The Inkspired Life - Architectural Sketching

Hey everybody, hope you're doing well. Happy, um, Sunday evening, December 3rd. Hope you're doing great. I'm just on for a few minutes here, um, doing kind of my— it's become an annual sketch. It's the annual Tree in the City sketch. This is the third, I think the third one I've done. I think this is number 3. So yeah, we'll see how it goes. I'm just keeping it quick and loose here. Um, this might be the first take. I might do another one, who the heck knows. I just want to come online and just have some fun and throw down some ink, throw down some water, and just make some awesome colors happen. I'm gonna zoom in so you can see how this is drying. I see Denise is in the house. Hey Jason, glad I caught you. Awesome to see you, hope you're doing well. Yeah, yeah, I hope you're doing great. It's great to see you. I appreciate all your positivity and I love your artwork. It is, uh, your artwork makes me so happy. So thanks for tuning in. This is so cool. So I'm just, uh, I broke out the Lamy. I haven't used the Lamy in a while. Um, you always, like, 90%, 95% of time, you always see me with a Sharpie to start with, but I knew I wanted to bleed some ink. That's why I went right to the Lamy tonight. I wanted to bleed some black. And what I love about Lamy ink is it has these— if you can see it, there's blacks, there's grays, there's purples in there, some yellows and browns. It's really awesome. All the colors you get from just black ink. Who would have thunk it, right? Yeah, I just said thunk. So I'm creating a perspective scene. I'll zoom out a little bit. It's a streetscape kind of looking down a couple buildings in the foreground, looking back at a tree in the city here. So we'll just play around and keep adding some things on here. I do want to show maybe sketching— let's do some kind of door or doors down here on this building. If you look at my lines, they are not straight. And that's— I love it. I just love the wonky look. I've had people say, hey, you know, you're drawing buildings, you're sketching buildings, why aren't your buildings straight like what they really are? And I'm just— I tell everybody, this is just what I like to do. It's quick, it's fast, it's fun. It's just a way for me to kind of get something down on paper and out of my brain. And it's something I kind of learned to do in college because when our professors were going around to give us feedbacks, feedback in architecture school, we had to have stuff to show them and we had to get our ideas out quick to talk to them. So that's kind of where I just started really learning to sketch kind of really fast. There we go. So you can see I have some doors happening right there. He says, oh, thank you, you are doing such great things. Oh, thank you so much, I appreciate it. So I'm kind of bouncing all over, all over the place. I have an awning here. I just want to add some kind of stripes just to give this awning some shape, some definition there. I'll bleed some more ink in a minute. Pop out a door there. Let's pop out— pop out a door here as well. This is a fun Christmas song here. Sidewalk happening here. All right, let's bleed some more. So I'm just using water. I've been sketching some of the buildings in my little town, very much out of my wheelhouse. That is so cool. I love that you're— you're doing that. Yeah, sometimes we don't have to look too far to be inspired to sketch architecture. Just look outside your window, just walk around your town or drive around your town. I'm sure you'll find something that inspires you, whether it's an old historic building Maybe it's just an ordinary building or house. Sometimes I think— I think sometimes when people want to sketch architecture, they think it has to be an amazing or extraordinary building. Not true. Sketching the ordinary, ordinary, it could be really fun and interesting to capture. These, these, this streetscape I'm creating kind of in my brain right now is, you know, there are no iconic buildings here. I'm not sketching the Eiffel Tower. It's kind of riffing off what's going on in my brain. I like to— one of the things I like to include are signs or clocks. So this is going to be a clock up here on top of That's some rocking, rocking holiday music. So I'm not afraid to go back and forth and work with the ink, add water, come back, work with the ink again. It's not quite a clean, streamlined process. It's Honestly, it's just kind of wherever my brain's taking me at the time. Now I just— I know I want to just add some more lines to these windows.

Pretty cool.

I'm gonna zoom in so you guys can see this a little closer and see what's happening. So here's where that clock is gonna go, right up up in here, top of that building. Sorry, I'm just gonna get a drink here, some hot chocolate going. I'm trying to capture some of the iconic businesses. That's really cool. It'd be really cool is if maybe if you, um, approach those businesses and either give away some artwork or ask if you can have your sketches hung in their businesses. Or maybe even they want to buy some of your artwork showing your business, right?

Cool.

I have this tree kind of happening here in the background. I'm gonna eventually add some green ink to that. I don't think I'm gonna do that tonight. 9:01, so I'm gonna wrap in about 3 minutes here. I just wanted to come on quick, get this started. The sketch will probably— to call this day 1, it'll probably have I'll spend 2 more days or 2 more sessions on it. Maybe 15 or 20-minute sessions. So it'll end up being probably about an hour apiece by the time I finish with it. I just, I love this. Here's what I love about the Lamy ink. Let me zoom in again. So I'm adding some water on top of the ink that was there before. Before, and it's turning purple. And I just love that. I'm actually just kind of dabbing my brush into the ink, just letting it— I do have my paper at an angle, and I love that because I let gravity pull this stuff down, pull the ink down a little bit. It's just an aesthetic I like to happen.

Zoom down here.

Like, I really love what's happening right here in this window. These colors are really fun. Good idea. Hey, thanks. Sometimes I have a good one. Sometimes. Cool. So yeah, I like how this is drying. Zoom out a little bit more and you can get a sense of where this is headed. There's the whole piece. I did start with a frame around here, so So I like to do that a lot of times with perspective drawings. I'll do a little— just a box. And I don't mind breaking the fourth wall, so to speak, with that box and coming outside of it. I actually like that. And I like that you're going to be able to see this sketchy kind of wonky box framing the main part of the sketch. I'm not going to try to cover or hide it. For me, it just adds— it tells the story. I like, I like for people to be able to see how I created these sketches. Um, I think all the lines kind of tell the story. I'm not trying to erase anything out. That's another reason I like to work with ink. If I had— was working in pencil, I would be so tempted to erase things. And I want to kind of just document my process through using ink. It just eliminates me from wanting to erase anything. There's a couple things here I don't like, but that's okay. Like, I kind of got my palm here. It's not art unless we wear it, so I'm wearing it right here. I kind of got it here. That's— we'll make it work. I'm not afraid. Yeah, this is looking cool. I'm liking the streetscape. Let it dry for a sec, take a breather, see if there's any questions or comments. Let me know where you guys are watching from. I know there's a few people watching out there. Don't be shy. Denise, I appreciate you, uh, in the comments. What paper are you using? Great question. I am using Oh, this is what I'm using, 1264 Fabriano, 140-pound. Um, this is an 8-inch by 8-inch square. Um, the other format, and I really, really love this size, this is 4 by 8. 4 by 8 is just— it's an incredible format. So I love this one. And I've been using Fabriano more than Strathmore. I just— I'm liking the texture of it, so it's all good. And tonight, again, I'm just using my Lamy pen with black Lamy ink and water. I haven't broke out any other colors. The only other color you're going to see on here will be— I'll show you, I'll give you a preview. It'll probably be a mixture of two different greens. I'll be using a green preppy highlight. It might be three, I have to— depends. Green preppy. Ah, where's my— where's my ink? Let me see if I can grab this back. Here it is. This is my sacred ink. This is back from 2015. They don't make this color anymore. Lamy, I don't know when they discontinued it, but when I bought my— let me show you the pen I bought. So this, this, I love this pen. This goes back to 2015. It's a Lamy Safari, and it came with this ink. I always forget the name. I think it was like Electric Lime. I love this Electric Lime color so much. That I hesitate using it because I can't get it anymore. Um, but you know what we'll do? Actually, we'll throw some down on the tree. What the heck, we'll wrap up and do that. So yeah, and I love this. This was my very first Lamy pen right here, but right now I have Apple Snail ink in it, which is a cool kind of rusty color. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to Open up this here. Again, I think this is called Electric Lime. It's flamy. I'm just going to take my brush and dip it into the cap. And we'll just throw some green on this tree here. Oh cool, I have some of that. I'll have to get it out and give it a try. Yeah, so I'm loving this Fabriano paper. I've been using it for a while now. All right, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to actually— I have some water I'm just going to throw here. All right, let's— going to grab some of this lime color you can kind of see in the cap. Linda was on, she would give me high fives right now. Linda, Linda S. loves this color ink. And let's see, and I actually want to do my, um, I want it to look like this is kind of a wet street here and just kind of let it run down here. So I almost want to create like the idea of a reflection happening. They've gone a little too overboard with that.

I'm gonna blot it out a little bit.

Down some of this here. And this again, this is just layer 1, or I don't know if you want to call it session 1, of probably 2 more sessions. After this dries, I'll come back in and I'll add some, some more ink. I might at some point in time— I'm actually probably going to break out the Sharpie next because I have enough black ink on here that can bleed. So I'm going to go with the Sharpie next time because I don't need, um, right now I don't need more black ink to bleed. So then I would switch to the Sharpie. Lamy is awesome for bleeding. Sharpie equals no bleed. Love it, love it, love it. Cool stuff. So there we go. So we have kind of the start of this, uh, Tree in the City sketch number 3, or I should say version number 3. The originals are out there. I think someone owns— I think someone owns both of the originals of the other one, the other two, I mean. So this one will be out there for sale as well, probably a week or so. He says, love that color, awesome! It is a fun color, right? Love that you love that color. And then I'll probably be dipping in some of this prepping here as well, just to darken up some areas of that tree. I'm not going to say— I'm going to save that for another time. And I'm going to close this up so I don't spill it. All right, let's kind of wrap up tonight. I'll just add some more— actually, break out the Sharpie. And I'm just going to throw down some hatch lines a little bit here and there. I just want to create some depth, give some shadowy depth to underneath this awning. And I'm just going to do some vertical hatch lines here to create the idea of a shadow happening. And I'm going to do the same thing at the top of the building here. So I'm adding some shadows with some hatch lines here. Uh, when this is dry— Sharpies don't like to write on wet areas, so I have to wait for that to dry, but I'll pull out these windows and put sharpen. Just clean them up, lines up a little bit more. This tree will get some texture in it as well. It's a little too wet, so I have to come back and do that too. All right, there we go. And the clock— this will be a clock up Kind of on top of this building that's sitting on maybe some kind of steel frame, metal frame across there. I love to add clocks to these, um, cityscapes. All right guys, I think that's gonna be a wrap for this one for tonight. Hey, Cameron's in! Good to see you. They popped up for a moment, but hello, and I like the drawing. Hello Cameron, good to see you. Hope you're doing well. Great to see you over the break. Thank you for your compliment. Yeah, this has been a fun drawing. I'm actually headed out. Zoom out so you guys can see how we're ending tonight. Um, thank you guys for watching live. I appreciate it. I know Denise was in the house. Denise, keep on creating. Um, artwork that just makes me smile. Your work, yeah, it's the best way for me to describe it. It just warms me up and always makes me smile. So I appreciate you sharing what you do, Cameron. I always appreciate seeing you and connecting. You're awesome. And everybody else that watched or is watching the replay, thank you so much. You guys have an amazing week. I have a really crazy week ahead of me. I'll talk to you about it later on. It's good stuff.

Tough.

Just busy, busy, busy, guys. Take care. Have a great, great rest of your Sunday evening. Peace. Live creatively. I'll see you guys soon. Take care.