Finishing the Spokane Davenport and Train Sketch

Hello, welcome to The Inkspired Life. It is Tuesday, August 20th, 2024. I'm, uh, popping on for a few minutes so I can just wrap up this sketch I started the other night, um, inspired from a rooftop terrace looking out at railroad tracks and a train here. And off in the distance is the Davenport, the historic Davenport Hotel in Spokane. So that'd be fun, just come on for a little bit and just, uh, add some more lines to it. So I think it's been drying for a couple days. It didn't need that long, but I just set it aside for a couple days. I figured come back and revisit it. Don't feel like you always need to complete your, your sketches in one session. You could take your time, step away, come back, um, which is great because sometimes when you step away and you come back, you have fresh insights, fresh pair of eyes. So, um, yeah, there you go. Let me know in the chat where you're watching from, if you have any questions or comments. It would be so cool to Talk to you guys. Alright, so, um, I added some more ink. I First thing I did is I just wanted to add some tracks on here, so I just took my Sharpie, quick tracks, um, then I added some ink on top of that, watercolor, throwing down some red just to mix it up a little bit. Throw— I like to throw red in. It's something new I started doing, um, just some pops of red on these sketches. Hey, DB is in the house! DB, great to see you. Hope all's well. She says, I love your work. Hey, thank you so much, that means tons coming from you. You are such a gifted and creative human being, so thank you so much. It's so awesome to see you tonight. Awesome, awesome. This one's almost done. I think I'm gonna break out some colored pencils next, and then we'll call this one a day. There's a lot happening here. Um, I kind of like it. It's fun, it's different. So let's break out some colored pencils. So this is part 2. I started this sketch the other night and I felt like coming back to it today. So don't be afraid to step away and come back to your work. So I know it looks crooked. Um, I intentionally— actually, I did sketch this crooked intentionally. I wanted just to be a little different and have it angling down instead of doing perfectly horizontal. I thought it'd be more fun and a little more dramatic just to get the, the kind of downhill slope happening. All right, definitely got to add some neon pink, right? That's kind of the signature. Um, light aqua. Here's, here's my favorite, which is— yeah, I just say my favorite or go-to color pencil colors right in here. So I have neon yellow, neon pink, light aqua, chartreuse, sunburst yellow, which is kind of a new color I've started using. And this is magenta. So this magenta is not one of my favorites. Um, there's a color called Process Red. Process Red. I like magenta, but Process Red should be in here, and I don't know where the heck it is. Let me just check in here quick. This— I see a QQQ from DB. Have you ever used a blender pencil when working with colored pencils? Great question. I have not, I have not used a blender pencil. If I needed to blend something together, I usually will use my finger or a tissue. That's a really great question. Aha, did I find it? Aha, I got it. Process Red. Ta-da! Let's put like, let's do something fun. Let's put Process Red next to Magenta. They are— it's probably gonna be hard to pick this up on camera, but they are very, very similar. Maybe if I do it here, they're very similar in, in color. Um, magenta— I mean, Process Red for me is more— how do I say it— looks like it's more on the pinkish side than magenta. Hey, D-Ray's in the house! D-Ray, great to see you. Hope all's well. I love when you guys pop on. This is so fun. But great question about the, uh, blending the colored pencils. It'll be fun to play around with. So maybe we'll do— maybe I'll stay on and maybe we'll just mess around color pencils for a few minutes. So these are not watercolor pencils, they're just regular color pencils. Typically when I'm using water— not watercolor pencils— typically when I'm using color pencils on my sketches, though, I will put them on towards the end of the sketch process, um, because if I put them down beforehand and I try to, you know, paint or ink on top of the pencil, it won't it won't stick. So I usually will throw the pencil down towards the end. Hopefully that made sense. I feel like I'm rambling a little bit. This one needs a little more freshness or brightness to it, so either I could use lemon yellow watercolor or Neon yellow color pencil. Let's go with neon yellow. There we go. This is all about just messing around with color and having fun. In the end, it really all just comes down for me to have fun with this. I'm not going to stress out. I'm not going to stress out while doing this because I do this to be unstressed, right? This is kind of my fun creative outlet, and I'm not looking for perfection. Once I shut down the idea that I need to be perfect, anything can happen. So I really— I strongly suggest adopting that mindset. Be playful, don't expect perfection, and just, just go for it. That's cool. All right, I'm liking those pops of yellow on there. D-Ray says, we're used to your rambling. That's awesome, I love that. Thanks for letting me ramble. I am trying to allow for a little bit more white space during these live streams, so, um, I'm not talking way too much. It's just something I'm personally working on here, and I want to bring it into my classroom in the next couple weeks in school. So feel free to tell me if I ever am talking too much. There is time for our pops of pink. That's nice. I love this color happening right here. One of my absolute favorite color combinations of all time: orange, whether it's watercolor orange or a different orange, and neon pink. I'm going to zoom in even closer. I get that away from my big head there. Um, I love these color combination, this color combination. This is like, this is so inktense, which is actually a brand. Um, these aren't inktense, these are actually just Prismacolor pencils. I love Prismacolor Premier colored pencils. Hey, Mickey's on! Mickey says you are using more colors this season. Hey, thank you for noticing! Yeah, I appreciate that. It's such a great observation because I'm consciously trying to be even a little more out of the box, so I am pushing myself. Thank you for saying that, I appreciate it. Dear DB says, when you talk, we learn. That's cool, thanks DB. You guys like this one? Let me know in the comments. What are your thoughts? Let me zoom out. It is a little on the busy side, but let's throw a frame around it and see what it looks like. I think the last thing I want to do is I'm going to pull out these train cars a little bit more before we frame it. And here, here's what I'm thinking. I'm gonna grab and go. So I like to go grab and go with what's around me. Um, I have a thicker Sharpie right here, so I can use that. Let's do it. The other thing I'm eyeing up over here is a Tombow marker. Uh, let's use the Tombow actually, just for fun. Let's mix it up. So this is a Tombow water-based marker. I love the Tombow markers. Don't use them too much yet. This is cool because it has a brush tip on one side and then kind of a, a finer tip on the other. So I thought— I think this brush would be really cool. I just want to pull these train cars out a little closer. So we're just going to go for it. We're going to throw down some bold ink. Let's do it. Wish me luck. Wishing me luck. I need— I'm changing the music here. I need some hype-up music. I wish I could play it for you guys. If I play the music, it's going to be copyrighted and I'll get shut down by the socials. Um, I'm going to start just putting a playlist of what I'm listening to in case you guys want to follow along, or I think I could even share my Spotify playlist while I'm on. So if you guys are on Spotify, you could just, uh, listen to the playlist along with me. I just can't broadcast it. All right, let's do this. All right, I have a habit of always taking the caps off. I feel like sometimes— I feel like when the cap is on— here's an example— when the cap is on, I tend to rotate when I'm sketching. I rotate the pen or marker. Um, I think that's— that goes way back to architecture school and old-school hand drafting, where when you're using a pencil on a T-square, you would rotate the pencil as you're drawing to help keep the point sharp. So I think I just have that ingrained in me from so many years of hand drafting, which I still love actually, um, and I would do it for fun if I had it set up here. But anyway, I still rotate, so I rotate the markers, and I— this clip annoys me because as I'm rotating it hits my hand, so I tend to take the caps off so I can rotate. So just a little side, kind of a side note there. So if you see me always taking the caps off Notice I'm doing the line on the train, but it's not perfectly straight. I'm sketching it wavy and wonky. I feel like some of this got a little lost down here. I'm going to go back over it. I want to make it darker. All right, cool. So you can see by adding the black line, it just pulled those train cars a little bit more, um, into the foreground. Orange and pink, loving the combination. Yeah, right, D-Ray. I like orange and blue together, or green and purple. Yes, those are awesome. If I'll zoom in here I have some orange and turquoise here. It's an awesome color combination. Yes, Tombow, Tombow right here. These numbers mean— I think it means different colors, right? Let's see. Um, yeah, I guess it refers to different colors. So this is like a gray N45. This is black N25. That is true, when we learned to rotate pencils in architecture and drawing, my dad was an old school architect. Hey Mickey, that's so awesome! Yeah, I'm so glad that you're, um, kind of confirmed what I was saying. Very cool. All right, let's just put some frames around this and see what this bad boy looks like. Let me zoom out. I kind of like this framed. I think this is too much with all these tracks, tracks happening here, so I kind of like it framed and cropping out some of those tracks. So I like this. So I slide it down. No, I like this. I actually like hiding some of that bottom track. I think it makes it more interesting. Let's do a smaller frame. D-Ray's like, getting out the frames. Oh yeah, you know I love breaking out the frames. I always love seeing what smaller pictures we could see within the bigger one. For me, I think that's really fun, and lots of times the smaller images are much more effective than the overall. So don't be afraid to over-sketch the size of something, um I guess meaning the expanse of it, because you can crop pieces out. This is fun. We always go down to the, uh, 1, 1 inch and the 1.5. I'm sorry, I think it's 1.5 or 2. I'm drawing a blank. Yeah, 1.5. So I have a 1-inch square and a 1.5-inch square. Let's zoom in. This is great for just picking out little vignettes. Or thumbnail sketches, which thumbnail sketches are my absolute most favorite sketches to do. I love these little either 2-inch or 1-inch or 1— and for me, I think 1.5-inch by 1.5-inch is a good size. This way you can just really see how the colors pull out. Right? You're removing distractions around the entire sketch. You're able to focus and zero in. And my brain is crazy. Like, I need to zero in and focus a lot. I feel like the older I get— it's really weird. I feel like the older I'm getting, the more my brain wants to dance around. To different things at the same time. It's really, it's really interesting. I'm just learning to embrace it and work with it. So yeah, my brain is the creative brain. It's just, it's firing like crazy, and I'm thinking about so many things at one time. This is kind of cool. I like this little square here. I'm loving the colors in here. Actually, that's kind of a fun little piece. Hey, Sherry's on! Sherry's over there on the YouTubes. Awesome! Hey, Sherry says, uh, try portrait. Yeah, I'm gonna do that. Great idea. Hey guys, while I'm doing this, I'm gonna make a quick plug. On the bottom left, you're gonna— you'll see where it says vote for me. So pardon the plug here, but I'm pretty excited about this right there. Vote for me, www.lockbead.com/pages/contest. They're running a photo contest. Um, you guys know I always talk about Lockbead. I use their products like crazy. I'm an ambassador for them. Um, here's my field journal, goes pretty much everywhere with me. So anyway, they have a photo contest of your Lockbee products. So I entered a few photos. If you go there and you like what I picked, there's other entries. Pick the ones you like. You can only vote for one once per day. Um, I have one, I think it's in third place right now. I posted, it's my Lockbee field journal with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. I think that's third. I have another one that's doing pretty good. It's my Lockbee journal on top of a couple of piers on a dock. If you go there and you like them, I'd love for you guys to vote for me. Voting's free and, um, I could win a cool little prize. So first place is like 90-something votes. I think I'm at like 19. So, um, it's really cool. Anyway, I'd appreciate you guys to go there, check it out. If you do like my stuff, obviously vote for the ones you like the one you like the best, but hopefully it's one of mine. All right, vertical. Let's go to vertical. Sherry said let's do vertical. I— yeah, let's see.

It's kind of—

I'm gonna pan it over a little bit so we find a view. So whenever, um, I'm framing something, always looking to balance like big color areas with negative or white space. I think it's a good way to balance, you know. So something like this, we have kind of the colors and then we have that white space around it. So I have a smaller— let's do the smaller vertical. I think this is going to be better. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm liking the smaller opening. I, I like the vertical format on this actually. What do you guys think? If I get down, get a little more of the track on the bottom See, position 1, position 2, position 3. Yeah, um, I'm really digging this position 3. I think, I think this is my favorite. I like the white space, plays off the colors here. I also like how the train car kind of looks like it continues beyond the frame. I like that. I do. And I like this white space on the bottom. What do you guys think? I'm going to leave it like that for a sec. I'm gonna get a drink of water. Hey, D-Ray, I have my water with me. Look. I got some water with me today. I remembered. Hey, De voted! Thank you so much for voting. I appreciate that. You guys are awesome. Mickey said cool, we'll do it. Thank you, Mickey, that's awesome. Big use of negative space indeed. Yeah, right? Mickey likes 2, so 2 was somewhere in here, right? I think 2 also works with the— you get a lot of the building here and you get this cool kind of white space, this arch. So that's 2, and then we have 3. It's a toss-up, it's a toss-up. My gut is still leaning towards 3. D says like the white space. Okay, I agree with position 3. Cool, we can do something really fun here. Let's check this out. This is just a cardboard piece that came in the frame. Let's do a little triangle sliver and see how that looks. Why not, right? Let's do vertical. It's kind of fun, the triangle. Um, can you move 3 over to the left a little? Okay, let's, let's do it again. I'm going to put 3 here. All right, so DB, tell me, how does that look? So Sherry, Mickey, D-Ray, DB, whoever else is watching, um, let me know, how do you like the framing of this? Because what I'm going to do is I'm actually— I'm looking— just going to mark it with a pencil. Hey DB, look, I have pencils here. A pencil, I should say. You don't usually see me with a pencil, so I happen to have one right on my table. That looks great. That is interesting. Oh, the triangle was interesting. This looks great. Okay, I like that too. So you guys are liking this one. Do you like the flag in the upper left, or should I come over and crop the flag out. So yes flag or no flag? I like the flag showing a bit more, so I'm thinking I almost want to put a pop of color in the flag. So if we frame it like this, I want to add a color. You know what I might do? I actually might just take my red Pilot Precise Pen and shade that all red because I— yeah, let's do it. Flag. Hey Edward T. Morris. Edward, thanks for joining on YouTube. Hope all is well. Edward's saying flag. Yeah. All right guys, everybody seems like Flag. That's it. So stop moving it. Stop fussing around. All right, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna mark this because I'm literally— I'm just gonna cut the— I'm gonna cut it. So I'm marking the frame out so I know where to cut. It'll be a little interesting because it goes off the paper. I'll show you what I mean in a second. All right, cool. So I'm going to put a pop of red in there. The white space below the building is a winner for me here, right? Yeah, I agree. I'm glad I left that white. This actually had more white in it too, this piece. Um, I got a little carried away and filled it in. It's all good. Now let's just throw that red on. My favorite way to add red to my, to my sketches is a Pilot Precise red pen. I just love the, the color that comes out more so than even like a red watercolor. All right, I, I actually like the red flag cuz I had that red line that did this, or I'm sorry I have a red line that does this. It's still here. So that red line's just kind of like this. It kind of ties things together. There's something I've also been doing a lot lately is finding a line somewhere and just continuing it throughout the sketch, one continuous line. Um, and it seems like it's helping to pull things together better. So kind of cool. Arched. Yep, yep. All right, so that's what it's going to look like. Let's cut it while we're here live. Would you guys like to see me cut, cut this right here in person so you could see what I meant? You see how it's crooked? So We're just going to cut this. Well, first of all, we can just take it out of here. One of the things I love about, um, the Fabriano 1264 watercolor book, sketchbook— well, besides the fact that it's made in Italy, because I'm half Italian and I love Italian food. The other thing I really love is the perforations. It just makes it so easy to tear and share. So for me, this is a tear and share sketchbook. The man says as he can't rip it out. There we go, it's coming off. There we go. All right, so I have a We're going to cut right on this mat here. My metal ruler, and I have some X-Actos. They might be in— I was reorganizing and I think they're actually in my bin over here.

All right, I'm back.

Just wanted to get my X-Acto. I love, um, model making. It's something I don't do nearly as much as I would love to. So I have all kinds of X-Acto knives and cutting edges. Oh, slice and dice! We're slicing and we're dicing. It's okay, this will be behind a mat, so I don't mind the funky angle. A pro tip if you're cutting Let me show you what not to do. Let's say I want to cut this out like this. Oh, always try to keep your cutting— always try to keep the blade away from the area you want to keep. So if I was doing this and I made a mistake and slipped, I could cut the area I don't want to cut. So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to flip it, put the straight edge here. So notice now when I'm cutting, my blade, if it slips, it's going to hit the ruler and not the part of the sketch I want to keep. So think about how you're cutting. Um, there are ways you can cut to minimize any potential damage to your work. Same thing here, right? I could cut it like this, but then again, I'm cutting right near the area I want to keep, so I'm going to flip it like this. There you go, there's the final sketch. Oh, so Edward said, why does it have to be cut? Yeah, so great question, Edward. I cut it because I, I want it matte it in this frame. I have a cleaner frame, but same, same idea. I decided out of— I decided I really liked this view. Lots of times I'll take my sketches and zero in or focus in on certain areas, so I don't feel like I lost a lot. By doing that. It's just a personal preference. I'm trying to think about if I was to sell this, which it is available— hint hint— if anybody is interested in the original, let me know. I will even include a mat. Just message me. But, um, yeah, I want to know what it's going to look like if I go to sell it. So this is how I would sell this one. Hopefully that helps. Hey, did I see Becky's in the house? Becky, what's up? What's up, Becky? Excellent. Wash hands. Sherry says wash hands. Are my hands dirty? I have some Sharpie on them. I have some paint. Cool. All right, let's see, it's, uh, 10:02. I'll put one more song on, then we'll wrap up after, uh, this song here. So it was a cool little sketch. Hope you guys liked that one. So if you missed the first part, it wasn't yesterday, I think the night before. Um, if you go to my YouTube, go to the live section, you'll, you'll see part 1 of this sketch. This is part 2. I think it came out pretty swell. So let me know if you have any final questions, thoughts, comments as I wrap up. I am actually going to be live streaming tomorrow night, Wednesday, at 9 o'clock PM here on YouTube and Facebook. So, um, we'll start a new sketch tomorrow. I think I have an idea of what I want to sketch. I think, um, so right now it could change, but I think right now I might be sketching a scene from one of the streets in Chinatown. So my friend Sifat, he's a live streamer on YouTube. He streams from New York City. He was walking around Chinatown tonight and, um, there's some really cool like perspectives and lights hanging over the street. So I thought maybe we'd use that for a little bit of inspo and just create something fun tomorrow night. Cool. All right, let me, um, go through final questions, comments, thoughts. It's great seeing some, uh, new faces here and names. So I appreciate that, guys. Thank you for liking and subscribing on YouTube. Thank you guys for thumbs ups and liking and hearts and stuff on Facebook and YouTube. It means so much. Um, before I forget, so Becky and DB, I will be messaging you guys about um, the Inklings meetup, possible meetup we had all talked about. So I will be messaging you probably tomorrow about that, okay? For, um, I'll talk about our Zoom. Um, have you thought about collaging the outside of the pieces or putting something different after the piece is cut out? Oh. Edward, Edward, how— you know what, all right, let's do this. Edward just had a really fun idea. Is Edward cool, or do you like Ed? Let me know. Or Eddie. So what if we take this piece and just make something random on it, I guess, right? Is that what you're saying? How could we do that? I know how we could do it. Let's just take this piece here. I know I need a scrap piece. Let me just trace a scrap piece here. Let's do this. This will be fun. All right, so I'm going to try what Edward was just talking about. I'm going to take another piece of paper. Sorry, I'll just tear it like that. Cool. Let's just trace this and we'll cut a fresh piece out. And here's what we're going to do. I'm not even going to look at this. I'm going to flip it and we're just going to make something totally random and see what it looks like. This will be cool. I hope this is what you meant. So we're just going to do this. Just kind of quick here, I'm just going to do that. Now we're just going to cut this out and this will be the piece we're going to— actually, I'm just going to leave it like this and I'll cut it after. All right, let's just put something random on here. I'm not looking at the original, so don't know what it's going to do. I think I want— I think I want to start off by just throwing down some color on here. Let's just, let's just throw down— I'll just throw some random watercolors and be really quick. All right, I'm just going to do that quick. Unfortunately, I don't have a hair dryer for this to dry, so I'm just going to blot it a little bit, only because I want to come back and add some ink. Sharpies don't like to sketch in wet areas, so since the Sharpie is not going to work Uh, let's try a Sharpie gel pen and see if that works. So the Sharpie gel pen is working really well on here. I'm just totally making something up. Um, let's give a little more, uh, texture. All right, let's sketch maybe, um, bricks on here. Use some kind of brick. All right, I want to throw down some colored pencil. Just want to get this done kind of quick. Oh, broke my point. Pro tip: always have a backup pencil or sharpen both ends. Usually, um, usually I'll have both ends sharpened so when I go out sketching, if I don't have a sharpener, at least I have another sharp end. All right, uh, pink. Let's put on some pink and then we'll just kind of cut it and we'll match it and we'll just see what it does. I just want this to be kind of really loose and very um, abstract. All right, cool, let's cut it. So I like— I think this is a very, very fun concept. What I would do is I would keep my scrap pieces of paper that have sketches or colors on them, and I could cut— I would cut those up so it's really, really random, and then just collage it. So thanks for the idea. Uh, oh, oh, here it is. I'm like, where did I put the knife?

All right, all right, let's check this out.

Check it out. So we have this piece. So if we match it up something like this Um, it's a fun concept for sure. No, that was supposed to be a clap. That's okay. That's so funny. You're not an artist unless you wear— yes, DB knows my quotes. I always say you're not an artist unless— what? Unless you're wearing it. So I'm usually wearing some ink or paints or something on my hand, more so than my clothing. Becky sounds awesome. Great, sounds like a great sketch tomorrow night. Yeah, D-Ray, thank you. It should be fun. Like I said, I'm not 100% sure. I don't usually pre-plan, but I thought that would be kind of just a fun inspo for tomorrow night. Edward says thank you for humoring the idea. No, it's— I think it's a great idea. Thank you for suggesting it. Except I think—

did I—

oh no, this— I didn't cut the— yes, it's all good. We get the concept. It's kind of cool. Mickey said voted. Thank you for voting on the Lockbee page. Yeah guys, if you're just joining, look at the bottom left of my screen, vote for me. Um, I entered a Lockbee photo contest just showing my field journal in a couple of different locations. I think my vote— my photo that has the most votes is the field journal with the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance. So if you haven't voted, I would love for you to vote. You can vote once a day up until August 24th. So I would love— and I'm sorry if I'm going to be annoying with this, I'm going to keep mentioning it every day I don't usually do contests, and, um, I'm kind of hyped up about this one. So thank you guys for voting. It's free to vote as well. Emphatically Edward. Emphatically Edward. Oh, so you like— yes, I will stick with Edward. Love it. Um, Becky says fun, love it. Hey, thank you, Becky. All right, guys, I think that's gonna be a wrap tonight on the Ink Inspired Life. A couple of, um, takeaways that stand out to me. I always love to know what your takeaways are also. Feel free in the comments to leave me maybe something you're leaving with here tonight. It doesn't have to be something from me that I taught you or you learned from me. It could be something you learned from each other in the chat. So I always love that feedback. So if you can leave that in the comments, that would be so cool. Again, if you could vote— I'm asking a lot, I know— but if you could do the vote, that would be so helpful too. Um, D-Race says thank you. Thank you, thank you guys so much. My— so a big takeaway, um, be open for ideas. Thanks to Edward and his idea. So don't be afraid to try something new and just have fun. So Be open-minded. That's probably one key takeaway. And what's another one? I think another one we talked about is just looking at your overall sketches, maybe just focusing in or zooming in on just pieces of that so you can create smaller artworks from the bigger ones, right? Awesome. T-Ray says you are so calm. And reassuring. That means tons to me because, um, I really appreciate that. Um, thank you so much for that. And likewise, I appreciate you guys, um, in the chat. You keep me motivated, um, inspire me. It's great to be out here having fun and just connecting with you guys through art. Guys, thank you so much. Have a great, great rest of your night. Remember, keep using your creativity for positivity in the world. We definitely need more of that. Um, things are getting nutty out there, so, um, let's just be positive. And I truly believe that, um, you can— you too can sketch architecture, buildings, and the world around you One line at a time. That's how I simplify, organize, embrace, and celebrate the world I live in. Well, the world we all live in. All right guys, take care. Thank you so, so much. Have a great rest of your Tuesday, and hopefully I'll see you, uh, tomorrow, 9 o'clock Eastern Time, Facebook and YouTube, and we'll do another sketch. Take care.