Notes for Enhancing your Sketches with Watercolor . (Beginner's ink + washes)

Here's a simple tutorial for someone venturing into watercolor for the first time.

• Its important to first establish your fundamental skills in shape recognition, value allocation and color temperature. 
• Eliminate the complexity of colors by first focusing on values 
• Progress into two colors when you are comfortable with just one color. Acquire temperature sensitivity by focusing on the extreme warm and cool. This is more "valuable" than splashing random colors on your work.

Lets assume that I want to work on a sketch of the skyline of Singapore.

Photo Reference from the internet. Its important to recognize the values of the scene. This allow you to design the shapes to your painting. You may draw with Micron Pens or load a fountain pen with waterpoof ink (noodlers's ink). Washes won't smudge lines made with waterproof ink.. They have to be waterproof though. 

• Permanent lines make it easier for your painting to sustain the shapes, Even when the colors failed to sustain the shapes of your painting ? The lines are there to support it. This is why ink & wash is a very reliable technique to establish a painting fast. In short, its quick and easy.

4 simple steps to glaze your scene with one color. 

• To establish atmospheric perspective. You just need to glaze the scene with 4 flat/ graded washes. 
• Its important to allow each glaze (layer) to dry before proceeding onto the next. 
• Watercolor is transparent. When you apply a wet layer to an already dried layer ? you bump up its value and make things darker. Contrary to oil painters, water-colorist usually work from light to dark, building up values towards the end.
• You can only lift the value off if the pigments are non-staining. Some pigment stains and a "lift" is out of the question.

To finish off, you can drop a soft-edged reflection of the scene. 

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• A soft edged reflection can easily be accomplish if you first prime the dried paper with clear water....To do that, Paint the shape of the reflection with clear water first. After that, simply charge in a thin wash of color.

Quick example with the top sketch done quickly with just one color.

• Beginners, allured by the appeal of colors often make the mistakes of painting without temperature sensitivity. In actuality, a limited palette is more than sufficient 
• The top painting was completed with just one color to establish a simple image. It could be better for sure. 
• The bottom painting was completed with merely two colors. One Warm and one Cool. Realize that by just using two colors, I was able to successfully illustrate both dark versus light and depict a good sense of spatial depth. Two colors were more than enough to secure that. 

My Perfect Sketches

I wanted to embark on a pan-America painting trip. You know - build my own camper van, live on electricity generated from solar panels, and most importantly - staying a little off the grid to paint my heart out. Though I previously lived in America for close to a decade, this dream was never fulfilled and it is becoming more distant as time goes by.

Recently, I decided to take action and contacted corporations, art foundations and various other organizations for sponsorship. Unfortunately, none of the companies that I contacted could envision the potential of my trip, and all declined to offer assistance.

At the brink of giving up, my collaborator from a previous project, Bynd Artisan, sent me a prototype of the finest watercolor sketchbook that I have designed. I thought about doing what I can with what I have, and decided to paint the places that I could have visited and painted if I could have gone on this dream road trip.



Every Artist has within them a desire to fill their sketchbook with only perfect sketches.
These are my Perfect Sketches.

It took me more than a month to complete this entire sketchbook.