Loose Ink & Watercolor Sketching Tutorial l How to Sketch a Café

Hey guys, welcome to a new video. Today I'll be showing you how I do a loose urban sketch with ink and watercolor. Urban sketching is one of my favorite things to do to capture the mood and feel of a place. So sometimes I use my sketchbook but today I felt like using a bigger piece of paper so that I can paint more loosely and with more freedom. So Arches, this one, is one of the best watercolor papers out there but it's pretty expensive. So I decided to use a cheaper option which is this 25% cotton paper by Winsor & Newton. It's pretty good quality and it's archival which means it's museum quality. It will last forever and it's acid free so it won't yellow over time. I also like that this paper is FSC certified and made using hydroelectric power so it reduces greenhouse gas emissions which is really great. And this paper also has a medium to rough texture which I find great for pieces that have looser brush strokes and are not so tight. Usually when I paint with watercolor I prepare a container of clean water and a piece of cloth. I don't use tissue paper because I used to go through a lot of them and I started to use cloth and washing it after use and it lasts me for a long time so I don't have to use tissue paper. I'll also be using my very messy watercolor palette which has mostly Holbein and Van Gogh watercolors that I squeezed out from individual paint tubes into these little half pans. I like to draw inspiration from Pinterest but today I won't follow every single detail. These are just reference pictures that will inspire the piece. So I will be using some synthetic mop brushes which take up quite a lot of water and paint because I will be starting with a wet on wet wash for the base of the whole illustration or painting so I will need a lot of paint and water on my brush to paint really quickly. So now I'm just mixing three of the main colors that I'll be using for this piece and I'm also testing them out on a piece of paper in my sketchbook to see if they work well together. Alright so I'm starting by brushing clean water onto the paper in basically the center. Next I paint the greens first. I want this to look loose and full of energy so I painted this quite fast with some random strokes scattered around the paper. It's important to remember that you need to paint really fast before the water dries on the paper because the purpose of doing this is to have a soft color and soft edges so you want to paint really really fast. Next I added the blue for the roof. This is just a base layer so it doesn't have to be accurate and you don't have to fuss over it too much but you do need to have a little bit of structure and shape of the object. After that I added the burnt sienna mix. It may look like it's quite intense here but this color will become lighter once the paint dries so you don't have to be worried if it's too intense right now. Then I added some grayish brown for the windows and some of the pots. At this point the paint was starting to dry but I still added some blue and green to certain areas to give the piece a little bit more balance. Okay so while we're waiting for that to dry let's take a look at my pen. The pen I'll be using is the Lamy Safari fountain pen. I have it with a medium nib and I'm also using black noodler's ink which is water resistant so it's very very important that you use water resistant ink for this piece that you'll be using watercolor on later. You don't want to finish your inking and then realize that while you're painting watercolor that you used a non-water resistant pen, non-waterproof. So trust me I've been there and done that before, it's not fun. So yeah remember to use waterproof ink. So usually when I draw or ink freehand I draw the part that I find the easiest first. So number one I'm basically for this piece drawing this without any outline with pencil and without a ruler so I need to kind of block out the basic shapes of the roof and the stall first before I go in and draw any details. And number two if I start with a part that I find really difficult it might ruin the piece even before I get to the other parts. I might not like it and I might have to start all over again which is some very time consuming and I don't like that. So I always start with drawing the easiest part that I find, the most straightforward part and then I go in and add details and add these parts that are more difficult to me. So you may notice that these lines are not particularly straight but actually that's what I want. I want this to have a more spontaneous and energetic feel to it. I mean I could use a ruler and be accurate but that will create a whole different kind of style. So once the basic shape of the cafe is done I moved on to the plants and again I chose to be spontaneous with my strokes. In fact they look quite random and very quick but actually you do need to maintain the basic shape of the plant like it's not a square or round shape. It's actually like a tree shape or a bush shape. So after that the easy part for me is adding the details. So in my opinion broken lines like these on the roof they help to make it look less cartoony and look a little bit more natural. Plus with this pen you naturally get broken lines when you draw fast and it looks very spontaneous and natural so I think it looks better than straight solid lines everywhere. So one of the most important elements right here is the person is the shopkeeper right in the middle there. So you want to be extra careful not to mess this up because a weirdly shaped person will probably ruin the piece since it's very obvious if you get it wrong and if you get the person in the wrong proportions people will instantly they will pick it up and so do be careful when you draw people. So it's looking pretty good now so I'm going to start with the stripes on the roof with the blue color that I mixed before and again I'm not filling in the blanks and making it too clean. I'm leaving little spots here and there which will look kind of like highlights. And by the way I did leave this ink for about 15 minutes to make sure it was dry before I started painting. Knudler's ink doesn't dry immediately especially on this kind of paper so I got smudges on my fingers and it did get a little messy but definitely definitely remember to give your ink a little bit of time to dry if you're using the same stuff as I am. So now I'm using the second color for the cafe. I'm painting in the wood colored areas. Next I'm painting the inside of the cafe which is in shadow so I mixed in some ultramarine with burnt umber and I created this area which is darker than the rest so that it makes the rest of the painting look bright and sunny. So on to the third color which is the greens. So I already have a light base color so that will serve as my highlights and I'm only adding in a medium dark green with lots of water and pigment and later on I add the darker green which has ultramarine mixed in. I like to add some random leaves flying around when it comes to these kinds of pieces so it adds some movement and interest to the piece like it's a windy but really sunny day. So I felt like this cafe needed a little bit more color so I added yellow ochre to some of the wood and also some of the vases. So at this point I just kept adding more grayish blue shadows in the areas that would be in shadow. So now I'm adding the final darkest color of the piece which is almost close to black color and I'm adding it to the shopkeeper's hair and other areas that I think could do with more deeper shadows. Light is coming from the top but slanting towards the right side so I added shadows below the vases and on the left of the bushes. I felt like there wasn't enough color in the center of the piece so I added some yellow ochre and burnt sienna as well and as well as some red for the flowers. I think watercolor looks the best under natural sunlight so I went on the balcony to look at it and overall I think it's okay but the plants on the bottom left needed a bit of tidying up and I think it needed more random dots. After that I added my signature and date and it's done! As always do like, comment, and subscribe if you found this video helpful. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one!