Sketch Something Sunday - 1/19/25

Hello. Happy Sunday, January 19th, 2025. It is snowing here in northern New Jersey. Five to six inches. We'll see. My gut's saying it's going to be more. It's really coming down out there. Hope you're safe and dry and warm wherever you are. So welcome to sketch Something Sunday. I'm Jason with the Inkspire Life. I'm popping on just for a few minutes today. Not sure what I'm going to sketch, but I do know I'm going to sketch something architecture related. I also want to start off with a little sketchbook tour. I was in New York City yesterday with the NYC Urban Sketchers. We went to Grand Central Terminal. Really incredible building. And on my way there and on my way back, I stopped and did some quick sketches as well. So I'll give you a quick tour and we'll take it from there. Hope you're having a great day today. So I traveled and brought my new Lockbee mini field journal with me. I'm really liking it. It's a really cool piece of equipment. I'll talk more about it in another episode. But so far so good. Let's see. I have a couple of different notebooks in here. One is a dot grid. I like to take notes on the dot grid and I like. I brought some plain sketchbooks to do some sketching. So let me see, where do we start this one? So I'll zoom in a little bit. Cool. So the sketches I'm going to show you were all done on spot, on location, quick, loose, fast. My intention when I went into the city yesterday to sketch was to do mostly small sketches in the mini field journal and quick and loose. And I really love this style. This is the H and M building. I just sketched the top of it here. It was pretty cold outside. My hands were freezing as I was out there sketching. But it was still a lot of fun to be out there. So the H and M building, really cool piece of architecture. This was a building. Nothing in particular. I. I just really liked it. It had a very. Almost like a neo gothic kind of feel to it. So another quick sketch and you'll notice a lot of these are just the tops of buildings. I didn't want to try to cram an entire building on these small sheets. So I just focused on parts of the buildings. And usually it's the top part of buildings that really intrigue me the most. You know, where the buildings are meeting the sky because you can really pull out the silhouettes and shapes. This. Oh my Gosh, I should know the name of this building. It's near Grand Central. It'll hit me. Gosh, I'm drawing a blank on this building. I'll. I'll get back with the name of it. I know the building. There's an observation deck on the top. If anybody's watching and knows the building, let me know. I'm really drawing a blank on it. These shows are unprepared and unrehearsed, but again, you can see the top of the building. Lots of times when I'm sketching these, I'm literally putting. Well, I'll show you. I'm literally just putting my marker or pen on the page and I'm looking at the building. A lot of times right now, I'm pretending I'm looking at a building, but. And I'm just kind of letting my pen go, you know, while I'm looking at the building, I'll take a quick look at the paper. I'll look back at the building and do more lines. So it's a. It's a skill I've been practicing more and more. And the reason I'm working on it is I feel like it's a great time saver, so. And it keeps my sketches pretty loose. If anybody can guess this building, this is the top of the Empire State Building. The spire is a little crooked, but again, the same technique. Looking at the building and just sketching. And this is the top of the iconic Chrysler Building. So I spent some time taking pictures of the Chrysler Building. I had never really photographed it before, only from a distance. So I got up nice and close to it, took a bunch of pictures. Real fun, challenging building to sketch for. Sure has all these kind of arch shapes on it, but I think it came out kind of cool. This is another view of the Chrysler Building. This is kind of an interesting perspective looking at two sides of it. And you can see the arches here. All right, so the main purpose of our sketching yesterday was to go to Grand Central. An incredible, beautiful piece of architecture. So the same thing. I was just trying to keep things small. I will show you one. I did do two larger sketches. I'll show you after this. And I just was kind of the same thing. Quick, kind of rapid fire sketching energy. Puts me in the mood of being there on location and actually. Actually really love these kinds of sketches. Got some people kind of in the foreground here. A lot of. I'm not trying to compose a complete image. A lot of blank space here. A lot of just bleeding off, leaving it to your imagination, the viewer's imagination, to complete what's happening. Here's another one inside Grand Central. This is actually the newest part, Grand Central. Go all the way down a couple escalators to the brand new section, which is really a contrast to the classic Grand Central. Real cool, very clean space, very modern, very plain. So I was just sketching some subway cars back upstairs to the main Grand Central area. Kind of like this one, too, is kind of. These curves here, I think are really interesting. Then I went to look at some of the tracks. This is track 25. I was really just kind of practicing a perspective here. This is kind of an old. Looks like it's an abandoned rail track here. There were subway cars over here on this side. But I just wanted to play with capturing idea of a perspective and looking back and just popping a little bit of color on that. You probably noticed that these are all black and white, except for that one. They're mostly black and white. I might come back and add color at some point. And this was just a quick. Before I had to leave, I just was sketching. This is a ticket booth counter. This is kind of a gate or a window area at the ticket booth. Cool. So that's my show. And tell of this mini journal. I'll show you a couple big sketches I did and then see, it's 239. I will do a quick sketch here. Put the comments on. If you're watching, feel free to say hello whether you're live. Well, I mean watching live or watching replay. Leave some comments. I'll check in, answer questions. And yeah, I don't have the comments turned on. So if you did say hello. I haven't seen them yet. I'm going to turn them on now. I'm working, trying a new setup here in my studio. I'm sitting down at my desk. I put my other microphone I brought over. I brought my camera over here. I just want to see how it goes. Let's see. I'm just trying to find the comment. Here we are. Boom, it's open. All right. All right. So here, let me zoom out. So I did two big sketches. This. This is just a Moleskine. Kind of a Kraft paper cover. I really like it flexible and I like the format of it. It's fairly large. Let me open it and I'll show you. Let me get a scale here. So each page on this is 8 by 8 by 5. I love that format. I think it's a really cool size for sketching. And I wanted to practice Doing some vertical sketching, some real long vertical sketching. So I'll show you the first one here. I don't know if I could fit it all on screen if I angle it a little bit. So this was downstairs in the. The new section. This is one of the new platforms down there. I love the ceiling. It has these kind of curved arches that kind of harken back to subway tunnels back to Grand Central. There's a lot of curves, whether it's the newest section or the old section. Again, I was kind of looking down at the top of a subway car. So I'm trying to get a perspective looking down. This was a pretty quick sketch. Let me zoom in so you can see some of the detail of it. So this takes up, you know, two full pages. This. I may come back and throw down some color. Let's zoom in. I'll show you some of the details on. On here. This was really hard for me to hold this up and sketch because it's kind of floppy. I didn't have a board on it against it or anything. So I was holding this up like this, just sketching it. At one point in time, I did put it against the glass anyway. All right, let's look at some details. Let me fold this so you can see it. You might notice that I put some red on here. I was just trying to be playful with it. So I used a red pilot precise pen, which I'm looking for. I guess I didn't put it back in here. I got one here. Just grab it. There it is. So I use a red pilot precise pen. One of the things I like to do with my sketches is I like to do a continuous line somewhere that is either red or turquoise or pink. It depends. The color varies. But I like doing that continuous line. So you can kind of see here the reds doing this. It goes up down here, and it continues off to the other side as well. You can see it here. For me, I feel like it's just a cool way to kind of tie things together on sketches. So think of almost like a ribbon on a package. Right? Kind of ties it together. That's one of the reasons I love doing just these continuous lines on sketches. Makes it a little more playful and fun. So I thought this one came out pretty cool. I actually really like this one. And then the last sketch I have to show you is this one. So this is back up in the main concourse area. There's an iconic view. You've probably seen pictures of it. I'll post pictures another time. And it's iconic. View the American flag here. This actually continues off the page. I could have done a two pager like I just showed you with the subway car, but I didn't. But anyway, this does continue off. It's. It's much taller and I'll zoom in so you can see it kind of closer. So you have this kind of the ceiling line before the arches start, like a cornice line across here. There's actually lights in these areas and you can see a little bit of perspective going on here. I did the same thing as the subway sketch I just showed you. Subway car sketch. I took the red pen and I did a continuous line there. I figured instead of using, you know, red, white and blue for the flag, I would just kind of pull out a red pen and just trace around there. I think the sketch came out kind of cool. I like it. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. If you're watching, feel free to say hello. I'd love to chat with you. And I see Chip is in the house. Chip, awesome to see you, man. Hope all's well. Alright, let's do a quick sketch. So I don't know what I'm going to sketch. I'm probably going to sketch something from yesterday. Let's sketch into my field journal and let's go for it. Let's just go through here. Find a blank page. Ta da. Awesome. All right, let me zoom out. You might notice I keep a binder clip in here and paper clips. Pro tip. Keep a binder clip or paper clips with you. If you have a sketchbook or even if you have this lock, you lock your fill journal. It's a great way. Just kind of weigh the pages down. Hold them down a little bit while you're sketching. I'll put a paper clip on the other side here. All right, cool. All right, so we got a blank page. I'm gonna. Let me see if I'll. I can pull up a picture from yesterday. I took a lot of pictures. I always take a lot of pictures. What do I want to sketch? Let's see. 246. I'm gonna do something pretty quick here and I'll show you the image I'm going to sketch. I'll pull, pull it on screen. What do I want to do? So the snow is really coming down out here. Unfortunately, it's not Monday night because I would have a snow day on Tuesday. Yes, I'm greedy. I could use a snow day. I love school, but snow days are fun too. All right, I'M going to pull a couple of pictures on screen. I just want to show you guys something. Just want to give you kind of an inside peek of what it looks like when I'm sketching. So here is a picture of me sketching. Not well, you can't see me, but you can see the Chrysler Building. There's my sketchbook again. That's the mini field journal. The lock B mini field journal. But I'll pan up and you can see I was looking at that view right there. So I was really focusing on top of the Chrysler Building. Pretty cool. And I lost the Chrysler Building picture. All right, let's see. I'm gonna pull out another sketch here, another photo and we'll sketch it. Wow, it's really coming down. All right, let's do this one here. Alright, so here's a picture looking at Grand Central. You can see this really cool bridge here connecting the Chrysler Building in the background as well and the MetLife building in the background, aka I think it was the Pan Am building at one point in time, if I remember. So I'm going to use this as a quick, quick guide and we're going to keep this sketch tight. So tight meaning time wise. Yeah. So it's kind of horizontal. So we're going to flip this horizontal. I'm going to turn off the image and let's just sketch something. I'm holding the red pen. So we're going to sketch in red. Why not? No one ever said you can't sketch with a red pen. Use whatever colors you want. This is what makes it fun, right? All right. You'll see my hand kind of dancing around. I guess it's called the hand dance. I don't know what we should call it. It's how one of the ways I kind of loosen up a little bit, I kind of put what I'm looking at in my brain so we get the hand, eye, brain connection kind of happening. So I'll kind of do this lots of times before I even put the pen down. I'm also kind of mapping out in my brain kind of where I want things to go or at least where I want to start. So I'm going to sketch the Pan Am building here. Got this kind of funky statue. I don't really draw statues that well or people. But I'm just looking at shapes right now. Break things down into shapes. Especially when you're sketching, I guess sketching anything. Always break it down into shapes. So when I'm looking at buildings, I'm looking at blocks. Of shapes. And this kind of comes down like this back up here, and we'll get the Chrysler. The top of the Chrysler Building in this somehow. It's kind of in the distance back there. It. So some buildings I can sketch without looking at a picture. It takes a lot of practice. So I can do the Empire State Building pretty good. I'm getting the Chrysler building down. I can definitely do the Brooklyn Bridge without looking at an image. And it's just muscle memory. Just practicing and doing the same thing over and over again. The fun thing is just recreating it in different looks, different styles, and from different perspectives. This is fun sketching with a red pen. You'll notice me going back over lines like this. If I'm not happy with this line or the angle, I'm not afraid to change it. I'll just. Let's just exaggerate here. I'm gonna make it steeper so you can see. And that's just part of the history of the sketch, kind of changing it on the fly. If I had a pencil, I would want to erase it and redo it. So I'm always, always starting with pen. It's a great way to build confidence. You have to be courageous, Right. To throw that pen down. It lends itself to the way I like, the style I like. I'm not trying to draw something precise and technical. And once it lines down with ink, it's down. So either I have to learn to live with it. Right. So it challenges and stretches that creative muscle a little bit. I have not sketched Grand Central. I think this is only probably the third time I've ever sketched the outside of it. Got this big arch here. Cool. Hey, Karen's in house. Karen, great to see you. Hope all's well. Happy Sunday. Hope. Hope you're doing great today. If you guys can let me know if I sound okay, that would be amazing. Again, I'm just. I'm sitting in a different location in my studio room. I'm sitting down. I usually stand up, and I wanted to try sitting down sketching for a while. I rarely do it. I want to see if it kind of. It's like a test. I want to see how it affects my. My sketching, my art, my mindset by. By sitting instead of standing. So that is just a quick outline. Back Here is the MetLife building. We have Grand Central. We have Chrysler Building as well. Pretty cool. Chip says, sound great. Karen says, you sound fine. Well, thank you so much. I got the microphone, like, super close to my mouth here. If it was an ice cream cone. I'd be eating it. But it's not, which is a good thing because I need to lose weight. Lay off that sugar. Cool. All right. And just for fun, guys, let's throw some color on this. I do want to talk about a pen. I've actually really. I'm enjoying sketching with. I'm gonna take it out right here. Still love my Sharpies 100% Sharpie marker. Boom. But I am also loving sketching with these Sharpie gel pens. I grabbed this, like, last year or sometime because I like the color I saw in staples. What's called. What is it? Sharpie S gel. I don't know if you can see that. That's what I used in here. That's what I did most of my sketching with yesterday. You know, this. This is the gel pen. So it works out really well. All right, let's throw down some color and just have some fun. And I'm going to wrap it three. So I have four minutes. All right, so I got. When I traveled yesterday, here's a couple things I travel with. I bring this in my cool little mini backpack. So I have colored pencils in here. I have this other cool pen in here as well. I bring another one that has creative markers in it. And then I have my field journal, the big field journal, and the mini field journal. I brought this. I had so much paper with me, and there's a Moleskine store in Grand Central that I ended up buying these because I was. Yes, I was afraid I was going to run out of paper. All right, put your hands up right now or put in the chat. Are you ever paranoid you're going to run out of paper? I am. Especially when I'm out sketching. So I had plenty of paper, but I was a little nervous, so I went to the Moleskine store and actually bought. I love the color of the covers. I bought a few of what's called this here. It is pretty cool. It fits in the mini field journal. And I love the color of the COVID And I ended up not using them, but they will not go to waste. All right, all right. So I was going to add color. So I'll be. What I was doing. I was telling you guys what I brought with me. What else do I bring with me? It's another note to self make video about travel sketching. And what do I pack? I have to make a note to myself because otherwise I forget. I am talking because I'm really hyper. I'm talking a lot let's grab some colors. And you know me, I'm going to use not the colors that are there, but the color as I'm feeling right now. Maybe I should zoom in so you can see this closer. All right. I almost got some marker on my white shirt. That would not have been cool. I don't think this stuff washes out. I'm gonna break out green. I don't really use the green too much, but let's play with some. It. And I know it's three but for another minute and I think I'm gonna head out at 3:30 and do some shoveling. Round one. I'm hoping I can get all the shoveling done in three rounds only. We'll see how that goes. Let's just do some hatching in here. Just give a little bit of depth here to kind of these arched areas. This is that really cool window. So I'm going to draw the window grills in here. I did stop looking at the picture. So I stopped looking at the picture. Because if I look at the picture then I'm going to want to try to match colors and be perfect. So picture really for me is just to make an outline and then bye, bye picture. Hello creativity and imagination. Just go for it. There are some people that do amazing, amazing, beautiful, lifelike sketches. Really talented. And I'm in awe of those people. I'm just not one of them. I just want my sketches to be whimsical, fun, playful, have a certain energy, kind of a surprise and looseness about them. We'll bring some window lines in here. Maybe. Actually just go all the way across. I think it'll pull this. I don't want to pull the building out. I want to just make a backdrop. It. The Chrysler Building is a beautiful, beautiful piece of architecture. If you ever have the chance to go to New York City, make sure you look. You check out the Chrysler Building in person. It is just so, so elegant. Adding that black really kind of popped things out. So I kind of like that. I think this one might be done. If I find myself thinking too much about either a color I want to use or a detail I want to add. If it's kind of shutting me down, then that's a signal for me just to kind of stop. Nothing. There's nothing that says you can't go back, right. So I might go back at one point in time and add color or add some stuff to it. But right now, just going with my gut feeling and we're gonna leave it like this. I kind of like it. I had someone ask me a question recently. Why are my lines so wonky? So what was the word they used? It was something like crazy. Like, why are your lines so crazy? Jittery. I forget the word. Yeah, they are. They're. They're really jittery. That's a result of me sketching fast. And it's also. It's a way I like to show energy. When I go to New York City, I feel energetic. So for me, wavy lines equal energy. So you'll see a lot of that in my city sketches. See, my brain now is. I just picked it. I just picked this up, so I'm gonna go with it. All right. If I did do anything, I would want to just pull this outline out because it's kind of closer to us. All right, let's try with the red creative marker. I'm really just trying to bold this up a little bit because I want it to read. That is a little bit closer. Right. So just by adding this kind of little thicker line with a Sharpie mark creative marker. Boom. I think it pulled it out forward. Alright, guys, let me know if you have any last questions or comments. I'd love to check them out before I head out. Karen says that's your style. Yeah, thank you so much. It is my style and I'm sticking to it. It's my style and I'm sticking to it. Oh, let's put a date on here. I am really bad at putting dates on sketches. I'll just. We'll throw one down here. We'll just say Grand. Central Terminal. Today is the 19th, so sometimes I like to do this. 01 19, put that in a box and then put the year next to it. So we got 0119, Grand Central Terminal. Pretty cool. So it's a good complement to the other sketches that I did yesterday. You know, it goes pretty well with the other Grand Central sketches. Trying to see if I have a favorite one. I kind of like. I don't know if I like that one. There is some. I kind of like this one. There's something. Yeah, I. I like. I really like this sketch. If I didn't tell you guys what this was or if I showed someone and didn't tell them what it was, would they guess Grand Central, say they knew. Say they knew the building? I don't know. Probably not. This one, I would say yes, it has a little more detail. But this one, probably not. And that's okay with me. This is the Ike. There's an iconic clock in the main Concourse. That's the iconic clock here at the information booth area. Cool. All right, guys, thank you so much for sitting down with me for a few minutes today on this sketch. Something Sunday. I'm loving this new Sunday, let's say show. It's not a show, not a series. This new Sunday time I get to spend with you. I know it's. There's not a set time. I'll just pop on it randomly. But it is great to maybe do a little show and tell, get some ideas out. You guys can get in my creative brain a little bit and it's just a great way to spend time together and encourage each other. I appreciate you guys so, so much. I get immensely prepare myself now and physically meaning nap to get ready to go shovel. It is coming down out there. All right, guys, you might see me again on tonight or even tomorrow because we have no school tomorrow. We are off. All right, take care. Keep using your creativity for positivity, prayers and thoughts and positive vibes to everybody out there. Appreciate you guys so, so much. Take care again. I'm. I'm Jason with the ink inspired life. And if you want to sketch architecture, you definitely can. If you can scribble, you can sketch architecture. Take care, guys. Until we meet again. See you real soon. Wait. There we go. Awkward wave time until I hit the finish button. Let me know in the comments. Do you like this setup? Yes or no? Or do you like the other old setup better? I am just curious. If anybody has feedback, let me know what you think. I always appreciate your input. Leave it in the comments. Take care.