Sketching Architecture with Loose Lines & No Apologies

Hey, Jason Nicholas Nicholas here from The Inspired Life. It's Saturday evening, 9:25 PM, um, June 13th. Hope you are having a great day today. I'm back on— I started this early, um, I started this earlier today, so I wanted to come back and continue working on this sketch of the, of the The London Guarantee Building in Chicago served as the kind of backdrop, or what do you call it on a TV show? It was like, it's where— it's from the TV show Perfect Strangers. Larry and Balki worked in here for the Chicago Chronicle. So this building, the exterior shot, was just used to set, you know, the workplace. So I thought it'd be cool to, you know, start sketching buildings inspired by TV shows. So this first one is from Perfect Strangers, an awesome, awesome show. And, um, as a special treat, I, I am going to a meet and greet with the two stars from this show tomorrow. So that would be cool, kind of a signing, picture, photo op thingy. It'll be really, really cool. And I think I'm gonna bring a couple of sketches to give to them. So that's what I'm working on tonight. Join me for a little bit as I work on this. We'll do another sketch And let's put some music on and start the live stream on Instagram. Hope you're having a great day today. We're gonna put a little bit of music on and let me get back to this one. Uh, feel free to say hello, leave questions, comments. I'll be checking in, um, during the stream as always. Alrighty then, just clicking through my playlist. Uh, this is watercolor, so the black ink you see is, is Sharpie. And then I just— I'm throwing down some watercolor. I haven't done watercolor in a while, thought it would be fun. So we're going to take this up to the next level. Um, maybe I'll break out some creative markers on it as well. I'm not really sure. It's the first time I've actually sketched this building. I've I think it was built in 1923. Uh, it's Neo-Classical style, really beautiful building. Again, it's in Chicago, a city I've not been to, but I would love to go visit. Chicago looks like an architectural, um, it's an architectural like showcase of buildings, and I'd love to go check it out sometime.

I'm changing, still fighting, still learning, still trying. No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human.

All right, cool. So, um, threw down some creative marker on here. Let me zoom in. Hey Becky, good to see you on Facebook. I hope you're doing well, Becky. Always, always awesome to see you. And Edie, I see you on the YouTube. Good to see you as well. Hope you are having an amazing Saturday.

Cool.

So if you're just joining me, uh, I am— I'm sketching the, um, London Guarantee Building in Chicago. Yeah. Um, so it's pretty fun. It's a really cool neoclassical building built, I think, I think 1923. Um, the reason I'm sketching it is it served for the exterior location shot for the TV show Perfect Strangers. I love that show, um, one of my favorite sitcoms ever. And I, I am going to a signing tomorrow with the two stars, so I'm excited to be going to that. And I want to present— I want to give them some sketches, so I thought maybe I'd do a building from the TV show. As a backup, I always have the torch sketches I do. I can give out as well. So I've never sketched this building. This is the first time here, and I'll do— I'm going to do another sketch with a close-up of the base of the building. So that's where we're headed to in about maybe 2 minutes. I like this sketch. It's very quick, very loose, very, very fun. Hey Becky, I see you over on the YouTube now. Good to see you. So pretty cool building. I love how loose, loosey-goosey this is. I want to pull out— there's some columns down here. I want to pull these columns out a little bit more. So I have my glasses on. I am freshly cleaned up from some yard work this evening. It was hot and steamy outside. Um, so you're seeing me with with, uh, my hair's not done. It never is. I kid about that. But I made glasses on, but I'll be taking them on and off because I like to get kind of close when I'm working. And if my head is in the way of the camera, please let me know. I have no idea if I'm blocking it or not. And I want to pull these columns out here. They're like 4 massive columns. And I might, I might, you know, I might pull the creative marker and pull this out. What color do I want to put on here? I don't get, I don't get too cray cray with colors on this. Maybe we'll try yellow, maybe see if I can pull out those columns. Kind of got like a big column here, we got a big one there, we got one there, and we got like one here somewhere. There we go. I just want to pull that structure out a little bit. And since I have yellow down here, I kind of want to trickle it up somewhere else. These are not the actual colors of the building, and if you've been following me, you know that I just pick colors mostly from the heart. Um, sometimes, oftentimes it's strategic to putting opposite colors next to each other to get things to read and pop. I'm never trying to duplicate the exact colors of a building. I go for a vibe. Sketching for me is about creating different vibes. Cool. And again, I don't get too cray cray, but just some yellow just to tie it in a little bit. Pretty cool. What else do I want to do?

This—

I want to do some cross-hatching shadows, and I think we'll wrap this one up and we'll do another quick sketch. So let's do some cross-hatching. I'm gonna put some music on in my ears.

Let's do this.

Unless if you want to hear music, let me know. I could put on my, uh, invisibly caffeinated playlist. More than happy to do that. Again, if my head is in the way, please let me know, cuz some people do say I have a big head. I don't think I do. This building is interesting. It has kind of a curvature to it, which I'm going to pick up a little bit. I'm going to turn this sideways. I'm using a clipboard tonight to hold down my paper, so it's kind of a good pro tip. Just a standard clipboard, nothing fancy schmancy about it. Give a little shading, a little hatching. A little depth to the building. There's something I want to add on here. I want to put the name of the, the newspaper that he worked for called the Chicago Chronicle, but I don't think I fit the whole thing. But maybe I'll just put Chronicle somewhere down, down here just as a nod to this sketch. Let me pull out the edge of the building too, a little bit darker. Kind of cool. I'm vibing with it. Like it, like it. All right, let's do that sign thing across the bottom. It's glasses on, glasses off kind of night. Um, love the colors, uh, fab light and shadow effects. Oh, thank you, Becky, so cool. I appreciate that. I always appreciate your feedback. Thank you so much. Yeah, let's do the sign. It's going to say Chronicle. I think I'm going to Mm, don't want to just do blue. I don't need blue anywhere else. Purple, it's going to go right down in here. You know, I'm going to do blue. My brain's saying blue, so let's just put blue down. It's going to be super, super duper tiny. I will put the sign there, and since I have blue there, I— if I have a color in one place, I kind of like to put it in other places too. Just to tie, tie things together visually.

I think that's good.

It's enough blue for now. All right, let me get my white gel pen. What's— I want to see what's the smallest point size I have is. This is 1.0. I hope I have something smaller. Definitely not that. Uh, this is also, I think, a 1.0. All right, I guess we're going for the 1.0. Wait, what do we got here? One zero— no, oh, eight. This is an 08. All right, this one's a little smaller. All right, let's see. Hopefully it works. There is no way I'm going to write the word Chronicle on it. Oh boy, I don't have— I don't have a small enough point. So is this an 05? No, is it? Well, It says 05 on the cap. Hold on, we're going to do a point comparison here. This one's definitely smaller. You only live once, let's just do it. I'm thinking too much. What has less— what has less letters, Chicago or Chronicle? C-H-I-C-A-G-O, 7. Chronicle, C-H-R-O-N-I-C-L-E. All right, Chicago. Maybe I can fit Chicago on here. All right, I got Chicago on there. Chronicle was not going to happen. I think this one's done. We'll move on to a different sketch. Pretty cool. So let me zoom out, you can see the whole thing. And what I'll do is I'll do a few sketches. I'll pick the best two to give away, sign it. I'll put my Inspired Life, uh, QR code on it as well. But here you can see there it says Chicago, really, really small.

Cool.

All right, and then let's throw a frame around just for fun. This one is a little small. Um, I like the frame around it, it looks cool. My brain's debating whether or not I should color the background behind the building, but I'm not going to. I'm going to leave that till the end if I do it. I don't think I'm going to color it, actually. I think we'll leave it white. This frame is mega big, but we can get an idea if I kind of do this. This actually looks really cool with a vertical frame on it. I like you, like you. All right, next. All right, so we got one down. We're gonna do a different view, same building. We're gonna focus on the base of the building. Uh, I'm sketching in Fabriano 1264 watercolor paper, my go-to watercolor paper. 4 by 8 inches, is that right? Yeah, 4 by 8. Love this format. And I just kind of sketch like this. I'll zoom out. Actually, I don't know if I'll zoom out. Sorry if you can't see my watercolor palette.

If I do this a little bit better, maybe we'll do that for now. All right, cool.

All right, we're gonna do— start with our Sharpie again. Why do I start with a Sharpie? Because I know when I go to add watercolor, it's not going to bleed the black ink. So I love using a Sharpie. All right, same building, we're going to go to a lower bottom view. I need a, I need a rough image, rough image, because I have never sketched before. Well, never sketched this building before. Excuse me. All right, all right, let's do a loosey-goosey sketch. And I am, I'm actually going to play some music for you guys because I want to hear as well. So just going to give you a heads up, I am going to put some music on. It won't be loud, and you might let me know if it dominates my voice, but I'll probably be sketching for a few without, without talking. All right, so let's do this. We'll just go to— we'll just hit the playlist again.

All right, here we go.

This is simply being human. I've carried doubts like heavy stone, felt the weight when I'm alone. I've lit the dark with smaller sparks, found my strength inside the marks. Every flaw, every bruise, I Every lesson painfully learned, all the moments that left me torn made me someone worth fighting for. I'm stumbling, I'm rising, falling, realizing I'm changing. Still fighting, still learning, still trying. No script. No plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human. I'm not here to be flawless. I'm not here to pretend. I'm here to keep moving again and again. I'm Here to keep choosing a life I can stand, a life that's my own. I'm still becoming, I'm still becoming. I'm stumbling, I'm rising, falling I'm changing, still fighting, still learning, still trying. No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human.

All right, so this is interesting. I, um, I did not sketch nearly as much as I wanted. I am— I got cut way short on this paper, so I wanted to fit more of the underneath on here. And that's okay. We're— I'll keep sketching on this. We'll play around with it. Um, it's not the view I was hoping to capture. I'm way off the scale, and that's okay. That's— again, it's— this is just fun, guys. I'm just throwing down lines, and I'm not about perfection. It's— if anything, you know, I just know I can redo and just start, you know, make it smaller or do it vertically, but I want to give a horizontal try. Instead of sitting here fearing that it would be horrible and I would screw it up, I just wanted to go for it and throw, throw it down and see what I could do with this interesting view, um, of the building. But in reality, I wanted to capture— in reality, I wanted to capture kind of a block like this. Let me sketch it smaller. Boom, boom. To be really good, like, I want to slice kind of this verticality like this, and I only got like half of that box, and that's that half of the box. Let's just keep sketching. Let's throw down some colors on it, and I'll just do it. I'll do another one. No big deal, right? Sometimes we just, we just freak out. We're like, oh my God, what did I do? It's horrible. Um, well, yeah, maybe it is, but you know what? You learn from it. You learn. And I learned that I didn't capture the whole view, but you know what? It still gives me a chance to play around with colors and mess around with it. And I'm not going to let that stop me because this is the part I love, just throwing lines down, throwing colors down, and seeing what happens. Um, yeah, I've been loving mixing some red and blue to make purple, so that kind of up here. I'm just going to throw some down. A little more red, it's kind of bluish. Boom, there we go. The thing I love about watercolor is I just love when it dries and how it just changes so much. That's like the magic of watercolor is, for me, it's the drying and the transformation that happens, um, after it dries. And you can see with this one we did here, I have some of that purple. Let's throw some more on there. Uh, let's grab some— let's grab some yellow, but I'm going to use my Taxi Cab Yellow. I love, I love Taxi Cab Yellow. That's what I call this color right here. I don't know. I should know the real name. I don't really know what the real name of it is. I probably knew it, I forgot it, and that's okay. My, my brain cells don't need to remember the exact name of colors because it's— well, it's not the name I care about, it's the color. So there you go. I mean, I could always look it up if I needed to. Look at that. Oh my gosh. I love the way the water is going. I love the way this is all trailing down. For me, that was worth the price of admission on this sketch right there. Oh, that was so fun. Let's break out some orange. We're going to go cray cray with this.

Cray cray.

Welcome to the world of cray cray. I'm just going to let the water work its magic. I'm working at an angle, so everything's kind of going down the page, which is a fan fave of mine to do. So I would say 9 times out of 10, I will use— work with watercolor at an angle. Digging into some turquoise here, and this will be fun, guys. I'll show you probably tomorrow this after it dries because I'm going to keep working on it. We'll bring it to life. I like— I like what's happening. Or it might be dry before we wrap tonight. We'll see, but stay tuned. You can see the magic of how this dries. All right, I'm going to put this aside and let's do another sketch and bring it close up.

Boom!

It's kind of cool. Go with it, see where it takes you. Yeah, Becky, you're right. You just keep— you got to keep going with it. You never know, but you never know where it's going to take you. And I'm just letting the gravity kind of move the colors around a little bit. Boom. All right, we're gonna let that dry. That'll be fun to add some detail to. All right, let's give this— let's give this sketch a try, another try. Should I do it vertical? Hmm, yeah, I'm going to try to capture this as a vertical sliver. My gosh, it's almost 10 o'clock. What the heck, where does the time go? All right, let's do this again. We'll start up here.

All right, cool.

All right, we got that. I want this kind of massive piece happening here. This boom boom. All right, my brain's thinking too much. We know what happens when I think too much, right? So let me know in the chat, what happens when I start thinking too much? While I'm sketching? Does anybody know? I know what happens. Yeah, I'm liking the verticality of this better. I really just want to get this arch right here.

Cool.

All right, that works. There we go. And we got another column kind of Off to the side here. Yeah, this will be fun. I think I'm going to outline it, we'll throw down some color, we'll bring in some Creative Marker, and I'm starting to picture this in my brain a little bit where it's headed. So I have a sneak peek in my brain, and I'm okay if it changes. What I put up here in my brain as I'm working isn't set in stone. It's, it's a changing target. I don't always get a visual of where I'm headed, but I have a visual kind of popping in now. We'll see where it goes. Yeah, and then here got some cool windows. Here, here I'm gonna have a sign that says Chronicle right there. Boom, that's where my sign's gonna be. I got doors underneath. All right, this is capturing enough of the context I wanted.

Perfect.

So this will be really cool when I add color to it. And then the building does continue up. Again, this is just a small kind of portion of it. Uh, there's some windows kind of happening up in here. I'm going to block them in just so lightly. We got a kind of a cornice piece here.

All right, I think that's all the detail I want to sketch on there.

I'm going to throw down some color.

Cool.

All right, let me throw down some background color, and this will be like the last thing we do tonight because I'll let it dry and I'll work, work on it in the morning. I'm just gonna throw it on as this kind of dirty watercolor. I'm just mixing up some purple. A little more water, a little more red. I just want to flow a little bit more. It's not, not purpley enough for me.

Oh, that's better.

It's kind of color a little more reddish through in there. Again, this is just a background because I will— I'll come on top of it with some, um, either more watercolor or markers or even colored pencil. I'm not sure yet. But I'm just laying down, laying down, um, just kind of think of it as like layer 1, or layered. Layer 1 is a sharpie, layer 2 is this kind of quick wash, layer 3 will be when I start pulling out some of the detail a little bit more depending, you know, whatever medium I'm going to decide to use. I'm not sure yet. Yeah, this will be cool when I start. I think I'm gonna— after it dries, I'll come back with a Sharpie. I'll pull out some details, and then, um, I'm already picturing in my brain I'm going to use some Creative Marker. So yeah, so sometimes I do think ahead when I'm sketching. Lots of times I don't. Right now I am kind of thinking ahead a little bit, but I'm not letting it stop me. It's just kind of guiding me to a stopping point for tonight. So you can kind of— you're just kind of hearing what's going inside, what's going on inside my— on inside my brain. When I get tired, I can't talk. Does that happen to anybody else? When you get tired, you just like, you can't talk, you slur your words. That is me. I don't drink, so I'm not slurring because of that. I just— my brain gets tired. All right, cool. I kind of like where this is for a drying point. I want to touch a little bit of this here.

All right, cool.

A little bit down here as well. All right, I think this is like a good drying point. I feel like, I feel like when it dries, I can kind of picture what it's going to be like when it dries. And I'm just sticking with the same color palette I used for this one. So this is kind of a close-up view of— this area is a close-up view of what's happening down here in that arch. So it's kind of what I'm capturing, just a small segment of that. And then this will also say— I should be able to fit Chicago Chronicle on this. This will be the blue sign you see here. Says Chicago. This will be the sign here, the blue sign. So these are kind of the companion pieces. And I think, um, yeah, I'll wrap these up. I'll, I'll give these sketches away tomorrow. That'll be fun. Um, I think I'll throw in a torch as well. So it'll be a few torches here. Let's pick out the best two if you're still online. If you're still watching, I'd love for you to help me pick out the best two torches that I'm going to show you. So if you're still there, I'd love some feedback. If not, that's okay, I get it. All right, here are the torches I have. Let me know. Let me move this out of the way. And this is how this one's drying, by the way. I love the colors on this, so This will be fun to play with. All right, we'll call that Torch 1, Torch 2. Oops, I'm gonna make some more room. Let's do this. Torch 1, 2. Cool if I close that up. Oh my gosh, I need to clear my desk off. All right, 1, 2— sorry, 3. Uh, this is my New York Knicks one, we'll put— we'll call that one 3. And 4. It's hard to see them all. 1, 2, 3, 4. So which of those two do you think are your favorites? Let me know in the chat. 1, 2, 3, 4. And while you're doing that, we'll wrap up for tonight. Made some great progress. This had so much fun. I'm loving this color right here, by the way. This color is— that rusty color is the bomb. Yes. I don't know if I can say that on Instagram, uh, YouTube. No, I'm on Instagram too. And if you're watching on Instagram, hello! I have not seen the Instagram chat, so I don't know if anybody's watching on Instagram. I haven't been able to see it tonight. Yeah, that was looking cool. All right, let those dry, let that dry. Boom shakalaka! And we'll end the Instagram Live. We'll close that one down. Hey, Lori Jean, good to see you. Hope all's well. Thank you for your feedback, I appreciate it. I appreciate that. Thank you for watching, uh, as well. So, 2. 2, not an easy choice. So you like 2 the best? That's a cool choice.

So 2.

All right, so we'll give 2 away tomorrow, and I'm going to pick another one. So if I had to pick a fave, I have to say I like 3. I kind of like 3. 1, 2, 3. I like this one. I like this. I like these two. This is my least favorite one, but I think these two, um, I just like the really loosey sketchy quality of this one. So maybe I'll give these two away. Cool, that's gonna be so much fun. So I am excited about the meet and greet tomorrow. That'll be awesome, awesome. Something fun to do, something different to do, and more fun just to give away some artwork and connect.

That is—

that's what it's about. All right, I appreciate you watching. Your time is valuable, and I appreciate you spending some of it with me. Um, So Edie, was good to see you on YouTube, and Becky and Lori, thank you all for participating in the chat. It means so much to me. Becky says, I really like 1 and 3, bright and colorful, really draws you in. Becky likes 1 and 3. Yeah, so these two, right? Yeah, I mean, I totally get it. It is a hard choice, and that's a good thing. That means it's a good thing. Very cool. All right, so I, I mean, we'll just bring them all and be like, hey, would you like to pick one? As I hold up the line of— I don't know how many people will be there. Hey, would you want to pick one? I want to pick a torch. I'll just bring them. I'll bring them all with me. Of course, I'll bring my Lockbie portfolio, which is back there. Or maybe we'll bring my original one and only field journal, the one that started my love of Lockbie, right here. Maybe we'll hang tomorrow instead. All right, I appreciate you. Keep using your creativity for positivity out there in the world. Until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and embrace imperfection. Stay tuned for the next show where I'll show you the final sketches we did tonight. See you.