Sketch To Practice

Learning anything requires practice. In painting, sketching is our practice.  The practice of sketching allows the artist to focus on important skills and techniques, exploration of subjects, and way more.  Maybe the most important thing that sketching practice provides is freedom – mostly from the fear that we will really mess up that big beautiful and expensive piece of paper while wasting paint!

It’s a pretty common feeling for an artist to think their sketches are often “better” than their finished paintings.  This is mostly because sketches are done with the freedom that comes from lack of any expectation except that you are practicing, exploring or “playing around”.

In this painting lesson, we take a common – maybe even overlooked – scene and use it for sketching practice. We’ll focus on two main things: one is to work on creating mass shapes from separate objects; the other is to work on showing reflections in a simple way.

Drawing Layout For Any Painting

One note on the drawing layout. The downloadable layouts are done with heavy lines to make it easy to see and copy onto your watercolor paper. It is best not to draw the lines too heavy on your paper, especially in the sky, since there is a good chance the lines will show through the paint. It’s not a deal-breaker, but those heavy pencil lines are sometimes a distraction.

What you’ll need

• Brushes – Medium Round, and Small Round
• Colors – Raw Sienna, DaVinci Burnt Sienna, Winsor Newton French Ultramarine Blue
• Watercolor paper – preferably Arches 140lb Cold Press cut to about 11″ x 7″ or so

 Get ready, turn on the video and let’s jump in!