Urban Sketching Tips: Painting and Mixing Shadows

1. Intro: Welcome to this course on understanding and using shadows more effectively in your sketches. Now, this is a beginner's course, but you do need to have some knowledge of drawing and sketching on location in order to get the best out of this course. You can think of this course as a complement to other urban sketching courses that I have already created. In this course, I'm going to show you how important shadows are and how they can make your sketches look more beautiful. How to think about tunnel values and contrast, how to mix shadows with watercolor, the colors that are used to mix shadows. For the last few lessons, we will take a walk around Singapore River and look at the different buildings and how they look under different light and shadow conditions. There are several hands on tutorials included in this course, which you can follow along very easily by downloading the reference photos provided. After you've gone through the tutorials, I recommend you submit your projects online so that I can have a look and give you some ideas on how to improve. And don't be afraid of making mistakes because the more mistakes you make the faster you will learn. And I have a favor to ask you before we head over to the first lesson. If you find the lessons useful, do leave this course and review so that you can help other students discover the course. All right, let's head over to the first lesson. 2. Tools and Supplies: Take a quick look at the tools we'll need for this course. We will be creating pen ink and watercolor sketches. We need watercolor supplies. We need watercolor paper. You can either use hot press or cold press watercolor paper, and it will be good if you have 100% cotton watercolor paper because it's easier to create wet and wet techniques on them. Obviously, you need watercolor paint. Shown on the screen right now are some of the suggested colors that I recommend for this course. You don't actually need that many colors. In this course we'll focus on using a limited color palette, so that usually means we are using one yellow, one red, and one blue, it would be good if you have two sets of primary colors because that will give you the additional versatility to mix colors. For drawing, I'm using a pen with waterproof black ink, and this is a pencil for creating drafting lines, and this is a white gel pen, nivo signal um153. This is for creating highlights or adding details. I have two watercolor brushes, and these are actually pocket brushes that I use outdoor, so I can keep them very easily in my back. The small brush is used for painting details and small areas and the bigger brush is used for covering larger areas. In case you're interested to know the brand, This brush is made by Da Vinci, and there are many companies that make pocket brushes. The two others that I know of are Rosemary and Escoda. And there are two cups of water here for washing the brushes. And this is tissue for drying the brushes or removing paint. One additional tool you might want to add is this water Mr., so I can use this to make my paint wet. And because this can hold a good amount of water, I can also pour out some of the water into this well here so that I can wash my brush with the water. When I'm outdoors, I do not bring the cups out. I use this instead. 3. Effect of Shadows: This lesson, I want to show you how you can make your sketches look more lively and interesting just by adding shadows and why you should consider framing your sketch or your composition based on how shadows look. Let's look at the line art for this exercise. So I have drawn a building six times and later, I will paint the shadows differently for each building to let you see the difference. This building is essentially just a cube. If you draw the building or the cube like this without any shadows, it's going to look like the building is floating in space. By adding shadows to the building, it will make the building look grounded instantly. This building has three floors. There are pillars at each corner and on the ground floor, there are some shops. We have two rows of windows here, two rows of windows here, and the two windows have an awning above, there is this rooftop area If you want to follow along with this lesson, you can draw the same building a few times and paint with me. Let's start with the first building where the light source is coming from the right. I've just tested some shadow mixes that I have created on this scrap piece of paper and listed by the side of the screen are some mixes that you can try out, or you can just dilute black ink or black paint for this exercise. For this first drawing or building, the light source is coming from the right. The cast shadow will be here cast by this wall, and there will be some shadows here as well. And this side of the building will be in shape because it's not facing the light and this will be the shape of the shadow and the cast shadow on the ground. Now, the shadow should also follow the perspective. In this case, this is sort of an isometric perspective. So the shadow here on the ground will be parallel to this diagonal lines. I have drawn the drawing with waterproof black ink. So if you want to draw with ink make suure your ink is waterproof when dry so that you can paint watercolor on top. Okay. So there is a pillar here. And there is shadow here as well. And this pillar will cast some shadow. And since these are the shops on the ground floor, there will be some shadows here as well because they are not they are blocked by the top here, so they can't see the light. The first sketch is done. Let's move on to the second sketch where the light source is coming from the back. Same thing, because the side walls here are blocked, so that's how the shadows will look and these two walls are not facing the light, so they will be in shade. Oops too much red. This mix that I'm using is Azo yellow, tra quinit scarlet and thalo blue. Now, when you're painting shadows, try to make sure to paint the shadow as one continuous shape. By that, I mean, don't wait for the paint to dry. Make sure the paint is still wet and continue painting so that your shadows will not have edges done. For this building, the light is coming from the left. This part here will be in shape. And notice there are awnings here. So the awnings will cast shadow as well. Let me just paint the shadow beneath the awning. Make sure your shadows are dark enough so that you can see the contrast, you can actually see the shadows. And this side of the building is facing away from the light. So this will be in shade and make sure to paint the shadow as one continuous shape. When the wash is still wet, continue painting. Don't wait for the wash to dry. De for this building, the light source is coming from the front. So these two walls are facing the light source, which means you don't have to paint shadows for these two walls. But the awning is still going to cast some shadows. So we need to paint shadows beneath the, you know, the awning. There should be some hint of shadow here. Caused by the two walls behind these two parts here. And we need to paint the shadows here as well on the ground floor. Okay. Okay, I think this is done. And for this last building, the sun is directly on top. So there will be no shadows here because the sun is directly on top. But the sun will hit the awning. So you have to paint the shadows for the awning, and the shadows will be quite long because the sun is directly on top. And this awning will be in shade as well because the shadow from the awning on top will cast directly onto the shadow, sorry onto the awning, just directly below. And this or these two awnings will cast shadows to the bottom here. This part here will be in shed as well. Let's look at the painted examples. At a glance, I can see the sketches painted with shadows look more interesting compared to just a black and white line drawing because now there is more contrast. In addition to the details such as the windows, the awning, the pillars, there is now the shadow. Now with the shadows, there are more areas of contrast which catches our IM, we also get more information regarding the building. This building also looks more dimensional and grounded because it is on the ground since the shadow is on the ground. We also know where the light source is coming from. It's coming from the right side because the cast shadows are on the left. If we think of the timing, it's probably the morning or the evening because the cast shadows are quite long. If this building was drawn in the afternoon with the sun directly on top, the cast shadows will not be that long. And thanks to the shadows, we also can get a better sense of the form of the physical form of this building. Next, we have the light source coming from the back, and this is usually the type of shadow shapes that I will avoid drawing because highlight of this sketch is the building, but the two walls that faces viewer in shadows. Everything is in shadow. You can't really see the details. The areas of contrast would be this part here because there is light and shadow and ages here, where there is light and shadow. Whereas if you compare this with this, you can see light versus shadow, light versus shadow, light versus shadow. You can get a better sense of the form of this building due to the shadow shapes. But for this, well, you can tell the form of these two walls because of how the shadows is cast. For these two walls, you can get a sense of the form of the walls, simply because of the angle shadows. But for this, this is just one big shape, so it's difficult to tell the form of this two walls. For this building, the light source is coming from the left side because the cast shadows are on the right side. Again, we have one wall that is lit by light and one wall that is in shadow, and we also have the awnings that cast shadow. For this particular sketch, there are more areas of contrast. We have the contrast here, here, here, here, and here. The shadow shapes for the last two buildings are not that different. For this building, the light source is coming from the front, and for this building, the light source is coming from the top of the building. For this building, I actually need to pin the shadow here. I accidentally left out the shadow here, because the light source is coming from the front, this pillar will cast a shadow behind. Depending on how high the light source is, you may or may not be able to see the cast shadows created by the two walls behind these two areas. For this building, the light source is from the top directly above, which is why the shadows cast by the awning. Is top down because the shadow is top down, it's going to cover this whole area of the building versus this where the cast shadows are actually at an angle cast by the awning here. Also on the ground floor, you can see the corridor here. This front area here just in front of the shops. This whole area is in shade. Whereas for this building, the front area here is lit by light. These buildings were drawn from imagination. Because of that, I can control where the light source is coming from and where the shadows will go. Now if you are sketching on location, if you're out urban sketching, your control over how or where the light is coming from is going to be limited. For example, if you want to sketch or paint buildings with long shadows, you should not be out painting in the afternoon from maybe 11:00 to 12:00 P.M. Of course, that will depend on which country you are in Here in Singapore, if we go out and paint from 11:00 to 2:00 P.M. The shadows will look like this the shadows will not look as nice. For me, when I'm out sketching, I prefer to sketch and paint in the morning or in the evening where I can see longer cast shadows. If I'm out sketching on location and I happen to see a building like this where the light source is coming from this direction, and I happen to be standing here, that will mean I'm looking at the shadow side of the building. These two walls will be in shape. The building is going to look something like this because I'm on location, I can choose to walk and I will choose to walk to someplace else to sketch this building, so that I can see one side of the wall. One side of the building that's in light and one side of the building that is in shadow. Whenever I'm sketching outdoors, I always think of contrasts. I'm always looking for contrasts. When I look at shadows, I think about how the shadows can show off the physical form of the building. And I from where I'm standing, the shadows cannot show off the physical form of the building, I will move to a different spot just to frame the building and check the composition and check the shadow shapes. Some buildings will look better in the morning and some buildings will look better in the evening due to just how the building was designed. For example, for this building, the sun will rise from the east, so the sun will hit the building from this direction in the morning. In the morning, this side is lit by light and this side will be in shadow. Now, during evening time, the sun will be setting, so the sun will be here and the light will be here. Because the light is here, The awnings can cast shadow. So this building is going to look slightly better during evening time compared to in the morning. Just simply because there are more shadow shapes that give you more information regarding how the form of this building looks. All the things that I've mentioned so far in this lesson will become part of your subconscious as you gain more experience with painting. In the next lesson, I want to show you how you can control shadow shapes. 4. How to Control Shadows: To painting shadows, there are some things you can control and some things you cannot control. One example of a thing you cannot control is weather. If you're out sketching and it's cloudy, then unfortunately, you may not get any beautiful shadows. However, if it's sunny, then you will see shadows and I highly recommend you take a reference photo first just in case the weather changes, at least, you can still work on painting the shadows with the help of a reference photo. So the things that you can control are the time that you go out for sketching. So if you want to paint long shadows, you should sketch and paint in the morning or in the evening where the shadows are long. Do not go out in the afternoon where the sun is directly overhead. Another thing you can control is the perspective. So you can actually control the horizon. To see how much shadow you want in your scene. And you can also walk around certain places just to choose your composition to show more or less of the shadows that you want to see. Let's look at these three buildings, which were drawn with different perspective and see how shadows will be affected by the perspective. For the first building, the horizon is here. It's high it's on the second floor, and the horizon usually coincides with our eye level. In this case, the eye level is here. We are probably drawing this building from another building on the second floor. We can see the diagonal lines converge to the vanishing point here. For the second building, now we are standing on the ground. We are now at the ground level. The horizon is lower. It's here, and the horizon coincides with our eye level. This horizon intersects with the heat, the eye of this person standing here and goes across, and this is the finishing point for this building, and this is where the diagram lines will converge. For the last building, the horizon is now much lower, so close to the ground it's almost on the ground. This is the vanishing point and the diagonal lines will converge to the vishing point. This is not a very realistic scene or building because if we have the horizon here, it would mean that we are actually lying down on the ground while drawing this. Are the same buildings from the earlier lesson, as you can see how the buildings will be affected by perspective and how the shadows look will also be affected by perspective. Depending on where you are, you may be able to change the perspective. For example, if you want to draw something like this, you will need to draw the building from a higher elevation. If you are drawing a building like this, it probably means you are standing and drawing. If you want to draw a perspective like this, it means you are probably seated very low or just for exaggeration, you're lying down on the ground. Let's pin the shadow for the first building and see how the shadows differ. I'm going to have the light source coming from the right side, the shadow will follow the finishing point, this diagonal line. Will follow this diagonal line. And this pilar will be casting shadow. When you're painting on location, you just, you know, follow what you see. Again, these buildings were drawn from imagination so that I can show you the examples more clearly. Same thing, this shadow cast shadow here will follow the vanishing point on the left and the right side. Since the eye level or the horizon is lower, when we look up, we can actually see the ceiling for the ground floor. Okay. And lastly, we have this very exaggerated perspective as if we are painting from the ground, like we are lying down on the ground. Same thing, the shadow should follow the vanishing point as well. In this case, because we are so low on the ground, we can barely see the cast shadow. Let's look at the similarities and differences between these three sketches. At a glance, you can clearly see that the side of this building is in shape. For the first building, where the horizon is high, where the eye level is high, it means we are at a higher elevation looking down and because we are high up looking down, we can see more of the ground, so we can see more shadow here. For the second building, our eye level is now lower and because our eye level is now lower, we see less of the ground because we are now closer to the ground. And for the last example, our eye level is well, on the ground, because our eye is on the ground, we can barely see the shadow cast by this building, which is on the ground. What this means is, if you want to see more shadows, you should go to the higher elevation to sketch whatever you want to sketch and that way, you can see more of the ground and see more of the shadows. And if you want to see less shadows, just move the horizon lower, move your eye level lower. Instead of standing and sketching, you should sit down on a small portable tool or sit down on the ground to move your eye level lower. That way you can compress the shadows. The shadows for this three buildings look accurate. However, they also look different thanks to the different perspective used. You can choose the perspective to use. You can change where the horizon is, you can choose to change where the eye level is, and that will affect the perspective and how the shadows will look Another way to control the shadow shape is to walk around and see how the perspective changes. Here I have drawn three similar buildings again. This time, I have kept the horizon at the same level for this three buildings. The horizon is between the ceiling here and the ground. For this example, let's assume this side with the signboard is the front of the building. Here you can see the two sides of the building is almost similar in proportion. This is maybe 50%, and this is also 50%. Let's say the light source is coming from the right the left side of the building will be in shade, and this is how it's going to look. I'm going to paint this really quickly. The signboard will also cast a shadow on the ground as well. To see less of the shadow for this building, what I can do is walk to the front of the building. When you are at the front of the building, you will see more of the front and less of the side, and because of that, the shadow shape for the side here will be compressed. Now the shadow portion takes up less area compared to the areas lit by light. For this building, there is light coming through this open area here, which is why you see this areas lit. Let's say now you want to see more of the side of the building. Now we walk from the front of the building to the side of the building and this is what we will see. If we do so, The shadow shape will be much larger compared to the side that is lit by light. Usually, I will try to avoid having the building look this way where most of the building is in shape because when everything is in shape, you can't really see the details because everything is hiding in the shadow and we need to paint the signboard here by the side. Let's compare the three examples and see what are the differences. For the first example, we have 50% area for the shadow and 50% for the area lit by light. This is almost symmetrical and this is not really interesting because it's symmetrical. Usually, I will try to avoid drawing something that looks too symmetrical. This is good because we have a smaller proportion for the shadow area and a larger proportion for the lit area. But this is not ideal as well. The front of this building is quite simple. There isn't much detail. It's just two rows of windows and this little signboard. The side is actually more interesting because there are more window panes and there is the awning above the windows. Interesting side of this building is actually in the shape. Here we have the owning, we have the window panes with more details, and this side looks more interesting, but unfortunately, it's in the shape. If I'm sketching this building outdoors, I will make a note, maybe to come back to sketch this building at a different time so that this side can be in the light and the other side can be in the shape. So the two ways to control shadow ships is to change the perspective and can do so by changing where the horizon line is. But to be able to change where the horizon line is, it means you may have to sketch on staircase, sketch from higher elevation, sketch from somewhere tall. But sometimes you cannot go taller and hence you have to use the second way to change perspective. Just walk around the building just to see how the shadow and the lead areas change. When you're sketching and painting on location, you can change the perspective to a certain limit, and you should use that to your advantage. 5. How to Mix Shadows: In this lesson, I'm going to show you some of my favorite mixes for shadows. Now, you don't have to use the exact colors that I'm using in this lesson because there are so many colors or paint choices out there. It is impossible for you to use the same colors as I use. But what's more important is you should understand certain concepts when it comes to choosing colors, when it comes to mixing colors. And the most important concept or the easiest concept when it comes to mixing shadows is to use a limited color palette. Use the same color palette that you have used to create your sketch and use those primary colors to mix shadows and those shadows will look harmonious to the existing colors that you have used. This is my watercolor palette with just six colors. By the way, this watercolor palette is called the micro portable painter. The colors I have are Azo yellow, which is a bright vibrant yellow. Good alternatives to this would be Hansa yellow medium or nickel Azo yellow. This is yellow color, and this is traquinit scarlet, which is a warm rate. You can also use any scarlet or pyro rate. This is To blue. This is a cool blue. This is cobalt blue deep. Most people use ultramarine or French ultramarine. Personally, I prefer cobalt blue deep, this is transparent oxide. A good alternative to this would be burnt sienna. Shown on the screen right now are the alternative colors that you can use if you want to follow along with this exercise a bit more closely. Before we start mixing, I want to give you this first tip. Try not to mix your colors completely in the mixing well. Try to have some of the mixes happen on paper because if you mix the colors completely in the mixing well, The mix is not going to look that interesting because it's just going to be a single color compared to having the paint mix on the paper, you can see the two colors that I used to create that mix, and that will make your wash look more interesting. I shall damo that for you to see. I'm going to show you one of my favorite mixes for mixing black and that's using blue, which is this color. Next color is tra quint scarlet. This is a bit dirty because the paint is dirty. You can use pyro red or pyro scarlet as well. As mentioned earlier, I'm going to try and have the colors mixed on paper. I'm putting some water on the paper. We already have the scarlet. Let's add some blue to it. If it's too blue, just add more red. You can do this in the mixing well as well, but as you can see if you mix this on the paper, it's more interesting because you can see the colors that are used to create that mix. This is one color that I used to shadows and also the really dark area. Now, when the wash is still wet, you can charge in some color, either blue or red to shift the shadow tone or a shadow color. Now, if you want to mix black black, just use more pin. This is a lot of blue, and this is a lot of traqin scarlet. You can see the resulting mix is almost, and this is great for painting Black. This mix is not exactly black, but it looks black enough. It's not black like this black. When it comes to painting, everything is relative, everything is subjective. You don't really have to mix a pure black for that mix to appear black. This looks black just by placing this color beside white or other colors. Reference purposes, you may want to write down the name of the colors that were used to create the mix. In this case, I have written down blue with a warm red instead of intra Quinte Colt because you can create this mix with any warm red. To have your shadows look harmonious together with other colors that you have already used in your sketch. All you have to do is to use the same colors that you have already used to mix the shadows. For example, let's say I'm painting a sketch with this yellow Asoyellow Traqunit scarlet and blue. To mix the shadows for that sketch, I will mix the shadows with these three colors. Let me show you how it's done. I'm going to add some yellow to the water that I already have in this pan, and I'm going to add some blue. When we have yellow and blue, we get green to neutralize the green, we will add Just make this less green. And you can test this on a scrap piece of paper. Let's test it here. If it's too red, you will have to add more blue and yellow if needed. Because this is to red, I'm going to add a little bit more blue to this and test it again. Now this color is not yellow. It's not red or blue. This can be used to paint shadows. Once you have your mixtures painted on the paper. And when the wash is still wet, again, you can choose to charge in some color. So here I have added some red. And now you can see it's more reddish. This is what happens when I add more yellow. Because the wash is still wet, the colors will blend. I want to add more blue here and it turns green. To neutralize the green, I add more red. If this looks brown, I add more blue. When you use a limited color palette for mixing, it's pretty straightforward. You just play around with the proportion for the paint and you will be able to get your shadows. This looks more blue. Let me add a bit more red to it. Now you can see we have a neutralized color. Even with a limited color palette, in this case, with three primary colors. You can create a good variety of mixes, and all these colors can be used to create shadows. Shadows are not always gray. Sometimes there are colors within shadows. If you look at the shadows here, you can see a hint of blue whereas this whole area here is just flat color. For this, there is a hint of red, and there is some gradation and some watercolor marks that makes this wash look more interesting. For this, I don't see any color shift, so it's just this very flat color. It's not as interesting compared to the earlier two examples. It is very important to choose transparent colors for mixing shadows because what you really want is to have your line art and existing colors to show through the shadows. If you use opaque colors for mixing shadows, the opaque color will cover your line art and existing colors and the shadows will not look good. Another popular mix for shadows is ultramarine with burnt sienna. Now for this palette, I do not have ultramarine and burnt sienna, so I'm using cobalt blue deep and transparent red oxide. Now, ultramarine is a warm blue and burnt sienna is an Earth color, it's blue with Earth. Kobo blue dip is also a warm blue, and transparent red oxide is also an earth color. This will work as well. Kobo blue deep has more intense granulation compared to ultramarine, but it's not as vibrant compared to ultramarine. Ultramarine is also a more affordable color compared to Cobalt blue dip, which is more expensive. This is transparent red oxide, let's put some water on the paper and have more cobot blue dip. Okay. You can also mix this in the mixing well. It's just easier for me to show you the actual color on paper. Let's add some transparent red oxide hoops. Can you see how the color pushes the cobol deep away. Different paint will have different characteristics. All this looks more brown. I may have to add more blue. Notice the intense granulation. You have to figure out what is the proportion of blue and earth color yourself. This is again to brown. I have to add some blue to it. Now, I don't really see the co body obviously or the transparent rate side very obviously. Now that this is dry, you can see the granulation is quite obvious. With this mix, you can create some pretty eye catching shadows. Here are two buildings painted with different mixes. The blue and traqit scarlet do not granulate. The resulting mixture does not granulate. This is the mix from Cbo blue tip with transparent red oxide. Both colors granulate and because of that, the resulting mix also granulates, in this case, quite dramatically. Which mix to use really comes down to personal preference and sometimes the colors that you use to mix shadows will be determined by the existing primary colors that you have already used. Another mix that I like is the yellow occur mix with Coup. This is yellow curve. It's a bit dirty because my pen again is dirty. This is what we get when we mix the two colors. Yellow curve can be considered an earth color as well, and again, cob blue deep is blue. When we have blue together with earth color, they will neutralize each other. This looks nice. These are the possible color mixes for shadows that I can create from this limited palette of just six colors. Another important thing to note is there will be certain color combination or mixes that will not give you or cannot create that really dark color. For example, with ultramarine and burnt sienna, or in this case, C blue with the earth color. It is not possible for me to mix a color that is close to black. So if you want to mix a really dark value, you have to use the correct color. In this case, you need to use high tinting colors, colors that are very strong to start with. The blue and scarlet are incredibly high tinting colors. By high tinting, I mean, you just need to use a little bit of paint and you can achieve really high intensity. Those are high tinting colors of paint, and you can use high tinting colors to mix really dark values or really vibrant colors. To sum up this lesson. To create shadows that look harmonious to other colors that you have already used. Just use the existing primary colors that you use to create the sketch or the painting. Second tip, it is very important to know which color combination creates black because black is the only color that will give you the most contrast. You find that your sketches or your paintings, they are lacking contrasts, it's probably due to the lack of a really dark value. The tip for you is try to figure out which primary colors work well together because not primary colors work well together. For example, some primary colors are opaque and you shouldn't use them for mixing and when you want to mix shadows, you should always use transparent colors for mixing. 6. Understanding Tonal Values: This lesson, I'm going to show you how to create contrast light and shadows using tonal values. To paint shadows effectively, you need to understand this concept called tonal values, total values is basically just how light or dark something is. Tonal values is the thing, the concept that creates contrast Contrast is the most important thing when it comes to creating art. For example, if we look at this piece of watercolor paper, it's just white, there is no tonal value because it's just white. Now, if I use black ink to draw something on the paper, there is now an additional tonal value. There is now black and there is now white because there are now two tonal values, there is contrast, and we can see the lines because there is contrast. Now, if I am to draw a square using this pencil, Um, I'm also adding total value on the paper. However, this pencil line, you can see, it's not that darker. So the contrast between the pencil and the paper is not that obvious. So you can vary how much contrast you can create just by using a certain technique. In this case, I can press down harder to make the line darker. And now, I have two tonal values. I have this lighter value and this darker value. Now let's use watercolor to create tonal values. If we are creating a black and white sketch, just by adding one sheet here, this can actually represent shadow. For this exercise, I want you to draw four squares and paint across three of the squares like this because we want to create three additional tonal values. Make sure the paint is dry before you paint the second wash and paint it over the third and fourth box. Now, if the second wash does not look dark enough, you should add more paint. The point here is You should create noticeable contrast between the different boxes. I've just added more paint to make this darker because I feel like when this dress going to dry lighter, so I need to make this darker. Now that this has dried, let me paint the last box. This is just a four value scale. For the last box, I have added a bit more paint to make this noticeably darker compared to the third box. If this is not dark enough, you will have to add more paint. This is a four value skill. You can create a five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten value skill and keep using the same process to make each box or each value darker. For this four value skill, we have white a slightly darker sheet, but it's still quite dark. I can actually make this even lighter to create a five value scale. But this is what we have here. The next value should be noticeably darker compared to the previous value. If this is not darker after drawing, you will have to pin this to make it even darker. Now, for this fourth box here, you can see that this value doesn't seem to be significantly darker compared to the third box. For this, I really need to add more paint to make this much darker so that this can appear almost black. Okay. Okay, so we will need to wait for this to dry again. This is now dry and this looks darker compared to this, and this is darker compared to this, which is darker compared to this. So when you're painting values, I use the overlay or the glazing method, which is easier because when you overlay a second layer, you will definitely make the second layer darker. Whereas if you try to mix each value separately without overlaying, it's very difficult for you to mix the correct value. Now, let's use the color scale to paint this sketch. I have already applied one value. If you are using a very limited value scale for painting, you can just use white and black, or in this case, this is white and a dark gray. But if you want to add more details, you can add an additional value. In this case, I'm going to add the value here. To create a contrast between the darker windows and the white side of the wall. I want to make the windows here darker as well, so I'm going to paint this overlay basically overlay another layer on top of this. I'm going to do so here as well for the second row. One important thing to note when painting shadows is if possible, you may want to use staining colors for the first wash. Staining colors are colors that you cannot lift. For example, the blue is staining. If you have the blue on the paper, you will not be able to lift or remove that color. If you use colors that do not stain, sometimes when painting a second layer, you may actually reactivate the first layer. What I'm doing here is just adding an additional layer just to create more value. Now we have white a mid value and a darker value. You can see this person standing here. This person can be seen because there is contrast because this person is in lighter value against darker value. Now, in reality in the real world, this person is probably going to be in shape, so this person is going to be quite difficult to see. But when it comes to sketching, again, you can use your artistic license in this case to make certain things stand out. If I want to make this person stand out, this is what I would do. I will make the person pin the person in lighter value. To contrast against the darker value. The second wash has. So I feel like I need to add an additional value. I need to add black to create that extra contrast because right now we only have white. We only have the med values. So I've just created this very dark mix of the blue and tra queen scarlet just to make certain areas darker. Usually for the ground floor shops that are in shape, they can be quite dark. I can also use this to paint the bottom side of the awning. Here as well. With this white colored pencil. I can use it to create some highlights to create the illusion of lights in this building. This doesn't work that well against water color. Sometimes I use my white gel pen. Sometimes I use colored pencils. Sometimes the white gel pen will create too much contrast. This is where the colored pencil, the white color pencil is more subtle. This is just a very simple sketch to show you how you can use tonal values to create light and shadows. For the next exercise, let's look at this fun optical illusion with tonal values and shadows. Make a guess is square a darker than square B. This is a really fun illusion that basically tells us that our brains can trick us. If you look at squared B, which is beside a darker squared, you know that this is a lighter square obviously. This darker square is beside a lighter square, so this is obviously lighter. These two squares are supposed to be lighter, are they of the same value? And if these two squares are darker, of the same value. Believe it or not, square A and square B are of the same value. I can show you y. This is my drawing and the photo reference is by the side. Let's paint the black squares first. We will also need to paint the shadow side of the cylinder. So right now there are only two values white and gray. This is square B, and this is square A. It is difficult for me to see whether the green cylinder has the same total value as the gray box, so I'm just going to leave the green cylinder as it is. So now that everything has dried, let's paint the shadow, which there obviously is. So when we paint the shadow, This is the cast shadow. Notice I'm overlaying the gray box. This side is also, in shade, let's paint over this. I can see some value difference between the white box here and the cylinder. So the cylinder is probably darker. So now that this is dry, we can see that square a indeed has the same total value as squared b because square A was painted with one layer of wash and square B was also painted with one layer of wash. It's actually the darker squares that are under the shadow that are darker compared to the white squares under the shadow. What's the point here? Well, tonal values is relative, light and dark is relative. This box only appears to be darker and that's because it's placed beside a box that is lighter. Box B appears to be lighter, only because it's placed beside a box that is darker. Even though in reality, these two boxes have the same value, which means if you want to make something lighter, you can make that lighter, or you can make the surrounding darker. For example, if you want to make this box B lighter, you can increase the contrast by making this box darker because this is watercolor. Once we paint over this, we cannot remove this unless we scrub it out. The only way to make this lighter by comparison is to make this darker. Let me show you another example. When it comes to painting, tonal values, painting light and shadow, what do you really want to do is to capture the contrast accurately. And if you can capture the contrast accurately, your sketch, your painting, even though it's in black and white, can look really realistic. So let's see what we have here. We have some plastic pans on top of black cut board. You know that white plastic pans are lighter compared to black cut board. This side here is hit by light, it's white. I'm going to put a zero there. If I compare this side to the top, they have the same value, so it's going to be a zero here. Now for this side which is in shape, this is obviously darker compared to the top and this side. This will be one value darker than these two sides. So whenever I'm painting, I'm always comparing. Is this lighter or is this darker? If I compare this to this cast shadow here, obviously, this is going to be darker than this. This is one value darker, and the black cut board here is lit by light, and you can see that this is lighter than this. This is also value one. This is value one, and this is value one. These two areas actually have the same value. Even though your brain knows that black should be darker than white. So when you're painting something like this, all you have to do is paint all the areas that are not white with one wash, and that will mean this whole black area, including the shaded side. All this will be one wash, one layer. And for the darker areas, just paint an additional layer. How about this? This is zero again. This is one value darker than this side is obviously darker than this, this is two, and this is three. We know that this black cut board is darker than this. Is this a two? Yes, it is because it should be darker than this, and this should be lighter than this as well. This actually works zero, one, two, three. And for this, we only have 012. How many values to use in your sketch or painting is subjective and really depends on whatever you are drawing or painting. The only tip that I have for you when it comes to judging values is to always compare the values. Is this lighter or is this darker? If it's darker, then you should make it darker. Total values is really important, and having your tonal values look right can make your artworks look terrific, even if it's just a black and white sketch without any colors. One of the most common mistakes that beginners make, including me is painting the shadows to light, which is to say that The value difference between the shadow and your highlighted areas is not that noticeable. So what you need to do is to paint your shadows darker. But how dark should you paint your shadows? That, again, is something relative. All you have to do is to paint your shadows noticeably darker compared to whatever is below the shadows. 7. Looking for Things to Draw: This lesson, we are going to walk along Singapore River and look at the different buildings and see how they look under different light and shadow conditions. It's 9:00 A.M. In the morning right now and light is beautiful. It's a sunny day today or at least at this time, but weather can change very quickly. I always highly recommend you take a reference photo first before you start sketching in case lighting condition changes or the weather changes. For example, I know for a fact it's going to rain very heavily later on because I actually read the weather report. So let's take a closer look at the shop houses by the river. The sunlight is hitting the shop houses from the front and the shadows that I can see are all small areas of localized shadows. For example, we can see shadows under the shelter for these restaurants here. So these are the little pockets of black. And we have shadows for the balconies, for the shop houses. So those are the little areas that you have to paint or make very black when you are sketching. And this reflection here is also very dark. So these are the areas of contrast that you will have to remember and get them right. This is considered a high contrast scene because we have the brightest white and the darkest dark. And thanks to the sun, everything is well lit, so all the colors are very vibrant. But the shadows are not that obvious because well, the sun is hitting the buildings on the front and also on the side. So the shadows, most of the shadows are actually behind the buildings. But still, this is a really beautiful scene to sketch and paint. It's just that the shadows are not that obvious, even though there are shadows in this scene. Let's look at this museum across the river. And this is the Asian civilization Museum. So there are some really beautiful shadows right now. You can see the angled shadows. So when I see angled shadows, I just left hand because they are so dynamic. And this scene has lots of contrasts. We have the shadow side, side lit by light, shadow, light, shadow, light, shadow. So we get this repeating pattern. And you can see for the buildings in the background, there is this hotel which is lit by light from the right side, and most of the hotel is in shape. We have that tower, which is lit by again, the light from the right side and this side of the tower, the clock tower is in shape and we have other buildings as well, which are also lit by the sun on the right, and with the shadow side on the left. But this is not, I would say a perfect scene to sketch because we are actually looking at the shadow side of the building. So there is a lot of shadows. There is a lot of beautiful details hidden in the shadows. If I see a scene like this, I may want to walk around the museum, to see if I can hide the shadows by changing the perspective or composition. Also, when I'm sketching a scene like this, I have to sketch very fast. Right. Now, the shadows are at an angle because it's still quite early in the morning. But 1 hour later, the shadow will be steeper. So half an hour ago, the shadow was like this is at about 45 degrees covering half of the wall and half of the wall here is actually in shape. So now the shadow is actually moving inwards as the sun is going up. And once again, it will be good to take a reference photo first before we start sketching and I can see the storm clouds coming in and already. So let's maybe walk to the front of the museum and see what we can see. Let's look at this scene first before we head over to the other side of the river. So this is the bridge in front of the museum, and this is not the best composition because there is actually another bridge behind. So if we want to draw or sketch this bridge, we need to move to a better location so that we don't have bridge one overlapping bridge two behind that overlaps the buildings behind because right now it's quite confusing. It's very difficult to see the two bridges. Anyway, this is a back lit scene. So all the buildings are back lit. We are looking at the shadow side of the building, so there is no light and shadow for the buildings. If you look at this hotel, the Fullerton Hotel on the right side, you don't see any light and shadow because this is the shadow side. For this scene, it is possible to balance the light and shadow. So for the light areas, we have the sky and for the shadow areas, we have well, the back lit buildings. And for the back lit building, we don't really see high contrast. I mean, there are some areas which are lighter, but this whole area is in shade, it's in the shadow, so it doesn't look good. All the details will be hidden in the shadows. We will go behind the fluent hotel leader to take a look at the side that is lit by the light, and you will see how different and how more beautiful building is from the other side. This is the hotel up front and this is the shadow side. So the best time to paint this hotel is not in the morning but in the evening where the light is hitting this side of the building of this hotel. This is the bridge in front of the museum we saw earlier. And this bridge is lit by the sun from this side, so we can see some cast shadows on the ground. This is the view from my standing position and we can see the shadow details created by the support. And we can see this big shadow shape here and we can see the light here. And there are repeating patterns of light and shadows, again, we have light shadow light and darker areas here, we have the trees which are dark and museum, which is lit by light that is right. So when I see repeating light and shadow details or shapes, instantly, I know that this is a very sketchable scene. And also notice the shadows cast by the people walking across the bridge. The shadow is long right now because it's still quite early in the morning and when you paint those shadows for the people who are walking, it makes them feel grounded. There are some really good contrast here as well for the background. We can see this part here, the bridge. This is white against the trees which are dark, so there is really beautiful contrast there in the background. And if we zooming closer, like what we are looking at right now, we can see the shapes created by the shadow. So we can see all the enclosed lead area. Those are interesting shapes. So right now I'm in front of the museum and sunlight is coming from the right side, so there are cast shadows on the left side. This is a beautiful building to sketch and paint. This is a high contrast scene because we have most of the building lit by light, and we have the really dark areas. Now, in this view, the areas are going to look really dark, darker than what I can see with my eyes due to the limited dynamic range of my camera. But in real life, it's actually dark gray. It's not black. So the shadow sites are now hidden on the left side because we are not there. We are not standing there to look at the building from that view. You know what? Let's go over to that area, that spot. Let me talk a bit about perspective first before I talk about and shadow. Now, if you are sketching this building from a reference photo, the vertical lines for the buildings, as you can see are tilted inwards, and that's due to camera distortion. In real life, obviously, the vertical lines for the building are vertical. Okay. So now we have some really beautiful light and shadow and we can see the repeating pattern of light and shadow kin. We have the dark areas here created by the trees in the background. We have light shadow, light shadow light, and we have the dark trees here and we have this enclosed lit area here. So there is a lot of repeating pattern, which is nice, and we can see details from the front of the building because that's lit by light, and we can see the shadow areas This is just a wonderfully beautiful scene and a building to sketch. Now, this is in the morning. So the angles for the shadows, as you can see the angle almost 45 degrees, and this angle is almost similar to the angle here after a perspective line, but it's not the same angle, by the way. Now, in the afternoon, the shadows here will be gone and the shadows here will be gone. So this whole area will be lit by light. So that's how light lighting conditions can change very quickly. Earlier when I was standing in front of the building, the whole building was lit by light, and now I'm standing at the corner of the building, some parts of the building are lit by light and some parts are in shadow, which is what I want. I don't want everything to be in light. I don't want everything to be in shadow. I want areas of light, shadow, light and shadow. That's what I'm always looking for when I am sketching outdoors. Notice right now I am standing in shade. But as I move out into the sun, you can see some cast shadow. Yeah. So there is there is just more detail when you can see light and shadow versus everything in shadow or everything in light. This is Victoria theater and right now it's cloudy, so the cast shadow is not that obvious. Now later when the sun comes out, there will be very obvious triangular shadow here created by this part of the building, which is actually patrolling forward. But without the sun and without the shadows, it's not easy to know that these two parts of the building are actually patrolling forward. So we'll have to wait for the sun to come out. And there is this clock tower. And we can see this side of the clock tower, that little sit there, which is away from the sin, so that's the shadow side. Now, when the sun comes out this building and this scene will again have repeating patterns of light and shadow. But we will have to Okay. And as expected, the rain clouds are coming in. Correct. The sun is coming out from behind the clouds and now we can see the angle shadow here. But it's not the darkest shadow because there is actually a lot of reflected light from this building, the white walls, and also reflected light from the ground that's reflecting outlets. Which is why this shadow side is not that. Now, on the left side, you can see this is darker, and that's because there are trees that blocking the reflected light. Here's a closer look at the angle cast shadow here. So without the shadow, it is going to be more difficult to know or see at a glance that this part of the building is actually protruding. Here's a view of Victoria theater from the side side as in, we can see the front and sites. We don't just see the front. From this view and with this perspective, we can get a good sense of the form of the building because we can see the front and the side of this building. Even without shadows, we can get an idea of the form of the building. But if there are shadows, then the form will be even more obvious and right now it's cloudy again, so we don't see that angle shadow here. So when the sun comes out later, if it comes out again, we should see this area here much darker. And there will be cast shadow here as well and also here as well the shadow side of the building. Right now without shadows, as you can see, the tonal values is not that white. I mean, there is contrast, yes, there is the light areas versus the gray areas versus the darker grays and the blacks. But we just don't really get that extra level of contrast when there are actually cast shadows. Right. The sun is now out and yes, we can see the area here. This is darker. But as mentioned earlier, this is still not that dark due to so much reflected light from the ground from the ground here and also from the walls here onto the wall here. But at least we can still see the cast shadows quite obviously. So when we paint, you can choose to make the shadows darker or you can paint as what you see. Right now, I'm on the side of the hotel that is lit by light. This is the same hotel at the start of this lesson where it's totally back lit from the other side. Now this building is lit by sunlight from the left. Once again, we can see repeating patterns of light and shadow. We have the darker trees in front. We have this whole side here, which is lit by light, and we have the shadow side and we have the cast shadows. Now, this side that is not receiving light is darker compared to this side. But this side here, this wall here is not as dark compared to the side that is under shadow. Those are the tonal values you must understand for this scene and also notice the cast shadows are at an angle. And there are cut shadows here as well and the angle this one is nice because the angle is different from the angles here. And there are also cast shadows just below the ledge that goes all the way across, and we have some ct shadows here as well and here as well. There is a tall skyscraper behind, so I'm not sure if it looks good from this view. So I may want to walk around the building to see if I can see other compositions or other views. Here's another view I can consider and I have moved the building away from this area here so that shapes for the skyscraper behind and the hotel more recognizable. Right now it's cloudy again, so we don't really see noticeable cast shadows. But for the areas here you can see still darker. It's just that without the cast shadows, we don't really see the angle shadows, which look so beautiful. Without shadows, I mean, you can still clearly see the structure of the building. Thanks to the perspective in this case, and also thanks to the late side. But The form of the building will look more obvious with shadows to help you. Let me show you this sketch that I sketched two days ago. I drew this sketch really quickly because the rain clods were coming in my direction. So I probably completed the line art in 30 to 45 minutes and I painted this at some other location from memory. Now, on hindsight, I probably should have used a reference photo so that I can get the shadow shapes right. So when painting shadows, your shadows must behave consistently. For example, earlier on, you saw that angle shadow here. Yeah. I did not know that angle, so I painted the shadows like this. And this is not really accurate. And there are four columns here which are all lit by the light. In fact, they are fully lit by light. So there should not be any shadows on the column itself. And notice I have three out of four columns in light and this fourth column is not in light. This is wrong. So this four column should be fully in light, and of course, I got the angle angle shadows wrong. And I should have painted the cast shadow underneath the ledge more clearly. I mean, it's there, but it's not clear. But at least I got the tonal values more or less correct. So the side as lit by light is lighter compared to the side that is not lit by light. And for the shadow side of the building, the side that is under the shadow under the cast shadow will be darker. So at least I managed to get to values more or less accurate. Those are the four columns I was talking about, right now, it's cloudy, so we don't see cast shadows, but we still see the side, which is lit by light very obviously and the shadow side. I will want to wait for the cast shadow to appear because I want to show you this area between these two columns. So when there is cast shadow, the shadow will be this triangular shape, and this side here will be the light shape, which is also a triangle. So between these two columns, you will see the shadow side here and and the lit side here. Right now it's cloudy, so we can't see that. Okay. But when you can see that, it's going to look interesting. It looks like I will not be able to show you the light and shadow between those two columns because it's getting more and more cloudy and it looks like it's going to rain. So I'm going to end this lesson now and run for shelter or hit for lunch. 8. Sketching Victoria Theatre (pt 1): Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to have some painting exercises. We're going to paint the shadows for some of the buildings that we saw in the earlier lesson. Now to follow along, you just have to download the reference photos provided. Now, do note that there will be camera distortion in the photos because of the camera lens. More specifically, the vertical lines for some of the buildings are going to look tuted which is why I prefer to sketch or paint on location because the scene will look more real. However, when it comes to teaching, it's just easier to teach with a reference photo and also the shadows will not disappear suddenly. Start with something easy for the first sketch. We will sketch and paint Victoria theater from the front. As mentioned in the previous lesson, the cast shadows are not that dark because the scene is really bright. When we're painting the shadows, we can decide whether to make the shadows darker or not. Let's start by creating the line art with pen and ink. Now this lesson is the focus of this lesson is not on drawing. So if you want to learn how to draw, you can check out my other causes. But generally speaking, and drawing complicated scenes, I like to use the pencil to mark out the composition first. And during this stage, I may identify certain mistakes which I can avoid when I'm inking the drawing later on. So for this particular gauge, the most important thing is to make sure you can feed the building in the page. Okay. Now, when you are practicing or when you're following along, you don't actually need to make discussion that detail because the purpose really is to learn how to paint shadows. You can actually just draw a very simplified version of this. If you make any mistakes, well, just along that way. We have a triangle here. We have a side of the building here. Yeah. This This photo actually does not have much camera distortion because we are because I took this photo from quite a far distance away looking straight at the building almost straight at the building. We can see the side of the wall here here and also the side of the wall here. So make sure you get that in. Now, when you're on location, if you want to show more of the form of the building, you can just walk, you know, to the left or the right side so they can see the front and the side of the building. And now I'm happy with the composition. So I'm going to just ink the sketch. I am drawing pretty quickly. And notice I did not erase I did not even erase the pencil lines. Okay. So once you have the pencil lines down, just draw over the pencil lines, draw the big shapes first, then divide the big shape into smaller shapes and smaller shapes. This is how you can add more detailed ops. I the columns here should be thinner. This column here is too thick, unfortunately. That's a mistake there. But don't worry about all the inaccuracies because that is not a focus of this lesson. The focus really is on how you can paint shadows and how you can make your sketch look more beautiful, more impactful with shadows. Notice, I'm drawing the tree over the building here and I can still see this part of the building behind a tree. Okay. That is okay. We have some tree branches here. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So don't be too caught up, I'll say with drawing all the details. We have some windows here. The line is a bit curvy. Make sure the windows are aligned vertically below the big windows. This is my completed ink sketch, which was drawn really quickly and loosely. I really didn't add much details to the sketch. For example, I did not add the window frames and all the little details on the walls. Maybe we can add them later. So now we can paint this. 9. 7B Painting Victoria Theatre 1080PSketching Victoria Theatre (pt 2): To make the color mixing process easy, we will stick with a limited color palette. In this case, I'll be using Azo yellow, which is a mid yellow. Tra quin scarlet, warm red, yellow blue, a cool blue. Let me wet paint first. Let's paint the sky first because the sky takes up a huge proportion of the sea, because it's a big area, I'm using a big brush. There are rain clouds. What I want to do is to wet the sky. Make sure you do not use wet water to paint over the building because the building is many parts of the building is actually white. Bright white. We want to make sure the white areas will remain white. Be very careful when you are applying water over the sky. Make sure the building is not wet. Otherwise, when you paint the clouds, the pin will blend into the building, which should not happen. I'm tilting the paper at an angle to see what are the wet parts and where are the wet parts and where are the dry parts. Okay. I'm wetting the paper because I want to use wet on wet techniques. Now, for the sky for that gray, we are going to use that gray to pin the shadows later on as well. Now, this particular section of the tutorial or exercise can be difficult to follow if you are using watercolor paper that is, well, of lesser quality because wet on wet technique is kind of difficult on lousy quality watercolor paper. Okay. So for the sky, we're going to mix blue with warm red. Okay. So once you have the color, just add it onto the sky. Now, if there is too much water, have tissue by the side so that they can drain off some of the water, right? So paint across. Just try to paint the cloud pattern. You will notice the color will start to move down. Certain areas will be dry, for example, the bottom part here will be dry. What we want to do is to dry the bottom part here and not have to pin go down too much. I'm trying to pick up the excess water at the bottom to try and make sure this bottom part is lighter. If you cannot do that, you can use tissue and dry like this. Just dry like this. This looks all right. Maybe we need certain areas darker, so let's add a bit more paint to the sky. Just to make the clouds make them darker. Okay, so make sure you do not paint over the building. The building has to be white. This building here actually can be I can actually just paint over this because it's in the background. So it should not call for attention. The highlight is actually it's actually the theater. Okay, I think the sky looks good. Using the same wash. So far we have used To blue and traqu scarlet. Maybe we want to add some yellow. Just to paint the grass. When you are painting, try to paint a shape like have the pint connect together so that your paint work will not look patchy like this. So when the paint is still wet, just continue to paint. So the grass is well, green. I'm painting yellow because I want to, you know, add some green or blue later. The tree is also green. So I can add yellow to the tree and later add blue, and we will get green. Now I want to put slight slight amount of th blue. Just a little bit of the blue into the wet wash. Okay. Let's paint really quickly here. The trees are much darker. Later on, you will probably need to add red, which is why using a limited color palette is really easy when it comes to mixing colors. You use yellow and blue. In this case, yellow and blue, you get green. If you want to make this darker, just add red to the mix. Okay. Okay. We have some leaves that overlap, you know, the building. Okay. This looks good enough. Let's wash our brush. Next, we will go on to paint the gray of the building. I just saw that there are actually banners on the tall windows. So let's paint the banners. We have yellow. I just wash my brush, and now we have. There is a red here as well. Lastly, we have the blue. This is still wet. If I paint over this area right now, the blue will actually just blend with the green. I believe I've used too much blue. It should be light blue, if you look at the reference photo. For the next color, we will mix warm gray and prepare a bit more water here. I have Azo yellow, so I'm going to add some to it. This actually looks pretty good already. It looks a bit more orange, we're going to put a bit of blue, a little bit. If you put too much, it's going to turn green. Make sure you don't put that much. I'm going to put a bit more red here. Okay. So let's see what we have to use this color to paint the bottom here. Okay. This doesn't look that neutralized. So I'm going to try and mix a neutralized warm gray if I can. Perhaps I need more blue and red. This is a new mix. This is red and blue. As you are painting the second or the ground floor units, make sure you do not paint over the white areas. And notice the color blend here. The color that you use is actually not that important as in not that important relatively speaking. You can spend a lot of time to mix the color to get that perfect gray, but in this case, I'm fine with this. I just want to make the bottom darker compared to the top. I want to use this color to paint the design here as well. There is a white column between the colors. I did not want to use black to draw the lines. Now I'm using the color to suggest the shape. Okay. And don't be too I mean, if you can't get the accuracy, don't be I won't be that concerned because literally, you will see. So just have this. You know what? I while the watch is still wet, I can actually plan some of some of the orange that I mixed earlier here. Yeah. The most important thing really here is to make sure the top part is white and the bottom part or the colored areas are darker. As I painted over this area, I noticed that this tree here is casting a shadow onto the building. Okay. So we will need to pin that cast shadow here. Okay. For the top here, that's painted green. For green, it's easy, it's just yellow and blue. When this is dry, this will be lighter later on. I believe I use too much water. So this is going to take a bit quite long to dry. Let me just take up some of the water. And this building here in the background, this is more blue, so this is a bit too much. When it's still wet, you can add some to the warm rate to neutralize blue. This looks all right. Next, we'll mix the shadows. So far for the gray, I'm using thing blue. As you can see, it's blue here with one red. These two colors are really strong, you just have to tap or da your paint brush slightly onto the paint and you will get a lot of paint. Now we will paint the shadows. I'm going to have a very light line here. And a thicker line here to represent the shadow. Now, this looks quite pale, so I will want to add more paint to make this darker because when this dries later on, it's going to dry much lighter. There is this pion here. The protrusion will cast this shadow beneath. Okay. Does this look dark enough? I think it looks dark enough. This area here, the left side of the building, this will be sorry, this part here will be in shade because the light source is coming from the right side. You may also want to paint the windows now just to remind you to make them later on. For the tall windows here, I'm going to leave it white first. Later, I'm going to mix a really dark black to mix the pin ds. There is protrusion here as well. So the protrusion is casting the shadow oops. This is too light. Yeah. Casting the shadow down here. Now, if you feel like the shadow is too boring, you can add some additional red or blue to shift the shadow. Now, it may not be obvious here, but there is actually a cast shadow. There is this ct shadow created by this side of the wall, which is a very small side of the wall is too dark. Against the wall in front. This is again too dark. Let me just wash my brush slightly to make this lighter. And this whole part here, I'm going to paint it with the same wash because this is the site that is in shape. We have some shadows here and here, there should be some color here. I had forgotten to paint, so the color is this color. Later on, when I mix same color to paint this area, that color will not be the same. Okay. Okay. So now we can paint over the sorry, the cast shadow over the wall here at an angle. So the shadow will end here. So when you know where the shadow ends and where it starts, you just connect the lines like this. This is the easy way. And this is again, this mix is thalo blue with red. And I just added some red. This side of the wall is in shadow, pin over that side. As we move over again, we need to make sure our shadows are consistent. That means all the hears that should have shadows have shadows. This part here and we need to pin the c shadows from the tree. Let's just pin that. Okay. When the wash is still wet, I just charge in some red here just to make that shadow shape more interesting. Okay. Okay. So this whole bottom area should be darker. Okay. So let's see where else we can paint the shadows. I think that's pretty much it. We covered most of the shadows. So after painting the shadows, you can see the sketch is coming to life. Let's add some more shadows here here as well. I want to make this part darker because now it looks lighter, it looks like the cloud. And if you look at the cloud from the photo, the value of the how dark the cloud is is quite similar to how dark the side wall here is. If certain areas are not dark enough, you have to go in and make the colors darker. I just realized that there is the roof here. Let me just add some red here. Make sure the sky is dry before you do this. Otherwise, the red will blend into the sky some red here as well. This is consistent. As in, you can see this red roof go across the top and behind all the structure here. Right now, we have the white of the paper and we have one layer of wash from the color and speaking of the color should probably really mix this color up is the home color. Okay. Yeah. So try and look at your sketch from a far to see which are the areas that you left out so they can pin them first because when you try to mix the color, the same color here and apply it here, the second time you mix that color, it's not going to look the same as the first time you did. Okay. We have the white of the paper. We have one layer of paint, and this cut shadow is the second layer. From a far or at a glance, I can see just light value and meat values. Next, we will need to add the darker values. In this case, blacks. For the blacks, it's really easy just mix it with lots of fallow blue and red. T test mix on the mixing well first, and I'm going to test it here. This looks dark enough. Okay. I'm going to make certain parts of the tree darker. I'm going to paint this area, make it black. This looks dark enough. It's not a perfect black, but it's dark enough to give us the impression that this is black. Again, when you paint all this, make sure the adjacent colors. The colors beside are d. I'm going to paint here as well, make this black enough, more black. Okay. So I painting all the colors are well, relative. If it looks a bit blue, just add more red, and if it looks more red, just add more blue. Okay. Um, we have some black here as well. Oops. It looks small red now. So I need to add more blue. Okay. You see this problem here. This is still wet. So when I painted the blue, the blue actually blend into the wet areas. So make sure when you're trying to paint like sharp edges, make sure the adjacent colors are dry. Otherwise, that will happen. And don't forget the little detail at the top. Now, you can paint this with paint or you can actually just draw this with Okay. B Ink. 10. 7C Painting Victoria Theatre 1080PSketching Victoria Theatre (pt 3): Let's look at what we have so far. I noticed the clouds here. You can see the rough edges. The color did not blend smoothly because I dried the area here, so the color stopped. There. I I guess it looks all right. For the shadows, I don't think they are dark enough. I mean, if you look carefully, yes, there are shadows, but they don't look dark enough, so I will probably want to go in with another layer just to make the shadows more obvious. While waiting for certain parts of the sketch to dry, I can use this white pen to add some details. This is the error of the mistake that I made earlier. Is now mostly dry. Now I want to add some some blue here to make this building a bit more blue, and that is a bit too much or is it looks all right now. Let's add additional layer of cost shadow. I'm going to mix thy blue with warm rate again. Let's test it here where this should be darker. Okay. Can you see that? Once I added the estra layer, it looks darker. This looks darker. It looks okay. And now let's make this pot here darker. Okay. As you paint over the ct shadow, just make sure you don't extend beyond the ct shadow that was already painted. Now, it's going to look like it's too dark, but later on when it dries, it's going to dry lighter like this area here. Make sure you do not paint over the front of the building. Notice now it's much darker. Now painting shadows can be quite scary at times because, uh, it looks dark, but later on, when it dress is going to dry lighter. So how much paint to use will come down to experience. So how much paint to use really will come down to experience. Okay. We have to cut shadow here from the tree to the side of the building. The underside of the tree will be very dark as well, so I can maybe make the bottom side darker. Now, if you have pin the shadows much darker in the first place, you don't need to pin it a second time. Let's make this darker as well. Let's make certain areas darker accidentally covered over the white line. I think it should be fine. This part here should have a shadow as well because remember, shadows have to be consistent. So all the bottom part here are in shadow, so this part here will have to be in shadow as well. The sketch is almost done, and now I want to make the clouds darker so that the building can appear brighter. And also the clouds look very boring because it's just one flat color. So I'm going to wash my brush and put some water again. Make sure you do not go over the building. Now, depending on the paint you use for the sky. When you apply water the second time, you may scrub off some of the initial color. You may lift some of the initial color. But since we are using the blue and quint scarlet, which are colors that will tint the paper. As in the colors will go into the paper, they are not going to lift from the paper. That is too much red. Now the sky looks really moody. The paper I'm using is 300 GSM, so it should be able to hold a lot of water without much buckling. Notice, as I make the sky, now the building appears brighter, relatively speaking. I think this looks great now. So I'm removing the excess water. Now, when the wash is still wet, certain areas, you may want to make it. When the wash is still wet, you can do so. For example, let's say I want to make this area. I just put a bit more pin here. Okay. Or here and here. Okay. So we will wait for this to dry and see how it looks later. Meanwhile, I'm going to keep the paper tilted at an angle so that water can flow in this direction. Let's add some finishing. I'm going to add to suggest texture. Yeah. And I'm going to add maybe a few people in the background because right now the scene is without people. I'm going to put maybe a person here and maybe another person here. How I draw people in the background is just this line and a little dot above. Now there is actually a statue here. Maybe I should draw the statue here as well, but it's not that obvious, which is okay because this is very far in the background. I can maybe add more people here Let's look at the completed sketch. After painting the watercolor, the pencil lines earlier are almost gone because they are covered by the watercolor. I notice a white spot here. This is inconsistent because the whole sky should be covered with clouds. Let me just try and remove that. Now it looks consistent. Yeah. So earlier on when I was talking about the values, there was only the white and also the met values. So now after you add the darker values. So now we have wide met values and really dark values. So now there is extra contrast. Usually, when you sketch, don't doesn't look good. It's usually due to the lack of contrast. Having the right amount of contrasts is very important. Now you can see the clouds they are looking just way more interesting because of the soft color blending within the areas and it's no longer looking flat. It also looks quite dramatic. We can see gradation, we can see the colors that we use to mix the clouds. Even though there is no red in the photo, it doesn't really matter because, um, when we're painting, we will not be able to replicate a photo and we are not trying to replicate a photo. So that's the fun thing about, uh, painting or creating art. You have your artistic license to do whatever you feel like doing. Okay. So, when the building is set beside the darker clots, you can see the contrast, this is really good contrast, um, bright versus dark. So for this scene, there are areas of bright versus dark, bright, dark, bright, dark, bright, dark and dark and bright here. Oh, I just realize one line that I should draw here just to make this dark. Now, when you draw above water color with ink, line is going to look darker. And also the black is not going to look as nice compared to the black that is under the water color. But in this case, it looks, um, all right, because, um, we have all the details hidden in the shadows. Earlier, while I was painting this, I was wondering if the sketch is going to turn out all right. And, um, Yeah. It turned out all right, thankfully. But even if your sketch does not turn out all right, you can look at your mistakes and see why you made that mistake and see how you can improve with more practice. All right. This is the sketch of Victorio there. Remember to write the name of the place and also the date 11. Sketching a Museum (pt 1): For the second exercise, we will sketch and paint the Asian civilization Museum. I have taken two reference photos and this is the one with the very obvious cast shadows. For this photo, the camera lens distortion is quite obvious because we can see the vertical lines, they are tilting in if I'm drawing this on location, the vertical lines are actually vertical. So for my sketch, I will draw the vertical lines as vertical instead of the diagonal lines that you see here. The cast shadow here is very obvious. You can see this very angle shadow. There is very obviously the lit area and the darker area, and this area here is also lit by light. The sunlight is coming from the right side. So again, we have the light light pattern, which is nice. Now, for this second photo, you can see, it's becoming cloudy. The contrast is not there. Everything looks flat. We have the physical form of the building because we are actually at the corner of the building, so we can see the front and the side of the front side front. So we can see the physical form due to the perspective, but when we have cast shadows, you can see the form more clearly. For this particular scene, I probably should have taken other photos from the front so that I can see more of the front and less of the shadows. So when walking on location, this is how you can control the shadow shapes, if you want to see no shadows, you just walk to the other corner of the building so that you don't see the shadows on the back of the building. But usually when sketching, um, I'll try to include some shadows because, um, the arch grade for creating extra contrast and portraying form. For this building, the Asian civilization Museum. I'm going to draw with the help of the reference photo and I'm also going to use my knowledge of perspective to make the lines vertical. By the way, if you want to learn more about perspective, you can check out the perspective cost that I have. I placed a cross here, this is the vanishing point and this is where the diagonal lines will converge. Once again, I'm using a pencil just to mark out the composition first. Okay. It is possible to draw this from observation without any drafting lines. I just have to be well, more careful. For this diagonal line here, I'm going to again use this ****** point to help me this point here from what I can see is actually quite close to this point. Yeah. I'm going to put down like this. There is another vishing point somewhere here, it should be there. So notice what what I have here is the general shape of the building. And now that I have the general shape, I can divide the ground floor from the second or third floor and just keep dividing until I have more and more details. There is a tree here some windows. Okay. Believe it or not, the structure of the buildings already complete. As mentioned earlier, if you make any mistakes here, that's great mistakes that are made with pencil will not be permanent, so you can correct them later on when you ink the sketch. Okay. Once again, later on, when I pin over the ink lines, the pencils will not be that obvious. So I don't have to be I don't have to erase the pencil lines now. So let's just very quickly sketch out this building. So once the structure is there, your sketch can still sketchy, like really sketchy and the building will still be recognizable even if it doesn't have any details. Let me sketch is really quickly. Now, the style that I have here is, I would just call it pen and ink watercolor style. Style can also be affected by how fast you draw. If you are someone who likes to sketch fast, your style will look very different compared to someone who sketches more slowly, and hence more carefully. There is a slope here it seems for maybe handicapped people to go into the museum. Okay. So when drawing, I just make sure you pay attention to the perspective because perspective is important when it comes to creating the illusion of a properly standing building. And notice my vertical lines are perfectly vertical. So I'm using my perspective knowledge to help me draw this. It is possible to draw everything from observation, draw the perspective perfectly from observation, but you can draw more accurately and faster if you know the knowledge of perspective. So perspective is actually pretty helpful. Knowing perspective is really helpful. Okay. Okay. So the structure of the building is done and now I just have to add details. So this sketch is almost complete. Now, when drawing windows, make sure the windows are aligned vertically. So this window must be directly beneath this window and this arch must be directly beneath this window. There are some banners in front. Yeah. So this was drawn very quickly and loosely. 12. Sketching a Museum (pt 2): Colors we'll use for this exercise are yellow ochre, rocuind scarlet and cobalt blue deep. Now, yellow co is quite a common color. If you do not have andro quindcart you can use pyrod pyrosc ermlion And if you do not have cobalt blue deep, you can use French ultramarine or ultramarine or even dentro blue. Let's start by painting the sky. I'm going to have some blue here and some gray clouds here. So for the blue, I'm using cobalt blue deep actually accidentally depth some blue over there, but it's fine. Let me try and draw the shape for the clouds and just have this blue here. Okay. Now, I'm going to wash my brush and wet this area. Make sure you do not wet the building. Yeah. Just wet this area where the gray clouds will be. For the gray clouds, since I'm using a limited color palette, so let's try yellow cur with a little bit of blue. So let's paint this area with that mix and see too much water. If it's too green, you can add a slide a bit of red to it. So you can see now the color nice mix of three colors. Okay, too much water. I'm going to I've just dried my brush to pick up the excess water. Okay. Maybe here as well. We have some clouds. Okay. Just make sure you do not paint over the building. This part of it's time so far. Next, we will paint the yellow of the walls. For the yellow of the wall, since we only have yellow occur, that's the well color we use, and you can create slight variation just by adding more water to dilute that yellow occur, or you can make the color more intense by using more paint. Or you can add a bit of red like what I've done so here, just to create more variation with that wash, more color variation. So when the wash is still wet here, for example, you can add in some red ops too much, if it's too much red, just dry your brush or use tissue to pick up the excess red. Okay. Yeah. So the scarlet is really strong. The color is very intense. So once you add a little bit of scarlet, the color will shift immediately. Okay. So if it's too red just add more yellow for the bottom of the building, it's actually very neutralized warm color. I'm going to use yellow c mixed with a little bit of coo blue, and also add more water so that I can create this very diluted almost warm wash that you see here. And try not to mix the colors to completely in your mixing well so that the wash can look more interesting. We will also need to use that color to paint the pillars because the pilars are not totally white. In this scene, it seems like there and the only thing that's white is the other clouds. So we will keep the clouds white. I just realize I accidentally painted over this banner here, which should be white. It's not a pilar. For the trees, it's very dark green. If we mix the dark green with yellow and yellow blue, this is what we will get Okay. It's I would say a very dry dirty green. Yeah. It's not the green, dark green. That's the limitation here. Now, if you really want to paint the cool dark green, you can use blue. You will probably get a better color if you use ultra mering here I'm using cobo blue deep. I think it looks okay. We will see how this looks when it dries later on. I'll use that paint here as well. Yeah. This is definitely not green. Yellow occur is an earth yellow. So when you mix an earth color with blue, you usually get a grayish color, which is what I have here. So if you want to have a vibrant green, you need a sorry, a cool yellow. So if I want to paint the grass here yellow will, let me just cheat a bit and use Azo yellow. Okay. I'm going to use Azo yellow here as well with cold blue. Okay, this green looks more like a yellow green. Looks nice. Now, that this is dry. I can anticipate some problems later on. With these three colors that I have yellow curve, traquina scarlet and cobalt blue teeth. It is very difficult for me to mix black or color that is really dark like this. The darkest I can get is this, later on, I may not be able to create extra contrast due to this limited color palette. But that's the thing with limited color palette. Okay. So now this is dry. I'm going to paint the shadows. For the shadows, I'm going to test out two mixes here. The first mix is with yellow occur again with coal blue dip. So I'm using a lot of paint here. This is how it looks. The other option is to use cobalt blue deep with tra quint scarlet hopes to too much red. This is much better. We can use this purple or we can add more blue to make it look like this. Let's see what will happen if I let's add in some of the red here. No, that's too much, unfortunately. Now, this color actually looks pretty good. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure if it will look great over the existing wash. But let's try. For the shadows, I will be using a lot of water. I'm going to paint the ground first. We, this actually looks pretty good. This is just yellow cur without mixing any color. So I'm going to mix this. I'm going to have this yellow ocher mix with cobal blue. So you can mix it with ultramarine if you want to. So I am using a lot of paint right now to mix that gray. And we will cover this now. Remember to create the angle first. This is not that dark because later on when this dries it's going to drive much lighter, we need to add a lot more paint. This side of the building is in shade. Now, I will want to tilt the paper slightly so that the paint can flow down in this direction. Okay. As looks actually pretty good right now. Hopefully, we'll dry better. So we need to paint a shadow here as well. Once again, let me just mix a bit more blue here. Now, there will be certain color mixes that you prefer certain color mixes for shadows that will not look good. Again, with experience and with more practice, you will be able to find out the colors that you like and those those mixes that just do not work. I have a lot of blue here and this shadow is coming down at an angle as well. See this diagonal line here. This diagonal line should be behind the tree. To remove the diagonal line, I will have to paint the tree. Let's look at the tonal values that we have so far. We have the white of the paper. We have mostly met values, but we don't have that or the extra contrast. Now you can see in this area, we have very obvious dark versus light, but it's not black. Okay. It's not something like this. So with this limited color palette of yellow cur, scarlet and cobo blue tip, it is impossible for me to mix black. So to get that extra contrast, I'm going to have to add an additional color. So I'm going to have to add Ty blue to this limited color palette, so that I can mix black with Ty blue and the scarlet. But first, I will want to paint the cast shadows on the ground because I missed that. Earlier on, I actually painted this whole shape as a single wet wash. So now I need to add that extra cast shadow here. For the cast shadow, I'm just going to paint it with the same mix earlier, yellow c with cold blue dip. And make sure you follow the shape. As you gain more experience, you will know what's your favorite color mixes for shadows. If I layer multiple times to make the paint darker, I can I can. But there you layer, there you will lose the vibrancy of the colors beneath. For example, I lay one layer of shadow here and the color the fibrin color here, you can see it's almost lost. So the more layers you add, the more the color will be lost, which is what I do not want. I can see very dark shadows behind this banner here, but I cannot mix the black well with the limited color palette. Now, I'm going to use the blue and add the scolt to get the black. Okay. Let me test maybe test it here here first. This looks dark enough. This definitely looks very dark. Once I add this immediately, there is extra contrast in the sketch. After adding this shadow, this really dark shadow behind the banner, you can see the banner floats in front of the building. The darkest areas will be the shaded areas the shelter that do not receive any light. So this would be the really dark areas. Where you can see this plant here, but it's in shape. Now, it's a really dark green, but here, I'm just going to paint black just to save time. And for the trees here, I'm going to paint this black. Once you add the extra contrast, you can see it really brings the sketch to life. And that's what shadows do as well. Once you add shadows, which will create extra contrasts, your sketch will come to life. Now, I try to paint with one shape. You notice my technique here is to d here. It may sometimes work, it may not. If you keep dabbing, the work is going to appear patchy, but here it's dark, so we won't be able to see the patchiness. But here when it's not that dark, I can see it can be quite patchy. One thing I notice from the photo is these two trees are actually lit by light. There is actually a shadow side. For the shadow side, I'm going to pin this side. And this area that is under the shadow, it's going to be darker here as well. Let's have the tree trunk black, and the side of this tree just darker. We need to add shadows here underneath the ledge. Now, depending on the paper you use, you may or may not be able to layer or add more layers because the paper is already at the limit. So for example, if I add more layers here, it doesn't seem to work anymore. So you have to understand the quality of the paper that you have as well. There are some red colored banners in front, so let me just add the red oops. I need to dry the brush to make the pint thicker so that it appears to be more red. I can add some designs for the for the posters here. The long banner here. The look and feel of this sketch is quite different from the first sketch because the tonal values here or the contrast here is more limited compared to this sketch due to the paint or colors that we use to mix the colors here. So it is not possible to mix bla bla with cobalt blue. A warm red and an earth yellow. If you want a really strong contrast or dark color, you have to go with high tinting colors such as scarlet, few blue. In Dentrm blue is black as well, so that's a good color. Anyway, before you paint, always test out the mixture on some scrap piece of paper first. I think that contributes to the different look and feel is granulation. Coba blue tip granulates quite obviously, so you can see a lot of texture. This paper is hot press paper, and this is how granulation looks on hot press paper. This is Cob blue tip, mixed with yellow cur. And you can see a lot of granulation here in the darker area. This area is a lot of yellow color and coba blue deep and on the left side, we added some thing blue to make it slightly darker, but it's not that obvious. Here it's a bit more obvious. So here you can see it's noticeably darker and I like this because the shadow is hitting the trees, so it's darker. Here you can see the granulation. It's quite obvious. Some people may prefer granulation, some may not. And we will compare the shadow that we had earlier. This was painted with Ty blue and scarlet. They blue does not granulate. And hence the mixture does not granulate. For the green, we use They blue as well, so the green does not granulate. The clouds also do not granulate compared to the clouds here. So the look and feel is very different depending on the color choices you use. Sketching on location, the way to control shadow shape is usually to just walk around. The other way to control shadow shape will depend on whether we have access to sketch at a higher elevation, maybe sketch from a second floor, third floor or just somewhere higher. Because if we cannot go up a building to sketch and look down to sketch, um, we can only control the shadow shapes by walking around. So how much shadow on the ground, can we can control a bit, we can control that slightly. We can stand and sketch or sit down on the portable do and sketch and that way, we can control how much shadow we see on the ground. 13. Sketching Fullerton Hotel: In this lesson, we will sketch and paint Fullerton Hotel. I'm going to just keep the sketching section and go straight to painting. This building is very challenging total because while there are so many parts, if you want to follow on with this tutor, I highly recommend you you know, I create some drafting lines first like what I've done here. But I mean, when you are drawing this building, don't be too caught up with getting the accuracy, don't be too caught up with the details because what we really want to do here is to have fun with painting the shadows, creating color mixes. So even if you building I mean, your building should look more or less like the the photo in terms of the shape. But don't be too disappointed if you cannot get the perspective right. Because even right now when I'm drawing, I'm just drawing very loosely without any specific focus on the perspective. When drawing, one thing that you should at least get right is get the spacing between the columns right because we want to paint the shadow between the columns, so we need that little area there to paint. This line behind the columns is very important because this will make the column look like they are in front of the wall behind. I did not draw the skyscrapers in the background, but I did mark them out with pencils, so that I can pin them later. If I draw them with ink, they will also get the same attention as the building. Without the ink lines, now the focus is on the hotel. The colors I'm using for this sketch are Azo yellow, raconte soltthyo blue, Cobo blue deep, and transparent red oxide. If you do not have cobo blue deep and transparent red side, the alternatives would be French ultramarine and burnt sienna. Now, transparent red oxide is pretty dark color, so I like to use these two colors to mix red. For the sky, I'm going to wet the paper again. I can cover the sky scrapers because those buildings are blue as well. Yeah, so I'm going to have maybe blue blend tubed white. This building here. The skyscraper here is also in blue, so let's just paint that. Make sure again, you do not paint over the main building. Now, the blue is a really intense color, so don't use too much the blue. Okay. So the paper is starting to buckle, so I'm actually trying to press the paper down slightly. Let's just have a bit of thy blue, just a little bit. Yeah, a little bit and have it go across the top here so that the color can move down. Okay. Okay, I realized that there are some clouds here, so I'm just going to let the colors move down like this and fix my mistake here. So this area here will be just clouds. For the clouds, I'm going to use blue scarlet. So that's the mix that we have been using so far. Dark clouds here. Yeah. Just let the colors flow and dry your brush to pick up the excess colors here at the bottom, or you can use this to just pick up the excess water. For the trees, what I like to do usually is to use yellow first. Now, well, I just realized that this part here at the top is still wet. So if I notice what happened there. So if I paint the yellow onto the blue sky, which is wet, the color is going to spread up, which does not look good as you can probably tell. Yeah. So be careful. The thing is when you're working fast, sometimes things like this will happen. Not that particular because the fun thing really is about watercolor is. Sometimes you need to let accidents happen and see whether sometimes those accidents can be happy accidents, but sometimes they are not. In this case, it doesn't really matter. This is almost dry and there is some weird effect here. So earlier on when I painted the sky, I left out this area here that I did not color. So I went in to paint this again, and there was extra water which pushed out of the paint here. So when you're painting, try to do everything with one wash because when you go in to paint a second layer, you may disturb the first wash when the first wash is still wet. That applies to painting shadows as well. So when you paint the shadows, make sure you do it right the first time because when you miss of certain areas and you add more shadows, you may disturb the first wash. Okay. So now that this part here is dry, I may want to add red to the blue or red to the green to make this area darker. Just to make the trees here darker. This is Azo yellow with the blue with red. Notice, there is some red here. When the wash is wet, you can charge in some extra blue or extra red just to make your colors look more interesting. For the building, I'm thinking of using cobot blue deep and transparent red oxide. This is what we get with cob blue deep and transparent red oxide. Even though the building is off white. I'm going to keep the areas lit by light or by the sun to be white. So let's paint the shadows. I'm going to boop. Wow, that is very blue. So if it's very blue, when it's still wet, you can add more transparent oxide to quickly neutralize the color. So I want to paint between the columns. Okay. When you are painting, make sure you get the shapes right. See this area. I actually drew the lines too close, so there is no gap between those two columns. Yeah. That's the thing when you are sketching so fast. Okay. So this area here, there is actually an angle shadow here. So paint ops, too much paint. You know what? Let me just remove some of the excess water from the brush. So this part here is under the shade. Oh. Yeah, so let me just put that. There is an angle shadow that goes behind the loops that goes behind the columns, so we will want to paint that later on. Okay, this building has a lot of shadows, so let's just paint as much as we can. There are there is the well, the shadows between the columns, so paint those areas between the column oops, accidentally painted one column. If you want to be precise, you will have to paint more slowly. I am also going to use this blue to paint the skyscrapers in the background. This looks nice. This looks really nice. For this one, let's have blue with a bit more transparent rate oxide that looks nice as well. We have another building here. To brown right now it is to brown, it should be blue or gray. Those skyscrapers are usually blue or gray. Okay. Make sure the roof there is this triangular roof here. Make sure you get that shape that triangular shape to be white to remain white. More buildings in the background. So by not using ink to the buildings in the background, they will not be as they will not grab the attention compared to the hotel. So for the buildings in the background, I just need to, you know, pin the shapes, later on, some details for the windows to suggest the windows. Okay, so let's see what we have. We have one side of the wall which is not casting shadow, but yeah, this side here, this side is actually, this is the lighter side. And this as well, this should go all the way down here. This is black. This part here. This little area here behind the pillar is gray. I notice there are certain areas which are lit by light. So let's leave a little area there. There's this triangular roof that some shadow, some windows here, here. This is still. So if we paint now, the color is going to spread. There's a balcony here here here. This part for this part here at the top, we need to wait for the paint to dry. But we can paint this side first. So this is in shade. This balcony here, the left side of the balcony. This is white. And this side here, it's darker. Yeah. And we have actually a lot of cost shadow here as well. So far so good. Now we'll just need to wait for the pin to dry before we add the darker shadows and also add some details to the skyscrapers. Now, that this is dry, we need to make certain areas darker. So we have the light value or no value. We have one wash here and we have the darker value here, but we don't have black. Now, this area here looks black, so there is really strong contrast here, but, uh, we need to add more contrast to certain areas such as this area here, which should be darker. This area here, Okay. Yeah. So this sketch can actually be completed really quickly. Okay. Here's the fun thing about this area. There is this angle shadow. So this triangular part is actually the ceiling. So what I need to do is actually I need to make the angle shadow more obvious. So let's paint it like this. Make this darker and have it like this and paint another layer here to make the angle shadow more obvious. Make sure the wash here is dry. Otherwise, you are going to disturb the initial wash. Okay. Okay. The bottom here has to be much darker as well. I'm going to charge in some extra blue so that it's darker. For the windows, let's just quickly just paint something over just to make it. The area just beneath the roof or the columns here, that's really dark. And I may want to know. I'm going to keep this roof here with this color. And I'm going to paint this area here with a light wash because accidentally left that out. Let me just make this slightly darker. This part here you know what? It looks a bit inconsistent because you know that this side of the wall is actually facing away from the side. Now this side of the wall is interior also facing away from the side. But if we look at the photo, we can see that it's actually lighter compared to this wall. So what I want to do here really is wait for this wash here to dry first before we paint a very light wash here. So while waiting for other areas to dry, we can once again add some details and I want to add a lamp post here. This pen is not working very well. I just switched to a new pen, but this is the same model. It's the same. It doesn't roll very well on this paper. Okay. Anyway, it sort of works. For the skyscraper, I'm going to draw horizontal lines across to suggest windows. Even though there are no horizontal lines for the skyscraper in the background. So I'm just going to have windows on this side and not on the other side. Just create some variation. And for this same thing, I'm going to draw lines. This building is actually curved, so I'm going to have the white lines curved. Okay. This looks nice. This looks really nice. And we have this building here at the top. I'm going to use that line to draw the form of the building. I think I drew it wrongly. Anyway, let's continue. Let's now the pen rolls more nicely. Maybe I need to tit the pen a bit more, that's why. So Ts really nice with the extra detail. This looks all right. So far, we have another building here. And now I'm adding some dots in addition to the horizontal lines to create some variation. There is a yellow sign up there. I'm going to use thick yellow paint to paint on this. I hope when it strikes still yellow. There is a red flag here, so I want to use red paint to paint the red flag there I can also use the red paint to maybe add some details at certain areas. Maybe there are some flowers here sort of just to balance out the red. So we have red here, and we also have red on the right side. And if we look very closely the transparent red oxide here, there is also some red here. So, uh, we get this balance. And for yellow, we also have some balance. We have yellow at the top, yellow at the bottom. Now, I'm just going to paint this here with a very light wash. It looks a bit weird. So let me just take up the color and just use a bit more blue because it should be more blue. Okay, it looks all right. This this also needs to be painted over. Do we need to add some details to the columns? Let's. Let's add a few. This is not very obvious. Okay. That is not good. So let's just leave the columns wide. This sketch is almost complete certain areas stand out for the wrong reasons. For example, this area here, this looks too wide. There should definitely be some detail here, so there is actually a window there. There could be a window there. I'm actually not too sure. So maybe let's draw window there, and we can draw window here as well. It's quite difficult for me to see what's up. What's up there? I see little details. There are some electric boxes. Okay. This penny is starting to act up again. Okay. There is a lamp poles which is actually pointing to the right side, but it's going to look really weird if I draw this lamps pointing to the right side. I'm going to have the lamp poles point in instead. I draw the bottom part here with white and switch over to drawing the top part here with black and it goes maybe into the building here. I should have left the white areas here with white paper instead of drawing it with white lines. Now it looks weird. I just realized that I should make the column slightly darker. Okay, that's too dark. That's not good. Just make it slightly darker because I can see some cast shadows there. I think it looks fine. This is the completed sketch, and I am actually quite pleased with this. There is a good variety of total values here. We have, we have met values, darker met values, and we have a very lax something that's close to black. There is a good variety. Again, there is a pattern of light versus dark versus light and dark. That is really nice. 14. Comparing the 3 Sketches: These are the three pen and ink watercolor sketches. If you if you sketch a building from the front, you really have to rely on the shadows to bring out the form of the building. Because if you just draw this with, let's say, ink without any colors, the drawing is going to look quite flat because you're drawing from the front. With the shadows, you can tell which areas actually protrude forward towards you. With the shadows, you know that triangular top here protrudes forward, which is why the top here is casting shadow, and this area here protrudes forward because this area is casting shadow onto this side wall and this area protrudes forward because we can see this shadow area here. For this second sketch, the physical form of the building is recognizable due to the perspective. So even if I don't add any colors, I will know what form this is. It's a squarish or rectangular block, and there are trees overlapping in front of the building, trees behind. So this perspective is quite dynamic, and when you add colors and shadows on top, it's going to look even better. However, I don't actually like this particular color palette because of the lack of contrast. Lastly, we have this sketch where there is good tonal values, good contrast. The colors are vibrant and we have a nice contrasty shadow shapes. When we compare these two scenes, we can we place more emphasis on the shadow shape here and less emphasis here. If we want to see more of the shadows here, we can actually walk to the other side so that we can see the side, which is still lit by light and also the shadow side of the building. It really depends on which view or what kind of story you want to tell. 15. End 1080P: We have come to the end of the course and I hope you have enjoyed the course. Don't forget to submit your projects so that I can have a look at them, and also don't forget to leave this course a review to help other students discover the course. Before you go, I have one last tip for you and that is to experiment. Experiment with different color mixes because you will not know which color combination will work best for shadows. For example, can you use red to paint shadows? Can you pint shadows with green or purple? And you will be surprised that you can use any color to paint shadows. You just have to experiment to see under which circumstances under which circumstances would, those colors work for shadows. All right. Thanks for watching and following along, see you guys in the next course. Bye.