Guest post: My first sketch in watercolor

By Gabriel Ronco

I’ve been rejecting the idea of trying watercolor for a while. I started drawing in May, copying photographs including portraits and landscapes. Later, I was seduced by charcoal and I continued drawing portraits and landscapes but always from a photograph. It was in July when I found about Urban Sketchers and I got caught by the manifesto and the challenge it supposed for me to start drawing on location and forgetting about copying. Thus, I saw lots of sketches but I didn’t feel inspired. I thought that every sketch was so good and the technique so complex that I could never get something like that. A hot evening in the middle of July, I went to the yard and looking at the ugliest corner of my house, I found a pile of plastic chairs, an old table and two buckets. It was perfect. The first problem was to frame what I wanted to sketch. Once I started, however, everything was solved naturally.

That crucial sketch was made with a pencil and later I added ink. Later, I bought the book Urban Sketching by Thomas Thorspecken. At first, I felt that I had wasted my money on a book that was mainly focusing on watercolor. And I repeated to myself that I was not going to use watercolor. At the beginning of August, I found myself buying online a pack of Pentel waterbrush and a watercolor book. I kept on sketching a church near the town where I’m currently living, but again, using pencil, ink and colored pencils (which produced an effect I didn’t like very much…).

Finally, I decided to use my watercolor book. I was determined to sketch something, and I didn’t need to go out of home. I looked over the house searching a good corner and I found the heater and an armchair. It was perfect to start. After spending some time organizing the sketch, I completed it with a pencil. Later, I used ink, as before. I liked so much the result that I was afraid of using watercolor. I didn’t want to ruin the sketch! I waited for the next day and I started to read about mixing colors, water, paper… I tried to get a grey and I got a muddy horrible color. I tried again and again. I couldn’t get a grey but I found a similar color that I liked and I ended up applying it. I liked the result so much and I had lots of fun during the process. I’m eager to do the next one.

Gabriel Ronco is a teacher of English and urban sketcher living in Arenas de San Pedro (Ávila), Spain.