Sketching with Watercolour - easy Barn Door Study

I roughed this out with a regular pencil just so I could find where I wanted to go with it. I decided that the interest was around the base of the door so I've cropped the whole thing down and I've cut out all the top of it. I'm only looking for composition when I'm doing this so I've deliberately placed the area around the bottom of the door down here which is not on the middle of the picture, it's not out on the edge and it's not right down at the bottom either. So I've got a composition which has got my main focus here but I've got a nice diagonal coming down because of the scope as well. So I'm playing around with all of these blocks of stone with all the colour and interest that the steps have and the base of the door with the high contrast and then the rest of it really is almost immaterial, it's just there to support the main elements of the picture. What I'll do is block in a little bit on my main subject. So I'm just going to look straight away at the door and what colour that is. So I want a pale grey and a standard sort of pale grey for me would be a little bit of burnt sienna with a touch of ultramarine and that gives me a warm grey, really really washy sort of warm grey and I'm just going to use that directly on it. There is no white in this so having a little bit of a variation in it is all good. I don't want this to be a sort of solid colour so we'll get tiny little touches of change throughout it and that can just fill in, just make sure there is no white in that door and sort of bring that down to where the step is there. The timber on either side is the same, it's got a little bit of paint in it so I can paint that out as well. So just do this straight away, if you're going to paint a subject like this you need to get your base colour in first. Obviously reserve any whites but it's the base colour that's interesting. Now the stone on either side, that's much more ochery so I'm going to get some raw sienna and just tint that down straight away on the sides. I don't want these to be separate so I'm deliberately joining all of this straight away right down here as well. I'm going very light with this, I could reserve a tiny little bit of white in there if I wanted to, I'm not going to try and do a real white or anything like that but just getting some colour in that will do. The rest of it I'll sort out in a moment. Before that dries I'm just going to put a little variation in it so I'm going to take a hint more strength, I'm going to take a little bit of the burnt sienna and the ultra that I've got there as well and I'm just going to break this up. So straight away throw some variation into it. I know that I'm going to have interest in the steps and so on down here so I don't need to do very much but to help me, to help me to see what I'm doing, if I do the slightly shadowed side of the step like that and then I've got the dark coming from under the door, that helps me just to see where I'm going with it. I'm going to do another step here which is not in the photograph, I'm making it up, but that's going to help me too. So I'm going to get a little rise going up to the door over on that side there and that's enough. As long as I've broken up the edges all around the outside here that's all I really care about, I just don't want any hard line there at the moment. So straight away I'm going to block in some of the darker areas. Now I'm not going dark, dark with this, I'm just going to use my brush to pick out some shapes and I know that the base of the door is going to be in shadow as we can see through it. So this is the broken edge of the timbers across the bottom there so I'm just going to put that in place, take that all the way across, cut out this little stone here like that, take a little bit of water on my brush and just soften that edge and then I've got a rise sort of going into the darkness there. So that's just done with some Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna. I use the same colour just to come in where my pencil lines are, just along the sides there just to pick out a little bit of dark. This is a relatively thin line, relatively quick. I'm not going to try and do this too sharply. You can have a little bit there as well, you could also have a little bit down on some of these bits. Just sort of pick out a few sections which is all going to start helping me see what I'm doing. The next thing is I want to put a little bit of the paint on this, the actual colour that the door was painted originally and there's a green on that, there's a sort of almost aqua green. Using the side of my brush I'm just going to drag that straight up and down in the direction that the timbers go in the door. They're just in a couple of spots just to sort of pull it out a little bit further but I'm not going to do very much of it. While I've got that colour I can also put just a little bit of it into the walls because there's damp, there's mosses and lichens and all that sort of stuff growing so I'm just going to put a bit of that in here as well. Make it possibly a little bit warmer with some Raw Sienna but we'll just get some of that coming through. So it starts to tie things together a little bit. This is where the top of the base of, I don't know what it's called, the bit of wood at the bottom there which is holding it all together, we'll just call it that, it's a technical thing, and on top of that there is the rusty hinge so we'll keep that there. This is where this is broken and we can see the planks beyond it so I'll just place that in. Coming down there like that, this is all the interest that you're going to get in the bottom. A bit more of the colour here now and decide on how many planks we're having coming down. I think there's about five, maybe six in the photo. What I don't want to do with this is have anything too carefully drawn. I haven't quite got the spacing of that right but I don't really care. So I'm going to have that going all the way up to the top but broken. I'm not trying to do a rigid line, I just want to imply these lines in it. Get the same sort of grey but again with variations. I'm going to make some of this a little bit cooler with a little bit more of the ultramarine in it and I'm just going to put some patches of that over the top. Here I'm going to go with the shapes and the angles because I've now described where they are. Those ones are going to have a little bit more colour in them as the warmth increases down there. So just a little bit and that will come in sort of under the door there as well. I'm just going to warm that up a little bit. That was too much, that was burnt sienna. So I'm just going to go in now with some more ultra on top of that. Darken it right up because I can see where the base of the door is now. And again just do what I did before, just a damp brush and we'll just pull that away. Now a little bit more variation I think because the door is the main subject. I don't want all the door to be the same. So a tiny bit more raw sienna going on top there just to break it up. These are part of the door so they can have a little bit more. Mixing up mostly raw sienna and there's a little bit of colour on that as well but mostly. I'm going to look for some of the shapes here. So I'm going to have one here that's going to have an edge to it there like that. I've already talked about this one which is coming out and I'm going to have some edge on that. This step here. I like to think of steps out of old barns and things like this as having been used over centuries. I don't know how old the barn really is but it's really nice to be sort of a little bit romantic about that. We don't want the big lump of concrete in the front of course because that's not so romantic but having a couple of old steps I think is terrific. So we'll use a little bit more that grubby sienna and take that across there up here. Take some of that into the wall. You don't want to use a good brush for this. Certainly not expensive sables but I don't use those myself. I only use synthetic brushes. Okay so there's a lot more structure in there now and because I can see where everything is going I can now fill in the rest of the picture. So all I want to do for that is just take a wash and extend where the wall and so on is going. So I'll just get some very diluted raw sienna again this time and start filling some of this in. Just a big brush now. If I leave a couple of white patches here and there that will be great especially down towards the bottom. Just do that. If you're doing a thing like this in a sketchbook then this is very much the sequence that I would use for this. Only adding in stuff around the outside if necessary because quite often it's not. You're just drawing the bit that you want and you don't need to really do the rest of it but in this case I've got a piece of paper or tape down so I might as well. So that's just pretty much raw sienna and then I'll do the same colouring so burnt sienna and ultramarine again. Add a bit more of that into it so that I can have some patches which are a different colour. Some bits be a little bit more golden so we'll get some slightly stronger sienna and that's about it. So now I'm just going to indicate where some of the blocks are. This is fairly random. I can pretty much make this up. I can follow a cue from the photograph but I'm not trying to build everything into this. These sort of alternate. You don't get them all lining up perfectly and they blur so I'm just going to push that around like that. When I say they blur I'm talking about the pointing between them. You can't see it all. Barns are often made up of all the bits and pieces that were left over from doing something else so they don't have the best sizes and shapes. We just put in pretty much what we want here. Now I've got one or two sort of random things here just from the marks that I happen to have made and what I can do with that is actually build some of them in. So I've got a pale area and I'm thinking okay let's put something a little bit darker there and we've got one or two holes and things happening and then a bright bit. Now there's a little bit of a sort of tumble down of rocks coming through here so I'm not going to try and pick all of those out but certainly a little bit of it like that. A little bit more shape because I do want that sort of diagonal coming down all the way through here. This is some slightly stronger sienna and I can build just a little bit of that in here and there to get some richer strength within some of these rocks and stop it all being a little bit bland. That's just a little bit of water going on to soften those things down. Now while that is drying off I'm going to take a brush and do a little bit of dry brush work on it. Some slightly stronger siennas, both siennas together again, tiny little bit of that ultra, drag that and get a little bit of texture down towards the bottom. And then into that I'm going to put a little bit more of the green. So a tiny hint of that phthalo green I'm going to put with the sienna, the raw sienna, for the sort of mosses and things we've got down in here. So this time I'm going to go for the darkest dark that I'm going to use. So this is still the ultramarine and the burnt sienna but made that up to be pretty black and I want some of that to just sort of fit in under here, just really punchy and dark in there. Can have a little bit there too. This is where I can draw some real broken edges and things. I've got a lot of that in place already so I'm just adding into it. I want some of that to be in this crack which comes through here. And we'll have a defining shape on a rock or two there and one or two here. So this is where the drawing element of all of this comes in. You need to be able to see shapes and structures in order to do all of this but once your eye is in it should be okay. Just a hint more, I'm almost there. Right, just a couple more lines I think in the door itself. I could add some additional ones, just a tiny little suggestion that there is structure to those planks but they're not going to be the dark marks. And then this one I can do that going across, just separate this out a little bit here from the edge. And there we go, that's most of it. A tiny bit more along there I think. That edge. Now I've just got to put the hinge in, a sort of dark rusty hinge, a little bit of burnt sienna to start with. That will certainly start putting rust in place and let this come sort of all the way across. So just throw that in. And I also want to have a lock showing just up here. I'm not going to take a lot of care about exactly what that is but as long as I've got a little bit of something there. There's a padlock in there in reality but I think I can't be bothered to start drawing padlocks now. I'm going to put a little cast shadow underneath from that. That's going over the top and a little bit more distressing on the underside as well. And I think that's almost it. I'll finish off with just the last bit of extra green. That yellow and phthalo, just boost that up. I think just right down the bottom here, that could be good. Have that a little bit stronger in there where it's constantly damp and all these things are growing. There we go, I think that's probably enough.