Windows in Watercolor: Develop Drawing, Shadowing, & Painting Skills

1. Intro: They say that windows are the eyes to one's home. But they're also the eyes to the soul of the city, town, or a village. They're present in so many different shapes, colors, and styles. Some of them are very modest, just a simple frame and glass. Others are very beautifully decorated and look almost like a piece of art. In some of them, we can see a reflection, sometimes a tree or a cloud, and sometimes a whole world full of buildings, trees, people in the street, the sky, and so much more. While in other windows, we can see the room behind, a secret world of the owner. Hello, everyone. I am Julia Henze, an artist drawing teacher and urban sketcher from the Netherlands. As you can guess, in this class, we will learn how to draw windows. Drawing windows is not very different from drawing anything else, of course, but some things can definitely make or break your sketch. What are we going to do, first, I will take you through the supplies I'm going to use and give you my suggestions. Then I will explain how to draw windows in general, apply shadows, and paint glass and reflections. There will be plenty of tips from choosing good reference and drawing straight lines to achieving symmetry in the window drawing, dividing a frame into equal parts, and mixing paint colors. Of course, we will also do a lot of practice, and I will give you a few suggestions for additional practicing because as you know, practice makes better. By the end of the theoretical part and the practice session, you will have much more knowledge and confidence in how to approach drawing and painting windows. Finally, we will, step-by-step, creative finished project, a watercolor sketch of this beautiful window. This class has been designed for anyone who wants to learn how to draw windows. The theoretical and the practicing parts are very doable for beginners with little experience. The project part is a bit more complicated but if you follow all the other parts and do the exercises along with me, you will definitely be able to deliver a wonderful sketch and make your own sketches using the same technique later. Are you ready? Let's get started then. 2. Tools & Materials: Now let's talk about tools and materials. There are a few items you will need for this class. In the first two parts, I will explain how to draw windows and how to draw shadows. For practicing, you will need only plain sketching paper and a pencil, a regular or mechanical, it's your own choice. Further, we will need an eraser, a regular one. For sketching paper, I would recommend you get a kneaded eraser for watercolor paper because they are much softer than the regular ones and don't damage the paper. Fine liners. There are so many various colors and thicknesses nowadays. I like to try them out and use colors and thicknesses depending on the scene, my mood, and the paper I'll use. Sometimes I just mix them up in one sketch. You can use a fine liner of your choice. The only important thing that you need to keep in mind is that it should be waterproof. Because in the final project we will use watercolor all with a fine liner and if it is not waterproof, it will turn out very messy. As for watercolor paper, I'm going to use this watercolor paper pad for practicing. Maybe many of you are thinking now, this is a very expensive paper to practice on and your right, there isn't a user does actually, because I got it a while ago. But I don't really like painting on hot press paper because it's too smooth and it's also pretty unforgiving and we'll show any irregularities in my sketches and washers. But I use both sides for practicing so it makes it a little bit less deck that. You can use any watercolor paper features for practicing. For the final sketch, I recommend you 100 percent cotton paper or any other paper that you are familiar with and know works well with painting. This is a paper I'm going to use. It's a cold-pressed, very nice paper from Winsor and Newton. Further, a masking tape and brushes. This I'm ready to go EPA sketching brushes and a few that we will need to paint small details and reflections. All of these brushes are synthetic because I don't want animals to be harmed from any artworks. Nowadays, there are a lot of good alternatives for natural hair brushes. The largest one is a non-what develop a skill that ultimate material brushes synthetic squirrel hair for large areas. A smaller one, Number 8, is called a parallel. This stipple brush provides a lot of control, making painting much easier, especially when we need to do details, lines, or small shadows. Then you will need a rigger brush or any other long hair brush for painting greenery and reflections. I have this Winsor Newton synthetic sable brush Number 3, and the smaller brush Number 1, 2, or 3 for details. The size of your brush is, of course, depending on the paper format. The smaller the paper, the smaller the brushes. The next one is the watercolor itself. This is my current color palette, and some of this colors I'm going to use in this class. Some of them are not very common, but it's totally not a problem because it's okay and maybe even better if you use your own colors. In the project video, I'll be giving you suggestions for alternatives. You probably do have ultramarine blue and Payne's gray are the only colors I would recommend you to have all your palette anyway. All the other colors are less important. Further, we will need a lot of mixing space, so it will be great to have a large palette. The last things we will need are a jug of water, or maybe even two for rinsing your brush studio and painting, a spray bottle, and a paper towel. It will also be great to have a board that can easily be tilled foremost techniques or something to incline the watercolor pad or your sketchbook at between 20 and 30 degrees. That's all we need to get started. But basically, just use what you've got. The most important thing is that your paper is suitable for watercolor if you paint with watercolor, that you find liners are waterproof, and that you have a lot of fun. This is awful materials. Let's get started. 3. How to Draw Windows: How to draw windows. In this part, I want to show you how to draw a window so that it looks more or less realistic and attractive. I always say that simplifying objects is a good idea, but I very often see window drawings that are simplified too much. There are frames without any thicknesses, or there is no sense of depth at all. I can imagine that when you draw from a photograph for especially on location, it's not always easy to understand which lines matter and which ones do not. To make it easier for ourselves, let's look at some schemes that we can use in our drawings. The most important thing that we need to keep in mind while drawing is that we live in a three-dimensional world and all the objects we see are three-dimensional. Even a sheet of paper has a length, width, and height. The walls in our drawings, the brains and all the other objects have it as well. The first scheme I want to show you is when we stand in front of a window deepened in a wall and our eyes are at the level of about the middle of a window. Then we will see and draw the depth of the wall in all four sides pretty much equal. This doesn't happen very often on location because most of windows are not at our eye level, but much higher. When we stand on the ground and look up to the window, we will only see the top-ward and the sides. When we look down to a window from another taller building, for example, we will see the other way around, only the bottom and the sides. Where we will use the schemes in practice? We will apply not only to the wall but also to the frame and possibly other objects. For example, sometimes we have some ornaments taken out the wall around the windows or some shades about them. Here we also have to adapt, otherwise, our sketch will look flat and boring. We're not going too deep into drawing perspective in this class because it might already be quite complicated without perspective. By the way, I have two classes on perspective that will help you understand how it works. Still, I want to show you some things here and give you a few tips and tricks for drawing perspective later on in case you're already familiar with that. I very often see drawings in perspective with windows without any depth. I think it's missing an opportunity to make your drawing look really cool. Also in perspective, you can use a scheme to remember how to draw a window with depth. You also can see it of course, but as I said, the reality can be too overwhelming sometimes. When we stand on one side of the window, we can't see the depth of the wall close to us. We only see the wall's top, bottom, and depth on the other side like this. Looking up, we will only see the depth on the other side again and the top and looking down would be the other way around. This is how it looks in practice. Later in the tips and tricks video, I will show you how to find the middle of the window for dividing it into two equal parts and draw the vertical bar exactly in the middle. 4. How to Draw Windows | Light & Shadows: Another way to show or stress depth is by adding shadows. In pretty much all my classes, I explain this very simple method of drawing shadows. We don't look at the real shadows we see on occasion or the photograph. Instead, we decide where to have our light source, right or left, and draw imaginary shadows. Using this method, you will create much stronger shadows than trying to imitate what you see in reality. Let's put our light source on the left. This is my favorite side, maybe because I was born left-handed. Then all the shadows will be on the opposite side of the objects. In this case, the opposite side of the wall. Not of the whole window, of course. You can immediately see how the window pops up and looks much more engaging. We can apply the same technique to the windows in perspective. Remember we can see the left side of the window, so we also can see the shadow in it. We only see it on the upper side. When we look at the window from the other side we will see the shadows on the top again, and also on the left. [MUSIC] These windows look already nice, but this is not all yet. We also have cast shadows. These are the shadows. Not on the object, but from the object. I take another color to make it more obvious. The wall and the frame both create shadows. To soften them a bit, we can add some soft hedging. There will be, of course, a shadow under the wall from the window sill. Another one on the sill from the wall on the left. It has a triangle shape because it disappears at a certain point. That's all for shadows. I hope it's clear. But I also know that this topic is quite challenging to comprehend for many people. If you have any questions or doubts, don't hesitate to ask me in the comments below. You're definitely not alone. I'll be happy to help. 5. How to Draw Windows | Tips & Tricks: In this video, I want to share some tips and tricks that will make your sketching process easier. First, I want to talk about choosing a good reference for your sketches. Whether you draw on occasion or from a photograph, it's essential to choose a good reference. If your reference is not good, there is a big chance that your sketch also won't be that good. Those applies to all the objects and scenes, not only for windows. My rule is, the reference should be interesting to draw, but not too complicated. For instance, a reference with some lovely details on or around the window over the beautiful glass reflection might be a great choice. Well, it's seen overloaded with details or flowers, or whatever it is, will probably be very difficult to draw, overload the image and lose the meaning we wanted to convey. The same goes for textures. They're more challenging to paint, but you can use them to make this sketch really cool if you know how to do this. Again, in moderation. Windows exist in so many different shapes. The most common is a rectangle, a full circle, a circle top, a triangle, an oval, and there is so much more. A two simple window shape might look boring. So a very complicated one, especially in combination with decorations or alert frame, might make your sketch look heavy and not appealing. Second, I want to show you how to draw several windows in their own perspective. I see a lot of beginning artists trying to draw all the windows in the same manner, whether they are close to ours or in the distance, they try to draw them equally detailed. However, we don't need to draw windows in distance details at all. We only want to create a suggestion of a window. So in most cases, a few strokes and the shape of a window will be more than enough, and it'll save you a lot of time. So when we draw windows in perspective, the closest ones, we will create a detailed. We will draw the frame thicknesses and all the shadows and reflections over one, two, the windows. Farther from us, we're what a little less accurate, less detailed, and the windows in the distance will appear just as a suggestion. Now, I want to show you how to draw straight lines and symmetrical windows. The questions I often get from my students are, how I draw straight lines without a ruler or how do you draw everything so straight, and now I think it's time to reveal the mystery. First of all, drawing straight lines, circles, or whatever, this is a matter of practicing. Unfortunately, there is no other way. However, when you draw lines horizontal to the edge of a sketchpad or sketchbook, you can use the flowing trick. It's very easy, but you should be very careful doing this. So what you need to do is to put your hand down on the table, put your fingers against the edge of the paper block and draw a line softly pressing hand on the table and against the edge. Paper can be very sharp, so please be careful. Now we have a straight line which is also almost perfectly parallel to the edge. Let's draw another line at the bottom. The same idea just from the other side, and the line at the top, we can draw each sheet from this bottom side, so we just rotate the block and draw it in the same manner. When the line should be farther from the edge, we keep the hand at the same position and only use the length and the pencil. You can of course keep drawing all the lines in this manner, but actually once you get the main lines on paper, you can do the rest as usual. Now, let's take a look at how to get our windows to look symmetrical. Most of the windows we see around are symmetrical or pretty much symmetrical. It's important to keep them this way in our sketches. By the way, when you draw a whole scene with many windows, it doesn't really matter if every single window is symmetrical because you look at the whole scene at once and get a general impression of it. However, when you draw a single window, it might look quite messy if one or more window parts are much bigger than the others. So to draw a symmetrical window, we have to draw the window's biggest shape first, the outer frame will always work from big down to small and not the other way round. To divide the window into two equal parts, I need to find the meeting point by connecting the rectangles corners. The meeting point is precisely the middle of the window. Now, we only need to draw the middle line, and it's done. Now, imagine that we want to add shutters to the window. The width of the shutter is usually the half of the window. We use our pencil and a nail to measure and transfer the length of the line. Now, we do the same with the shutter on the right, measure, transfer, draw the shutter, and now we have two pretty much perfectly equal shutters. Of course, there are usually much more details, but it's just to give you an idea of how it works. Another useful thing I want to show you in this video is how to divide the window into six equal parts. It's a little bit more difficult than what we did before, but it's also a great and helpful trick. So the first steps are the same as before. We'll find the meeting point by connecting the rectangles corners. But this time, we draw both the vertical and the horizontal lines, and then we connect the right corners with the left end of the horizontal line. You can do the same on the other side to ensure the best result. But as I already said, for me, sketching is not about perfection so I keep it this way. The intersections we get by connecting these points divide our rectangle into three parts. Now we draw the horizontal lines and wallah, there are six equal parts. As you can see now, they're almost perfectly equal. In my perspective classes, I say that you could easily measure distance in proportions on the pacing side, but it's so to do it in perspective. Actually, it's even impossible to do this when we draw outside or from a photograph because we simply have no idea of the weight of objects we draw. We can see ignore, measure it, only estimate. So we don't know the actual windows with when it's in perspective, but what we do know now is how to find the middle of the window and the shutters holopaw of a window. So we only need to determine an approximate window width, including open shutters and divided into four parts as we did earlier, but now in perspective. Let's take a look. I draw a rectangle representing the window with open shutters, connect the corners to find the middle of this whole thing, connect the corners on the right part to find the width of the right shutter, and do the same on the left to find the width of the left shutter. Now we have four equal parts, and we can add thicknesses to make it look more like a window with shutters. There's still one thing that might rise some questions. Very often, the window frame is deepened, like in this example, you can see that the left part of the frame is hidden behind the wall and the middle bar is not really in the middle, but you don't know how to deal with that. It's actually not very difficult if you've watched my perspective classes where I encourage you to draw visible and invisible lines to get the perspective right. So this is what we can also apply here. We draw a rectangle in perspective, at some depth through the wall on the facing side first, and then in perspective going through the intersections at all this window in one-point perspective, it will be slightly different in two-point because of a second vanishing point. But the idea is the same. Here the lines are parallel to the ground. Now we have the surface of the actual window, so we can connect each corners and find the center. This is how it will look in the end. So it's all for the theoretical part, it's time for your work. 6. Painting Glass & Reflections: In the class, urban sketching for beginners, watercolor sketch in three steps. I saw many of you struggling with painting windows. In this video, I want to show you a pretty simple method of making windows look nice without reflections. It requires some practice for beginning artists, but it's absolutely worth it. I will also show you some exercises to practice this technique in a fun and easy way, and then, I'm going to demonstrate a more complicated technique for creating reflections in windows in grayscale and in color. I think it will be quite complicated for you if you are a beginner, but I would say you can always try. The first thing we will do is to learn how to create an interesting window loop with some nice graded washes. We will use the wet-on-dry technique; painting with wet watercolor on dry paper. For the better result, incline your board with watercolor paper or your sketchbook at between 20 and 30 degrees. Before the start painting anything though, we need to wet our watercolor, don't be a moist bright on paper. Then we need to prepare a large amount of light paint for the wash. I mix blue color and a good amount of water on my palette, a little bit more water. I'll load my brush with paint and apply the horizontal lines across the top of the paper. The paint flows down the paper, forming a bead and accumulation of excess water at the lower edge of my brush stroke. Now, I add a little bit more pigment to the mixture, put my brush on the paper, pick up the bead, pull it down, and continue painting from one side to another adding more and more color every two or three brushstrokes. I want to encourage you to try painting from the lightest to the darkest as possible color so you really feel how the watercolor works. These exercises are not about creating a beautiful wash, but about exploring the possibilities of the paint and learning how to deal with it. At the bottom of the wash, I dry my brush and remove the bead very carefully. This is a very useful technique for a lot of different things. In the class project, we will also use it for painting walls. Now we will apply the same technique, but the other way around. Load my brush and apply it on the top of the paper. Now I want my wash to become light in tone, so instead of adding pigment, I add some clean water to the mixture to weaken it. I load my brush with the diluted mixture and continue to paint back and forth with my brush adding every two or three strokes more water. It's important to add the water not right on the paper, but to the mixture and mix it very well with the pigment. You have to paint quite quickly because otherwise, the mixture will soak into the paper and create a hard edge so that it will be tough to spread it out. Also here, I dry my brush and remove the bead. You can make your windows look very special by using more than one color in your wash. With this exercise, I take two complementary colors, blue and yellow. The task here is to create a nice wash without mixing the colors too much so that it will look like a reflection of a rising sun without any greenery in the middle. I begin to paint in the same way as I did before. Then, when I get to the point that I want to make the color transition, I wash my brush, dry it a bit, remove the bead, wash and dry it again, and load it with a light blue color I use at the end of the last wash, and begin to apply it a little bit lower. Now, I very carefully connect both colors, and then they blend by themselves. Then I add more blue color and proceed with painting. To make the bottom of the window even darker, I can add another blue color, which is a bit darker and has a slightly different hum. It makes the glass look even more exciting. You can use this technique for many different color combinations. For instance, yellow and blue for the sunrise, pink and purple for the sunset, and less contrasting colors like purple and blue, or blue and Payne's gray for any regular window. Now, I want to show you quickly why practicing with the bead is so important. In this example, we have two flower pots behind the glass. There is a chance here that when your paint such a window, the glass doesn't look very smooth because the paint dries up when you are trying to fill these corners around the pots and the leaves, and then you can't get the smooth gradient anymore. I wouldn't say that we will avoid it entirely, but the glass will look much smoother when you master the balance between the pigment and water to create and keep the bead. Now, let's try another technique. Imagine this is one window consisting of four parts. This time, I'm going to paint all the parts with the flat wash method without any gradient in the first place. I just evenly cover it and then put some darker blue at the bottom and let it spread and mix. Or another color pink, for instance. It's so cool to see the colors spread out and mix. Before we go further, I want to prepare another two windows for painting reflections. The first window and the reflection will be in grayscale that will help you understand tonal values. The second will be in color. I start with paint gray, a lot of water, not much paint. As we did in the very first exercise, add more pigment closer to the bottom. The second window will bring color. Now, the same as we did then the third exercise, I start with yellow. Remove the bead, clean my brush, load it with blue, carefully apply it to the paper, and connect the colors, pressing my brush a little bit harder than I did in the exercise to remove the excess paint at the same time. Then apply the graded wash to the bottom part. Now we have a few pretty cool washes here, but they don't really look like windows yet because as we already know, windows get shadows from the frame on the glass. Shadows can be very complex in reality, but since we want to keep things easy and fun, we're only drawing a dark line on the shadow side. Let's imagine that the light source is on the left again, then the shadows will be on the right side of the frame. Sometimes it's not easy to paint a straight line of a consistent thickness, so we need to practice it a bit. I'm using my pinky finger to help to stabilize my hand. By the way, it will be easier to put your board or sketchbook down on the table because when your hand is not supported, your lines might be a little bit shaky. I will try to do it at an angle. Anyway it's easier to create a straight line of consistent thickness when you move your brush in the direction of the end of the line, then your brush, and actually also your hand and your arm, are extension of the line. You just gently pull the brush from left to right and if you're left-handed from right to left, of course. It's exactly the same when we're going down. Try to move your whole arm, not only the brush. Now we can apply to our windows. I use pretty dark colors for the shadows to make my windows look more outstanding. To make the shadow look even more solid, we can add some dark paint with a smaller brush. For the windows with two or more colors, the shadows will also have multiple colors. Here, I apply burnt sienna for the yellow part. I think is the most suitable color here. Paint the line downward just a bit lower than the transition point. Clean my brush and go further with dark blue and then blend the colors a bit. The brown shadow drawing is already pretty light so I add a darker color here. Brown and violet will be great, I think. If you don't have brown and violet, you can use the same burnt sienna once again or any other dark brown color. The same goes for this window. I use a smaller brush from the beginning because the windows parts are quite small. One last thing about shadows here, when there is something large above the window, a balcony, or a sunshade, the shadow on the top will also be much larger like in this example. Practicing ideas especially if you get bored with practicing very quickly, I would recommend you to use different color combinations that are maybe not suitable for paintings for windows so much, but they're definitely very fun to play with. We need to make practicing attractive because if you want to improve your drawing skills, you have to practice a lot. Use two or three colors to create gradients, add more or less water, remove some paint between the colors, try to paint at an angle, add some darker paint when the first layer is drying and so on. Many of these techniques might be very useful for your paintings and ones that aren't, are good to remember so that you won't make mistakes in your actual artworks. It's also a good idea to vary the size and practice to color inside small shapes and learn to manage the amount of paint and water, for the same reason, to make it easier for the actual artwork. This is just an example of how you can do with practice. You can of course, choose to paint many more different shapes, use different colors and variable sizes. The more you practice, the better the result. You can, of course, also practice with shadows. Reflections are more challenging to draw, but even if you are not very experienced with watercolor, I recommend you to try to paint at least one window with me. It's a step-by-step process that will help you understand how watercolor works and you can make your windows look really cool. There are, of course, a lot of different techniques in watercolor, but in essence, one always work from lightest colors to the darkest and also in this case, we will step-by-step apply layers from the lightest to the darkest. I will paint the windows simultaneously to spare the waiting time. First, I want to show you how to paint trees and reflections in a pretty simple way. You can also use the same technique for painting not reflected trees, but then you will probably need to add more details to them. Anyway, there are a lot of different techniques to paint trees. I want to show you two of them that I like the most. I'm going to use a rigger brush for this. If you don't have a rigger, no worries. Any long hairbrush will probably work well, I hold my rigger brush as far towards the end as possible and perpendicular to the paper surface. I'll loosen my wrist and start to paint short lines at the top of the tree, moving back and forth and gradually making the tree wire. It's a very relaxing and natural movement. Then we can release a darker color, the same paint's gray with less water at the bottom of the tree to make it more robust. By the way, trees and other objects are usually light at the top and darker closer to the ground. The second method is my favorite. I'm just delicately, again with a relaxed wrist, tapping watercolor paper with my brush, rotating it, and pressing a little bit harder sometimes. It's essential to have your brush almost perpendicular to the watercolor paper. These techniques require a bit of practice, but it's absolutely worth to master them. Now we do the same thing to create reflection in our grayscale window beginning with the lightest color, which is just a bit darker than the first layer and making it darker closer to the bottom. Now let's dry it for a bit. In the second window, I want to paint a reflection now our window with shutters across the street. Imagine the shutter is red or dark red. Then I take the color I would use. If it wasn't a reflection, add Payne's gray to make it less bright and paint the shutter. I add some darker color to the bottom and paint it lighter at the top. Create a sunny feeling. I keep painting, mixing the colors of the actual objects with Payne's gray to make them look the light reflections. Maybe you've already noticed that I don't have greens on my palette. I prefer to mix greens from yellows and blues because mix greens are much livelier and more beautiful than ones from the tube. If the actual window frame would be green, I mix yellow, blue, and some Payne's gray to make its reflection. To practice green area reflection a bit more, we can paint a bush in the corner with the same colors, yellow, blue, and Payne's gray. Our left window is dry. Now we can add shadow and some darker color to the shadow side on the tree to make it look even stronger. Every time the paint dries lighter than we want it to be, we can add another dark layer. But know this, that the previous layer should be really dry before you apply the next one. Now we add the shadow to the other window, again, with burnt sienna and burnt violet at the top or your own colors that you use previously. Mixture of ultramarine blue and Payne's gray at the bottom part. May be darker pigment with a smaller brush. Burnt violet darkened with Payne's gray for the shorter slats. Here, green mixture we already had also darkened with Payne's gray. We may not forget the dark shadow from the shutter. We keep adding darker colors until we're satisfied with how it looks. That's all for this part. I hope you now understand how it works. Of course, the most important thing is to practice and to experiment. The more you practice, the better the result. However, as I always say, don't try to do it perfectly. Sketching is not about perfection, but about an impression, about the story you want to tell you viewer. In the next point, I'll give you tips and tricks on choosing your reference for a sketch, drawing several windows in the quickly spun of time by simplifying objects, drawing straight lines, symmetrical windows, and much more. 7. Class Project | Painting a Window | Part 1: Now we'll learn how to draw windows in general, add shadows and depth, painting windows and reflections. It's time to put all this knowledge together and create a beautiful window sketch. I chose this reference for a few different reasons. First, it's a nice picture with some sweet details, such as these wonderful green shutters, wire tubes, curtains, and flowers. Second, we have some lovely textures on the stone frame, which are not too complicated to draw. Third, this photograph reminds me of Italy. Its old and charming tones, delightful squares and their streets, the warmth of the sun and the cup of the most delicious coffee in the morning. Then a windows sketch turns out to be more than just a drawing. It's a memory book, a book full of the sweetest and most pleasant memories. If you prefer to use your own reference, it will be probably a little bit more challenging to follow all the steps, but I'm sure you can make it work, so let's get started. The first thing I want to do is to create a thumbnail or actually a preliminary sketch. If you've watched my previous classes, you may have already noticed that I love thumbnails, and the reason for that is, that I want to know how to determine the composition, decide what materials I'm going to use, how I'm going to use them, which paints I have to make to create the colors I want and so on. Otherwise, I will need to make all these decisions while I'm in the drawing process. Everything should happen very quickly and then I don't know what to choose, choose the wrong color, apply it to the wrong place and my artwork is horned, we don't want it to happen in this way. So thumbnails it is, or in this case, a correct preliminary sketch. Here we don't think a lot about the composition. We just follow the reference for that matter. We're trying out different fine line of thicknesses and colors. If we have something to choose, what works better? What doesn't work at all? Warm-up our hand by drawing fast with loose lines. Here is no place for perfection. We're only loosing our hand and try to find out what will work in our final sketch. I have two yellows and two blues on my palette that I mostly use for mixing greens. These are quinacridone gold, nickel azo yellow, cobalt blue, and ultramarine blue. Alternatives for mixing greens may be, for example, cadmium yellow light with ultramarine blue, Winsor lemon with ultramarine blue, Winsor lemon with cobalt blue, Hansa yellow with ultramarine blue and Hansa yellow with cerulean blue. I try different portions of pigment and water. Look what mix I like the most and what works the best for light parts, mid-tones, and shadows. This is definitely no rocket science. It's something that you just need to try out many times before you get the hang of it, before you find a good balance between the amount of water and the paint and between the amount of one color paint and another. We need three tones; light, mid-tone, and dark. By adding more yellow we get a lighter and fresher green. By adding more blue, we get the darker shadow green. The water makes every color look lighter anyway. I decided to choose the mixture of nickel azo yellow, and ultramarine, maybe in combination with cobalt blue, which creates a little bit softer green and I want to try to use these three colors for actually all greens in this sketch for the wall, the frame, the shelter greenery, and the plant, or just by varying the amount of paint colors and water. For the stone frame, I think the mixture of potters pink and a little bit of quinacridone gold will work very well. It's a warm mixture that is not to present and is quite similar to the color in our reference. If you don't have these colors on your palette, alternatives may be, for example, ocher with alizarin crimson, ocher any pink we have or yellow you have with a little bit of purple or umber or burnt sienna. Just try different combinations and see what colors you get and what you like the most. Here, it's essential to add a lot of water to the mixture, to paint this stone frame really light. The amount of water plays a huge role in painting. Look how dark in a mixture of yellow and ultramarine might be when we add a little water and a tone of ultramarine. As you've probably noticed, I have already decided that in my final sketch, the light source, will be on the left and the shadows on the right. The flowers, I'll be using opera pink, alizarin crimson, and perylene violet. Alternative may be, quinacridone rose with ultramarine blue, permanent rose, rose deep red, or any other rose with a violet or purple or any other combination you like for flowers. Now we made the preliminary sketch we've played with colors and we'll find out what would work the best. I think we are ready for the final sketch. 8. Class Project | Painting a Window | Part 2: I start with a pencil sketch and try to draw with more or less straight lines. In some of my other classes, I explained how to create more dynamics by drawing with skewed lines. But this time we want to draw in a more traditional style, creating the tension by the contrast between light and shadow, so straight lines, straight shapes. If you find it difficult to draw a straight line at once, just rotate your drawing pad and use the method I explained in the tips and tricks video. This window is the only object in this picture, so it's important to draw its metric correct. We use the same simple method that I showed you before. I have the depth and the frame here, everything we talked about before. The shelter should also be symmetrical. You can use the pencil or the nail method to check it. But it's also good for you to just look at the elements on both sides and try to compare them and reproduce the size and the curve from one to another. But don't overdo this, it's still a sketch and it's still shouldn't be perfect since we're all still practicing. Even if I tell you it's the final sketch, it's one of the many sketches you will make in your life. It may be imperfect, it may even feel, it's just one of thousands and thousands of steps to mastering. Now we have our pencil sketch, let's outline it with a fine liner. I made the lines a bit lighter and just drew everything once again. If you don't have any waterproof fine liners or you don't like to work with them, you can stick to the pencil. Probably we won't see a lot of these lines later anyway. Now I want to remove all the pencil lines and we can start painting. First of all, we need to wet our watercolor paints of course to prepare them for painting. Then I create a good amount of green mixture as a yellow and cobalt blue. Start to paint the wall in the same manner as we did in the practicing section. So graded washes are not only good for glass painting but also painting in general. The only difference here is that I don't paint in strokes from left to right, but I still have beads at the bottom of every stroke which prevents the watercolor from drying too fast so that we get hard edges, bad blended areas, and unappealing marks in our sketch. I keep painting and add some ultramarine blue to the mixture because ultramarine is a granulating pigment which means that it looks grainy as it dries, and it creates a very natural, nice, and beautiful texture. I paint with the same color over the planters and only leave the flowers unpainted. Add more ultramarine blue to make the mixture darker. Paint the green frame and the shutters, adding more blue or yellow along the way, and leave the lightest parts unpainted. Make a more yellowish mixture for plants and also vary the amount of yellow and blue. Still the same color but look how many different tones you have here. This is the power of mixing colors. The technique I use for painting plants is very similar to the technique I use for painting trees and reflections, but this time use a brush larger. I paint the flowers while the leaves are still wet so the colors flow in each other and create this beautiful transition. I make a very light mixture of ultramarine blue and Payne's gray but adding quite a good amount of water, mixing all the three ingredients very well. Less water for the darker parts like the bottom section and the shadows in the curtain pleats and folds. Then I paint the shutter slats lighter than the rest of the shutters because they are in the light Apply the same mixture to this window bars and share that to the greenery. Remember the light source is on the left, the shadows on the right. Now, I take some potters pink apply it to the paper. Add quinacridone gold and go on with painting, adding more of one of the other color. This is the second technique I showed in the practicing section. Remember, when we paint it with a lighter bloom and added a darker one later. Now we'll do the same, but we keep alternating and make a little bit darker closer to the bottom But the darker green make sure I paint the dark parts of the planters Now the wall is dry, we can add shadows from this stone frame and the wires Paint the shadows from the slats The background behind the flowers is also in the shadow. I think perylene violet and ultramarine violet will work great here. If you don't have these colors, you can use Payne's gray with some other, violet or purple. The flowers and the blenders create quite a big shadow on the wall. We need to paint it too and for this shadow, we will use a technique I haven't shown you before, but it's really not that complicated wherein the brush and wet a larger area than we need for the shadow. Then we apply the color and turn the painting around because of the ways our shadow will be darker at the bottom and lighter at the top. Darken it a little bit more and wait for a few minutes until the paint is dry enough to stay in its place. Now we darken the shadow on and form the wires. Add a mix of purple and violet and alizarin crimson to the shadow side of the flowers. More purple and violet to the darkest areas. I paint around the flower to define the flower shapes. Not very precisely, just to create a suggestion. We'll allow a green mixture, a lot of ultramarine this time. You can also take pure ultramarine to create a very core shadow. By the way, we paint a dark shadow under the edge of the planter. Draw the leaf shapes the same mixture with a bit more of water. Again, where the very dark paint we add shadows to the window frame and the shutters They pop up immediately Now, I take a mixture of potters pink and ultramarine violet, and paint the shadow side of the stone frame. Add some more violet to darken it and apply it to the left side. Maybe it's a little bit too dark, so I dry my brush with a paper towel and make it lighter. Use the same color for the dimples in the stone frame. Paint a few more. Make a light mixture of Payne's gray and ultramarine blue for the curtain's folds and paint them. Spreading the paint to soften the edges. Now, I make my brush dry, take the lightest possible green from my palette and apply it to the white parts of the shutters, so they seal the rest of the colors, and do the same with the frame bars. A little bit more pigment though. Now, I clean my brush, wet it a bit, and carefully spread the dark shadow on the shutters to show that the slides are at an angle. I love my shadows to be really dark because they make my sketches look very strong. I apply more dark paint to them until I'm satisfied. The same is for the curtains. Every new layer make them look more interesting and realistic. I keep looking at my reference and just paint what I see. There behind the shutters will be darker. By the way, you always have to keep in mind while painting that when you have objects in different planes in fore and the background of a scene, the one in the background will be darker around the one in the foreground. Now, I add lines and dimples to the stone frame and the curtains with my fine liner. Add a dark shadow from the frame to the curtain, again with a mixture of Payne's gray and ultramarine blue. Much darker in the corners to make the shadow look very strong, and we also have a dark shadow from this stone frame on the wooden frame. Here again, our green mixture with a lot of blue, less yellow, and just a little bit water. Again, I make the area behind the shutters darker to make the shutters pop up. Of course, the part of the frame that is not in the shadow should be lighter. A few small shadows and details, and we are done. 9. Final Thoughts: Thank you guys so much for joining me in this class. It was a pleasure for me to get everything together. I hope you've learned a lot and enjoyed practicing. But before I go, a quick summary of the main points that we have covered in this class. First, we've learned how to draw windows in general. Second, I showed you how to add shadows and create a sense of depth to make your sketches look more engaging. Then I gave you a bunch of tips and tricks that will make your drawing process easier. After that, we practiced with drawing glass and reflections. Finally, we learned how to get everything together in one final sketch. I'm so excited to see what you have created. Please share your drills and especially final projects in the Project Gallery. Also, let me know if you want to get more profound feedback. I'm always happy to help you grow as an artist. Also be sure to checkout our other students' projects to get inspired and to look at their interpretations, not to compare yourself to others, of course. Write down a few nice words of encouragement in their comment section, because being an artist is not always easy and we'll all need to hear something nice sometimes. I'm sure many of them will do the same in return, so we can build a strong creative community and help each other keep going. If you share your artworks on Instagram, don't forget to use the hashtag, juliahenze_skillshare. Also, if you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions, please leave a comment in the discussion section under the video, I'll be glad to answer. Thanks again. Keep sketching, keep practicing, and keep enjoying everything you do. See you in many other classes. Bye bye.