The INKspired Life - architectural sketching

Hey everybody, happy, um, Monday. Hope you're all doing well. I am doing some sketching before the snow. We have snow headed our way and snow day tomorrow, which is awesome. Always use a snow day to catch up on things. Hope you guys are doing well. Let me know how you're doing and where you're watching from. Talk about this sketch in a few. View something.

There we go.

Alright, so, um, I'm sketching a house that's in Florida, uh, based on a photograph by Sent to me by my friend Michael Hong, aka Roo. You guys might know Roo. He's an awesome artist, a dear friend, and an awesome creative mentor. So, he sent me this picture and I'm just doing a quick loose sketch of it. Just trying to capture the feel of it. I'll sketch it again and again a few more times for for sure, but I was actually thinking a little too much about it. You know I'm thinking when I'm kind of drawing and then I hesitate and I stop. And this is going to sound weird, but I don't like to think about— I don't like to think about things when I'm sketching.

It's hard.

I wonder if I can explain that. Let's see. When I say I don't want to think about things, I am thinking about things, but not too hard. I'm not, I guess, pre-planning. I'm just kind of letting go and just letting the pen, the marker, move around. Um, this is accurate. Is it proportioned to the photograph? A little bit. It's not exactly. I know it's— I could tell it's way off, but I don't mind that. Again, I just want to just have quick, loose, just capture it. I don't know, let's see. I think there's a lot of it's off screen, so I'm going to be sketching again. Anyway, if you're watching out there, say hello. Great to know you. Ah, that's better. Now you can see more of it. So we're gonna probably start to sketch over because I did start the stream with half of the sketch off the screen. It's all good. So this is, um, what we call this style, arts and crafts bungalow. Style. There's a really cool porch hap— happening right here. Got a railing going on.

Boom.

There's actually another column, so this really comes down here. There's another column somewhere in here. Um, I couldn't fit fit it all on the page, but there are steps going down here. See, there's a kind of door happening back in here. So, I'm looking at a pretty small photograph and the reason I have it small is I'm not worried about the detail. If I was to look— be looking at a really big photo, I'd be trying to focus on the detail of it and I would get kind of lost. This is just trying to capture the overall essence here. So I'm— that's why I'm kind of looking at a really small photograph. This dormer is definitely wider, so it would really come out more here. It's more rectangular in proportion. Cool, there you go. And I'm not afraid— I'm not afraid to adjust this on the fly if I want this to be longer, I'll just kind of bring this line out, pull it down. So yeah, I'm making some mods as I go here, and for me that's going to just help keep that kind of loose, um, feel about it. There we go, so there's a little more center. We have 3 windows here. Probably one, two, and then another one. Got some windows happening here as well.

Cool.

In the photo, I can't even really see the side here, so it's almost flat on. And then we got some kind of palm trees happening in here. The— I think these are sable palms, maybe. They're kind of spiky.

Looking.

I remember from going to school in Miami, I did major in— not major, but I minored in landscape architecture. If I remember correctly, I think these were sable palms. That was a long time ago. A galaxy far, far away. Cool. So we got— yeah, we've got some kind of palm tree thing happening here, foreground, and shade in a little bit. So I'm doing something like this happening right there. So you have a palm tree on that side, there's some palm trees happening over here as well. Get some spiky spikiness happening. And I'm just going to kind of do the same thing, just hatch them in. Here just to give a little definition, just to show something's happening, right? Sometimes if we're drawing trees in our scenes, we think we have to show every single branch, every frond, and we don't, unless you want to capture that detail. But here it's really just to just suggest there's something happening here. So I want to kind of want the house to pop out a little bit. There we go. So it's roughed out there. And what else? Let's just add some shading, some hatching here. Let's actually just draw these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. We've got some windows up here, pretty cool. Another one, some windows down here as well. They probably go across the back, I'm gonna guess. Maybe we have some there. Cool. Again, this is just really, really fast and quick. This is a brick chimney, so I'm gonna zoom in a little bit so you can see that. There you go. So capture that brick. I'm just going to really lightly just go across. I'm going to let the texture of the paper pick up the marker and not pick up the marker. So you get this kind of— I call them Morse code lines or dash-dash lines. Dash-dash lines. I'll say Morse code lines. They're kind of broken if I was to exaggerate. If I was to fill these in, you would see they're not continuous lines by any means. And I like to create brick really quick lines like that and letting the texture of the paper do the work. Boom. So we have some brick happening on there. What else we got on here? Um, shingles. We got shingles on the roof. So let's sketch those as well. Same idea with the brick, except we're gonna have wider lines. So I'm letting the texture of the paper kind of create these Morse code lines. So we get just kind of some kind of texture just to indicate, hey, we have some shingles on a roof. And I'm also going to follow the angle. So we have the angle of the roof coming down like this. I'm going to add some really light lines that are following that angle more or less and just randomly pop them in. This helps create the idea that we have shingles going on the roof. Ta-da! Hope you guys are doing well on this amazing Monday night. It is— almost said January— February 20th.

12th.

We're expecting 8 to 10 inches of snow, so they've already called school off. So very, very lucky. Um, I'll be shoveling, but that's cool. Catch up on some other things tomorrow. Let me know if you're watching and leave a comment in the chat. I have no comments. Either I'm really boring, which is possible, or the comments aren't working, which could also be possible. Um, it's all good. Or you're shy, which is also possible. All right, so we got some really rough outlines going. I'm going to darken some of this up a bit just to pull out some extra shapes on here. Um, let's pull out the silhouette of the dormer in the top of the roof. I think my Sharpie is dying a little bit, so I'm really— I'm just going to go back over these lines and Keep it kind of loose and wonky and just pull them out. I could get another Sharpie, fresh one. I can get it. I could use one of these bad boys as well, right? Thicker Sharpie. But let's just work with this one and kind of just grind it in here a little bit. I've got some shadows happening, kind of doing that from the chimney. Definitely some shadows from the dormer happening here. If you don't know what a dormer is, a dormer is this kind of area that pops out of the roof and it has windows in it. And I'm actually just going to go around these lines and pull out some rectangular shapes for the windows so you can see them a little bit more. Hey, D-Ray's in the house. Great to see you, D-Ray. Hope all's well. Thanks for waving. I'm gonna wave back. Good to see you. Um, well, so we pulled out some lines there. Uh, to show there's glass in the windows, I like to do this kind of trick. So you'll see this in architectural renderings a lot for glass. They'll do something like this. Might be doing too many lines here close together. That's okay. Maybe there's some glass happening in here. D-Ray is laughing. D-Ray, it's nice to see you laughing. I like that. So there's a roof overhang. I want to pull this out and here's how I'm going to pull that out. I'm literally just going to do hatch lines in here. I'm going to zoom in close so you can kind of see it better. My contacts are going wonky, so if I am squinting or winking at you on camera, it's because my contacts are going cray cray. I think they're so dry, I'm tempted to take them out and sketch without them. That'd be interesting. I could see close very well without contacts, but not far away. But here you can see these kind of hatch lines were thrown down just to indicate there's some kind of roof overhang. So if I zoom out, you'll see created that kind of shadow line happening. Oops, cool, right? Then we have a porch roof. I'm going to do the same thing, just going to darken this up. Then we have our columns. So let's just kind of square out a column here. We'll, uh, square one out here, square one out here. So when I say square one out, I'm basically— should say rectangular it out, but I'm really drawing a rectangle. That's okay, it's easier to say square. So I'm going to just square it out like like that, just to pull out the shape. Um, these have a shingled base on them, which is this kind of pedestal that the columns are on happening there. These have siding on them. Music like cranked up over here. All right, cool. All right, so you can kind of see a porch happening there, and let's create kind of a a deep shadow line here with the porches. I'm gonna use— do the hatching thing again. You're gonna see I'm actually just hatching in between where I squared out those columns, right? So I'm kind of doing that. And then let's say there— let's say there's a shadow from the column, so I mean, somewhere in here. There's a shadow from the column, maybe another one happening here, maybe another one happening here somewhere. So there you go. So you have, uh, creates kind of a shadow line or depth on the porch there. Hey KD, great to see you! Hi, having fun sketching along, watching from Trinidad. Hey, that is so cool, KD! Welcome, great to see see you. Trinidad, that's awesome! Hope all's well. I hope you're not getting snow in Trinidad, that would be strange. We have snow coming here. So again, this is just a real quick loose sketch. It might be looser than my normal ones, and I'm just trying to capture the feel of this building. I'll probably come on tomorrow at some at some point and sketch it again, but just slow it down a hair. I want to keep it really loose still, but I want to put this more in frame so I can get more of the house. Today I just wanted to play around and come online. Pretty cool. Hey Matt Larocque, how are you, Matt? Great to see you. Great to say you. Great to see you. Um, fellow lefty. Yes indeed, I am a lefty. So, uh, Matt, you're lefty also? That's awesome. I know we have issues with always smudging, smearing. That's when I say it's not art unless we wear it. Usually wearing something here, whether it's paint, marker, or ink. Cool, right? So this is quick and loose, um, I feel like throwing down some just fun colors on this just to play around. So what should we— should I break out? So if you're new to the channel, thank you guys for watching. This is really cool. I always love seeing new people. Uh, I'm all about sketching architecture but in really fun, loose, whimsical style. Here's a piece I did the other night based on Grand Central Station. Or Grand Central Terminal in New York City, which I love to go to and sketch things up. You can see it's kind of really loose and wonky, has some fun colors. So, yeah, that's kind of what I'm about. Thank you. Haha, no snow here. That's good. All right, so just for fun, let's throw down some color. What do we want to throw down? Should we use some ink or color watercolors. I have my watercolor— I have my watercolors right here. So just have fun, pick out a couple colors and throw them down. This is unrehearsed, unscripted, spur of the moment, and that's what makes this, this fun for me because I never know what's going to happen next. Um, cool. All right, so I have a my Winsor Newton watercolor palette. I have my— if you guys have been watching like D-Ray out there, I like to usually use dirty water because I'm usually lazy to clean it out. But more importantly, I kind of like the aesthetic of the dirty water, especially when I'm doing buildings. I love kind of the grungy look with old look or industrial look I can get when I'm using dirty water. Alright, let's just throw down some color. I'm gonna zoom in so you guys can see it closer. So cool. If you guys are watching on YouTube, I love that. If you like what you're seeing, it would be so cool if you could give me a thumbs up out there and maybe even subscribe. Subscribe to the page, that would be awesome. All right, I'm just dipping in random colors. This is not the realistic colors of the house. I'm just painting for fun. Uh, I'm feeling tropical, so Trinidad. I wonder what kind of colors are in Trinidad. I'm imagining you would see some bright, vibrant colors in Trinidad. So let's make this fun, and I'm going to just go with Dip into the turquoise here. I'm going to put this up. I like to watercolor at a little bit of an angle just so the water and the paint run down sometimes. Yep, we splattered on there. That's cool. Let's see. I don't know. Let's just sketch here. Maybe some blue happening. And I do want this to be, again, really loose. And I like to paint from my feelings or emotions or just kind of my gut. Grab and go. D-Ray said, did I hear grunge? D-Ray, you did hear the word grunge. I know, I know you're a fan of the grunginess. Um, hey, let's Dip in— let's grab some yellow, like a lemon yellow color. So you can say, you guys can see the colors going down and you're getting, hopefully getting the sense that this definitely is just loose and whimsical. Not, not real, not reality. And that's one of the amazing things about a blank piece of paper is, guys, we can put anything on it we want to. I am not a realistic painter by any means. I could take my time and I can draw a really technically precise house. Being an architect, that's what I do, right? That's my training. But when I go to watercolor and have fun, that's where I just really let go. I feel like I want some blue on here. Let's go with some like a dark blue. So we have wet on wet here, so the colors are mixing together, they're blending together. I'm cool with that. Kind of challenging myself really now just to just intentionally go really fast. It might not look— might not look great when I'm done, and that's okay. I'm having fun doing it, guys. That's, that's why I do this. I just love it. It's just fun for me to throw down the colors and see what happens. Let them do their stuff. It's how I learn, it's how I play. It took me a long time to be brave enough to do this. To be honest with you, I always felt like, uh, if I was going to come online and do stuff, it had to be perfect. And that was the biggest thing that set me back from ever starting. Feeling of perfection. So again, if that's your art style, that's cool. You guys can do whatever you want, but me, it's just throwing this stuff down. I'm going extra crazy right now. Yeah, it's looking fun. I just love watching the colors dry. I'm going to move them around a little bit, so I'm just Kind of tilting this, letting them run back into each other. Let them dry for a second. Checking with the chat. It's Carnival right now, so you'll see all the colors. Okay, that's awesome, Katie. I can't imagine, it must be incredible. There must be such an amazing vibe during Carnival. The energy must be incredible. Uh, feeling tropical. I am. Don't know how you're getting any color from there. That yellow is a smidge near gone. Oh, are you talking about my palette here? Yeah, so the blue definitely needs replacement, and orange here. This is my palette, guys. I'll just put it down if you want to see how it's looking. I'm a messy painter. Messy watercolor painter. You can see my palette's really not clean, not neat. I will mix colors into colors here sometimes. That's okay because I'm just going. I like it. Matt says, "Cool." Thanks, Matt. Curious says, "It's fun for me." It is fun for me. Perfection keeps my hesitation as well. He says, "Yeah, right." All right, let's throw down, you know, I'm gonna, I do have red watercolor in here, but I'm gonna break out, I like using, I actually like using my Pilot Precise red pens to get red. So, I feel like I wanna just throw some on here and we can bleed it. I'll show you how it looks. I'm just gonna throw some down. And then let me just get some water on my brush here, and then we'll just— I'm gonna mix with the yellow, that's fine. So we get some orangey things happening. That's part of the fun with ink and watercolors, you can let things mix and match and play off each other. Let's see, these columns are not really red in real life. I'm gonna make them red. You see that? Hopefully it's on camera. I think this red pen is— maybe has had it. Oh no, there we go. Let's just throw down some red and we'll add some water.

Time's up.

I'm gonna wrap in a couple of minutes here. Even though we have a snow day here tomorrow, that's so cool. My school is closed and I am so glad. With 8 to 10 inches, it's a smart idea to close schools tomorrow. I'm gonna just pull this red down here a little bit so you can see you get a really nice red color with that Pilot precise pen there. Uh, I feel like I need some purple, so I'm going to make my own purple. I'm actually going to dip into— you see in here I have a little bit going, so I usually I'll grab some blue with that red. It's too red, I think, so I'm gonna throw down some more blue in here. All right, got a purpley kind of color happening. Um, we're gonna want to throw that even the shadows here. We'll throw that purple kind of happening there, and then I'll throw some just in here. I'm gonna throw some here. So, I'm using— kind of using that purple where I did the hatch lines before for shadows. I'm just going over it with purple. Cool, there we go. Let me zoom out. So again, we're just playing tonight, guys, just having fun throwing down some colors. Hey, Heather K's in the house! Hey Heather K, popping in for a second, good to see you. Hope all is well, Heather. I haven't seen you in a while. Thanks for popping on. So cool. I love seeing all you guys out there. If any of you guys have questions or comments, let me know. I'm going to wrap up about maybe 2 minutes or so. Um, I'll post later. I'll post a picture of this, show you how it dried. And I'm just moving the colors around here. Ta-da! So while that's drying, let me put this to the side. We'll do a quick show and tell. Grab— should we grab that? Yeah, I'll show you here. Um, so here's an— here's an example. This is New York City inspired Empire State Building background here. But here you can see, I really like this one because there's not a lot of color, a lot of white on here, and I love the balance of the color and the white. You can see how just colors kind of bleed into each other, right? Which I think is really cool on this piece. I really love in here how these colors are just kind of bleeding in. This one's got splatter on it. Splatter for me shows energy. I love showing the energy of New York City, so often throw on some splatter. So, this is just another example of what you can do by throwing down colors really quick. I really like this piece. This piece has too much. I put too much color on. I also muddied it up. I'm going to see how it dries but This was the first practice piece for this house, and I'm going to be doing many more sketches, I'm sure, because I want to, uh, share it with my friend Michael. D-Ray says wrapping up in 2 minutes. Thank you, D-Ray. I am— D-Ray, you can be my 2-minute timer. Let me know when I should hit that finish button. Um, Also, here's another— there's a quickie I did of the Brooklyn Bridge. This one is really, really loose. And zoom in so you can see those colors, right? See how those colors are all running together to create that base, that roadway of the bridge. Um, yeah, I really like this piece also. Think about doing a bigger version of something like this. Cool. And you'll also notice I leave a lot of unfinished kind of areas. I do that intentionally to let you guys looking at this imagine, let Fill in the blanks with your own imagination. That's a great way to engage people in looking at what you're creating. We'll let this one dry. I'll probably come back to it and add some more details with my Sharpie or my Pilot pen here. I love doing that after watercolor and ink dries, adding more info on there. "On the blend." Awesome, thank you so much. Hey, you guys are amazing. Thank you all so much for watching this quick, quick get it out of my head session. I like to just get ideas, sketches out of my head onto paper as a starting place.

So, thank you guys.

So, I want to go back, let me thank my YouTube viewers out there. Hey, Katie from Trinidad, that was awesome. Hope to see you back. And, uh, Matt was on. Matt, hope to see you back as well, that would be amazing. And Heather K popped in over on YouTube, so thank you, Heather. Love to see all you guys back again. Who else was out there for me? And we had D-Ray over on the Facebook. D-Ray, thank you, it's always great to see you. If you guys don't know D-Ray, she's awesome and is always kind of summarizing what I'm saying. That's a huge help. Thank you guys so much for watching. I will probably pop on during my snow day tomorrow. If you're on YouTube, make sure you hit that notification button, and if you're on Facebook as well. Katie says it was fun. Katie, awesome! I would love to see what you did as you were sketching along. That would be so Cool. How could we do that? Uh, I'm also on Facebook. I don't know if you're on Facebook. Definitely post something there, or yeah, it'd be cool to kind of see what you're sketching. Thank you guys so much. Take care, have a great, great night. Remember to pay it forward with positivity. I would say positivity through creativity, but however you can pay it forward positively, whether it's saying hello, giving someone a smile, know, it could be really something simple. I appreciate you guys. Take care, peace, and live creatively. I will, uh, hopefully see you tomorrow during this snowstorm. Take care, guys, if we don't lose power.

Good night.

Hey, D-Ray, I'm going for it. I'm going for the button. It's right— I'm pointing out to you, right, so you know I know where it is. I'm going to just go right here, right? Down here. Finish. Take care, guys. Have a great night. End broadcast.