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A loose urban-sketch watercolour of a busy street crossing in {CITY}, vertical 3:4, on pure bright white cold-press watercolour paper with visible tooth. No cream, sepia, beige or vintage cast anywhere. TITLE — in the empty sky along the top, the single word "{CITY}" in large hand-lettering with thick brush downstrokes and thin connecting strokes. Painted in GREY WATERCOLOUR, not solid black ink: a soft warm grey grading from slightly deeper at the first letter to nearly dissolved pale grey at the last, wash pooling darker at stroke ends, dry-brush gaps splitting the thick strokes so paper shows through. Same weight and transparency as the painting beneath it — painted with the same brush, never printed or pasted on. Slightly tilted baseline, one letter larger. A pale sky-blue and apricot wash bleeds from behind it and fades well short of the frame edges. Only readable text in the picture. SCENE — a wide multi-lane crossing in {CITY}, seen from the pavement at a slight low angle. Centre and dominant: {HERO}, a tall building with a large glass curtain wall. Left: {LEFT}. Right: {RIGHT}, stepping down to a dark shopfront podium at street level. Far right and smaller: {FAR}. In the road: {VEHICLE}, a few sedans, and one small {PUNCH} vehicle. Keep the four buildings clearly different in height, material and colour temperature so they never read as one mass. LINE FIRST. Draw the scene in rough black fineliner ink before any colour: roughly 50–60 wobbly freehand strokes, uneven pressure, lines that break off mid-run and restart, corners that overshoot, verticals out of plumb and never parallel to the frame. Nothing ruled. Single-direction hatching only, one layer, under 15% of the drawn area. DENSITY GRADIENT — the most important rule. Paint density falls off sharply from centre outward and front to back; the sheet is never evenly filled. · Centre foreground: about 60% coverage, full chroma, crisp edges. · Mid-ground: about 30%, chroma halved, several edges lost into damp paper. · Distance: about 10% — a single pale ghost wash, some buildings left as pure outline with no colour, and at least two far buildings drawn as line only or omitted so open white sky shows between them. · Outer 20% of the sheet on all four sides: bare untouched paper, no ink and no wash. Objects at the same distance must also differ — one tree painted, the next left as bare outline. Never one uniform wash across a whole zone. WINDOWS AND FACADES — never a complete window grid. On {HERO} ink only the silhouette plus three or four broken mullion runs that fade out before the roof; at least half the facade carries no line, only wash. On {LEFT} and {RIGHT} ink two or three bays and let the rest collapse into one flat wash. Short broken dashes elsewhere, never individual openings. HERO MOTIF — the glass curtain wall of {HERO} reflects the sky: broad calm sweeps of sky-blue and untouched white paper, warm apricot where the sun catches, and only TWO soft warped reflected building shapes low in the glass. No crowd of reflected towers, no skyline inside the reflection. FIGURES — 10 to 12 people in three depth bands, never one row. · NEAR: two or three at about one fifth of frame height, low and off-centre, one cropped by the frame edge, one seen from behind. · MIDDLE: four or five at about one ninth, loosely scattered at different distances, at least two overlapping. · FAR: the rest as tiny abstract marks, several unpainted ink marks only. No two the same height, no even spacing, no shared baseline. Each doing something specific — stepping off the kerb, checking a phone, carrying a bag, waiting with a coffee. Clothing appropriate to {CITY} and the season. Faces suggested with four or five ink strokes, no rendered eyes or lips. One soft grey contact shadow each, and part of every outline lost into the wash. NEAR GROUND — the bottom fifth carries the weight: a dark cast shadow reaching toward the viewer, the near kerb with a few pavement joints, scattered grit marks. Paint only about half the crossing stripes — the rest bare white paper with a few ink dashes, stopping and dissolving before the bottom edge. Never a fully painted expanse of stripes. WATERCOLOUR — loose washes over the ink, off-register so colour crosses some outlines and leaves others dry. Wet-in-wet blooms, backruns, hard dried edges, generous dry-brush skips. Warm pastels lead: {WARM} across the sunlit facades and pavement, muted sage on the trees, cerulean reserved for sky and glass. No single hue over 35% of the painted area, at least four clearly different hues visible. One punch colour under 3%: the {PUNCH} vehicle. Untouched white paper is the brightest light. VALUE STRUCTURE AND DARK ANCHORS — 4 or 5 accents at the true darkest value, thumbnail-sized and spread apart: the recessed shopfront, a shadow band under a cornice, the {VEHICLE} window strip, one wheel well, one near figure's cast shadow. Clear four-step value ladder between these and the white paper. No large black masses on clothing or bags. SKY — mostly bare white paper. A few broad cerulean strokes in the upper corners and between the buildings, breaking into dry-brush. No allover speckling. STREET TREES — an interrupted line, never a continuous band. Clusters of two or three with wide gaps of bare paper between them, different heights, some painted and some left as pale outline, one near tree large and cropped by the frame edge. EDGE DISSOLVE — the central 60% is fully resolved. From 60% to 80% ink drops to hairlines and washes to half strength with soft wet edges. The outer 20% on every side including the bottom is bare untouched white paper; all four corners empty. Organic asymmetric fade, not an oval vignette and not a rectangular border. Never bleeds to the frame. SIGNAGE — all signs and banners are illegible abstract patches and rhythmic dashes. Avoid: photorealism, digital or vector rendering, uniform even coverage across the sheet, a fully painted background, solid black brush lettering, printed or pasted-on typography, complete window grids, ruled straight lines, a continuous unbroken row of trees, distant buildings as dark and detailed as near ones, a fully painted crosswalk, cream or sepia paper tone, readable text other than the word {CITY}, a white frame border, a signature, a watermark.@Create image |
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