Here’s another video about Urban sketching !
This one was made in the beautiful Kenrokuen Garden in Kanazawa.
It’s one of my favorite spots in Japan. Kanazawa is a very beautiful city, and the Kenrokuen Garden is one of the most beautiful gardens in Japan.
I painted in a watercolor sketchbook called “hand.book” manufactured by Global Art Materials. It has a nice square shape. The paper is good quality.
I used travel brushes: a diagonal sable brush by Rosemary’s & Co and a synthetic Perla Escoda brush, with my usual two Pocket Palettes, the blue-green one and the orange-browns one. More details here : http://barbaraluel.com/product/pocket-palette-blues-greens/ and http://barbaraluel.com/product/watercolor-pocket-palette-yellows-reds-browns/ . I do all my urban sketching with these pocket palettes to have lighter luggage. It seems very small but there’s more then enough paint for long trips. Even after 3 weeks of sketching every day I didn’t even use half of the paint.
The video starts with the painting. I didn’t show the drawing part so it wouldn’t be too long. The drawing was made with a fine ball point pen.
For the water I used Green earth and Perylene green.
For the autumn colors I used light ochre and raw and burnt Siena. In “real life” the colors were not very present because it was raining very hard… But I liked to put more of it in the watercolor 🙂
The structure with bamboo and ropes to protect the tree branches against winter are very special and graphical. I use light ochre. (the weight of the snow might make the branches of the old trees break, so the Japanese suspend the branches on ropes ahning from a central wooden pole next to the tree trunk)
For the shadows and tree trunks I used sepia and a grey made of orange and ultramarine blue.
The trees far away are painted without drawing to make them look far away, and painted in light Green Earth.
I hope you enjoy the video!
Happy painting 🙂
Love,
Barbara