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When you sit at a café in a bustling city and try to paint the complex architecture of the European street in front of you using only watercolor, the result is often a soft, blurry, undefined mess. Buildings require rigid structure, and watercolor naturally wants to bloom and bleed.
If you try to draw the exact same street using only a black ink pen, the drawing is incredibly structured and accurate, but it feels cold, sterile, and lifeless.
The undisputed king of the "Urban Sketching" movement is the marriage of both mediums: "Line and Wash." By laying down a chaotic, highly vibrant, loose watercolor foundation, and then carving sharp, rigid, architectural details over the top using waterproof black ink, you capture both the energetic color and the rigid structure of the city. Here is how to execute this rapid, highly satisfying technique.