Hi, I'm Darren from Watercolor Mentor, and welcome to Urban Sketching Essentials: Create Your Own Coloring Books! Urban sketching with line and wash is a fun way to create fresh and spontaneous works while enjoying some time outdoors. It combines the benefits of both ink drawing and watercolour painting. Urban sketching is a great way to learn and improve your drawing and painting skills. Through our day-to-day lives and travels, we often form connections with our surroundings, buildings, objects, and people we interact with. Urban sketching requires few materials and can be done in a variety of places including; cafés, parks, your room, or on a bus or train. It's a convenient and powerful way to practice line and wash and dramatically improves your drawing and painting skills over a short period of time. In this course, you'll learn how to transform day-to-day scenes that you observe into beautiful line and wash sketches that you can hold onto and treasure.

This course is aimed towards beginners with 8 line and wash demonstrations which I'll help guide you through step-by-step. There are scans, drawing, and tracing templates included as well for each demonstration to help you transfer your drawing over quickly and easily. You also have the option to follow along to my real-time drawing and narration videos for 5 of these demonstrations.

In this course, I narrate my demonstrations in real-time. I explain every technique I use in the context of the painting, such as using watercolor to paint shadows on a building. I'll be going over the basics of line and wash sketching. I'll talk about what materials you'll need, your options, and which ones I use and recommend. If you have a pen, some watercolor paints, and paper, then you're set to go.

I'll show you how to sketch with a pen quickly and accurately using a variety of techniques including drawing lines in segments, hatching, and using different sized nibs to your advantage. I also demonstrate essential watercolor techniques you can use over and over again for any painting.

In this course, I will cover basics such as:

• How to draw simple to complex buildings with a pen, and how to use watercolor to imply light, shade, and mood with a variety of colors.

• How to sketch figures and people.

• Materials - what paints, paper, brushes, and pens you will need.

• Hands-on pen sketching techniques - follow along and sketch with me. Learn how to hold your pen for different effects, draw basic lines and shapes, how to create depth and light/darkness in your drawing through the use of 'hatching'.

• Understanding light sources and how to paint realistic shadows.

• How to sketch a subject easily by simplifying a landscape into basic shapes, and using a combination of loose and accurate drawing styles.

• Hands-on lessons on essential watercolor techniques such as wet-in-wet and wet-on-dry.

• How to paint skies, buildings, land, figures, trees and shrubs, and other objects.

Additional materials including original painting scans, drawing/tracing templates, and reference photographs are included under the 'Materials Required' lecture.

So join me in this course - let's create some beautiful drawings and paintings that you can be proud of!

Course Assignment:

Your course assignment is to draw and paint your own urban landscape! This can be a scene featured in one of the course demonstration videos or based on one of your own photographs or scenes you have observed outside.

You can also refer to the scanned drawing/painting templates attached below which will allow you to trace the drawings if you choose to do so. I recommend drawing each scene free hand. Drawing is an important step in improving your painting skills. This provides you with an opportunity to compose and plan your painting. Once you've finished the drawing, use the watercolor steps and processes included in the course demonstrations to complete your painting.

Materials:

Use any permanent black ink pens, watercolour paper, and brushes you have available. I recommend:

• Lightfast/Permanent ballpoint ink pen (0.5mm nib)

• 100% cotton watercolour paper or sketchbook

• Watercolour Brushes - mop brush and a variety of round and flat brushes.

Getting Started:

• Review the course demonstrations first. There are 8 different urban landscapes that you can draw and paint from. You can also download the tracing templates to transfer over your drawing.

• Looking to sketch and paint another scene? Research some free reference photo websites, pick one of your own reference photos, or simply find an outdoor location where you can sit and paint. Using the steps and processes included in this course, create your own unique urban sketch.

Sharing Your Work:

• Feel free to share your work through the Q&A section, or message me directly. If you have any questions or need more tips, please let me know. I'm happy to help.