Sketching Maine : Loose Style Ink and Watercolor

Hey, how are you today? Jason here, The Inkspired Life. Hope you're doing awesome. Outside, the sound might be wonky, but that's okay. Impromptu live, going crazy. Batteries are running low, but I wanted to pop on and do some sketching. We're gonna do some Maine-inspired sketching here, maybe for 10 or 15 minutes. So I hope you're doing awesome today. Let's see, click, click, click. All right, perfect. So it's been a while. I've been pretty, pretty busy doing stuff, good stuff. Just busy, so I haven't been live streaming. And yeah, it kind of stinks, but I'd love to be doing it more regularly. But sometimes schedule just is crazy and I'm tired at night. So thanks for bearing with me. I know it's not a consistent schedule. I gotta work on that consistency. But what, what is remaining consistent is sketching. I'm always trying to sketch something. Every day, even, um, just for a few minutes. Get some water here. Hopefully it's live streaming. I can't tell.

Let me move this.

I'm gonna open a window here. If you're watching, feel free to say hello. It's always great to, um, see you guys. So here's what I've got. So I've been working on Maine-inspired sketching. Shout out to my friend Rue right here, MrRueDoodles.com, who has been mentoring and guiding and encouraging me on doing some landscape stuff. So I shout out to you, my friend. Here's some practice pieces. Every piece is a practice piece for me when we're sketching. And that's part of the mindset, just have an open mind to Just be playful. Just put things on paper. This is just practice and it's cool. I mean, I got scribbles going on here. Another example. Hey, Karen, good to see you. Hope you're doing well. Another example.

Boom.

And another one. So again, shout out to my friend Rue who has been encouraging me with landscape stuff, Maine stuff. And here's what I want to do. I have a friend, she sent me a picture here. If you can see it that well, probably not 'cause of the sun. She was just in Maine, saw this, sent me a picture of a lighthouse, and I thought it'd be fun to sketch this and paint it for her. Here is what I'm doing, something kind of random. I'm taking an accordion journal, one of these bad boys that unfolds, and I am gonna open up and start somewhere in this, I don't know where, random. And I just figured I'd start sketching and doing a lighthouse in the accordion journal and seeing what happens. Yeah, so I'm popping on today just to get it started. Hey, he's in the house! Good to see you. I'm so glad you guys are popping on again. I'm so sorry I have not been, uh, live lately. I've been, well, alive but not live. I'm gonna sketch and talk, guys. I've just been so busy with— and nothing bad, just a lot of stuff for the school year that's headed my way. And I just lost a picture I was sketching. Let me reopen it. So yeah, that, and then I had a trip to Maine— not to Maine, to North Carolina to visit Friend. So it's been busy. I'm glad to be here and I always love talking to you guys. Let me know if you have any questions. I hope you are well. I'm gonna start this, I'm just gonna sketch in some rocks here, bit of formation going on, big chunky rocks. And then we're gonna— this is gonna be an accordion sketchbook, so it's gonna spread out, but we'll just— so we're starting in this section here and see where it takes us. And I have— we're gonna bleed that ink. I have some water here and a brush. Hopefully you guys can see this okay. School starts next week, so embrace the sunshine while I can. Tuesday, teachers head back next Tuesday, which is cool. I love teaching, so I'm not sad that summer's coming to an end. It's been a working summer for me, so I really did not take If I maybe took 7 days where I did absolutely nothing, that was about it. Um, I had architecture projects I've been working on, which I'm blessed and grateful for. Other fun projects as well. So no complaints on that one. All right, so we're just sketching in some rocks here. Hey, Chip's in the house. Chip, Good to see you, man. We need to catch up. I have 2 lighthouses to send you from OBX. Yeah, please. I would love for you to send them. I'd love to do sketches and it'd be amazing. You're awesome. I'm sorry I missed your call the other day. It's silly of me. I'm one to keep the ringer on my phone. I always do that. I totally missed the call and I knew you were calling. So my bad. And so we got some chunky rocks going on here. This pen I am using is a— IiPen. IiPen. Shout out to Rue who gave this to me. So I've never really used it. I don't even know who makes it. Maybe that's the company. Aye, aye, aye, Captain. I don't know. Grant says for some reason I have no audio, so I will just watch.

Hmm.

Can you guys hear me? Let me know.

I changed microphones.

Can you hear me now? Let me know. Hopefully you can hear me. I'm not sure what's up with that. I'm gonna sketch the buildings with a Sharpie because I don't really want them to bleed. Of course I have a Sharpie here somewhere. Me without a Sharpie is a rare thing. There's one in here. Let me grab this. Boom. Yeah, let me know in the chat, can, can you guys hear me or not? I'm curious. Or maybe you don't want to hear me. Just getting ready, getting me ready for school where the kids don't really want to hear me. So we're just doing a quick loosey-goosey sketch, never striving for perfection. I like this lighthouse. It's kind of stubby. I wish I knew the name of it off the top of my head. Sorry, I didn't look it up. I'll post the name of it. And this is kind of quick, loosey-goosey style. Boom. The reason I'm using Sharpie is I don't want this ink to bleed when I Start adding water because I don't want a muddy, soupy-looking lighthouse. I want to keep it a little more crisp. It's still loose, but it won't bleed. Sound is really, really low. Thanks, guys. I can hear you. Have to turn the volume up. Hey Chris, good to see you. I'm gonna move this closer. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? It's using my Mac mic, my Mac mic. Let me know, can you hear me now? I hope you can hear me better. I'll talk louder. Thanks for the feedback, guys. All right, let's throw in some trees. We got some scrubby stuff happening here, maybe. Boom, scrubbies. And throw in just some kind of trees happening. I know they don't look like trees yet, but they will. We're just, we're just throwing in some kind of lines here. Very scrappy. Scrappy. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? All right. I'm gonna bleed this ink, and you'll see these will, these will transform. That's how all these trees started here, same idea. We'll just bleed some of it now. Maybe I'll throw down some color. And you'll want to stick around for another minute or 2. I want to show you something cool that I got in the mail today from Linda. So Linda, if you're watching, it's so cool. All right, cool. So I'm just bleeding the ink a little bit. And again, the idea is this is an accordion book, so I will be, you know, continuing the sketch at some point. On either side of the paper. Throw a little bit more down, then we'll break out some, some colors, I think. There are a lot of trees here. Just sketch some more in. Not all the trees have to be perfectly straight, right? They can be twisted and leaning and the Leaning Tower of Treesa. I hope I said that loud enough. My audio says it's showing on here.

All right, cool.

Let's throw some green on here. Um, quick show and tell. So I got this cool Check out this little keychain palette thingy. Um, shout out to Linda for sending this to me. It's so cool. I haven't put paint in it yet, but check this out. How awesome, right? So cool. So I can't wait to use, use this.

All right.

So cool. And here's another small Altoid tin. Shout out to Roo for this one. But boom. So these are the main colors I've been using. I can do a post later on with the colors and let you know what they are. Honestly, I don't remember off the top of my head the names, but I have it photographed somewhere. I'm using an Aqua Brush. Aqua Rush. It is cute, right? Hey, Edie, can you hear me better? I hope so. All right, let's throw down some fun colors on here. We're just gonna go cray-cray. Um, I have a darker green, but it's inside, but we'll come back and add that later. Right now I just kind of want the ink and the colors to bleed. Um, again, right, keeping it fast and loose and quick. Let's just bring— I'm going to throw— I'm just going to throw blocks of color in here without any trees or anything sketched. So there's another cool way to do it, just throw down your background blocks in of color. You can always come back later and add on top of it, right? I love how this is bleeding here.

Boom.

Um, Chip, good question. I will find out the information. Um, well, I'll find out the information, but here, here's, um, an idea that Linda suggested, and Something I've been working on actually behind the scenes. I can design and 3D print these. I have, I have a 3D printer at home, I have them at school, so I, I'm intrigued to try to design something and 3D print it, which would be cool. But in the meantime, I will, I will find out the information and let you know. All right, let's throw down some more colors. We've got some trees happening. I'm gonna throw down some rock colors here. This is a cool color. It's— again, I can't remember the names. I will post them for you guys, so check back later, or I will put it on my Facebook and YouTube. I'm gonna throw down some more Instagram. Instagram, I'll just post it on there for you guys. I wish I could remember, but this is a really cool kind of mossy, mossy color, more brown than green. And I'm thinking a little too much, but I just want to kind of lay it down here. Again, I'm just being quick because that's part of the fun.

That's cute.

Yeah, that keychain is cute.

It's—

I can't wait to try it. I hope you guys can see this okay with the light out here. I thought it'd be fun to pop outside, and next time I'll bring my microphone. I have one I could have brought out. I wasn't thinking. Well, I was thinking but not thinking. Thinking but not thinking.

Huh. Cool.

All right, I love these colors. These are fun. Here's a cool orange. And it's okay if I lose some of the black line work here, the ink that's bleeding. I like it, but I can come back and pull out some of these shapes later if I want, so that's not a problem. So don't be afraid just to, um, you know, come back at another time and pull out shapes. We can do it with a black pen or Sometimes I've been doing these white outlines with white gel pen, which I kind of like. So there's all different ways you could pull out, pull out the shapes. So don't be afraid if you feel like you've lost them. I like— I love how this is drying. This is looking really cool here. Let's just kind of bleed some of that out a little bit. All right, cool. Let's throw down— I love this color. I want to say this is periwinkle, but I don't— it might not be. This is a great kind of purpley-blue color. If you're watching this on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram, feel free to give me a thumbs up. Share this, please. That'd be awesome. I do love coming on here and doing livestream sketching and painting. It's so fun. And I'm sorry, I just have not been consistent with my schedule, but it's all good. All right, cool. I'm loving these colors. Look at that, that's fun. Awesome. So let me know if you guys have any questions or comments. I don't know. I don't think I'm on Instagram Live. Maybe I am. If I'm on Insta— hello, I got a message, an error message. I wasn't streaming somewhere, so I don't think it's going on Insta right now. Uh, let's grab— I don't know, there's like a brown. This might be the— this might be the copper. Kettle or copper penny color?

Uh-huh.

I'm going pretty heavy on the watercolor here, and I'm kind of loading the brush up a lot. Yeah, this is cool. I think my favorite part of the whole scene right now is right here. I'm gonna move it out of the shadow right here. I love the colors right there. So cool. Um, I wish I had my yellow. I left that inside. That would be— I'd pop some yellow down here. So I don't have that with me. We got a, like, a bright orange. This might be Pumpkin Orange. You know I love my pops of color, right? The trick with these landscapes for me is to pop the color down but not get too, too cheesy with it. I want to keep my kind of vibe, my style. And not get— go to Cheesetown with it, because Cheesetown is not good for my cholesterol. It's not good for my, uh, for these watercolors. So you have— you may have noticed I have not used any fluorescent pink on any of these, these main— and it's hard for me to refrain from using like these cray-cray colors, but I I threw some down, but I'm trying to keep— for me, try to keep a reserved color palette. I put reserved in quotes because I still want it to be me and my voice, and I need to have some pops of color because that's just who I am, right? It's what I love doing with my sketches. Yeah, oh man, look at that. Boom. I like the white space here. I'm gonna leave that white space. You can see the sun is shifting out here. We got some shadows kind of happening. I do hope you guys can hear me better, but that's okay if you can't because you can at least see what I'm doing. That's the most important thing.

I'm gonna go ahead and So I'm throwing down this—

it's kind of a lighter green, minty. I'll call it minty. It's like a minty green. Give it some at the base. So I'm not, I'm not even looking at the reference picture anymore. I just wanted to get the lighthouse And the rest of it's just gonna be my vibe and what I'm feeling. So that's what's happening, guys. Pretty cool, huh? And I'm outside. You might hear landscapers, random people talking. What else? Let's throw some water down. I don't I don't have my blue out here, so I'm gonna use this kind of just tropical blue for now. I'll come back and throw a dark blue on it later, just so you guys get the idea that there's water happening here. I was just squeezing water onto the paper. So now when I come back, you kind of— the paper is pre-moistened just so the paint runs a little bit better. Again, I'm bleeding it out because I do want this scene to eventually continue. We're going to expand this on this accordion journal. I don't know how far, so I kind of picked a random page to start with. I didn't start at the beginning. And we're just gonna expand this out. I figured if I started in the middle, it would give me more freedom to go as wide or un-wide as I wanted to. This is actually— this is a nice— I like this blue color. We'll just kind of continue out there a little bit. It's pretty cool. Hey Dirk, good to see you. Dirk is on all the way from Germany. I hope you can hear me, Dirk. I know my microphone's kind of low here, but Good to see you. Thank you guys for watching live. I appreciate this and commenting and saying hello. I do hope you're all well on this Monday. It's one almost one thirty p.m. here. I, I actually am liking that blue. Thank you for the heart. Thank you for the thumbs up. I see it. I didn't do my hair today. Um, when you guys let me know in the chat, what do you think?

Do you—

are you vibing with this? Not vibing? Does it look cool? I'm curious. I'd love your feedback. Um, I'm gonna bleed some gray on these, on these stones now.

Let's—

to do that, I don't— I do have some I think I have some black. Is this Payne's Gray or black? I don't remember. Or, or neither. Let's see, this might be the purple. Oh yeah, this is, this is, um, purple. You can use it. I kind of like it. I mean, I do like the color, so. I don't mind using it.

Boom.

This would actually be cool maybe to use in the shadows back here, but to get the, the black I want, or the— what I'll do is I'll just bleed some of the ink. So I can literally just bleed this ink here. Let's, um, here's that other side, right? So I didn't, I didn't draw any trees there. I just threw the background color. So I'm trying something a little different on this. I've done it before in architecture stuff. Um, I'll show you, I'll show you something in a minute, but I'm doing it on this side. I want to throw the colors, then we'll throw the trees on. On top of it. And I'm just, just being playful, that's all. I could blot some of that out. All right, it's looking cool. I think I'm gonna let it dry. In a minute, I'll do a quick show and tell and we'll wrap up.

All right, cool.

All right, so here's how it's, how it's looking. All right, awesome. So we're gonna let this dry for a sec. Let's do a show and tell quick here. Again, if you're watching, hello, good to see you. I'm outside, microphone might be low, but that's okay as long as you can see what we're doing. If you're on YouTube, give me that thumbs up, please. Let's get other people watching. Facebook, whatever, just share, share, share with your friends. All right, here's show and tell. So you guys know I've been loving these, um, Uglybooks. They are my new go-to sketchbook. Love the colors. If you go to— there's a link. If you go to the link in the description here, uh, if you use my link, you can get 10% off for a first-time buyer. If you still use my link and you've bought before, that's okay. I appreciate it because I get a little Just a little bit, but thank you. Uglybooks.co, C-O, not com. Uglybooks.co/theinkspiredlife. Check them out. And here's what I love doing with these. This is chartreuse paper. Love this color. Shout out to Linda. Um, I'm gonna do this upside down. So these have been fun. I've been Taking my creative markers and just kind of doing random backgrounds and sketching on top, typically with a white gel pen. So this is, um, this is Bass Harbor Headlight, which is the one I'm sketching now, I think. So Pretty cool looking, right? It's very different, very, very loose, and I just throw the colors on the background random, so that's fun. Thank you for the thumbs up out there. I see that on the chat. Thank you so much. Um, so that's been a lot of fun to do. There's other things there. I think it's the only main one I have in here. What else do I have? I went to a sculpture garden last— or a couple Fridays ago, I can't remember. This is like a mermaid statue that was there in a sculpture garden. This is New York City. This is a view from Central Park looking towards the plaza. Here's the plaza. So same idea, just random colors and sketching on top with a white gel pen.

Boom.

Let's see, what else do we have in here?

Oh, that's cool.

Find something cool. This was a— this was a caterpillar. This is like an Alice in Wonderland caterpillar sculpture in the sculpture garden. This is my take on that. It really does go vertical. That's how the statue was. I was looking at it, but you can kind of see, right, the colors.

Boom.

So, uh, I didn't finish. This was a Pegasus statue I didn't finish. But I started to sketch it. Um, you can see just throwing down these random background colors, it's fun. It's a great way to keep loose because I'm not thinking about adding color. I'm really thinking about adding where I'm sketching on top of it, but not the colors that I'm filling in. Like here, I'm thinking more about, um, the colors where I'm gonna fill, fill them in. Versus just sketching on top. So it's a different technique if you're looking for ideas or ways to keep loose. That's a good exercise to try. All right, cool. I'm gonna wrap up in a minute. Let me know if you have any final questions. I hope this has been fun. I will— this is, this is not done. I will come back and work on it maybe tonight or tomorrow. I'm not sure. Um, I'll probably livestream. I'll try to livestream when I continue with it. And yeah, do I want to do anything before I leave? Yeah, you know what I want to do? I do want to just bleed some ink and make some gray stones here. So that's a good way since I don't have any Payne's gray or watercolor. I can just really throw down some ink and just bleed it from that pen. I can't bleed the Sharpie ink. That's why I did this because I don't want the building to get all mucky. So I purposely use a Sharpie there, but where I want the ink to bleed, like we'll do some down here. I want to make this darker, so we're just letting that happen. Letting that happen. There is one last color I'm going to throw down before I go because I just thought of it. How many times have I said one last thing? One last color. Thank you, Dirk, for watching. Chris, thank you for your saying nice. I appreciate that. I hope you're doing well. I always appreciate you tuning in. You might be my furthest viewer today. All the way from Germany. That's so cool. I love it. What is the time? What is the time in Germany right now? Or at least where you are. All right, I'm gonna throw down this last color here today. This is a— is it called Coastal Blue? Maybe. Again, if you want to know the colors, I will post them. Stay tuned. I'm digging into that kind of coastal blue color, and we're gonna kind of splash up some of that on the rocks here. It's a pretty cool color. I can even use some of that in the rocks if I wanted. Here's what I actually like to do. Watch this, guys. This will be fun. Fun way to end this. Watch, we'll do it here. I'm going to throw this down, make it pretty wet, and then literally just go like this.

Oh, that's cool.

So it kind of looks like maybe some waves or water washing up. 7:36 PM in Germany. Thank you, sir. Cool, right? That's fun. Do the same thing down here.

Awesome.

All right, I think with that we're gonna wrap for now. Let me get this out of the— you can see the sun is moving out here. Try to get that all in.

The light.

Cool. Thank you guys for watching. I appreciate your time so much. This is so much fun. Can't wait to work on this one again. Um, until we meet again, sketch boldly. Oh my gosh. Sketch boldly. Be creative and embrace imperfection. Hit that thumbs up on the way out. Let's share the stream. Thank you guys so much. See you soon.