Staring at a complex street scene or a detailed reference photo can feel incredibly overwhelming when you’re just starting out. Where do you even begin? How do you know what to draw and what to leave out?
The secret is to stop trying to draw a “perfect” picture, and instead break the process down into a reliable, repeatable framework. In this post, I am going to walk you through my simple 5-step method for loose urban sketching.
📺 Watch the Video: Want to see this exact method in action? Watch the step-by-step video tutorial here, where I use my budget £30 sketching kit to bring a scene to life from scratch!
First, A Note on References
Before we put pen to paper, let’s talk about your reference. Whether you are sitting on a park bench or looking at a photo on your monitor, your reference is a starting point, not a strict blueprint. You do not need to capture every single window pane, brick, or background tree.
When you look at your reference, squint your eyes. This hides the distracting details and reveals the big, simple shapes and the main areas of light and shadow. That is all you actually need to start.
Step 1: Seeing Shapes Using Light Lines
We don’t start by drawing the intricate details of a house, we start by drawing the big square that will eventually form the house. I’ve annotated very simply some ‘shapes’ that we see in the reference as an example – and in the video I do the same thing as I guide you through this step.
Using your pen with a very light touch, begin mapping out the largest shapes in your scene, rectangles for buildings, triangles for roofs, loose circles for trees. Keeping your lines light leaves you incredibly flexible. If a line is in the wrong place, just keep going. Don’t add too many corrections, just accept the humanity that is coming into your art.
You don’t need to erase anything. In loose sketching, mistakes are a superpower. Those stray, wobbly, “incorrect” lines are what give a sketch its energy, movement, and handmade charm. When you layer watercolor over them later, those initial search lines stop looking like errors and start looking like artistic style.
💡 Extra Info: The “Continuous Line” Trick
If you struggle to stay loose, try keeping your pen on the paper as much as possible, dragging it lightly from one shape to the next. This prevents you from overthinking and forces you to capture the rhythm of the scene rather than the rigid architecture.
Step 2: Bold Lines, Hatching, and Textures
Once your basic shapes are mapped out, it’s time to commit. Go back over your sketch, but this time, press a little firmer to create bold, confident lines.
Where should you put them? Add bold lines where you literally see bold in your reference—deep shadows under eaves, the heavy base of a wall, or wherever you want to draw the eye. A thick, crisp line will immediately pull the viewer’s attention to that part of the sketch.
This is also the stage to introduce hatching and textures. Use rapid, parallel lines (hatching) to suggest the shaded side of a building, or add a few dots, squiggles, and broken dashes to indicate brickwork or the rough leaves of a tree.
💡 Extra Info: Line Weight
If you are using a Fude nib (like the Tombow Fudenosuke), you can achieve this variation simply by changing your hand pressure. Thick lines ground the sketch and give it weight, while thin lines push things into the background.
Step 3: Loose Colours and Painting the Light
Now we bring in the watercolor. For your first layer, the goal is speed and fluidity. Use plenty of water and wash the colours loosely around the page.
Don’t worry about staying inside your ink lines. Instead, your main objective is to paint the light and leave plenty of space. Let the white of your sketchbook paper shine through to represent the brightest highlights, sunlit walls, and the tops of clouds. If you cover the entire page in paint, your sketch will immediately feel flat and heavy.
💡 Extra Info: Wet-on-Wet Blending
While the paper is still wet, try dropping a second colour directly into the wash and letting the water mix them for you. It creates beautiful, unpredictable gradients that you could never paint by hand.
Step 4: Bold Colours and Layering
Once your first loose wash is dry (or mostly dry), it’s time to add a bit of punch.
Take a slightly thicker mixture of paint (more pigment, less water) and layer it up just a little bit to create more depth in your colour. Use these bolder colours to define the shadowed side of buildings, the dark canopy of a tree, or a brightly coloured door that acts as your focal point.
💡 Extra Info: The Power of Transparency
Watercolours are transparent. When you add a shadow layer over your initial wash, the bottom colour still glows through. This is called “glazing,” and it’s the secret to creating deep, rich, luminous shadows without the sketch looking muddy.
Step 5: Finishing Touches (Anything Goes)
The final 5% of the sketch is where you tie it all together, and honestly… anything goes!
Pick up your ink pen again to reinforce a shadow that got lost under the paint, or grab a tiny brush to drop in a few sharp details like power lines, window frames, or the silhouette of a bird. See what happens. Play around with some final marks until the sketch feels “done.”
💡 Extra Info: Knowing When to Stop
The biggest danger in step five is overworking. If you catch yourself adding detail just for the sake of it, put your pen down and step back. A sketch is often finished 5 minutes before you realize it is!
Ready to give it a try?
Grab your sketchbook, watch the step-by-step video here, and let’s get some ink on the page. Remember, there are no rules—just loose lines, flowing water, and having fun.
👉 Read my guide to the ultimate £30 / $40 beginner sketching kit here
👉 Join my Free Sketching Course at SketchLoose.co.uk