Inking Out Loud

Hey Jennifer, good to see you. Cheers from Arizona. Hope all is well. Hope you're having, um, good weather, and I hope you're feeling well. Good to see you. Chilly in the 30s at night. Ooh, doing okay. Yeah, 30 is chilly. I hear you. Happy Friday evening, everybody. I'm popping on here. I didn't do my bridge sketch yet today, so I'm just showing up. I want to get my bridge sketch in for today, number 58. 58 consecutive days, 58 consecutive bridges. Alright, cool, so I'm just sketching with a Sharpie. I'm gonna add some kind of color or ink wash. Actually, no, we're just gonna use, um, I got this pen here, so let's just use this tonight. Hopefully there's ink in here. Ooh, there is no ink. Let me reload this with some ink. So hopefully you guys can hear me okay, see everything okay. There was an update with the software. I use for streaming, so I updated everything. I think I have all the settings correct. And now I just stop the music, I think. What is he doing? So I'm refilling this right here. I'm actually just gonna dip the whole nib in here. And we'll refill it this way. Take 2, let's see if we can actually get ink in here. I didn't put it down deep enough, I don't think. Dang, it's not filling. What the heck? Take 2.

Take 2.

Should be filling. I don't know why it's not. That's weird. All right, we'll just do it the old school way. We're just going to dip the pen in the ink. Get ready for some action. I don't know why this isn't filling.

It's weird. Hmm.

Try it one more time. Just make sure I have the converter in here tight. Let's try it again, see if it's gonna fill. I might as well take it out. Let's try taking it out. It's not filling that way. Sometimes I've been able to fill pens with the nib on, but maybe this one I can't. Let's try it this way. That could be the issue.

Aha!

We have success! So I guess I can't fill this pen with the nib on it. There we go. So now we have ink in here. Perfect. Who wants to see that again in slow motion or fast motion? Because it just took a while to do that. All right, we should be G2G, good to go. Put this back on and let's do some, uh, Let's do some wash on this. This is just a real quick bridge sketch. Again, since I didn't do it today, it's kind of late, I'm kind of tired, but I wanted to make sure I got my sketch in today. So I'm kind of— well, I'm sketching because it's fun, but I'm kind of sketching out of guilt. I feel a little guilty that I didn't do my bridge sketch yet. So I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing to be sketching out of guilt. I guess it's good because it's keeping me up with my habit here. And I'm still having fun, so it's all good. Alright, I'm just gonna bleed some of this ink, throw some water down. Anyway, hope you guys are having a great day, hope you had a great week. I hope you have some plans this weekend to maybe rest up, catch up. Here we go. Jennifer says, "Committed, no guilt." Yeah. Committed, that's a good word. Committed. I've been having fun sketching bridges, I have to say. Some imaginary ones, some real bridges. And I've been getting some really good feedback, which is great. I love that. Some people recognize the bridges I'm doing. They've been to them. It's bringing back memories for some people. So I, I'm really loving that part of sketching bridges when it's connecting people to memories. That's so fun. So I'm going to keep sketching them. I don't have a set number. Again, this is, I think, 58. I should probably just give myself a target number. Maybe, maybe 75, maybe 100. I don't— I'm not sure, but I'm going to continue sketching other things as well besides bridges, some other buildings. Ah, cool. There we go. Yeah, yeah, I'm loving this color on here. So I have it nice and dark kind of here in the foreground, so it's popping a little more. It's a little bit lighter back here in this area. I think this is going to dry really nicely. Just kind of tapping the colors down here. Likey likey. I don't know how much more I'll do. I'm thinking about breaking out some blue for the background. I have teal. Let's see, what do I have on my desk? I'll show you guys a wide shot. Got a bunch of stuff out here. You know what I'll do? Actually, I feel like using, um, I'm going to break out this Pilot Varsity pen. I like the blue color. So I'm just going to bleed some blue on here. I haven't used it in a while. Hopefully— make sure there's some ink left in here. Oh yeah, cool. Jennifer says purple. Ooh, purple would go well with this also. Purple would go well. I think I'm looking to see if I have a purple pen. Oh, I do. Let's see, I have purple, I have a purple Varsity pen also. Hmm, which one should we do, purple or blue? You know what? Let's, let's try the purple. Jennifer, we're going with the purple. We're going to go for it. We'll just bleed some purple on there. Let me just— I'm actually— I still have some ink on here. I'm just throwing it down. I did— this is a quick sketch I did yesterday. A really quick sketch. I was in a meeting. I like the way it came out. I'm just throwing down some of this ink I just used on top. And this is a really small sketch, but I like the detail of it. Just blot some of this ink on here as well. Cool, there we go. Let that dry over here. Jennifer says yippee, yippee, let's do it! So we're going to bleed some blue, uh, purple. Purple.

Um, let's see.

So just start here, we'll throw some down and we'll throw some water on top. Scribble it. Here we go. Awesome. Yeah, I like it. It's kind of light now. We can— I can always come back and make it darker. Let's just keep adding it across here. There we go. So I'm literally just tapping down the pen kind of on the wet areas here. You see it bleeding out. And I'll take the brush and I'll just kind of spread it out a little bit. Throw some over here, kind of wet the paper. Let's wet the paper here a little bit. Bleed some in here, kind of bleed some down in there as well. So Jennifer, I think it was a good, uh, good choice using the purple for the background. So thank you for suggesting that. Hey, I see Cole H has joined us. Cole H, great to see you. Hope you're doing well tonight. Thanks for tuning in, Cole. So Cole, you can see I'm actually living what I talk about. That's right, I talk about sketching a lot, so I actually do, I do love sketching. So guys, this is an imaginary bridge. Loosely— it was loosely based, uh, very loosely based on the Brooklyn Bridge. It doesn't even really look like it, but the perspective— I kind of like it has a kind of a perspective here view. Um, what's cool about these Varsity pens is I like the fact that I can dab them, dab them on wet areas, and it bleeds. Some pens don't really do that so well, so it's really, uh, it's cool for doing these ink washes with. So I, and I really love the way it's drying here. This has kind of this kind of— it's called a hard edge where it's drying. I like line there. I like that it's not all even, it's kind of an uneven background. I think it adds a little more interest. Let's go ahead and throw some down here as well. I'll probably come in and do another layer of the purple after it dries just to darken some areas more, but I think this color is going really well with the color we threw down here on the bridge. Cool stuff. This is drying really nicely here too. I love this color. I'm going to come back in a few minutes when it dries and we'll throw down some, uh, some hatching lines to give some depth to this bridge, some shadows. But I do want to wait for it to dry. Sharpies do not like to work on wet surfaces. Um, I could use my Pilot pen on the wet area, but it's going to bleed, and I don't want the hatch lines to bleed. So that's why we're going to— I'm going to do it with a Sharpie, I think. Let's throw some on here, create some shadows with this purple right on the bridge. See how that looks. Maybe I won't use the Sharpie, maybe I'll use this purple Varsity pen to do some shadows. Let's try that instead. So part of the thing, one of the reasons I love sketching is I just love just being playful, having fun with it, trying different things out. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't work, but you don't know unless you try, right? So that's why I'm just making this some fun, fun time. I'm not stressing, I'm not worried about where I'm putting the ink right now, how it's going to work. We're going to test it out. So I'm liking the purple here I added to help create some shadows. Purples mixing with— this color is called Apple Snail or Snail Apple, one of those two. So just throwing that on here, throwing the purple on top of that one, trying to keep my lines kind of loose and wonky, very sketchy looking. Hey, D-Ray's in the house! Hey, D-Ray! D-Ray says hi again. Hey, D-Ray! Yeah, so I, so I updated my streaming software, and when I came on earlier, um, I went live but I didn't mean to go live, and you guys are only seeing half of my face. I apologize, I'm kind of half on screen. Um, so that's what happened. It went live. I didn't mean to go live yet. I was trying to sort out the music here a little bit, so, so I turned it off. So, uh, D-Ray, it's good to see you. How are things in Alaska today? I know, uh, I saw some pictures with some snow. I hope you're keeping warm. Jennifer's chilly there in Arizona, and New Jersey was— it was actually Maybe in the 40s, low 40s, but it felt warmer to me when I went outside today, so it felt kind of mild. We're having a very mild winter here.

Cool.

So I'm really liking the way this is drying here. I'm going to leave this back the way it is, kind of light. I don't want to draw too much attention. I really want it to look faded. And this area I want to be the darkest, so your eye is kind of drawn here. Just to create the idea of depth. But I think I'm going to let it dry, then I'll come back and add some hatching lines. There you go. I like the way it's looking. D-Ray says, "Loose and wonky, just the way we like it." That's right. Alaska is doing its thing at 27 degrees here. Alaska is definitely unique. It's got to get a drink here, drink of some water. So let me know if you guys have any questions. I'll zoom out a little bit. So the paper I'm using, sometimes people want to know I'm actually sketching in this right here. This is a Strathmore Visual Journal, 140-pound watercolor paper, cold press, 44 pages, 22 sheets. It's 5.5 inches by 8 inches. One of the things I do like about this is the spiral— I like it and I don't like it— the spiral binding. I like it because I can lay the pages flat. Which is great. I don't like the spiral binding because it gets in the way a lot being left-handed. I guess I could always flip and work this way on the book, but I do like the fact that it lays flat, so that wins out for me. It's a nice size paper. The texture is fairly smooth, it's not very rough. I prefer my paper to be a little rougher, but it is a nice convenient book to carry around, sketchbook. Um, actually, if I look, actually there's two different sides. This side is rougher, so there's kind of a rough side and then there's a smoother side.

Cool.

So that's drying there. T-Rex says, I like faded. Water is good for you. It is. We just went out of focus. What the heck?

There we are. Cool.

We're gonna let this dry. Let's do another sketch. Actually, I'm just gonna sketch right here in my little, um, pocket journal. I love this pocket journal. It's so small, it's convenient to carry, has a cool little place put a pen or a pencil. Boom. I have a couple— I have a dot— dotted grid paper in here, which you can see. This was a sketch I did at a Winter Choral concert. I also have plain paper as well. Pretty cool. There's a pocket on the back as well, Velcro, so you can put stuff in here. But since it's out, let's just do a little tiny thumbnail sketch. Let me just flip over. You can actually see I did sketch in here, just playing around with the Golden Gate Bridge. So here's a sketch I did of the Golden Gate. And then here's kind of an imaginary bridge. Um, let's sketch on this page here. And what do— let's sketch with— let's get— I'll use a Pilot Precise pen. I don't think I'm going to do any bleeding on it, but you never know.

All right, cool.

Jennifer says, I have the larger one. Ooh, Jennifer, do you? Jennifer has the, um, Jennifer, Jennifer has the larger field journal, right? So here's— this is the large one, this is the pocket one. I love them both. Lockbee, if you are out there, you guys know I'm always, um, giving you guys shoutouts because I love their products. This is the company Lockbee. Great, great stuff. I, yeah, I love this. This is wearing well. This goes everywhere with me. I actually carry the bigger one more than the little one. It's got pockets for stuff. I have, I think, 3 different journals in here now. You put 4 in there. Pocket in the back, pocket here. Um, great, great stuff. Even a little carry handle. If you guys are ever interested in Lockbee stuff, let me know. Go to my website page on the front page. If you scroll down, you'll see I have a Lockbee discount code that you can use to get something from Lockbee. So I guess that was my Lockbee commercial. If you use that link, I do get a very, very small commission, but your price is the same. It's not raised or anything like that. It's just, they're just giving me a little reward for, you know, referring them. But enough about that. So let's do a sketch in here. So I kind of call this my iconic bridge sketch. It's the one I do the most. It's kind of an imaginary one, perspective view. I'm always revisiting this one. Wait, so this would be actually Bridge Sketch 59 right here. So we'll do this, we'll turn it into a little perspective kind of view. We do this really fast and loose. Sometimes I'll sketch a figure kind of on the front of the bridge.

Cool.

I'm just using some fun colors. This is like an old kind of like a neon yellow, yellowish green color. Maybe we have some kind of light fixtures here.

Alright, cool.

Alright, there you got a quick little bridge sketch there. Jennifer says, "Do you use the hook closure?" So yeah, so let me show you this field journal. I'll bring that back over here. Good question. So here you go, this is kind of my, um, I call it my iconic, I don't know what to call it, iconic, because maybe that's not the right word. I use, I sketch this one a lot. And this is all based on a, I know I've showed this before, this is based on a Post-it note sketch I did last year in school when I was actually covering a class. So I had my Post-it notes, I did this quick pencil sketch. And ever since then, I've been trying to do many, many different versions of this. This is still my favorite, the original one. But I've always, I've been playing around with it and I must have done at least 30 different versions of it. So it's always fun to mix it up, try different colors, different styles, make it loose, make it a little bit cleaner, put people on, put light fixtures on. Maybe iconic's not the word, maybe signature is the right word. This is probably my signature bird sketch that I'm always revisiting. So let me just put a date on here and then I'll show you guys the field journal and we'll take a look at the earlier sketch, see how that's drying, and I could maybe add some more ink to it and we'll wrap it up. So I usually like to sign my name and just at least put the year that this is from.

Cool.

So you can see this is the bridge I did yesterday, and then we have a different version today. All right, so that was 50— I should actually put on here, this is, um, 50— what'd I say it was? Oh my gosh, 58. This is either 58 or 59. I'm losing track.

I'll put—

I think this is Bridge 59. Jennifer had a good question about this journal. Do I use the hook closure? Yeah, so here, this is the hook closure right here. I do use it. I do use it and it has an adjustable strap so you can tighten it if you want. Um, when I'm not using it, sometimes I'll just tuck it in back here, or when I'm sketching and stuff, I'll just take it and I'll either just stick it in the back here like this or clip it. I think you usually just kind of hook it on here. Look kind of like that. So if I'm holding my sketchbook, it's not dangling, at least it's kind of being held up. So yeah, but I do use it. You can see it's kind of wearing here a little bit from taking the closure on and off. So, uh, good question, GQ. Good question. All right, let's bring this one back. We'll take a look at it. We're going to wrap up in a few. So if there's any questions, other questions out there, and Questionland. Tightening up a little bit. All right, let's zoom in, see how this is drying. There you go. You can see it. Oh, I like it. It almost looks like it has a glow. This is really interesting. I think my camera on my screen looks a little brighter than in reality here. I don't know how it's coming across on your end, but it almost looks like there's a glow. Here, which I actually really like. So it's drying really nicely. Um, D-Ray says we got lime green. Yeah, on the other sketch. Yep. Uh, and teal green, or maybe blue. So yeah, this, this was like a teal color. On here. I don't know the exact name of it, but it's a Pilot—

oops—

it's a Pilot Varsity pen. I really like these. I also like the Preppy pens and the Varsity pens. I find the Varsity works a little bit better when when I want to sketch it on a wet surface. D-Ray says wrapping up in a few. That's right. I am so thirsty. All right, let's add some— let's take our Sharpie. Let's just sketch some hatch lines on here. Thank you guys for the thumbs up. I see there's still a couple of people watching. That's awesome, I appreciate you guys. I zoomed in pretty close and we're going to— we're going to hatch on here. I'm just thinking, I don't want to take away from this, so I'm not going to do my hatch lines too intense. We'll just kind of keep it— I will see, let my— just let instinct take over and see what happens. So I'm just adding these vertical hatch lines here just to add some more texture, create a little more depth here. There we go. That might be just all I need to add on that. Let's zoom out. I think I do want to pull this section of the bridge out a little bit. I liked these finials I drew on the other sketch. Let's just draw some finials up here. It's kind of, uh, ball shapes at the top just to add a little accent on top of the bridge, a little detail.

Kind of like that. Cool.

I just want to pull this edge out a little bit more. I could put— I could put— use my Lamy pen and outline it. Bleed it. I could use a Sharpie, thicker Sharpie. I'm gonna stick with this. I want it to look very sketchy. So if I zoom in, you'll see my lines here are very, very sketchy. I'm going over the same lines, but not exactly. So I'm not tracing, and this helps to keep that sketchy look I like. I think that's good. I can pull this edge out a little bit more. Boom! I'm really liking it. I actually really like this part. I'm gonna zoom in again. So I, I love, I love when you're on sketches, when you can see see kind of the thought process. I'm not trying to hide any of these lines here. I like, I like having them. It's kind of how I was thinking when I was sketching it out, very loose and wonky. And I think it, for me, it adds kind of to that loose sketchy look I like. If I was to sketch in pencil, I would want to— I might be tempted to erase the lines. So one of the reasons I like to sketch, just start off sketching with a pen, is it leaves these here, these lines, and I know I can't erase them. And it just kind of puts my brain in a mindset of not being perfect because I, because I like the look. I know it's going to end up very sketchy and loose, and that's fine with me. If it was in pencil, I'd be like, oh man, I could erase that if I want, I could redo it. Once it's down, it's kind of down. It keeps me moving forward, if that makes sense. That's just kind of my thing. I knew the song was going to be next. All right, cool guys, I think this one might be done. So thanks to Jennifer for the purple background suggestion. You could see I kind of had some of this snail color, apple color on the brush, or it's in the water, and when I was putting the purple on, it kind of mixed um, which I like actually. You can see it definitely up in here. You can see it up in here as well, down in here. Um, I do like the darker areas of purple. I could come back and put more on, but I think I'm going to leave it. I kind of like the softness, but we have some darker edges here, which is right here, which is kind of cool looking. Hey, Denise is in the house! Good to see you. Hope all's well. Denise is popping off for a few. That's so cool. Thank you, Denise. It's great to see you. Let me know what you guys think. This— do you like this one? Is it too loose looking for you? I'm curious. What's your feedback? Kind of digging it. So we have that one and here's the other. Here's how this one's drying that we did before. This was a real fun, just quick loose one. I really like these colors. Kind of looks like Seattle Seahawks colors. Are we any Seahawks fans? Um, it's kind of reminding me of Real fun, loose. And I tried to, you know, give a hint that maybe some really sketchy, sketchy lampposts here. And I'm just going down in perspective. So we'll put these side by side. You can just see the two different ones we worked on tonight. Hey, Denise says, love the purple. That's cool, Denise. I'm so glad you do. So Denise, you're just joining us. I know you're here for a few, but before you head out, let me show you. So the purple is just a Pilot Varsity pen. Um, we just bled some ink on here, so that's where the purple came from.

Pretty cool.

We'll do a little sketchbook flip through. We'll see what we have on in here. I might have to get another one of these. This is my last Sketchbook. But this sketchbook has all bridges in it. This was a fun sketch, Grand Central Terminal, a pedestrian kind of bridge up here, walkway. I'll be actually at this building end of February. I'm gonna go be doing sketching in Grand Central Terminal, so that's gonna be really, really fun. So I can't wait to see what stuff happens there. It'll be cool. Some Venice bridges. These were fun sketches also. I really like, like these a lot. This one, I like the little pop of red here. It's some kind of awning canopy. What else do we have in this one? More Venice. I think we go from Venice to France here. Pont d'Avignon. Avignon. I'm saying it right. This was, um, this was actually a fun perspective sketch, trying to sketch these arches just to give the idea of a perspective, right, going this way. So we can have the small arch and they get a little bit bigger. These are actually Now I'm looking at these, they're too similar in size. So we have smaller, should have been bigger, this one should have been a little bit bigger, and this should have been the biggest. But I still think it works. So get a sense of kind of the bridge receding into the distance. I even sketched some little peeps on there hanging out. Sometimes it's fun to throw people on your sketches to give a sense of scale. Show me how big this bridge is in relation to a person. Oh, is this the— yes, Storia Megler Bridge. Yeah, I know this one's a really cool bridge. This one I need to practice more. This was, uh, my first crack at the— if Linda Zanchi would know, I don't know. I think I have this labeled wrong. Mackinac Bridge. I have to double-check. Here's one of my— this was a single line sketch, mostly single line, right? Just continue or continuous line, right? I think I picked the pen up maybe 2 times on this. Did a Sky Bridge. Anyway, So that's just a little tour of what's in here. Here we are, here we are today, Bridge 58. Let me write that down before I forget. So we have, uh, this is 58, 2023. We'll just sign it. Cool. Hey guys, I think that's going to be a wrap for tonight. Uh, Denise says you've got some awesome sketches. Thank you, Denise. Denise, I appreciate that. Denise is an amazing, um, talent— amazingly talented artist. Denise, I love your stuff. Uh, incredible, incredible artwork. I could never sketch what you sketch, but that's why I sketch what I sketch. You're awesome, so I love when you share your artwork. Thank you so much for doing that. I love, love your stuff. Um, D-Ray says hi. Oh, she's saying hi to Denise, love it. D-Ray says it works, nice catch. Hey, thanks guys, you're all awesome. So I'm gonna wrap up. Thank you guys for watching on this Friday night. It's 11:17, I'm a tired boy. I need to get some sleep. I will be sketching live this weekend. I don't know the times, but I'll pop on. If you're watching out there on YouTube, thank you for, uh, watching. Make sure you like it. Cole, if you're still on YouTube, thank you for watching. I appreciate that so much. If anybody else is on YouTube, feel free to like it and share this. Uh, subscribe would be really cool. And then you guys here, so we have D-Ray. D-Ray, it's always awesome to see you. Thank you so much for popping on. Uh, keep warm in Alaska, Denise. Keep on being creative, you're awesome. Um, Jennifer, Jennifer, keep warm and hope you're feeling better. Hang in there, it's always great seeing you from Arizona. You guys are awesome, thank you so much for watching. Um, I do appreciate you all. Another peaceful watch, awesome. I'm glad it's peaceful. I hope I'm bringing some joy, some peacefulness, some entertainment, some edutainment. You're learning some stuff. Um, most of all, I just hope I'm putting positive, positive vibes out there. Thank you guys so much. Have a great, great night. I will see you soon. Take care. Thanks again. Peace and live creatively. Creatively. See you soon. I like this music, by the way. I put a couple different new tracks on here. Good night, guys. Take care. See you soon.