In this blog, you will learn about the concept of loose drawing in watercolor. It’s a basic idea for beginners.

What is a loose painting?

In our interpretation, loose painting is a way to show your understanding of the picture and express it through your drawing, rather than drawing every detail of it. In other words, you are telling the quintessence of a story in a visual form.

Keys to doing it

1.Outline the silhouette

The shape of the objects should remain similar. When we look at a picture, we want the viewer can understand what we are drawing instead of confusing them.

2. Pick the main colors from the objects

For one object, there are maybe more than 10 colors combined from an object. Simplify it by picking 2-4 colours from it. Roughly paint the silhouette of it.

Painting of Robin Bird by CanotStop Painting

In this bird paint, the body original consists different colors. The painter paints it with one color in orange. He also plays with the depth. In the middle of the body, he uses more paint to show the shadow of it.

You can apply this on street or building drawing. Try to focus painting more on the shadow areas and slightly omit the areas of light by using lots of water.

In the painting below, at the right bottom corner, the painter paints the bush with bold brush strokes. When you look closely, you can see some lines to show the leaves.

Oceanside, San Diego

For loose paintings, we need to have a perspective how we want the drawing to be. Be fearless and try to do more approaches.

You can also apply the concept on graphite. We will cover it in the future.

For more, we record a simple video. Check it out on youtube.