Friday Night Sketch and Chill

Hey there. I'm Jason from the Inkspired Life. I love sketching, architecture and urban sketching. Hope you're doing well on this Friday night. I'm popping on here 9.50pm I know it's kind of late, but I feel like I need to wind down. My brain's been all over the map today. So sketching is a great way for me to wind down the night. So let's do some sketching. Let me pick up some sketches I dropped here on the floor. Anyway, if you're watching live, let me know where you're watching from. I always love to know that. And I'm back. If you hear a strange sound in the background, I have. My 3D printer is going right now. So you might hear some beeps and bops and boops and all kinds of sounds coming from the 3D printer. So yeah, so that's what that sound is in the background. All right, you're looking at a sketch here that's inspired by the steel stacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I have a workshop coming up at the end of this month. I can't believe it's May. Oh my gosh, time flies. My workshop is going to be sketching industrial architecture buildings like the steel stacks in Pennsylvania, the steam plant in Spokane, Washington and some other ones as well. If you're interested in that or you want to know when the workshops coming up, there's a link here in the description. You can click on it. It's just a sign up page to get notified about upcoming workshops. So feel free to check that out. That would be so cool. All right, let's do some sketching. I'll check in first and say hello. I see Chip. Chip, what is up? So good to see you. Hope you're having a great, great day today. It's always great seeing you in the house, in the, in the chat. Chat house over there. So let me bring a picture up on screen tonight. Let me show you guys kind of what is in my brain right now or what I'm gonna do a sketch of. Let me pop this here. Let me drag this on. So here's a shot of a small section of the steel stacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. This was a really, really busy place. It provided steel for. I think one of the things that provides steel for was the Golden Gate Bridge. I also believe it provided steel for some battleships as well. So a lot of history here. It's now kind of defunct. It's been shut down, but it remains as. There's a walkway called the Trestle. It's like an elevated steel. Its colors, its sounds, its history. It's intriguing and I love this place. I've been there twice and I'm, I'm going to go back again pretty soon. So. Yeah, so I'm going to do a sketch based on the photograph you're looking at there on screen again. It'll be kind of my style, loose, quick, just to capture the idea of it. And here's a sketch I did the other day sitting in Panera. I was having lunch and I did a quick sketch. So the idea is, you know, how do we take something really complicated and simplify it? Pretty, pretty crazy looking structure. Let's see Sharpie or. You know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do things a little differently tonight. I, for some reason I pulled out the pilot precise. So let's do some sketching with the Pilot precise pen and see how that goes. Usually I start with a Sharpie because Sharpies allow me to add water or an ink wash or watercolor afterwards and the Sharpie ink won't, won't bleed. So that's why I usually will start with a Sharpie. Well, yeah, let's play with the pilot pen just for fun. Jennifer's in the house. Jennifer, hope you're doing well. Great to see you. I'm going to zoom in a little closer if you're on the. I know, I'm also streaming on Instagram. I think if you're on Instagram, let me know if you can't see my image. Cool. All right, let's do some sketching. If you're curious to know what music I'm listening to, I have a, I shared a link to the Spotify playlist I'm listening to right now. So I think that link is also in the. Should be in the chat description. So Pilot pens bring me back to college. I used to sketch with Pilot precise pens all the time even before I started using Sharpies. I like the way the, the ink just kind of rolls out onto the page. It's pretty smooth. The 3D printer is. I don't know if you guys can hear that in the background. It's really going to work over here. So I had a student design a gumball machine for a mini golf course project they're working on right now. How cool is that? And we're. She's been trying to print this gumball machine like crazy and it hasn't been working. So I wanted to give it a try here this weekend, see if I can get it to work. I'm so so blessed to be able to teach some really incredible kids out there. This may sound weird, but for me, I don't know. Teaching it for me is just a. I just love the career as a way of serving with my things. I love to do my skills, my architecture knowledge, my design skills and knowledge and just to introduce students to new things and let them try new things in architecture and design. It's absolutely thrilling for me to be able to have that privilege to do that. And some, some of my students are incredible, just incredible. So I'm really, really blessed. So here you go. You can see I'm just kind of adding lines here, a little wonky. And I'll do some hatching and contour lines. I'll show you how to make these cylinders look round here at the steel stacks. Again, I'm just capturing really loosey goosey quick here. Hey, Jason's in the house. Jason, long time no see. Hope you're doing well. Hope all's going well with your, your illustrating and drawing. I know you're working on that right now for your. For a career. So good stuff. And I see. D Ray. D Ray, great to see you. Hope you're doing well. All. Right, it. All right, so I have some tanks, some cylinders here, A lot of cylinders in this image. A lot of some pipe work happening. All kinds of steel crisscrosses and bracing and things like that going on as well. Hey, Sheila's in the house. Sheila, great to see you. Hope all's well. Alright, so we have some, some of the kind of stacks happening here, the steel stacks. I'm gonna draw some contour lines on here so that these cylinders look round and you can see I kind of started one here. I'm gonna zoom in a little bit as I do that. So let's zoom in, zoom in, zoom in, zoom in, zoom in. There you go. Cool. So contour lines give shape. Let's throw some in here as well. You can put as many or as little as you want. I want to exaggerate this for you guys to really pull out the curved kind of shape happening. So by drawing these contours or these curved lines, it's kind of wrapping, right? It looks like we're wrapping around that cylinder shape. And I'm going to show you how to make it look even more rounded with some hatching. Cool. All right, so let me show you how to. Let me add some hatching. So these, these vertical hatch lines here, notice they're shorter and as they get to the right, they're getting longer and that helps to create the idea of a shadow maybe wrapping around this. I do the same thing with lighthouses as well. I'll do one here so you can see this one too. Let's see. Let's do this. Let's do this one here. So you can kind of see the looseness and the curves happening. I'm actually loving this. I'm loving the vibe of this. I feel like a certain energy is happening here. Pretty cool. All right, I'm gonna leave this here for a sec. I want to just do a little quick show and tell of some of the past sketches I've done of the steel stacks. I have a few here. I've actually sold some, which is. Has been cool. I'll show you some of the ones I have left. And this is the kind of stuff we're gonna be doing in the workshop at the end of May. Right now, the day is May 30th. I think I have. It's tentative. I haven't. I'm still working on the final touches for the website sales page and all that. I think May 30th is when the workshop will be. It'll be on zoom and we'll be sketching industrial architecture. This is not the steel stacks, but this is a. This is the Starbucks. Oh, man. Oh, it's down near. It's down in. Near Chelsea, the meatpacking district. Starbucks Reserve. That's what it's called. Starbucks Reserve is a really fancy, fancy, schmancy Starbucks. And inside they have. I wish I had a picture to show you. But inside they have a really cool industrial, mechanized kind of conveyor belt system that brings coffee beans into the roasters. It's really an amazing sight to see. And this is just a small section that I did a mixed media painting sketch of based on that reserve area. This is actually done on what's called Yupo paper. Y U P O Yupo. Or maybe it's Yuppo. Yupo is more like plastic than paper. I don't know if you can hear this. You can't really hear it, but. So Yupo is like sketching and painting on plastic. And I actually love Yupo. It does. You get really cool effects with layers happening here. But you have to be patient, though. You have to wait for things to dry before you keep adding layers. But this is a cool kind of industrial type of sketch. Notice the colors. You'll see this very similar color palette on the other sketches I show you. Here's an industrial repurposed building, the Domino Sugar Factory in. In Brooklyn. New York City. And I love the Domino Sugar factory. I've been there. I was on a tour there when it was under construction. It was really. It was an old sugar factory, and they've converted it into offices. But here's a black and white building. Here's another sketch. Same building. And then, let me. Here's another one. I really like this one. This is also the steel stacks. But you'll see that color palette I showed you before. This is actually a sketch inspired by the steel stacks. I have that signature neon pink. Just add a touch of whimsy. So when I see all the. All the pipes and conveyor belts and steel structures and supports and the rust and flaking paint and metals, this is. This is my interpretation of what I see there. This is my kind of whimsical take on it. And you can see I did contour lines up here, but it's much more subtle than the sketch I did tonight. Here's another one as well. Here you can see the towers, some of the stacks there. And I did. I did some of the hatch lines on it, And I just have a couple more, and then we'll wrap up tonight's sketch. I kind of like this one. It's really. It's super busy, but why I, like, has some diagonal lines here, kind of a Z shape there. Some perspective happening in here. So it's pretty busy, but I love the feeling and the vibe of it. And then here's the last one. This one's might asoom out. This one's kind of. This is a really. This is a pretty big sketch here. Another one inspired by the steel stacks. This one's actually done hot press. Hot press paper, so it's smooth. Pretty cool, right, guys? So those are some steel stacks inspired sketches. If you're interested in any, let me know. All sketches you see are always available for purchase. You just have to send me a message and I'll respond. I'm going to be launching a new gallery page very soon. All right, cool. All right, let's go back to this. It's going to open a window here. All right, cool. All right, so we're back to the steel stacks. And let's add just more kind of lines and on here. Actually, I kind of want this to look in the background, so I'm going to. Just looking. Do I have a pencil here? Just look. Just want to do some grab and go. If I had a pencil, I was gonna mess around the pencil. I don't have one here. Wait, hold on. I lied. I have A pencil right here. Let's do some shading with a pencil. I'm really stepping out tonight, guys. When's the last time you saw me use a pencil? Hardly ever. Right, Zoom in. There we go. So I'm just going to kind of shade this in with. The reason I went with a pencil is I just wanted the gray from the graphite just to kind of put this in the background a little bit. It. Maybe I'll even do some gray here, fill these lines in a little bit. Cool. Let me check in the comments, see if you have any questions. Feel free to ask some questions or say hello in the chat. D Ray. D Ray. D Ray's back. I love when you got some of the things I say written down here. Awesome. Shading with what pencil? You know how to use a pencil? I do know how to use a pencil. Isn't that surprising? This is actually a pretty cool lead holder here. What is the brand? I got a whole set of these on Amazon a couple years ago called Nick Pro, N I C P R O. Which is kind of cool because my last name is Nicholas. My students call me Mr. Nick. So this is Nick Pro. This has a really nice kind of point on there. I have a sharpener here somewhere as well. I just like the satisfying clicking sounds. Yeah. So this is cool. I've been keeping this here in my lock B folio. So it's been journeying around with me a little bit. All right. I'm grabbing and going. I want to mess around this color. I don't know why. It's just. It's in front of me. Let's do it. Add a little bit color to this. This is. This is a Quran de ash Swiss made color pencil. I'm not sure if I'm saying. I'm positive. I'm not saying that Right. What color is this called? This is called spring green. Spring green. I thought it'd be fun to put some color. Just add a little bit of fun to this. Sometimes we get so serious about what we're doing that's just kind of throwing something out there that's totally random. Takes that seriousness and kind of makes it into a little bit of fun. I love this color. Pretty cool. Let's see. And we're gonna. I have this other color, same company. This is called light blue. Light blue. Maybe we'll do a. I'll do like a little background here. Pop out some of these shapes a little bit. So I think this. I like this light blue in the background. It's kind of popping these Stacks out a little bit here. Andrea is on. Hey, how are you? Great to see you. Long, long time no see. Hope all's well. Love the bright colors. Oh, good. I'm so glad you like these. I think. I think these are fun. I'm only. I think I'm only going to use these two colors on this sketch because I don't want to overdo it, but I. I'm really digging it. The people. The people still say that. Digging it. I. I just said it. I'm showing. I'm showing my. See, we'll just kind of. It's looking kind of cool. Let me know if you guys are liking this kind of the sky here. Is that helping to pop the shapes of the cylinders and the stacks and the pipes a little bit more? Pretty cool. And I think I'm going to pull these out a little bit more. So we used a pilot precise pen for all the ink you see so far. But it is now time for Mr. Sharpie to make an appearance because I want to boldy these lines a little bit. I think the Sharpie is going to. It'll pop them out a little bit darker. Let me get this edge here a little darker as well. There we go. I think they're popping a little bit better. I'm going to throw in some kind of some X X cross bracing in here just to give it more of a steel work kind of framework vibe. The same thing here. Maybe. Digging it. We just let it slide on by. D ray. D ray, you're a hoot. I'm gonna add some contour lines on this pipe thing here to look curved. So let's do it this way. Actually, maybe I'll do. We'll do like maybe some kind of rivets up here, but we'll put the rivets down in a curved way and we'll add some more down here. We'll do the same thing here. Just a little detail. I think it adds another. Just layer of visual interest there. Right? You see rivets where the sheets of metal are kind of coming together, where they're being attached to the frame behind them. This. This is a riveting sketch. See what I did there? Riveting sketch. And skip that song. What? Yes. Yes, there are. There's some abba going on here in my air pod right now. Pretty cool. All right, I'm gonna wrap up in a minute. I wanted. I just want to show you guys how I'm sketching or filling in the sky. Let me just want to do a little detail of it just looking for a scrap paper. I have an envelope. We'll use that right here. Here's actually a trick I learned in college of how to kind of do background here. Here's actually a trick I learned in college of how to kind of do backgrounds or like sky backgrounds. If you look, I didn't color it solid blue. I kind of have some white left in there. Some spaces. I like the look of it. And this is hands or like sky backgrounds. If you look, I didn't color it solid blue. I kind of have some white left in there. Some spaces. I like the look of it. And this is how. This is how I do it. I'll do it kind of at a bigger scale. So I'm kind of doing swirling motions with my hand. This is how I do it. I'll do it kind of at a bigger scale. I'm literally just so I'll just do a large scale one here. So basically I'm doing swirls like this, And I'm exaggerating so you could see it, but they're usually a little tighter together and they kind of overlap each other a little bit. And that's how I kind of do the background skies pretty quickly. I mean, I could do it this way. I could do them solid like this. There's nothing wrong with it. It eats up a lot of your. Your colored pencil lead quickly. It also takes longer. This is kind of a shorthand. I like to teach shorthand sketching methods. So this is an interesting shorthand sketching method for creating or filling in a big area in a quick way, especially skies. So we'll call this my sky shorthand method. If you have. If you have a better name than that, let me know. Something more creative. I'll just kind of do it here. And this is something I picked up from one of. From one of my college professors way back when. In architecture school, we had to learn how to quick draw, quick coloring things, just be kind of quick and speedy. And this is something I picked up for one of. From one of my college professors way back when in architecture school, we had to learn how to quick draw quick coloring things. Just be kind of quick and speedy to get our ideas out onto paper. So there you go. That's kind of the shorthand sky sketching system. I love alliterations. All right, cool. All right, guys, let me know if you have any final questions or comments. I'm going to check in and see if we to get our ideas out onto paper. So there you go. That's kind of the Shorthand. Sky sketching system. I love alliterations. All right, cool. All right, guys, let me know if you any final questions or comments. I'm gonna check in and see before we wrap it up. Andrea. I know Andrea. I forget it was Andrea or Andrea, so I'm so sorry. I dig your loose, sketchy style. My artwork is very tight, and I want to loosen up, lol. Before we wrap. Wrap it up. Andrea. I know Andrea. I forget it was Andrea or Andrea. So I'm so sorry. I dig your loose, sketchy style. My artwork is very tight, and I want to loosen up, lol. Andrea. I hear that a lot, and that's cool. I'm sure your. Your sketches are absolutely beautiful. To loosen up, think. Thanks, Andrea. I hear that a lot, and that's cool. I'm sure your. Your sketches are absolutely beautiful. Scribbles. Think scribbly, right? Just be really scribbly with your lines to loosen up. Think. Think scribbles. Think scribbly. Right? Just be really scribbly with your lines. Be scribbly. Sometimes a lot of it has to do with how you're holding your pen or pencil as well. You can hold it kind of loose and let your wrist kind of be flexy. Flexy wrist. This is actually a sketch I was doing while I was sitting in my doctor's office the other day. Waiting. Scribbly. Sometimes a lot of it has to do with how you're holding your pen or pencil as well. You can hold it kind of loose and let your wrist kind of be flexy. Flexi wrist. This is actually a sketch I was doing while I was sitting in my doctor's office the other day, waiting. Line types. I like to talk about different line types to be kind of loose. So notice my lines are kind of very wonky. Right. Line types. I like to talk about different line types to be kind of loose. So notice my lines are kind of very wonky. Right. Almost wave, like. Or, you know, if I was to do a technical drawing, I could slow it down and we could be really almost wave, like. Or, you know, if I was to do a technical drawing, I could slow it down and we could be really more precise, like these lines. More precise. Like these lines. Yeah. If you ever get the chance, I'd love for you to take join us in one of my workshops where I could give you, you know, direct feedback. Yeah. If you ever get the chance, I'd love for you to take. Join what you're doing. It would be so cool. Also, another way to be loose for me is to sketch fast. So when I'm fast getting things done, not thinking too much in one of my workshops where I could give you direct feedback on what you're doing, it would be so cool. Just kind of grab, go throw down some ink, throw down some color. For me, less time thinking equals. Also another way to be loose for me is to sketch fast. So when I'm fast getting things done, not thinking too much time, it equals more freedom, more loose style. Pretty cool. I love that. I love that comment, by the way. All right, cool guys. So this is the one I showed you at the beginning. And then here's the one we did tonight. Just kind of grab, go throw down some ink, throw down some color. For me, less time thinking equals. Most of these are both based on the steel stacks in Bethlehem, pa. I think that's gonna be a wrap tonight for this Friday night. The time, it equals more freedom, more loose style Sketch and chills session. If you're interested in in the Future workshops, upcoming workshops, check the description. Pretty cool. I love that. I love that comment, by the way. All right, cool guys. So this is the one I showed you at the beginning. And then here's the one we did tonight. There should be a link there. I think it says like workshops 2024. Click on it. You can just sign up for a list. It's free and I'll email you with upcoming workshop information. I know it says 2024. I'm just using the same page as I did last year. I'd love for. These are both based on the steel stacks in Bethlehem Penny. I think that's gonna be a wrap tonight for this Friday night sketch and chill session. If you're interested in in the Future workshops, upcoming workshops, check the description for you guys to join me. Next one will be end of May. I think May 30th is where I'm headed right now with a date for it and we'll be doing this industrial, loose style, industrial architecture. You are so welcome. I hope that quick tip helped you. Feel free to leave me questions or comments. And I. There should be a link there. I think it says like workshops 2024. Click on it. You can just sign up for a list. It's free and I'll email you with upcoming workshop information. I know it says 2024. I'll respond and see if I could help you more. I would love to do that. All right, guys, I appreciate you all so, so much. Keep using your creativity for positivity. Just using the same page as I did last year I'd love a little bit goes a long way these days so spread the love out there and yeah I appreciate all so much for your time and for you guys to join me. Next one will be end of May. I think May 30th is where I'm headed right now with a date for it and we'll be doing this industrial loose style industrial architecture. You are so welcome. I hope that quick tip helped you. Feel free to leave me questions or comments and I'll respond and see if I can help you more. I would love to do that. All right guys I appreciate you all so so much. Keep using your creativity for positivity. A little bit goes a long way these days so spread the love out there and yeah I appreciate all so much for your time and for your positivity and comments. It's always fun for me to do this until we sketch again. See you real soon. I'm Jason with the Ink Spired Life. Take care.