Yesterday in the West Village of New York City, a slice of afternoon light, highlighting the apartments in bricks on the corner of Bleecker and Avenue 11.
what attracted me was the way the left tree was a dark pattern against light construction, while the central shaft was a light texture against the shadow. Since my main interest was this tonal relationship, and since I only had a half hour to work, I limit my approach to a drawing in black and white wash.
I am sitting on a park holding watercolor notebook bench
on my knee. On the right is what the sketch looks after about 10 minutes. At this point, I'm falling in large tones on a grid outline perspective, carefully paint around the white branches and windows. Special tonal regions, using two water brushes Niji
, one filled with water and the other filled with ink Higgins Eternal 
. The gray areas are the brush in clear water pick up some ink. 
This is a detail of a section of the size of a postage stamp. After the great dry wash, I use a black pencil to watercolor linear details of windows, mullions, the details of the cornice, and small branches.
