From Tight Lines to Free-Flowing Sketches: A Successful Line & Wash Workshop at The Brewhouse

What happens when you stop worrying about getting every detail right and start drawing with rhythm, expression and movement?

That was the starting point for my recent Line & Wash in the Urban Landscape workshop at The Brewhouse, Taunton, where a group of artists spent two hours exploring a different way of looking at, drawing and painting the urban environment.

The workshop was designed to be practical, energetic and, above all, liberating. Rather than simply sitting down and copying a photograph, we worked through a series of exercises designed to loosen up the way participants draw and challenge some of the habits that can make urban sketching feel stiff or overly precise.

Learning to loosen up

For many artists, the instinct when faced with an architectural scene is to concentrate on accuracy. Straight lines, windows, perspective and detail can quickly take over.

So we started by deliberately breaking some of those habits.

Through a series of quick drawing exercises, participants explored ways of making their lines more spontaneous and expressive. The aim wasn't to produce a perfect drawing. It was to become more comfortable with movement, variation and the character of the line.

We experimented with continuous and free-flowing lines, encouraging participants to draw with greater confidence rather than constantly stopping to correct themselves.

Seeing the urban landscape differently

A major part of the workshop was about changing the way we look at an urban scene.

Instead of trying to reproduce everything we could see, we considered what actually makes a scene interesting. Which buildings deserve attention? Where is the movement? What can be simplified? Where can we exaggerate or leave things out?

This is an important part of my own approach to urban landscape painting.

I’m not interested in photographic accuracy. I want to capture the character of a place through line, colour, rhythm, perspective and movement.

Participants were encouraged to make decisions about what to include and, just as importantly, what to leave out.

Bringing line and wash together

The second part of the workshop introduced the wash. Rather than treating watercolour as a way of carefully colouring a drawing, we looked at how paint can work alongside the line to create atmosphere, depth and movement. The combination of loose drawing and expressive washes gives artists considerable freedom. A few confident marks can suggest a building, a street or an entire urban scene without describing every architectural detail. We explored how washes can be applied quickly and confidently, allowing the paint to move and interact with the drawing rather than trying to control every mark.

Drawing and painting with rhythm

One of the central ideas throughout the session was rhythm.

Urban environments are full of rhythm: windows, doorways, rooftops, streets, signs, people, vehicles and repeating architectural forms. Rather than seeing these simply as individual objects to draw, we looked at how they can become part of a larger visual rhythm. The result is a more expressive approach to urban sketching, where the drawing becomes less about recording a scene and more about capturing its energy and personality.

A workshop for artists at different levels

The workshop was deliberately structured so that artists could take the exercises in their own direction. You didn't need to be an experienced urban sketcher. In fact, some of the exercises were specifically designed to help artists who feel that their drawing has become too cautious, detailed or controlled. The emphasis was on experimentation rather than perfection. By the end of the session, everyone had worked through a series of drawings and washes, explored different approaches to line and developed a better understanding of how to simplify and interpret an urban scene.

And perhaps most importantly, there was a real sense of energy in the room

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Bring my Line & Wash workshop to your venue?

This workshop is available for galleries, theatres, arts centres, festivals, creative organisations and community arts programmes looking to offer something practical, engaging and different.

The session can be adapted to suit different groups and experience levels, with a mixture of demonstrations, guided exercises and individual drawing and painting.

The aim is simple: to help artists become more confident, expressive and adventurous in the way they draw and paint the world around them.

If you are interested in bringing a Line & Wash in the Urban Landscape workshop to your venue, I’d be very happy to discuss the possibilities.

To enquire about workshops, demonstrations or artist talks, get in touch.