Line and wash is a great way to learn how to draw and paint at the same time! I like drawing and painting outside as it forces you to work fast. Below are a few scenes I painted in a recent free workshop.
Quick tips: remember to draw the figures in the foreground first so that lines won’t overlap with the background buildings! The lines on the ground are simply directional lines, leading to the vanishing point in the background. It’s a bonus they appear as marble blocks.
To take a break from all the details, I painted this after:
The above scene was painted entirely wet-into-wet. One of the things that drew me to watercolours initially was the magical, fluid effects such as in this scene. The most amazing thing is how easy it is to achieve this. You wet the page, and then drop in paint. It’s that simple. Always start with the lighter/warm colours first – in this case, the sky, water.
A little trick is to scratch out some highlights at the end with a small blade or card. You can see where I’ve done this in the trees and grass. A subtle but effective technique to create some sharper shapes amongst the softness.
The free live workshop is available below – there was a live audience and I answered a lot of questions for beginners:
