Monday Sketching Moment - Lighthouse

Hi, Jason Nicholas here from The Inkspired Life. Hope you're having an amazing Monday. I'm on really quick. I'm gonna do a lighthouse sketch. I have a really cool new online workshop coming up on April 5th. There's a link on screen and one in the comments. I'm gonna post one there. I'd love for you to check it out and maybe even join us for the workshop. How cool would that be? All right, all right. So I'm just going to sketch a lighthouse from my imagination right now. Um, yeah, hope you're doing good. Sorry, I'm looking around screen here. I have— working on setting up a new setup in here and just trying to find my windows so I can post stuff. But we got this thing. We're not gonna let tech slow us down. All right, here we go. All right, awesome. All right, so, uh, I'm just gonna sketch a random lighthouse just from my imagination. I love lighthouses, um, very special meaning to me, uh, just growing up and seeing lighthouses left an impression. I love what they stand for. They they protect us and warn us. They are beacons of light, beacons of hope. Um, really cool. So maybe we have a hill. Maybe I'll sketch a lighthouse kind of here. I'm using a Sharpie, um, and then I'm sketching in this Soho Craft Sketchbook. I like the color of the paper. It's almost like a, like a brown paper bag type of color. So for me, when I sketch lighthouses, it's really all about just kind of the shapes we see. Maybe this lighthouse has some swirls of color coming down. Uh, my friend Chip was just recently showing me some pictures of lighthouses, and I think one may have had some swirls coming down like this. And then we'll do kind of a house up here, maybe the lightkeeper's house. So there we go, we have something kind of like this. I'm going to add some color, we'll add some lines on it to give a little bit of depth. I'm going to see if I can zoom in on it for you. There we go, I think that's better. We'll kind of hold it right there. Feel free to leave any questions or comments for me. I'm going to check the chat in a couple of minutes to say hello. Um, so yeah, so let me know where you're watching from tonight. Let me know, do you like lighthouses? If so, do you have a favorite one? I'd love to know. Put it in the chat for me. My most favorite lighthouse that I've been to is in Maine. It's the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse. Love it, love it. And on my April 5th workshop, we'll be sketching Pemaquid Point for sure, and I have a lot of pictures of it. All right, so you can see just a basic kind of quick sketchy lighthouse. My style is loose and wonky. I'm not going for perfection. I'm not going for clean straight lines. No rulers needed, no experience needed, just a pen or pencil and some paper and we got this thing. All right, cool. So, um, what should we do? Let's throw down some color on this just for fun. So lately I've been using either color pencils— I have Prismacolor color pencils in here in my really cool Lockbee Quattro. I love these things. You could also check out, um, my website, and I have a link to my favorite tools. Maybe I'll post that in the chat later as well. If not, on YouTube it's in the description. If you click on more, you should be able to get a link to that. I've also been using these Sharpie Creative Markers a lot. So let's, um, I don't know, I think lighthouse, I think red stripes a lot. So let's just break out some red Creative Marker and throw some throw some color on here. There's some on the building. Maybe one of the reasons I love the Sharpie Creative Markers is how fast they dry. It's really, it's really a great advantage when I'm out sketching, when I'm urban sketching, to have something that dries so quick. I love watercolor, but for me, sometimes watercolor, especially when I'm out sketching buildings, sometimes watercolor just doesn't, doesn't dry quick enough. I'm, I'm a rapid-fire sketcher and I just want to keep moving. Um, so yeah, so there we go. I'm just throwing down some white on there, just This is just a quick down-and-dirty sketch. I just wanted to be online for a few minutes to say hello and do a quickie little lighthouse. We're going to continue with the Creative Markers. This is my favorite Sharpie Creative Marker color. It's a, uh, I, I guess like a turquoise or aqua color. And I also, I also have these on the link on my website page where I have all my tools. Not all of them, but a lot of the sketching tools and things I like to use. So I will post that in the comments. Again, if you're on YouTube, you can click more and you should be able to see a link on there so you can find this on there. Look how cool that blue color is. Isn't that beautiful? Notice I'm not coloring everything in solid. It's not like, like old school when we were like in elementary school, right? We wanted to color everything solid, keep it clean, keep it in the lines. Yeah, we're doing the opposite. I am not staying in the lines. I'm keeping a lot of open space. I want that brown paper to show through. It's part of that quick, loose, wonky style that I like. We lost a little bit of the lighthouse, so I'm going to pull that lighthouse out and make it a little bit more 3D looking. I'm going to click a setting here and speed up the feed. I think I know what's going on. Um, it just, just dawned on me, so just give me a sec here. Yeah, this should be better. Hey, is that better? There we go. For some reason my camera came on and it was set to portrait mode on my, my laptop, so I just turned it off. Things should be much smoother and cleaner. Awesome. All right, let me see if I can find some comments, say hello to you guys. So again, if you're just joining me, I'm Jason Nicholas with The Inkspired Life. We're just doing a quick lighthouse sketch tonight and we're having some fun with it. You know what's really fun is, uh, my comment box has disappeared. I'm looking for it. Wow, this is a first. What the heck? You know what, we're not going to let the tech stop us. If you have questions, comments— I think I just found the window. Haha, awesome, we're back on. I see Chip is in the house. Chip, great to see you. Hope all is well. Love lighthouses. Yes, I'm Chip. That is awesome. I Love that you love lighthouses. Hey Angel, Angel, great to see you. Hope you're doing well. Thanks for joining me over on the YouTube side of things. Always love that. While I'm talking and answering questions, I'm going to sketch some more lines. We're going to pull this lighthouse out again. I'm actually going to be bold and I'm going to use a Sharpie creative marker, a black one. So I just really want to pop that lighthouse out. See how the— you can see how this marker does. We'll do that. Janice Flanagan! Oh my gosh, how the heck are you, Janice? Great to see you, it's been a while. Hope you're doing well. So here we go. So I'm using that black now to pull out the lighthouse. You can see how it really— making it kind of bold. I'm gonna go kind of lighter here. I don't want the house to pop out quite as much. It's a little, little more in the background, but there you go. I just like how that pulled it out. I'm going to pull out these stripes. So don't be afraid to go back over your line work. You could always pull things back out again. I love sketching lines over lines to, to pull shapes out, to add shade, shadows, to rework things as well. So don't be afraid to do that. That for me is really just part of that, that wonky look. I feel like every line I lay down on paper tells a story, maybe a story about how the sketch was created, right? There's kind of a history. Imagine being an archaeologist and you're looking at this sketch. You could dig through layers, sift out the sand, and what remains will be a treasure or an artifact. I know that was deep. Um, here's a, here's a cool shortcut for showing shadows. I'm going to hatch some lines in here quick. Here's how I can make the lighthouse look round. So I'm going to sketch Oh, see what I just sketched there? Boom. And I'm going to do vertical lines in that shape. The lines are going to get closer as I get to the right, and that kind of helps to create the idea that this is round. So It's just a quick kind of shortcut. Cool. I love the colors. I'm going to sketch maybe some rocks here. We got some rock outcropping that's happening. I'm sketching these as kind of a single line sketch, not drawing individual boulders here. Um, I learned to sketch rocks like this when I was a young architect in training. Um, I worked for an architect who was really a master at drawing stones on buildings, and he had a shorthand technique that I really loved. All right, cool, got some rocks happening there. Uh, let's just break out some yellow. You know what, let's see, you know, actually I'm going to use— I have a neon yellow color pencil. I love the way color pencil and color show up on this brown kraft paper. Uh, it's really transformed a lot the way I'm thinking about my sketching, because especially when I use colors, because they just pop, they pop, pop, pop. All right, so I'm gonna use this neon yellow and then we'll just kind of put it out here a little bit. So you can kind of see that. I'll get a little darker there. Maybe got some lights happening in the house. Maybe it's kind of a getting dark out. Cool. All right, let me see if there's any questions or comments. Jen is doing great. Awesome, I love that. Angel says, I love your remark on only coloring partial. The lighthouse colors are nice and popping on the page. I like your desire to capture the essence of the form in quick, fresh, and lively lines. That is so eloquent. I love what you just said there. Thank you so much. You are a wordsmith. Great, great description. Thanks for that. That's so cool. Let's see. Cylindrical. Yeah, right, it's looking cylindrical there. See if there's any comments I missed. Chip says, I love the story that each lighthouse tells. Yeah, right, each lighthouse definitely tells its own unique story for sure. Cool. All right, so guys, let me know if you have any other questions or comments. I'm going to wrap up in a couple of minutes here. I just wanted to pop on, say hello. Do a little quick lighthouse sketch and just let you know that I do have this really cool lighthouse sketch workshop coming up. I love the name of it. It's called the Lighthouse Sketching Lab, and there's a reason I'm calling, calling it that. I want this workshop and all of my workshops to feel like an environment where we can create and experiment right? We're trying to get to an end result, not a specific end result in this case, but just a fun, playful experimentation, a journey. So I feel like when I say Lighthouse Sketching Lab, that's what I hope pops into mind. So just think of this as a fun time with other creatives. I'll be walking you through some exercises, um, be talking about my sketch framework and, you know, answering some questions. So again, check out the link in the chat. I will post it also later. I'd love to have you guys there. I'm gonna just show some detail on here. Maybe we'll put some roofing on there. Maybe it's a metal roof. Notice I really didn't call a lot of attention to the house or the windows, just kind of scribbled them in a little bit. I mean, I could sketch a boat on here. Let's put a boat on here, a sailboat. I don't know if a sailboat would be out at night, but, um, let's catch one on. Where's my Sharpie? I think the Sharpie may be dying. Let's see, we can use it. All right, so, uh, here's my really quick interpretation of a sailboat. My sailboat forms were inspired by the amazing, amazing artist Peter Max. If you don't know who Peter Max is, definitely Google his work. Peter Max is— he was an inspirational artist for me. He still is. Um, love his colors, his kind of fun style, his very cosmic kind of style. But yeah, he had these— I remember his boats were kind of like this, maybe a little more detail probably. But I always like to sketch 3 boats, 3 sailboats on my lighthouse sketches, um, to represent my family. So I almost kind of see myself as the lighthouse figure, and then I see my family as the boats, my wife, my son, and my pup. So there's 3 sailboats there. Really cool. Let me zoom out, you can get the whole overview. Awesome. Lab Eagles experiments. Yes, Janice, exactly. Janice, love Peter Max, but I am a bit older. Yeah, you know, Peter Max, um, he was really big, right, in this— and I guess in the '60s and '70s. Um, haven't heard much about him. I know there was a lot of trouble going on in his life. Um, last time I Googled him, I think was like a year or two years ago. And yeah, I wasn't— I wasn't— weren't great stories I was reading online. But, um, I believe he's still around. I don't know if he's still creating art or not. Um, but anyway, yeah, he was— he did inspire me. Let's just pop some colors on the lighthouse— I'm on, on the sailboats, and then we'll wrap up. Oh, you know what else I want to add color? I'm going to add some color up on this. I drew a flag up here. There we go, there we go. I think you can see that. Sorry, I know the lighthouses are hidden behind the, uh, text there on screen. They say lighthouses, sailboats. Yeah, it's been a long day. A good day, but a long day. I love winding my days down with sketching. It, it helps me unwind, puts me in a zen state of mind, although sometimes it puts me in a fired up state of mind as well. But that's okay. All in all, it just helps me end the day on a really positive note, doing something that I just love doing. And we should all be doing things we love doing. All right, cool. All right, I think this is a cool little quick scene. I, I like the looseness, the sketchiness of it. I love the colors. Um, cool stuff. Awesome. I don't know about his Life just is art. There you go. Extra hour today. Extra. Oh, you mean because the daylight savings, we lost, we lost that hour, right? How crazy is that? Um, before I wrap up, if you guys can do help me with a little bit of tech, can you see the post I have on there with a link to my workshop? I'm just curious. That'd be great. You guys are awesome. Sorry, I'm looking— I know I have a camera there, I have a camera here. I am in the midst of redoing my whole setup here, so by the end of the week I'll have a new setup and more organized, more efficient. Um, you know why? Because I just want to take this up a level. Always challenge yourself to be the best that you are, the best you can bring to the table each and every day. Challenge yourself to grow every day in some way. All right guys, thank you so much for watching. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life. I'm an architect, a teacher, creative who loves sketching architecture, and you too can sketch architecture one line at a time. Have an amazing evening, and I appreciate you so, so much. Keep paying it forward with your creativity. See you guys real soon.