SKETCH Fearless : Loose Lines + No Apologies

Hey, hello! It is, um, Tuesday, August 4th, 2026. Hope you're having an awesome day. 9:40 PM here in New Jersey, and, uh, it's, it's me. It's been a while, I know. It's been crazy. I hope you're having a great, great day. So let's, um, we're gonna do some sketching over here as I listen to some music. I'll talk a little bit about, um, my adventure in Industry City, Brooklyn this past weekend-ish, and I'll show you some sketches and maybe we'll do a quick sketch tonight. So I started, I tried streaming like half hour ago and the cameras were going wonky. And I actually noticed my face camera here is not showing anything, so that's okay. We're going to continue ahead. Um, imagine you see me in that black screen in the upper left corner. Hope you're having a great day today. All right, so let's do, um, a quick sketch here. I'm tired, so bear with me. I know, all over the place, and it's only been not even a minute on the stream. Oh man, welcome to the world of livestream sketching. Um, it is good to be back. I have missed, you know, sketching live at night. I've been so busy. I was prepping for the workshop I had on Saturday. Yeah, I'll be going away for a few days, um, in a few days. So I gotta work on that as well. And there's other stuff happening behind the scenes. It's all good stuff, but just busy, busy. So good to be here. Let me know how you're doing. Say hello in the chat, and I will see, um, we'll do something about that camera in a little bit. But so this past Saturday, I, uh, I taught a workshop. Let Let's— we're gonna just go to the face cam. Hold on a sec. Boom! There we are. Hey guys, how are you? My little camera is not working in the picture-in-picture, but we'll go back to the desktop in a minute. I just want to be, uh, kind of up close and personal with you. I hope you can hear me okay. So this past Saturday, I had the awesome, awesome privilege of teaching a workshop at Stationery Fest in Industry, Brooklyn. It was, um, it was so cool, so cool. Hey, Adi Fatma, I see you on YouTube. Thanks for saying hi. So I'll switch to desktop in a minute. We'll go— I'll show you some sketches and stuff, but we're doing the heart-to-heart cam. So Industry City, Brooklyn is a really cool place, as the name sounds. Um, old industrial buildings, warehouses converted into multi-purpose structures. Stationery Fest was so cool. It was an event that started— let's see, let's see— last— it was last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I was there Friday afternoon as a customer walking around checking out the vendors. Over 200 vendors were there. It was crowded, I'm not gonna lie. It was packed. I think they said they expected or had around 10,000 people in those 3 days. Um, so Friday was cool, walked around, saw a lot of vendors. I actually picked up a new pencil. I'll show you that on another stream. Um, and then Saturday I walked around a little bit again, and then I had a workshop at 11:30 called, uh, Sketch Fearless New York City Loose Line Sketching. So that was really— that was so cool. I was so dang nervous teaching in a place I had never been, teaching people I've never taught before. Um, yeah, I won't admit it, I was nervous. But let me tell you, if you're watching now and you're part of that workshop, you were amazing. I had a great group. Great, great group. And we did, I'll show you. Let me go to the desktop cam and I'll kind of show you what we did a little bit of. Hey, Mel, good to see you. Always good to see you. I know you had a question or wanted to know how it went. So yeah, I'll definitely respond, but I'll talk a little bit about it now as well. Hope you're doing well, man. All right, so it was called Sketch Fearless and I walked everybody through this guide. I've been working on for the past year. I keep refining it, and this is the version I have now called the Sketch Framework™. So using the steps in this guide, um, we— I walked the class through sketching some iconic New York City buildings. Let me see if I'll pull up some images. You know, we sketched— I don't know if I have them ready or not on here. Uh, that's okay if I don't. So we sketched— I actually ran out of time. I had a lot of material prepared, too much material, so we didn't get through everything. But using the sketch framework, we actually did a little exercise with the Empire State Building. We— I threw a lighthouse sketch in there, which was really interesting because I hadn't planned on that, but we started off with doing a water tower sketch. So here's kind of a, an example, and I'll talk a little bit about the ugly books. I love these things. Um, so yeah, so we sketched kind of a water tower, iconic, you know, New York City, you see them a lot in Brooklyn. So we sketch that, and then this naturally led to the idea of, um, how do we make our sketches, our buildings, our shapes look round? So we add contour lines, hatch lines. But, and we did a lighthouse. This lighthouse is not from the workshop, but we went on to do a lighthouse sketch. So that was kind of cool. Um, what else? And then we did a kind of Empire State Building sketch. And it was about— the real point of the workshop was about sketching fearless, not being afraid to throw lines down on paper. So I didn't supply anybody with a pencil or eraser. We went straight with a Sharpie. Um, I gave everybody a Sharpie, I gave everybody a white Create-A-White gel pen, and one creative marker. Um, everybody got an Ugly Books sketchbooks. So shout out to Ugly Books, they actually sponsored and, and gave me the sketchbooks for the workshop. So shout out to them. Please check Ugly Books out. There's a link of mine you can use where you can get a discount if you're a first-time buyer. So check that out in the comments. Um, shout out to Ugly Books. So the point was Nuts. It was not a technical sketching workshop. It was really a mindset. How do we capture something quick, loose, and fast? Um, that's my vibe. So that was really fun. So that was this past Saturday. Uh, it was not really a moneymaker for me because I spent money on supplies and getting there and staying overnight, but I didn't do it for the money. I did it for the experience. To grow as a person, to go somewhere I had never been before, do something I've really never done before, challenge me to take myself up to a new level. So that was really cool. So I grew on that level. Also, you know, it was, it was just positive in so many ways. I met really cool people. I got some really nice feedback about the class. And I learned things I would not do in the future in classes like that. So even though it wasn't a financial win for me, the more important thing is it was a learning experience, a growing experience, and a connecting, because I got to connect with some people. So that was really cool. All right, that's a quick lowdown of my Stationery Fest. If they have it again next year, it's really cool to go to. Um, be prepared for crowds of people if you're walking around the vendor booths, unless you get a VIP ticket and you can get in early. Um, yeah, so shout out to the Stationery Fest people as well for organizing a cool event. All right, so here's what I want to do. Uh, we're gonna— I'm gonna show you a couple sketches I did while I was in Industry City. I didn't sketch as much as I wanted. Um, so Industry City, here's an example of one of the cool just old warehouse buildings that they've converted. This building I sketched is actually— oh my gosh, it's a real upscale interior furniture place. West Elm, I think. I think this is West Elm. Is located in this building. But just notice, it's kind of quick, fast, and scribbly. White gel pen, red paper. This, this is the only sketchbook I brought. My Lockbie field journal, but I really only sketched in my ugly books because this fit in my pocket. So I carried this in my pocket. I carried a white gel pen in my pocket. And that's what I walked around with most of the time. So I'm loving this kind of white gel pen look, and it's something I'm going to keep promoting and doing. Another building we talked about in the workshop was the Copper Building. The Copper Building, you know, if you look at the Copper Building, what, what does it look like to you? So we kind of talked about Buildings is sometimes buildings, we look at the overall shapes, and in this case, some buildings look like letters. This is kind of like a crooked wonky H. So we sketch the copper. I have a question on YouTube from Adi Fatma. Did you have academic, academic training in art? Or just self-learning in your own style? Love, love that question. I'm gonna do the face cam again. I, I like answering face to face. My picture in picture is not working, so I gotta switch cams. Boom. Um, great question. I, I am self-taught. I've never had academic or formal training in art. I really learned how— I started sketching and drawing at a pretty young age. Um, I'll give you the quick, the quick lowdown. Um, I had an accident when I was in fourth, fourth grade. Um, third or fourth, it's hard for me to remember. Fourth grade, I had an accident where, um, I was in the hospital for a while. When I got back to school, I was not able to participate on the playground, go to gym, run around with my friends. Every day I'd have to go to either the principal office or the nurse's office during recess and sit there alone. So that's where I started just drawing. I was bored, right? I need to do something. So paper— back then, you know, it was probably paper and crayons, um, pencil. And I would sketch maps. I used to love to draw maps and cars. So I started sketching way back then. Then for a while I kind of stopped and lost touch with anything art related. I didn't take art classes in school or high school, but then when I got to architecture school, college, that's where I kind of developed my, um, loose, loose style. Was in architecture school because architecture is what? It's drawing. It's technical drawing. It's loose sketching, right? So I had to learn how to sketch quick, fast, and loose if I wanted to talk to my professor, get feedback, have a conversation. Architecture is extremely visual, so I was forced to really learn how to draw— or not draw Drawing for me is a— means a slow process. I had to learn to sketch really fast or the professor would be on to the next student. So that's where I kind of developed my loose style, was way, way back in architecture school. I know there's a long rambling answer, sorry. Hopefully it makes sense. Cool, right? And this style does change a little bit. So I never used to use, um, never used to use color. It was always black and white sketches because I was afraid to pick the wrong color. And then I eventually broke out of that mindset and said, you know what, I can use any color I want when I'm sketching. It's my world. My universe. It doesn't matter. I'm not trying to make a photograph. I'm trying to capture a feeling, an emotion, a moment, trying to capture a vibe. So then I started adding color and stuff. All right, cool. Let me know in the chat if you guys want to see me do a sketch. Just put yes in the chat, say yes or sketch. I'll do a quick sketch. Um, I didn't finish my quick show and tell here. So I'm learning, I'm stepping out of my comfort zone a little bit, guys. I have sketched something in here I've never really sketched before— fashion. I, uh, this is a t-shirt design that I actually had made and printed, but here's kind of a sketch for a t-shirt. So again, the same style but a different subject. What else do I have in here? Um, I'm going to show a short video too, if that works. We'll see. So here's another sketch from Industry City. Um, this is done on location, standing on the corner. It's cool, people walking by seeing what I'm doing. Love that, love it. And I've just captured a little bit of what I saw was interesting. A stair— um, it's a stairwell here, part of a gate here. And again, just white gel pen. And but I love just the different lines on here, different directions of lines. Um, so you're an architect, I got it. That's the reason behind the confident loose lines. So, Adi, great point. Yes, I, I am an architect by trade. Um, confidence is something that I'm always working on. And let's— confidence is a skill, something we could always work on, always develop, right? No matter what we do or what it is. But I would be afraid to actually show people my sketches. I had a lot of lack of confidence because I was always comparing myself to other people and always said, oh my gosh, their sketches are so much better, mine look horrible. And I'd be afraid to show any of my stuff. But there comes a point in time, you know, um, especially in architecture where you have to show— you have to show your stuff to communicate. Here's another quick sketch I did in Industry City. And then, um, here's another quick sketch. Boom. I'm going to play a short video, see if it works. Um, this sketch here was so in between some of the buildings in Industry City, there are these courtyard spaces And I don't remember, I think this was 7 and 8. I think between buildings 7 and 8 there's a courtyard and these cool restaurants. This was a— I was looking towards a wall with, um, towards a restaurant here, pizza place, really good. And there was a cat hanging out. So let me show you a video based on, uh, this sketch. Let's see if it shows. It may or may not play. We'll see. Again, I was having some tech issues. Hmm, let's try one more time. If not, we'll bring it up another time. I don't want to take your time right now. Yeah, so I can't pull it up right now, but it is actually— I posted on my Instagram and TikTok, uh, if you see the video with a cat that was based on this location and this sketch. Pretty cool, right? Awesome. All right, I think we're gonna wrap, guys. It's, um, almost 10 o'clock here. I want to come on quick, say hello. I know it's been a while. It's always great to be here. My goal is to start live streaming on Tuesday nights and Thursday, and one day on the weekend, not sure yet. So let's, let's aim for Tuesday nights and Thursday nights, as well as one night on a weekend, or even a Who knows, anytime during the day on the weekend. I think I did it even last Sunday. I think I was on. Um, yeah, I always appreciate you watching, and your feedback and your comments are well, well appreciated. Um, shout out again if you were at my workshop on Saturday. It was— thank you so much. I had a blast, and I learned so much, and I really appreciate everybody that attended the workshop. It was pretty cool. I will have an online Zoom workshop coming up end of this month, which is not that far away. Um, we're going to be sketching wonky fishing shacks, so it'll be an online Zoom workshop. I'll post it on my website soon. But until then, thanks for watching. Thank you for the thumbs up. Um, subscribe if you haven't. Let's keep growing this this channel. All right, until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and embrace imperfection.