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Start Art 5 42 RT START www.painters-online.co.uk …using soluble oil pastels, with Tim Fisher DRAW and PAINT a street scene B efore painting your street scene, use a 3b pencil to create a working drawing that can be used to experiment with lighting and act as a template that will reduce damage to your watercolour paper from excessive rubbing out. If you don’t want to draw the scene at the size shown in Figure 1, use a photocopier or printer and scanner to reproduce my ink line drawing to A4 size. Try making several copies and experiment with the light from different directions. As you can see from my sketch in Figure 2, I decided to light the scene from the right. This allowed me to run tree shadows over the road and onto the adjacent buildings. Have a go with your spare piece of paper and see how the scene would look by lighting it from the left. Drawing and painting tips ● If you do decide to have a go and draw the scene for yourself, beware of the direction the gutters slope. A useful aid to drawing is to make a folding angle finder. It can easily be constructed by cutting two pieces of mount card measuring 2 20cm and joining them at one end with a brass split pin. By holding one side on the vertical of the building, the other side can be adjusted by eye to measure the angle of the sloping gutter (See Figure 3). Figure 1 The ink line drawing of my street scene. To paint the same scene, either trace this outline to use as your guide, or use a photocopier or scanner and printer to enlarge it to A4 size This measurement can then easily be transferred to your drawing. ● When you are drawing for a painting, draw with a solid colour stick. I like to use orange. Avoiding graphite helps to make the finished work cleaner and brighter. If tracing, get the bare outline down with graphite then change to a coloured pencil. Use a putty rubber to remove the graphite when you’ve finished.