Line and Wash Essentials: Urban Sketching for Beginners

🎉 Welcome to "Line and Wash Essentials: Urban Sketching for Beginners"! 🎨

Dive into the vibrant world of urban sketching with this comprehensive course designed specifically for beginners. As your Watercolour Mentor, I'll guide you through the foundational principles that will transform your observation skills and help you capture the essence of street scenes and buildings with just a pen and watercolor. 🌆

Course Overview:

📑 Understanding Shapes: We'll start by teaching you to recognize and simplify complex subjects into their basic shapes, enhancing your confidence in drawing and leading to more accurate representations.

✨ 7-Step Painting Process: My unique 7-step process will ensure that by the end of this course, you'll have a painting you're proud of! Here's a quick rundown:

1. Choose Your Scene: Select a suitable scene or reference photo that captures your interest.
2. Identify Light and Dark: Learn to see the contrasting areas by squinting at your subject.
3. Compositional Elements: Decide on what elements you want to include in your composition, considering perspective, light source, shadows, and possible color adjustments.
4. Sketching: Whether you prefer pen or pencil, we'll sketch out the details of our scene.
5. Painting the Light: Begin with the lighter areas, bringing your sketch to life.
6. Painting the Shadows: Deepen the colors in the shadows, adding depth to your artwork.
7. Highlights and Darkest Areas: Accentuate the brightest points and darkest areas to create a stunning contrast and finalize your piece.

🖌️ Mastering Techniques: We'll cover essential watercolor techniques, including:

• Water Consistency and Color Mixing: Discover how the right consistency of water and understanding values can dramatically improve your paintings.
• Brush Control: Gain command over your brushes to apply just the right amount of paint.
• One Point Perspective Crash Course: Learn the basics of perspective to create a sense of depth in your sketches.
• Composition: Understand how to balance elements within your artwork for a harmonious and captivating piece.
• Building Confidence: Overcome self-doubt and learn to embrace mistakes as part of the creative process.
• Resilience and Persistence: Stay motivated and persistent, turning challenges into opportunities for growth.

Course Project:

Your task is to sketch and paint your own urban scene! Use the course video or a photograph you've taken as inspiration, or choose a scene from life. You can also make use of the scanned drawing/painting templates provided. Remember to draw freehand to improve your planning and composition skills. 🏢✍️

Materials Needed:

• Normal or mechanical pencil (0.5mm)
• Permanent liquid ink pen (0.5-0.7mm nib) or pigment liners
• 100% cotton watercolour paper or sketchbook
• Watercolour Brushes - a variety of mop brushes and round/flat brushes

Getting Started: Begin with the practice exercises to get accustomed to my process. You can also utilize free reference photo websites to find inspiration for your unique urban landscape painting. 🖼️

Sharing Your Work:

Once you've completed your masterpiece, share your progress and final painting with the course community on Udemy. I'm eager to provide you with constructive feedback and answer any questions you may have throughout this exciting journey into urban sketching! 🤝

Let's embark on this artistic adventure together and bring the bustling energy of cities to life on your canvas. Enroll now and let your creativity flow! 🎨✨