chances are you know by now that I love painting outdoors in my sketchbook my
setup here is the slate mini from etchr lab so let's pack up the painting bag
throw on a jacket and buckle it all in because we're headed all the way to
London that beats air travel so I like to explore a new place before settling
down to paint whether it be immersing myself in the
markets checking out some of the local condominiums or watching a royal
procession coming from Buckingham Palace later on I arrive at Trafalgar Square
and I'm ready to paint I've scouted a nice little spot in front of this wall
here and here's what I'm looking at I really like the fountain element in the
foreground against the large facade in the background and the people spotted
throughout okay let's speed through my rudimentary pencil sketch now I don't
solve all the problems here I'm just placing the major elements where I think
they go in the frame that's electrical tape on the paper by the way now I'm
squeezing some white gouache paint onto my watercolor palette I'll mix the two
mediums I'll start right now getting a wash with some white gouache as well as
some watercolor my goal here is to offset the warm monotone of the page now
I like that warm page but I want to just you know get it kind of a warm versus
cool soup let's say just kind of start me off it's kind of a colorful yet still
neutral starting point that I'll build color on now these are not local colors
they're more random than that this however is a bit of a local color and
while it's on my brush I'll throw it into other areas of the painting in an
effort to kind of weave colors together I don't want my painting to look like
I'm just coloring in the lines all right see those big lumbering clouds I think I
can use them to kind of frame that center dome so I'm mixing up a pretty
thick helping of gouache and I'll draw these shapes very carefully to not only
start drawing the clouds but to simultaneously reveal the architecture
in front of them this is why I like having gouache in my
setup so I can go opaquely lighter over a darker page in this case I'll mix up
the shadow side of the cloud with this dirty blue color a little more
transparency a little more water in the mix which will allow the page to kind of
show through as well I really prefer the transparent quality of watercolor over
gouache which is why my colors our watercolor anyway I mixed up a much more
clean saturated blue for the actual blue of the sky can you believe it I got a
sunny day in London what are the chances there's a look at the etchr bag in
action putting down a very careful shape here to indicate the center dome and now
I'll mix up a kind of neutral grayish warm color for the stonework beneath it
again being pretty careful in this area that I'm making clean shapes good
drawing decisions it's an important feature of the architecture and as a
result I think a lot of people will be drawn to this area of the sketch so I'll
make sure there is some kind of accuracy here where as you'll see in other areas
I'll leave it completely abstract. *music plays in BG*
I'm just enjoying that guy playing live music while I sketch one of the many
perks of painting outdoors all right I'm mixing up a pretty dark
value here and it's a very warm color and I'll use that to reveal by virtue of
the shadows I'll reveal the columns let's kind of blob those in for now and
while I'm working with a dark value I'll see where else I can use it and here I'm
working pretty carefully to get the rest of the columns in but I'm kind of
walking this tightrope I don't want the same column shape repeated like eight
times or however many columns there are there I want to play a little game with
the audience the audience will be smart enough to fill in the fact that those
are columns so as a painter I kind of want to be one step ahead of that and do
it in a way that is a little bit unpredictable so I'll play with the
color I'll play with the value I'll play with the edge I'll let some things be
lost while other things are found now this is purely an aesthetic choice of
course you don't have to paint it this way again for me it's like a little game
where I know what the viewer expects so I try and not give it to them exactly
how they think they're gonna get it and this is nothing I invented a lot of my
favorite painters do that as well and I find that kind of work just a joy to
look at in case you're wondering I'm not holding the bag with my hands the weight
is distributed evenly around my neck it's nice because I can just focus on
holding the brush and holding my palette it's almost like a manual easel and it's
not too heavy either so it's not like my neck is all sore when I'm finished with
a painting over the years I have amassed quite a few outdoor painting setups and
I'll show you a whole different one the next time I make an outdoor painting
video anyway back to the painting I just put in the water where the fountain is
spilling into and I used a pretty rich blue a little bit more rich in
saturation than it actually was in real life I think it'll be nice to echo that
sky blue and bring that color down into other areas of the painting speaking of
color London as you might know is kind of famous for being gray and while I
want to capture London's grayness I don't want my colors to look dead
the way you paint graze without making them look dead is to have them always
moving in temperature just a little bit a little warmer here a little cooler
there a little bridge between the warm and cool connecting them that process is
happening almost invisibly I'm not always talking about it but I am always
doing it so keep it in mind as you watch me work here like this gray is a little
bit more purple against a more orange II gray over the years I've learned to be
very sensitive to those little shifts because our eye in real life is very
sensitive to those shifts in nature and they occur everywhere a pretty thick
mixture here to kind of dry brush in the darks of the fountain I'm using that dry
brush patchy texture here because I think it'll play nicely with the blowing
water texture that I'm going to layer on top of this in just a moment here you
can get a look at it that water is really blowing in the wind and it's
causing this interesting patchwork of whites which I will try and imitate with
a heavy load of gouache on my brush a brush which I wrung the water out of
before loading up with paint and touching that lightly to the page will
allow the texture of the paper to kind of pick up paint in an uneven way this
is dry brush technique oh and I just wanted to point out my water container
which you can see here at the top right of the frame there's a clip on the
underside of that so it clips right onto the bag itself quick break folks
Easter's coming and I have hidden an easter egg in this video Easter egg as
in a hidden surprise not a literal egg anyway the first person to find the
easter egg gets a free download of their choice from my store speaking of which I
have an online store featuring in-depth lessons on a whole range of subjects
from traditional media to my entire digital illustration process techniques
for digital brushwork 3d techniques understanding how the human head works
and more so go check it out at Marco Bucci art store calm ok back to London I
still had all that white on my brush so I added some yellow to it for some
opaque highlights on the fountain and while that's still on the brush I'll
just look around the page to see where else I can put it maybe hinted some
background people with some dots also some railings in the back getting
hit by light all the things that I said earlier can remain abstract just going
back to the fountain here still with a lot of white on my brush but now I've
added a little bit more blue to it to kind of get the blowing water in shadow
but in true London fashion I've lost the sunlight I am NOT going to reverse
course however I started in sunlight that's what I've got on my page I'm
gonna keep working with it losing your entire lighting condition in the middle
of the painting is a bait-and-switch tactic that nature just loves to play on
painters and I'll wager that anyone who paints outdoors is nodding along with me
right now but that's okay I've got a ton of reference on the paper I'll just
continue on the path that I set out on I can still use the reference in front of
me for detail work like these additional domes that I've decided to add I felt
the sides of the frame we're looking pretty empty without them and I'll just
quickly go ahead and mix up some kind of color to connect these floating domes in
with the architectural facade
and it's about this time where I should finally start getting some people in
there that is to say some foreground people I've got a lot of dots and dashes
in the background that don't look like people yet but with a few kind of more
recognizable human figures in the foreground that are much larger of
course I can give the viewer the necessary context to then interpret all
those dots and dashes in the background as more people so I just look up to see
who's in front of me at this moment and I kind of just get a silhouette down
nothing more than that I have to remind myself that the people
are not the focal point of this painting if they were I would have started with
them probably figures can often provide a little splash of color like in this
case the kids red jacket and while I have that read on the brush let's find
some other red jackets even if it means having to invent them and as I get to
the background I'll just reduce my brush strokes to little dots again relying on
the figures in the foreground to provide the necessary scale the consistency of
the cast shadows are important so I'll make sure that every major figure has
one I'm also seeing a little cast shadow creeping into the scene over here and
I'll decide to include that late in the game and as a kind of finishing touch
I'll load up the brush with white once more just get a few more figures popping
out in the background there maybe adjusting a few lights on the foreground
figures just a few highlights on the sides of them where the light would be
striking reinforce some perspective lines on the ground and do whatever this
is I think this means that I'm done my favorite parts peeling off the tape
seeing the final result I think a dark frame is useful so I'll throw one in
with a pencil don't forget to label the sketch I also find it nice to date them
after all this is my travel journal I'll look back on this years in the future
well thank you for joining me I hope this has inspired you to get out there
with your sketchbook my videos wouldn't be complete without a big thank you to
my patrons you guys really helped make these videos possible anyway
good luck finding that Easter egg check out the online store and I'll see you in
another video