going lower. Then they are walking, so you can bend their leg and then have the other one overlapping. Then it looks like there's a kid. Careful with when you draw children because you don't want it to look like a misproportioned person. So I'm just doing this real quick. That's it for the people over here. So you can see in reference, how when it's along that line of about eye level, that they do look like they're further in the distance when you draw them according to those proportions, and you keep in mind that they are smaller, they're in reference to the door. Then since they're darker, it might be a good idea to add some darker shading to our guy in the foreground. Maybe some underneath his hood, like that. Then we'll draw these people across the street. They're a little bit closer to us, but they're still a lot smaller than this guy. Then even though my post is right here and the people are over here, because I shrunk my scene when I was framing, I'm actually going to do the guy on this side. SIT looks like he comes up about here. I want to avoid this shaded area for the most part so I'm putting his head here. It looks like he has a bag, jacket. His arm comes out like that. I'm going to make his bag a little more defined. Then he's walking. He has a leg coming behind, and then like that. Some people right behind him, so they're a little bit smaller, but they're still pretty close. Same eye level. I'm just going to draw a couple of quick heads. He's got a hat. So he's walking toward you. Then the legs here. This guy looks like he's facing out this way, and he's got his hand in his pocket, but you can't really tell because I do my sketches pretty scratchy. Then there are some people walking in this direction, but I'm just going to leave it as this. You see some dimension and people, where they're located. You see the vanishing point. You see that it's all based on eye level right here. Hopefully that helps and I will show you how we can bring even more dimension, in here with some watercolor. 11. Incorporating Watercolor (Scene #2): As we're moving into our watercolor portion, if you are one of those people that feels watercolor challenged, don't worry, this doesn't take a lot. In fact, it's probably a lot less than you're expecting. I do have another class on watercolor, so if you would like to, after this segment or before, to check that class out, and I'll walk you through some basics of watercolor and how to mix color, create different tones and hues, and then also some water control. I recommend that for several reasons, but also it will help guide you in this portion as well. But I really think you should just give it a try because it's a lot easier than you might think. We really take advantage of the white space in our illustration. We'll just add enough color to really bring out the extra dimension, and some texture, and things like that that don't exist from what we actually drew. Also, allow yourself to break out of that and change it up a little bit. If you see an area that looks a little more muted and you want to bring it to life, add a different hue, or add some multi-dimension of color, and I'll show you a little bit of that as we go along. I'm using the Loew Cornell Soft Comfort round brush and a number four. This, guys, you can grab like a four-pack of different sizes of round brushes on Amazon for under ten bucks. These are my favorite go-to to this day. I love these brushes. I'm just using an artist loft palette, looks like this, and it's also really inexpensive. The first thing I'm going to do with color or the first thing that stands out to me in our image is our pale yellow building. I'm going to dip my brush, grab some yellow color, and I do recommend to having a paper towel on hand or something that you can color swatch so you can see what your color is going to look like. I'm not going to do that just because I know about where I'm going to go, but it's good to sample and test that. Notice I'm just doing an L-shape just around the window, I'm going to dip again, do a little L-shape, drag it through, and then come down. But this is really fast, just the way that sketching is. Then I'm going to go and do the same thing on this side. That's a little too much yellow, so before I go the whole stroke down, I took a little bit off by dipping it into water, and then drag that throughout. If you notice too, let's say you don't have enough paint on your brush, and you're coming in here and you're like, "Okay, well, now this water's on here. I don't want to add more water," all you need to do is dip your brush in the paint, and then come back to where it's wet, and just set your brush down, and it will bleed anywhere that the water is still wet. That's a great technique to add it a different color too if you want to add some dimension in. Notice that, it's not really easy to see, but on this panel here, in this panel, it's a little bit darker, so you don't want to attack this while these parts are still wet. You want to do it when it's dry, otherwise, it's going to bleed throughout. But we can add a little bit of a darker yellow in here to emphasize that shadowed area. I'm going to bring that yellow through the side. But see, we're just going real fast, and then in the front. But don't make these perfect. Allow that white space to come through. Then just overall finish that off. Then we'll go into the roof, and you can see that it's kind of like a brick red color. That's all I'm going to do there. Then we have his jacket, it's like there's a darker color, I'm not really sure what it is, brown or green, but you just bring a darker color throughout. Then as you're dragging it, I would go along the crease under here, like where the side and his arm is, and then maybe leave some white space a couple of places, like this. That's my personal favorite type of watercolor, it's when it is kind of messy, and splotchy, and leaves more movement texture. If that gets too flat, you can always add some darker elements to certain areas, and then leave others lighter. If there's ever an area that you overdo, I usually just ball up a little point of a paper towel and I just set it down, and it picks up extra water, and then some extra color. You can also dab, never put it down and rub it because then, it can mess up where that color direction is going, or it might smear somewhere you don't want it to be. Looks like he has jeans on, so I'm just going to grab a lighter blue and just do a really quick sweep. You notice how that's a bleed? That's because I met those two colors, which is not ideal, but that's when you can go in, dab it out, and then it takes care of that, and it's gone. So it's not the end of the world. If you notice that after it's starting to dry, something that you can do is get your brush wet with just water and just go over that area with water and then try to dab it out. These are pretty light, so I want to add a little bit of shadow. You can do this with a grayscale, gray tone. You can do it with some darker blue. I'm mixing a gray and a blue because I like that depth where it looks a little more gritty, little less bright. I will brush throughout his hair. I'm not going to do a wash necessarily, I'm just going to set it down, like set my brush over and over and then go back in with a darker color just on a couple areas. That bleeds, and that's all I'm going to do there. This building back here, it's got kind of a gray color, and it also has a little bit of a red color. So I am going to emphasize the red on this only, just so it stands out a little bit more. Then pull this over, come down. But I'm not going to come too far, I'm just going to see how I just leave it kind of trailing off, that's it. It's the same thing as when we sketched it, not much is going on there, but I will emphasize this crease, and then the edge here a little bit. It's just enough to show that something is back there but not pulling too much attention out of it. Then our lampposts, I'm going to do this in a gray color. I start here at the top, drag it down, and then just a couple sweeps and then leave it. I really like that white space in there. Definitely not something you have to do, this is definitely my own personal style choice. I just like how much it's like it livens it up. To have all that extra texture, I'm going to skip over these papers, drag it down. That seems good. This bike rack over here is like a darker blue or greenish, so I'm going to do that base color first, and then I'll go back in, and add a gray. Then for gray, I'm just going to go in and set it throughout not really dragging because I still want to bring that color out. I'm going to go back up to this yellow building and then add in a golden brown color just on these sides. But have it pretty transparent, so lots of water on your brush because you don't want that to be too dark. Because it is still that yellow building. This is just enough to show or to emphasize how it pops out. Again, if you have any areas that you feel are too heavy, you can just go in and dab it. Let's move on to these trees. In the image, the sun is coming through, so they are extremely dark. We're not going to do on that dark. I mean, you can, but I want to pull out some different greens and show you what that looks like. I'm mixing a darker green with a more army green. Then I'm going to come in and just set my brush down throughout this bottom area, and then come in with the same color but more water on my brush and sweep through the top, grab a lighter green and set that throughout more of the top area and a little bit into the bottom. Then I'm going to grab the darker color again and just set it through a couple areas on the top. As that dry, I'm going to do the same thing so that I creates more dimension. But you can't do that when it's still wet. Just do that same thing to the rest of your trees. The lighter on top, and then that darker color toward the bottom. Then as this one starts to dry, you can go back and add that extra dimension. You can have it completely dry. I like to do it when it's still a little bit wet because I think that it bleeds nicely. We can go into our vehicles, and looks like white, maybe some black. These I'm just going to do whatever color I feel like doing, and grab a blue for the van. Then I'll grab a red for one of these cars. Maybe a lighter gray. Then how about another blue color? Now I'll do some color on our people, and I'm just going to grab some random colors. I encourage you to do the same. Then just be careful that these colors don't bleed into each other. Similar to the trees, we're going to do the same thing to the ground in this area. I'm just going to do a quick wash with a light color first. As some amazing art teachers had said to me when I earn, you're dark. We started out with the light color, still an overall wash, and then come in and get darker and darker. I'm putting in some brown first, but it's not going to be too prominent because I'm coming in with these darker colors right away. All I'm doing is setting my brush down like this, but just fast. You don't have to go fast,.I just do it because I get excited. There we go. I would have liked a little more white areas in there. I'm just going to dab throughout and see how that opens that up a little bit for more texture. This texture actually can't be created without the dabbing. There's some times that doing this intentionally can really be beneficial. I'm going get this building with a light wash like we did this here. I'm just going to get it more prominent toward us and then see how it just fades off. We'll do some more on this side that's just a little bit lighter. Then I'm going to do the same thing on this side that we did down here to the curve area, so just that nice wash. Go in with some darker colors. Just dab that throughout. Then you can put some color in these fliers too if you want. I'm going to do some orange for they stand out, not too bright, but just enough. Encourage you guys to play with the levels of your water colors so you can see exactly how much you're taking it once, or even just before you lay it down so that you're aware of it. So you don't get a big glob. You don't mean [inaudible] so you know how dark it is but less is more. Obviously, there are ways to pick it up, but it's nice to have a test paper nearby. Then I'm just going to add some dimension into the road. I'm just doing some gray with a lot of water on my brush. I'm not going get everything because I like that empty space. I'm going to drag it through. We'll go over here. Then I want to get that. Nice and then so that it's lighter. I want to emphasize the edges to make those little darker in perspective. I'm just dragging in some areas and you can do less, you can do more. Whatever feels right to you. I'm going to hit this curve over here the same way we did on the others. Only it takes less because it's a lot smaller in our perspective. I would just grab some darker color, set it throughout a little bit and then call it good. That's it you guys. It's super quick to have watercolor. That's all I'm going to do, and it is finished. Super fun. I would recommend playing around with having a wet wash and then your brushing color and dabbing and onto that water and washing where that wants to bleed and how that will work with you in your piece. 12. Urban Scene #3 - Isolated Bicycle: The next image that I want to show you guys is just to assemble bicycle. The reason for this is because I want you to experience visualizing something, being able to see something simple and then even simplify that further. I'm just going to show you where it is that I see shape. If we're looking at it like this, we can see that this is maybe a little more tapered outward toward the top, but overall a rectangle, a rectangle down here. Then we have a cylinder shape. Notice that it is not a perfect circle this way, rather this way. So this is something to think about as you're visualizing it. I am going to keep a pretty large border on this so probably right around here. My bicycle is going to fit out here-ish and then I'm going to probably keep it about here, so I'm enlarging it a bit. I'm going to start with my wheel circle, that skinnier wheel size, this doesn't have to be perfect either you guys. I'm going to go over it a couple of times because I like the way that looks. Then the second one, it's pretty close, but no, it's on that angle. If you do a little dot and then another dot, notice that the line that you're looking at from the street where it meets the wall, looks like it's going through about the center of that wheel. If you do those two lines, that helped you figure out exactly where that is. The second wheel up here, that's where we're going to let it fade off. I'm going to actually start here, that's going to be smaller because it's further away from us. Then notice that it's starting to get lighter and that's where the bike is going to start going away. Then I am going to go in and put the center area where the pedals are. The line that goes just above the wheel into that area is going to look like this. Right above just down. Go over that a couple of times. You don't have to go over it a couple times that's just my personal preference. Then we have this area here. Mine looks, it's always looking different than the actual image, which I am fine with. You can see that those lines come in, you have the circle area here. It's actually a little flatter. Then we have this pedal that shoots up and comes straight out. Then the bike comes up. The bike wheel connects here and here. Then you have another connecting line coming down. To see the dimension of the wheel, you can see that there's a little bar in the center and then we have this circular area that that goes through. Then you can see that there's another bar through the spokes. I'm going to keep this one a little darker so you can see it's on our foreground. This one you can't really see on the other side, so I'm just going to do a light version of that and then you can see that there's a bar going through here again. Now, I'm going to add a second line. This one looks like it's already started. Then I'll draw my spokes in. I'm just doing these loosely, so I don't really care how that ends up guideline wise. Then I'm just going to see how I'm fading that out toward the front. Then I'm going to put this mud, is it a mud flap? The bar that comes down this way. Push that in, get a reflector in here, put a reflector on the back, and then our basket sits on top of that. For my basket I know that it has that slight taper, so I'm going to draw that in. Then remember this line right here, that same line is up here. So I follow it and then straight down, and that creates that dimension. Then we have that following as well. I'm going just to do a couple of little details from this basket. Notice it's getting darker here, so I'm going to push in some shading. Then we have our flowers. I'm just going to do these loose shapes, they're like circles with a lot of little squiggly lines and throughout like so. Then I might add a couple of lines stemming out from the center and not so much toward the front of the bike because we know that that part it's fading away. Then for some leaves, I'm going to throw some in here. That's just going up, down, and then back in. Then some smaller ones toward the front. Then I'm just going to put some shading underneath them, which would be inside this basket box. You can see now that my box comes further in than the photo. Ideally probably would have put it overlapped more, but this is something that happens with urban sketching, especially when you're going quickly. I just peekaboo that seat toward the front. Get it nice and dark so you know what it is. That part's done. Then I can do this bar down here, and it's along that same line. Then you can do that little sign if you want to right here. I am going to skip it. For handlebars, that's a straight line according to our paper. Let's bring just a straight line across. Then we will add a bell, so that's just an oblong shape here. Then handlebars there. I'm going to have them come down and straight down kind of a fading out handlebar on this side, and then we can add color to it. You can see how long that took it wasn't very long at all and it's very simple. It's clearly not perfect, but again, that's the idea is to let go of the need to make those perfections happen. I'm going to choose a goldish brown color and just push that through lightly. Then I'm going to let that dry somewhat and then add a little bit darker colors throughout. Then I'll go into my flowers and they're pink in this picture, you can do a pink and you can change that up. I'm going to actually do some orange. I'm just setting my brush down on top of these flowers. I'm not pushing it around, just leaving it as is and the bicycle is white. I'm going to change that too just because my background is white. I'm going to make this bike be blue. I'm just running colors, straight line on these bars. Then add some gray scale to my wheels and a little darker to my pedal and my handlebars. Then that's dried part out of the way so I'm going to go back in with a darker brown color, set that through a little bit and that will bleed where it wants to, but also pull out to some of the other area. The shading, I always want to make that a little bit darker, blend it through, and then I will go in with a darker green and just set that in my leaves. I would be careful doing this if your flowers are still wet because you don't want those colors to bleed together, so I'm just setting it toward the tip of them just to show you guys. I'm waiting on those reflection, those reflectors for the colors next to it to dry so that doesn't bleed. Get some gray in my bell, maybe some up here for some depth. Then I want to push in a little bit of shadow, so you can see the depth of the background just a little bit. I'm just going to grab a neutral color and come along here and then bring it through the back just a little bit. Then I want to bring that down. I'm just doing some quick washes that are real light just underneath, and that's it. Then you can also add a background of a wall. I wouldn't do it behind the bike itself because I think that would be too busy, but you could do just something toward the side and then give the illusion where it gets its tall and then it gets shorter toward the middle to give the illusion it's there, and then maybe something just on the back here. It's still really simple, but I think that background can really change the effect of what's going on so especially color, texture, if you wanted to put the idea of trees behind there, I wouldn't illustrate them. Just get some paint and water on your brush and set it throughout. Keep that white space in there, maybe add another color. This isn't in the image itself, but it does add to it a bit. You get that idea. Maybe some in the front, just smaller though and that's it. Then as soon as that part is dry, this one looks dry, I'm going in with a red color for my reflection and also right here. That's it. That is an easy way to do a bicycle. So urban settings don't have to be a really intense, they can be something really simple which can look quite lovely. 13. Class Project: Thank you guys so much. I could easily go on with this so much longer because I think that there are an infinite amount of examples that I can give you. But overall, I just wanted to give you a quick run-through so that you have something to go of so that you can get out there and start sketching and I'm so excited to see what you guys come up with. I'm so excited to see all of your different styles even if you sketched along in this class. One of my favorite things about urban sketching is seeing everybody's different unique artistry come out because I may draw something like so and then this person you are going to draw, so different and yet it still reflects the same image and I think it's so fun because it's so loose and so imperfect. So please embrace that. Don't worry about perfection. If you mess something up, just go over it, get that grit in there because that's what adds so much character. So thank you so much again and the project in this class, I would love to see a side-by-side of an image whether it be in your city, whether it be something that you pull off the internet, anything like that next to a sketch that you do. So if you sketch on location, just snap a photo before you leave and put those up side-by-side in your project gallery. Keep in mind that you need to be on a desktop to access the class resources and I believe you have to as well on a computer versus a mobile device to upload your project and so if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. Otherwise, I'm so excited. I really can't wait to see what you guys produce. So thanks again and I will see you next time.