Quick Sketching Tips for Creating Stonework, Round shapes, and Color

Hello, hope you're having an amazing Wednesday night. It's 9:25 here in beautiful New Jersey. Hope all's well with you guys. I am on just for a real brief time. I'm, I'm sketching a lighthouse here that's Inspired by the Ram Island Lighthouse in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, one of my most favorite places in the world. Um, so that'd be fun just to pop on, do a quick little lighthouse. It's been a long day, a good day. Just got back from a nice dinner at school where they were honoring the top 20 graduating seniors. And I was lucky enough to be invited by a student to attend, so it was very cool. But I am kind of tired and kind of wound up at the same time, so I thought it'd be fun to pop on and kind of sketch and get some of this energy out as I wind down the day. So this is just kind of a fast and furious sketch here. Um, this is a really cool little lighthouse in Boothbay Harbor. I love that it has this kind of bridge that connects it. Kind of metal railing up here. The light is right here. It kind of comes down. Um, this is actually stone, big blocks of stone at the base. One of the ways I like to draw stone is almost as a continuous line. You can kind of see how I'm sketching it in here, and the lines kind of overlap, crisscross. It is kind of a square, blocky stone, so that's the shape I'm kind of going for as I do a continuous line on that. Sometimes you see stone like this. I'll zoom in. Sometimes you see stone that's like this. It's just more kind of round, right? But notice I'm still doing a continuous line sketch. To show that stone. So this is more of a round kind of stone. And if I want to switch it back to the blocky stone, I can just kind of— I'm just kind of controlling more how my wrist and fingers move. So that's kind of a blocky stone. And I can go back to the little bit quicker, looser, more movement in the wrist to create the round look. So it's just my, uh, kind of pro tip on how to sketch stone on a building facade, or it could be a stone wall, right? Zoom in a little bit more. There you go, you can kind of see it better. And then sometimes I'll come back in and I'll just kind of darken some of the kind of, um, where the stones meet, the joint area. Between the stones, kind of darken it a little bit, just pull some of the shapes out. I don't want to do them all because if I did, if I pulled all the, the joints out, it would, it wouldn't be as loose and sketchy looking. So I'm just kind of hitting a few here and there. So hopefully that kind of makes sense. So that's kind of cool. So that's what I was showing down here on this part of the lighthouse. I was just sketching some of that stone. Um, another thing, another thing I want to point out and the reason I love sketching, um, lighthouses is— let me zoom in again. So I like lighthouses because they're round, right? We have the round shape. So here is a— I guess tonight's just a couple of pro tips. One is how to sketch stone quickly, and pro tip number 2 is How do we show this lighthouse around? How do we make it look curved? So there's a couple of things, and we're not going to add any color or wash tonight. We're just going to stick with a pen. So I'm just happy to be using, uh, a Sharpie here. Hey, D-Ray's in the house! D-Ray, great to see you. Hope all's well. My music stopped. I got to put my music back on. What happened? All right, put the music back on. D-Ray, great to see you. So, um, pro tip 2: how do we make this flat area look round? A couple ways. One is we can do, um, contour lines. So for me, contour lines add— are lines that help to add the shape or define the shape of something. So I'm going to kind of exaggerate here so you can see what I'm talking about, but we can draw contour lines, these kind of curved lines on the lighthouse. And I'm really exaggerating this. Sometimes I would do it much lighter, but I want to kind of show you guys. So we have these curved lines, so it's starting to look kind of curved, right, with the form. If I do this, I curve this railing up here as well. But another thing I like to do to help make, make it look curved is Let's do some hatch lines, some vertical hatch lines, and I'll just do it and kind of watch what the pattern looks like. Ta-da! So you have the vertical hatch lines here that help to make it look curved, and they're kind of smaller here and they get longer as it's curving to the right. Kind of creating like shadows, right? Hey Linda, great to see you! Hope all's well. Thank you guys for popping on. So that helps to make it look round. We can kind of do the same thing. Um, here's the glass at the top of the lighthouse. I can curve and kind of curve this a little bit. And if I want to do some of the same hatch line ideas, we can do this. So there you go. So that's kind of two ways that I like to show curved areas is that we do these contour lines here. We'll do it up here again. So we have our stone. Let's just draw a box, do a rectangle, and let's try to make it look curved. So we'll curve the top. Maybe it's a barrel, I don't know. Um, curve the top. And then I'm going to do some of these kind of contour lines in here. These are more— these are looser and sketchier than I just did on the lighthouse. But then the magic kind of happens when you do this part. Now, ta-da! You kind of get a curved-looking shape. This is cool. You can do it with ink. So, you know, with ink, you could throw it on some ink and create that same kind of shape. Watercolor, um, that all helps to get that curved look. So there you go. I love that you guys are here. So let's see, we talked about how to show stone kind of quickly, how to do curves. Let's see, any other pro tips? Let me see, I'm just thinking off the cuff here out loud. Again, I just wanted to pop on for a couple of minutes winding down from a very, very long day. A good day, but a long day. So no complaints here. Uh, no other pro tips are coming to mind right now. Let's actually— let's go back to this. So We'll just mess around this lighthouse. I'm going to kind of make it my own. The Ram Lighthouse doesn't have windows here, but let me just show you how I do a window on the lighthouse here. So, you know, I could draw a window, you know, I have— you can see me sketching it, and I could do a little window pane. So I can do it like that with some kind of detail, but I'd rather show it this way. Let's just do another one like here. Let's say there's a window here somewhere. If I'm doing a quick loose sketch, my window is going to look more like— that didn't really— that actually didn't stand out because of the shadows here. Let's do it up here. Let's just extend this down. Let's make this, uh, let's just bring this down again. This is just having fun, just doing some quick loose sketching, some pro tips here. Um, let me say, let's say I want to just throw a window here. I might kind of just do something like that, just quick, fill some of it in, especially when I do skyscrapers. Here, let's just sketch maybe this, maybe it's the top of a skyscraper here, maybe it steps out. Maybe it's sort of Empire State Building-ish, right? So we have a tower, and then on the skyscraper— I'm not going to draw it, I'm not going to do this for the windows, I'm not going to draw all of these rectangles, that would just take forever. Hey Misty Kate, great to see you! Hello, here from Adam Savage's stream. Hey, great to see you, Misty Kate, so cool! Yeah, I love Adam Savage's streams, they are awesome. Thanks for joining in. So fun. So say this is a skyscraper, right? So my pro tip is, if I want to do fast loose sketching, I'm not going to draw my windows like that. I'm going to do this, and I'm randomly going to place them because, uh, for me, when I show them randomly, it creates more energy. If I'm going to do this, which is how they really are it's more static, right? I'm— I like to show energy in especially cityscapes, so you'll notice my windows are a little bit jumpy. So hopefully that helps. So that's kind of, um, let's see. So we talked about Pro Tip 1 here was the stone. Pro Tip 2 is kind of showing curves or rounded shapes. Dun dun dun dun. I am not hearing my music, dang it. I love music. Maybe it's playing and I just can't hear it. I don't know. But I love, I love listening to music. Pro tip 3, I was just talking about how to show windows quick. Now there's nothing wrong with this. If I'm doing a big, like a house, and a nice kind of slower, more detailed sketch, I don't mind taking the time out to sketch a full-blown window. You know, you could put the window grilles in there. I do— I mean, I do do this. It depends on what kind of effect I'm going for. You can see this lighthouse is really scribbly here, right? Really scribbly. Ta-da! You got it! Just having some loose sketching. That's right, D-Ray, that's what I'm saying. Do sketching. Uh, just for fun, guys, let's throw a little bit of color. I wasn't going to, but I'm— why not? I'm going to wrap up in about 3 minutes though. This is just a quick, quick session. Uh, so this, this summer I'm planning an online workshop to sketch Maine-inspired fishing shacks, coastal shacks. So I'm gonna have a fishing shack inspired workshop, so I'll be promoting that pretty soon. I'd love to have you guys join that. If you're not on my email list, go to theinkspiredlife.com, and you'll see a pop-up there. You can sign up for my email list. It's free. I don't spam it. I really only send emails when I have, you know, like a workshop I'm doing. Um, and if— and if anything, it might be a quarterly type of email, but that's about it. But I'd love for you to join my email list so I can let you guys know if you want to join me for an online sketching workshop to do some Maine-inspired, or doesn't necessarily be Maine, but I love Maine. My heart is always there. So, all right, I'm just throwing down some fun random colors here. I'm gonna have some red, some yellow— I'm not yellow, orange. I told you it's been a long day. My brain hurts. Good day. So I was really honored to be asked to go to this top 20 dinner at school. Tonight for, um, our graduating seniors, the top 20 in the class. So it was so cool to go and be there, and, um, yeah, just really an honor. So I love it, love it, love it. That's— things like that are one of the things that makes teaching so fun for me, makes it all worth it, because let me tell you, teaching is not easy. If anybody ever told you, if you ever thought teaching was easy, this is not a complaint. It's just, it is— I am extremely exhausted when I get home from teaching every day. That's how I know I've done my job, when I am mentally drained. I know it sounds weird, but it's true. Um, and physically too. So teaching is amazing. All right, cool. So I'm just throwing down these fun colors here, just messing around a little bit. I guess another pro tip tonight. So we have pro tip 1, stonework. Pro tip 2, curved shapes. Pro tip 3, throwing quick windows down on skyscraper. Pro tip 4, let's talk color. This is unplanned, unrehearsed. That is why I'm all over the place. And I'm excited. Color. My biggest pro tip about color and something people ask me, I get a lot, I get asked a lot about how do I pick the colors. It's a mindset really. I choose colors based on just having fun. I base them on the mood that I'm feeling. It's a lot of gut feeling. I'm not trying to recreate amazing, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to recreate what I'm seeing in a photograph. Or an existing building. I'm just painting— I hate to say it, but kind of by gut or feeling or emotion and fun. I just want to— I love colors. I want to just mix colors and play around and see what I can do with them. Um, so I think you— I think having a positive and/or playful mindset— I like to say, um, I like to explore the world and a childlike sense of of wonder. And it's that childlike sense of wonder that just opens up and frees you, or frees the creative brain, to, um, be playful. It's all about being playful. You know, this, this is not the most amazing thing, but I'm just doing quick, fun, loose sketches here, and I'm loving it. I'm, I'm just having a blast. And I learned things. I learned what I like. I learned what I don't like. I learned what colors look for me look good together, which ones don't. So don't be afraid to play around with colors, guys. I always thought I had to paint realistically, match what I was seeing in reality, but that's— for me, that's what photographs do. Sketching is my interpretation of the world. Hopefully that makes sense. Ta-da! It's a cool little lighthouse. D-Ray, thank you. Oh, oops, 4 colors. Wonderful. Ask to go time. Yeah, time to unwind. You got that right. Cool. Um, yeah guys, hope you're doing well. Um, let me know if you have any other questions or comments. I see people on— is anyone on Instagram? Yeah, I see Monica Scott. Monica Scott 70 is over on the Insta Live. Hey, how are you? I can see, I can see you watching there live. That's so cool. Well, I can see your name in the chat there. Awesome. Feel free to leave comments or questions. I love that you're on Insta, and I love that we had Misty Kate over on YouTube. That's so fun. Thank you guys. Um, I'm going to throw down a little bit of— let's just throw some purple on this, and I'm going to wrap up. So today's Wednesday. I plan on being here on Friday night live, probably around 9:00 PM Eastern time. So that's my goal. I'm not going to promise, but that's what I'm going to shoot for. Yeah, I'm trying to make purple, but I really need to replace my blue in here, and I could grab a purple varsity pen or a preppy pen, but I'm being lazy and I'm not— I'm not gonna be lazy. Let's see if it's in here. Nope. All right, I don't have my purple, but let's throw down some fun pink. Why not? Just gonna throw some pink ink. Let me zoom in so you can see that closer. So this is a, um, This is a Varsity pen, and I'll show you how it bleeds. I love to bleed this ink, so I'm just dipping my brush in the water. I'm going to throw some water on top of that. My water's dirty, so we're just going to spread some of that pink around. And then one of the things I do like about the Varsity pens is I can dip them on a wet area and let the ink kind of come out a little bit. Um, maybe I'll do it here so you can see it better. We'll just throw it up here. So I'm just scribbling some of that ink, got my brush with water on it, and then you can see how you can kind of spread the ink. And then we'll just kind of dip this on here. It is 9:44. Cool. So you can see how the Varsity ink kind of just bleeds in the water. Here comes the pink. D-Ray knows it. You guys know one of my— I call it trademark color. Is that the right expression? I don't know if it's trademark or not. Um, signature, maybe that's the word. Signature colors. I didn't trademark it. But I love throwing down, especially right here. For you guys that haven't seen me use it yet, this is one of my top 3 favorite colored pencil colors right here. Neon pink. I'll throw some down and let me actually— let me wrap up and I'll show you guys one thing. So So put this aside. So this was just kind of quick fun tonight, just a couple of pro tips I wanted to get out and share with you. I'll be doing more organized show about all that stuff, or shows, definitely. Um, here's some cool sketches I just wanted you to see. I don't know if you may have seen these on my Facebook or Instagram pages, but you could see here, really good, the color scheme. I love— you see the pink on here. I just kind of throw it down in a few places. It's not meant to overwhelm, but make it whimsical, right? So that's kind of fun. I'm definitely gonna be doing more sketches of the Spokane Steam Plant building here. I have a series going in this book, and I, I would love to actually make a book. I have a friend and I who briefly, like for 30 seconds, talked about maybe collabing on a project. With this building. That would be so fun to have something published. But you could see some more shots from the inside. Hey Cameron, hope you're doing well. Cameron's in the house. Ta-da! There's— this is a fun whimsical tree that just kind of happened the other day. So I'm trying to branch out— get it, branch out— trying to branch out a little bit. And maybe, maybe I love my buildings and architecture, but you know what, I gotta push myself, step out of the comfort zone. So you might see more landscape-y stuff this summer. And I'm afraid to say this, I can't believe I'm gonna say it, you might see me slow down and do— I might try my hand at a little more detailed sketches. And detail would be a stretch for me because I have— you know me, my brain is fast when this stuff happens, and I think it might be fun to slow down and see, uh, what I could do. So there you go, guys. You are awesome. I am going to wrap up. Um, I appreciate y'all so much for watching and jumping on. I know this was kind of brief tonight. But yeah, look for me again Friday night around 9 o'clock PM Eastern time. I'm not promising, but I will see how the day goes, and that's when I would most likely be on again. Thank you guys for watching. Thank you for liking this on YouTube, for subscribing on YouTube. Uh, thank you guys for liking this stuff and sharing it on Facebook. I gotta get this— I want to get my name out there more because I feel like creativity for me equals positivity, and I want to put more positivity in the world. Through creativity. I think I just kind of changed the words there. I don't know if that made sense, but yeah, this brings me into a good place, sketching, um, on many different levels. We'll talk more deeply about that, but I want to be able to share that and pay it forward. Thank you guys so much. Misty Kate, thank you for joining in on YouTube. I appreciate you. D-Ray and Cameron and Linda S, I saw you there on Facebook. Thank you so much. and I had Monica Scott over on the Insta page. The Insta page? The Instagram. Take care, guys. Peace, and live creatively. I'll see you soon. By the way, check out the Lockbee Field Journal. I know I always plug this thing. Check it out. Use my discount code Jason Nicholas, lockbee.com. You'll get a discount on it. Love this. I'll do another ad another night. Take care, guys.