SketchbookTour : Spokane

Hello, happy August 17th. Hope you guys are doing well. I thought it'd be fun tonight to, um, pop on and do a sketchbook tour of my, uh, trip I had this past week. So let's do it. Um, you can see I have two different sketchbooks here, right? I have my Moleskine sketchbook, which is this red one. Um, pretty cool. Um, I've taken it to Spokane before, so I'm just trying to collect all my, um, travel sketches from Spokane in this one book. I shouldn't say all of them because I have more in this one as well. So this is a really cool book. I like the size of it. I like the COVID because it's hard and durable, has this cool elastic that can keep it closed. So it's really nice and easy to carry around. It's a little bigger than the accordion journal. They also have Moleskine, uh, journals this size as well, which fit right in your pocket. So this, this red one's a little bit bigger. And then I also brought my Lockbee field journal with me. The field journal is my go-to. You could see, and someone actually commented on this when I was away, how weathered and worn it looks. And I love this look. That's because this thing has gone— has pretty much gone everywhere with me, which is really amazing. So, um, just clicking a couple settings there. Awesome. So yeah, here's the Lockbie Field Journal, and I have a couple sketches in here we'll look at as well. So I was just in Spokane, Washington, a really interesting city. Here's a— I have a map here, we can pull this out. I was there for an amazing meeting, and here's some of the iconic things you'll see in Spokane. This cool clock tower, which was part of a railroad, railroad, um, station. These cool kind of Skyliner cars. There's a huge red wagon in the middle of a park. I mean, this thing is huge. There's actually a slide that comes down the handle. So I spent a lot of time on Riverfront Park, or at the Riverfront Park. And we'll just kind of look in here quickly. So let me zoom in a little bit, zoom in some more. All right, Spokane. So here's Riverfront Park. You can see this— here's that clock tower I showed you. Spent a lot of time in this area. Let's see if there is a close-up. Aha, there is a close-up of the Riverfront Park. Here we go. So here's kind of a close-up of the Riverfront Park area. Here's that red wagon I just briefly talked about, the clock tower, the Skyride here, um, really cool modern building, Center of the Arts, which you'll see a sketch of as well. And then over here, let's see if it's on here. Well, near this area there's a really cool old building that I did some sketches of, and we'll look at that as well. So there you go. So that's kind of the area where we're going to be looking at these sketches. And, and this right here is the U.S. Pavilion. This is actually part of— they had the 1974, um, I think World Expo there, and this still remains. So really cool. All right, so I brought along my Red Moleskine book. Really cool, love the hardcover. I just talked about that. Some of these sketches are from my first trip and some are from the second trip out there. So what did I use to sketch? Mostly my Sharpie. Some of these you see might have some color pencil in them as well. Um, and some might have a watercolor wash. So here we are. So for watercolor wash, I either, um, I think the first time I brought my pocket watercolors— actually, both times I didn't use my watercolors. This time out, I really think I stuck mostly to the pen. Hey, Linda's on! Linda, great to see you. Linda says, what a fun trip. Yeah, it was fun. It was a great trip. Um, educational. It was— it just covered a whole range of things for sure. And one of the highlights for me is I got to teach a really short session on, uh, kind of imagination, creativity, urban sketching, which is really a lot of fun. And to do, uh, I think it went really well. And what I really love most about that, everybody had a different takeaway. I didn't do a lot of instruction. We didn't get into any technical things like perspectives or things like that. It was more, it was more of kind of a mindset, uh, type of session. So it was really fun. All right, so here's some sketches here. This is the Spokane County Courthouse, not the whole thing, I just took a piece of it. So a lot of these sketches you won't see entire buildings, but which is part of a building or part of a scene. Again, here's that same building, but I just took a close-up of the tower. There are a lot of bridges over in Spokane River, so you'll see a lot of bridge sketches. I was trying to give, uh, cute captions to these. This one says, "Take me to the river," which is interesting because I forgot I had musical references the first trip. The second trip I also tried to put some musical references, which is interesting. Just realized that one of the cool things about capturing is just kind of capturing with feeling, just putting lines down and seeing what results. There are a lot of funky shapes. This is in that 1974 US Pavilion area. We have this cool metal truss bridge in the background. There's a building here. I just like the shapes and the forms. I said life isn't always fair. This is part of that Contemporary Center of the Arts building. This is that clock tower way in the distance. Notice, if you notice this sketch, it's very different than, let's say, the first— this one here. If you look at the lines, this is more of my typical style, kind of really sketchy, loose, quick lines. This one I actually took a little bit more time and the lines are a lot cleaner. So when you're sketching, lines are your language. Lines can dictate how you're going to tell your story, what emotions you want to show, what feelings you want to show as you're sketching. So this was kind of more contemplative times, just sitting there for a while, being more precise. Here's one of the utilitarian, uh, power buildings. I love this architecture here of this building. The power— the power to not complain. Yeah, so these are for— these were from March. We'll get to the new ones. Oh, starting now. So this is a new sketch from my recent trip. This is me sitting inside of a— not me, but I was sitting inside of a lobby area looking out the window. So sometimes it's really fun when you're doing architectural sketches to frame your view. So in this case, I was framing the view with this arched window and just trying to sketch what I saw outside the window. So, uh, it's, it's all about how you see things, right? So I thought that was kind of an interesting thing to do. This apparently in the background is the Washington Trust, uh, building. And I called this one You Can Count on It. I'm trying to get better at labeling my sketches, the dates, titles on them. Um, this is the Spokane See, look here, the Spokane Washington Review Building. Pretty cool, just part of it. The building is huge, it continues on, it actually curves, but I really like the tower piece of it. This one I called Extra Extra Extra Extra, read all about it. Um, I love it. I also just did some little snapshots, little vignettes just captured a little bit of moment in time. So this was just a small section of a bridge. Um, this is, this is the Washington Water Power Building, or part of it. The building continues on to the left. But like a lot of my sketches, I just like to leave a lot of kind of blank and just let it drift off so the viewer can use their imagination and finish it. I call this one Power On. Power On. This sketch takes up 2 pages, so don't feel like you have to limit yourself to 1 page. You can spread things out. So I spread this across 2 pages here. This is, uh, one arch. This bridge is huge. There's like, I think, I forget now, 3 separate big arches. But this is just part of that bridge. And I called this one Arch Enemy, just playing a little pun on words there. This, this bridge kind of reminds me of the Roman aqueduct, uh, aqueducts that were constructed to transport water with all the arches here. So this is actually the bridge surface where you can walk across and drive across. Um, one thing I'm— I was playing around with is how do I capture like a foreground or a landscape, or, um, you know, where does this bridge meet the land? So I have this line going down and I just took vertical lines. It's almost like a cross-section. If you know architectural technical drawings, we do cross-sections where we slice through objects or sliced through buildings. And the part we're slicing through here is where I just put these dark lines. So I thought that was an interesting way to set off kind of this foreground architecture, foreground landscape with the structure in the background. Another example of this, this is the same bridge we were looking at in a different part of it. I just called this one Archery. Archery, which I thought was kind of cool. We have this arch and then with the background arches, it kind of, for me, is almost looking like a target. So yeah, so that's why I called it Archery. Um, this is a— this is called Rosie's. This is actually in sitting inside looking out This is a little kind of diner restaurant, which is really cool because it had a garage door that faces the street. And this garage door you can open, so you kind of feel like you're dining outdoors when you're inside. Real interesting architectural, um, design there. All right, let's go to Time for Your Close-up. Time for your close-up. Um, that's what this is. It's a close-up of that same bridge. I am fascinated with the bridges there. Same, same bridge. I just zoomed in on some details. I liked kind of the lines, the circles, the curves. I shaded in some areas and make it darker. So this is really just about geometry and play, just playing around shapes. This one I didn't label yet. This is the Davenport, the historic Davenport Hotel, just a part of it. It's a huge structure. This was actually sketched from a rooftop terrace where our meetings were being, were being held, our workshop was held. You could step outside onto this terrace and you had a view of this building in the distance. It was really cool because in the foreground there were, there are train tracks. I'll put— I'll post some pictures up on my Facebook page if you want to see more. But this was kind of a fun, just real— this is more of my style. This is my go-to quick— windows are just kind of like that. I actually, actually really like this one. This one, this one, I think this actually might be one of my favorite sketches. It's— there's not a lot of lines here. But for me, there's a lot of feeling when I was drawing this. If you look— I'm not going to draw on top of it, but if you could just look at the marks— a lot of urban sketching for me is just mark making, just putting marks on your paper. So these windows are just marks, right? I'm not drawing rectangles and window grill patterns. I'm just doing little quick marks just to capture, capture something quickly. So this is actually the building I had— I had stayed in this hotel. This is the Davenport Hotel Tower. It has a flag on top. Then I thought it would be fun— here's a change, you guys. Do you notice what's different between these sketches and say this sketch red. I'm like, you know what, who says we always have to sketch with black ink? So I broke— I broke out my red, uh, Pilot Precise Pen, which these are my favorite sketch pens besides Sharpies. I just like to go with the Pilot Precise Pens. So I use red and I thought it'd be fun because the book's red, so See how that goes. Uh, this is a carousel building on the Spokane Riverfront Park. There's an old-time carousel in here. This is part of the river in the foreground, so, and a bridge in the background there. Pretty cool. I was— I like the perspective on here. So the perspective, you can kind of see it just kind of winds back here, so the view is kind of going back this way towards this bridge. It's been a nice perspective with this carousel building. And then, uh, I was talking earlier about using captions about music, which I'm not pre-planning, just kind of wrote these. And it, um, this one says, "You spin me right round." So I love that. It's one of my favorite '80s songs. I won't sing it. And then this one, this is, uh, this is the, the clock tower that used to be part of an old railroad station there. So I just kind of captured the top of the tower. You can see the time on there. This is the time I sketched, so it was about 6 o'clock or 6:05 PM. So that's a really fun way to, uh, if you're sketching, you want to put a time you're sketching a clock tower or anything with a clock, you just show the time that you sketched. Cool way to document it. Uh, this says, "Time is on your side." Yes. It is. If you know where that song or that lyric came from, what band, let me know in the chat. Put it in the chat or the comments, wherever you're watching. Let me know what band or group that's from. Here's another example of going to two pages instead of sticking on one. So I spread this across. This is, um, in that US Expo Pavilion, 1974 World's Fair. This is the structure that remains, clock tower in the background, uh, kind of a metal truss structure. And there's this tensile structure, which is basically this net here that goes up into a cone. I did a live stream from here, so if you go on my YouTube channel and look under the live tab, you should be able to see a little bit of footage of this, this area. I think this might be the last one in this book here. So this is, um, I call this one Connected. It's really just a detail of where this, the steel of a bridge kind of meets this concrete Foundation. So I thought, I thought I'd just call it connected, which can mean a lot of things, right? I was able to really connect with the people there. I connected with the place itself on different levels, connected with myself on different levels. So it was a really kind of, uh, power— powerful few days here. So that is the Moleskine sketchbook tour. Let's just go— we'll go to the Lockbie Field Journal. I— this, you're going to see some sketches that were done during the trip, not necessarily in Spokane, but at airports and such. Just have to— I didn't do too many in this one, or did I? Uh, these are just— this is an airport sketch. I didn't get to naming this one. Um, just a detail in the airport. I really like this, this kind of metal column here. This was a sign across here. A lot of fun shapes. So I wasn't really looking at the architecture, I was looking at the forms and shapes. This is a structural detail of Um, looking out the glass windows in the airport terminal, this is a structural piece that came down with a connection at the bottom. So I like that little detail. And then all the way in the background was a number 8 sign outside over by the airplane, so I just kind of captured that number 8. And I called this one Connecting Flight, little pun on words there because of the connecting piece here. Uh, this was— this is called Ukraine, Ukraine Eyewatch. They were doing a lot of construction outside this airport. This was the— which airport is this? I'm trying to think now. This is Salt Lake City, Utah Airport. So they had these cranes outside doing some construction work. I thought it'd be fun to capture those on Sketch. This is— this was a sketch I did on the plane. It had nothing to do with this trip. This is a— this is a sketch of— from the interior of the New York Public Library. So I just captured a little snippet of some people here. Why do I include people? Sometimes I have people because I want to show the scale of a building compared to a person. So look at the size of the people and look at the size of the space, right? It's a huge, huge space. So sometimes I'll show people to get a sense of the scale or size of a building. And this one I called Book It. I said, book it to the New York Public Library. And then back to Spokane again. Um, my favorite building in Spokane is the steam plant building. I've sketched this, you guys may have seen this in the past, me sketching live. This is a really cool build. This was a very, very— this is probably a 2 to 3 minute sketch I did before I went into the workshop. So I just wanted to capture that, and I called it Steamy Romance because I love this building. D-Ray says, book it, looks awesome! Hey D-Ray, thank you so much, this is so cool. I'm glad some of you guys are watching live, that is always fun. If you are watching live, let me know. I see some Facebook people. If you're watching live on the YouTube, let me know, just put in the comments so I can see if it's working or not. Just say, hello, I'm watching on YouTube. Actually, you don't have to say that, it'll come up on the icon for me. Just curious, I know who out there is watching. Um, cool. This is in Spokane, the riverfront. This is the Washington Water Power Building, part of it here. Cool bridge. This is cool. I just want to grab— let me grab something here if I can. Let me see where it is. Here it is. So this sketch is from inside a building called the Historic Davenport Hotel, an incredibly amazing piece of architecture. It's— I think it's on the National Historic Register of buildings. This was just a small sketch based on a part of the interior. I have photographs, I'll post them. The photographs have really— it'll capture the details, but I liked this space. Here's the building. Here's a pamphlet I had received, or not received, but a pamphlet I got from the hotel. So it's called the Historic Davenport Hotel. You can kind of see what it looks like on the outside. I did not do that drawing. This is on the brochure. It's a beautiful drawing though. I really love it. And I was able to take a walking tour. The walking tour was fantastic. The guide knew his stuff. He had some ghost stories he told us as well. Um, trying to see if there's any— here's— well, here's a picture of one of the interior ballrooms. There have been presidents that have stayed here. Celebrities have and currently stay here. Um, how cool is that? So if you're ever in Spokane, I really recommend checking this amazing building out. I could, I could spend hours and hours inside this building photographing and sketching it. So this is a sliver. This sketch is a sliver of an entire amazing structure. Hey, how are you? Good to see you. Nice seeing you live, but it's late. Ah, go to sleep. Thank you for tuning in. It's great to see you. I love that, all the way in Norway. Thanks for tuning in for a minute. It was great seeing you on here. I, I appreciate that. And then Jason Horvath says, are you live? Um, let me pinch myself to see. Ow! Yeah. Oh yeah, I'm live. I felt that. Great to see you, Jason. Hope all is well. Congratulations on your interview. Awesome, awesome stuff. Good night from Norway, D-Ray says. Or good night to Norway. That is so cool. I love this. Thank you, guys. And then here's another little vignette. This is just part of a display cabinet that was inside that building, that, um, historic Davenport building. And I called it Just in Case display cabinet. Um, I love coming up with these fun names. And then this vignette was me sitting on an airplane for way, way too long waiting to take off, and I just did a quick sketch. It was so hot in there I didn't even want to sketch, but that's a story for another day. Um, so that is just a kind of a quick trip through my sketchbook. Um, yeah, so again, this was the Lock— the Lockbie Field Journal, and then this was the Moleskine book. So I'm gonna— I'm gonna say I think this— I have a couple of favorites. This is one of my favorite sketches I showed you tonight. I like this because it's minimal for me. This is a minimal sketch, believe it or not. I know it has a lot of busyness, but it's very minimal because I feel like I did not overpower this with too many lines. Um, and that's hard for me to do. Sometimes it's hard for me to hold back. And just going totally bonkers and lines everywhere. So I've been trying to be a little more clean with my style, just a little more, not lose the characteristic but just pull back. I'm just kind of challenging myself to pull back a little bit. So I mean, you can see it here, right? This is not a lot of business— busyness to this, but I think it really captures the form. So anyway, I really love this sketch, and I really love this sketch of the historic Davenport. And then I think— where was the NYPL? I think the New York Public Library building sketch in here. See if I can find it. I really love this sketch. Let me zoom in. So this— those 3 sketches are probably the epitome of my typical go-to sketching style. Now if you also notice, I didn't— none of these have color. I didn't come back and add any color to these. I did have my colored pencils with me. I did have my watercolor. But I, I kind of want to see how the black and white reads on it, uh, unto itself. That sounded very formal. Unto itself. Um, but I just want to see how these would look without color. Very cool. Jason Nicholas Nicholas says, I saw you went to the Olympics. Oh no, I didn't. I wish I went to the Olympics. I did not go to the Olympics, but I was in Spokane, Washington, where they had, um a U.S. World's Fair exposition in 1974, and that's where I sketched this view from. I wish I was at the Olympics if I was in Paris. That's my dream, to go to Paris one day and draw my heart out. I like this one, a dome window. Thanks, D-Ray. You guys are so cool. I'm gonna do a quick sketch if you want to hang on for a couple more minutes. I'm going to actually look at the clock and we're going to see what we can sketch in 5 minutes. We're going to keep it short and sweet. And what are we going to sketch? I don't know. Maybe I'll pull up a picture from Spokane and we'll do a sketch. Um, we'll sketch in here. We'll sketch in a Fabriano watercolor book. Let's see, and we'll just do a little sketch on here. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. Any thoughts, any feedback? If you're eating, if you're eating something, let me know what you're eating. Um, this is— this will be fun. Dearest is enjoying the minimal black and white. That— yeah, thank you. I love the black and white sketches too. All right, I'm going to pull up an image. Jason Nicholas Nicholas, no worries, it's all good. Sometimes I don't even know where I am. It's all good. All right, I got some tunes going here. I'm going to pull up a sketch, an image. I'll show you the image. Um, what do I want to sketch? I don't know. What do I want to sketch? Bridge building. Steam plant detail. We'll figure it out. I'll just pull an image on screen and we'll, we'll, uh, you know, here, let's do this. I'm gonna pull this image on here. Um, so this is, uh, looking standing on a rooftop. The train's not on the rooftop, but standing on a rooftop terrace, if you look straight out, you would see this train track. Which is not on the roof. Uh, that would have been interesting. And then way beyond is the historic Davenport Hotel. So let's just use this image as a start and put some lines on paper. Oreo cookie dessert and lemon pie with graham cracker crust. That sounds pretty delicious. Love it. All right, sketching from photographs. I had this question actually come up during the workshop this past week. Do I sketch from photographs? So the answer is yes, but I'm not sketching the photograph. And what I mean is the photograph is a starting point for me. And oftentimes I will just kind of sketch a quick outline of some things on it and put the photograph away or turn it off so I'm not looking at it. So for me, photographs capture the details in detail. I know I said detailed a couple times there. So the photographs capture the details in detail. Sketching for me captures my feelings, my heart, um, and whatever kind of interests me in that moment in time. So this photograph, I thought it was really cool having the train pass by, and have some video footage. I'm going to be putting together some other pieces, some videos, um, some reels and shorts that you guys can see some of this stuff. So let's just use this and do a little sketch and see what happens. All right, I'm just pulling up a bit bigger here. Sharpie, in case we want to add some color, some ink or watercolor later. The Sharpie will not bleed, so I love starting with Sharpies. I actually like that the train's kind of crooked in the photo. I, I— yeah, I took the photo crooked for some reason. We're going to go with it. Uh, let me zoom in so you guys can see this better. Hey, Chip's in the house! Good to see you, Chip. Hope all's well. Sorry guys, I, uh, I have a playlist going here. I just, I want to just change up the song a little bit here. Jason made me hungry with that Oreo little key lime or lime dessert. I forgot exactly what it was, but it sounded good. So yes, this is intentionally slanted down, right? We— that's straight, but I'm drawing this crooked on purpose. Who says we have to draw things perfectly vertical or horizontal, right? All right, cool. I'm going to turn off the picture. I know the sketch was behind it a little bit. Sorry about that. All right, cool. Let's just throw a bit of some color on this. Uh, I, I do— I'm going to use yellow. I do like that pop of yellow you saw on that train. So let's break out some watercolors. Here. Yeah, I almost dipped my Sharpie in the water instead of my brush. Oops. All right. So I'm just going to dig into some of this, um, I call it Taxi Cab Yellow. I don't honestly know what the real, real color name is. I really just throwing on— I want to throw the paint on pretty thick here. I just want it to really pop. All right, so cool. So that's kind of that yellow train car. Um, I turned the picture off. I don't even remember what the other color was here, but let's just go with the feeling, right? I like to use— pick colors based on how I'm feeling and based on the color palette that I really love to use. So turquoise is always going to make an appearance, so here it is. You may have noticed I put a little watercolor palette underneath. That's because I wanted to prop up the paper so everything runs down and drips down. I love that effect. Gravity is our friend. Gravity is a tool that we can use when we're creating watercolors. So let gravity, you know, be playful. Let the gravity kind of take over and pull things down. Let things puddle up together. I just love these puddles of color, and I'm gonna— I'll let it dry this way. Uh, what else do we want to add here? Let's see. This goes back to when I was talking about photographs. The photographs— for me, photographs show the details of the details. Captures the colors and the details as are, as is. I know this build— building isn't really orange, and that's why the blank piece of paper is a playground for you to use the colors you want. Have fun with it. Be brave, be bold. It's only paper. It's only paper. You're not going to make a mistake, right? Loose style sketching, loose style painting really opens up a lot of freedom for you to just let things happen. I know I said I was going to stay on for just do this for 5 minutes. I didn't set a timer and I'm in— I'm lost in the moment, so I'm going to just keep going. All right, let's see. I'm gonna break out— I have some ink here. I'm gonna break out some of my— let's break out some of this really cool— I just grabbed this Inferno Orange. This ink is awesome. Um, it has gold flecks in it. I don't think it's real gold, but some kind of gold flecks in there. You may have seen me use this color on my Statue of Liberty torches, and I have to thank, uh, Linda S. I think Linda S introduced me to this color and maybe even had, uh, sent it to me. It's a great color. So I'm just letting colors kind of bleed together. Yeah, these train cars really are in front, so this color shouldn't technically bleed down, but again, we're being experimental and playful. This is our playground. I, I can pop the train cars out in front by just going back over it later with a Sharpie or some kind of other black marker, and we can just really pull them forward. So this is about layers, just adding different layers. I really want to get this yellow-orange color really intense. I'm just literally— I'll show you what I'm doing. This is, this is how I get the paint on my brush. I'm— oh, I put it in and I spin it to layer it up, and you can see it wears out like a hole there. I'm just trying to really load this up because I just want to pop in places. You can see there, right? It's just popping. Maybe it's like a mustard yellow. What kind of mustard would this be if it was mustard? Yeah, here we go. I'm loving this. I'm loving how this is coming together. I'm going to leave some white there. I'm actually going to blot some out here. I just want to pull back some of that. There we go. Pull that back a little bit. I'll probably, um, come back after this dries and sketch some train tracks in the foreground. I'll add train tracks here. All right, let's try for a second. We'll go see if there's any questions in the comments. Feel free to leave comments, questions. Your favorite banana bread recipe, whatever you want, in the, in the comments. I need to make some banana bread. All right, let this dry. I'm going to grab a drink of water, and that I did not bring in here, so I am not going to grab a drink of water. Okay, and I'm not going to drink this ink. Chip says, is this pic from out west? Yeah, so Chip, this is based on, um The photograph— let me put the photograph back on screen if I can find it here. I think it may have been this one. Yeah, so this photo is— was taken in Spokane, Washington. This was, um, where our workshop was being held, which was in the steam plant building. If you walk out on a rooftop terrace, across from the terrace you could see this train was down lower. So this is kind of the view we had out one of the rooftop terraces. Great question. Uh, Linda says, I'm back, sorry, had a phone call. Hey Linda, no worries. Shout out to Linda for the Inferno Orange, and shout out for, uh, Linda was so kind enough— hope it's okay to give you a shout out to, to send, uh, some butcher trays my way that I could bring into the classroom. So my students, we're gonna— I'm gonna get really playful with them in architecture class this year. We're gonna be, we're gonna be breaking out the watercolors this year. So thank you so much, this was awesome. I really appreciate it, and my kids are going to appreciate that in school. I'll definitely post some of their work. Seattle, Washington. Uh, Spokane. This was Spokane, Washington. Love that ink, Linda says. Yeah, Linda, I believe you introduced me to this. Going intense. Yes, the race is— yeah, much so. Why did I blot out some of that orange? I really wanted to preserve some of the white. Here, just, just as a contrast. You can see here it's a lot of white happening. Um, I probably should have left a little bit more, but that's okay. So that's why I kind of blotted out and pulled out some of that color. So don't be afraid in watercolor to take things out, right? And I like that there's a little stain. There's not going to get it out perfectly. I'm cool with that. Again, this is fun, playful, not about perfection. It's about exploration. It's about the journey. It's about fun. I probably said that a lot tonight, but just want to stress that I feel a lot of people, um, want to create— not necessarily just sketching, but whatever you want to create, uh, cooking, dancing, whatever your art is— we feel like it has to be perfect before we start it. A key mindset when I'm sketching and creativity: I'm not expecting any specific outcome. So that kind of frees me up to be loose, fun, and playful. Now obviously it doesn't apply to everything. If you're, you know, an Olympic swimmer, of course you have an expected outcome. But for certain creative endeavors, you don't have to always have a certain outcome you're going for. And for me, I, I don't, so that way I'm not stressing about creating. Um, go get water, D-Ray says. Thanks, D-Ray. I'm good. I'm gonna wrap in about 2 minutes. Awesome butcher pans. Yes, they are. Yes, leave some of the white. Um, I love what Ruth said to me the other day: art needs to breathe. Of course, yeah, art needs breathing space. And that's why there's always a lot of white here. I'm not trying to complete the full picture. I want you as the viewer to complete the picture with one of our most amazing gifts that we all have. I want you to complete the picture with your imagination, right? Imagination is powerful. Imagination is what leads to creating. If we can't imagine something, it's really hard to actually create. Something. So I believe that— yeah, I strongly believe one of our greatest gifts is our imagination. Pull this down a little bit here. Cool. This one I might have to let sit and just dry before I come back and add any more to it. So check, see if there's any other final questions on here. Um, yeah. So I would like— I could use your help if you feel like leaving a comment for me, either in the chat or YouTube comments, or message me. I'm really— I'm working on creating in-person, on-location sketching workshops. I want to be able to take a small group of people to, say, New York City for a day and sketch. Tour, just a little bit of touring around, learn about some of the history, the architecture in particular, and then sketch. So if you were, if you were to do something like that, what are some reasons that you might be interested in doing some on-location urban sketching? And ultimately we'd be going to places like Venice. That is my dream. Have an immersive experience for a week in Venice, touring, sketching, really savoring the moment of sketching on location. When you sketch in person, it really slows things down. It lets you capture what you're seeing in a different way, and it leaves memories in a much different way than photographing and leaving pictures on your phone that you don't look at. If you can go on a journey and create a sketchbook or travel journal, like we looked at here tonight, this is something I can leave out on my desk, on my table, leave it out on a coffee table so people come over where they can pick it up, look through it, we talk about it. There's a lot of value to having captured special moments on paper in a journal. And I'm not dismissing the phone. I use my iPhone all the time. I have over 70,000 pictures— not kidding, 70,000 pictures on my phone. But I keep going back to these, um, as how I remembered the trip, right? This is that accordion journal that I did in New York City. Which I will be headed there next Saturday in New York City doing more sketching. I don't know if— actually, I don't even know if you guys saw some of these. I've added some more to this one. I added this Grand Central pic image. This is a really cool space in New York City. Um, oh man, the Ford Foundation building has this, this really cool atrium garden space. It's all inside, so I did some sketching in that atrium. Really cool space. There you go, it goes like that. So anyway, if you have any feedback or thoughts about that, let me know. I'm trying to figure out what would get people to go on a sketching journey. Why, why would you want to go? If you could go, what would you want to get out of that program, and how would that change you sketching? On location? Would it change you in any way? Cool. Let's see, there are some beautiful blooms. Yeah, Linda's listening. Linda's talking about this, right? Got some really cool things happening here. This is going to dry really nicely. Uh, Linda hasn't— I'm going to put this on screen. I kind of like this. When you're with other artists, I know for music it ups your game. You learn immediately and have lots of aha moments. If the bar is raised, you do better. That is an awesome way to put it. I love that, Linda. Yeah, when you're sketching, or no matter what you're doing— of course I always say sketching because that's my thing, but it doesn't matter what your thing is. I agree. When you're with other people, there's a different kind of connection that happens in different aha moments. Awesome. Um, hey Dylan! Dylan's on YouTube. Hey Dylan, how are you? Can you share your sketchbook art? Um, I live near city, subway stations would be cool. That's true. Yeah, Dylan, I'm not sure what you're asking, but if you want, I can— let me show you this. I'll show you this sketchbook here again. I'll do it a little bit slower. I have, I have tons. I have a whole stack. I have, I don't know, 200, 300 sketches of New York City. Well, these aren't, but yeah, if you go to my Instagram, you can definitely see a lot of those, or YouTube videos as well. But let me break out this It's a great question. Let's look at this again. So this was a sketchbook I took to New York City a couple weeks ago, or a few weeks ago. This is, uh, this is Grand Central here with the Chrysler Building in the background, and I would just add some facts on here. The Park Ave— Park Avenue Viaduct. The bridge is pretty cool. Got a lamppost on there. This is a detail, um, inside Grand Central. Just a kind of look at the ceiling. There's this cool light fixture hanging down. This structure isn't grand, it's colossal. It should be called the Coloss— Colossal, um, Central Terminal. Not Grand Central. This is actually from— inspired by Central Park, the, um, central area with the, the fountain, the Fountain Plaza Terrace, the Queensborough Bridge, the has these, uh, Skyliners— uh, trams. It has a tram that goes across the East River, which is really interesting. I'd love to ride the tram. I haven't done that. Shout out to Sifat of the NYC Walking Show here on YouTube. Check out the NYC Walking Show. Sifat's amazing. I've met him a couple times. A great person, an incredible live streamer who— from New York City. So shout out to the NYC Walking Show. Grand Central as well. And here's that Ford Foundation, the atrium inside. And there's a lot of blank pages, so I'm going to keep adding to this. Cool. Hope that helped, Dylan. Dylan, uh, I'm also going to break out this here quickly just because these are right here. I know some of you guys have seen these already, so just bear with me. I think they're fun to look at again. Zoom out. Uh, so I call this My City Lines. It's a series that I'm trying to work on here. I love this sketch. I love the colors. I don't usually talk about my artwork and say I love, love it, but I love, love, love this. So this is the Statue of Liberty torch. Pretty amazing colors on this. And then I have one of the, the Brooklyn Bridge here, which is undoubtedly one of my favorite structures in the city. So again, this is on the accordion journal. There's the Brooklyn Bridge. I love the energy of this, the splashes. This one is a lot of energy. So these are— hey, any of these original sketches are available for purchase if anybody's ever interested. Just send me a message, leave a message, and leave something in the comments or message me. Be more than happy to talk to you. All right, let's see how this is drying. We're going to make our wrap up, guys. This was so much fun. I love being on here live with you, and hopefully you're able to get something out of tonight's sketch session, whether it was a trip— a trip, I can't talk— a tip, a trick, a technique, a tool, or a sketching mindset. I'm hoping I served you and your creativity, creativity and your imagination in some way tonight. And you can see how this is drying. I like how this is— I'm going to let this puddle up here and dry. We'll see how it comes out. Uh, have I sketched the Chrysler Building? Yes, Chip, I've sketched the Chrysler Building, and I, I don't have it here. I gave away a really cool graphite sketch of the Chrysler Building to one of my students who graduated. Uh, Peyton, if you're out there, Peyton graduated 2 years ago and she is a proud owner of probably the coolest Chrysler Building sketch I've ever done. So yes, I love the Chrysler Building. It's a gorgeous piece of Art Deco architecture. Great question. Um, maybe we'll have a live session. If you're interested, let me know. We'll have a live session. I'll come on one night and we'll just sketch the Chrysler Building. And also in my workshop, I think Linda was in that workshop where we sketched the Chrysler Building. We did a New York City inspired sketching workshop. Leaving the notebook coffee on the table. Grand Central is a sketch that caught my eye. Oh, D-Ray, that's so cool. Hey, you're welcome, Dylan. Thank you for tuning in on the YouTube side of things. I appreciate that. Be sure to like and subscribe if you haven't already, that way you can keep up to date when I come online. Color combo is great, pretty amazing colors right on the torch. Yes, I have to say, this is probably— this is probably my most favorite, um, combination of colors I've used I use these colors a lot, but it's probably my best— my favorite application of these colors. They're pretty insane, especially in person. I— and I use the Inferno ink, not this one. This one's the Inferno, right? Yeah, I use the Inferno Orange. I don't know if you can see this on here, but there are— you can see the gold flecks in person. Let me know if you can see those gold flecks happening. So this is really even more special in person. So cool. Energy one does, uh, reflects exactly that energy. Yeah, the Brooklyn Bridge. Thank you. Linda says we had fun working on that one, one of Jason Nicholas' workshops. Fun. I remember that, and I think we did— did we do the door, Linda? I think we sketched the door of the Chrysler Building. Or maybe people pick different parts of the building. That may have been what it was. All right guys, I think that's going to be a wrap for tonight. It's 9 o'clock. I appreciate every single one of you guys for taking time out and listening, watching, eating Oreos while you're here with me. It doesn't matter what you're doing, um, I have fun putting this out there. Thank you for letting me share my passion with you and my heart. Um, sketching for me is a way of capturing kind of my love of the world around me. So thank you guys so much. Have an amazing rest of your day. I think it's Saturday. My, uh, my brain and body are on West Coast time. I had a 14-hour travel— fun travel time yesterday trying to get from the West Coast back home to New Jersey. Um, so my brain is zombie. I am in zombie mode. Not complaining, it's all good. Thank you guys so much. Remember, um, keep using your creativity for positivity in the world. Let's just keep putting good stuff out there. We all can play our little part and just make the world a better place to live in, for sure. All right guys, thank you so much. Till we get together next time, keep sketching the world around you one line at a time. Peace out, see you guys real soon. I have to wave with the other hand so I can fit— hit the finish button. And also let me know how the audio was. I hope it's better because I tried to move the microphone closer. Take care, guys. There we are.