Sketching a NYC Chinatown INKspired Scene : Part 2

Hey, happy, um, Friday, August 23rd, 1:38 PM Eastern Time. It's a really random time I'm popping on. Um, a couple things were going through my brain. One, do I take a nap? My brain's really tired from doing like loose end paperwork, bill paying kind of stuff, which can be exhausting, right, when you do that kind of work. Um, so the other option was maybe I'll just come on, change my state of mind, get it fired up again. And sketching really helps me to get those synapses really lighting up and, and, uh, feeling great and positive. So that is definitely one of the powers of, of sketching for me. So I opted for number 2. I am going to do some sketching instead of taking the nap. So if you're watching this, uh, let me know where you're watching from, whether you're watching live or in the comments. I always appreciate everybody's thoughts and feedback and, um, your interaction, right? This isn't really about me, it's about us coming together to learn how we can take our creativity up to a different level, maybe a different level from where you're currently at. Um, whether it's something I do or say or inspire or someone in the community, right? So, um, yeah, let's just have some fun. It's 1:40. I'm only going to stay on until 2 o'clock PM, so 20 minutes. Here we go. So what I'd like to do today is I started this, um, this New York City Chinatown inspired sketch the other night. It is very different than the original photo, which I'm not even going to bring on right now. If you were interested to see the original photo, um, feel free to watch part 1 of this. Go on YouTube, click on my channel, go to live, and you could watch the replay. The reason I'm not bringing up the photo is I don't want to be tainted by it. I really just use a photo for some loose line work, throw down an idea of a view, a perspective view. So the colors here are not going to match the city scene at all, and that's what I want. I really want just my creativity to go forward. Cool, thank you so much. So, um, before I get started, I'm going to check the chat, and I see Alexander Art is in the house. Hello, Alexander Art, it's so great to see you. I hope all is well. Thank you for joining, uh, my, my stream here live. So cool. I love it, love it. If you guys don't know Alexander Art, check it out. Um, Bill Alexander— I used to watch Bill Alexander when I was a little kid on PBS. He was just a really cool landscape painter. That's what I remember him for. And if I remember, you can correct me, Alexander Art, but I remember he was an oil painter. Um, definitely check out the Alexander Art YouTube channel. You're going to find some really amazing and inspiring art there. Good stuff. All right. Hey, Chris is in the house. Chris, great to see you. Welcome. All right, so what I thought I'd do today— so this is part 2. I'm going to wrap this up. One of the things that was missing that I didn't sketch yet, when you're in Chinatown in New York City, you'll see lanterns or lights that are strung across the streets. So I'm going to add some of that on here just real quick, loose. I don't know what color yet we're going to use for those. Um, here's a, here's a pro tip. Sometimes when I need to change gears— so I just came from the world of bill paying paperwork, my brain is still thinking about that a little bit. I need to transition into my creative zone, so I'm just going to shake things out, loosen up my hands. So I'm physically just kind of shaking it out. Take my pen, just kind of move it around a little bit, and I'm going to change gears. So it's just kind of a— kind of like a signal for me and my brain to do something different. So just kind of shaking it out. Alright, so we have these kind of round-shaped lanterns hanging. I just really just placed them randomly, and I want to bring these out with some color, make them pop a little bit. So a couple options. I don't really like to think a lot about what I'm going to do because it kind of stops me. I just want to go with the flow. Um, so I like to have everything around me. Let me zoom out a little bit. You can see my desk. Can't really see all of it, but I have watercolors, colored pencils, markers over here. I just want to grab and go if I'm searching for a tool to use. It's going to slow me down, right? So I'm just going to grab and go. So I definitely know I'm going to use pink at some point. Let's throw in some pink. Maybe I want these to pop, and I— neon pink is one of my signature colors that I'll use in, um, probably like 95% of the sketches I do. I just add these, the pop of the neon pink. I'll zoom in again so you can see it closer. That's cool. I want them to stand out from the background. Let's try, um, I have a neon yellow color pencil, or I like to use highlighters, so I'm going to use actually a Sharpie highlighter. I'm a huge Sharpie fan. I use Sharpies from everything for the original sketch to highlighters to, um, you name it. I have a Sharpie roller pen or gel pen here as well. Let's just see how this yellow looks. I'll zoom in closer so you can kind of see what I'm doing. It's not popping out as much as I had hoped, but you know what, for me it's, it's embracing the creative journey, the process. Um, I'm just having fun throwing color down, to be honest with you. It makes me happy. I'm gonna— I'm gonna throw some red in here. So whenever I put red on sketches, I really like to use a Pilot Precise red pen. I do have red watercolor, acrylics, but for me, this is my favorite way to add red. I just like the way it pops, the color of it. There we go. I'm liking it. One of the cool things about adding these strings of lights across the street is it helps— for me, it helps to visually tie the different sides together. So we're kind of just tying this together. That's looking cool. I'm going to go back and take my Sharpie. I want to pull out some of the shapes we see in here and maybe add a little bit of detail. Um, maybe I'll break out— you know what I haven't used in a while? My Lamy, my black Lamy pen. Oh, I have to refill it. I could see this is a cool Lamy pen. I love— it's called the Lamy Safari. It's a cool fountain pen. If you look in this little clear window here might be hard to see. Um, this shows how much ink is inside. Right now it's empty, so I don't have any cartridges to refill it right now, so I'm— I can't break it out. But, um, I'll do another show where we focus maybe on just using fountain pens, and I have a few different ones I really like to use. So we'll just go back to the Sharpie. I'm going to add some hatch lines. Um, the way I like to add some shading or shadows lots of times is to use a hatch, a diagonal hatch line. I'll show you here, I'll zoom in. So these are awnings, I want them to pop a little bit. So to pop out, I'm going to just do these diagonal hatch lines, and it's a great way to create the idea of a shadow, and it also helps to keep the loose style. My goal with my sketching is to keep it really loose These are not meant to be technical drawings by any means. They're fun, fast, kind of really, really loose and sketchy. And that's the vibe I like to go for. That's a great way to create the idea of some shadows happening. Maybe we'll do some here as well. Maybe this door is recessed. I'll also use colors for shadows. I like to use grays and blues. And browns to mix my own shadow colors. And same thing here, we have another overhang. This is a cool column. Um, after I sketched it it kind of looked like bamboo. So just kind of playing around with the shape of this a little bit. And I'm going to add some— when I like— when I try to make shapes look round, to add these contour lines. For me, the contour lines are these curves. So you can see by— sorry, I was off camera, but you can see now what I just added, these curved contour lines here, and helps create that round look. I'll do the same thing with this canopy. This is an awning. I'm just going to add some curves on here just to help define that round shape on it. Feel free to let me know if you guys have any questions or comments, uh, put them in the chat. I definitely like to stop and pause and take a look at what you guys are thinking or want to know. I'm here to help. One of my goals is just to help you feel a little more confident about sketching architecture. As you can see, it's really all just about lines and throwing different lines down. And I go for the loose, wonky style because it frees my brain up, um, from thinking everything has to be perfect. And when I think everything has to be perfect, perfectionism equals stagnation for me. It stops me. Um, it puts my brain in like a quagmire where it's just stuck, stuck in the muck. It's kind of stuck in the muck and it doesn't want to move ahead and create, draw anything, because I'm thinking about, oh my gosh, this line has to be here and this color needs to be here and 'Oh, there's a shadow here.' There's a place for that, absolutely, in creativity, in creativity and art, but it depends what you want to do and what you want to create, right? So my world is just capturing architecture in the built world one line at a time in my own wonky fun way. So I'm really just coming back in, pulling out some of these lines. I'm going to leave this kind of blank here. I just like the white space. Don't be afraid to leave white space. Don't have to fill the entire paper with color. Um, I like to leave a lot of white space and leave it up to the viewer's kind of imagination. This is a sidewalk. Let's just show me some sidewalk lines here to help with the idea of a perspective that this is going back. I also want to pull out this, this curb. There's a curb here, so Lots of times if I have a step or a curb, what I like to do is make some vertical lines so that your eye and your brain kind of knows this is going up and down. So I'm actually enjoying coming on at a random time today. I I have one more full week until school starts, so I thought it'd be fun just to pop on at this time because once school starts, yeah, I will not be popping on at 1:40 in the afternoon. My teaching day does not get done until, um, like 2:30-ish. But you know what, I love teaching and I'm excited to get back in the classroom. Teaching's a really interesting— I don't like to call it a job because for me it's not really a job. It's, um, I just love doing it. I love being able to at least hopefully touch or inspire 1, 2, 3 students every year. Um, and then hear my dog barking. Sorry about that. We're getting in. I think she's barking because her Her Chewy delivery is here. She's an amazing pup. I love her. Um, yeah, my brain, my brain does jump around. She's a really good pup, but when someone is outside, she hardly barks. But when someone's outside, woof, she lets us know, which is awesome. She's doing her job. She's, um, she's what's called a Mountain Cur. Um, we kind of think it's almost like, um, a border collie. She has that kind of herding instinct, we've noticed. All right, I'm going to show some brick, maybe some texture on this building. So that's what we're going to do here. I'm letting the texture— this is cold press watercolor paper. Cold press has a texture to it. I don't know if you can pick up the texture here on camera, but I'm letting the texture kind of let these lines kind of be broken lines. They're not really solid or continuous, and that really helps to add to the loose aesthetic. So I'm kind of lightly dragging the pen or It's really a marker, I guess, across the rough texture to let that texture come through. I want to indicate some windows on this wall. Um, if you might notice, I'm not drawing windows like beautiful rectangles. I'm just really kind of just doing this to give the illusion they're really small because I want this to look in the, you know, in the background. So I made them small, but it lets your brain or the viewer's brain just kind of work work its imagination and let it kind of fill in what's happening. And that's why I love— another reason I love loose style sketching and leaving a lot of white space or unfinished edges. Like here, this is very unfinished, right? This just kind of bleeds off. I just love doing that because it lets the viewer bring in their imagination and really become more a part of the scene. Gonna throw a window in here. Do a round window. Alright, cool. Maybe I'll add a little bit here, maybe a base across here. Let's do a— let's make a window in here. All right, so there you go. All right, it's almost done. I want to pop on— you know, I'm not going to bring any more watercolor on here. I think I'm going to leave that. I'm gonna use some neon yellow pencil, and then I'm gonna pull out chartreuse and light aqua. These are some of my favorite color pencil colors. We're gonna just finish this up with some color pencil. I love doing mixed media sketches. Um, for me, it's just more fun, more playful, and I could throw color pencil, watercolor, ink all down on the same Paper. I love chartreuse. I never— I have to be honest with you, I didn't know what chartreuse color was until a couple of years ago. I had never used it, and then once I picked up the colored pencil, I'm like, I'm really loving the color. So it's made its way to my favorites list. Who remembers the rule that you had to color inside the lines? Uh, here's my advice: forget it. Don't, don't do it when it comes to this style sketching. Don't do it. Stay outside the lines. Here's a really great example. Uh, look where the top of this building is here. Look where the color is. Way above it, right? Um, it's just that loose flow. So don't— do not color in the lines for loose style sketching. Stay outside of the lines. It really helps that loose and that wonky look. Again, it's all about being fun, uh, creative, playful. I like to say, you know, it, it's helps you to see the world in wondrous and curious ways, right? In a childlike sense of wonder and curious ways. Um, by sketching this way, loose and outside the box, it really has helped me over the years to see everything around me from a different perspective. So I think the more you can sketch like this the more it's going to help influence the way you see things in your world through different eyes and different perspectives. And the other way around, the more we can look around us in a— in a wondrous state of mind, it could influence how fun and loose our art can be, right? It really— mindset and creativity, I really feel, go hand in hand. They can't be separated. And I like to talk a lot about that in on my YouTube channel here. Um, in my new— I just started a new newsletter. If you go to theinkspiredlife.com, you can sign up for my free newsletter. It's about architectural sketching, urban sketching. Um, it's gonna— it has— it's gonna have stuff about creative mindset as well. So I'd love for you to sign up. Again, it's free. Um, right now I'm only going to be sending it out twice a month, but we'll see, that might change. And it might change, I might start developing a membership, we'll see how that goes. But for now, just, I would love for you to sign up and check out the newsletter. The first, um, issue is out and I am working on the second one, so it'll be out probably tonight, today or tomorrow. So go to theinkspiredlife.com. Cool. All right, I think this, this one might be a wrap. Let's put a frame around it. So if you were watching live the other night, I kind of went a little nuts in a good way, a little crazy. I threw a mat with an opening around it and it really it took this to a whole unexpected level. So I got really excited online. Um, let me— let's do it here. I'm keep zooming in and out, I'm sorry, but trying to figure out where is the best distance to show you. All right, so here it is without the mat, and I can zoom in after. Let's throw this on here. Um, actually, let me zoom in. I think it's gonna be much better. Here it is without the mat. So before— sorry, my head's in the way there, and, uh, the contest thing on the bottom, which I'll talk about in one second before we wrap up. All right, before frame, BF, and here we go, after frame. Holy moly, the colors pop so much. I'm just going to leave it there for a sec. I am— I'm loving this. I love it with the frame for sure. If I was to add anything, I might just add a little bit to where the street is. You know what, I'm, I'm gonna do it. Let's just go for it. I want to use a graphite stick. So I'm just talking about grabbing and going. I don't know if I have it here with me. I may have packed it. Because I went to— I went on a recent trip to Spokane, Washington. It was an amazing workshop I was at. I loved it, loved it. Brought some sketching stuff with me, and I think, I think my graphite stick is still packed away. Let me just check in here. I think I'd love to throw down some graphite. I think it'd be fun. Uh-oh, where is it? Um, I got it, I got it! I found the graphite stick. Um, I love graphite stick. If you know my vibe, it's, it's— I like to do industrial grungy sketching, you know, um, old weathered buildings, rust. Um, and I find this graphite stick is really cool and helpful with that. So this is an Art Graph water-soluble graphite stick. So here's what we're going to do. I just want to make this look more like a street. I'm not going to go too crazy. I do love the white space. So graphite stick is cool. You can use it a bunch of different ways. You can throw it down dry, leave it that way, throw it down dry, add water and let it bleed a little bit. Or one of the things— or here's what One of the ways I like to use it is I can— I like to wet. So I'm just wetting this here with water. I have dirty water. I like to use dirty water when I'm sketching for the vibe. So here's the actual water, it's kind of mucky looking. And we could do— we could throw some graphite on here lightly. Again, I don't want to overdo it, I just want to add a little bit of texture. I'm going to come back over it, but that is not my favorite way to use the graphite. My favorite way is to dip it right in the water. So I'm dipping this in the water and we're going to throw it on here and it kind of will melt. I say melt, but it kind of dissolves onto the paper. And you can see the texture, really loose. I'm just letting it do its thing. I'm not forcing it. Here's a— here you can really see it kind of just melting right there. And I can come back if I want, and I can try to blend it a little bit. All right, that might be enough. I don't want to overdo it. I just wanted to add a little bit on there. So if I throw the frame— there you go. I think it helps look a little bit more like a, um, streetscape. I'm gonna leave it at that. I could I could add more, but I don't want to overdo it. It will dry lighter. I'm just trying to ground this building here in the background, so I'm throwing some black under it. I just want to kind of anchor it down a little bit more. And let's just throw a little bit here. You can even take your finger and blend it too. Yeah, I think that's better. All right, cool. All right, so that's just a little bit of graphite. So here we are, unframed, matted, which I think is the way to do this. This original is available if anybody's interested. Send me a message. I would love to sell this to someone who wants it in their house. I have probably a couple hundred of sketches sitting around here that is so sad because I don't have enough wall space. I would love for someone to— I should do an auction one night and just start auctioning some of these sketches off. Um, they're piling up. Makes me sad to see them sitting here in a pile. All right, enough of that. Um, but here you go. So guys, that is a wrap for today on this. This was part 2. Definitely go back and check out part 1. Just go to my YouTube channel, look at— click on live, and you should see part 1 on there. Um, yeah, um, the last— just a quick announcement, there is a contest bottom left of my screen. Lockbee, who I love. Lockbee, I'm actually an ambassador of them. Love their products. Their, their field journal goes pretty much everywhere with me. It went to Spokane with me. It's really well weathered. Anyway, they have a photo contest showing your Lockbee gear in different— wherever, wherever you want to take pictures of it. So I entered. I am currently in 5th with a picture of my field journal. And the New York City skyline, Brooklyn Bridge in the background. So if you're interested and you want to support a little bit, support me a little bit, just go to lockbe.com/pages/contest. Um, I could win a gift card, but it's really, it's really about just having fun. I'm pushing myself to get out there, show what I'm doing to more people. Um, yeah, because I love this stuff and I love you guys for watching. Thank you so much. Keep using your creativity for Positivity. I may be on tonight, I'm not sure, um, but until then, guys, I, I really appreciate you. Remember, you too can sketch architecture and the world around you one line at a time. This is Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life, um, wishing you a great day. Take care, appreciate y'all. Oh, there we are. Take care.