Street perspective in Tokyo in ballpoint pen and watercolor

Painting of a street in Tokyo, Japan in watercolors and ballpoint penThis one i just did from google streetview – It’s really fun to explore the world with streetview – I were looking for a “historical city center” of Tokyo.. Older houses or older city structures, but couldn’t find it. Does anybody know anything?
I did this one in my A4 sketchbook, so it’s bigger than the usual sketches. I think the perspective part is getting better and better, but I miss some contrast in my watercolors. I need some parts to be really dark, and every street perspective that I do do seem to have the same range of anonymous reds and blues. I’m hoping to getting a little better at using my color palette in the future. Also in mixing the colors. A problem I seem to have is, that whenever I mix two colors, I need some water in the mix aswell, and that seems to dillude the paint too much to get it dark enough.

I just love those electricity masts and cables that you see everywhere in the streets of Japan. We don’t really have that anymore on Denmark. Everything is under the pavement I suppose.

That was my 420’th drawing. It’s moving fast towards 500.. I still owe you that “milestone” drawing, though, but I don’t really know if I’m up for doing a complicated thing anytime soob. We’ll see.

7 thoughts on “Street perspective in Tokyo in ballpoint pen and watercolor”

  1. I love this, it really takes me back to my trip to Tokyo so some years back. It’s a weird mix of traditional and modern all mashed together. As for mixing stronger colours, it just takes a bit of practice but make sure your paints are prewetted, so give them a spray or add a bit of water to the pans before you start if you can. You can keep picking up a bit of colour from the pan while you’re mixing to get more pigment in there. Obviously it varies a lot with brands too, sometimes it’s just hard to get enough colour in there, or student paint won’t have as much pigment either. Also, for some reason WordPress unfollowed you by accident, so I was missing these daily drawings!

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    • Thanks.. Yeah, there’s something about that city. And a weird mix of order and disorder in everything. I really want to travel there some day. I’ll try putting on a bit of water from the start and see if that helps. I use student grade pigment.. The plan is to upgrade once i get close to emptying the pans, but they last so long!! Don’t worry about the unfollow. WordPress does this quite frequently for some reason..

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  2. I don’t think there’s a historical centre really in Tokyo. You’re better off looking in Kyoto!!!
    I’ve just been trying out watercolour recently and found your painting, which I like a lot!!!

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