Illustration or sketch: one, two, three: ready!

Barn illustration, art classes

Illustration or sketch of building

Illustration or sketch can be simplified in order to get it done outdoors or to complete indoors because sometimes the weather can be quite bothersome and not cooperating with our intentions. I would love to share some observations because they might inspire somebody to just get a pencil, a brush and paper and go ahead.

Do we need rules in art?

It might sound strange, but most people believe there are many strict rules when we draw or paint. Maybe the instruction on some sites makes one feel that if you do not follow these rules you cannot paint or draw. That is not true.  While there are lots of tricks, shortcuts and favorite ways to get things done faster and better, one should not try to stick to something which we call strict rules. Not with creativity. Not in art.

Learn freedom from children

That would mean the small kid who does not have an idea of rules and instructions should not be able to draw. But the small kid is able to draw. Every kid is able to draw and paint. As people grow up they find out that life wants us to comply with requirements, regulations, rules and certain instructions. It’s no surprise they want to apply rules to everything what we do. I know artists who would call every step of drawing or painting a rule.

No rules, but observe principles

I would love to encourage these who want to try art, to just go with their intention. I hear quite frequently: I don’t know anything about painting or drawing. Well, you don’t have to. You just have to start trusting your eyes and trying to draw or paint whatever you intend to. We discover all main principles of art along the way. These principles are composition, color theory and mixing, values, contrast, direction of light, shadows and perspective.

What to use for watercolor sketching?

You can use for sketching everything you can afford or like. If you do not know whether you will continue or not, why would you buy watercolor brush at $75? We always use the largest watercolor brush that still allows achieving what we want. It’s pretty much common sense. You could live with just one number 10 synthetic, soft watercolor brush if it has a good fine tip. 20-brush sets from Dollarama won’t do anything, don’t go for these.

Decent watercolor paper

If you are applying wet paint on your sketch, traditional sketching paper won’t allow that. It is too thin. That’s pretty much common sense, as well. It could tolerate dry pencil or some pen, but not washes, especially repeated washes or paint lifting. I would advise to always use watercolor paper for drawing, sketch, illustration, practice, color or flow practice because it is thicker and can be made wet. If you are a beginner, you can use just beginner’s watercolor paint set.

You can do illustration or sketch any way you like

If you are afraid to draw right away with pen, do the initial drawing in pencil and go over with pen afterwards. Keep the best lines and erase everything else, and there you have a nice, clean, attractive drawing. Why to use pen? It is simply easier. Pen makes the outline clearly visible, the entire image looks finished and elaborated even when the drawing is far from perfect, but watercolor washes will bring your artistic attempt to life.

There is no wrong or right way to sketch, to draw or to paint

All artists develop their own style over time. Should you expect the first attempts to be perfect? No, don’t do that. Always tell yourself: let us see what happens. Treat all of your first year’s art as practice, as experiment. Some will be god, some will fly into the wastebasket, and that is absolutely fine.

Artistic mistakes can be interesting

People call everything which did not come out perfect: a mistake. That does not always apply to art either. Some artistic mistakes and flaws can become the foundation of your personal style. Some experiments can set the tone for anything you do in the future. Therefore: experiment, experiment and experiment!

Use any style

Illustration or sketch can be carried out in any style you prefer. Illustration can be done easily. I am advising to use pen just for simplicity and speed. It really helps. I also love the accomplished look of such sketches which can be definitely used as completely finished art on the wall or for any other purpose.

A few steps

Illustration, barn drawing
Barn illustration, step 1, pen drawing

First we draw with pencil the main lines. We draw lightly without using pressure. After that we repeat the best lines in pen.

Illustration, barn drawing
Step 2, adding background color

Choose whatever colors you love and would want in your sketch. Activate with water. Test on testing paper how transparent the watered down mix is. Apply small amount of water onto the main image area. You can use spray bottle if it creates mist. Check against light: if the shine is about to disappear, that’s the best time for first washes.

Barn drawing
Illustration is ready after adding more washes with less diluted paint

Adjust and correct

If you allow first layers to dry and then make your paper wet again, nothing will happen to the first dry layers. It is safe to go over with water. Don’t rub or scratch with the brush; that will definitely take off some paint. Corrections are done with paper towel when the painting is wet: pressing paper towel onto watercolor paper will take off most of wet paint. When paper is completely dry, apply washes and use damp brush or paper towel to lift color or remove paint. Repeat until you like it.

Village illustration, pen and watercolor
Large 18 x 24 in or 46 x 61 cm sketch, done in a few minutes for demo

Pen and paper

The thicker the watercolor paper, the more things you can do with it. Cheap watercolor paper is for tests and practice only. It is simply too thin to do something more. You can choose any pen you can afford or like. Your pen can be different color, too. Black simply fits any other color and makes it stand out more.

All watercolor illustrations and sketches look great. If you want them to be better, practice more and don’t expect immediate perfection.

How to create better art with less effort

Watercolor sketch

Everything requires effort

Is it even possible to create great art with little effort? Yes, and no. The most important part is probably wasting less time and materials. We need a plan to achieve that. A good plan for creation of a painting means a sketching, drawing or a value sketch. In my personal experience, it is pencil, pen and watercolor sketch which is the best preparation stage for a painting.

Not only result matters

When somebody wants to apply for classes I am usually told this: “I’d really like to paint”. Something like that. Points to some landscape or floral, or still life. Basically, everybody is interested in the result and not that much in the path which led me to it. I spend a lot of time practicing and exploring the subject from different perspectives.

Exploring art supplies

If you are one of those artists-to-be who jumped straight to brushes and did not take your time to explore the elements of an artwork, I can understand you. People usually think watercolor and sketching is for watercolor artists, who mask out white spots or those who get ideal washes just by swinging around the brush with some paint on it. However, there is a missing link between the idea of our art and it’s draft.

Seeing subject artistically

The real life shows that any potential artist and anybody, who does art as hobby, would have gotten much better paintings sooner if they considered sketching as an important step. That refers to painting with any medium: watercolor, pastel, acrylic or oil. The truth is, they all originate in one place: in our brain, through our eyes and senses. Therefore, we should exercise our visual abilities and our visual perception. I’m talking more about importance to learn seeing in my previous posts:

Attraction of drawing and Overcoming painting issues

Lack of values, proportions and contrast

The problem with not well developing painting is not only the technique of applying paint. That usually works fairly well after a few attempts. The problem most often is in our eyes: we do not perceive values, shapes, proportions and potential composition; therefore, we cannot come up with a neat plan to make painting elements work.

Watercolor sketch
This sketch became a large watercolor painting afterwards

Advantage of sketching

Sketch is done much faster than a painting. Sketching out objects or just values, putting them in a draft composition allows making a decision momentarily if that will or won’t work. Sketch isn’t the entire painting, but by doing it one learns much more about their subject. We find out that we need to look at it more carefully, more intensely, more accurately.

Watercolor sketch
Thin and thick black pen and watercolor for creation of perspective sketch, 1-point perspective

Watercolor sketch
Rough black pen and watercolor wash sketch to use as reference for larger acrylic painting

Skills are based on knowledge

I can compare creating art with writing. When people say “I don’t want to sketch and I don’t want to know anything about drawing”, it is like somebody who intends to write a novel would say “I don’t want to know anything about spelling and grammar. I just want to write a novel, so give me the idea and off we go”. The entertaining painting events also do a bad service: not only the entire idea does not allow anybody to really learn anything about creation of art, but the approach is just so wrong and materials are so bad that many people get a wrong idea.

Sketch results in painting
White birches, recent class demo, 20 x 24 inches, painting is sold

Art is more than moving paint around canvas

When somebody is just moving paint around the canvas in hopes that it miraculously will take the right shape and become the right color, I must say, it won’t. Painting is a summary of things we put in it. It is also the energy we put in it. Therefore, the sooner one learns about values, relationship between light and dark areas, values, softness or roughness of edges, proportion and compositional layout, the faster their paintings take shape and have volume. The missing link between our idea and its incorporation into artwork is the value sketch. Creating value sketch and color sketch is not a waste of time and paint.