Class Description
Urban Sketchbooking
Teacher: Lewis Rossignol
6 Lessons
March 5-15, 2024
I’ve been working a lot in my sketchbooks of late. As a mixed media artists, I’m always bouncing around to different subject matter, concepts, and materials. One of my favorite things that I always seem to come back to is urban watercolor sketching. I find watercolors to be a very freeing medium. And combining them with landscapes made of loose line work gives you the opportunity to allow the watercolors to build mood, color and texture into your scene.
In this class we will use mostly watercolors, liner pens, and pencil. However, I will encourage to use whatever other tools you have at your disposal to turn your watercolor sketches into more fun and detailed mixed media drawings.
I will share with you different methods of laying down lines, as well as varied ways of using watercolor. We’ll learn how to take more control of the watercolor in some cases. But more importantly, we’ll learn how to let go of the need to control every mark. This is so important, as watercolor really looks best when you allow the water to take the color on a journey, rather than trying to force the colors to do exactly what you think it should do.
We’ll also learn how to keep everything loose and confident, which will only make your finished pieces more visually appealing. Although our focus is on urban landscapes, these watercolor and line work methods will easily transition to any subject that you enjoy drawing and painting. I hope you can join me in this fun journey.
Lewis
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Class Itinerary
Lessons are prerecorded and available on the following schedule:
Lesson 1 – Tuesday, March 5
Lesson 2 – Wednesday, March 6
Lesson 3 – Friday, March 8
Lesson 4 – Tuesday, March 12
Lesson 5 – Wednesday, March 13
Lesson 6 – Thursday, March 15
Lesson 1: Reference Photos, Perspective, and Textures
In this first lesson we’ll go over what makes a great reference photo, and how to choose one that fits your skill level. We’ll also briefly touch on perspective so you have a frame of reference. Finally, we’ll work on creating textures with our pens and watercolors.
Lesson 2: Lines
Lines are the bones of urban sketching. In this lesson we’ll be creating the bones, through line work, for two different drawings, which we will work more on in Lesson 3.
Lesson 3: Value and Texture
In this first lesson we are going to add focus, shading, texture and value to our two line drawings. We’ll do one mainly dry, with more pen and pencil marks. The other will be done with mostly brush, water and watercolor.
Lesson 4: Timed Lines, and expressive watercolor
Possibly the most challenging, and fun lesson, we will be working on some timed line work to set up the drawings for the last three lessons. We will use a continuous line technique some of the time. We will also add some expressive watercolor to one of the drawings.
Lesson 5: Full On Watercolor
Here we are going to try some different watercolor techniques on the two unfinished drawings from lesson 4, adding a lot of texture and color to our pieces.
Lesson 6: Finishing Touches through Mixed Media
To finish our course we will be bringing our sketches to a finished place by adding mixed media. The focus will be on using the tools that you already have at your disposal in your studio or house. Some possibilities are water soluble crayons, colored pencils, watercolor pencils, markers, poscas, colored pens, oil pastels, and the list goes on.
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For a full list of the supplies you will need, see the tab titled “Supplies” located just under the video screen above.