Urban sketching with Infinite Painter

1. Intro: Welcome to this course on urban sketching with the app infinite painter. My name is to, and I'm an artist, graphic designer, and urban sketcher who enjoys sketching on location. Now this is an intermediate course which means you will need to know the basics of using the app infinite painter and the basics of drawing from observation. If you do not know those two things, I highly recommend you check out at least the beginners course on using infinite painter. Because if you don't know the tools, it's going to be quite challenging to follow along. In this course, I will show you how I set up my infine painter work space, the settings that I use, the brushes that I use. I will show you my workflow for digital sketching. Before we hit outdoors to sketch, we will warm up with a drawing exercise so that you can get familiar with the tools and with the workflow. Urban sketching or sketching outdoors can be quite intimidating for beginners. I highly recommend you be as familiar as possible with the tools and the workflow before you hit outdoors. Because when you're outdoors, you should be focusing on drawing and not thinking about how to use app. Now, there are many advantages to sketching outdoors and the most obvious advantage is it will help you gain confidence. With more confidence, your art can look better, your sketches can look better. And this can help you improve much faster compared to sketching at home. Infinite Painter is a drawing app that's available on Android tablets and on ipads. The functionality of the app is more or less the same on both platforms. Now on the ipad, the more popular drawing app is actually Procreate. And I do have other drawing courses with procreate, but on the Android tablet, Infinitpainter is more popular because there is no procreate on Android tablets. I hope you're using a tablet with a pen that supports pressure sensitivity, tilt and pump rejection. Because that type of pen will give you the best drawing experience and performance. You will definitely need to buy Infinite Painter, which is a one time purchase in order to follow along with the lessons. Because many of the tools that I use, we'll be locked behind a paywall if you're using the free version. By the end of this course, I hope you will be familiar with the digital urban sketching workflow. Before we start the first lesson, I have a favor to ask of you if you enjoy this course or if you find this course, you soon do leave this course a review so that you can help other students discover the cost. By the way, if you have any completed projects and sketches, sketches that you have drawn outdoors, feel free to send them to me and also send me a reference photo of the scene that you have sketched so that I can see the scene and also your sketch and give you some critics on how you can improve. All right, let's head over to the first lesson. 2. Workspace setup: This lesson, I want to show you how I set up my workspace in Infinite Painter for sketching. The user interface is the same on an Android tablet and ipad with minor differences. Let's go into the settings. The settings page looks different, but the features are similar. Here I have the light UI, you can switch it to dark if you want to. I have Split Tools menu and Able. This will show me two tools icon here instead of just one so that I don't have to swipe left and right, I can just tap on the icon to see all the tools. I also have color history picker and Able. This will show you your recently used colors so that you can reuse them easily. Under gestures, I have double tap set to feed screen and I have a long press set to eyedropper. Now when I double tap, this will zoom out to show me the whole canvas so that I can get a quick overview. As for the long press, when you tap and hole, this color picker will appear to help you pick colors your canvas so they can re use those colors quickly. Under Stylus I have the finger set to disable. Or you can set this to move so that you can move the canvas with your finger. If you find that palm rejection doesn't quite work as expected, you can disable this for double tap with the stylus. You can set it to fit screen as well or some other shortcut under brush settings. I have draw cursor and Able so that I can see the cursor whenever the cursor preview is supported. And I have shaped detection able. If you enable shape detection, you can draw a shape and after a split second the software will turn it into a geometric shape. If you want to draw a perfect circle, you can try to draw the circle as perfectly as you can. Shape detection will turn it into a perfect circle and you can even scale the shape. I usually disable that because when I draw a straight line and if I hold down too long, the line will be perfectly straight. But when I'm drawing, I prefer that hand drawn look sometimes with the slight wobble due to the hand shape, because it makes the line look more natural. If your line is too perfect, your sketch can look too rigid. Anyway, all these settings are just personal preference, so you can choose whichever settings that you prefer. This is where you can customize the pressure curve if you want the pen to be more or less sensitive. I'm just going to leave all this as default. Next, let me show you how to add the shortcut tools that I have here. You can add up to eight tools here. I'm going to remove the tools first by dragging them out one by one. To add the shortcut tools, you just have to tap on the pitch with all the tools. And I'm going to choose field bucket, tap and hole, and drag it to the top. I'm going to swap to the right side to add the less too. I'm going to choose the magic one tool. I also use the basic transform tool quite often. Let me just pull it up here. And you can also tap on the layers palette tap here, and this will call out the layers tools and tap here. I have a clear tool that I want to drag up here. You can even tap on the Settings button here and drag a safe tool here as well. If you run out of space here, they will move the tools to the center. But if I remove this, this will go back to the top right corner. In the next lesson, I will show you the brushes that I use for sketching and for coloring. 3. Brushes to use: This lesson, we will look at the brushes we'll use for drawing and coloring. Just open the brush palette. This favorite folder is where you can save all your favorite brushes. If this is the first time you are opening the folder, it's going to be empty. On the left side, you can see all the brush categories. All my favorite brushes were actually sourced from the categories. I have 60 pencil from the pencils category. I have Cost ink Android inker from the pens category. Solid field is from the fields category. Try ink and clay roller are from pinned here I have water splatter and flex from the sprayers category. To add your favorite brushes, just go into the category and look for the brushes. Let's add six. Just put a hot here and this will be added to the favorites folder underpan. I have to look for cost inker, add a T here, and cost inker will be added. I also have dried inker which has already been added, which is why you see the T here. Once you have the brushes added to the favorites folder, you can actually rearrange them. You can put your most frequently used brush all the way up. One thing you should note is you can create favorite brushes for the smudge tool as well as for the eraser to. If I tap here on the eraser to, I can choose to add the solid brush here as a favorite brush. And I also have manga inker added as an eraser into the favorite folder. Now let me show you how the tools look. Let's select six feet pencil from the pencils category. Depending on how you hold the pen, you can get thin and thick lines. If I tie the pen lower, I can actually shade with the pen. Provided your pen supports tu sensitivity pencil can let you draw versatile lines, Thin, thick and broad lines. You can use this for shading as well. This is quite a nice brush. Next we have dry in dry. Incur can do the same as the pencil. You can draw thin and thick lines, and if you tilt down, you can get the smudgers going on, which is very nice. This is how the two brushes look. This is dry, incur. Next we'll look at cost cost incur ink brush. The lines will be solid if you like the bowl solid lines. This is a good brush to consider. If I draw with minimal pressure, I can get the thin lines. If I press down hard, I can get the thick lines. Inks usually don't have tut. Tut doesn't really work here. Next we will clear the canvas using the shortcut button here. Let's use a solid fuel. Solid fuel is what I used to color things. What? Let me bring back the chair and create a new layer beneath the line art. I'm going to use color history here and use solid field to color this chair. This is how I color my sketches very quickly. The upside to using solid field is you can color very quickly. The downside, it's not very precise. If you want to color within the shapes, you have to color more slowly within the shapes. Let's see what other brushes we have. We have the dry ink brush, which is nice as well. Let me clear this layer using the short cut again. And I'm still using the brush. For the dry ink brush, you can hold the pen like vertically to get the thinner strokes. This can be used to color areas quite quickly as well. But you can see I'm not coloring within the ship again because the brush is too thick. To reduce the brush size, I have to, well reduce it here. The nice thing about this brush is you can tilt it to get the broader strokes can hold it more vertically to color into smaller areas. It has this very nice texture effect which looks very beautiful. That's look at the second coloring brush. Clay roller. For clay roller, this brush is too thick. Let me just reduce the size here. This is nice because it also creates that texture. Look, if you press down hat, you get a solid broad stroke. But if you don't press down that hot, you can get this very nice. And you can go over the texture several times to create different layers. Sometimes I use this to color my sketch. It's either this or the dry ink brush with a mix of solid field. I try to mix the different brushes to create different looks. Next we have the water splatter. This is great for creating textures. If you want some texture here, let me just reduce the size. First, you can put some splatter marks on the ground if you want to create texture on the chair, For example, you can select the color wheel and shift the color slightly to a different color. And you can place the dots on the chair. Now you can see some texture instead of the flat color, for this will give you the brushes too thick. Again, this will give you the smaller splatter at. These are all the brushes that I use and these are default brushes from infinite. 4. My digital urban sketching workflow: It's time for some hands on exercise. In this lesson, I want to show you my workflow. When I'm out sketching. I want you to follow along with me and draw with me by downloading the reference photo that I have provided, which is a photo of some windows from the front view. This is not a very complicated subject matter because I want you to focus on the workflow and not be distracted by the details. Let's create a new blank canvas. I'm going to choose from the presets. I'm going to choose four. Make sure the orientation is horizontal. Make sure you have disabled time lapse unless you want to record a time lapse video. Let's create, let's show the layers palette by the side and swap out so that we can see the name of the layer. We need to create eight layers, we already have one. Let's create more 2345678. I'm going to rename the first layer draft. This will be where I create the drafting lines to test the composition. Next, you have to rename all these layers which I have already done. So the second layer is BG color, which is background color that are usually reserved for painting the greenery or the sky. Next there is color followed by lines, which I used to create line art. On top of lines, we have details, textures and shadow for the shadows layer. Make sure you tap here to go into the layers settings and choose the blending mode multiply. The last layer is called empty to protect your artwork so that in the future if you open your file and you accidentally draw something, you can clear the empty layer very easily. If you do this often, I mean creating the layers and renaming them. You may want to turn this into a template so that you can reuse it next time. To do that, just go into the home page again. Choose the blank canvas. Tap and choose to duplicate. Now, tap and hole on the blank canvas. Choose to rename, and I'm going to rename the four template next time when I want to create an A four file, I can just tap here duplicate. I can open that file and I have all my layers already already renamed. I'm going to choose the draft layer first to draw on that. I'm going to choose the dry ink brush. I'm going to choose a light blue color from the color palette. Something lighter to create the drafting lines first to help out with the composition. This is just a lesson to get you familiarized with the workflow so we don't actually have to be too caught up with the details. I'm using the light blue lines to draw the pillars, and then I will draw the windows between the pillars. Let me use the transform tool to scale this down because I think it's too big. We have the top of the windows and the bottom of the window. This stage shouldn't take up too much time, but this is a very useful stage because if you make any mistakes now, you can avoid making the same mistakes later when you're actually drawing or inking with the black lines. Let me use the transform tool again to move this down. Okay? If I make any mistakes it's okay because this is just a drafting stitch. All right, Next let's inc, I'm going to make the lines more transparent. I'm going to reduce the opacity to make the lines lighter. And I'm going to select lines layer to draw my black lines. I'm still using the dry ink brush and I'm going to 90% black. I'd like to draw with 90% black because the black is not too contrast. Since this is just a quick sketch to get you familiarized with the work flow, I'm not too particular about 100% representation of what we are actually drawing. Get a few of the pressure and also get a few of the line thickness that you need. If you feel like the lines here are too thick, you can adjust the line with here. You can draw with more details if you want to, but it's not necessary here. Just doing a really quick sketch. Okay, with the window here. Let's divide it. This, my sketch looks a bit white. I may even want to use the transform to, to actually squash this. I think I shall just leave it as it is. It looks alright. For the black part here, I can tilt the brush to shade it. I can add some details here as well. I will add the details for the windows later on with another color. Okay. So believe it or not, this is actually the sketch. Yeah, we don't need too much details. Okay, next let's color this. To color this, I will select the color layer instead of the BG color layer, which are usually reserved for painting the sky or greenery in the background. So I'm going to select the color layer which is below the line. I'm going to choose a brush, let's choose clay roller, and I'm going to apply a very light shade of gray. Yeah, if you tell the brush you can get this nice texture look. Next, I'm going to color the window with this blue color, desaturated blue, maybe something lighter. I'm going to use the dry ink brush. The clay roller is great for covering large area. If you want to color smaller areas, you can use the dry ink brush or reduce the brush size. I'm not very particular about coloring within the shape. If the color spills out, I can actually paint it back. I can tap on the display surface to use the eye dropper and paint this back. Let me use the eye dropper in to pick up the same blue to color this window. Next, I want to add the details. I pick the dry ink brush again and I'm going to go to the details layer here. And I'm going to select this orange color to draw the details. We have a rectangle here, some horizontal lines, and a rectangle here. When we have all these layers, it's easy to make corrections if we need to. For example, if I want to change the color of the window to something darker so that I can have better contrasts with the yellow or orange color in front. I can pick this darker color and switch to the dry ink brush again, and I'm painting on the wrong layer. I can go back to the color layer here and pint beneath the details like this. I can also change the color of the window to some other color if I want to. Now, this actually looks better. With better contrast, it seems like the coloring looks flat. I want to add some more details. Let me change to a different sheet of color to just add some texture. Okay, now let's have the details back Next, I want to add some textures. I'm going to select the texture layer and I'm going to pick this gray color and just make this grey slightly darker. Just slightly darker. And I'm going to use the water splatter brush to add some texture here. You can see that I also have some texture spilled onto the window and it's okay. This will make the flat color look more interesting. Okay, maybe some spill color over here. I think this looks good enough. Next, we will select the shadows layer. We will choose a solid fuel brush to create a shadow. I'm going to choose maybe 50 or 60% gray, since the shadows layer already has the blending mode multiply. If I draw the shadow here, you will see the shadow will multiply over the color like this. This is a very quick way to add shadows. There are some shadows here as well and some shadows here as well by using the. Fill to, you can add all solid shapes really fast. Okay, let's add the shadow here as well. We have some shadows here. I think that's pretty much it for the shadow details. Now, if the shadows don't look dark enough, you can actually make it darker. Just tap here on the layers to open the layers option, tap here to select this will actually make a selection of the is that you have just added onto the canvas. Now we can select a darker shadow, maybe. Let's go with 70% Yeah. Now let's just draw over everything. Notice how the shadow is now darker. Let's tap here to get out of the selection. Now you can see the shadow is too dark. Yeah, it's too dark. Shadows around 50, 60, 70% works well for me. I think the shadows look all right. Now, let me select the lines layer and select the dry ink brush. And use the 90% black to add more details. Because right now it seems like the sketch is lacking details. Let's add a few more details here. Once you don't know where else to add details, that's the time you should stop adding details or you will overwork the whole sketch. Another way to use the eye dropper is to tap here on the color and drag it to whichever color you like. Okay, have some shadows beneath as well. I can use the dry inker brush to add shadows too. Just tilt this part here. Now, this does not look good. Let's use the solid fuel brush to color this area much faster. There are also shadows at top. Apparently, this whole part here is actually in shadow. Yeah, maybe I want to add more details by the side here just to well complete the sketch because I feel like maybe it looks more complete with more details here. All right. This is pretty much the workflow that I usually use for sketching. Create the drafting lines to figure out the composition. Create the line art at the colors, at the details, at the textures, and finally, at the shadows if needed and more details. Try and get more practice so that you can be as familiar as the workflow as you can try to switch and try out different tools as well. Just to get a hang of how they perform. The last thing I want to do is to add this paper texture to the sketch. And to do so you just have to scroll down to the bottom of the layers. Palette, tap on the paper layer, enable texture tap on this image. This will open up all the texture options you can choose. I'm going to choose this and this will apply the texture to the sketch that you have created. If I zoom in here, you can see the texture applied. It looks really good. You can adjust the texture, for example, you can adjust how obvious it is by adjusting the depth here. If you want something very obvious, you can go all the way up to 100% I highly recommend you scale down to have a look and see how it looks. You can also adjust the opacity, which also affects the texture. Let's leave it at maybe 30% You can also adjust the skill. It's easier to adjust the texture when you're zoomed out. Just choose whichever looks good to. The takeaway for this lesson is be familiar with the tools and the type of effects and look that you can create when you're drawing and painting. Make sure you draw and paint on the correct layer. Lastly, be very familiar with the workflow. I highly recommend you get more practice before you heat out for urban sketching. 5. Urban sketching essential tools: This lesson, I want to show you some items that I usually bring along with me when I'm out sketching. To make my sketching experience more enjoyable, I always bring a hat because this provides shade and this also minimizes the glare that really makes my eyes uncomfortable. This is just a generic white brim hat, and this is not waterproof. But you can buy one that is waterproof as well. This particular one doesn't have any brand, and I bought this at a local shop for less than US $10 So this is really affordable. What I really like about this is you can fold this into something really compact and put it in your pocket. I will also bring a water bottle, and this one that I have here is a flat one so that I can pack it easily in my backpack. You can find this easily from online shops by doing a search for flat water bottle. This is considered an essential item to me. This is a portable folding stool. It's light weight and this allows you to sit anywhere you like. So you can choose a shady spot to sit with the help of. And you can fold it flat so they can pack it in your backpack. And sometimes I will carry it around like this. I'm using a tablet case for my tablet and this will add more weight to the tablet. Sometimes when I'm standing and sketching, I will just remove the case to make the tablet lighter and more comfortable to hold. But if I'm just seated down, then I don't have to remove the case. Another thing you may want to consider getting is at screen protector to provide that nice tactile drain experience. But I am not using one because when you have the Met screen protector on the display, all the reflections will be diffused. It can make the surface look bright, too bright sometimes, and that can be quite glaring for my eyes, which is why now I no longer use met screen protectors. Those are items that I bring when I'm out sketching, but of course you don't have to bring all those. You can just bring your tablet and the stylus. All right, in the next lesson, we will be out and about looking for places to sketch. 6. Walking around the neighbourhood: In this lesson, I want to bring you around Little India, which is a huge neighborhood here in Singapore. And it just so happens that tomorrow is Valley, which is a huge festival here in Singapore. So there are many decorations around the neighborhood and also on the streets. My first thing for you as a neighbor sketcher is to take some time to explore the neighborhood because you never know what you find. The pop up stores are actually temporary. They were set up for the Debo Bali Festival for people to shop, and as you can see, it's really crowded. It's quite impossible to sketch here because there is no space to sit, no place to sit, and almost no place to even stand, and so crowded. Wow. What's the s? And if you think this is crowded, wait till the festival happens Tomorrow, maybe I should come back tomorrow to sketch as well. So I just came out from there, so I just walked out from there. My next step for you is to be mindful of your safety when you're out of urban sketching. When you're crossing the road, be aware of traffic. Be aware of cars and vehicles. And when you're in crowded places, be aware of your belongings. Trying to stay safe and try not to lose your things. Trying to find a comfortable place to sit and sketch, because standing and sketching with a tablet for extended periods of time can be quite tiring. And don't forget to drink your water so that you don't get dehydrated. Today is a really hot day. This is actually a nice scene to sketch, except I'm not able to find a shady spot to sketch this. So that's the scene that I wanted to sketch, but it's just way too hot. If you want to sketch in the comfortable environment, the best time to sketch is actually very early in the morning or during the evening time. When sketching, you should always anticipate things that can happen. For example, if you want to sketch this scene, there is so much traffic, so you can anticipate traffic blocking your view. You can anticipate vehicles that will park in front of you to block your view. There are many people walking around who will block your view as well. If you want to sketch here, you have to find a time where it's less busy. Because otherwise it's just not possible to sketch here, even though this is a very beautiful scene that I want to sketch, right? Let's walk down the street to see if there are other places to sketch. If it's really too hot, if it's noon time, you can find a cafe and just sketch inside cafe, which is going to be way more comfortable and less stressful to. Another thing you might want to take note of is where the sun will be. Because certain buildings will look better during the morning and certain buildings will look better during the evening because of where the sun is. Because of where the shadows are, this is actually a nice building to draw, but the sun is behind the building. The front of the building is actually in shape. And because of that, we don't really see light and shadow. If you take a look at this building, this is actually a better subject because we have sunlight coming from the left and we have the car shadows on the right side. We also see some car shadow beneath the roof. So this is what I'm usually looking for when sketching. I want to see light and shadow. I don't want the whole building to be shape. Lighting conditions can change very quickly, so now it's cloudy and the cast shadows are gone. Before you sketch, you may want to maybe take a photo when the shadows are still there, so that when the shadows are gone, you can still work with your photo reference as much as possible. I would prefer to sketch and paint everything on location, but the thing is conditions can change very quickly. Earlier it was sunny and now it's cloudy, and maybe in half an hour's time, there could be a thunderstorm. Sometimes when I am out sketching, I may end up not sketching anything because the conditions are not right. But I will at least try to take some photographs to know where the sun is coming from and where the shadows are, so that I can come back to the same place again to sketch some other day. For example, with this building, you can see it's lit by the sun on the left in the afternoon to evening time, if I want to come back to sketch this building, I will do so during evening time. You can get more dramatic shadows when sketching in the morning and evening, because when the sun is low, the cast shadows will be longer. And that will give you the drama and excitement in your sketch. This church is a good subject matter to draw as well, but I'll probably have to draw in portrait orientation. But I probably won't draw this because there is no light and shadows. And cast shadows when the weather is not good. You can always catch indoors. So it's actually good to have some research done before you hit out light. Have a list of places you can sketch during good weather and bad weather. So those are some of the many urban sketching tips that I have for you. And in the next lesson, we will finally sketch something. Okay? Hopefully something not that intimidating, so that you can get some warm up. All right. I need to find my way out of this place first. See you guys in the next lesson. Okay? 7. Sketching a fruit stall: In this lesson, we will create some warm up sketches. Now, if this is your first time sketching outdoors, I recommend you sketch at a place that's familiar to you. Maybe you can sketch near your home, near your office, or you can sketch in your neighborhood, or maybe sketch in a cafe. Or if you want to challenge yourself, you can always sketch at a busy place, such as in the market, such as where I'm at right now. Or you can sketch at the food center, shopping malls at a park, in the library, or in a cafe where it's more relaxing. It will be great if you can find a seat so that you can sit down comfortably to draw. Right now, I'm in front of the fruit store, which I'm going to draw because I'm really attracted by the colors of those fruits. You can even get yourself a cup of coffee while you are sketching. Or if you're up to the challenge, you can sketch people eating as well. All right, let's do it. The first thing I want to do is to turn on airplane mode so that I won't get distracted while I'm sketching. Let's open the infinite painter app and duplicate the template file from the previous last openness. By the way, if you want to follow along with this Totorrow, you can download the reference photos provided. Now the perspective in the reference photos will not match what I'm sketching because there is camera lens distortion versus what our eyes can see. I'm starting this sketch by creating drafting lines just to figure out the composition. Also figure out the perspective, and trying to identify any mistakes that I will not want to make. Again, during the actual sketch, you can see me reposition elements such as the shopper on the left. Now initially I drew the shopper on the left too big, so I had to scale her down. And I also scale the whole scene down so that I can have enough space to draw the whole fruit store. During the drafting stage, there is a lot of leeway. Or you can move things around, you can reposition elements, some scaling. After you're done with the drafting stage, you can change the opacity of the drafting layer to something that's lighter so that those blue lines will not be too distracting. There is actually perspective going on if you look at where the diagonal lines converge. And the diagonal lines are the ones at the top of the fruit stalls. And diagonal lines for the fruit crates and fruit boxes. If you look at where the diagonal lines converge, you will find the vanishing point on the left side. With that vanishing point, you can draw all the other diagonal lines, that vanishing point. This is one way you can draw more accurately and very quickly without having to really draw exactly what you see. I mean, you can draw the angles from what you see, but if you have knowledge of perspective, you can actually use that knowledge to help you draw faster and more accurately. There is another vanishing point on the far right, outside of the scene, which is why you see other diagonoizedil fitting down to the far right. Now I have actually blocked out the general store, and now I'm just adding details. Notice I've drawn the boxes, but I did not draw the details such as the fruits and also the little textures on the boxes. You can draw the details later on. For example, when you're drawing a shirt, you should draw the shape of the shirt first, followed by the pockets, and the buttons. Don't draw the buttons in the pockets before drawing the sh, always draw the big shapes first before drawing the details. That will really help a lot with your sketch, because if you get your big shapes wrong, if you get your perspective wrong at the start of the sketch, all the little elements will be affected by the wrong perspective. Try to make, try to get your perspective accurate. At the start are actually some shelves at the back of the fruit stores. I'm using those horizontal lines for the shelves to divide the back of the stores into smaller and smaller sections so that I can place the details more accurately within those sections. You can see me use the same technique when it comes to drawing the pillars on the left and also the ceiling section at the top where the lights are hanging from. For the coloring process, I'm actually painting onto the BG color layer, that's the background color layer using the clay roller, which is a very big brush that can cover big spaces very quickly. You don't need to paint colors that accurately. First, I'm actually painting the whole canvas with colors just to remove the white of the canvas. For the detailed coloring, I'm painting onto the color layer. This is where you can spend a lot more time to paint the details. When it comes to drawing or painting details, sometimes you don't have to actually draw the details with black lines first. You can actually paint the details later. For example, there are some containers and some shelving units on the shelves behind. But I did not draw those shelves because I have the intention to draw those containers with colors instead of drawing them with black lines. That's why I also did not draw the fruits. Yet you can see the fruits, they are missing from the boxes on top of the boxes, because I have intention to draw those fruits with colored lines instead of black and white lines. Notice I have the color palette on the screen. If you want to show the color palette, you can open the color palette and use two fingers to drag the color palette onto the screen. This way, the color palette will always be visible and you can pick colors very easily. The other way to pick colors very easily is to use the existing colors that you have already used. And you have to enable the color history palette in order to see the color history. Using color history palette is great because this will limit the number of colors that you have in the scene so they can paint with more harmonious colors. Notice as I drew the fruits, I started out with the green lines, but then I realized that it doesn't look that great. I went ahead with the black lines. But later on, I will still add more vibrant colors for the fruits. For the bananas, you can see they are actually yellow. They are yellow. But the thing is the yellow must contrast with the darker brown behind. Now initially, the back of the store was painted with light brown, but with light brown you cannot get that color contrast with the yellow. I actually painted the back of the store with a darker brown so that I can create that contrast with the yellow bananas, with the green bananas, and also with the yellow, red, and white boxes that you just saw me draw. The tiles on the ground are also affected by perspective. Those lines are actually converging to the respective finishing points. I feel like I have to draw the tiles because the ground looks empty. By drawing the tiles, you are actually adding more details and information to your sketch. Believe it or not, this sketch is almost complete. Now, it's really all about adding more details, such as using the splatter brushes to create some splatter to simulate the traditional look. Because sometimes when sketching with digital art programs, the sketch can look very digital. What I want to achieve here really is to make the sketch look more traditional by creating more textures, In this case artificial textures. I'm actually using the dry ink brush for most of the coloring. For coloring smaller areas, I just reduce the dry ink brush to a smaller size. I like to use the dry ink brush because creates textures. At this stage of the sketch, it's all about adding more details to the scene. Trying to create contrasts in certain areas just to present more information with clarity. For example, if you have boxes that are dirty. If you have boxes that are not cleaned for a long time, you will want to add some textures to those boxes. Maybe add some stains or yellowing to the boxes. Adding details can take a lot of time. Do spend the time to add details before you start coloring. You should always take a good look at your line art to see whether it looks good enough. If your line art doesn't look good, adding colors is not going to really improve the sketch, unless you do some correction to the line art by using colors. If your line art looks good at the start, you don't actually need to add colors. Your line art already looks good. Your sketch already looks good. Adding colors is just icing on the cake to make your sketch look even better. To get your sketch to look good, you have to focus on getting your line art to look good. And you have to use a mix of techniques to make your line art look good. You need to know perspective. You need to know how to draw from observation. You need to know some basics to contour drawing techniques. You need to know how to draw details in the foreground versus details in the background. There are actually a lot of techniques involved to creating good looking sketches. All this will be part of your subconscious when you are more experienced. I've just added the paper texture to the whole scene, and don't forget to write down the name of the place and the date, and this is the completed sketch. It was becoming extremely crowded downstairs and I've just headed up the second floor to look for quite a spot to talk more about the sketch. That, wow, there are so many clothing stores on the second floor. On the ground floor, there's also a wet market. This is a terrific spot for sketching as well, because I'm away from the crowd and I can see everything. When it comes to urban sketching, we are usually drawing on the ground level. This is actually a nice view from the second level. There is so much activity and so many things to draw. I've actually been on the second floor here before, but I've never actually walked through all the house hole today. I discovered a lot of places that I've not been to. This is the completed sketch. I did not use all the layers. More specifically, I did not use the shadows layer because I was drawing indoors and there wasn't any sunlight and cast shadows. So let me remove the layers. I'm quite pleased with this sketch. I think I managed to capture the activity that's going on, and I managed to capture beautiful colors. And the paper texture that I have applied looks really nice. Now if you look closely, you will be able to identify certain mistakes that you have made. And you can actually correct those mistakes at home and just learn along the process. For example, here I spotted one mistake. The color of the sign board here, the price text here. The color matches the skin tone. I want to differentiate this from the skin tone. Let me change the color of the sign board here to something darker so that I can differentiate the price text from the skin phone of the person there. Yeah. Okay. Now, it looks it definitely looks much better sometimes at home, I may still want to add some details because I feel like adding some details may make the sketch look more interesting. All right, let me turn off the colors to show you the line. Let me show you the drafting lines first. So these are the drafting lines. So when I sketch this, I wanted to make sure I capture the perspective accurately. So I tried to block out the shape of the store first. I also try to block out the boxes and the crates with the fruits. I also want to make sure the height of the people are at the correct height, relatively speaking, compared to the height of the store. Those are the very important things you need to set up before you start. If you get the perspective wrong at the start of your sketch, the perspective will be inaccurate throughout the sketch. Try to get the perspective and the composition right at the start of the sketch. It will be very useful if you can find the vanishing point. For example, with this scene, the vanishing point for this store is actually here. The diagonal lines will point here. The boxes will also be affected by the vanishing point. As I draw the diagonal lines, I will point the diagonal line towards the vanishing point. The other vanishing point is somewhere on the far right side. That's why the line here down. As I draw the lines, I will point to that mention point which is somewhere at the bar right. Now, let's overlay the line up with the drafting lines created. You should be able to create the line up more easily. The composition should be set. If you make any mistakes during the drafting stage, that's great, because that means you will not repeat the same mistakes. Here, let me turn off the drafting lines. After I have sketched this, I've also added more people. I'm not sure if you see that I've added more people here in the background. And these people in the background are further away due to perspective. They are actually smaller and you have to position them correctly, relatively speaking, compared to other people in the scene, compared to the store in the scene. I've also added some people here. Now if the person that you're drawing suddenly walks away, it's okay just leave the sketch halfway, half done, and someone else will come in and take the place. Later on when the person comes in, you can continue to sketch that person. Again, during this sketch, I noticed there are a lot of things in the background. But I don't want to draw all those items with line art because I can actually draw them later on with colors. This is how the scene looks with colors added. You can see I did not draw line art for the details here. But during the coloring stage, I can actually color the details. I can use the colors to draw the lines, the boxes, the plastic bags in the background. It's good to have a mix of black and white together with color. Together with color. You don't always have to use black to draw the lines. You can use color to draw the lines as well. Let me show you the details. Yeah. If you need to overlay colors on top of the line art, you can add them to the details layer. This is how the colors look alone. Without the line art, the sketch should look good as well, even without the line art. This is quite interesting too. Of course, if you actually create your line art more accurately, you will be able to color more accurately. The line art is actually quite important. If you get your line art to look great, you can make your sketch look even better with colors added. But if your line art does not look great at the start, then adding colors later on is not going to help that much. Okay, let's add the colors back. Let's add the details back for this part. There are actually many bananas hanging in front of the fruit stalls. You can see I actually use black lines to draw the string that's used to hang the bananas black against the darker brown is not that obvious. When I'm sketching, I'm always constantly thinking about contrast. How can I create contrast? I wanted to paint the background here a dark brown so that I can have the yellow bananas contrast against the darker brown. I also use brighter colors like this, bright red and white to create that contrast against the darker brown. I could have drawn the shelves here or the boxes here with black lines. But as you can see, when you draw with some other color that creates contrast, your sketch is going to look interesting. Let me add the details here. I actually made the background even darker so that I can draw the white lines to create that contrast. Now, compare this to this. Which do you prefer? I think I prefer this with more contrast. When you're sketching, always try to think about contrast. Lastly, I mentioned the background. Yeah, this is the background that I laid down. We have the floor and this is just a brown background that's at the textures. Let me just show you how the textures look without the other colors. I use textures, if the texture is too obvious, you may want to adjust the capacity. But generally speaking, when you use the eye dropper to pick a color, you can just shift the color picker slightly to get that subtle change in color. That is actually good enough to create spltters like this. We have magenta color and I have a darker magenta here at the top. I actually have the color and I increase the value to create the darker spots. I also reduce the value to create the lighter spots. I actually have a mix of light, light over dark, so that it's more interesting. Once you have everything put together, this is how it looks. Make sure to write the name of the place and the date so that you can remember the places that you have been to. Don't be too disappointed if your sketch doesn't turn out the way you expect it to, especially if it's your first time out. Sketching, because sketching is a still, it's just like writing. It's just like playing a musical instrument. It's just like playing a sport. You need to practice to get better. The more you sketch, the better you will get. And you will also be more confident, and when you have more confidence, you will sketch better. 8. Sketching at a road junction: Hello and welcome to this next lesson where we will sketch outdoors. As mentioned in the earlier lesson, I recommend you to walk around the neighborhood first, just to explore, because the first place that you are at may not be the best place to sketch. It is actually the day of the festival, and I'm out here early in the morning just to avoid the crowd. This is the street junction that I want to sketch, and as you can see, it's a cloudy day, so there are no cast shadows which may make the building look flat later on when the sun comes out. I will want to take a reference photo just in case it becomes cloudy again. I can see a lot of activity here at the shop, here on the ground floor, but this other shop is not open yet. But when it comes to sketching, you can always use your creative license to make the shop open earlier than usual. I'm actually standing here at a high elevation instead of there at the ground level, because I anticipate heavy human traffic later. When it comes to sketching, try not to obstruct traffic, whether it's human traffic or vehicle traffic. And try not to situate yourself in front of stores to affect their business. I've actually been here at this place before, and I know for a fact that the sun will come from the left, which means there will be cast shadows here. If I want to sit here and sketch, I can actually do so. But I have to sketch really quickly because the sun will move over to the other side and I will lose the shadow. This is one of the problems that I mentioned about urban sketching. There will always be some vehicle that will park in front of you. You have to anticipate this and try to find a location to sit where it's more difficult for vehicles to park in front of you When the vehicle parks in front of you, you can always sketch other areas first and then come back to draw area behind the vehicle. For this scene, I will stand and sketch. By the way, I have this hop here that helps me hop back to the railing so I don't have to carry my bag or leave my back on the floor. I actually want to sit and sketch because I have my portable stool here. I could sit at the steps here, but I know the security guard will chase me away. Because I've already anticipated that to happen. If you're using a matt screen protector on your tablet, the reflection for the sky will be diffused into this bright white diffusion. Personally, for me, it's quite glaring, which is the reason why I no longer use a mat protector. But as long as there are no reflections on your tablet, it should look fine. Remember to charge the battery of your tablet, because when you're sketching outdoors, the auto brightness of the display will usually be at 100% which will drain the battery quite fast. All right, to follow along with this sketch, you can download the reference photos that I have provided. I have also made the looping video with people walking on the street. If you prefer to draw from a video where there is activity versus drawing from a static photo, you can do that. This scene is more complicated to draw compared to the fruit store because there are so many elements. There are so many buildings, there are awnings and signboards sticking out from the side of the building. There are many people walking on the streets and there are some parked vehicles. This sketch was also quite challenging to draw because it was such a hot day and I was standing and sketching, and everything looks really bright because it was so sunny. If you happen to have a pair of sunglasses, you can use them outdoors as well to reduce the glare. So once again, I'm starting this sketch with the drafting lines, just to figure out the composition and also the perspective. You can see me use the transform tool quite often just to move things around, just to scale certain elements, to make sure that what I want to draw, all the things that I want to draw, can fit onto the canvas. By the way, I just noticed that the reference photo that I have on the screen right now does not have the parked vehicles. If you want to draw those vehicles in, you will need to know the perspective of the vehicles. Two vehicles are actually just trucks, which are rectangular and boxy, so they are not too difficult to draw with the help of the drafting lines that I have created. You can see me now inking over the drafting lines. If there are any mistakes that I have made earlier during the drafting stage, I can avoid all those mistakes here. Generally speaking, I would draw the big ships first, followed by the small ships. But here you can see me draw the details first. That's only because I have already drawn the big ships with the drafting line. You should always draw the big ships first because otherwise you may get a perspective wrong or inaccurate at the start. And that's really going to affect your sketch later on. That's why having drafting lines is so useful and can help you save a lot of time later on so that when you're drawing, you don't have to undo that often. Try not to undo that. Often, each time you undo, it means you have to redraw again. It means you have to spend more time with the sketch, with the drawing sketching digitally. Sometimes I will think of myself as sketching with actual pen and ink that cannot be erased. This helps me sketch more carefully. This also helps me observe more carefully. When you can observe what you see in front of you more carefully, you will be able to draw more accurate mistakes. Take time to correct. If you don't make that many mistakes, you don't have to spend so much time correcting the mistakes. This scene was actually drawn from a higher elevation. For this scene, the most important thing to find out first is where's the horizon line? The horizon line is actually somewhere between the first and second floor. On the horizon line is where you will draw most of the lines horizontal ly for the lines that are above the horizon line, they will tilt down to a vanishing point in this case, which is somewhere off the canvas on the far left and also on the far right. With this scene, I'm actually sketching the perspective from observation, instead of trying to find out where the vanishing point is and drawing the diagonal lines to the vanishing point. Now one thing to note about the perspective is there are many people walking for people that are further away. You should draw them smaller for people that are closer to you, you should draw them bigger. The placement of the human figures will be relative to one another. Let's take a look at what I have here. So far, the ink sketch is almost complete. I just need to add some details. Perhaps I could add those details with colors later on. Now, this door on the ground floor was not opened earlier, but now it's opening up. If you anticipate the shop opening later, you can actually draw other parts of the sketch first and come back to this area when the shop is open. If the shop is not going to open, then you will have to use your artistic license to think about what shop this can be. I actually thought this was a shop that sells accessories, but it's actually a money changer. So I am going to erase this part here and turn this into a money changer. All right, And now it's time to paint again. Same thing. I'm using the clay roller brush to paint the big ships. I'm painting the sky, the ground, the shop house. Just to remove the white of the canvas later on when I paint the details, it's easier for me to cover the whole sketch with colors and not miss out any spots. When you're painting the big areas of colors, paint it onto the background color layer. When you're painting little areas of colors, adding the details with colors, paint them onto the color layer if you need to do any adjustments later. For example, if you want to maybe change the color of the sky, you can do so very easily by switching over to ground layer to change the color of the sky. Now, this scene was sketched during a cloudy day. All the colors are desaturated. When picking colors, I try to choose a color that is desaturated. But there are, as you can see from the photo, some spots of bright colors, such as the bright red awning under the sun. And also some of the people are wearing very vibrant color shirt. For most of the sketch, I want to use a desaturated color scheme. I will leave the more vibrant colors to just certain smaller areas. If you make your sketch like way too colorful, too vibrant colors can look quite jarring again. When coloring, try to use a limited color palette. Try to use the history color palette to reuse the colors that you have already used. This will, first of all, help you save a lot of time because you don't have to go open the color picker all the time to choose colors. And this will make the colors work more harmoniously. Now notice I have drawn some people at Bottom left side and some of them are cropped off. I like to create this illusion of people walking into the scene with those human figures at the bottom left. The shops on the ground floor are selling a lot of items, but I didn't draw all the items with the black lines because I have intention to color them with color. When you're coloring, try to use light over dark, and dark over light. For example, if you take a look at the red awning on the left side, red, but there are white details on top of the red. For the white awnings, you can see the yellow and black details on the white awnings. We have color or darker values over white. And for the red and white, we have lighter values over darker values. Play around with the light over dark and dark over light to create visual interest. To create contrast, this will make your sketch look way more interesting. When sketching, I'm always thinking about contrasts, like how can I create contrasts using values? How can I create contrasts using textures? How can create contrast using just line art? Because if you think about it, drawing is about contrast. When you have a clean sheet of paper, it's just white and there are no lines on it, there is nothing. But once you add a few lines on the paper, there is contrast and suddenly there is meaning to those lines depending on what you are drawing. Will sketching this scene, it was cloudy, there were no cast shadows. Without the shadows, it's difficult to present the form of the buildings more clearly, even when you have lots of details in your sketch. Without the shadows, the sketch can still look flat. Without any car shadows or even shadows, the sketch looks flat. I really want to add some shadows to increase the contrast in certain areas, just to make the physical form of the building look more obvious. The lighting condition today looks very different compared to what you can get on the sunny day. Because earlier I mentioned the sun should come from the left side. But on the cloudy day, you can see that it's actually the right side of the building that is lit by light. It is the right side of the building that is brighter. The front side of the buildings are darker. Now I want to add shadows to the scene, and I'm going to create two variations. The first variation will have the sunlight coming from the right side, and the second variation will have the sunlight coming from the left side. I'm trying to remember how the scene actually looks with shadows because I have been to this place before. When you have the sun coming from the right side, the front of the shop house will be darker. But if you have the sun coming from the left side, it's the right side of the shop house of the buildings that will be darker. This is how it looks. I'm using the fuel ship brush to create the shadows very quickly. Because with the fuel ship brush, you can draw big ships very quickly. This is a very quick way to add shadows. I've just added shadows, and this is my artistic impression, because right now, there is just no cast shadows. Let me turn off the visibility to let you see the difference. Now, everything is brightly lit. There is no contrast, and it's difficult to make out the form of the building. But once you add the shadows, you can see the shadow side. You can see the form of the building more clear. This is scenario one, where the light source is coming from the right side. Let me show you scenario two, where the light source is coming from the left side. I'm not sure which one looks better, but these two, the shadows are not drawn on location. This is just my artistic impression, of course. Lastly, we can add the paper texture has enabled paper texture. So let's zoom in and have a look. This is the wrong texture, this is the canvas texture. So let's choose the sandstone texture. All right, this looks so much better. One way to make the scene look more lively is to add lots of people in the scene. The second way is to add little details such as overhanging cables. There is one here. You can add antenna lines as well. There's one here. There is another antenna line here as well. This is my completed sketch, which took me about 2 hours to complete. I'm quite pleased with it. So as you can see, it's becoming increasingly crowded and increasingly hot because it's almost 12:00 the sun is about to come out. But unfortunately, there is a big truck in front. So even with the sun out, even with the cast shadows, I won't be able to sketch with that truck in front. Here's a look at the cast shadows. The sun is almost directly on top, so the shadows are very short. You can get an idea of where the sun is by looking at the shadows of the people around. So this truck has been there for almost half an hour. And I'm not sure when it's going to leave because there's still quite a lot for them to unload anyway. I'm quite hungry now, so I'm going to leave for lunch. And that's it for this lesson. 9. Adding shadows: Now I'm back home and I want to paint the shadows again. This time with the help of a reference photo with light and shadow. I'm going to show the layers palette. Select the shadows layer, make sure the blending mode is multiply. And I'm going to select the 60% gray. I'm going to choose the solid field brush. And I'm going to hide this layers palette. After choosing the correct layer, the sun is coming from the left. The sun is also coming slightly from the back. The front of the shops are actually in shadow. The site is also in shadow, but the shadow is less, probably due to the ambient light for the front. Let's choose a 70% green state just to make it darker. Let's just paint this shadow shape. Now if you feel like the shadow is too dark, you can adjust it later. I will show you how to do so. Try to paint the shadow shapes as accurately as possible. As you see, this whole part here is in shadow. If you need to erase the shadows later, you can use the eraser with the shadow, sorry, the solid field brush. So that will allow you to erase the shadows very quickly? There is cast shadow here, yeah. So some of the people here are under the shade, but their shoulders are under the sun. We also need to paint the shadows for these people here and here as well. You see some people here as well. Okay, so it's the afternoon. So the shadows are actually not that long. This whole part here is in shadow. So now you can see this is much darker, but is it too dark? We shall see later. Okay, here we have people. So we need shadows as well. And I can see the cast shadow on the ground. So let's paint the cast shadow for the vehicle. The vehicle will cast the shadow. Okay, This part here as well, this part of the building will cut shadow as well. This whole building here on the right side is actually in shadow except for the rooftop here. Let's just have all this in shadow here as well. I'm going to cut away some of the shadow here because there is light streaming through. Okay. For this side of the wall, I'm going to choose a lighter shadow. This is 70% We will go with maybe 50% Let's see if it's enough or light enough. Yeah, let's see if this is too dark or if the contrast is not obvious, you can choose a lighter shadow. So let's go with 40% Yeah, I think this looks good. Let's create a shadow here. There is cut shadow here as well. This Ac unit is in shadow. The bottom of the awning. In shadow as well. This whole part here is in shadow. The fan is in shadow. The shadow is from building. It's actually cut shadow from the building. We need to paint all in gray, light gray. I need to erase this part here. Oops. Okay, let's choose the brush again. And let's paint this pot here. This part here is lit by light. We need this white. This part here is lighter. Let's choose maybe 20% gray. Yeah. Okay. So let's have a look and see what we have so far. Okay, So this is what we have so far. This part here should be darker as well. So we need maybe 70 or 60% Yeah. Okay. Because this part is all these elements are below below the shade. So it needs to be darker. Okay. All right. So this is what we have so far. This is also in shadow. We need to paint that as well. So let's go with the 40% using the solid fuel brush. A very convenient, it's very quick. It allows you to paint really quickly. The top of the roof will be lit by sunlight, so we just need to paint the side of the building. Okay. This is what I have. Let's compare this with, with my artistic impression of the shadows. Okay. I need to make certain parts darker. Okay, let me reduce this first. This is the actual shadows based on the P. Let's turn this off and turn on this, which is my artistic impression, where the light is coming from the left and this whole side is shaded. Yeah, this actually looks good. It looks pretty good because the contrast is very strong. I can see very obvious light area versus the darker areas. This is the second version where the light source is coming from the right side. Yeah, the darker shadows look better. And this is the one that I've just painted with the real shadows. I'm not sure which one I should choose. Probably this one. Yeah, I'm actually not too sure. Anyway, you can choose whichever version that looks the best to you. And the best version is probably the one that was sketch on location. All right. There are two ways to make the shadows lighter or darker. The first way is to reduce the opacity of the shadows. Oh, right now it's at 89% If I reduce it down to 40% again see the shadows, it's almost gone. I can increase it all the way up to 100% and it looks like this. The other way is to change the color of the shadow. To do so very quickly, just tap on the shadow layer. Select this will select all the pixels on that layer. In this case, it will be the pixels that were used to create a shadow. Now you can choose a lighter gray, choose the solid fuel brush. Let me just zoom down and just draw over this. And get out of the selection and take a look at your shadows. It's not that obvious, so let me just undo because 40% is too light. Let me select this again and maybe apply 50 or 60% 60% Let's get out of the selection. And you can see 60% is still obvious, but it's not too dark. There are two ways to adjust shadows. You can use the selection method, or you can change the opacity. If you find some of the edges too rough like this, you can select the eraser to and choose the dry ink eraser. This will let you erase the to produce the rougher. You can see this pink or magenta here, because that's from another lower layer. Yeah. So just use the dry ink eraser to create the rougher H if needed, such as Here, spot here. All right then. 10. Video reference of road junction: Yeah. Us. Yeah. I re Yeah. Lousy religious. Yeah, this. Yeah. Religious. I think. Yeah. List. Yeah, Lo Yeah, I'm not Relus. 11. Goodbye: We are at the end of this course. I hope you have enjoyed the course and I hope you have learned more about the digital urban sketching workflow and also learned more about Infinit Painter. Don't forget to leave this course, a review to help other students know what this course is about and also let other students know what you have learned. Recording this course wasn't easy because I had to sketch outdoors and I had to record myself and the weather was so hot. But it's still a very fulfilling experience, especially on the urban sketching part because I discovered places that I've not been to. It's just a new experience each time when I'm out sketching. Urban sketching is really about the experience as well as about the sketching part of course. But it's really about being there on location to experience the sight, the sound, and the environment. And these are things that you will remember for the rest of your life. Don't be too upset if your first few sketches don't turn out the way you expect them to. Because with more practice, you will be more confident and with more confidence, your sketches will look better. It's really more about practice and going out there to draw and to enjoy the moment. Thanks so much for joining this course. If you want to learn more about sketching using traditional or even digital media, you can check out the other courses that I have. All right, see you in the next course, bye.