Urban Sketching with Procreate on the iPad

1. Introduction: Hello, my name is T0 and I'm an artist, graphic designer, and urban sketcher who enjoy sketching out on location. This is a digital urban sketching cost using the app Procreate, which is available on the iPad. And this is an intermediate costs. So you will need to be somewhat familiar with using Procreate or drawing in order to follow along because we will be jumping straight into drawing. So if you are a beginner who is not familiar with using Procreate, I highly recommend you check out earlier calls that I have created on how you can create digital illustrations using procreate. In the first half of this course, I will show you the tips and techniques that are used for creating digital urban sketches. You can download the reference photo that is provided to follow along. And in the second half of the course, we will be going outdoors, where I will show you how to apply those tips and techniques when it comes to going outdoors on location. Before we get started, I just wanted to ask for your help. If you find this course useful to live this cause a review so that you can help other students discover the cost. Alright, let's get started. 2. Composition and Drafting (part 1): Let's open the Procreate app. So let's create a canvas. By the way, you can create your own Canvas size. Just click this button here. You can type in whatever resolution you want. I'm going to have it as four key UHD, so that's 3840 by 2160. And go look into this time-lapse settings here and make sure that it's recording at four K at lossless quality. So when you are drawing, Procreate, we'll record a time-lapse video of your drawing process. So now that you have your own Canvas, you can just tap on it to create that canvas at that size and resolution. So I have my reference photo on the side here. If I'm drawing on-location, my reference, we'll be in front of me. So the first thing I want to do is to create a few layers. The first layer, I will use a light blue to create some drafting lines to help me create the composition so that I can feed or the subject that I want to fit onto the canvas. So this part here is going to be very quick. I just want to basically get the composition. It doesn't really matter if you can't draw the details at this stage because the details are not important. All you want to do is to fit everything on to the pitch to make sure that you have enough space to fit everything onto the page. And you can draw more accurately later on. So typically this process for me, we will just take like five minutes. If I'm drawing with my watercolor sketch book. Depending on how complex the scene is, I may actually use pencils to create rafting lines as well. But if the senior is not that complicated than I may just go or draw with ink straight away. There is a van park here. I am not able to see site of the van because my reference photo is cropped off. But if you are drawing on-location, you get to see everything. There is anything blocking your view. You can actually still stand up and move around to see what's in front of you. So this white car here, let me just place the wheels higher compared to the Ben. Let me zoom out slightly to have a look. Alright. I think this is pretty much dropped. When I'm drawing this building here. I want to make the line straight because I know in the real-world, lines are straight. Okay, there are other tall buildings be highest. Well, there is an arch here and this arch is actually cropped off k. So this is this part of the sketch. So what I want to do is to turn, sorry, make is more transparent so that when I draw with black lines over there dropping lines, I would not be distracted by the lies beneath. So let me just rename this layer raft. And this layer will be caught lines. And I will be using black brush that I'm using is a custom brush that I bought online. If you want to use default brushes provided by Procreate, these are the four I would recommend. I use tinderbox and facing net for drawing lines. Tinderbox is my preferred brush for creating line OD. And you can use this brush on the side with Apple pencil to sensitivity to cover large areas. So tinderbox is quite a versatile brush. For textures. I would use a hearts and clouds can be great for creating clouds or textures as well. 3. Inking (part 2): Let's make sure we are drawing on the correct layer. So I'm going to have one layer, four lines and other leaf or colors. Another layer for textures and other layer for shadows. I don't use a lot of layers when I'm drawing on location because it's very difficult to keep track of this layers. So let's draw the beak shapes first. I'm going to draw like really fast. This line is a bit thick. Maybe I can make this line thinner. Yeah, I think it's better to have the Allies thinner. So I have the brush controls here on the loudest site. So what I want to do is to draw the big shapes first and then later on draw the details within the shapes. There is a sign here. Let me zoom in for you to see. So we've done drafting lies beneath. It's easy for me to draw those shapes accurately and quickly. So having drafting lines can help you draw Foster and definitely more accurately. So you may note, here's my lines are beard. How should I say sketchy? They are not that straight. You don't have to draw a perfectly straight line to create the illusion of a straight line. There is a sign board here. The body is facing. The sun is actually facing the shop front or some, or some somewhere facing some direction. Anyway, withdrawing, you can use your artistic license to have to assign point wherever you want it to point. So I want it to point like this. Now we've Procreate by default, you can use two fingers to tap on the display to undo. And procreate has good like palm rejection. So now I can actually draw on the display with my finger, but you can actually turn off that feature. Let me erase. There should be a shortcut for me to erase when I double-tap depends on maybe I did not turn that on. So let me go into the settings that gestures control where you start, you raise, I'm going to press toggle this. So basically this will allow me to press this wire here and then go into the erase mode. I find it easier to do this than to double-tap on the Apple pencil. When I released my finger. It goes back to the brush. I realized that if I draw like slow, my lines will look like too rigid. So I will want to draw faster to have, to have the Allies look more sketchy mall dues. And we have this van that it's parked here. This van is basically or rectangular block. I cannot see the site mirror of the van. So I'm using my artistic impression, sorry, artistic license to add a site mirror. You have two wheels here, 12. If you draw a location, if you draw a lot, if you get a lot of practice, you will be able to remember how a vehicle should look like. And if you are drawing the vehicle for the first time, chances are you're going to draw the vehicle from your imagination. And that vehicle from your imagination is not going to look the same as the vehicle that you see in the real-world. But if you have drawn like a lot of vehicles from observation, from the real-world, you will be able to draw v equals more accurately. So that's one nice advantage, nice thing about drawing on-location. It helps with your memory, even help you remember more. Basically, this is the line dividing the first second law. When drawing digitally, you have the advantage of being able to undo. But I would recommend you try not to use to undo unless necessary because. The more you can do, the more time you have to take to draw the scene. We have another vehicle here. And also if you just keep undoing it, it will tell your mind that it's alright to make mistakes. I mean, it is alright to make mistakes, but if you just keep undoing, it will actually make you more catalysts. For example, if you are drawing with ink, you won't be able to undo. So because you are not able to undo, you would be more careful when you are drawing with but when you're drawing digitally, at least for me, I find that sometimes I am a bit more callous because I can just undo, undo, undo, undo, and I can erase. Oops, see, notice that I drew the windows wrong. This will hear, it. Shouldn't be in contact with this v equals. So let me just erase here. So when you're drawing, it would be good to pay attention to where the lines intersect. So I'm going to put the wheel here. And this really is further away. This and higher. We have this here. There is a peeler here. This pillar will go down from the top to the bottom floor. So you have to draw a continuous line to create that illusion that the peeler is continuous. So now I've used a peeler to divide their shop house from this shop house, I will continue to use the peelers to divide. And now that I have the pilus, I have the sharp House Divided. I can draw the windows within the shapes. This is so much easier compared to earlier on when I drew the windows first before drawing the pilus. So here I'm going to be like really sketchy. And I think we have drawing digitally versus drawing traditionally are on a sketchbook is with digital software, with a tablet, you can zoom in to draw those details. And sometimes it's not a good thing because you don't want to draw too much. Sometimes you want your sketch to be simple. You want to simplify or Scatchard when so many details. So if you're drawing with paper, if you're drawing on paper, you will run out of space to draw details, in which case you can just leave out the details. But here you may have to temptation to actually zoom in to draw those little details. Which is good if you need to draw the details. But it's not good if you want to simplify and you cannot resist the urge to draw all those details. So this part here is very difficult for me because the reference will to actually doesn't show what's happening here. So I'm actually just drawing what I think is their case. So let's see what we have here so far. I'm good. I think this is nice. The sketch is slowly coming to life. Let's draw the beauty and the tall building in the background. So for the tall building, its height is here. So I have that curve there. This curve is not the exact curve that you see in the reference photo and it's alright. I may want to turn off this ability to draw with the finger. So let me go into the gestures control again. So under General, you can disable touch actions. So that's turned on. Now when you draw with your finger and nothing happens. But when you draw with the Apple pencil, you can draw. So this is quite convenient. This is basically perfect palm rejection. I may have drawn this too wide because based on the reference photo, the gap between the gap here is actually much smaller. So let me see what I should do. Maybe I can draw this and you've raised this. Yeah. Okay. I think it looks alright now. Yeah, I think it looks alright. Let me draw a sign here below, and another window here. So the main shape of the shop houses are ready drawn now it's just now I just have to add details. Notice this part here. So this is an accidental straight stroke that I drew with my finger earlier. And if you don't disable touch, things like this can happen. And to rescue this, to correct this, you have to unfortunately redraw this area. So it might be a good thing for you to actually able touch. Basically have such a way that you can only drove the Apple pencil. You cannot draw with your finger. Okay, let's see if there are anymore stress rocks. And another one here. The NGO that I have here is wrong because if I look at the corner of this roof on this should be much higher at a window. I mean, a line to the window here, but I have the arch here. So again, this is a sketch. So if you want to draw accurately, you may have to erase all this oddest part here and redraw again. But since this is a sketch, I can actually just use my artistic impression to correct this scene. Now if you draw a long enough, if you have a lot of practice, you can correct your scenes very easily. However, if you get like the perspective, like if your perspective is really off and correcting the scene is going to be like very challenging. So sometimes it's good to actually draw those drafting lines first. Another thing about the drawing on-location is your eyes are very sensitive and will be able to see details in the darker areas easily. So for example, here, It's really dark. It's very difficult for me to see the details here. From the photograph. I'm actually just drawing some tables. I'm just going to draw tables even though I cannot see the tables. This is a restaurant, so there should be tables. If you're drawing on occasion, you will be able to see what's happening in this darker shaded area in the photograph. But I'm trying with a reference photo has its limitations. You will want to add some people in the scene because it's going to make your scene look more lively. So to draw, people tried to draw those people who are not moving first. Because people who are moving. A bit more challenging to draw. And also zoom out to see how big that person is in relation to whatever you have just drawn. So I think the size for this person, it's alright. So let me just draw another, one person here. So we have people in your scene. It's going to make your scene look more lively. And also it will help the person who is looking at your sketch get a sense of just how big all those other elements are by comparison to those people in your scene. So this is a coffee shop that is selling some v and some food. I'm going to leave this a rare just black later on. I will, I mean, just empty later on I will just draw those details. Okay, at this stage, this sketch is almost complete. I can just look around sketch to see if there are any more things I need to draw like this, buildings in the background that I have almost accidentally left out. I'm gonna use really thin lines to draw these buildings in the background because for elements that are in front, they are close to you. You can draw them big with thicker lines for elements that are further away, you can draw them small width, thinner lines. 4. Colouring (part 3): Now for the coloring process, I forgot to mention earlier that when I am drawing, I tried to close the lines. So for example, when I'm drawing this triangular shape, I don't want to have gaps like this. Because when it comes to coloring, I'm going to use the fill bucket to the few packet needs to fuse into an enclosed area. When there is a gap, the color wheel leak out. Let me show you what I mean. So first thing I want to do is to tap here and make this a reference layer so that when I add or used a few bucket tool, they will use the reference layer to feel the colors. So I'm going to add like, Can orange, should I have written for the roofs? Let's have rate for the roofs. So make sure you are painting the colors into the correct layer. So this layer will be called colors. Make sure to choose the correct The year and drag and paint the color into the shape here. You can control how much value there is, how much area that we'll cover. So this is good. You can see some jagged edges here are the colors did not view on to the dinner overlap deadlines there. So what I wanna do now is to move this color layer below the lines. Alright, so now it looks better. You may still need to go into color Ages. This is the part where I don't particular and don't enjoy particularly because it's a lot of work. If I'm painting with actual watercolor. Watercolor, we just go over the lines, but here with this view bucket, It's not perfect. Alright, so let's do this again. Oops. Notice the colors actually went out. So let me try it again. So you can control how sensitive the few bucket is. Or you can just just do this. Yeah, just color it like this. Depends on whether or not you want to save time or whichever is easier for you. I've almost colored everything that is read into sin. So here I just want to go in and Few the lines. You can see the lines here. They are black and white. So I may want to just at this rate over just to make it look nicer. Now a digital sketch will not be able to replicate traditional look a 100 per cent. Maybe it can replicate the traditional look a 100%, but it's going to take a lot of time. So for me I try not to. I mean, I would love to have the digital sketch look traditional. But I also know that it's going to take a lot of time. So I don't really, I'm not really too fussy about how digital or how traditional sketch looks. Okay, so sometimes I may actually want to like CDs. I'm coloring, I'm painting outside the line. If I'm painting, we have real watercolors. Sometimes I will not be able to paint within the lines because I paint too fast. So sometimes I may want to add this mystics into the scene. Next thing I want to do is to add some textures to the owning the sunshade. So what I want to do is to add texture only onto the red areas. So I'm going to use two fingers to swipe here, basically to mask out all the other areas. And I'm going to switch to a different color. I'm going to use this color wheel and switch it to something that is orange. And I'm going to switch to a different brush. Again, the brush that I'm using is actually a custom brush that I bought. This is hearts, which ART Zack one. So this is a nice textured brush. So earlier on, when I mask out the the non pixels, this allows me to paint within the pixels here. So now when I paint over, you can actually see some texture. But this color doesn't look that great. So let me just make this, instead of changing the color, I want to change the value. So now you can see the texture. I think this is nice. I can adjust the size of the brush just to. Just to see what kind of textures you can create. I can also make this even brighter. More highlights, basically give it more highlights like this. This looks nice. I liked this texture. So compared to this flat roof, you can see the texture. It gives it more life. But also, I don't want to like paint over the whole thing. I just want to give it some texture. Okay, this is nice. Next up, let's paint all the other areas. Before we pin the other areas, you have to decide whether you should create another layer for the odd the elements. So in this case, I may want to create another layer for all the other elements. So here for the roof, I'm going to rename this again. I'm going to rename this as a screen name is S groups. So I've just switch back to the other brush and now I'm going to color everything else. Let's try and use this in. There are some plants here. Now for this particular part, I may want to append is dark area here first. So I did not draw the lines for the plans and I also do not draw the lines for the blinds, the sunshade. Sometimes it's good to leave a sudden things not drawn, don't use lines for everything. So here I can draw the plans. This hopes up my iPad Pro is dying. Later. I have to I mean, right after this tutorial, I would have to send this iPad for servicing. So let's use this shape here, this color here to paint the blinds. And here. And here. This is getting very irritating. And I can use a darker shade to draw the lines on the blinds, maybe something darker so that I can see the DTUs. It's nice. And I can use this green again, but this time make it darker to add some details. I can also throw in some bread as z if there are some flowers here. And you'll see these black lines here. That's delete the black lines. Let's go to the lines layer and delete the black lines. Alright, let's press, press this eraser and move the lines up. So now it looks like the plans are in front of the pillars and the plants. They don't have outlines, so it makes the plants Lucas softer compared to the hatch, sorry, compared to the hot H peelers. By the way, this color palette that I have, It's also a custom color palette that I bought online. I cannot remember the name of the person who actually saw that pellet though, but it's a really nice palette. You can buy a lot of these color palettes online, but don't get too carried away with buying too much this. Now for the growl, I also want to add texture. So remember earlier I used a double finger to swipe right to create the mask. So now this allows me to paint texture onto the ground under the pixels. And I want to make this darker. Okay, so let's use the other brush again. Okay. See the texture. Very nice. Um, yeah, so let me just add some texture. And now let's color the buildings in the background. So I'm going to color this building with a light blue. Nothing is happening because we need to unmask this first. Hopes. Hopes. It looks like the few bucket is not working correctly. So I would have to actually go in and color this myself. And I want to draw the windows here. For Windows, Let's have it dark, Let's have it. Let's have dark blue induce k. That's how the logo here. This car has dark windows here and here and the bottom of the vehicle is like black because of the cast shadow. But we want to leave some light here because we can see the front of the vehicle. The cast shadow will go to the site of this curve here. And we have to have the cast shadows for this as well, the Ben. And we need to draw this pot here and make it darker. There are some reflections, but I'm not going to draw those reflections. So remember this shop. So when I paint this black area, I want to create an outline for the people standing in front so that we can see them more clearly. If you like, paint over the person, you are going to lose the shape. That's draw some details within this black shape. So I'm going to make a square here. Maybe there's a sign board with manuals. Um, so that's how some white here. Maybe there's a light bulb here, horizontal light bulb. And some T2s here, areas of highlights and may be, I can have this slight white, but I will blend this site here like this. But I try not to lose the shape of the head. And this area here because of the photo that I'm using, I cannot see the details here. So maybe I can just paint all these areas are black. And I will draw some details later on for the chairs, the tables and the chairs. So earlier on I shouldn't have drawn those tables and chairs with the black lines because it's easier to paint the black shape and then draw those details with lighter color over the black color. Now when you are painting colors, I'll make sure you paint onto the correct layer so you're on. I pinned it to orange onto the roof layer. See if I turn off the roof. I also turned off the chairs and also the colors for all the people here. Yeah. So be careful not to paint onto the wrong layer. 5. Adding shadows: So next thing I gonna do is to add shadows and I'm going to create a new layer for the shadows. I'm going to have the blending mode Multiply so that the shadows can like blend over their colors. And let's paint the shadows. So I'm going to use a dark color. I'm going to use maybe this warm gray. I'm going to try one reverse. If it doesn't work, then we can try cool gray. Okay, I think a cool gray works better. So let's paint cast shadows. If the shadow is too light, you can, you can make it darker later on, I'll show you how. But first let's paint or the cast shadows. I've just added the shadows. So if you find the shadows too light, you can actually make them darker. So in this case here, I may want to duplicate this shadow layer first as a backup just in case things go wrong after the adjustments. So select shadows, select adjustments here, select Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and select layer. So now you can actually make the shadows darker. I'm going to make this slightly, just slightly darker. So it looks like the sky. It's too bright, it's too wide, too boring. So I've just created another layer for this guy right at the bottom. So now I'm going to use this color, this blue and just feel the whole sky with this color. And it looks, all right. It looks alright. Accept this guy, it's a very flat colors. So I want to swipe again to lock, to create a masking layer. And I'm going to use this lighter color to paint the clots. So let's see what happens. Oops. So a lot of trial and error is going to, you will need to have a lot of trial and error to find a right brush to paint clouds. And I think this brush works fine for me. It's a very nice brush. And let's have the clouds the more white. So I'm not a clouds will be very white. Do here. Let's make it more white here. Last layer will be taxed chairs. Just basically just adding some dots here and there to create some textures. Let's have it as Lamar. Where's my texture? Hopes I used the wrong brush. So let's use this brush again. Too big. Okay, just some textures here and there to do. And also I want to draw the road markings. So for the rope marketing is let's find the color layer and use white for that. Have some road markings here and some yellow markings here. We can add more details here and here, here. Textures at the top. So now that the sketch is complete, the last thing you may want to do is to create another layer. Right at the top. It's an empty layer. So the next time when you open up the file, if for some reason you accidentally add any stray strokes on to the art, you can actually just delete that protective layer. So let's take a look at the time-lapse video that was recorded. So this is the time that's the deal. If you want to, you can share this time-lapse video on your Facebook or Instagram page. If you want to share this on Instagram, you will have to export this video out first and then crop it to a square and then upload to Instagram. So That's nice. The time-lapse video, we will take up a lot of storage space. So let's take a look and see how much storage space the time-lapse video is taking up. Let's look at the statistics. So that for k UHD fall is taking up 310 mega bytes. The time-lapse video is taking up a 137 megabytes. So if you want to save some storage after you export and share your time-lapse video, you may want to just delete a way, the time-lapse video, but I'm just going to keep it here. So notice the file size is 300 megabytes. So if you want to sketch or scheduling, this one, gig will allow you to store maybe just a three or four files. Ten gigs will allow you to store 30 or 44 hours. Hopefully your iPad has enough storage to store on false. 6. Painting the sky and adding textures: So it looks like the sky, it's too bright, it's too wide to borrowing. So I've just created another layer for this guy right at the bottom. So now I'm going to use this color, this blue and just feel the whole sky with this color. And it looks, all right. It looks alright. Accept this guy, it's a very flat colors. So I want to swipe again to lock, to create a masking layer. And I'm going to use this lighter color to paint the clots. So let's see what happens. Oops. So a lot of trial and error is going to, you will need to have a lot of trial and error to find a right brush to paint clouds. And I think this brush works fine for me. It's very nice brush. And let's have the clouds the more white. So it's another clouds will be very white. Do here. Let's make it more white here. Last layer will be taxed chairs. Just basically just adding some dots here and there to create some textures. Let's have it as Lamar. Where's my texture? Hopes I used the wrong brush. So let's use this project can too big. Okay, just some textures here and there. And also I want to draw the road markings. So for the rope marketing is let's find color layer and use white font that have some road markings here and some yellow markings here. We can add more details here and here. Textures at the top. So now that the sketch is complete, the last thing you may want to do is to create another layer. Right at the top. It's an empty layer. So the next time when you open up the file, if for some reason you accidentally add any stray strokes on to the art, you can actually just delete that protective layer. So let's take a look at the time-lapse video that was recorded. So this is the time that's the deal. If you want to, you can share this time-lapse view on your Facebook or Instagram page. If you want to share this on Instagram, you will have to export this video out first and then crop it to a square, then upload to Instagram. So That's nice. The time-lapse video, we will take up a lot of storage space. So let's take a look and see how much storage space the time-lapse video is taking up. Let's look at the statistics. So that for k UHD fall is taking up 310 mega bytes. The time-lapse video is taking up a 137 megabytes. So if you want to save some storage after you export and share your time-lapse video, you may want to just delete a way, the time-lapse video, but I'm just going to keep it here. So notice the file size is 300 megabytes. So if you want to sketch or scheduling, this one, gig will allow you to store maybe just a three or four files. Ten gigs will allow you to store 30 or 44 hours. Hopefully your iPad has enough storage to store on false. 7. Walkabout on location: A course on urban sketching. Sketching out on location is not going to be complete. So let me show you around this neighborhood while I talk about the things we should look out for when it comes to choosing subjects to draw. The first thing to look out for when urban sketching is actually to look out for your own safety, especially when crossing the road. So look out for traffic, see those potted plants across the road. Those are different types of plants and I can actually take reference photos of them as well to draw them as a collage. I may also take photos of individual items such as this stone lions that you're here. For reference purposes. If you want to sketch in front of shops mixture to check the opening time so that you don't obstruct or affect businesses, all the shops. I highly recommend you walk around the neighborhood to look for interesting perspective and composition. All views and not just settled down at the first convenient location. Take this mosque, for example, if you are going to sketch from the front view, is going to look quite flat. So for this building, I would actually sketch from this view so that I can get a three-dimensional look to it. And I can also capture the perspective. I'm always very excited when I'm sketching because there are so many things to see, so many things to draw, even for very mundane objects, they will look interesting to me when looking for subjects to draw, try to look for dominant subject. For example, if you take a look at all the bicycles, here, it can be quite messy. If you are going to draw everything, it is possible to draw this. But in this case, I would focus on this bicycle in front and draw the background with maybe lighter or thinner lines. Even back alleys may look interesting when you are looking for subjects to draw them. So here this back alley, we see a lot of air conditioning units. And this building is actually a restaurant, so we see a tall chimney that goes all the way up. And this cover here that covers the electric bought seems like it hasn't been fixed for quite a while. This neighborhood, and by the way is Little India in Singapore. There on the right side, you can see a familiar building there. So that's the building and neighborhood that we sketch using the reference picture. Foot places are good places to sketch because they are very lively. You can sketch the people eating and you can sketch the food that is sold. See that empty table over there. You can actually buy a drink or maybe a coconut to drink over there and sketch the neighborhood. One thing I would advise is to pick a spot in shade, which means if the sun comes out, makes sure the sun is not shining on you. This is the view from the chair and this is actually quite good spot for sketching. We can see a one-point perspective scene here with shop houses that have a lot of details. Even had a road junction like this. You can actually sketch at all the four corners of the junction and you will get four different views as you walk around. I highly recommend you take as many reference photos as you can in case the weather changes, you can still work with your reference photos. It's not technically urban sketching, but you still have something to work on. So this is the back view of the building that we sketched for the tutorial. And from what I can see, it seems like it's going to rain later on. So if I am to sketch this building, I will have to do it really quickly. So this is actually a church. Here. I wanted to take a photo of the name of the church as well as the address so that if I am not able to sketch this building, one location today, I can always come back some other day. So this is the view of the church from the ground. And this object is porous, so it seems like it's more suitable to be drawn on a vertical converse. If you want to make this scene a bit wider, you can include the rate building on the right side, but you have to choose a composition that fits does to building. And don't have the two buildings balanced like this. Always try to make sure that one subject is more prominent compared to the other subject. So in this case, you can actually make the building more prominent by having it take up a larger proportion of the canvas. Or you can make the church more prominent by having it take up a larger proportion of the canvas. My camera, unfortunately is not white enough to capture the top of the church in this case. However, if you are drawing on location, your eyes are actually going to be wide enough to capture the whole scene from top to bottom. When I'm picking a spot to sketch from, you should always anticipate things that may happen. For example, the sun may move the semi, move into you or the shadow me move away or cars may pop in front of you, or the business may open up a business and push. There are cuts out to where you are sitting. This is actually a good spot for sketching the church. Because under the shade and I can see the front of the church. And it seems like I'm in luck today. There are some chairs here that I can sit on. These chairs are owned by anyone. It's best to ask permission before you take them. If you want to sit on dreams slaps, they may look stable enough. But I probably wouldn't advise you to do so because I know those gaps things may fall into the drain. So that's spot under the tree earlier was where I wanted to sketch, but I found out that it's actually a spot frequent by smokers and there's a truck that's ******* blocking my view. So sometimes you may want to again, just spend some time walking around, observed a surrounding. Before you settle down. I've decided to draw the red building instead because I couldn't find any spot where it's shaded for me to draw the church. So that's one thing about urban sketching some time to come out to or location one draw something specific. But the thing is, you may not be able to draw that due to conditions such as the bladder, the traffic people could be any reason. So I may come back to draw the church again, some other date. So the last thing I'm going to talk about is a hat. It's good to get a hat to protect yourself against the sun and rain. And I was a highly recommend you get a portable stool, foldable one so that you can see anywhere you like. 8. Drawing on location: In this lesson, I'm going to show you a time-lapse video of my sketch. Now, all the tools that features the techniques they were already discussed in the earlier lesson. In this lesson, I just wanted to talk about my drawing process and experience of sketching outdoors. This is the view that I'm sketching. If you want to practice along, you can download the reference photo I have provided. Alright, let's sketch. At the start of all my sketches, I will create multiple layers and I will name the layer so that it's easier for me to know which layer I am working on. If you do not name your layers is going to get confusing later on when you have too many layers, it's quite intimidating to work on a blank canvas. So for beginners, I highly recommend you use drafting lines to mark out the composition first to get a feel of how your sketch is going to look. At this stage of laying down the drafting lines. You will also be able to identify challenging aspects of creating this sketch. So for example, with this sketch, you can see me trying to scale down the sketch because I actually ran out of space. So I have a tendency to draw bigger and bigger as the high draws. So with the drafting lines, this will help me mark out the compositions so that I can stay within the composition and not run out of space later on. Any mistakes you make at this stage can be avoided. So just remember the mystics and a Ford making the same mistakes while you ink sketch later on. So here I'm trying to find out where's the vanishing point. And I realized that the bulk of the drawing that I've just drawn on there don't match up to the perspective. So I've decided to just mark out the vanishing point and draw the diagonal lines to the vanishing point. So when you are drawing on location, you can rely on observation skills for drawing. But if you know the laws of perspective, you can actually use that knowledge to help you make a more accurate sketch, which is what I'm doing right now. I will find a vanishing point and I will draw the diagonal lines to the vanishing point. It's also much faster to find a vanishing point. Because if you are drawing from observation, it's going to make you more tired, faster as you are always trying to observe, trying to measure what you see when sketching. Try to draw the big ships first before drawing the details within those shapes. And try to get the perspective accurate at the start. Because if you get the perspective wrong, that is going to affect all the other elements that you are going to draw it later. For example, if you get the perspective of the building wrong, it's going to affect all the windows on the walls of the building is going to affect all the pillars. So if you're building looks like it's skewed, then the windows are going to appear as if they are skewed. So it's very important to get their perspective accurate at start. And having drafting lines. That's really going to help a lot. As you become more experience with drawing, you will be able to identify your own habits when it comes to drawing. For me, I have the tendency to draw bigger and bigger and run out of space, which is why I like to use drafting lines at the start of the sketch to mark out the composition. I also have the tendency to get the perspective wrong occasionally. So nowadays, if I see a scene were very obvious perspective, I will try to find the vanishing point and Horizon first. As you become more experienced, you are techniques will also evolve and you will improve. To make your lines look more confident and you just have to close up your lines. Don't have any gaps, and don't use too many lines when one line will do. So. For example, if you are drawing the edge of a wall which is represented by one straight line, just draw it with one straight line. Don't draw it with three lines joined together. Which is why I said, don't use too many lines when one line will do. This will improve your sketch noticeably. It's going to make your sketch, your line art look more confident. For the truck that I'm currently drawing, I'm comparing the size and position relative to the site of the building. You just saw me erase that because I got the size and location of the truck wrong. When you're drawing, spend some time to observe the relationship between what you are drawing with things that you have already drawn. So for example, if I want to draw the truck, I was span a few seconds just to make sure that a truck is in the correct position before I draw it. Because if you draw it in the wrong position, you can undo. But that's going to waste some time. So if you undo too many times, it's going to waste a lot of time. It's better to get it right the first time. Spent a bit more time to observe, get it right the first time rather than draw it wrong and undo and draw it again, it's double the amount of work and time spent when drawing. Always look out for overlapping elements because overlapping elements, we'll create this sense of depth. I will always look for elements in the foreground that overlap, elements in the background. So now I'm currently coloring the sketch with the colors going onto its own layers. And I have just applied an alpha mask to that layer. So when I'm painting the textures, Textures will be painted on existing colors. They will not be painted on the white space. So that's very useful to use Alpha masking. I did not draw the windows with black lines. Instead, I'm using white to draw the window frames. How I'm drawing the windows now, planned in advance, I could have used black lines to draw the windows and the window frames and color the window frames with white later. But it looks so much better to draw the windows with white. Again, rate in this case. Also for elements that do not affect the form of the structure. For example, we have windows on the side of the wall. The windows don't actually change the form of the wall. It's the h of the war that changes the surface of the wall. The balconies come out of the wall. We have awnings that come out of the war are attached to the wall. So those will be drawn with solid black lines. But for things that do not affect the physical form, I would sometimes just not draw them with black lines and add those details later on with other colors. With pre-planning, with planning in advance, sometimes you can create this very nice look. So while sketching, I always try to mix and match different style. You don't have to use black lines to draw everything. Sometimes you can just use solid colors to create shapes. When coloring, It's also good to work from big to small. So color the big shapes first before you fill in the details with spots of colors. For beginners, I highly recommend you get very familiar with Procreate as well as the digital art process first, before you head out to draw because it can be quite intimidating for beginners sketching out on location the first time. So when you're out on location, you don't really want to think about where are the 2s or the brushes you need? How can I create a layer mask or Alpha masking all those features, functionalities and two's should be very familiar to you before you hit out to drop. Because while you're outdoors or there are going to be things that will affect your performance, such as the weather. If the weather is too hot or too cold, you're going to think about your firm and while you are drawing. So you really want to know procreate and digital workflow at the back of your hand when you're drawn. So that when you're drawing you, you're not actually thinking of how you're using the software. You are not thinking of the digital art process. You are just drawing. When you're drawing, you're just drawing. Don't be disappointed if your sketch doesn't turn out the way you have an vision. Because that's part of the funnel with urban sketching, you may draw with a certain style at home. When you are outdoor sketching, there are so many things that can affect your performance. And when you look at the end result, it could be something that's totally different from your usual style. And that is great because you have just discovered a new style. If you have made any mistakes, that's great as well. Every mistake is a learning opportunity. So the more mistakes you make, the faster you are going to learn. I still cringe when I look at some of the earlier sketches I have made when I started urban sketching, but that's part of the learning process. So now I am painting the shadows. The shadows are right at the top layer or somewhere near the top layer has multiply mode. So the shadows we'll multiply over the colors beneath. This is a very useful way to paint shadows because if for some reason, if you want to change the color of the building and make it blue instead of red. Shadow layer is still there and a shadow we'll multiply over the new blue beauty. So it's great to work with layers. And if you need to delete the shadows, or you can just delete the layer with the shadows. Painting all those little spots of colors and adding details is probably more time-consuming compared to painting the big shapes. So on the right side, the bottom right side, there is a fence that overlaps the building. I did not draw the fence with black lines are true defense, as you can see with green lines, it's good to mix and match different styles, and it's good to explore different styles. You don't always have to draw everything with black lines and color within the black lines. With mixing and matching of different styles. It's going to make your sketch look more interesting. If you take a look at my layers palette, right now, there are so many layers, so it's very important to name your layers. So I have the fence and bicycles on the right side on their own layer. And if I need to remove the fence, I can just clear the layer or make that layer invisible. And now I'm adding some street lamps. The background is looking. How should I say empty? So I need to add some buildings in the background because there are some buildings in the background. Now for elements that are in the background where you can't really see much details. You don't have to draw that much details. Sometimes I would just block out elements in the background with shapes rather than draw them with lines. And if I want to draw elements in the background with lines, I would draw them with the inner lines because we've perspective things that are in the foreground, they are appearing, they will appear to be bigger. Elements that are in the background will appear to be smaller, and this will apply to the thickness of the lines as well. Notice the two street lamps in the background on the left side, which were drawn with white. They are actually supposed to be black. However, I chose white instead because I want the white to stand out to contrast against the background. Here I'm just adding little details like the chairs that this restaurant people standing beside the peeler. I'm also trying to see where else to add details. The last stage of my sketch will involve adding textures. Digital art is going to look at digital most of the time, unless you are really skilled at using textured brushes to draw and paint your sketch. For me, my style, it's very stylized and I want to add some texture to the ground, to the walls, to the flat colors, just to make the digital sketch look less digital. And it really helps when you add those up. Backup max, dose ink blobs here and there. I was really lucky with this cache because the weather was fantastic. It was sunny and light and shadows are so beautiful. Actually, it's not complete yet because I just discovered some details that I have left out accidentally when compared to the scene in front of me. So I'm definitely going to add additional textures to the sketch to make this sketch looks more likely. 9. Touchup at home: Now that we're back home, Let's take a look at our sketch and see if we can improve on it. If your first sketch on location doesn't look great, don't be disheartened. It can be quite overwhelming to apply all the techniques that you have learned at home, out on location. So just keep on practicing. The more you draw, the better you will get and the more confident you will be. And your sketch is going to look better and better with each new scene that you draw. So let's take a look at the layers palette. You can do some touch up at home. In this case, I'm going to maybe add some textures. Sometimes I may also draw details that I may have accidentally left out while it's catching on location. So in this case, I may just want to add some textures to maybe the building. I'm going to press and hold here. Dropper. I'm going to make this color a bit darker. Make sure you have named your layers. Otherwise, it's gonna be very tedious to look through all the layers to find out has the texture layer in this case. So I'm just going to add some dots. Just to make this look more life be. You can add details to get after you have done your sketch. Location. These are just very minor details. The next thing I wanna do is I have an empty layer here, which I will rename. I'm going to put the street name. So let me just name the street. And I'm going to use a white brush to just write down the name of the street and also the data that I've drawn on this. It will be good to always do this at the end of your sketch so that you don't forget it. And it's the 11th of much. I may also want to sign my name somewhere. The last thing I want to do is add an empty layer. Let me just rename this D so that this empty layer is going to protect all the artworks that you have. And if you accidentally draw on this layer, you can always go back to the empty layer and clear the layer or delete this layer. So this is a protective layer that I find is very useful because sometimes when you open your fall, you may accidentally swipe your finger on the file and it creates a stray mark that you may not know it's there. But when you close your file, that file is actually saved and it was going to push to undo. So the next time you open you see the stray mark. You won't be able to undo, at least with this empty layer. You can still clear that stream out by just removing that layer. If you haven't made any mistakes, It's going to be quite difficult to correct it back at home because you are no longer on location so you can erase your mistakes, but to draw the details back, you need a reference, which is why I told you to take many reference photos, if possible, when you're out on location because they can come in quite handy. And if you need more practice, you can also just practice with the help of your reference photo just to build up your confidence, just to be more familiar with your techniques. So now, if you want to share your art online, you can do so by tapping here and tap here to share, make sure to choose the file format first. Jpeg is good. So in this case, I'm going to choose save image. Now let's take a look at our saved image. So this is the JPEG file. You can share it as this on Facebook or on a website or on any other social media platform. If you want to share this on Instagram, it may be good to crop it into r0 square. So let's see if we can do that here. And we can choose the composition that best represents the scene. So in this case, the highlight of this catches the red building. If I move here, I don't see much of the building. So let me just move it here and notice that the names of the streets and the date that I've written down, they are gone when I choose this composition. So you may want to do a square crop within Procreate itself and write your name and street name here at the bottom left, and save it as a jpeg rather than saving as a JPEG and then crop it, which is what I'm doing here. So when it comes to the digital workflow, there are many ways to achieve the same results. So let's tap here, done. So this is the square image that I can share on Instagram. 10. Goodbye: We've come to the end of the course. I hope you have enjoyed the course. So every sketching is fun and challenging. It can be fulfilling and satisfying as well. My parting advice to you would be this. Get yourself very familiar with the urban sketching techniques, the 2s and procreate before you hit out to sketch on location. Because when you are outdoors sketching on location, it can be quite stressful. You don't really want to think about how you can use Procreate or where to find the two's are the brushes to create certain effects. When you're out on location, you should focus on drawing what you see. So all those techniques, the twos, they should be second nature to you before you hit out to draw. And this is going to make the urban sketching experience less stress, who are more enjoyable and more pleasant. Alright, so I hope you have enjoyed this course. Thanks for following along with me. I hope to see you again. Bye.