Sketching NYC Chinatown Inspired Street : Part 1

Hello. Happy Wednesday, August 21st. Hope you're having an awesome day today. I'm popping on for a few minutes to do some sketching. It's nine o'. Clock. I'm only gonna be on maybe 15 minutes or so. I always say that and end up staying longer, but let's see if we can stick to 15 minutes. I thought tonight it would be fun to sketch a New York City city inspired street scene. This one's going to be very loosely based on Chinatown over in Manhattan. So what I'm going to try to do is, let's see, I'm going to pull up a photo as a quick reference. So let me just go here. But I hope you're doing great today. Hopefully. I hope you did something creative. If you haven't yet, maybe join me or, you know, grab a sheet of paper, pen or pencil and do some sketching. That would be so cool. So let's see if I have an image here. If I don't, there's always a backup. Normally when I come on the live streams, I don't really even know what I'm going to be sketching. I just kind of, I wing it that way. I like to create in the spur of the moment and off the cuff. I feel like if I'm going to sketch something I know about, I'm going to want to plan it out too much. And sometimes the more I plan the end result of a sketch, the more. What's the word? I guess the more precise I feel like it has to be and the more I fear of actually doing it. I know that makes sense. So because I, I'm going to know the outcome. Um, in this case today, I just know I want something similar to a Chinatown vibe. Nothing exact. So, yeah, so lots of live streams you watch will be me just kind of coming up with something right in the moment. All right, so I'm going to pull up this image. I'll put it on screen. I want to thank an amazing live streamer. His name is sifat and his streaming channel is the NYC Walking Show. I've met him a few times. He's a great, great person. And this is actually a screen cap from his walk he did last night. So shout out to CFAT if you happen to go over to his stream and watch it one day live, just put in the comments that you heard about his channel from me. So this is just gonna be, like I said, just really loosey goosey kind of sketch here. All right, so if you don't know it, I have this Kind of framework I use when I sketch architecture. It's called Sketch S, K, E, T, C, H. And the C actually has three Cs for it. Sometimes this will change. It's a work in progress. But the S in sketch framework stands for see the world in creative and childlike sense of wonder. Wondrous ways. So we're just going to look at the S part of sketch tonight. And for me, when I'm looking at this picture, some of the things I'm imagining them back to when I was like five, the good old days. These are the good new days. You know, I'm seeing these balloon like structures, you know, yellow orbs. Pretty cool. Almost look like floating volleyballs. I know they're lamps. I'm seeing different colors. I've seen greens, blues, whites, red, yellows, Shapes. Right. As children, we tend to explore the world in the built world in shapes. So when I'm looking at this image, you know, I see those, those spheres. I'm seeing rectangles. What else am I seeing? Squares. I see a green kind of like post or column on the left. I see different textures. I see like a metal door here. I see a pave road, brick, buildings. So. So the S in the sketch framework stands for see the world in creative and wondrous ways. So that's kind of how we're going to approach this. So I'll keep this on, on screen for a little bit. I don't want to block my sketch. So we're going to do a perspective and it's going to be loosey goosey perspective. It's not going to be precise, technical, no measuring. It's just going to be kind of just going, going for it and laying down some lines. That's often how I capture sketches, perspectives. I'm just kind of throwing some angles down. You'll see what I mean. So I know I'm kind of, I haven't started sketching, kind of rambling a little bit, but I just want to give you guys a setup of something. Some of the things we're going to be taking a look at. This will probably be a two part live stream. Again, tonight's gonna be pretty short, about 15 minutes and then I'll wrap it up sometime later in the week. All right. As I before I get going, I see Becky and Linda. Hey, two of my original inklings. You guys are awesome. Thanks for popping on. It's so good to see you. So I forgot to send a message out, but hopefully you guys are still available for our inkling. Zoom on Sunday. All right, cool. And Mickey, welcome. Mickey, great to see you also. All right, let me see. Should I zoom in? How do I want to do this picture is really. That can be smaller. I don't need it to be too big. All right, all right, let's make this big here. I also want to thank everybody who has voted for me in this lock me competition. I know I keep talking about it and posting about it. I don't usually enter contests and I'm just finding this one to be pretty exciting and fun. I was up there. I was up there in third place. Now I'm like knocked down to fifth some, which is cool. There's some really great photos there. But I would love to come in the top three. So if you haven't voted, I have links at the top of the comments. All right. I'm chatting too much. Alright, let's sketch this thing. I'm just moving windows around, having kind of a different setup here. What's really cool is this almost looks like a movie set, but this is actually it's in Chinatown. And what's standing out to me when I want to set up a perspective is I'm going to look at two things. Probably the easiest way to get the idea of depth here is look at the sidewalk or the curb where the sidewalk ends. So that's where I'm going to start sketching. And I'm using creative license. I'm ignoring some of the things we see or a lot of the things. Then I'm gonna. There's kind of an edge of a building here. I'm gonna do a vertical line. There's many different ways to do perspective sketches. Sometimes I'll. Lots of times I'll even draw a little frame. But we'll do that a different time. I'll. I'll put together a series of how to do quick perspectives. The quick. The quick easy way to do perspectives without measuring. That's a great title for a YouTube video. Mental note, I'll have to go back and listen to this. I'm just kind of pulling out some edges I see of buildings here. I personally have not been to Chinatown. I haven't walked around this area. It's actually really cool. And especially at night when the streets are lit up with these lamps, these lanterns. This is the awning. You see the big yellow awning on the left hand side. I'm going to sketch that in. So I'm just putting in lines that my eyes are being drawn to. Let me kind of have. Let's just show this kind of green column here. It has a tapered base happening, something like that. If you have any questions or comments for me, just put them in the chat and I'll be checking. Again. I'm doing. I'm just selecting things that pop out to me. I'm not trying to sketch every little detail, Really just gonna go for a vibe. And I think this will really pull together once I throw down some really fun colors into it. But that'll be part two, so stay tuned for the next video. So I'm finding myself thinking too much instead of just going with it and creating. My brain is thinking, and when I think too much about what I'm doing, it's going to sound weird. But when I think too much about what I'm doing, sometimes it stops me. It keeps me from being loose, I should say, Because it's so easy to overthink what we're sketching and looking for perfection. And perfection can equal procrastination for me, for as a creative, Which is one of the reasons I like to start with Sharpies, because I just put the ink down. I'm not worried about making a mistake. I'm not worried about cleaning things up and erasing once I put that Sharpie down. I am committed to go and just embrace with whatever happens. And that's part of the creative adventure that I really love creating on the fly, not know what's going to happen, making it work or unwork. All right. All right. So I think I have enough stuff on here where I'm actually going to turn the photo off because I don't want to look at it. I don't want to look at this photo anymore. So it's going to go off. That's all I need. Let me find my screen. Here we are. Cool. So we just kind of have a quick perspective happening, right? We got what helps to. When sketching quick perspectives. One of the keys is you want these angles coming back. So we have these angles coming back. We have some angles coming back here. If it was a perfect perspective, they'd be coming back to the same focal point. But in this case, we're just trying to create the illusion of depth, which is fine. So we have these angles, these angles, which is making everything come back here. We have a building in the background. So this is our base. We'll throw down some more lines. And this is our imagination play here. We really just created a set of guidelines, or not even guidelines. What would you call it? I guess this is a real basic layout. So I know I had a Building back here, I think there were fire escapes. I'm not even sure anymore. Buildings have windows, right? So let's just throw some windows in. This is in the background of this piece. So I'm just going to put really simple, small, ish type of windows here, just so it looks far in the distance. Whereas if I was to show some windows on this building, again, we're going to kind of follow the angle idea. So let's just say there's a window here. I want it to angle just to keep the idea that we have a perspective happening. And honestly, I don't even remember what was here in the photo, so. And that's fine because I'm not trying to recreate it. Sometimes my brain will just jump around. I'm throwing on some contour lines or curved lines just to make this column look roundish. Almost looks like bamboo, actually. Pretty cool, right? All right, let's check the chat. Hope you guys are all doing great. Hey, Karen's in the house. Karen, great to see you. And Chip and D. Ray. Hey, thank you, guys. Linda says you can vote once a day, correct? Yes, Linda, you can vote once a day up to and including August 24th. So if you guys. You guys can do that. That's awesome. I'm sorry, I'm kind of being, like, annoying about it. I'm posting a lot about it. I'm just kind of. It's actually a self challenge. I wanted to see how good I am at promoting something I do because in reality, I am really bad at promoting what I do. And I love this stuff. I love what I'm doing. I think it's. I think sketching online and sharing my creative process. And I'm not bragging. I'm just kind of thinking out loud. But I think that has a lot of merit and is valuable in different ways to people. You know, some people sketch for. To clear their minds, to get away, for Zen, maybe for mental clarity or just fun entertainment. There's so many different reasons for sketching, and I'm hoping by putting out there what I do, you can find a special reason that you would want to maybe sketch architecture. So I just want to start promoting a little bit more of what I'm doing. Sometimes in life. We all. We have callings in life. I'm getting deep tonight, and I feel like this might be. I think teaching has ended up being a calling for me. Not only high school, but doing this stuff as well. So thank you guys for being here on the journey. The support, the community. It's. It is so fun. Thank you just for letting me be me. That's probably the greatest gift of all, just being able to share yourselves with people that you care about. So. And I do care about you guys so much, so thank you. Thank you all. All right. All right. To help keep this even looser, I'm gonna put down the Sharpie, and let's throw down some colors. Sometimes when I get at a point like this, if I keep inking and sketching, it's gonna get too tight. So now's where I'm just playing around ink and watercolor. Let loose, let colors fly, and that really helps the creative vibe flow. So let's do that. Notice I put this watercolor palette under here because I want to angle my paper so that everything drips down. I love ink watercolor when it kind of just kind of spills down the page. Linda, that was a great question, so thank you. I have no colors in mind. No colors in mind. I'm just going to grab and go and create. Have fun. I'm breaking this out. It's called Boxcar Kiwi. It. So one thing I am doing intentionally with color, just to let you guys know, is I'm trying to avoid the colors I typically start with. So usually I'll start with usually it's turquoise. Turquoise is usually my first color. Then I'll usually go to orange, a yellow. Throw down some ink either like a dark, either apple snail color or some caramel type color or rust color. Yeah. Red pen. So not that I'm not going to use any of those, but I'm not starting with those. So sometimes it's fun just to mix it up. And like, I'm dipping into blue. I hardly ever use. I'll show you guys. I hardly ever use the blue here. And I should know the name. I don't. It's the blue that comes with it. I forget what it's called. I'm really bad at remembering color names. But let's throw some of that down. So it'll be interesting to see what kind of vibe this sketch ends up having. Hello, Donna Bowman. Great to see you. Welcome. Thanks for tuning in. I'm now dipping into some of that lemon yellow color that I love oh so much. Let's see. I'm going to grab. I'm actually usually just grab and go, but I want to grab some different color inks over here. I'm gonna grab this color ink. This is. This is called Streetcar. Interesting use, using very natural colors for urban setting. Becky, that's funny. You said that I was. I was thinking that also. Yeah, it'd be. It's gonna be fun to see where this one transforms and what. What this one transforms into. And that's one of the really cool things about not pre planning and having an expected end result. Because I'm going down a path, a journey. I don't know where it's going. That's exciting. That is the fun part for me. That gets my heart going, my brain going. Yeah. And it's so cool. If I knew where I was headed. And I'm like, oh, I got to use yellow here. I must use a red right there. That would. That would just kind of freeze me. That would. Yeah, it would definitely freeze me. All right. But now. Now I am getting a little cuckoo. I'm assuming this is some kind of red color. There we go. That was an awesome observation. You guys always have great comments and thoughts and feedback. So I just. I love when you. When you participate in the comments. It's so fun. You know what? Let's. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna sp. I don't want to over. The thing with splattering is you. It's so easy to overdo it. Nine 24. I'm going to wrap it. Nine 30. Nine, 30. This is. This color is called rotted cork. Rotted cork. I. I don't think I've ever used it, so I don't know what to expect. Called rotted cork. Let's go for it. We have to lose. Oh, interesting. It's like a. Olive green. Like a dark olive green. Is that a real color? I guess so. So you can kind of see what I was talking about before. The Sharpie was really just an outline. Colors are starting to really make it jive. Become more interesting. If I kept throwing down more Sharpie at the beginning, I would have pigeonholed myself instead of her pigeonholed. I would have pigeonholed myself into a place of too much detail, not enough looseness. So a little bit of line work, a little bit of color work equals loosey goosey. I think I went to high school with someone named Lucy Goosey. No, just kidding. There's really cool things happening here. Let's zoom in. Check this out right here. That is awesome. Look at that color combination. That green and that orange just kind of blossoming, doing its own thing. That is the magic of letting things happen. Just let them happen. Here's what I was. Here's an example of what I was talking about with gravity and why I tilt the. The paper up. I Love the way the colors and are all running down and they're puddling up here. This puddle is going to dry in a really, really cool way. The trick is going to be letting it dry without moving it too much. Sometimes I will tilt things back up and let the puddle, let the. The ink watercolor go back up, then trail down again because it'll stain some of this a little bit darker. So that rotted cork color is kind of cool. We're gonna. Let's. Let's have some fun. Let's add some comments. Becky says living on the edge with new color. Yes. I'm intentionally mucking around with colors that I don't usually use. So that is a. That's cool. I sometimes talk about setting intentions before you create your sketch or painting. So I did have an intention tonight to. To stay away from my normal colors. So that's exactly what we're doing. Hey, thank you guys for the thumbs up. I see. Awesome. This is so fun. Also, thank you again for voting for my picture on the web link. You saw it in the comments at the top. I think they're posted. Maybe they're other pinned comments. I also have the link here on screen right there. Trying to point at it with my brush. There we go. Right there. If you go to that site and you. My foot. I have like eight photos posted there. But the one I really want people to vote on if they like it is my Lockby field journal here. That sitting in front of the New York City skyline with the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance. All right, So I said I was going to stay away from some colors. Not all colors, but I'm going to bring out some turquoise. I want to pop some turquoise in here now. I think it'd be fun just to kind of pop out. That. I feel like turquoise might go well. I want to leave a lot of white space, so I'm going to leave that canopy white. Let's kind of just pull this out a little bit here. I'm throwing on the turquoise pretty thick. I just want to be powerful. And now I'm bridging the colors. I just call that bridging when I have two or three colors separated by a small gap. I'll just connect them together with a bridge so they bleed together. I'm sure there's a technical term for it, but I have no idea what it is. This was cool. I didn't expect this to happen. Let me zoom out. I didn't expect this to happen here. Turquoise here went down like it. And I want to Pop a little more turquoise. I feel like I just need a little splash of it somewhere. I kind of like this vertical edge of the building. Let's just kind of. Just kind of pull that down. After it dries, I'll come back and I'll pull that shape out again with some ink. Yeah, this is looking cool. You guys liking these colors? I don't want to over color it either. I'm gonna let this sit here. Let's see if there's any other questions or comments. So be sure to enter them in now. So I'm gonna wrap up in a minute and then we'll come back and finish this another time. So this was part one of our Chinatown inspired or ink spired city scene. In the next video, what I'll do is I'll come back in with my Sharpie, add some more details. We'll pull out some shapes, maybe we'll add some windows and doors. We'll do some cross hatching or regular hatching to help add some shadows in here, and we'll punch it up with some other colors. I definitely. I know I definitely want some more. I'm going to do this before I forget. I definitely want some more of this blue color. Most of my sketches, if they're not just black and white, they're mixed media. So you'll see ink, watercolor. And I'm eyeing up these right here. I think we're gonna break these. These watercolor pencils, they're like watercolor sticks. I think I'll break these out at some point and we'll add those on here. I'm loving. There's some great colors in here I want to throw on. But not today. Not today. We need to be patient. I wanted to throw some of this blue before I forget and just kind of really darken some of this. While this was wet, I want these colors to kind of bleed a little bit. All right. That's so fun. All right. My brain's saying stop before you get too crazy. All right, brain, just let me do one more thing. One more thing. Let's do this. Trying to create the idea of maybe some shadows using this dark color. All right, we're done. Brush down. All right, let's see if there's any final questions or comments. Oh, let's see. Mickey says that is the fun part. The mystery. Exactly. It's fun to have some mystery, not know where you're always headed with your final sketch. Love that. This is fun. Popping comments on screen. Donna Bowman says yes. Very nice. Love the red. Yeah. So that was called box car. Or. No, which was it called? Streetcar. Streetcar. It's more of. As it's drying, it looks orange to me, so it's an orangey color. Interesting. I was almost imagining it to be almost like the color of the. The Golden Gate Bridge, But I think the Golden Gate Bridge has more red in. D. Ray says, here comes the turquoise. I couldn't resist. Couldn't resist. I had to bring out my. My friend turquoise. At least I didn't bring it out first, though. Usually it's the first color that goes down. Oh, Linda. All right, let's see what one Linda has here. I think the watercolor term for what you call bridging is mingle. I like brushing better. Yeah, I like bridging better, too, because of. Well, I love sketching bridges, so that's awesome. I can see mingling, right? So colors are mingling together, kind of like being at a cocktail party. But this. This is not a cocktail party. We're in the city here, so we're going to Bridge. Bridge. The colors together. Streetcar. Red. Yeah. So this is. It's called streetcar. All right, guys, let me zoom out so you can get a bigger view. And let's just do something fun. Usually I don't do this till it's almost done. Let's just throw a quick frame on this and see what it looks like. Because sketches and paintings always look more awesome when you frame them. So I got this kind of frame here. I gotta be careful. I don't want to put it on the wet spot. So I'm gonna hold it above it. Oh, my gosh. Larry. Can I zoom in? Whoa. Did this thing just transform for you guys? When I put the frame on. This is amazing. Holy cow. Oh, my God. This looks. This is looking pretty sick, as the kids say it's looking. I gotta get ready for. Get ready for school in a couple weeks. This is looking pretty sick with the frame on it. Wow. Wow. This actually. This is working for me. I don't know what you guys think. I think. Let me move it over. I like the white spot here on that column on the left. Dang. Maybe. Should I move it up? Yeah, maybe. Maybe move it up here. Let's keep the frame right here. Yeah. Linda says it totally changes. They pop. The colors pop right out. Holy moly. Although I like that puddle on the bottom here. I know you can't see it with my vote thing there. Move it up. Let me see. There you go. Yeah, this. This one looks really. This looks really good with the frame around it. It's gonna look even better when I pull out some more lines, add a little bit more detail. I don't think I'm gonna add any other colors on here, to be honest with you, other than I have. I definitely want to throw into this signature neon pink, but I don't know if I'm gonna bring any different colors to the table because I may darken, layer up some of these, but I'm just. I'm loving the vibe. Yeah, Karen. Karen says it's abstract, right? That might be what's so cool about it. I think you may. I think you. I think you might have nailed it there. It has a very abstract loose. I'm not even going to throw that much more detail, to be honest. I definitely want to show a little bit of hatch work for shadows, maybe a little bit more texture. Oh, there is something I did not add yet. Can anybody guess what did I not add to this scene that you feel like was an important element in the original picture? I don't know if I could bring that up. Let me see. Oh, boy. I don't know where the original image is. Can I drag it on? Let's see. There we go. What's in this image that I really should incorporate? Oh, my God, it looks so different. That's one of the reasons I turned a photo off is because I just want to go down my own trail. The lanterns. Yeah, Becky got it. Yeah. I definitely want to add those lanterns on here, and I think. Couple options. Those lanterns might end up being. Red was the first color that popped into my brain, so I think that's what might do. We might string some of those red lanterns in here. Crossing the street in a kind of chaotic way. And what I like about the lanterns, it's going to help connect the two. The left and the right side. Those lanterns and the lantern strings will tie things together. No more colors, just lines. Yeah, Linda, you got it. Sure did. Transform. Wow. Awesome. Hey, guys, I want to thank you for joining me tonight. I did say 15 minutes, and I'm way over. It's okay. Because this is a zone that I love to get lost in. Sketching is a place for me that it has a lot of beneficial effects on me, whether it's capturing a moment in time, whether it's escaping a moment in time. Sketching. For me, it could be a way of med getting into a meditative Zen state. So many other powerful reasons for sketching. If you're interested, check out my YouTube channel. I think I posted a video the other day about some of the benefits of sketching architecture. So definitely go through my YouTube channel. I'm trying to add these more kind of informative videos besides just sketch the live sketching stuff. Alright, guys, so that's gonna be a wrap tonight. I hope it was streaming to YouTube. I didn't see any YouTubers in the comments if it was on YouTube. Guys, everybody who participated in the comments, your feedback, your thoughts, your positivity, I really appreciate you. Thank you also for voting for my photo on thelockbee.com pages contest. Please vote if you like my photo with my field journal and the New York City skyline in the background and the Brooklyn Bridge. Love for you to vote for that. Let's see if we can get that up into the top three. I was in the top three until this morning. Darn it. And then someone else posted awesome photographs. But anyways, it's a fun challenge. I'm trying to push myself to get out there. Guys, keep using your creativity for positivity and try to capture the world around you one line at a time. Thank you guys so much. Take care. It is wonderful Wednesday. I will hope to be on Friday night again. I'm trying to put notifications out there ahead of time, but we'll see. Take care, guys. Have a great, great night. I appreciate you all so, so much. Peace and live creatively. This is Jason with or from or part of the inspired life? Yeah, something like that. All right, guys, take care. Appreciate y' all.