Architeture and Urban Sketching - Cuppa Creative Boost Time

Hello, happy Wednesday, September 25th. I'm on a really weird time, 7:09 PM. Um, I needed a creative boost right now. It's been a crazy, crazy day and I'm tired. Crazy in a good way, just busy. But, uh, my brain is like, I'm trying to fight a nap. I'm waiting for my laundry to get done over there, so I forgot to come on and just, uh, get a creative infusion by doing some sketching. Sketching helps to take me to the next level. It wakes me up, energizes me, and it's just something I love doing. So yeah, let's just sketch, um, some architectural stuff. I don't have anything set in mind here. Maybe I'll open my photos and we'll see what happens, or we'll just sketch something random. Let's just do— let's just do random. Hope you're having an amazing day. Let me know where you're watching from, whether you're watching live or in the comments. It's always great to see you guys. I hope everything is well in your world. All right, boom. I got some music on. Let's do some sketching. Um, cold press paper. I got my Sharpie here. Let's just see. Oh, I think I need a— I think I need another Sharpie. That one's has seen better days. Let me grab this Sharpie right here. Here we go. Gonna keep it quick, loose, and scribbly. Maybe we'll just do some kind of wonky building here. Wow, this Sharpie— I'm like 0 for 2 in Sharpie land. Could it be I don't have any here? What? Nope, nope, got another one right here. I have a whole box of them if I need to go get them. All right, cool, there we go. Uh, just sketching kind of a funky little building. And let's see, I got some music on. I'm just going to switch the playlist there a little bit. There we go. I am just grabbing and going with colors here. I'm not picking anything in particular, just kind of going with what I'm feeling. Um, so we have some orange, I have some turquoise. Let's load up a little more turquoise on here, make it more bold in some places. See how that dries. Now let's throw some of that here maybe as well. I'm gonna grab some blue. Um, I'm feeling red, but I don't— I don't like using red watercolor paint. I'm not sure why. So I'm gonna grab my red Pilot pen here and let's throw some red down using this, and we could bleed this ink if I want. Spread it out a little bit. I'm gonna mix some purple with blue and red watercolor paint over here. Let's see, let's grab some blue, grab some red, kind of mix them up. Let's get some kind of purpley color happening. Let's try that. This would be a really nice color for shadows. Let's make this kind of— let's put this kind of in some shadow, this little porch overhang thingy. See, I think I have a straw. Let's use a straw for that. Got one right here. Um, so I was just using a Sharpie. S gel pen, 0.7. The reason I went to that instead of my Sharpie marker is that this gel pen can write on wet surfaces, whereas the marker can't. So this is just kind of a really quick, fun, throw it down, get it out of my system, get the creativity up sketch, and I just want to keep the flow going. So I'm just grabbing and going with whatever's around me here. And I knew this would write on the wet area. I like that this is quick, fast. It's a little sloppy. I'm not trying to create any kind of a masterpiece. This is really just a sketch to change my state of mind and my energy level. That's kind of my intention with this. So you might— you, you might hear me, uh, talk about setting intentions when I'm sketching. I don't do it all the time, but when I do, I try to stick to it. And my intention tonight was to shift creative and energy states. I hope that makes sense. It's just kind of a trigger for me that helps me to do that. It's also a great way to pass time while you're waiting for your laundry to dry. Um, let's get some stone down here. I'm going to zoom in. Here's how I like to sketch stone pretty quickly. I try to treat it as a, as a single continuous line, and I'll just do it and you can kind of watch. Maybe this is some kind of cottage garden structure. Maybe it's a shed, some kind of garden shed. You have some doors here. Some kind of window. Maybe it's a garden, um, shed, or maybe it's some kind of workshop type of facility. This I'm imagining to be a sliding barn door up here. I didn't draw it yet. I'm thinking about putting a little balcony— balcony there. So it'd be a really cool kind of architectural feature having this sliding barn door so you can slide it over. And then maybe there's a doorway. You walk out onto a, uh, let's sketch some kind of a— let's do a quick balcony. Actually, you know what, let's just do this quick. Boom. Here, a couple lines. I'll add some color at some point so it just pops out more, but I'm picturing some kind of a walkout balcony or something here and some kind of cable rails across maybe. And I'll pop that out with some kind of color, um, at some point. This is getting really wet and mucky, so it might be a good time to start thinking about putting it aside for now. It's looking kind of cool. Hey, DB's in the house! DB, great to see you. Hope all's well. Awesome to see you. I'm itching to throw down some colored pencil stuff, so let's grab some colored pencils. So again, this is just a quick throw down, get it, change your state of being, up your creativity level type of sketch. Grab and go is what I'm calling it. Grab and go creating. Not pre-planning, not thinking this out, just doing it. And I am feeling so much different now than when I started. I was pretty low energy, um, maybe you detected that in my voice, but now I'm getting kind of really hyped up. So we all have different ways we can kind of just change our mental state of being and our physical state of being, right? And this is just one of those tools for me, is, is sketching. I'm actually kind of liking this. I'm not even gonna let it dry, we're just gonna go for it, throw down some pink. You know I like to have my pops of pink on these sketches. I'm, I'm loving the wonkiness of this. It's pretty fun, and I think that's going to be the theme of my October virtual workshop. I think we're going to go back to doing some wonky, wonky building sketches. Maybe we'll do funky garden sheds. I may even throw some kind of industrial vibe type of building in there. So stay, uh, stay, stay attuned to— that's not the way to say it. I don't know what I'm trying to say. Uh, be on the lookout for some news or some posts. Um, it'll be out in my next newsletter, just advertising or promoting the up— an upcoming October sketching workshop. Um, yeah, I think it'll be fun. I'm due to have one of those again. I love having those Zoom sketch workshops where we can all see each other, see what we're all creating, celebrate each other, pump each other up in a really fun environment. Safe, fun, creative environment. Yeah, yeah, I, I love the neon yellow color pencil. It looks so much like a highlighter, it's incredible. Hey, D-Ray's in the house! D-Ray, great to see you also. I know I'm on a really early time, my I got tired, tired brain. I have back-to-school night tomorrow, so I want to make sure I get to sleep early. It's gonna be a very, very long day at school, like super duper long, um, which will be cool. All right, let's zoom out a little bit. You guys can just see how this is looking, how it's drying. So yeah, let's just— let's call this some kind of fun garden shed. I think it'd be cool for— I'd love to have like an art studio up here. That would be so much fun. I guess, I guess I want to use this color pencil. I picked it up a couple of times and I haven't used it yet, so my brain's saying, hey man, use that pencil. Let's bring it, um, let's see if we can pull out this kind of beam structure that the barn door would slide on. So I'm going to pull that out with some of this blue. This is called Sky Blue Light. It's a very soothing, relaxing color. I think you can see it there. I'll just throw it down in some places, bring it here. I'm just going to shade in some of these stones to pull them out a little bit. I didn't show any siding here. Let's, um, ah, let's see, what kind of siding do we want to do? Vertical? Let's do some vertical. Maybe it's metal. I like the look of metal siding, corrugated metal. Kind of that industrial look, an industrial barn look. It's something that kind of appeals to me, so I'm imagining it being that vertical kind of metal panels there. It could also be vertical wood planks. This is still a little damp, so this mark— your marker's not going to work on there. I'm going to go back to the gel pen. Um, I have to— I'm going to put light pressure on. I don't want these lines to be too dark, so I'm going to hold this fairly lightly. I think for continuity, I'm actually just going to make them vertical. I was thinking about mixing it up. You know what, I'm mixing it up. We're going to do some shingles up here. Let's do like a windowsill. I'm letting the pen skip on the texture of the cold press paper. I'm actually wiggling and jiggling my pen as it goes across to get these jaggedy kind of lines happening. Like, I really love this look here, the jags. That would be great garden sheds. Hey DB, yeah, let's do— that'd be so cool. I think let's do a theme the next workshop Yeah, let's just do the garden structures, garden sheds. I think it'd be great because then people could work in some landscape, maybe some flowers, um, really give your structures a unique look. So let's do— yeah, garden shed structures. That'll be fun. Thank you for helping me decide what the next theme is going to be for upcoming workshop. And I think it's going to be mixed media, so stuff you see me using now— the markers, the pens, the colored pencils, watercolors— I'll be bringing it all into the workshop. But whoever's in there, you can use whatever materials you want to, whatever you're comfortable using. I'm going to make these look like cedar shingles. So I'm going to kind of randomly put in these vertical lines here so you get that kind of shingle-y look. I just say shingle-y. I love making up random words, it's so fun. I mean, I have some decaf coffee. Let me have a little sip. Lord knows I don't need any caffeine right now. There you go. That's kind of what it's looking like. This was a fun effect, just kind of throwing down some watercolor paint and using that straw and just kind of puffing these up here, right? So you get these kind of grasses or weeds kind of growing, or I like to call them growies. We have these growies kind of coming up a little bit. Oh. There's something I think I want to add. Let's see, I'm gonna give a little perspective to this— these porch columns. Oh, it's wet, so that's not working. Let's go back to here. So I have a column kind of here, just give a little depth to it. I don't want to get too fussy, so I just kind of threw in a couple lines in so it looks 3D-ish. And I'm actually— I want to add some hatch lines to create shadows. So let's make this overhang a little deeper by just throwing these diagonal lines on here. We'll create the idea of an overhang with a shadow underneath it. And I want to pull out the outline of the building. I want it to really kind of pop off the page. So what I'm going to use— I'm going to be brave and use a Tombow marker for that. I like these Tombow markers, they have brush tips on them. I'll zoom in and I'm literally just going to lightly just kind of go on the edge just to pop this out. I'll even pop the flag out a little bit here. I like the red. You may have seen me earlier, took the red pen and I did an outline. Somewhere in my sketches, I like to do a continuous line. Um, sometimes it's on the outside, sometimes it's not. And for me, when I have a continuous line, it's almost like taking ribbon and wrapping it around a package to tie it together. So a continuous line for me visually is that ribbon that's tying the whole picture together. By the way, happy fall everybody! Fall is here, my favorite season. Love, love, love the fall. I don't love to fall, I love the fall. Big difference. So you can see I put that kind of black outline. I kept it off the red here, which I'm going to do. I could have continued the black, but I want that red to, to kind of shine through. I don't want to get too crazy with this. I'm going to cap it and move it. Looking cool. Um, let me know, should I add a background color? Let me know in the comments. Say yes background or no background. Right now it's just kind of on the white, it's popping, but I could definitely add a color in the background if you want. DB says this is another Jason Nicholas Nicholas piece of awesome work. Oh my gosh, you are way too kind. This is, uh, I appreciate your kind words. This is This is a quick down-and-dirty sketch, just throwing it out there quick, kind of fast, Fast and Furious like the car movies. Fast and Furious sketch. My favorite part is I'm loving the color combination of the, the roof area. T-Rex says nice garden shed. Thank you. It's kind of cool. It's fun. It's definitely a fun little sketch. All right, let's see if, if I do a background. What do I want to do? I have these really cool— you guys have been seeing me using these a lot lately, the Sharpie Creative Markers. Oh, my song just changed. Um, I might actually— you know what, instead of talking about it, I'm just going to do it. By the way, if you hear that weird sound in the background, it's my 3D printer. 3D printer is working, working up a sweat back there, printing some cool stuff. Oh, that's so funny. I think it may have just finished as I said that. I had no idea. That was, that was weird timing. Yeah, I think it's done. So I'm just trying this white marker, see how it looks when I'm trying to pull out those lines of the metal roof. I kind of like it. Let's try to try it up here also. Maybe on these window panes I'll do some as well. I don't want to cover too much of the cool purple color. I like adding the white layer on top. It really is a cool way to maybe pull out some of the shapes. Don't want to overdo it though, so I'm capping it up. There you go. Zoom out. All right, I want to throw a background on here pretty quick. This will be the last thing. I haven't used like a sepia background in a while. Let's see if I have my sepia watercolor. Oh, awesome! Grab and go. So I have— where's my sepia? It's in here. Here it is. Let's use a watercolor marker and throw down some sepia here. I love sepia color. I just like saying sepia. Sepia. Um, so here, here's how I'm going to do it. I'm going to throw the sepia down on the board instead of throwing it on the paper because it'll stain and I can't really move it. So when I throw it down on my board Boom. We'll get started this way. Take my watercolor brush. There's some green in there, I don't care, it's cool. I'm not fussy-mussy. And we're just going to kind of throw some on here. Maybe I'll wet the page a little bit, just let the sepia marker do its thing. Maybe it's a gray fall day in our garden. So we have this kind of gray sepia sky happening. There we go. I'm kind of digging that, actually. And then let's just throw down some— make some patches kind of dark. It's only 7:48. It feels like midnight to me. All right, let's just pick up some of that, just kind of dab it in some places. This will help create the idea of clouds in the sky. Let's just do this. Let's just dab it on. I'm going to zoom in so you can see what happens when I put this right on the paper. I don't mind doing it when the paper is wet, but when the paper is dry and you do that, it, it's hard to move it around. There we go. So I'm going to let that kind of dry so we'll have like some kind of clouds happening. No, we'll do this. I like doing the board. I think my CP marker is dying, actually. No, it can't be. Maybe it's not. I don't know how long I've had this one. I think there's a backup one somewhere if I need to switch. All right, so you can see just kind of tapping down some sepia on top of the sepia, um, it's creating almost like a look of clouds. And when it dries, you'll be able to see a hard edge, which will bring those kind of cloud-like shapes out a little bit more. So it's just a fun way for me to create kind of a sky without adding a bunch of colors. I'm using just one color. On there. Hey, uh, Judy Morgan is in the house. Hi Judy, how are you? Great to see you. Thanks for, uh, joining us over there on the YouTube side of the world. Love the colors, how shading makes them pop. Thank you. I'll zoom in so you can see it a little closer. So this is just a fun wonky garden shed structure from my cray-cray brain. T-Ray says, "CP, your background, oh boy." I'm glad I added the background. I think it really— it kind of gave it more of a mood or setting than just having the white background. So now I'm picturing this, um, this garden shed. It's a fall kind of gray day, which I love. This is going to sound weird, I'm a rainy day guy. I love gray rainy days. I would— it's gonna sound weird, but I would, I would prefer a gray rainy day than a hot bright sunny day. Very strange. That's just the way I'm wired. I love rainy days. I love the sound of the rain, the feel of the rain, the vibe of the skies. And someone's going to tell me I should probably move to um, Seattle. But that's just me. So I'm getting that kind of vibe with this. I'm going to punch out some of the orange on the roof. So I'm going to go back to my watercolor paint. I'm just going to really throw a thick layer of orange on, on that roof area. So I'm going to lather this thing up. I'm a spin technique guy, if there's such a thing. I just like to put my brush in here and spin it. To get the colors on. You can— if you notice my colors, I always wear away the middle because I'm always, always spinning. So there's big divots in my paints. I guess I have this loaded with orange. Let's just kind of tap it down. I think this really thick layer of orange is just going to help things pop a little bit more, more contrast. I don't like that song. Sorry, sorry, song. There you go, this song is better. So you can see how rich that orange looks. I like it. I think I'm at that point where it's like, maybe I've already passed that point of way too much information on here. Too much happening. Again, this is just fun, grab-and-go, quick, get it, my energy up, get my creativity level up kind of exercise. T-Ray says Seattle. Exactly. I do like Starbucks. I mean, I am— it's not Starbucks, but I'm drinking decaf coffee. Yeah, it gives it a mood, right? I think that sepia gives it some kind of mood. I should have thrown some down in here. That's okay. Let's just take some dirty water and see what it looks like. There we go. Just kind of tone that down a little bit using dirty water. Oh, got some bleeding going on there. All right guys, I think this one is Finito. All right, we'll see if there's any final questions or comments, and then we'll wrap up on this unplanned— but they usually are all unplanned, um, livestream tonight, way early for me, but this kid has to go to bed early tonight and be bright and fresh tomorrow night. For our back-to-school night. Um, it's gonna be a long day tomorrow. A long, fun day. Cool. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching today. I really, really appreciate all of you and your time and just tuning in. Your comments are always welcomed, and I appreciate them, and your questions. Um, it's fun interacting with you. Hopefully you got a takeaway or something you learned. From tonight, maybe some kind of mindset tip or color tip or sketching technique, whether for me or from you guys in the chat, it doesn't matter. I just hope you have, uh, you're leaving our stream with something positive tonight. Keep using your creativity for positivity in the world. Every little bit helps, so keep putting good stuff out there, guys. I appreciate y'all so, so much. I'm Jason with The Inkspired Life. I love doing this stuff. And remember, you too can sketch architecture and the world around you one stinking line at a time. All right guys, take care. Have a great, great night. Peace and live creatively. I'll see you soon. Yeah, DeRay, I'm trying to find the mouse. I just got the mouse over here. I'm hitting that finish button.