Urban Sketching: Pen & Wash Course

What you'll learn

Learn to sketch urban street scenes with pen and wash with our drawing short courses in Sydney!

Learn how to capture your world in a sketchbook with this urban sketching course.

Explore your city with a professional artist to capture street scenes, beautiful buildings and public spaces in sketched compositions - then bring them to life with the tone and texture of watercolour wash. You'll develop and practice your outdoor urban sketching skills while learning new techniques to create depth and focus in your drawings. You will have the opportunity to explore different sketching styles, practice capturing a sense of time and place - and the value of your personal response - in your compositions.

Once mastered, this truly portable art form is a great skill to take travelling, or to explore your own environment through visual journaling.

The session starts in our classroom, where you will meet the group before walking to the chosen locations for a day of drawing outdoors.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this urban sketching course, you should have:

• Refreshed your knowledge of basic rules of perspective in the built environment
• Built confidence in using washes by progressing through single, two colour and limited palette washes
• Learned how to use colour washes to create a sense of depth and focus, and to capture local colour
• Learned the fundamentals of tonal value in the context of the built environment
• Used drawing exercises to explore different sketching styles
• Understood the importance of capturing a sense of time and place, and the value of your personal response
• Learned to make better-informed decisions about equipment
• Learned tips for creating more confident line styles
• Explored approaches for producing journals.

Course content

What will be covered in this urban sketching course?

• Observation
• Simplify a complex scene
• Perspective and composition
• Proportion, volume, light and shade

Intended audience

Who is this urban sketching course for?

This course is designed for a range of drawing abilities. It is recommended that students have previously completed Urban Sketching: Drawing Course or Drawing Course for Beginners or have some drawing experience.

Course materials

What to bring to class

Please dress appropriately for the weather, wear walking shoes and bring a water bottle, lunch and/or snacks.

Bring your own materials: click here for materials list

*Some coloured paints will be provided.

Additional information

Please note the following:

The course will go ahead in most weather, with undercover/indoor destinations used if it rains. We will only cancel if the weather is particularly inclement.