 Hello and welcome to my YouTube channel. My name is Sandy Olnock and if you're new here Please do feel free to share something in the comments to tell me who you are. Where are you from? What kind of art do you make? What kind of art do you want to learn to make? Because I'm an art teacher at heart and I'd love to know how I can help a Little bit about me. I live in Western Washington. I don't drink coffee, which makes me an anomaly here Everybody drinks coffee. I have two dogs And we are excited because the sunny weather is finally I hate to say it out loud The sunny weather is finally coming according to the weatherman. It's supposed to be nice all week and it's going to be 75 by Friday If I say that out loud, I hope it doesn't jinx it But also I'm an artist working in a lot of mediums. I work in all sorts of things You can find playlists for your favorite in my playlist tab on my channel. I Also work in all different sizes from very small things that you could put on a card in an envelope Two larger pieces that you can frame for your wall and sketchbooks and everything in between Today, I'm going to be answering a question that was raised by Deborah over on art venture art venture is my community on Mighty networks you can access that either through the web or through an app and it's free to join you're welcome to Join in with us over there It's kind of like a social media without the ads without the algorithms without any tech getting in the way It's just us and our art. We have lots of great conversations. There's even a few really inexpensive classes over there that you could check out All right, so Deborah asked me this She says hi Sandy. I have taken a local course in watercolor and ink sketchbook They taught ink drawing first. Is this just a matter of preference or do you feel there are advantages to watercolor first? And that is a great question because I just released two classes last week One does the watercolor first and one does the ink first and I didn't really explain any of them why I Choose one over the other for certain circumstances So today I'm going to share two sketchbook Examples comparing the two and then I'll share two larger pieces soon kind of get an idea of what I mean when I say Depends on what you want to create So let's get started Wash an ink ink and wash which comes first I almost did chickens and eggs and decided you would probably rather see a flower So we're gonna do a fox glove on the left hand side We're gonna do the ink first and on the right hand side the watercolor first and you'll see another fox glove That's much more spectacular than this in a later section But on the left side When I'm drawing with pen and ink on white paper, especially if I don't have a pre-sketched down Sometimes I don't do that when I'm drawing outside. I just get the pen and start drawing The whole idea of white paper and a black pen that doesn't erase can be really intimidating and you can end up scaring yourself out of Doing anything loose and free because you're all worried about trying to get it right and what if I get this wrong? I can't erase the line Etc etc If you're with me, then make sure you click the thumbs up button Because that happens to me it happens to a lot of us Because we lose confidence when we see that line that won't go anywhere and then when we get to the watercolor portion Yes, it's more relaxing to just paint it in but it feels kind of like a coloring book and We start going right up to every single line and we try not to go out of the lines And you don't want to we don't want to do anything expressive here We just want to fill everything in and the feeling of a sketch like this for me Feels kind of on the static side. There's not any real energy to it but when I can do something that's even much quicker than this and Start to paint right away rather than worrying about the pen and ink yet Just using a very light General sense of pencil lines to tell me kind of where there's blossoms at what direction they're facing and how big they are I can throw color in and I'm free to leave white space I'm free to leave gaps in between flowers All kinds of things that I wouldn't do when I'm filling in something that already has lines And this is the style that I did the Teaching for the pals would sketches class and in that that class I am hoping that it's going to free people up to get looser with your sketches and not feel like oh my gosh I can't sketch because I can't get my pen lines right Sketching is not about getting it right sketching is just about the practice of doing it just getting out there and doing it and That's one of the reasons why I wanted to be sure to bring this to my students so that you guys could Loosen up a little bit and not stress out so much over the pen lines So I've added in a little extra color while the flowers were wet and then added in some greens for the stems And then when it comes to the pen lines, I can just get loose I'm not tracing around all the shapes that I made because those shapes were not made to be the whole flower They were just general color in that area I don't care if it's out of the lines or in the lines if there's extra white space included all the better Because that makes it looks like it looking like I left highlights like it was deliberate, right? That's always a nice thing. I'm not worried about whether the Sun is shining on those highlights I'm just looking for something loose and fresh that's going to capture the feeling of that flower and these foxglove We're like these happy little flouncy flowers that got lost on the left-hand side from all of the being careful but on the right-hand side they got loose and happy and I felt better after doing it and it took half the time to do the second one as it did the first one and For me sometimes just getting it done quickly To get away from like the rain cloud on the horizon is a good thing or if I'm out running errands And I stopped to do a quick sketch I like to get that done quickly and I sketch every day and I don't have hours and hours to give to it So it's helpful to be able to just do something quickly This technique helps significantly in getting that done quick so You know consider a lot of different things But most importantly, what is the look you're going for are you looking to get really careful with things or are you just want to be Loose and fresh they link to the pals would sketch class is down below the video in the doobly-doo Down there Now I'm going to do another quick one in a sketchbook and this one is a building and After I released the market street sketches, which were all buildings Then one of my students sent me a photo from her trip to Portland She saw a bunch of buildings there and she's like oh that looks like Sandy's class So I decided to draw the post office from that one. She took it at a really crazy angle So it does have perspective in it and in the market street class You don't have to worry about any Perspective because I did not include any perspective. They're all straight-up buildings. So you don't have to worry about that Make it easy At least easier And here I've drawn all the building and the bricks and the windows and everything in the pen and ink first And then I can just flow color over it now when you're doing a quick sketch You can also just leave that much color in it and not do anything else You don't have to do a ton of detail and here I did decide I would throw some shadows Into areas where the Sun was casting a shadow onto the building as well as sections that were receded into the building because it had multiple facades on it that were at different levels closer and further from the street and Then started to move on to the other side where I was going to begin with the watercolor They put down a light wash and then a second wash dropped into it Leaving those columns a little bit lighter leaving some highlights on them Because one of the things I messed up on the pen and ink portion on the left was the columns got really scrawny and skinny They are not supposed to be scrawny and skinny But once I put them in there, I couldn't fix them I also had missed out on doing the capitals on the top the little decorative things on the tops of the columns and I wanted to make sure I included that in the second half So I could kind of give myself almost sketched areas sketched dark areas with water color That I can then use for my pen and ink guidelines without having to you know, really stress out about The specifics of everything I'm going to keep the drawing much looser But I have better guidelines here than my pencil lines, which were obviously wrong because the Columns on the left hand side were just way too skinny So I've got some general indications here But even so there are going to be some areas that are not correct in the water color So don't feel like your water color has to be perfect either the pen and ink is what's going to clean that up Now the Columns as they go across the building Change in perspective from the left side to the right side because of the angle that she took the picture at because it was a Kind of extreme thing. I've straightened it out a little bit here But now that I have those white streaks I can see Exactly what I want to do with the columns because they're supposed to join up with those little sections on the top and I could fix that Given that now I'm working with the water color here at the end There's a row of windows in there that I got wrong in the water color because I was trusting my water color line So that little row of windows needs to be moved over to if I had done that in pen and ink It'd be really hard to move them over But I can do that a little bit with my pen and not stress out over the shadows that now appear to the left side of Them because those are in water color. They're not in pen So a lot of my pen work tends to be fixing things that I didn't get right In the first pass on whatever it was that I did the second half of the The drawing looks a little bit more correct in those columns the way the columns are placed in and the columns that have lighting on them Then the side on the left The Market Street sketches link is in the doobly-doo as well And those all have templates that you follow you just get to decorate your own windows decide what kind you want to put in your drawings So this first half of the video covers sketching just you know small sketches and In the second half we're going to look at how this flows out into a larger piece of art Because if you're doing something larger the issues that you're facing are a bit different Then when you're working really small like this on a three and a half by five and a half sketchbook So I decided I would draw the Chrysler building. I lived in New York when I was a much younger pup and Loved this building. I just love the art deco feel to it. It's got all those crazy windows with strange shapes on them and curves and just all kinds of decorative details and gargoyles and stuff So I decided I would draw that and I'm creating this on a block of watercolor paper Blocks are sealed all the way around except for an opening. You see the opening is white there The adhesive around it is black and that holds the whole thing down So you don't have to tape anything down watercolor blocks are a little more expensive Then regular watercolor paper pads that sort of thing But for me I use these a lot when I travel because then I don't have to bring tape with me I can just take a couple of these blocks in my bag and not have to not have to stress And then when you want to take the top sheet off, you just slide something in between the opening And pull the top page off So for this one after the sketch was all done I added the watercolor first and I wanted the building to just have a really nice feel to it Color-wise so I went from a golden color on the left to more of a blue color in the shadows and then we'll get into more of a Brown color as we get over to the right and it's going to go from darker color at the top to lighter at the bottom Just doing this wash was so pleasing I love doing big washes like this and I wasn't going to worry about a sky behind it I was just like happy to be able to practice doing a wash on this one Just remember with washes you want to make sure your Pigment consistency is the same for the colors that are touching each other if you use a really wet wash in one area Use a wet wash to blend it in with as opposed to a thick wash because you'll you won't get this kind of nice smooth blend So once that was dry, I was able to do a second very very pale wash With some of the bluish color to create the areas where the windows go because there are windows that kind of go down In a streak down the building and I knew I was gonna do really loose pen and ink on top of this I wasn't gonna do really detailed stuff which meant that I wanted to have the guidelines of these straight lines to communicate that Those are all in a row because then I don't have to make Everything perfect because you could get lost in trying to get a t-square and a ruler and measure everything out and try to make them All perfect, but if I'm fitting them just into a column where there's already some darker color It's much easier to just do some sketchy lines to create the feeling of That portion of the building and not have to drive yourself bunkers So then I could get the pen out now here I used a micron pen because I wanted something thinner than the pens that I have for fountain pens and In the market straight class we use micron pens because the details are really small on those and Just had fun adding details and I could add them in a very sketchy fashion Didn't have to stress over it And I had that secondary wash of watercolor that I could follow For some of the sections that had different amounts of Shadow in them my windows could just kind of be sketched in over top of some of the color that I'd put down and The gargoyles there sticking out from the top of the building had you know shapes that were already done in the watercolor And here's where the window stuff comes in that this just made it so much easier So the windows look like they're all aligned even though. They're just messy Half lines in some cases this building has windows where some people had their curtains open Some people had them closed and they're all different every single window is different and I didn't want to sit there and micromanage Exactly every single window So I was able to do that with the color and give it that unified feeling for the whole building Without driving myself bananas Because after I do a drawing like this for part of the time I get really bored I don't want to finish all the dang windows But I also had this going from dark at the top to later at the bottom So I was okay with letting a little bit of it get looser as I got to the bottom of the drawing So there's a building rendition larger and let's look at what the fox glove the same flowers before But the single stalk instead of breaking it into two parts in the sketch When you're drawing with an area that you have a bigger space to work with I've got a much larger block this time I'm making a nice big drawing of these flowers Which means the size that I have to work with is going to work great to get a lot of this detail in If I tried making this much detail in the sketch in the sketchbook then most of the flower ends up being black especially if you're somebody who uses Say sharpies when you're doing your drawings That's a thicker pen and you're going to end up taking up a lot of the real estate of the Areas where the color is supposed to be by using a really thick pen It might be easier to watercolor into a thick pen, but it's going to make the whole drawing darker in that way And here I could add a little bit of shading using the pen because the area is so much bigger And I have more space to work with Now as for the watercoloring of this one the Painting came out just as static. I guess as the first sketch did even though the drawing came out much better I've got lots more detail in the pen and ink But when I have lines and I'm trying to fill in the lines This is just something that I do that I don't like stylistically for me And I know lots of other people do this all the time and love it and that's their style and that's great But I like something a little bit looser And therefore this didn't make me as happy the pen and ink part made me very happy But the watercoloring didn't I did get to practice mixing a lot of purples The picture that I had had a lot of kind of dusky colors You know not really bright happy purples. They were more muted types of colors So I was using a lot of french ultramarine blue And some anthraquinoid scarlet. I tried a little pyrule scarlet in there Just lots of different colors to see if I could make things that assimilated what I saw in the reference And it was a great exercise in mixing colors at least there's that much And this drawing will be drawing slash painting, I guess will be in my fine art website right now I have a sale going on until mother's day on all my florals And I'm going to be putting some more florals In there on saturday because I've got some more flowers coming up for you in a future video So if you're interested in getting in on the sale the link is in the doobly do Big thanks to debora for asking the question that prompted this video I hope that that was helpful to her as well as to you and always remember There are no dumb questions if you have the question There's probably 10 15 20 100 other people who want to know the same thing So just keep asking And I will see you guys again next time my next video is on saturday See you later