Architectural Sketching : Bryant Park Winter Village NYC

Hey, I see Linda's on. Good to see you.

Hope all's well.

Watching the countdown go to zero, then I'll start.

Let's take—

hey, just stopped. Awesome. Why do I have a countdown? Hey, why not? Because it's fun. Hope you guys are doing well. Happy— oh my gosh, what is today? Saturday, right? Happy Saturday, November 11th, 2023. 11/11. Hope you guys are doing well. I am Gonna do some sketching for a few minutes here tonight, inspired by New York City. I was actually in New York City today and it was awesome, beautiful weather, 50 degrees. We were there for, you know, 4 or 5 hours, went to see a show and did some walking around, so it was really cool. Really, really busy in the city, which this time of year it actually always is. So cool. Um, let me do a sketch. Let me just kind of turn this off. Let's change things up a little bit. Let's see if we can get the chat thing working today. Let's do this. And then we're gonna close this up. See if I can do it. You got this. Let me just change some tech things here. Let me shut off some thingy with Bobbers. Let me just exit out of this. Nope. Hey, it worked. Coolio. There we go. Awesome. All right, guys, you're awesome. Thank you for watching tonight. I love sketching architecture, as you know. I'm super excited. I'm going to be sketching a scene. We went to Bryant Park today. I can't get the big picture on screen, but I'll show you on my cell phone kind of what I'm looking at. So this is Bryant Park in NYC. Um, got the Christmas tree up there, and there's actually a skating rink in the background here. A couple of cool buildings. This is One Vanderbilt, this building here. I mean, One Vanderbilt is kind of building here. It almost looks like one little tree. So I thought I'd be, uh, do a quick sketch, maybe inspired by the scene a little bit. I'm gonna put the phone down. Let me know where you're watching from. If you're watching on YouTube, I'd love for you to give it a like and get more people watching. Yeah, let's do this. And, uh, don't hate me, but I am actually going to put on some holiday-sounding music. I'm in the spirit. I know it's not Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, but I kind of want to hear some holiday music, so let's change it up a little bit. Here we go.

Cool.

All right, let's do some sketching. Also, the chat thingy should be working today, that blue box with the chat streaming or scrolling, and that way YouTubers and Facebookers, you guys can all see each other. That's always a cool thing. All right, let's just do a sketch here. It's gonna be very, very loose, very quick, just kind of playing around some of the shapes. So the city was really awesome today. We went to go see Aladdin. Aladdin on Broadway, fun show. Nothing will, for me, will ever beat the animated Aladdin, the one that had Robin Williams as the genie. I love, love that movie. Um, Robin Williams totally made that movie amazing. But, uh, the Broadway show is fun. It's, if you're looking for just a good time out, light and breezy show, Highly recommend it. It was cool. It wasn't too crowded. I shouldn't say that. The theater actually was very busy, but it didn't feel crowded. If you guys are digging this music, I know some people are really set against having holiday songs before Thanksgiving. That's okay.

I'm not one of them.

I love Thanksgiving and this just for me is part of it. This kind of music. There's nothing that says you can't listen to holiday Christmas music any time of the year, right? Music is music and you guys know I love listening to music. It inspires me in so many different ways. Whether it's Christmas music or heavy metal, Metallica type music, or it doesn't matter. Just all inspires me in different ways. Light and breezy, Neil Diamond, movie soundtracks. I like so many different types of music. So I'm sketching just some kind of people here in the scene. All right, cool. There we go. So, um, you can kind of see you have a Christmas tree happening here. Um, ironically, today the, um, the Christmas tree was delivered to Rockefeller Center. I didn't get to see that happening live. Um, there's an awesome YouTube streamer, his name is CFOT, New York NYC walking show, and he actually caught that on video today. Yeah, so it was so cool to be in the city the same day the tree was delivered to Rockefeller Center. If you guys have not been to Bryant Park in New York City during the holidays, they have a winter village with all these really, really cool shops. I was going to do a little slideshow tonight for you, but for some reason I'm not uploading— my pics are not uploading to my, my iMac here. They're on my phone. But next time I'm on, I'll try to show you some pictures from the winter village. All kinds of shops, treats, and goodies happening. So cool. Hey, Jethro Bodine, hey, good to see you. Florida is tuning in. I love Florida. I went to school, University of Miami, that's where I went to college. My grandparents lived in Daytona Beach for many, many, many, many years. Orlando, Disney's in Florida. Does not love Florida. That's so cool. Love you tuning in. Cameron Bub is in the house. Cameron, so good to see you, my friend. I enjoyed looking at pictures from your latest school project. Um, really good stuff. And I'm hoping we'll— we can find some time to get together during the Thanksgiving break or winter break, whatever you guys are calling college these days. So I'm just sketching some buildings, some windows kind of in the background. This, this building right here I'm sketching now is One Vanderbilt Plaza. It has a roof. I don't know if it's a roof deck observation platform, but there's an observation deck somewhere on the building. I haven't been to it. I'm gonna move this out of the way. There we go, because my arm is killing me. Here we go. I'm going to add some kind of shading or hatching here, kind of darken this. Maybe it looks like we have windows going on, kind of a quick way to indicate kind of a ribbon of windows happening here in this building. Thank you guys, I always love watching your chats and your comments. So good to see that. Linda says 25 minutes. By the way, the Rockefeller Christmas tree is coming from Vestal, NYS, New York State, which I grew up 25 minutes from. Hey, that's so cool! Awesome, really awesome. How fun is it that they're getting a tree upstate New York. They're actually the family that donated the tree. Cut a little bit of them on the video, and, um, really exciting to see two little girls, mom and dad. They were there for the tree delivery in Rockefeller Center. How exciting! What, what a memory those kids are going to have forever, right? I wish I had a tree big enough on my property. To offer up for donation, but I don't. All right, let's just kind of— I'm going to kind of turn it sideways and darken some of these window areas a little bit. So you can kind of see the scene coming together a little bit. I think I'm going to keep this one black and white. Not sure. Maybe I'll do some green on the tree and pop out some of the red ornaments. Not sure yet. I'll just kind of keep it black and white for now. New York City really is a magical place during the holidays. It's the feeling, the lights. Decorations.

Cool.

Fraser fir, is that the type of tree that we have there this year? That's cool. All right, cool. I'm actually going to pull out the silhouette here. One of the things I love about New York City and skyline sketching is the silhouette of the buildings against the sky. So, I'm going to just pull that out. Lately, I've been just using a kind of a thicker Sharpie or whenever we say Sharpie, This is probably the one that most people think of, is the size point right here. So I'm going to use that and I'm going to just pull out the edge here. I am holding it pretty loose in my hand. It's nice on —has a Charlie Brown-ish Christmas sound to it. You see how just by adding the Sharpie, it's pulling the outline of the buildings out a little bit? I'm just going to kind of let it bleed off here. Same thing with this side. I'm not going to really finish it. I'm just going to leave it at that for now. And then I do— I should have— it's not too late. There's kind of an antenna here that goes up.

There we go.

I think it's just enough to pop that out. Cameron says, I remember organizing a Boy Scout trip to NYC close to Christmas. It was nice during that time. Yeah, Cameron, I totally It's all on how we look at things, right? Some people really hate New York City, some people love it, some could care less about it. That's cool. Um, I really like it. I really like it. That's why I'm always sketching it. It just— it intrigues my design architectural spirit, and amongst other things, it's just really interesting place. And again, I'm just sketching really kind of quick architectural type of people in here. I like this music piece. Kind of reminds me of that movie, um, oh my gosh, Polar Express, which I still have never seen the whole thing of. It has a Polar Express vibe to it. We got some people here as well. Let's sketch them a little smaller so they look further away. Maybe here as well. Yeah, I'm actually— I'm liking the scene a lot. Be cool. Zoom out so you can get a better sense of it. Let me know what you guys think. Should I add some color to this? Debating. I'm thinking of maybe just popping the Christmas tree out here in green. Leave the rest black and white. Yeah, let's do it. Why not? Let's see, do I want to use watercolor or— I have a green preppy, I have a green preppy pen here that I just broke. Oh my gosh. I got a green preppy, uh, and some watercolor. No, leave it black and white. I gotta leave it black and white. Interesting. That— my gut was saying black and white. I'm gonna leave black and white for now. This is a fun song. I'm gonna just lightly sketch some circular ornaments on here. That was a fun piece of music. There you go, because we got a cool little, uh Bryant Park inspired Christmas scene happening. Awesome. Zoom in. I'm gonna leave— I am gonna leave it black and white for now. Um, cool. I like it. I'm gonna leave this one. It's done. Um, nice time to go. We are going on the Saturday afternoon after Thanksgiving. Linda, that's awesome. Hope you have a great, great time. Kind of a holiday song.

That song is—

I like it. I don't know if it's a holiday song.

Kind of a cool song.

All right, all right guys, there you go. So this is my, uh, inspired scene tonight from New York City, Bryant Park.

Quick sketch.

I don't even know how long I was on for. The timer's somewhere— 21 minutes or so. Um, watercolor, maybe, maybe, maybe. We'll see. I'm gonna let this one rest right now at black and white. And, uh, yeah, thank you guys so much for watching. I really do appreciate your time, your positivity in the comments. Linda and Cameron and Jethro, great seeing all of you guys in the chat. Yeah, I do appreciate y'all so much. I'm going to add this to my NYC collection, which is growing and growing. So I'm hoping to have an auction online soon with my New York City inspired sketches. That'd be fun to see some of these go out to people that might enjoy hanging them up somewhere in their homes. Pretty small pieces. This is probably one of the bigger ones here. This is 8 inches by 8 inches. Um, I have a bunch more. Do a show and tell one day. Thank you guys so much. Take care. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday, and, um, I will be— so much. Take care. Peace. Be creative, you guys. I'll see you real soon. Rocking song. It's in my holiday playlist. Don't know if it's a holiday song, but I love the energy of it. All right guys, this is the holiday song that I'm heading out. Take care, see you soon. Have a great, great rest of your night. This is like happy elf music. I need a happy elf hat.