Sketching the Empire State Building with Watercolor Pencils

Hey there, happy Wednesday, June 12th, 9:46 PM in the awesome state of New Jersey. Hope you guys are doing well. I am on really, really shortly, briefly, um, I will go with briefly. I'm on briefly. I'm gonna do a real quick sketch and I have something new that I have not used that I want to try out. And, um, yeah, we'll have some fun with it. Let me know where you guys are watching from and how things are going. All right, let's do a sketch. I think I'm going to sketch, um, just an— I'll do a real quick Empire State Building inspired sketch here. I'll just kind of sketch the top of the Empire State Building, and I am looking— I'm looking at a reference sketch I have here that I've done before, um, and tonight my intention— I talk about intentions, right? Creative intentions. My intention tonight is really just to, um, I just want to play around with these brand new watercolor pencils I, I literally just got and I've never used them. So I thought it'd be fun to come on and just give them a shot here and let you guys know what I think of them. So let's just kind of throw in some lines here. We'll get an Empire State Building-ish inspired sketch going, and I'll check the comments in a few. I hope you guys are doing well. If you're watching live, I love that because I can interact with you here in person. It's like our own little fireside Sketch chat, fireside chat and sketch. Yeah, my brain's tired, as you can probably hear in my voice. My brain is tired. Does that even make sense? I don't know. All right, cool. Um, I already got a quick sketch here. I should have centered the spire here, really back in this area, so let's see if we can kind of scale it up a little. There we go, I think that works. So just by adding this kind of line here, I'm trying to center the spire of the State Building— Empire State Building— center it on the building. Hey, Chip's in the house! Chip, it's, uh, great to see you, man. Hope all is well. Great to see you. I started, I started reading that, um, that book by Alan Levi, and I'm so sorry, I forget the name. I think it's called Theo, Theo of Golden. I started reading it yesterday and, uh Not too far into it, maybe about 20 pages or so. I'm a very slow reader, but it's cool. All right, I think we got enough on there. Let's, let's do something, um, different. So this is an unsponsored, non-sponsored— I bought these on my own, no one sent these to me. So anything I'm about to say is just, it's totally my own personal opinion. Um, these are called Distress Watercolor Pencils Set 1. You can see the different colors that are inside here. Loving the names: Picked Raspberry, Fired Brick, Rusty Hinge. You know how much I love the industrial grungy vibe with my sketching, so I'm just digging that name. Mustard Seed, Peeled Paint, Salvage Patina. Yes, please. Thank you very much. Curry Tom, I'm gonna love that color. Speckled Egg, Salty Ocean, Villainous Potion— love, love, love that name— Walnut Stain, Black Soot, and Picket Fence. Um, yeah, sometimes I wish I had a job coming up with color names. How fun would that be? Um, so you could read here, Distress Pencils are Woodless watercolor pencils formulated to achieve vibrant coloring effects on porous surfaces. The solid water-reactive pigments are ideal for watercoloring, shading, sketching, and more. Color directly onto surface and blend with water. Layer with Distress Ink Oxide sprays or paint for more possibilities. Coordinates with a Distress Palette of products. All right, really cool. We got a description there. I'm going to play around them in different ways, um, and see what happens. So let's break these bad boys open. Let's zoom in, get a close-up. My camera is total state of wonkiness. I think it's focused. All right, it's focused. All right, so I'm going to, I'm going to dig into these. Let's put them over to here. Let's kind of shift things. There we go. Uh, I'm just gonna start and just throw some color on right on the paper, and we'll see how it goes. I am gonna pick— no particular order, guys— I'm gonna grab this. So it's all pigment. This is not wood, it's a sticker wrapping that looks like wood. This color is called Mustard Seed. Um, let's go for it. So I am using, um, 140-pound cold press watercolor paper. Has a little texture to it. Let's put it on dry and let's throw in a little bit of water and see what happens. Get even closer. There we go. So I am not— let's just say I'm not a fan. I just haven't really used watercolor pencils too often. Um, once in a while. So you can kind of see it bleeding there a little bit. As I add water. So it's kind of cool. It is painting. Let's just take some of that same color on top of the wet. Let's do a little— let's do something a little different. I'm going to throw down water on the paper here, uh, and then we're just going to kind of sketch on top and let the pencil, the pigment dissolve on that water, which I'm liking better. It allows it, uh, it moves a little bit more freely. That's kind of cool. So throw down water and then put the pencil on top. And let's just mix another color. Let's just grab, uh, we'll grab I can't resist this picked raspberry color. Love it. Let's just throw some of that on top of this wet area and see how it mixes. I'm just throwing some water on top. Definitely, if you were doing this on hot press paper, it would be more slick, it would glide, it would be different. But we're just going to do on cold press right now for the next couple of minutes. Cool. All right, now I actually want to try— I'm going to dip just dip this right into some water, which you can see, right? It's wet there on the point. So let's try throwing some of this down. Oh yeah, I'm really liking this. Really intense. So I have to say, my favorite way of putting this on the paper right now is just dipping the actual pencil in water and then throwing it down on the paper. I'm going to dissolve some of that with some water. And let's grab some Dianews Salvage Patina. Love it, love, love, love that name. Again, I'm just dipping it right in water. You can see the tip, I don't know if you can tell, but there's water on there. We're going to mix in that pink— that raspberry, I mean. We're getting a cool color, purple color, mixing these two together. And clean that off. And let's just use some straight up on here. Let's not mix it with anything. Mm, yeah, real nice color. Gonna throw some yellow here and see what happens. I am curious to see when this dries, can I sketch over this? Let's break out the Sharpie. Can you go on top of the— not so well. Let's try with the Pilot Precise here. That actually— does this one work? Let's see. It's just a scrap piece of paper. Uh, it's kind of dried out. Let me get a fresh Pilot pen here. All right, let's see, can I add some windows? Yeah. All right, so once it dries, you can come back on top of it. I know color pencil, regular color pencils, you can't really do that with. It seems like you can definitely come back and sketch over it, which I like. Awesome. This is called Peeled Paint. Um, very interesting name. Not sure how they came up with it. It's— to me it looks like an olive green. Mm, I'm liking this color. This is a cool color here. So that was, uh, through it just dry onto the paper. Let's dip it in water. All right, so the tip is wet, and let's, let's kind of sketch it on here. I gotta go for this rusty hinge color now. Let's do it dry and then I'll add water and we'll see how that goes. Uh, let's throw some here. And we'll throw some water on part of it, see what it looks like. Mm, yeah, yeah, yeah, looking cool. And then let me just dip this in the water. So I dipped it in water, and let's just kind of sketch paint with it now. Oh yeah, there you go. I am digging this color. Alright, just gonna layer a little bit more of this on top. Alright, there you go guys. So that's just a real, uh, kind of quick, loose Empire State Building sketch, trying out these, um, Distress Watercolor Pencils. So my overall impression is, yeah, I'm really liking them a lot. I like the way they're going down on the cold press paper, um, dry. I like that you can add water, move it around a little bit. I'll get closer so you can kind of see this. I love using mixed media, and I love using media like these in different ways, right? I like the kind of dry look here, so you see the texture of the paper. Um, I love the way this is drying. This is that Rust color, which I love. I'm actually really liking all these colors, to be honest with you. It's a real fun color palette, and it's kind of— it's It's right up my alley for my, my industrial grungy vibe I go for. So that is really fortunate. So these are the colors I used tonight right here: Peeled Paint, Rusty Hinge, Mustard Seed, Salvaged Patina, and Picked Raspberry. There you go. Chip says, love the yellow and green combinations. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you, they are pretty cool. Again, I'll zoom in, you guys can see it. And I just, I really do love the way this is drying right here. It's a great example. You can see the hard edges happening with that rust color. So yeah, um Right now I recommend them. I like them. First try ever. Um, it's not art unless you— what— you wear it. So I'm wearing it, guys, which means we made some artwork tonight. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching. I appreciate all— whether you're watching live or replay, feel free to give this a like. If you're on YouTube, I'd love for you to give it a thumbs up and share it, or even subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet. That would be so helpful. Uh, Facebook peeps, you guys are amazing. Thank you always for liking this and sharing it out there as well. And wait, today's Wednesday. Tomorrow is our high school senior prom, which will be a fun event. So I am, uh, I was lucky enough to be invited to go as a chaperone, so that'll be awesome. But I will not be painting here. But you know what, I might bring my sketchbook with me tomorrow because I can't just sit still for 5 hours. Um, so I might have my sketchbook with me. So if I do any sketches, I'll show you guys. All right, take care everybody. Appreciate it, Chip. Thank you for being out there. We'll catch up real soon. Um, take care guys. Peace and live creatively. Keep using your creativity. For positivity. See you soon. I am looking for the finish button. I actually lost— I lost the pointer on my screen. I am pointerless right now. Okay, so we have to figure out how to end this. Oh, got it. Take care, guys. Have a great, great rest of your night. Enjoy your Thursday. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]