Winter Landscape Art in Ink and Watercolors

1. Introduction: Hi there, my name is Toby, and thank you very much for joining my class all about urban sketching in snow. In this class, I want to show you how to sketch snow, which seems almost silly, doesn't it? Cause snow is white, so how can you sketch it? Well, I think we all probably know that snow is one of the things which is actually really hard to get especially when we're using the sort and wash, ink and watercolor techniques because we don't have white in our palette. We don't have white watercolor, we just have the white on our page. Well, what I want to show you in a series of lessons is, firstly, what color is snow? Snow isn't actually always white. We'll look through some photos and then we'll see that actually the snow is all about the shadows, the reflections, different colors, and actually, there's hundreds of different colors in snow. With this framework, we can practice drawing some snowballs, drawing a tree, and then making a cute little card, maybe a Christmas card or something like that with a snowman team. From putting all of these bits together, will learn about contrast. We'll do a little bit about different layers and to have an understanding that snow isn't soft and round and circular, and then we'll go on to our final project. Our final project, I'll provide you a reference photo, which is of course, in the class resources. With that reference photo, we're going to sketch it through five different stages, pencil, pen, first layer of watercolor, second layer of watercolor, and then those final interesting bold touches. We're going to sketch this whole scene and bring it to life. Trust the process, don't rush. Like with all watercolor, it takes all those stages until it starts to look good. But I'm confident that by the end of this class, you have something you're proud of and you have a lovely framework for capturing snow, getting those colors, those contrast right that you'll be competent to produce your own image. If you enjoy my stuff, please do follow me on my socials at tobyurbansketch on YouTube or Instagram. Of course, follow me on here and check out my other classes where I would love to join you in learning more about urban sketching and ink and watercolor techniques. [MUSIC] 2. Suggested Supplies: [MUSIC] Hello everyone. The first lesson, the first bit, we're going to look at the supplies that you might use, and this is more than everything that you might need. You certainly won't need all of this, but I wanted to give you a few different options, few choices, so that you can choose what you do have and be a bit flexible and get excited like I do about supplies. The first thing I've got here is a mechanical pencil. It's a 0.5 millimeter pencil. I like this because it's always sharp. There is always a good lead in there. It's got a rubber on the end. A Patio eraser it does work best. That means you can erase quite gently and things. But often, I just use the eraser on the end of my pencil as well. On the left here, you can see, what I obviously got, I've got my fountain pen. This is a Lamy safari fountain pen with an extra fine nib. I use Platinum Carbon Black ink, which is waterproof. Having waterproof ink is important, but the exact kind of pen it's not important, so here, I've got a Fude pen which will be useful, so a Fude pen gives us a really bold line as opposed to really thin line. Another option would be a brush pen or something like that. The idea of that is, as you can see, because it's got a bent nib, we can do such a huge range of marks. This really bold line is something which is going to be quite important, quite useful as we get to the end of our snowy scene, being able to create this high contrast lines is pretty important for this kind of sketching. Another option, like I said, is something like a brush pen, so brush pens got a flexible nib, like a very flexible felt tip and that means you can create really, really thick lines. There are lots of other things as well, this is a Fude pen, which is a bit closer to a felt just by Tombow. Another option is just to have a range of different fountain pen, so this fountain pen, for example, it's got a fine nib, so it's a little bit bolder, and it can also create all sorts of different marks and that's what fountain pens are good for, it's creating a range of flexible marks. What have we got next? After all pens, well, let's have a think about our watercolors. I always use this little old set of watercolors. I got 14 colors in there, but we're not using all of them. If you just pause the video now, on the right, you can see the colors that I will be using, which isn't a huge number. As I use those colors, as I use them in the videos and things, I'll make sure to explain which colors I'm using and why. If you look on my [inaudible] description, you will see, I'll list all the colors in the pallet, a moment for you. and you can see that in all my classes, I like to let you know exactly what colors I do have. Now with watercolors, comes brushes. I've got three brushes today, a large mop brush, which is one of my favorite things to use. It's similar to a Size 12 round brush. Then this one is a small round brush, nice for making little iron marks and denser bits of watercolor. Then somewhere in the middle is a medium-size round brush as well. You could really make do with just one of those brushes if you had two. Really important, things I always forget having some paper roll, I like to use towel, having a really big tub of water and my water is a bit mucky because I've been painting, but good to start with it clear, at least. Although as you see, it doesn't stay clear for too long. Now, what else? There is a couple of special things in this class. We've got some white marks we're going to want to add, now you could use some girth which is available in all sorts of brands and with that you just apply with normal brush. Advantage of that it's cheap. It will last you forever. You get these really big tubes like this. What I'm going to be using it my POSCA pen. POSCA pens are a brand of White Acrylic Marker. There are lots of different brands. They are quite expensive, like five pounds or so for pen, but they do, again, last quite a long time and the advantage of to control very well. Look how opaque that is? Not many white marks that you can make with watercolors and ganache are that opaque. Now in terms of paper, I'm just going to be using pretty basic paper by Taylor Ronnie, A4 student grade cold press watercolor paper. I do like to keep my board elevate by about 15 degrees, and all I do, is I just put a roll of masking tape underneath. That is everything I think you could possibly want to use in this class so without further ado, let's do some sketching. [MUSIC] 3. Start 'Painting Snow': [MUSIC]. What color is snow? That's a silly question; isn't it? Or is it? Well, in this lesson we're going to do two things. We're going to have a little play. Obviously, we're going to do a little exercise where we paint some snowballs and a tree. We're also going to start here by looking at some photos and a little bit of decision-making. Is snow white? Well, look all of these factors show that yes, snow is white. But how do we know it's snow? We know it's snow because of the shadows on these various scenes we're seeing white but we're seeing it's surrounded by dark. We're seeing contrast, and in this photo, in this murky scene, the snow is not even white. It's white compared to everything around it. It's called reflections. It's got a lot of blues where my mouse is, and it's got yellows and browns. Perhaps we need to break away from this idea that snow is white and that there's white in it. But there's also these blues look at all of this and within that some gold. Actually, snow can probably be whatever color we really want it to be. It might be a very crisp white. In this, we got this crisp white, but those trees are defined and the crisp white a few speckles again of high contrast is almost black if not actually black. Now we're starting to realize that okay, snow got some white in it, but not always, and also it's got lots of other colors. Let's see how we can take this knowledge and apply it into reality. I said at the beginning we'll do some snowballs. Here's three snowballs and a tree. We're going to have a look and a little play at different colors to make snow, and it's a bit of a practice of shadows as well. This is quite a fun exercise. These things can actually make really nice Christmas cards. Have a think about how you want to use them and if you want to splash or do them neatly. This first snowball we're going to do with moon glow. As I say here, don't worry if you don't have that. There's a lot of good alternatives and things like Payne's gray or doing some of the other mixes or using some of the other shadow colors. Its colors like shadow violet, for example, mangroves are lovely, shadowy color. What we're doing here is we're just applying a shadow, so imagine that light is coming from the top right of the screen. Actually, there's a shadow on the lower left of our snowballs, and if we apply that nice and gently, softly, and then we can soften that edge. We come in with a clean brush and we just scrub the edge to make it soft. Now we've got this soft graduating shadow coming across. Shadows don't just exist on the snow. When we had a look at those bridges, there are shadows underneath and shadows all around in the urban scene. So, a darker shadow will connect the snowball to the ground and make it feel much more real. Now, in the various photos we talked about blues. Here I'm using a cobalt blue but you could use an ultramarine, you could even use a cerulean or basically any blue. Ideally, a cool blue and we're using it in the same way. We're applying a really soft, quiet, gentle shadow across that lower left side of this snowball and just building it up. Payne's gray is another color I talked about briefly, is a potential alternative to moon glow. It's so much deeper, navy gray, almost navy blue gray. We can use that with our cobalt, whatever blue we use, and just deepen that shadow. You can see how I'm applying it, but because the pages wet, it's all going to soften together. At the moment it looks a bit separated and blotchy but it will just soften then we get that dark shadow as well underneath. We're starting to get shape instead of just a white block, this shadow is producing us some shape. Now, the last option is to do some mixing, a blue and a brown. I'm going to use cobalt and van **** brown. The more classic version of this would be ultramarine blue with a burnt sienna or burnt umber and that produces you a very neutral. As you can see, you can change that from being neutral to more blue but in more blue, you can change it from neutral to more warm brown, bilingual brown. Then we could do exactly the same thing, so nothing clever here. Exactly the same thing. Now we're creating a more neutral shadow. We could add more brown and make it more murky shadow and all this is doing again it's taking that white object. By applying the shadow, we're showing the viewer that this isn't just a white object. This is a white object with shape and it still appears as a white object because I interpret the shadow with shadow. I think it's really important to get that shadow underneath to connect this navel to the ground and to show that there's a shadow and a light source been cast from one direction. Time now to leave the snowballs behind and move on to our tree. Now I'm getting some green here. I'm using cascade green, it's the green I love playing with. It's a nice blue screen but you could use all greens and if you want to see them just have little rewind and just read. I've left lots of nice alternatives that you can use. We can also deepen that green with any of these shadow mixes but I'm using the cobalt and van **** brown to make two different greens, dark green and a lighter cascade green. We can now use that on our trees. Now, remember that trees also have shape and they are filled with bunches of leaves perhaps less so in winter but evergreen winter as well. They've got that white, which is sitting on top. We leave lots of white within our tree and we apply the green instead of loose patches and then we can bring that green down a little darker and apply the shadow underneath it. You've got white which is our snow and underneath it, we've got that lighter green as humans is an evergreen tree of course and then underneath that we've got our dark colors. Then we've got our darkest colors which are our branches, which we can just loosely apply and some of them will be covered in snow. We are going to see them as like solid lines but some of them won't be. We just got to remember that we're painting this as a part of. This isn't a detailed painting of a tree. This is part of the scene. We also have to remember what colors will build up. You have to leave lots of space and trust that as you build, things will work out. An already great example of this is negative paintings. If we now just apply a blue sky around it, notice how all of that white is now being contrasted and this is yet another time where we're talking about contrast because white only looks bright if it's contrasted against other things. Soon as we put in a blue sky and a bit of a blackish shadow underneath with some moon glow. Then our tree becomes an object and it's the same with our snowballs. If we apply that shadow underneath, maybe what we could have done is applied a bit of color around the outside as well and suddenly instead of just having a white through something a white shape, we now have a 3D object because we have given it shadow. Understanding those shadows and understanding the shadows are all colors. The colors of snow are not just white is what I'd love you to get from this lesson. [MUSIC]. 4. Next a Snowman: [MUSIC] This lesson also about the colors. Now, this time we're going to take 30 snowballs, the funny tree, and we're going to put it into practice with cute little fun snowman. A snowman is a nice way to start because it gives us the opportunity to create a little bit more of a scene around what is essentially a stack of snowballs, snowball bodies, snowball legs, and snowball head. It also creates a really lovely image which you might want to use maybe for a Christmas card or something like that. Now, as per the supplies lesson, just going to be using my LAMY Safari fountain pen, extra fine nib, and some black waterproof ink. Got a reference photo up in the corner there for you. What we're gonna do, we're just going to start with a loose sketch. We're not going to try and be smooth, we're not going to try and be clever, and we're not going to trying be perfect. But also we're not going to try and be smooth, but curves, snow isn't smooth. Now, we want to think snow is smooth. Seeing that lovely soft snowballs. Actually really look at that reference photo and just see, maybe next time you're out in the snow, just have a look. Try to make a snowball. Snow is not smooth, it's lumpy, angular, hard. It's got all edges and crevices. This, of course, is why it has so many shadows. Because if it was a perfectly smooth sphere and it would just have one smooth shadow on it, but it's not. It's got loads and loads of different shapes and shadows. We can exaggerate that angularity with our lovely loose-fit line work. Now as we get to the ground, we want to connect it to the ground. We're not actually seeing the bottom of the snowball. The bottom of the snowball is sunk, so we draw this edge of the ground instead of that. Then we've got a little touch like the arms which we can just pop in here. Then we put the other arm, of course, to just drop in on the other side. We can have a look around and find those other small shapes where the arm crazy and under the neck we've got dark shadows. What we're looking for is if we just demonstrate in the background, we're looking for planes or layers of the foreground, the background, and shapes within shapes. What I mean is where you see a line of snow in the background, we capture that little line of snow. Things like that also work as a horizon line. If you have a horizon behind something it grounds, it shows us the sky and the ground. Even though in this reference photo, of course, we are really only seeing any type background of ground. But having horizon lines are really useful way of just grounding in imaging and giving it some context. We're going to stop that is loads we could do, but what we'll do is we'll do some watercolors. We do these same principles we were doing before. We can come back and we can actually find some of those shapes within shapes, some of those planes using the shadows we covered in the previous lesson. Starting with some moon glow and remember there's lots of options you could use. I'm going to start with moon glow, using a really light and watery wash. We're applying the lightest shadows, the shadows which have the lowest value. This is the first wash and you can do several washes, often at least two or three washes in watercolor. We can still vary the density of shadow at this point a bit, but it's much easier to vary it when we come back. Notice how like with the tree, I'm leaving lots of white space. The shadows are, as we talked about, in different shapes, shapes within shapes. They're irregular, their snow is hard, so there were lots of white patches, but then within those white patches, there is dark and shadow. The shadows overrule on more in the left lower side of our snowman. But even on the shiny white sides, there's some shadow. Even within those darkest shadows, there's some reflective, bright snow. We're just gradually introducing that shadow all through our little snowman. It doesn't have to be entirely based on the reference, the reference is a really useful guide, but we're not being perfect. One aspect of not being perfect is in woodcuts, the ability to soften. It allows you to make your washes more varied. It prevents having too many lines. It prevents you overworking your image. What colors are best when you're been familiar when you're being suggestive and soft? Now, as before, that grounding shadow under the Snowman, which further demonstrates the shadow and the source of light. Then we're looking at separating our planes our layers. When I'm saying layers and I promised I'd come back to this, layers are a foreground, so our snowman is the closest layer to it, isn't it? Then our next layer is behind, and then the next layer is the background. What we're trying to get is this contrast between those layers, because the contrast is what makes things white. Where we've got these brightest areas, we're trying to get some contrast between them. So in my second layer behind the snowman, I've popped a little shadow which I've invented, which meets the brightest area snowman and now our layers are pulled apart and enhanced. And the background behind what a horizon line we can do with our furthest away layer is to just real suggestive lines. We can still suggest these bits of grass. We did that a little bit with our pen line, but now we can just use little watercolors and I'm using a bit of Van **** brown here. So moon glow for the shadows, but a Van **** brown, to suggest these tufts of grass. Again, if we bring them down to a snowman, we have them peeking out from behind them. That is doing two things. One, it is applying contrast. Suddenly our snowman gets pushed forward, and this pushing forward shows that he's a different layer, but the contrast doesn't just do that, doesn't just separate him and push him forward, it also shows how white he is, how bright some of these areas of snow are. Now, we move on to a second one. The same color, moon glow. So far, only two colors have been used. Now we're finding darker shadows. We found these big areas of shadow, this big shapes within shapes, now we're finding the lighter shapes within shapes. And we're getting these darkest shadows. We look where are they. They're between the snowballs and on the left-hand side and the bottom, and they are quite small, so the darkest areas are quite small. A good way of finding the darkest areas is to squint your eyes, and when you squint your eyes, you'll find yourself moving around and being like, "In the background there some dark shadows in the foreground, and this bit of grass is really dark." Don't forget to, just as we did before, soften. Just to talk a little bit more about softening, best done with a clean, slightly damp brush and you come and you just push around the edge of that watercolor, and to stop it being a hard line so you can't tell exactly where the watercolor start. Now, we can do a little bit of fun. This is no longer the exercises, this is us creating our own Christmas cards, so little bit of Van **** brown for the arms you saw me do in now. Bit of a scarlet lake for the nose. nice carrot nose, eyes and buttons, and things like that. So just have fun. Let your imagination run wild. Create your Christmas card. Or if you don't want to, if you want to just stop there with a lovely little scene, we can call it finished and move on to the next lesson. 5. Step One - Pencil Sketch: [MUSIC] It is time to start our final project, and we are of course starting with a little pencil sketch. This is my A4 piece of paper, taped down, and we're sketching this lovely scene, St. Mary's Church in Cheltenkings in Jordan, near where I grew up. A really lovely little church and a lovely little factory with a light dusting of snow. Now we are going, of course, to exaggerate that snow a bit, which isn't so hard to do now that we have all the skills. Like I say, let's take reality and be a bit creative. It's painting our decisions. Now, I'm using this a nought 0.5 millimeter mechanical pencil. I'm actually going to be a bit harder than normal. Normally, I be very light with my lines because I'm not going to rub the lines up. You can if you want, hook them up gently. I'm going to leave them there and I'm going to show you that it doesn't matter, that they'll be there and be interesting. It doesn't matter if we leave them. Starting with big shapes and I'm starting with this tree on the left. The reason is, that frames our composition already, that big tree sticking in frames our composition. I'm now just looking for shapes. Our roof is a couple of parallelograms. It's worth, when we're thinking about shapes or any part of it. Shapes got angles, but we can use our pencil if you want to line up those angles and then just work out the shapes approximately right. If they are, keep going. All these roofs are just triangles, with little other triangles next to them. Then we can find where the big vertical lines are. If we look again at the angles and the shapes, we'll see we're basically making a rectangle at the front, rectangle at the side. We can simplify things. There's all little extra bits and pillars and what not on this building. Those little bits can be left out, at least at this stage. Remember things like these bushes, they're just shapes. They're just little shapes and these pencil lines are just guidelines. It doesn't matter if they're a bit wrong because we're going to come back in with pen. We can always change things. Even with the pen, we can change things as long as we're gentle. Can get things like the path in which feels quite important so their flow through this image. Then just moving around finding the other important thing is this big tree for puffing up and we can change the size. I've made it a little smaller, perhaps. You give it a bit of asymmetry. We've got this big tree on the left, slightly smaller one on the right. Then behind the tree between the tree and the church is a bit of chaos. It's hard to see what's going on. Then invent things, just draw what you can see. This tower is obviously a really important part of our sketch. I'm exaggerating if you look at how I've done the lines perspective, I've floated them outwards, which is the wrong way around they should be going in. But it adds fun, it adds a pretty character. Why not? Basically, why not do it? Why do it? Because it adds character. Why not do it? Well, we're not after realism, so we can have a play, have fun. We can find all of our windows, things like that. We can find the doorways. It doesn't have to be perfect. You see, I've left out these pillars around the corners of the church and at the front of the church. Now, if I was sketching for another half an hour longer, I would add all these little details, but I'm not, I'm getting the essence of the scene and I'm having fun and I'm getting the snow. I don't have to add all the details. Just looking around, getting this basic purpose, that's all we need to do. Having done all we need to do, having been gentle with it, we can move on to the next stage, playing with our pen. [MUSIC] 6. Step Two - Pen Sketch: [MUSIC] I've got the same pen I've been using. Got our pencil sketch already, and this pen is my Lamy Safari extra fine with waterproof packing in it. It does need to be waterproofing. Even if you're using a fine liner, which is perfectly good, just make sure it's waterproofing so we can add our colors on top. We're now finding those shapes again. I'm starting upside down to start really gently and I mentioned this in the pencil lesson, we want to be gentle because even if we make mistakes when we're drawing these shapes, we can correct them. We can add the right lines, even if we've gone wrong, we can add the right lines and create textures and things, if we're gentle. Using a fountain pen upside down is a really great way of doing that. Now what we're going to do is move around, move around finding these pencil lines and not being worried. If I think a pencil line is wrong, I'm not going to be worried about editing it. Other side here. Now, I think this roofline is cut down a little bit so we can get the shape of the guttering on the side of it, so I'll move it down. It's now not perfectly aligned with the pencil, but that's fine, the pencil is a guideline. With these windows, I did them really quickly. Now I can decide if I want to move them left or right, make them bigger or smaller, and add in shape. We're looking at this an angle so we can see the edge like here. We can see the edge windows of 3D they've got a frame and we can see the edge of it. I'm now just going to add those edges in which I didn't do with pencil. Our doorway, we can add the edge in as well, the frame, but we can also add some of these other suggestive lines like the closure point in the middle. Can we see that in the reference? No. But it's okay to make up simple things, simple details. We're trying to show them this picture, we're trying to show them our scene, and if adding a door knocker to door helps show that we've drawn the door, that's fine. Then don't spend too long so move around going back and forward and moving to different areas and again, adding in these shapes. You can probably see more clearly now that it's dark. I've walked up perspective. It's not immediately obvious that it's wrong and I think that's probably because it's subtle, partly because it's done with confidence. Don't overdo it on details at this point. Remember, we've got more lessons to go. We're adding some colors. We can always come back and add some more details at a later day. Don't overdo it at this point and just focus on these really big clear shapes. The good example of this is our bushes, so bushes are shapes but texture. We did some really loose lines for them before, now we're going to come back and we're going to change that loose line into a slightly textured line but we're not going to worry about it being perfect. We're just trying to build on that pencil, build on that structure, and just quick loose feathery, loose leafy outline and we can build a few bits of shadow in. Where we know there's going to be shadows inside, we can start studying those few little leaves and things inside and there's going to be more leaves visible underneath, that's where the shadows are, and more of these leaf lines here, add more shadow that we're implying. These textural initial structural lines can also be building up towards aiding the watercolors and creating those shadows. Just the little things that we can start to think about, especially with natural things like bushes. Just notice how I jump around because I'm working near that window I spotted and I just want to slightly nudge the window to one side so I'll do that now that I'm nearer, I'll do exactly that. Then we can jump to our bigger objects, our tree over here and there's not that much to see in the reference photo if we're being so harsh on the reference photo, not much to see but we can, again, be creative. We can find our own shapes. We can come in with those same little loose feathery lines and just build up. Look at the reference photo to see where there are those little bundles, dark bundles of green, bundles of white, but also to have come with our own random lines and gradually build up those shadows, gradually build up those tint which we can then, in a moment, add our watercolor to and create a real fun image. We can also start our shadows on the ground. This is a really lovely example of how adding a shadow to the ground really crowns an object. By hatching in underneath and also by hatching at the edge of the path near the edge of the tree, we're really showing that the tree is an object, we're showing how it interacts with its surroundings, and adding the edge of the path around that. We're suddenly getting a scene just with these little touches and these little shadowy textural touches really do help. We can suggest the path in the distance and we can also create tiny little grassy marks in the foreground. When we do a snowman, if you remember, we have these little tufts coming up and they help with contrast. Well, much in the same way, these little dark tufts of grass are going to help with contrast showing that this white amongst the white little other tuft. Then we're back into what I call a chaotic background. There's a bush or something going on there. Draw, you can see door and oven vent. We can see there's a few bits, so we can see vertical lines, we can see also random lines, we can add those in. On the left, that's where we started. If you remember, I started the pencil drawing with this and big tree. I'm finishing the pen work with this big tree because it's so imposing and I don't want to make it too bold or too light. I want to make sure it's in the right place and I can only really do that with my pen once I've seen the rest of the image. Now it's got this nice little balance. It's got a flow through it. We've got the big shapes we started to build out and understanding of shadow and texture. We're ready to leave our pen for now. We can come back, so don't worry, we can come back and add our colors. [MUSIC] 7. Step Three - Add Colour and Shadow: [MUSIC] Time for the unbearable, perhaps the scary bit, but we've practiced now at this moment we don't snowball. Hopefully we are prepared trading those light colors and those little shadows. Now I'm going to use my mop brush to start with, which is a medium-sized mop brush equivalent to a size 10 or 12 round. I've also got my little brushes on the site, but I'm mostly going to be using that big mop. Under the reference photo, I've got a really big tub of water. That big tub of water helps keep the shadows nice and clean. Now, if you look at the sky, we need to make great decision. That sky is white gray, boringly, not fun sky, isn't it? But we can make it interesting. First thing I'm going to do is make our sky a bit more interesting. That will help with the contrast. It will contrast those roofs, which gives us the whiteness of the snow. I'm using our shadow color. I'm using moon glow and I'm applying it gently with lots of water with a big brush, moving it around, keeping it quite neat. Because I want that contrast. I want that edge where it goes from shadow, moon glow to white snow. Just move around. Notice how I'm not filling in the whole sky. You don't need to fill in the whole sky. We can build it up, we can build it down. But we don't need to have the whole sky filled with color. A few splashes still just a moon glow touching in little bits of pigment, and then adding in more life with some cobalt blue. Notice because it's wet, I don't have to paint that cobalt blue. It will do its own thing. Watercolors will paint themselves, they'll move. They'll flow down the page because we've got it elevated as well. Then we can move into the foreground. Still not the focal point, but the foreground. We've got our cascade green here. Much like when we did our snowball, we're looking for the shadow areas because we do need to leave lots of snowy white. I know we've gone to great lengths to explain that snow is not always white, but leaving white is a key part of creating the effect of reflections in snow. Using this green to find shadows in the grass, shadows in the trees. Applying it loosely and gently and in little patches. Again, lots of white paper so that we can leave that effective snow. Hopefully this feels similar as you're doing it, to when we added the green into our tree earlier in the second lesson of this class. Then, as before, come back softening some edges. I've moved to my middle sized brush. This is Size 8 and 10 round. It's actually a small quill or a small brush. Here we can soften those edges. We can start creating branch-like effects. The early process of watercolors never looks like much. But watercolors is all about building it up. I said this earlier in one of the first two lessons as well. It's all about just taking time and letting things buildup. We've got the same with these bits of green here in the front. Notice how squinting you your eyes, they're much darker, much darker than the grass. We can start with a nice stronger touches of green. Again, do you see how they're all very hard, little discrete blobs until we come in and soften. I've got my wet brush drying it, cleaning it slightly, then popping it back in the water, drying and cleaning it slightly. Then by controlling the water underbrush, we can control the effect we have as we move that watercolor around the page. Again, we still want to intercrete patches, we still want that white, especially the white is especially at the top of our objects, at the top of our chart, to the top of our tree, at the top of our bushes. Notice how I've left white at the top of these areas. Now, as well as these greens, we've just got shadows coming in with some more of the moon glow finding the shadows. The shadows on the path, the shadows under the tree and that kind of thing. Constantly looking for little shadows. By doing a little dragging of my brush along the page, just dragging it quickly along, you will see great interesting textures. It's a bit like dry brushing, especially on a path. It suggests someone walks along this area. Now we can start to find some of these warmer colors in our image. I've got a little bit of a Quinacridone sienna, just to really light wash with a little bit as well of Van **** brown in there. These gentle colors are just going to be loose. If I look at the color of the church is a very loose and gentle sandstoney color. Amongst all these other contrast and interest in the changes we've made to the sky. We don't need to go too overboard. Just start off with this gentle varied wash. Then similarly to before neatening up these edges. I was a bit untidy at the edge, and I want that snowy surface to stay white initially because it's bit untidy. I just come in with a clean brush and modify it a little bit. Again, same little mix of colors here. Now we're just going to gently find those shadows. There's always a bit of a shadow under the eaves, under the guttering. There's also a little murky bits, the bricks and have all the same color. Just by touching in little bits here and there, we end up with a lovely varied one. I'm building in a little bit more of that Van **** brown. Notice how this in the reference as well as the actual image. This wash is more neutral or imposing in that field. I'm just doing that to keep it closer to reality, but also to have a bit of fun, to leave it varied and interesting. Then changing back to that more warm brown, a bit of Quinacridone Sienna to show the different structures, to show those different pillars versus the actual top. It is at this stage where we start looking and thinking, is this working? Is it going in the right direction? Trust when I say, no one ever thinks it is. Don't worry at this point, just keep working and doing the processes. Now we've got some more shadows. Get more moon glow shadows in those windows and also shadows on the roofs, and more dry brushing. We did a little bit on that path, on that tarmac. But now, taking my brush and squishing it. I'm working really quick little movements with a brush really dry. It's really hard not to get my hand in the way. But you see how it creates that interesting texture, which suggests a complex set of shadows rather than just a loose splotch of shadow. There we go. That is the first watercolor a [inaudible] next we're going to add a second layer. [MUSIC] 8. Step Four - Develop Contrast: [MUSIC] We are on to the second wash of color. Now this is all about those deep tones, so it's bits of contrast. This is very much what we did with our snowman. When we came back, we'd had that light shadow, we added some dark shadows. What we're going to be doing, gently, is with as medium brush this time. If you have a look, I'm using a Size 8 round brush now. We can be adding thicker paint, so the same colors. This is a mix of cascade green and moon glow that's thicker, like maybe a very running honey. Not really dry, not like toothpaste, but quite thick paint. We are using it in the same way we did on assignments. Within the light shadows are areas of dark shadow, and this is where the contrast really pops out , becomes really noticeable. That's not till the next stage that things really come together. As I said before, with watercolors, don't worry, trust the process and just gradually build it up. But we can start adding bits of detail now. Within our extra bits of dark shadow, we can get little bits and dots of leaves, for example. We can get these little, really dark areas in the white. We can add little lines which are beginning to suggest branches. By doing so, we are building up from a very loose to a much brighter image. Those little scattered dots, these little dots, is where you're starting to understand what this white area is. You're starting to understand that it's got shape. It's got something, and its leaves poking out of snow. Just take your time and take it gently. Don't overdo it, but trust the process and don't worry, either. Where we notice areas of it blank, we can find loose shapes. On the left-hand corner, we've got these little bits of grass. But we can also just add our own little shapes, and just these little horizontal lines. Then we couldn't continue those across our snowy grass and other places as well. By continuing the same lines in different places, we unify the image. Don't forget, we can soften. In fact, softening and applying slightly middle tones is really important. Do not overdo it. Don't create an overworked image. Now coming around this path, again, finding these darker shadows. This time, I'm using mostly moon glow. I'm just finding little lines, just little bits and dots to add in. It's important to keep just looking around, moving around, finding those areas which seem too flat. And within those, we can add contrasting shadows, you lift them. We can really darken some shadows. Look under that tree in the reference photo, and if you squint, just look how dark that shadow is. Also notice, as we did, that we leave bits of white. That little slither of white at the back, little slither of white coming up the path, that makes it not flat. Just like we don't want anywhere too white, we want to have these little flecks of grass coming up to prevent it being flat. We also don't want our black areas, our dark areas, to be flat. To keep them there, we will keep flecks of white in them. Don't be afraid to go really dark. I said, squint to the shadow under the tree, we'll still squint to that tree. Look how old that shadow is in that tree. Then go for the experiment. Have fun, take a risk and go bold. The risk isn't in going too bold, it's in doing too much. If we don't leave that white space, then we just want a black, dark splurge. But if we work quite quickly and gently, keep it a little bit wet, and we go dark. Then what we're doing, we're increasing the contrast, and it doesn't look like much now. I said that before, and I'll say it again, it doesn't look like much now, but it comes together. We're just finding shapes. As we build up all those shapes, eventually, we have something really interesting. Also, you might notice the shapes and the movements that I'm using here, the same as the shapes and the movements I used to do the bushes in the foreground. But using the same shapes and movements, unifies things. Unifying things allows the person to visualize easily and understand that these are the same as that. When I was putting down these shapes, as before, it looks very clunky and very glamorous and clumsy, maybe. But then we can soften things. That's when I'm saying we need to work quite quickly. We need to rush. But if we work quickly, we can come back and soften our edges before they've all hardened. We get this less clunky, more varied area as we fill in the darkness in the background. Again, remember how I said? Don't leave it flat. We've got a little room of white. A little room of white effectively means that our darkness is negative painting. The same as we come down to your bushes here, we add shadows around the bush. Look, it's pushing in. It's creating shapes, and we can do it on the other side as well. Mainly, we don't just have any areas which are flat. We don't have shapes bumping into each other and being flat. We're creating contrast, we're negatively painting. We're taking white and encroaching around it, and so we end up with shapes, and interest, and a feeling of 3D in us. It's important just to keep moving around and looking. Don't work too hard in one area. I keep saying that as well, and that's, I think, a really important aspect of sketching and of watercolor painting and watercolors sketching. Never work too hard in one area because you need to move around. You need to add shadows. Also, I need to add shapes elsewhere to get the image working. With that in mind, let's move on to our church. Now we were talking earlier about how we want the church to be quite a delicate color to contrast against all these other darks. I'm going to start, actually, by hitting the windows with some shadow. Again, try not to make them flat. When I say that, I mean, leaving a little slither roofline, leaving these reflections, we can come back with our white marker later or with a brush, we can add white back in. But white is most effective in watercolor if you have lifted. If you can do some pre-planning, you can recognize you need to leave variation in your washes. That will be the most effective way of doing it. All these darks that I'm using are a mix of either moon glow or now moon glow, and other paints. We can find these really dark shadows of the church as well and add them in. Look how, again, this is clunky, isn't it? This edge is really clunky, but that's what happens with watercolor. You put it in, clunky to start with, but then you can move it around. You can come back with your brush, clean it off, a little bit of water and soften. I keep saying this word, softener. It's not something which is easy to immediately understand, but hopefully, you can gradually understand as you experiment yourselves with the idea of softening. When you touch an edge of wet paint with a clean, slightly wet brush, you soften it, you make it less of an obvious edge. Then you decided here to move some of these shadows down as well. Again, this is negatively painting, so I'm adding a lot of shadow around the white of our bushes. The white of the bushes is now surrounded by these deeper tones, these darker values and looks more and more white, and makes it more and more of a single shape. These brushes are now their own shape, rather than an obvious source project. Now, some light and interesting touches need to come in at the end. Got our red door. You can only just about see it's red, but let's make it really red. This is scarlet, like I've added in there. Other points of contrast, the little windows at the top of the tower. Now they're not dark in reality, but I think, right at the beginning of this class, I said, as we're starting out with a pencil, we're going to be making our own creative decisions. This is where I'm starting to look around the drawing now. Where could I add dark shadows or points of interest which are really going to lift it, which are going to separate out shapes, which are going to contrast between things and make it more fun? Sometimes just adding little bits of color as well for texture, so little splotches there in the top of the tower. They're just for a bit of texture, again, to stop things appearing flat. Now we got our snowy roof. Our snowy roof is already looking white, some light shadows. What we're going to do now is get some shapes, which suggests tiles. Because as the snow sits on a tiled roof like this, you get the shadows which are tiles. Also, there's some randomness, so that is random effect. Watercolor splashes are a great way of producing that random effect. I'm going to use this framing motif which you have on the left, this big tree, the very first thing we sketched in with the pencil. I'm going to also introduce some randomness in there, but I'm not going to paint it. It's not going to be a big negative space, which is pushing everything else towards looking in the church. The reason I'm doing that, I think, there's already a lot going on elsewhere. We don't need everything in our image to be filled with color. For me, leaving these interesting areas really does push the eye around and make it more interesting. Then next bit, we're going to be adding bold lines and some white. Get your brush out if you are using that, or get your acrylic marker, and let's get ready to bring this whole scene together. It might not look like much now, but in five or 10 minutes, you're going to be so proud of what you've achieved [MUSIC] 9. Step Five - Bold Lines and Highlights: [MUSIC] We are in the final stretch. We're adding some bold lines to the white highlights and suddenly this quite loose image will come together. It becomes something really quite pretty. How are we doing that? Well, it could be playing with our fude pen or you might use something different, but I'm going to be using my fude pen. We could use a bold fine liner or a different fountain pen with maybe a bolder medium nib or heavier nib than that. For example, I've got my medium nib fountain pen here. All these things are fine to use. You don't have to go out and get a special pen. Fude pen is a lovely thing to have, create that huge variation in line, and it is useful for this particular image to be able to create fine lines, thick lines, and really create a really interesting image. We've also, of course, got the Posca pen, so lots of ways of adding white, but I'm going to be using this white Posca acrylic marker. We can add a really opaque white very easily. We can also do things like splash it around if we need to. Easier to splash around, gouache and things, but I'll show you in this video that we can actually create lovely little splashes with our acrylic markers as well. Let's get started. Now, it is absolutely amazing how these bold lines really make it pop. They just create a illustrative contrast. We can start anywhere. I'm going to start around the edges with these bushes, and I'm going to find the outline of that white edge. I'm going to use the thickest part of my fude pen on the bottom and a bold, but the least bold edge at the top. That means we can make things look neat, make them look purposeful, and just really stop showing where there are contrasted edges. Where that white of the gouache meets the brown of our church, and suddenly we've got white snow. It's amazing, just a few touches and already, I hope you agree, these bushes are really becoming real. I mentioned in one of the last lessons, it's really important to just trust the process and watercolors, not panic. Just know that at the end as you add those darkest touches, things will come together. Don't rush, just take your time. I hope you agree again. I hope you agree is what is happening already in this last section. What we can do now is move to a focal point. Again, we can use this thick line to create that dark shadow. Squint, look at the reference, and you'll see along this guttering edge is really dark shadow and the same on these edges here. We can just simply create that shadow. We can make it dark more easily than with watercolor. Using a thick line, suddenly there's a nice shadow. Then we can vary the edge, make it slightly thinner, but still bold line on the other parts of the roof. We've now started to frame these shapes as well. We will jump around, move to the tree and start doing a little bit of shape and interest here as well. Again, it's the same process as we did with the bushes. Little jerky movements capturing the outline of the tree and just now really showing that contrasting point, showing where sky meets snow. We've added this now. The tree on the right, not very impressive in the reference, but as we said at the very beginning, we're going to be having fun and doing our own, but we can go through the tree and find that its contrast lined up this random little lined up more branches. Again, it all just comes together with these lines. Now, do be careful not to overdo it. I'm just moving around, flicking around, stopping, lifting my pen up, moving to another part of the tree, going down to the shadow. The reason I'm doing that is because I don't want to overdo it in one place. Very easy to overdo things, watercolor or ink and hard, it's more impossible to undo things. Don't worry if it doesn't look great. Just move to somewhere else and come back. When those shadows in important places like around the edge of that path, we've got shadows. Get that contrast and the shadows, why they're important on the path of course, add contrast between the shadows of the path from the snow on the ground creates the snow. As we sketch, as I do my little narration of stream of consciousness and sketch, hopefully you can see that everything is becoming a lot darker because all these darker bits repairing, certainly there's a lot more white on the page. Even though there isn't more white on the page here, it appears to be more white. We can just move back. Again, it's important to keep moving around and get stuck in one place. We can move around. We can use our pen to apply this darkest shadows around where we applied previous shadows. We're emphasizing, and then we've got the first washes is like the middle washes is medium and then this is very dark. This is where the darkest shadows are coming in. My lines are nowhere near perfect, and that's fine as well. We make mistakes, there's still the pencil lines there, some of which are in the "wrong place." Then there's the watercolors which were loose a bit, splashy, and they've definitely not stayed within those lines. Now, but is this other line. But together, it all works, together it all comes together and creates really a lovely effect. Where there's watercolors haven't quite stayed. Like in these windows, the watercolors weren't perfect, they were just too roughly put up. But we can use a pen to just slightly move with a bold line, slightly move where the original line was in. We know now we've got a neat edge, though we're cheating via outlining our previous colors and pretending that's exactly what we meant to do. Again, finishing the sketch with the frame. We've got this negative space where we decided just to add a few splashes rather than paint it. Now, we can add already bold fude pen doing that. Remember that we did that random line work right at the beginning to create that first line work full of pushes and hedges. You're just doing that same random field with a bolder line. Now, it's got a really lovely frame. I just move around, find a few bits to touch up here and there, keep casting around, keep moving around, but then put your pen away before you've done too much, and you can come back. Now, let's get out the Posca pen and let's see what we can do with this. Have a look and see the different mark you can create with it. It's good to use the masking tape for example, to activate it. Sometimes it gets a bit splunched up. That's what I was doing at the top right. Then we can come around and we can find both natural whites. We can find highlights in windows. Nice to create the idea of a frame in windows, just with a little flack of reflection. We can also create little white edges going around our darkest shadows. We can create little lines, a little squiggles all over the roof just suggests that randomness of snow, not randomness to the different shadows and the shapes. It's not just a soft uniform thing. It's not, it's random and splotchy. We can keep moving around much like we did with the pen, but with maybe fewer touches here, just taking a few bits here and there, and we can create those highest point of contrast. We can now create these little white touches, which appear within that flack, we can use a finger to smudge it. If we don't want it, just like with watercolor, we don't want it always to be a really harder, we can touch a bit of paint. Effectively, what we're doing is just softening the white edges. So with the reward color, soften the edges. We can do the same with this acrylic. We can just move around, little bits here and there. If you like what you're doing, you can keep doing it in other places. If it goes wrong, just take it gently and it's always recoverable. As I was with the pen, I'm moving around all over just doing fine touches. I don't want to overdo it. As we move around, you'll always find things you forgot. I forgot to do that little edge of the church, and we can move that in. That's what I said. When I said we're putting the pen away, I said, if we find something you want to do, we can get the pen out and just do it. Now, let's do some real fun stuff, some splashes, these bits which make a snowy scene feel alive through snow. We do splashes over time with watercolor. With a pen, it can be tempting just to touch all these little white marks. We don't have to, we can mistreat up just like we do with our brushes and do some tapping. You can see, especially in these dark areas, you can see those little splashes of one. If you want, you could pause the video now, and you'll be able to see, they are all around my drawing board that little touches of white. That's not really easy to see on the camera. The white certainly has come. We use watercolors, we splash with all the time, and you could do exactly the same with gouache, because this curiosity blocked in white and things like that. Let's just show you a bit of watercolor splashes. Well, gouache of course, is really just opaque watercolor, or that's how you can think of it, at least. Sometimes you want this to be subtle, but with snow it can be really nice to have read dense application of white. That's why I've done a lot of these marks, and now I think they're pretty obvious. It's just that quaint touch which makes it a bit kitsch, but for me, it's a really nice touch. It makes it really pretty seen. Don't forget to sign your art. It just makes you feel more proud when you come back and look at it. It makes sure everyone knows who did it. Because people love knowing about bits of art, they love knowing who the artist is. [MUSIC] 10. The Final Project Revealed: [MUSIC] Fantastic, well done. Thank you so much for joining me. We are done. We think it's important to do a little unveiling. I've already signed my piece, but this is where we get to see why I bought it, put tape around it. Because look at that really crisp edge that we can deduce. I like crisp edge. Now that we've removed that masking tape, it highlights that contrast so much. Now we've got a really beautiful painting. Little sketch, didn't take long. It's something which looks amazing in a frame. Although everything looks amazing in a frame. But do be proud of your art, and if you want to frame it, just try out a couple of frames which fit nicely. Now what be amazing is if you want to join in and do your own version, they've got the reference photo that I've been using. But you don't have to use my reference photo. You could do something yourself. This is my hometown now, I did this set outside very cold, and all you have to do if you're using your own scene is take it step-by-step. First those shapes, then a little pen to grab these shapes again. Again, do not rush just little by little, leaving plenty whitespace, plenty of decisions to come with this gentle colors, those slightly darker colors. Then there's magical marks with those dark and bold penned, the white splotches, in this last lesson that we did, which will just make things suddenly pop to life. If you do choose to do your own, I would love you to. Then please just share, share it in the class project and I'll make sure to comment, give you feedback, ask you some questions. If you enjoy my classes and want to follow me, I love producing these classes, I love interacting, and so you'll be able to see my upcoming classes. You can also find me on Instagram, on YouTube where I'm called Toby Urban Sketch so @tobyurbansketch, and you can find me, follow me there as well. Most of all, thank you so much for joining me for this fun little seasonal lesson, and I hope you have a good time sketching. [MUSIC]