How To Sketch ANYTHING Urban Sketching Objects For Beginners

My name is Scotty and in this tutorial I'm going to show you my technique to sketch anything you see whether in a photo or objects around you. For example, you could be sitting in a cafe and sketch the things in front of you or even across the street. So to begin with just an overview of the technique. So I use a dot method to measure. So I'll be showing you later how to do that. And we always sketch big shapes to small shapes and then we do the details. So that's really important. And the other thing is we use very loose and impressionistic line work. So mistakes are allowed here and it's just a really fun way to be creative and capture things around you. So the first object that we're going to sketch is food. So we'll do it up here on the page. It's quite a small sketch. So when I look at an object I first try and find what that first shape I'm going to do. And with this one the thing that stands out for me is the stack of the pancakes. So what I do first is I put the width just general width I think the pancakes could be. Now the next thing I want to draw the height. So I want to put two dots for the bottom corners there. So I've got my iPad in front of me so that's why I'm reaching across. I'm going to measure with my fingers. So this would be if you had a photo or if you had it in front of you you could measure. But also if it's a bit further away you could use your pen to measure and measure how big it is visually from a distance. But here I can reach out and put my fingers generally the width and then I turn my fingers and I put them for the height. The stack of pancakes is about three quarters of the width. So if I put a dot here that's about three quarters of the width. Then we can measure that distance with our fingers and just roughly put a dot down there. Okay now we have that stack of pancakes we can now outline that whole object. Top bit of the pancake. Now this part I'm not going to measure I'm just going to do by eye. So now just follow that silhouette of the berries as they go up and then across. Now we're coming down the side here and now I can see that there's indent there. It goes down and about halfway from the two dots that's where that second pancake ends. About there across the bottom. So there's one, two, three, four. Four within those two dots a bit and then cut all the way down to there. And this other one here go up here and down. Okay so I have my silhouette of the pancakes and the raspberries on top. Now let's go into the next main shape and that would be the plate. Now I have to compare this second object to the first one. That's where the plate comes out there and about a little bit higher than halfway on this side. Okay so that's where the plate comes out and then you can see it's very close to the bottom edge here so I'll put a dot there. And then what about this outer edge? So I'm trying to find all the edges of this plate. It's just about here on the pancakes. So half from halfway to the side of the pancake is about the same distance to the edge of the plate. So put a dot there. Now so let's draw this oval, the top oval of the plate. I'll start up here and I'll go to there. It doesn't matter if we do wobbly lines it's nice. And then here connect it. Now we want to draw the thickness of the plate, the next bit. Go down and I'm doing this by eye now. Draw this line here. The widest point is there. Come across and up like that. So roughly have the pancake shape and the plate shape. Now we can break up these big shapes into smaller shapes. So I might start at the top here with the raspberries and continue this shape here. So we've got that shape. I'm not sure if you call them pancakes but in Australia we call them pancakes. Join this line here and down there like that into there. And then we've got those pancakes. It's quite easy to divide it up once we have those main shapes. We have this line which starts thin here and gets a bit thicker. They're coming around close and then a bit thicker over here. A nice berry there. I'm using just one line here to connect them all. We can also break up these berries on the top. Done the main shapes and the smaller shapes. You can add a bit of detail in now. And I just might add just a little bit of little lines here just to show that thickness. And it might help when I'm doing the watercolor. Now the rest of the work can be done with the watercolor. Right our second exercise is going to be this telephone box. And it's great because it has lots of detail in it but it's also actually just a simple shape. So once again I might start with the width. If I measure the width and I come down one two and a bit. So two and a bit. So I can use my fingers one two and a bit. That's roughly the proportion of this telephone box. Now we're going to put an outline on this box. Nice curve on the top. So we go sort of straight. I'm holding my pen loosely down to that point. And if you're going off course you just stop and then just do a wiggle and readjust. And now we can do that angle. This edge comes down. So now we have the outline of this telephone box breaking up into the next bigger shapes. You can add a little bit of an angle if you like but quite flat through there. And it comes down and breaking up this big shape into smaller shapes. And in the corners we can use dots again to just mark out where we think those windows are. Or it doesn't go all the way to the bottom. So I'm leaving a gap there. Put dots in this corners down here and down here. Or we can see my line is a bit crazy that middle line here. And then we have a rectangle goes from here to here. You can add dots for those sort of things too. A crown. There are eight windows I just counted. So that means we can put a line halfway. And on this side we can put a line halfway too. Slight angle. And then we can break it into half so it gets smaller. And then we can break up those four windows on each side into half again. Helps to do break it up like this just down through here. Even more detail we have is the telephone here. The words. Now we have this really nice window. It's a very simple thing you might see. I liked it because of the color of the building. And it has that plant going across. But it's got some simple shapes there. So I can start again at the top and just mark those two dots for the width. Now how how high is it? Once again I'll get my fingers and I'll measure. One, two, two and a bit again. Roughly one, two and a bit down to there. And we can come straight down this side. So we've got those two shapes. Now the next next dot I'll do in here. Just visually I can see that the middle of the window. To the outside of that blue window is halfway between the outside of the frame and the middle. That's the width of the window. So let's put those in and down. And that's where that planter box is. Now we can see that if the windows actually go to here. So from the top here to there there's a bar in the middle. So I'm breaking it down even further. Put a bar here going vertically. So and then we can put in that window pane in the frame. So it goes in a bit. You can use dots as well. Say that looks looks good. Now then we can put in the planter box. So it runs along the edge here like that. And depending on what you like you can add in a little bit of detail like that. I would say between here and the corner. The corner of the window there. About halfway there's a significant part of the frame. Comparing what we see edge there. So a bit closer to the windows. On this section we have another lip there. So do another lip across this. And then we can draw that frame section. Now the vine. We can go down here and draw. This is where we can get our loose lines. So hold your pen loosely. And I say the vine ends about there. Put a dot there and come up and wiggle back over lines. Like this is my favorite part. Now add some leaves. And then these this metalwork. Just do them the same width. I might have put those in actually. And that's it for the window. So now the next three are slightly more complex. And have some interesting approaches that we're going to look at. So firstly these flowers. I really like them because we have a distinct silhouette to this. But it's quite complex. So instead of trying to draw one flower. And then measure everything off that flower. We are going to draw the whole flower section in one silhouette. So but I can start with dots as well at the top here. So put two dots for the width at the top. So that's the width there at the top. And then we come down. And about that width is about the height. And how wide is that base? Well I can see it's about a third. Let's put this silhouette. Let's go for it. So draw that flower there. And then I'm aiming towards this point. It's a leaf there. Comes down. We come across this way. There's another flower. You can continue the silhouette up there. So let's just draw a little bit of that pottage. Now the height of the vase or the pot that it's in is less than that height. I can just visually see and measure. It's about two thirds. So probably about that high. And that's how I'm comparing. Now the width. I know it's wider than that top bit just slightly. So I'm putting two dots down like this. Straight down and up. Now that leaf coming down here and this one here. Now I can draw that next shape because I can see how far it comes down compared to the vase that it's in. So come down to there. Now I'm happy with those main shapes. I can see the silhouette. Now we can go through and break them into small objects. Draw this flower. And you notice that I'm drawing with one line. Into the leaf there and then around. So now I've done those top shapes. And now let's start doing these leaves here. I'm going to just work my way across here. So down to there. Go across. Now in there it's a bit complex. So just add a little line there. I'm not worried about counting how many there are. The watercolor will show that's all green. The rope. More details. I'm in a very loose sketch of a complex object. Which you could sketch in front of you still life. Okay so I'm going to draw this cigar here. But I'm drawing on another bit of paper and just show you a mistake I made. So I was trying to measure the bird out by width to fit. But then I drew the head too big. Tried to make it smaller. But it didn't fit in for its feet from here to here. That's the height. So I'll put a dot here and say. I'll say it can go. Say it can go down to there. Roughly there's three sections to the height. So that might be around about the neck. And that is the body and the legs here. The legs are a little bit shorter than those two sections. So that that works out well. So we're just going to put two dots for where I think the head should be. So two dots here. I'm making them quite small here so they'll fit this time. So they're about five head widths across. So let's see if this fits. So we've got one. We've got two. Three. Four. So in this example I've used a few dots on the top and on the width. Just to work out where things sit. And so we'll do the first bit the head up the top here. And then the body. Come down there and the neck kind of ends about there. Around there and it bends back. The five head lengths back and back here. And put a dot here. That's where the tail is. So let's go work our way from the tail here over to here. Once again halfway between the head and the bottom there. That's about where it starts to arch in again. And do the back. So I'll come down to there. There. So now I have that bird roughly in proportion just by using dots. And then around this shape here. Now I can break up the shape. Down here that's that shape in there. The wing. And then the legs. More at this point where that gray bit of the wing hits that neck. About there. Let's go back and then down to where those are there. And now let's do some more details. And then we can then from there go over and draw the edge of the beak. Now the eye it's easy to think we put it more in the middle. But it actually follows that line up where the edge of the mouth is. And then it's just up in there. So it's closer to the right circle. And there is the bird. So with that one we have to basically use that head to measure out the length. The width and the height. So this is our final exercise. And another challenging one here where we've got lots of detail. With this kind of thing I think it's important to sketch it in layers. So think about what object is first. So in the foreground we have the first chair on the right. And then we have the table. And then in the background we have the final chair there. So I'm going to sketch the chair first. And then draw that table in comparison to the chair. So once again let's do our height. The bottom can be down to there. So I know it will fit in that little area. Now halfway between those two dots is where the seat is. Where you sit on. So that's about there. And then the width. It looks like about that height is the same as the width. So come across like that. That's about where that seat sits. Just in there. So I'm actually going to start with this shape here. Just circle. So it goes right to that top bit there and arches in. So let's arch that in. That line to there. Comes out to here. Out to here. And see this angle. Because of perspective we've got this angle here between those two dots. We come out from a bit and we come down to this point. So let's draw another line down there. Okay and we have our first chair. So I'm actually going to add some thickness to the chair legs. And a little knob on the end. When you're doing a little sketch you might just leave it with the single lines. So we have the first chair which is closest to us. We can compare the table to the chair. The table comes in about here. This is about two-thirds of the way up. And then the middle of the table is about here. So that means that width would just be double across this way. And that would be the width of the table. Now let's draw the table. And we've got an oval here. And let's draw that in. Let that draw the bottom here. Now we can use our one line technique to draw these branches. You could draw a straight branch and then add the leaves. Or you can just go across like this and draw a leaf as you go. Now we can easily make those legs go behind the chair because we've done a chair first. So right in the middle. So that was the middle point. Either side equal distance. And I'll see that width looks all right. And how far does it come down to? About there. So draw that first. And then we want to know where the legs come to on the floor. So I can compare it to the edge of the table. So let's draw that angle. And then give it width. Worry about it exactly. It's about there. Straight down like that. Now the final chair. The one in the background. So look across here from that chair. It's a table. The other chair goes about there. And it cuts through the table here. And then just comes out a little bit. So the seat isn't level. It's further up. So let's draw that top shape before we get too complicated with the bottom bit. Trying to follow that beautiful curvy shape it has. It's over here. So I'm just measuring the chair legs. Where do they go to? To there. Put a dot there. And this leg comes out and goes to this point. So around for a second line. Give it some thickness. Put one in the middle. There we go. So the main thing about this one was thinking about the layers. Which one you should draw first. And then in such a complex scene. How can you add that second layer? Comparing it to the object on the first one. So that's how I do the line work. Which is the most important part. The next section we're going to be doing is the watercolour. So I'm going to quickly skip through this. Just to show you the basic idea of how I apply that. But if you want the full version that'll be on my Patreon page. Okay I'm going to start with the food here. And we'll go through each one. Just adding the first layer of light colour. So the pancakes here. I'll use yellow ochre. And I'm mixing in a very light wash. Slapping on one stroke like that. And the last one. Burnt sienna. There. Once again just very lightly. And there's allowed to be gaps. So I'm adding a bit more water down here. Like that. So we're coming down this way. And as we come down. Let's add the purple. This purple lake. Right in the middle there. Rows on each flower. Try and dodge some of the rope across here. Give that a bit of depth. And make that darker. So we can add that in for the beak. Then for the legs. You need a good point to the brush. More darker on the legs. So these ones might be a lighter sap green. Raspberries down here. And in here. Just filling those windows as best you can. The frames on the back window. Sap green. Okay we're going down. That's a bit here. Rooting green and pull that down. It's a variegated wash. That color here. Payne's grey. I'm putting it there. That can add some texture. There's shadow under here. This section. Mostly on this side here. That. And then we've got a really nice dark show here. And it goes up and down. A little bit of shadow through here. Down this side right there. Shadow there. Just put the shadows through that bottom section. Just along the bottom to show that he's on the ground. All these little chair legs will come back. Sort of I call them dark highlights. Dry it a bit. You can add some texture to there. Some splatters there. And then highlights. So I'm using my Signo pen. There's a bit of the overlap where the shadow went over the leaves. I can add those back in the middle of those bends. The light's hitting those corners through here. On this closest surface. Just a few dots. Finished. So that's my technique on how I sketch anything I see. Using that simple process with dots, main shapes. And making sure we use really loose lines along the way. Now if you want the full tutorial that'll be over on Patreon. Without all the cuts. And you can also download the references there. The full process. But otherwise there's another tutorial here on YouTube you can watch right now. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.