I went to Ramat Hanadiv garden today, and created a quick watercolour sketch on location. There were a lot of details in the scene, and I wanted to capture a relatively wide angle, so I had to do a little planning ahead. I normally don’t take photos or videos when I sketch (only once I’m done), but this time I made some unusual choices for me, so I decided to document them as I went along.

This is part of the scene that I was sketching:

I was using a cold pressed Etchr watercolour sketch book. It’s wonderful for watercolours, but pen and ink struggle on this paper. I usually start the sketch with pen and ink (a fineliner or a fountain pen) and then move to watercolours, but since there was so much detail here and I didn’t want to get carried away by it, I started with a Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayon:

Then I blocked in the greens of the roses, the trees, and a bit of the ground. I’m using the lightest green hues as this point – I’ll add darker greens later to add volume and depth. In watercolour you work light to dark. I also went over the Neocolour II with some water.

At this point I took out the fineliner and sketched out the palm tree and started sketching in the tree trunks. I also added colour to the palm tree trunk. The palm isn’t supposed to be the focal point of this sketch, the roses are, but it’s there to give things perspective (and it literally was standing nearby – I just pulled it into the frame because I thought the sketch needed it).

At this point I finished the line work, and then moved to adding depth to the greens. I deliberately left the path largely flat because I wanted the roses to be the focus, not the cobble stones. There’s only so much detail our eye can take, so you need to be mindful of that when sketching. This is something I’ve been struggling with for years – what to leave in and what to edit out.

This is the finished sketch. There are roses added in, some shadows under the plants, tree trunks, the palm fronds. I was tempted to add the sky after I was done, which is why I knew I shouldn’t add the sky. Never add anything after the bulk of the sketch is done just because you had the idea as an afterthought. It’s the best way to “ruin” a painting.

This took me about 40 minutes, much of the time spent waiting for the paint to dry or mixing greens.

What do you think? Would you try and sketch something like this – by blocking it in paint first before moving to pen and ink?