One Minute Watercolor: Tinting a Single Line Sketch
I found this old footage on my hard drive the other day. This is an example done back in 2015 for a workshop on travel sketching. I still have a free PDF of the exercises up here for download.
It’s a sped-up time-lapse video, which is not my favorite way to show drawings – so I though I’d make it into a One Minute Watercolor short :)
It’s easy to *say* – just draw without lifting the pen :) Harder to actually do it! Here you can see exactly what I mean when I say – ‘stick to the spirit’ of single line.
I was trying to do this in 5-7 lines. But I see a bunch of single-line people in there – so I’m not sure how few lines it really was.
In any case – don’t be so strict with it you end up hating the drawing :) But use it as a way to encourage simplification. And speed!
~m
Citizen Sketcher 
This is fabulous! I’ve played it 7 times so far and plan to do so many more–each time focusing on one aspect of your approach. More please. More! Please!
Loved your passion!
Thanks Marc!
Thank you! Marc, you are always so generous in sharing your expertise!
Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
Wonderful and fits exactly what I’m trying to do with my work too. Marc, you also have a gorgeous voice too. Ha!
Thank you so much!
Fast and loose baby!!! I love to work like that…something happens in your artist brain when you go fast like that..really taps into the right brain visual function.thanks Marc.
Thanks, Marc! I just (finally!) got a copy of your book. The above poster was right, you are generous with our expertise. That applies to your book as well! Just curious….do you remember the actual time of the drawing in the video?
Thanks! DougN
Hey Doug – Well I can’t recall the exact time, but you can do these fairly quickly when you get into the zone. Let’s say 5-15 minutes? Depending on complexity. But really you draw for ‘a while’, say 2-3 hours and end up with “a stack” – 12?15?20? and then you go to the cafe and tint them all over a drinks or dinner. For me the bottom line is like – out of any given day, I end up with 3-5 ‘great sketches’ and some lesser ones I don’t show. Mostly depending on how inspiring the views are and how much walking vs how much drawing :)
Absolutely fantastic and so inspiring! Thanks!!
Fantastic and so inspiring!!
Marc, many thanks for the video and the PDF. I used the material as the content for my U3A art workshop – the theme was Sketching With A Pen. The average age of the class is about 70 and spans a range of abilities. The workshop was really successful and everyone enjoyed it, so now we have several converts to pen sketching. Once again many thanks for sharing your expertise.
Hey, that’s great to hear! Glad the notes helped out, and more people turned onto urban sketching :)
Thank you for this amazing PDF with the exercises!