Sketch Italy: Complex Scenes, Simple Steps
- Blog
- April 30, 2026
- 36 mins
When the Subject Feels Bigger Than Your Sketchbook
Ian stepped onto the quayside in Riomaggiore and immediately felt it: that familiar tightness in the chest that comes when the scene in front of you is so visually rich, so densely layered, that even the most confident sketcher hesitates. Terracotta buildings stacked against each other up a hillside so steep it defies logic. Boats beached at odd angles. Washing strung between shuttered windows. The marina full of the kind of everyday chaos that makes a blank page feel very small indeed. And if you have sketched for any length of time, you have felt that moment too. Not the butterflies of excitement, but the whisper of doubt:
Where do I actually start?
That feeling, that quiet overwhelm, is probably the single biggest reason people close their sketchbook before they have even opened it. Not because they lack skill. Not because they do not have the right pens. But because the scene in front of them feels too complicated, too busy, too much. And honestly, that is a perfectly reasonable response. Some scenes are genuinely a lot.
Sketch Italy was built for exactly that moment. Not to make the scene less complex, because these Italian coastal subjects genuinely are complex, but to give you a way through them that feels manageable, structured, and even enjoyable. Ian filmed the entire course on location in Riomaggiore, one of the five Cinque Terre villages on the Italian Riviera, and the subjects he chose are deliberately challenging. Harbours full of boats, narrow streets bursting with storytelling, panoramic views of buildings tumbling over each other all the way down to the Mediterranean. But the way the course is structured means you will never feel like you have been dropped in the deep end
Smaller Steps Than We Have Ever Done Before
If you have taken any of our previous workshops, you will know that we always break things down into stages.
Structure first, then line work, colour, tone and finally detail. That core process has not changed. What has changed in Sketch Italy is how small the steps are.
Every stage has been split into two parts. The composition planning is in two parts. The line work is in two parts. The watercolour is in two parts. The tonal work is in two parts. It sounds like a small thing, but the difference it makes is enormous. Instead of watching a full line work demonstration and then trying to replicate it all at once, you are working alongside Ian in shorter, more focused bursts. It is like having someone walk beside you rather than waving at you from the finish line.
On top of that, each workshop comes with a pre-sketch. Not as an afterthought, but as a deliberate first step. Ian films himself producing the pre-sketch for every scene, talking you through his composition decisions as he goes. Why he chose that particular angle. What he is looking for in the elevation. Where the vanishing points are pulling the eye. By the time you sit down to start the full workshop, you have already got a map of the territory. You know what you are walking into.
Three Colours Per Workshop (And Why That Changes Everything)
Here is where Sketch Italy does something we have never tried before, and it might be the part that surprises you most. Every single workshop uses just three colours. Two of them are primaries and one is a secondary. And within that trio, there is always a complementary pair, two colours that sit opposite each other on the colour wheel.
Take the first workshop down at the quayside. The palette is Green Gold, Ultramarine, and Burnt Sienna. Two primaries, a yellow and a blue, plus a secondary from the orange family. That Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna are your complementary pair, and when you mix them together, something genuinely useful happens. They create beautiful, natural neutrals. Warm greys, muted shadows, the kind of subtle tones that give a sketch depth without you ever needing to reach for a tube of grey or black paint.
Why does this matter? Because learning to mix colour is learning to paint. Every time you drag your brush through those two complementary colours on your palette, you are building an instinct for how colour behaves. How a blue and an orange can give you a shadow tone for the harbour walls. How those same two colours can shift in temperature depending on which one you favour. That is the kind of colour knowledge that sticks with you long after the course is finished, and it transfers to every sketch you do from that point on.
If you want to explore the full colour theory behind this approach, we have a separate blog post dedicated entirely to complementary colour mixing. There you will find all five workshop palettes broken down in detail, with practical exercises you can try with your own colours. For now, what matters is this: three colours, thoughtfully chosen, give you everything you need to paint a full-range sketch with depth, warmth, and subtlety.
Riomaggiore: Why the Location Is Part of the Learning
We could have filmed this course anywhere. A quiet park. A row of terraced houses. A tidy little high street. But we chose Riomaggiore precisely because it is not tidy or quiet or simple. It is a working fishing village on one of the most dramatic stretches of coastline in Italy. Buildings are crammed together and stacked on top of each other in ways that defy logic. The streets are narrow and steep. The marina is full of noise and life and activity. It is, in every sense, a place that would make most sketchers think twice before opening their sketchbook.
And that is exactly the point. The whole philosophy behind Sketch Italy is that you should be able to tackle subjects like this. Not simplified, sanitised versions of them, but the real thing. The course gives you the scaffolding, the safety net, the step-by-step structure to approach scenes that you might normally walk past and think, “that is gorgeous, but I could never draw that.” The idea is that by the end of the five workshops, you will look at complex scenes differently. Not with overwhelm, but with a quiet confidence that you know how to break them apart and put them back together on the page.
Ian talks a lot in the course about the storytelling in these buildings. The shutters, the washing lines, the pot plants on narrow steps, the peeling paint. Every window has a story. And because the subjects are so rich, there is so much to notice and capture. It is the kind of sketching that slows you down in the best way, because you are investing time in observation, and that investment always pays off on the page.
"All the buildings that fall down on top of each other, all the windows, the shutters, the washing on the lines, all the kind of amazing paraphernalia that you would see in a typical little seaside town on the Mediterranean."
Five Scenes, Five Stories: What You Will Actually Sketch
One of the things that sets Sketch Italy apart is the range of subjects Ian chose for the five workshops. They are not five variations of the same thing. Each one is a genuinely different scene with its own character, its own challenges, and its own rewards.
The first workshop takes you down to the quayside, where a pathway sweeps down to the Mediterranean and a terrace of colourful buildings rises up behind a rocky outcrop. It is a big, open scene with strong diagonals and lots of storytelling in the windows and balconies. The second moves across to the marina, full of life and energy, boats bobbing, buildings sweeping down with dramatic perspective, the kind of busy scene that would normally send you running but becomes manageable when you break it into stages.
Workshop three is all about the slipway, with fishing boats beached in the mid-ground and stacked buildings watching patiently from behind. Then workshop four changes the mood completely. Ian found a quiet little passageway tucked away from the crowds, full of pot plants, narrow steps, and the kind of shabby, lived-in charm that you would normally walk straight past without a second glance. It is a much more intimate subject, and it proves that not every good sketch needs to be a grand panorama.
And then the final workshop is exactly that: the big panorama. All the buildings lying on top of each other, the Mediterranean cutting back into the picture, the whole village laid out in front of you. It is the most ambitious scene in the course, and by that point you have four workshops of experience behind you. The progression is deliberate. Each scene builds on what you have learned in the one before, so by the time you reach the panorama, you have the tools and the confidence to take it on.
Who Is This Course For?
If you have tried urban sketching and found yourself sticking to simpler subjects because the complex ones felt too risky, this course is for you. If you love the idea of sketching Mediterranean architecture but have no idea how to approach a scene with dozens of buildings and boats and details, this course is for you. If you want to understand colour mixing properly, not in theory but by doing it across five different real-world scenes with real paint on a real palette, this course is for you.
It is not a beginners course in the sense that we assume you have never held a pen before. But it is the most accessible course we have ever made, because the steps are smaller and the guidance is more detailed than anything we have done previously. You do not need to be experienced. You just need to be willing to follow the process and trust that the scaffolding will hold. And as you work through it, you will discover something that makes sketching so much richer: you are learning alongside others. Whether you are comparing sketches in our student gallery, sharing your results with friends who are taking the course too, or simply knowing that somewhere else, someone is sitting down with their sketchbook and working through the same scenes you are, there is a kind of quiet friendship in that shared experience.
Final Thoughts
Sketch Italy came out of a simple idea: what if we took the most complex subjects we could find and made them the most accessible course we have ever produced? Not by dumbing things down, but by breaking them into smaller pieces. By limiting each palette to two primaries and one secondary, so colour decisions become clearer and complementary mixing becomes second nature. By filming pre-sketches so you understand the composition before you start. By choosing five genuinely different scenes that build on each other, so that by the end you have not just five finished sketches, but a real understanding of how to approach complex subjects with confidence.
There is something that happened when we were testing this course that we did not quite expect. A few people came back saying that somewhere around workshop three, their whole relationship with complexity shifted. One person said her first attempt at the slipway looked like a mess halfway through, colours muddier than she wanted and proportions slightly off. But she kept going, followed the process, and by the time she added the final tones, it all clicked into place. The mess became a sketch. The doubt became memory of what she had learned. That is exactly what we hope will happen for you.
Ian had an incredible time filming in Riomaggiore. He came back covered in paint, full of stories, and genuinely excited about what the course offers. We think you will feel the same way once you sit down with your sketchbook and start working through it. The atmosphere of that little Italian village, the colour, the light, the energy, it all comes through in the workshops. And by the end of it, you will have five finished sketches, a much deeper understanding of complementary colour mixing, and the confidence to tackle scenes you might never have attempted before.
We cannot wait to see what you create.
Ready to learn more?
Tackle complex coastal scenes with Ian Fennelly in our Sketch Italy course as he guides you through 5 full workshops and 5 pre-sketches, with three-colour palettes and bite-sized teaching stages, that transform you from overwhelmed by complex scenes to confident on every page!
Sketch Italy: Complex Scenes, Simple Steps
About the Artist
Ian Fennelly focuses on capturing urban spaces and environments by drawing the places where people have been without actually including them.
His process involves layering watercolors, brush pens, and liners to build depth, texture, and detail, allowing them to fully immerse in the scene while adapting to changes in their surroundings.
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