The INKspired Life - Architectural Sketching

Hey, happy December 24th, Christmas Eve, everybody. Hope you're doing well. I am. You see me kind of clicking around trying to figure out how to connect to Instagram Live. Maybe I'm there, maybe I'm not. But that's okay. I'm here with you guys and hope you're doing well. Happy holidays, best wishes, and I hope, um, just want to wish everybody best of health and happiness. I'm gonna do a quick sketch. Hey Linda, I see you in the house. Great to see you. We're on YouTube. Welcome. Uh, yeah, I'm gonna do a quick sketch today. I know it's Christmas Eve, everybody's out and about, or maybe home and chilling. Yeah, a little bit of time and let's get some sketching going. Forgive me if I'm clicking around a little bit. Dana says, "You're there!" Hey, awesome! I'm there. That's so cool. Where am I? Where am I, Dana? I'm definitely here, but it's good to see you. Hope you're doing well. All right, I am doing a lot of talking. Let's do some sketching. Um, there we go. We must be on YouTube now. Hey Linda, we are on YouTube. Yes, I should be streaming to YouTube and Facebook right now. I was trying to go on Instagram Live, but I don't think it connected. For some reason, but that's okay. So I'm sketching out just a kind of a quick fictitious perspective of a streetscape here, riffing off my Tree in the City sketches. I'm using a Lamy pen with Lamy ink. And I'm going to be bleeding this ink very, very shortly. And the idea is I want to kind of create something quick and loose here. Maybe we have a sidewalk or something.

All right, cool.

Let's, uh, let's bleed some of this ink and just have some fun with it. Let it run, see where it goes. And I'm just gonna grab some water. Got some water right here. It's actually clean for once. You guys usually see me using kind of grungy water. I, um, treated myself to clean water today. I just wanted to go— I don't know why it's getting kind of mucky, really mucky. I just started with some fresh water. But here we go, got some water on here. Let's just bleed some of this ink and see where it goes. Do I want to? All right, we'll do it this way.

Here we go.

So this is the Lamy ink. And you can just see how it's kind of bleeding a little bit here. And I'm bleeding it for a couple reasons. One, I just want to create kind of a really soft edge of the building here, edge of these buildings. Second reason I'm bleeding the ink is to help create some shadows. And the third reason is I just love bleeding ink because all kinds of fun things happen just leaving it up to a bit of random randomness. You can see as I'm just throwing down the water what's happening, and this is gonna be just a really quick ink throw down here today. Cool. So we have a sidewalk. I'm going to just draw some lines here to help indicate the sidewalk and create a little bit of depth in this perspective. Notice how the lines here are getting closer together, kind of the further I go back. That helps create a sense of depth.

Cool.

So I'm just adding some ink lines on top of ink lines. Dana says, what part of the country are you in? I love bleeding ink too. Hey Dana, awesome! I am in the Garden State, New Jersey. I'm in New Jersey. Or as people say, New Joisy, although I've never heard anybody say New Joisy. Um, so Dana, tell me, what kind of sketching do you like to do?

All right, cool.

I'm actually going to break out something too I haven't used in a while. I love these Art Graph graphite sticks. They're water soluble. Watch how cool these things are. Let's see, there's a couple different ways I like to use them. So one way is you can just put them straight on, on a dry area. Let's— let me show you here. I'll zoom in. So say we want to put them in on kind of a dry area, maybe sidewalk here. So I sketched it on dry paper, come back with a wet brush. So they're water-soluble. When I add the water, it's gonna kind of sketch with— sketch paint with it. Kind of see it's bleeding here, right? Um, that's one way to do it. The way I most likely like to use the Art Graphite sticks is I like to actually dip them right here in the water. I'm going to dip it in and I'm going to sketch right on the paper with it. Got a little too close there, didn't I?

I'll zoom out.

Okay, uh, actually, we'll zoom in. Hopefully I'm not making you seasick. So this is like maybe an overhang here, so I'm just going to sketch. It'll dry lighter than you see it going down. But I like it because it's loose and wonky and it picks up the texture of the paper. If you look here, I really like the texture showing through. So let's just do some sketch painting with this for a minute or two. Um, Linda's in New York State. Yeah, New York State, upper New York. New York State is a beautiful place. The Adirondacks are incredible. We're just going to grunge up these sidewalks a little bit. We're going to grunge-ify them. But you can see really right in here, I love what's happening. Dana says, I usually do outside, more landscape with watercolor and pen. Awesome. I have art graph lying around. Yeah, out in California. Very cool. I have not— I have never been to California.

One of these days.

I'm just kind of dirtying these sidewalks up a little bit here. Cool, right? So you can get a sense of the perspective happening. I'm just pushing some buttons here. I lost some of my screens.

Here we are. Excellent.

I think we're back. All right, cool. And we'll just throw down a little bit, a little bit more here. This is the Lamy ink. I'm just going over some of these areas. I just want to sharpen some of these lines up a little bit. Let's do a nice kind of crown type of molding on this building edge here. Just give it more interest at the top. This is going to be a clock over here. At least that's what my brain's saying. It's okay if you lose some line work. You always come back and just throw some lines on top. So my style is really— is kind of loose and sketchy, very wonky, never going for perfect lines unless it's a technical drawing. But these are loose, fun sketches, so you're gonna see my lines really wavy. And very whimsical. Hopefully that comes through in what I'm trying to sketch here. Cool. I'm liking it here. All right, let's throw down some I'm actually gonna break out some watercolor. I'm gonna grab some other ink. So I wanna just throw down some green on the kind of background where that tree is. So I'm gonna dig into my watercolor palette and use some, I think it's sap green. That's what we're gonna call it, sap green. This is my Winsor, well-loved Winsor Newton watercolor palette. Love, love, love this palette. As you can see, it gets really good use. Just dipping into the sap green. I'm actually gonna tilt this up and let it run down the page a little bit here. Cool. I'm gonna dip into this. This is— I think this is called Electric Lime. It's Lamy ink. I've had it since 2015-ish. They don't make this color anymore, so I use it really sparingly. I love it. This color ink is This ink here actually came with this pen, and I believe they— I believe I got it in 2015 when I first started kind of messing around adding color ink to my sketches. Before then, they were all black and white. I like this Electric Lime color a lot. I'm just going to kind of use it sparingly, and this will dry really nicely. I'll zoom in. You can see, uh, you can see how it's picking up the texture of the paper. I love that. There's the electric lime went down. I like that. It's going to dry really nicely in there.

Pop some in there. There we go.

That's, that's all I'm going to throw in there. As this is drying, the next step would be for me to add some detail, um, probably with my Sharpie because the Sharpie won't bleed. So I don't want all this black ink to be bleeding ink because it'll get really messy. So that's why I'll throw down some Sharpie, because it won't bleed. Yeah, my— I'm left-handed, so my palm, you can see where my palm kind of dragged across here a little bit. I'm not gonna let it stop me or worry me. We'll keep it there. We'll work it in somehow. It's all part of the fun, right? I always say it's not art unless— what? It's not art unless you wear it. So I am wearing it right here on my palm. It's officially artwork. Uh, let's read some comments. You do pay for the sunshine here. Yes, Yeah, I know, I know, some, uh, yeah, the weather out there, the droughts, it's, it's crazy. Landslides. Uh, already love the watercolor. Oh good, that's so cool. It'll dry nicely, hopefully. Sorry, I just need a drink there, some coffee. All right. Let's add some Sharpie on this. We'll call it a day. I'll have to come back to it later and add more details. Let's see, maybe we'll sketch in kind of, kind of some details, maybe where these doorway areas are. Sharpie does not like to draw on wet areas. Let's give some shape to this awning.

So I'm going to just do some angled lines, just give a little shape to it.

It's like it's tilted at an angle. I'm going to blot this dry over here because I keep putting my palm in it. And I am gonna mess with your mind and turn this sideways. I don't wanna get my palm in, in that area up there. So I'm gonna turn it sideways and sketch this way for a few minutes. Go upside down on it. Don't be afraid to turn the paper as you're working on it. It's all good. There's no rule that says we have to draw and sketch everything perfectly vertical, right? Turn the paper, make your life easier. I'm just sketching in some lines for this doorway just to define it a little bit more.

Just—

it's a door with kind of a window on top of it, transom window.

Boom.

So if I turn it this way, you can see just get a little more definition where those doors are. They're still loose, they're still wonky. I'm going to add some shading inside. Um, can I add some hatch? Let me see if I can add some hatch lines under here. I like to do hatch lines sometimes for shadows. Basically, I'm just sketching these vertical, vertical-ish lines closely to next to each other, create the idea of some shadows happening there. Do some under this Another cornice piece across the top, just to give this a little detail here. I like the clock, I'm going to leave it that way. I do want to continue this idea here of a roof roof. Let's see, really should come have this at an angle. So maybe that does something like that. Maybe this will be a— some kind of sign on the building here. Not sure yet what it'll say on it. There we go. Zoom out, you can get a sense of what it's looking like. Ta-da! There we go. Just adding a little more texture to this tree. I don't want to go too crazy. Awesome. Let's see, what else do I want to do with it for now? Okay, I'm inspired. Awesome, I'm glad I could inspire you. That's so fun. My job is done. Um, what I'm actually gonna do, the last thing for now, is I'm gonna mix up some gray with probably more purplish, uh, more purple, kind of purplish gray, and just kind of add some shadows or darken some of these window areas and door areas. So here's what I like to do to mix up gray is I like to take— mix my own up. So I'm going to take some brown and I'm just going to put it right in this dirty part of my palette, that's fine. I'm going to take some brown. I'm going to dip into some blue.

And I'm going to make kind of my own gray happening here.

I can make it more bluish if I want. Grayish. It's up to you. Just keep adding brown and blue to get the color you like. Let's actually just go with this for now.

I want a little bit more blue, I think. All right, cool.

Let's try that. I am dipping a little more into the blue here. Notice I'm not coloring in the entire kind of rectangle where the window or the glass is. Leaving some white space there. Do the same thing on this side. I was thinking purple, mixing up a purple color. Oh, I almost dipped that into the coffee. Silly me.

All right.

Throw some under here to create even more depth with these kind of overhanging areas.

Cool.

This is fun. Fun little sketch here. All right, cool. I think this one's going to be done for now. So it has to dry. If it dries, I'll come back and add more detail. So this was the previous one I did here, just so I can show it to you. This is my Tree in the City 3-ish, I call it. Because I can't remember if this is number 3 or 4 that I've done. Um, I've been doing one of these sketches around this time of year for the past couple years, last few years. I really like the way this one came out. So here's today's, put them next to each other. So this one here, you can see, has more ink kind of inky lines, brickwork down here, scratchy shadow lines happening. I came back on top of the tree and added some details there. And you can see by adding the extra layer, it'll, it'll just pull this to the next level, and that's fine. I want to— I like where this is. I don't want to overdo it. So this is perfect. Very cool. All right guys, thank you so much for watching over there on the YouTube and the Facebook. If you're on YouTube, I appreciate if you guys give me thumbs up if you like what you're seeing, and you haven't subscribed, that would be awesome if you subscribe. Trying to get 600 subscribers before the end of the month. I think I need 50, 50 more or 40. 8 more or something like that. Um, thank you guys so much for watching. I appreciate you all so, so much. Uh, I don't think this went to the Instagram Live. I'll play around with that. Maybe I'll play around with that after I end the stream. Thank you guys. Have a very, very happy holiday. Merry Christmas. Um, enjoy your family and some peace and quiet. Or if you're gonna go out and Celebrate however you spend the holidays. Spend them creatively. Make some artwork, maybe. You guys are awesome. Dana, it was great to see you in the chat. Thank you for tuning in. Hope to see you back again. Linda, thank you. You're always fun and positive in the comments. Um, I really do appreciate that. And if anybody else out there is watching, I appreciate you as well. Thank you so much, guys. Take care. Happy holidays, Merry Christmas. Maybe I'll sketch on Christmas Day, we'll see. Take care, peace, and live creatively. Oops, I gotta wave with the other hand so I can use my mouse to turn the stream off. Take care, guys, we'll see you. I might actually be on a few more minutes. I'm gonna try the Instagram thing, I think. Bye, guys, we'll see you.