3 Line and Wash Techniques You Can Try Right Now [Ink & Watercolour Tutorial]

hi everyone it's tarya from urbansketchingworld.com thanks very much for joining me in this youtube video so first of all i just wanted to show you i've got a bit of a new setup going on bought myself a fancy microphone um and as always just recording with my phone facing down like this i think for some people it was kind of interesting to see a bit of the behind the scenes so just a normal room um the tiny table and just trying to do my best to record the best video and audio that i can for you guys um so in today's video it kind of happened a bit organically really i wanted to try a few different techniques or processes of sketching a house i deliberately chose quite a simple subject matter so this is a picture of a house i found on pinterest i knew i was going to be sketching it maybe twice maybe three times who knows how many times so i wanted something that wasn't too detailed that i could kind of experiment with and not spend hours and hours drawing each time so in this first experiment i am doing something that you might have seen me do in one or two of my other videos and i'm just experimenting with laying down some watercolor wash with this mop brush and then sort of getting the basic colors in vaguely where they should be you know so the roof shape the house shape a bit of yellow in there for where the windows on the door is um and then just going in with a bit of green to be honest this is always an experiment i really just never know how this is going to turn out um but it's really fun so um i really encourage you guys to try this method it is it is really fun however when you put down um these watercolor washes you do have to be a bit patient and wait for it all to dry and i've used quite a bit of water there so you do need to let that paint dry once it's like getting partially dry you could then use a dryer just to dry off um the rest of it which i did actually do on this one and just because oh no sorry i did let this one dry naturally but later on i did use a hair dryer because it was just i wanted to get on with things you know and it was just taking a bit too long so i thought i'd approach this slightly different usually i'd go in and use my fountain pen but i thought i'd use a sort of thin ish fine liner so i'm using a copic multiliner 0.2 size um just to keep the the lines fairly fairly fine and then you know towards the end you can always go and um thicken up any lines that you want to emphasize but that's sort of later down the line anyway so yeah now these watercolor splashes are dry i'm just simply going to draw on top according to what i see in the photo really i'm not worrying about being too accurate obviously as you can see but i'm just trying to get the kind of basic details in you know so here's my usual sketching buddy she's got like a sixth sense as soon as i start sketching she wants in uh usually wants to sit on my lap her cat hair goes absolutely everywhere and i have to really strain my back to reach over her to carry on sketching and also not knock my camera so i always love it when she comes to sit on me i give her about 15 minutes and then i kick her off because it's like no you're making me uncomfortable now um so the reason behind this video really is um i kind of recognize that i'm a bit of a creature of habit and a lot of time i sketch in the exact same way but at the moment i'm really just trying to push myself out of my comfort zone and experiment with different methods um i've done that in a few videos i feel on this channel and i think you guys quite like seeing that process whether it's whether it succeeds or fails you know it's quite interesting to sort of i don't know just try and open your mind a little bit to various different processes or ways of doing things um so yeah so i thought you know let's let's carry on doing these kind of experiments once in a while you know so my kind of idea was to demo sort of two or three different ways of sketching the same house um and i was trying to sort of take inspiration from some of my favorite urban sketches perhaps not in the result of the sketch but more in the process at least so for example um the second sketch i was trying to channel maybe a little bit of liz steele's process again not the process she always uses but sometimes um i've seen her use this process um so i've sort of tried to channel her in the second sketch a bit and then you'll see in the third sketch i'll leave it as a bit of a surprise but i tried to channel another urban sketcher so um you'll see that later on i don't obviously think the results are anything like those sketches and and that kind of wasn't really the idea um you know it was just kind of trying to take some of you know the way that they might approach a sketch and try and incorporate that into my my own style not even really consciously to be honest it's just once you've been sketching for a fair few years you kind of whether whether you use a different process or not you kind of still end up with a sketch that still looks like you so it's like not even purposeful you know which is quite interesting i found you'll see that later on in the video um so i encourage you guys to do the same you know um especially if you're sort of sitting around at home at the moment and whatnot you know grab a picture of pinterest or you can grab this picture i'll leave the link in the description below or you can have a rifle through my sketching reference board i'm always sort of collecting interesting looking photos of architecture there's a couple of animals on there but otherwise it's mainly architecture um just for when i feel like picking up a pen and just messing around you know um to me there's just nothing more fun than doing that so i hope you guys feel the same i'm pretty sure if you're watching this channel that you do so yeah i encourage you to do the same find um you know maybe find a photo like this one that's kind of fairly straightforward but has a few details in it you know that kind of you can play with like the plants and the bike and the roofs quite quite cool to mess around with and stuff like that so um if it's too plain and simple then you won't get anything too interesting out of the process you know so yeah have a go um and just sort of see what happens you know even though i picked a fairly straightforward photo um i still took me like an hour for each of these sketches or more so um you know just to be aware that these these things do take time but hopefully that's fine so here i'm using um faber castell pit artist pens they are the brush nib they come in different nibs so they do come in a soft brush nib i haven't tried those these are the brushed nib um so they've got a little bit more firmness to them and they come there's six shades of gray three warm three cold so what i usually do as you can see on the video is i keep my warm grays to one side and i keep my cold grays to another side just so i don't get them mixed up i love these pens they're they're swiftly becoming part of my very um day-to-day kind of sketching tools you know um so definitely something new to me i've well maybe had them for three or four months perhaps but i'm absolutely loving them so i really highly recommend them they've got india ink in them so they don't um seep through the page at all like alcohol markers do you you can paint on top of them you can use them on top of watercolors and they've got a bit of transparency to them as well so you can layer them up and stuff like that so yeah i'm really enjoying them so i highly recommend checking those out if you feel like you want to add some gray markers into your life for this first method i mean thinking in the context of urban sketching is it the most convenient method perhaps not because you have to lay down those washes and really let them dry for quite a while however you could lay down the wash and especially if you're working in a sketchbook like this where you have a spare page to to the side you could actually start on a second sketch whilst you're waiting for that first sketch to dry and i know that that's something that um quite a few urban sketches do the the one that immediately comes to mind just because that's all i can remember is mark holmes um he does uh he does that you know he'll have two or three different sketches on the go so um you know working like this um you could actually start another one and then you know it's not so much of a pain that you have to sort of just sit there and wait for the for the paint to dry so that's pretty cool so i am kind of um flipping between my white knights water my saint petersburg white knights watercolors which i usually use just the small set that i've got um but i do have the mungyo paints here you know i got them a while back i did review them i've got a video on that and you know now and again they do come in kind of handy i'm actually finding myself enjoying using the white uh the white watercolor in the set which is just something i've never really thought about using before or whatever but since i've kind of done a bit of research on the white i kind of know how it works now i've swatched it out with the different colors um it actually really comes in quite handy for man-made colors especially that just kind of pastely yellow color that's on the doors and windows so i just mixed a bit of white with a tiny bit of yellow and a bit of yellow ochre as well just to make it a bit more beigey um and it works it works pretty well i also mixed a bit of white and a bit of the cobalt blue i think it is um just to make that kind of blue window area in the roof just uh pop a little bit more because it was just looking a bit i don't know a little bit dull so and then i'm just using like a white gel pen just to go in and make the window frame just to pop out a little bit more it's subtle but you know kind of just makes it look a bit brighter so yeah i mean i'm reasonably happy with how this sketch came out again you know it's a nice experiment and it's nice to see that um the splashes the watercolor splashes still that method does kind of work out quite nicely i always like when it kind of stops and i just draw up to where the paint stops so you'll see that on the cobblestones at the bottom i really like that effect i think it looks really nice um and it's something just i discovered completely by accident completely by doing this kind of stuff you know so that's what this sort of experimentation opens you up to it just helps you um discover or you know come across things that you like to do and that you might want to repeat in future work just through happy accidents you know um so never write off happy accidents they're uh you know they're a useful thing so as you can see i've just sort of i draw the cobblestones around where the paint stops and yeah i think that looks really cool i really like that i was a bit nervous to draw the bike because i don't really uh i don't i've never really in the past been great at drawing bikes but i think that actually came out quite well i really sort of just tried to forget what the object was and really just tried to look at the photograph and kind of understand where the lines were going and and that kind of thing so i think it came out pretty well um and then adding this kind of gray into the tiles on the roof really made the sketch kind of pop quite nicely so again just adding some depth depth to it all and then i'm just going in with my thicker fine liner so 0.7 i believe just thickening up some lines just to emphasize a few bits and again just make the sketch really pop i'm a big fan of adding loads of darks and blacks and whatnot to a sketch just to make it really kind of emphatic you know so now i'm just going in with my copic brush marker again just to kind of blacken in some further areas and just to make things bring a few things forward adding a few more shadows with my gray faber-castell pen that's pretty much it really so quite a nice little simple sketch um not too much to it but again as i said still takes an hour an hour and a half something like that so uh i was doing this well into the evening so that's why the light kind of changes so sorry about that guys but um yeah i think i even uh i think i even kept twiddling a little bit with it a tiny bit afterwards after the camera stopped but you can see it there this is this is the end result so nothing vastly different so this second sketch this is where i'm kind of and i say that emphatically kind of thinking about liz steele and how sometimes she goes straight into sketching in watercolor she also uses a rosemary and co brush dagger brush like this one but not this small she's got a bigger one i actually have the same one that she uses at home in the uk but that's in the uk and i'm not there but this is the slightly smaller travel brush version and if you've seen any of my videos before you know i absolutely love this brush it's like one of my go-to brushes so highly recommend it there all their brushes are handmade in the uk but i do believe you can you can get them across the world um and they're just they're just gorgeous brushes so highly highly recommend them so it was quite difficult to uh like trust the process with this one because i was like oh dear god this does actually just look like a preschool drawing of a uh house you know as you would do when you were five years old um i do regularly compare my sketching prowess to five-year-olds um which might be unfair to five-year-olds but no um i tend to uh keep working on it which is my huge huge advice is just keep working on it keep the layers you know keep going with it um and eventually you know it can it can turn out okay no it usually turns out fine um but i know my boyfriend does get uh he gets frustrated with me when i'm always like halfway through i'm like ah this is rubbish like it's no good it's never gonna work it's rubbish and he just rolls his eyes um because inevitably i'll work on it a bit longer and it generally turns out pretty pretty okay in my view whilst i'm waiting for that paint to dry above i'm actually decided to draw in the cobblestones um whilst once that's happening because i don't have to go anywhere near the paint to do that so again you know just mixing up the sketching process just doing whatever works within the context of the sketch really so here i'm using my twisabi eco fountain pen which is like my favorite thing in the world i love this pen and i'm just being quite loose with these cobblestones really i think that's something i learned from the first sketch is that i don't have to be too tight with it and make sure every all of them are perfect in fact it actually looks way better if i'm quite rough with it because then it just looks a bit more authentic anyway actually because cobblestones are quite not quite the right size they're not in line you know all that kind of thing so i was quite happy with how that came out the other thing i love about sketching with this fountain pen and fountain pens in general is that you can really kind of hold them towards the end of the pen a bit more you can get a bit looser with them and they work at kind of any kind of angle you draw with them really whereas the fine line the fine liner i do feel that you have to draw with it like at a certain angle um and yeah you can't you just can't be loose with it but i guess that's the nature of those pens you know they are technical pens so um so you know it's kind of each their own really but i do really enjoy drawing with a fountain pen and i feel like i can get a bit looser when i'm using it you know again i'm just kind of going through and drawing over the top of the watercolor i've laid down i do feel because i drew um or sketched more specifically with my watercolor brush that the colors are slightly cleaner slightly less muddy because they haven't blended into one another quite as much but we'll sort of see how that goes throughout the sketch i try my best to kind of keep the sketches relatively the same scale just so that you can kind of look at them a bit you know like in a fair kind of fair comparison kind of way um so here i'm going over the roof with a slightly darker color um at the time i was just like oh yeah i'll just paint it all in and i was kind of just picking up slight variations of color um and sort of just seeing how that would be i kind of wish i'd left the ridges the the narrow ridges unpainted and just painted in between them but that's okay i mean again that's a learning point for next time i think i'm quite happy with how the plants or the foliage is kind of looking on this one and the the top window in the roof is a kind of a better color it's like more of a gray which is a little bit closer to the picture than the blue so i'm using my flat brush um a bit in this sketch and i always kind of forget about this brush but i do actually really like using it it's so handy to do kind of um straight straightish lines you know so for architecture and stuff it's like really really useful to have like a flat brush for sure but for tighter spots i always kind of move back to my rosemary and coax it's got that nice dagger point you know so i can really get a little bit more precise you know into smaller areas so as always um you know i'm just kind of looking at the sketch and just keep darkening certain areas and adding further depth and making sure you know things are have are kind of being thrown forward as they need to be and that's kind of what takes the time really is just going through and like building it up and adding more shadows and you might add shadows like this here i've got like quite a nice kind of i think i mixed a bit of a ready purpley color for the shadows and i was like oh i really like this this is really nice um but then obviously it dries and it's like it just isn't quite punchy enough so you'll see me in a bit i'll just go back over it again because it's just not dried you know as as um dot you know as heavy as i like i want it to be just adding a few splatters there because you know it's my fave now just darkening darkening the house a bit because i thought it was just looking a bit too faint and also i was seeing that obviously this is kind of a bit rough but looking at the photo the paint on the house the paint job on the house is quite like patchy and stuff so i was like oh that's okay you know it kind of adds to the atmosphere [Music] so [Music] so i was going to leave things here but then i looked and i looked and i kept looking at these sketches and i thought to myself that they just looked quite similar actually even though i'd sort of done a bit of a different process on them um and i was thinking i'd kind of love to just go a bit crazy and do a bit of a wild version just totally for fun just absolutely just throw it all out the window and just kind of slap some paint around you know um so and i was entirely prepared for it to be really ugly and to not even include it in the video but then i thought where's the fun in sort of editing out the experimental process so here we go his number three is sketch number three so i think i mentioned earlier in the introduction that i was gonna try and just take a little inspiration from the process of um another of my favorite urban sketches who's got a bit of a wild style um and so that sketcher is ian fennelly mr ian fennelly so yeah so hence me sort of sketching a few bits in a gray marker really because i know he kind of does that um i haven't studied his process massively but i have seen a fair few videos of him doing his thing um so i think perhaps i could have used a lighter gray here but i um i just kind of went for it sometimes that happens i just go for it with whatever i pick up and then i'm like uh maybe i should have thought that about that a bit more but never mind um so yeah i thought okay that's sort of along the lines maybe of mr fennelly and then i was like well he likes kind of doing a lot of wet wet and wet um on his paper from what i can tell he tends to use pigments like straight out of the pan or straight out of the tube or whatever he doesn't really sort of mix things he just uses it straight straight up you know and then lets things mix on the page which is just awesome so and i was like don't shy away from colors just go for it so uh so this one really was like oh god like what is happening here am i gonna include this in the video i was like no don't think about that right now just do it just do it so yeah so i just went for it you know and i use this you know quinadracone rose straight out of my watercolor white nights watercolor set and like the indian yellow like in the doors and uh the kind of violet like on the ground there so yeah just trying to take a leaf out of his book really the only thing that wasn't very um him in terms of color was the fact that i used quite a i guess a naturally seeming green down there at the bottom for the bush um and actually what i should have done is reach for my viridian which is in the mungo set and that would have been a lot more um of a shade that ian fennelly would have used but that's fine you know again it's just vaguely again i emphasize that word vaguely uh along the lines of perhaps something you know along the lines of his process so again making the the windows kind of like a just gray squares like that um and just kind of just trying to keep it pretty pretty loose ish i suppose and just trying to every now and again i think i sort of checked back on instagram and just had a quick look at his work and i was like hmm okay what was he doing here how did he do that you know just trying to think about um what he might have done again you know i'm not ian fennelly and i'm not really trying to be in a family but i'm just trying to take a bit of inspiration from his style you know so i think one of the things that i could have done differently was to leave a bit more white space the problem is though where i've used um quite a rudim or quite i was going to say rudimentary but i didn't mean that a quite simple straightforward photograph of a simple object it's kind of hard to maybe leave some of the white space that ian fennelly would do so i feel like um also there's it's quite this house is drawn quite large on the page because i'm using an a5 book ian finley's usually uses like an a3 size kind of paper um but he would also include a lot more elements of a scene which then would allow for more white space to give a bit more open air to the overall um sketch so yeah i think it would have been a bit difficult to leave too much white space in this maybe without just painting the house at all or something but um it was an interesting experiment and an interesting thought process and i i'm quite tempted to do a video of sketching in the style of or inspired by him and get some bigger paper and do a bit more of a scene and just see see what i can do with it because he's got such a unique way of painting and i love like his use of colors so much and he just gets away with using these outrageous colors and you can still tell what the thing is and you still get a sense of being there he calls it emotional colors i think local colors versus emotional colors um and i've i find it really hard to do this i just end up trying to uh trying to get what's in the photo or or if i'm sketching live you know um i have tried it a bit you might have seen some of my london landmark sketches like westminster abbey and stuff where i was really trying my hardest to ignore like the actual colors in the reference and just kind of go with some crazy colors and i thought it ended up a bit of a mess but then um i did kind of rescue it right at the end i think so i mean that video is on my youtube channel it's a bit of an old one now and it's mainly just a time lapse but you can go check it out if you want um so i think it's really this really really got me out of my comfort zone because i was really trying to just not use the colors that were in the photo and just try and think of the colors maybe that ian fennelly would use so i used like a like ultramarine and i was using viridian on the other kind of bits of foliage on the front of the house there um he uses a lot of hatching lines but unfortunately my 0.1 copic um fineliners just completely given up the ghost i find like the naught point ones and the naught point naught fives really don't last too long they just um yeah they seem to wear out i guess because the the nib part of it is just so fine um so yeah um so i had to go in with a 0.2 which then didn't really achieve the effect i wanted it to on that front door i think that front door is a bit of a mess so um but never mind i mean the whole thing's a bit of a mess really but um so yeah just adding a bit of viridian at the top there which makes no sense to the kind of reference or painting but i was like again just trying to push myself in a bit of a different direction and just play and experiment i think the main thing for me is like the pink on the house is just a bit garish maybe i could have left it a bit white and just added a few bits of pink um i'm not sure i'm not sure what would have made this better but it was a good experiment nonetheless and i was kind of like really happy that i just went for it um and i'm really happy that i can share that process with you guys because you know you might look at it and be like oh i kind of want to try that or i would have done this differently etc etc so i mean again hopefully it's inspiring you to pick up your materials and like you know just go for it because that's the whole point of this channel to be honest is really just to share my my journey but also to encourage inspire you guys to get sketching really so yeah there it is there it is my little house uh my little pinterest house sketch uh inspired by mr ian fennelly um you know i was actually quite happy with the some elements of it and i think i could really try and push this experiment further a bit i'm quite quite keen to do that whether i do it on video or just personally if you want to see me do that then just let me know and uh i'll happily i'll happily share my mess of a sketch with you so let me know in the comments below guys which is your favorite if you have a favorite um if you don't have a favorite that's no problem or maybe which was your favorite looking um process at least anyway and not the result it's it's not about the results about the process so which which process looked more fun to you number one number two or number three let me know in the comments below so if you've watched any of my other videos you may already be aware but i do have um an e-book out for purchase um it's called sketchy adventures around the world it is kind of a chronicle of my last three years of traveling from 2017 to 2020 and it contains over 130 of my watercolor and ink illustrations of some of the places that i saw across those three years so i visited something like 15 different countries across four different continents over the three years and took my time even lived in some other places for a good six or seven months and i got to visit some super interesting countries like iran and somalia and south sudan as well as you know places like australia and my there's some sketches from my my home country in the uk um some stuff in europe um yeah so you know i feel if you like my illustration style if you've checked out my personal sketches over on instagram um at looking out to see underscore um then i think you will really love checking out this book um it is an ebook format it is 60 pages comes as a pdf so it's viewable on any device so you can hop over to the link which i'll include below and you can download it instantly there's no plans to release this as an actual physical book unfortunately the cost is just so prohibitive and for me to distribute it here from south africa is just kind of impossible especially at the moment with kovid so um it is it is probably going to stay as an e-book forever but that's fine um think of the environment not printing on uh all those poor trees so it's all good um so 20 of each sale of the book will go to a charity called cool earth um they are a climate charity and they work with rainforest communities to slow the rate of deforestation so doing some amazing work so um it's an honor for me to support them in any little way i can so yep 20 of your uh cash will go to them and then finally guys i just want to draw your attention to urbansketchingworld.com um this is my baby this is what i spend most of my time doing is writing posts on this website and also recording youtube videos um and again it's just got loads of information on all kinds of things different art supplies different methods everything to do with urban sketching adding to it all the time so almost 70 articles over there so do go and check it out and also if you're interested in joining my seven-day urban sketching at home challenge then you can join up for it over there as well where i'll send you an email each day challenging you to sketch a different thing around your house it's super fun people have really been enjoying it so do go and check it out thanks so much for watching this video i really hope you have enjoyed sort of seeing my experimentation i hope it's inspired you to try some of these processes yourself um and if you do and if you are on instagram then do make sure to attack me so i can check it out urban sketching world um cool guys i will see you in the next video

Channel: Urban Sketching World

Views: 70,099

Rating: 4.9688859 out of 5

Keywords: 3 line and wash techniques you can try right now, line and wash, pen and wash, ink and wash, ink and watercolor, line and wash tutorial, house sketch, urban sketching, watercolour tutorial, watercolour sketching, archisketch, watercolor house, watercolor painting, pen and ink, watercolor techniques

Id: 3P7Zxhk4hjM

Length: 34min 25sec (2065 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021

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[u/Jadabu91]

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