Urban Sketching with Gouache | Turquoise House by the Pool

1. Intro: Hi everyone and welcome to this class. I'm Julia Henze, a professional artist and urban sketcher based in the Netherlands. I'm a top teacher here on Skillshare, but I also run my own project. I create tutorials and courses and write weekly blogs on different aspects of sketching. My mission is to help beginning artists learn the skills and mindset to become creative and find confidence and inspiration. Don't forget to check out my website and subscribe to my newsletter to get your weekly boost of creativity right in your mailbox. In this class, I will take you through the step-by-step process of drawing this beautiful house by the pool. First, we'll cover the tools and materials you will need You will need a few gouache colors some colored pencils, a 2B lead pencil, and some paper, nothing extraordinary. Then we will experiment with mixing colors find beautiful color combinations and create and thumbnail of your sketch. After that, we will create a pencil sketch and then paint using the colors we've mixed. And finally, we add some details using colored pencils. This class is suitable for artists with some experience, but I have two more classes I recommend for those who are just starting out with gouache. "Let's draw some homes" For this class you don't need any drawing experience or any experience with gouache and colored pencils. This is a perfect place to start. You will learn how to use gouache, make brush strokes, mix different colors, and apply colored pencils to create more engaging and beautiful drawings. Another class you can do is "Draw with me: expressive sketching with gouache and colored pencils", which focuses on the gouache technique I use for most of my urban sketches to make them look impressive, whimsical, and dynamic. Whatever class you choose, make sure you don't hurry! Allow yourself to make mistakes, to try, fail and try again. Take your time and enjoy the creative process. Please feel free to share your artwork in the project gallery. I look forward to seeing all your beautiful artworks. So are you ready? Let's get started then! 2. Tools and Materials: In this part, I'm going to show you what materials I'm going to use for this class. Feel free to use your own, something that you have at home and what you're used to. First, we will need some gouache of course. I use my favorite Winsor and Newton designers gouache. In my previous classes, I taught you to use a limited color palette and mix new colors. If this is my first class you are watching and you don't know how to mix primary colors to create any color you want, please take my class, "Working with gouache and colored pencils: Let's draw some homes" and learn how to do that first. In this class, I will show you how to use the colors from my palette for sketches and make on location. And I will demonstrate the difference between the use of pre-made and mix colors. As you can see, I use a watercolor palette for gouache because I like to use it when I draw outside. I know the paint from the tube are easier to use the create big thicker layers. But the way I use gouache, painting with thicker and thinner layers allows me to do it this way. If you prefer fresh and moisture paints use them from the tube, squeeze a bit on your palette and enjoy, but consider keeping gouache on the palette if you like to work with quickly on location or just want to have your paints ready to use anytime. Then we need a bunch of colored pencils of different colors. Regular pencil for the thumbnail and the preliminary sketch. I like a 2B pencil which is quite soft and easy to remove. Especially with this kneaded eraser. I know it looks a bit weird at first sight, but this eraser is very soft and doesn't damage the paper as some other erasers do. Then paint brushes. I recommend using synthetic acrylic brushes for gouache painting because they give you much more control than natural hair watercolor brushes. They are also less expensive and work very well. I have here a few acrylic brushes I'm planning to draw in a quite large format, so I will need more brushes then I would use for paintings on a smaller format. The larger ones are from Winsor and Newton. These are flat brushes for coloring large and medium areas. And the smaller ones are round and flat brushes for smaller areas and details. Next, we will need a palette for mixing gouache colors and some draft paper. And then a sketchbook or a block of paper. I'm going to use this Winsor and Newton watercolor A4-format paper block, not too rouagh, not expensive, just perfect for gouache sketches. You can use mixed media, watercolor, or any other paper, you want. Gouache is great on pretty much any paper, as long as it's not too thin, the thickness is essential for avoiding buckling. The best paper for gouache paints needs a thickness of at least 200 grams per square meter. Okay, Then we will need a roll of masking tape, a paper towel, a jar of water, and a spray bottle. This one is essential for those of us who keep our paints on the palette, to reactivate it. So that's all for materials. Let's start drawing. 3. The Power of Thumbnail: Okay, I know you can't wait to start drawing the actual sketch and making beautiful artworks. But before we can do that, we really need to prepare a few things. And, you know, I always say that gouache is a very forgiving medium and you can change almost anything at any moment. But I think it's a good idea to plan your sketch first. So before we start painting, let's spend some time making a thumbnail, playing with colors and warming up. This way, we can get an idea of what you want to have in our picture and prepare for big work instead of unprepared painting and trying to fix all the mistakes afterward. So let's have a look. I start with a very rough sketch on my draft paper, draw a frame with the proportions of my watercolor paper, and only the largest objects. The line of the swimming pool, the house. And a few cushions on the ground. We don't draw any details here. I have already wetted my gouache with a spray bottle, so it's ready to use. And now I can start looking for colors I want to use for the house. I want to try a combination of turquoise blue and zinc white. It looks a little bit too bluish to mean I prefer color that is a bit more complicated. Maybe add some green. Not that beautiful, I think. Please never use such a green color for greenery. I know some of you do this, but it's not a color any plants ever have. So, let's add some more turquoise and white to the mixture? This is what this color looks like if we apply a thinner layer, not bad, not bad. But let's play around a bit more. One of my favorite colors is Cobalt Blue. It has a lovely rich appearance and is great for mixing with other colors. A bit more. Now, let's add some NOT-greenery green. Mix well, add some white, some more. Okay, it looks very good to me. Should I add a bit more green, Too greenish I think, add more white to green? I want to try another blue. It could work, but I think it will be difficult to mix so many colors. I actually like the previous mix with cobalt, blue, green, and white. Maybe I should try to make it again with slightly different proportions with less green. Okay, I think I like it. So let's try to paint the house. And you know, I remember my art teacher saying: "Try different combinations and choose the one you like the best." So I mixed one new color and thought: "This is the one I like the best" But the teacher wasn't that happy. So I had to make more mixes. But after creating quite a few mixes, I started to see it. So if you now think that trying out different combinations doesn't make any sense, please believe me, it does. It just takes some time for you to get used to it. Okay. For the sky, I want to use a pre-made cobalt turquoise light. As you can see, this is almost the same color as the one we just mixed. But if you don't know how to mix colors and only use premade colors, you palette will be very limited, while a palette with a few paints that you know how the mix is virtually unlimited. For the greenery, I have some favorite combinations and I don't want to spend a lot of time finding a good color. I just mix Linden Green and Cadmium-Free Yellow Pale with Ultramarine blue and apply it in different proportions to the paper. It appears is a lovely nature greenery color. Make it darker by adding more blue or keep it light using pure yellow. I use the same Cobalt Turquoise light for the swimming pool. It creates balanced color composition. Some blue in the sky, and some water. Add Ultramarine Blue to create a shadow in the sky to create a sense of coherence in composition. Okay, Let's do the cushions with orange. I think it will look amazing in combination with turquoise My pains got a little dry on this side. So I need to make them moist and smooth again. I think orange is too bright for the roofs in the distance. Burnt sienna will work much better here, less present. Remember, colors in the distance are never as bright as those in the foreground. Last thing, shadows on the house. A mix of green, blue and just a drop of black will work well here. I have on my palette that I think is close to the color I need. Sometimes colors kind of grow on your palette. So we just pick them up and use them. Okay, I know the combinations I have created in this thumbnail because I use them quite often, but I highly recommend you writing down all the combinations you have made. You might think you will remember them and maybe you don't need to write them down for today's painting. But I think it's important to save them for later when you want to use one of your beautiful mixes in another artwork. Alright, that's all for the thumbnail. Now, let's move on to the real work. 4. STEP 1 | Make a Pencil Sketch: First, I want to tape my paper down to prevent buckling and to leave a white frame around my sketch, which always makes sketches look nice and tidy. I want to cover about seven millimeter on all four sides. Okay, I start with a pencil sketch. Draw only the largest shapes first. Some drawing techniques suggest starting with details, building up your sketch around the starting point. But the traditional way of drawing is when we work from the largest shapes to smaller ones and draw little details in end. And this way, we can create a better composition. And we know for sure that all the objects we want to have in our drawing will fit on the page. I don't want to think too much about perspective here. Still it's important to have all the perspective lines like the floor of the balconies and the bottom of the roof in the right direction. And that's not rocket science. We just look at the directions of the lines in the picture, and try to reproduce them in our sketch. It's more like 45 degrees angle or maybe 60? Don't use any tools, by the way, just trie to estimate. And after a bit of practice, it will become a piece of cake. I draw the greenery in the foreground and in the background very roughly. We don't need any details here. Only a suggestion that will make it easier for us to paint with gouache. The fence, line of the swimming pool, and the cushions on the floor... Very briefly, without any details. We only need to know where they will be in our sketch and what their shapes will be. Turn your paper, if you think it will help you make a more precise line. Okay, I think we have enough information to start painting. Let's lighten up the lines with a kneaded eraser. It's another benefit of this eraser. It not only keeps the paper undamaged, but also allows us to make the pencil lines lighter without erasing some parts completely. 5. STEP 2 | Paint Loosely with Gouache (Part 1): Another essential thing we need to do before painting is spray our paints. It's important with watercolor paints and even more important with gouache because it really needs to be soft and smooth. I start painting with the largest areas and the largest brush. We have already decided what colors we will use for our mix. So it should be as easy as pie. Now, I mix cobalt blue with a little bit green, and then add zinc white... A bit more green. Try it on my draft paper. It's definitely not a good color yet. However, I love this color as well, maybe I will just add a bit of green along the way. Let's try. It's too blueish now. I add some green, though. Paint the largest parts of the house and leave the white parts white. We also can make them white later, but if I don't forget it and it's easy to do, I try to leave white objects white. It's so easy to paint with a flat brush, by the way, a few strokes and the whole house is painted. In contrast to smaller round brushes when you need so much more time to color a large area, and it is covered unevenly with a thicker and thinner strokes. Okay, now the swimming pool. Oops, I forgot I wanted to paint that with Cobalt Turquoise Light. No problem. I can paint over it if I want later or leave it as it is. We will see. There will still be unity in this sketch with this color. Add some ultramarine blue to this shadow along the edge with the smallest brush. Grab another small brush and wet it slightly. Dry it again, and remove some paint. Here. It's the reflection of the white fence in the water. A lovely detail I think. Then I take some orange, add a bit of burnt sienna and paint this wooden... I don't know what it is... object. And repeat it in the water. For the sky. I want to use Cobalt Turquoise Light though. My favorite sky color. I apply it quite roughly and not too thick. Now you can clearly see the difference between the mixed and the pre-made color. Cobalt Turquoise Light is a fantastic color, but it would look boring in large quantities if we don't add any other color to it. Now, let's do some ultramarine blue to visually connect it to the swimming pool. Well, look at this! Isn't that amazing? Now, let's paint some greenery. I start with a light mix of yellow and just a drop of Ultramarine. Add some more Ultramarine to make it a bit darker and paint rather roughly all the greenery I see in this picture. Add some pure Ultramarine here for some diversity. We don't draw every tree or a bush in the distance. Instead, we tried to suggest a landscape. we see. There is some difference in color and tone. It doesn't really matter what we paint exactly. It should be a lovely combination, not too bright and contrasted in the background. We can also remove some color to lighten it up. There is more contrast in the foreground, so we use lighter colors for the light parts and darker for the shadow under the bushes. I make the ultramarine darker here. When we paint on a wet surface, the paint gets much lighter. So if we want to have it darker, we just apply another layer over the first layer when it gets completely dry. Just a few strokes in the water and in the sky. Then I take a smaller brush and paint the roofs in the distance. A thin layer with a lot of water and just a little bit of paint. Take the smallest brush. Take more pain for a thicker layer, and paint the stripes on the cushions. Make a shadow with Burnt Sienna. Also on the other cushion. And paint the yellow cushions with yellow paint. And also add a shadow with Burnt Sienna to the bottom of the cushion... And here... A shadow from this object should be quite dark and cool. Ultramarine Blue will work great here. I think it's time to change our water. This is much better. Make some place for mixing shadows. We're going to mix black, blue, and white. It's in your notes. This looks like a beautiful color. Let's try it out. Yes! I think it will be perfect. Now, I will color all the shadows on the house with this color. Oh, I think I need to outline the balcony here to see where the shadows will come. Now, I add white to the mixture and paint the large shadow under the roof and under the balconies. At this stage, I don t think that I'm painting a roof or a balcony. I just look at my reference and try to copy the shapes. I see there. 6. STEP 2 | Paint Loosely with Gouache (Part 2): If something goes wrong in your sketch, you can paint over it and make it look better. Look here for example, my brush was too wet and I got this ugly thing, But no worries! When it dries completely, I will paint another layer and make it look right. That's why I love gouache so much. It's so forgiving. Okay. I could have done that at once with all the shadows, but I was too busy with other things. Now, I have to mix the same shadow color once again, make it darker for the top of the roof and all the dark strokes. Grab Permanent White to make windows white. The thicker the paint the sooner it will cover the previous layer. Paint the white house and draw the windows... The colors flow into each other, and that creates a nice effect. Some windows here. And an ultramarine shadow on the cushions. A beautiful contrast with the orange because, as you probably know, blue and orange are complimentary colors. Define this line on the cushions and paint the windows white again. The edge of the swimming pool would be great. Let's make the fence white with the smallest brush. Again, the thicker paint, the white the line. The shadow from the balcony and the small roof also appears on the windows. Let's make it light grey. With a flat brush. It's easy to paint the small slats of the shutters. Just press my brush against the paper and make a row. The paint is still wet so it doesn't work well. I think I will do it again later. Now, I add shadows under the windows and the balcony behind the trees with the same blue-grey color. Paint the three behind the house with Linden Green with my smallest brush. And with flicking movement, paint the leaves of the palm tree in the foreground. I use the same mixture I have already made and vary the tone from the light on the left, the dark on the right, and at the bottom. Some more darkness here. I don't do the door behind the palm tree because it would make the picture too detailed and a bit troubled. Take some burnt sienna. Add a drop of Ultramarine to make it darker for the shadow side, and pure Burnt Sienna for the lighted side. Let's paint the window between the shutters. The same greyish color. We already have plenty of it on the palette. Just mix a little. Now, the white layer is dry. We can paint the slats again. Now they look much better. I make the floor of the balcony white with my Permanent White. And refine the bottom. Make the roof bottom darker too. And refine the shadow under the roof of the house and the distance, and its windows. Here is a deepening in the floor. Let's paint a light grey. A few more dark strokes for the slats. I think this Ultramarine here is a bit too harsh. I want to lighten it up with some water and add a small stroke here. Paint a few strokes with some light colors. It's in the distance so we can keep it vague, with no details. Just some color. Brush creates a beautiful texture. I want to add an additional Permanent White layer to the fence to make it stand out a bit more. And the wooden object longer with the same colors I used before, Burnt Sienna on the shadow side and orange on the lighted side. Okay, I think the main part of the sketches done, we can start drawing and refining with colored pencils, but don't put your paints away yet. I'm sure we will need them later. 7. STEP 2 | Add Details with Colored Pencils: I love to draw shadows and the outlines with a blue pencil. So, I started with adding shadows under objects and on the right side of the objects. I didn't paint the balcony behind the greenery, but I can do it now. It's easy to refine everything because the main lines are already there, and we can barely make mistakes. However, if we make some, we can cover them with a new gouache layer and draw the right line. This is the stage where we can add some more details. Honestly, I don't have a lot of explanation for this. It's just playing around, making textures on the greenery and adding more colors to it, darkening the shadows and letting yourself go with the flow. All the objects like the fance, greenery, roofs, windows and so forth stand out more when you add darker shadows. Here we have a balcony railing and this part in the middle without a grill. Let's start with this part, so that we can define the height of the railing. Draw the whole raling lightly. And then press harder on the pencil to make the lines thicker and darker. I use a very dark green color here. By the way, I could use black or dark gray, but these are dull colors. And I try to replace them with more vivid and richer color in my sketches. But not always. Sometimes black is just the right color. I also love this pencil because it's very soft and easy to make dark lines. I want to make this part lighter and cover the blue line. I see there some planter, but there are no plants in them. Let's draw some for the atmosphere. You know, we are artists. We can add or remove things from the picture if we want to. Right? I want to add a little color and texture to the floor here. The lightest color I have, almost white. If you don't have such a color, just leave it white. There should be some kind of reflection from cushions and the greenery in the water. I use the same colors, but much lighter. A few highlights here and there. And blue shadows under the cushions. Some green under the flowers. And a shadow on the fence, shadow on the cushions. Dot the i's and, viola! Our sketches finished! If you like details, you can keep adding some more, but don't get carried away because a too detailed sketch looks less attractive. There is no intrigue anymore for the viewer. 8. Final Thoughts: Alright, that's it. Thank you guys so much for joining me in this class. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I also hope I have inspired you to do more gouache painting. It's such a vibrant, flexible, and forgiving medium. I will be delighted to see what you have created. Please share your work in the project gallery and let me know if you want to get more profound feedback, I'm always happy to help you grow as an artist. Also, please take a moment to check out the other students' projects and write a few nice words in their comment section. It is truly inspiring and motivating to get encouragement from your fellow artists. If you share your artwork on Instagram, don't forget to use the hashtag #juliahenze_skillshare I'll be happy to feature you in my stories. Also. If you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions, please leave a comment in the discussion section under the video, I would love to hear your thoughts. Thanks again, Have fun and keep practicing and making art. See in my other classes. Bye bye!