The INKspired Life - Architectural Sketching

Hello, happy Friday! Hope you're having a great day. My name is Jason Nicholas and I'm here with The Inkspired Life. I'm doing some architectural sketching. So tonight, right tonight, I'm gonna wrap up, I think, a couple of sketches I started. And these sketches are based on the steam plant in Spokane, Washington. This one I had done a while ago, so I thought it'd be cool just to come back and add some ink details. I'm using a Pilot Precise pen and, uh, won't spend too much time on this one, but maybe I'll add some texture. I'll zoom in a little bit closer. Ta-da! There we go. Sometimes I'll leave sketches for a while and I'll come back to them. Sometimes I will never come back to them, and that's okay. Most of the time I usually don't come back after I finish. This one I felt like could use a little more texture on these smokestacks. So I'm just going to draw these lines. Notice these lines are not straight, they're kind of curved. Call them contour lines, or just kind of wrapping around, just to give an idea that this is a chimney stack that is curved. So you can see— I'll do some here— you can kind of see how I'm just curving these lines, right? And that helps create the illusion that it's, it's it's round. And then there are bricks on here, and I'm just gonna kind of just stagger some vertical lines just so it looks like bricks happening. Hope you had a great day. Let me know where you're watching from, what you're up to. How was your Friday? Friday, or how is your Friday because it's still happening. Um, yeah, I'd love to know where you're, where you're watching from. Cool. There you go. So this is just part of the building. The building actually continues down. I just wanted to sketch the top part because I really love these, uh, chimney stacks here. And then the next sketch we're going to work on is actually, um, based on the interior of this building. So this is in Spokane, Washington. Used to be a steam plant, now it's been converted into a restaurant. There are office spaces here as well. It's a pretty fabulous interior space. I'm not looking at any pictures. I don't remember all the details, and that's intentional. I, I don't want to have a photograph out because then I'm going to try to want to sketch everything. I'm just going with fun for now. I just want to fill in where I want to fill in, add what I want to add. A lot of my sketches are— they're based on real locations, but then I mod them to kind of just make them my own vibe. You know, for example, I don't think there— I think there's a sign here, maybe it's a steam plant, but I'm going to sketch some more, some windows in here. And to show windows, I'm just doing some vertical lines in here. Let's see, I wanna make this look a little more rounded, so I'm actually just gonna kind of do more of these curved lines, but very close together. Here I'm kind of just actually scribbling to kind of fill in this edge. And here I'll just do a little bit bigger. So you can kind of see that it was almost like a zigzag kind of pattern. I'll do the same thing over here. I'll zoom in closer so you can see it. So I'm zigzagging. So I'll do it here and I'll work my way down. Again, they're curves, but it's kind of a zigzag. So I'm not trying to color it in. I'm not trying to fill all this in with black ink. I'll zoom even closer. You can see, hopefully the lighting's on here, light is okay on here. Uh, let's see. So you can kind of see there's some space in here between the lines. It's not solid black. Uh, you can actually see better over in here. You see the white shining through? And the reason I do that is that it goes with my loose style. It's kind of scribbly. And I like scribbly stuff. For me, it has a sense of energy, movement, um, rhythm. So, and it keeps, it keeps it loose. If I color this in solid black, I feel like it would be too intense and, and too much attention brought to it for the style I'm trying to create. I'm kind of liking where this one is at. I don't think I'm gonna do much more to it, if anything. So we're gonna, we're gonna call this one done. Let me just write what it is on here. So I didn't write the date I actually started this, but I think it was maybe 2 weeks ago. Let's just put here— I like to sign these or label these sketches usually sideways. Steam Plant, Spokane. It's in Washington. Spokane, Washington. I'm just gonna put the month and the year I worked on this. So let's just say May, which is 05. 5, 24 for 2024, as you like to put that little box. And then somewhere I'll have my, um, let's do it here. Sometimes I'll just put like a heart and then my name. So cool. So that is the outside of the steam plant in Spokane, Washington. Well, just a small part of It's just kind of focusing on the upper stack area. Very cool. Yes, see, Linda's in the house. Linda, great to see you. Hope all is well. Linda has been crushing it with flower paintings, so kudos to you on the awesome flower stuff. Love it, love it. All right, so I'm going to take you from the outside of the steam plant in Spokane. We're going to go inside to a sketch I started last night. And if you watched last night, um, you saw me create this, add some colors, and let it dry. So it is all dry now. See, I'm not wearing any. That's a good sign. Um, so I figured I'd play around with this a little bit tonight and just add some more. Let's go, uh, let's add some inky details. I'm probably gonna throw some more color on it, but Um, here's my Sharpie. So that's usually what I start with. I'm actually going to switch and use my Pilot pen. I'm kind of in a— they feel very different to me. Um, I feel like with the Pilot I can get really even more loose with it. I know it's kind of weird, but for me, uh, different pens, different markers have different feelings, different weights. And based on my comfort level or what I'm trying to accomplish, I'll switch to a different pen. So this, I feel like it'd be really kind of loose and light, um, so I'm going to use the Precise ink. I do have to be careful because if I throw this Pilot Precise ink down and then I come back on top of it with water or watercolor or ink it's going to bleed a little bit, unlike the Sharpie, which doesn't bleed. All right, Linda says, love the sound of that paper. All right, here, let's do a— let's mute the music. We're going to make this into an ASMR. So I'm going to be quiet for a few minutes. Let's do some sketching. And you just let the sounds take over. And Linda, the paper you're hearing, I think, is actually what's underneath. I have tracing paper here. Hey, there you go. So just want to be quiet, so let the sounds kind of come through a little bit. Hopefully you can hear that. Let me know in the chats if you're able to hear the pen kind of scribbling on the paper. Um, I think it's— I just love, you know, part of the sketching experience isn't just throwing down ink, throwing down color. It is about the sounds, whether it's music, the materials, the paper, the pen. Um, it all kind of joins together to form an experience, right? So sketching is really an experience. Um, on many different levels, different senses. Although I'm not going to taste the paper or the ink, um, you can smell the ink, you can smell the watercolor, you can smell water. So if you want to get in a more meditative or Zen state, kind of a state of flow where things just happen, creativity just happens, um, learn to tap into your different senses. As you're painting or sketching or whatever you're doing, it doesn't matter. It really kind of changes your experience of things. So it's kind of a cool thing. Hey, I see D-Ray! D-Ray's in the house! Let's all give it up for D-Ray. It is, uh, it's her birthday today. Happy birthday to you! Hope you're doing well. I'm so great for you to be here. Thank you for joining us on your, on your B-day today. Hope you're— hope you are having a real special day. Karen's in the house. Karen, how are you? Great to see you also. Yes, I hear it. Awesome. Karen, thank you for sending stars. I always appreciate when you do that on Facebook, so thank you so much. You guys are really cool. Yes, crunching of chips. So here's, here's what's making the crunching sound. There's two different things. I'll let you hear them. This is this paper, but the real crunching I think is the tracing paper underneath. So I think that's what you're mostly hearing is the trace underneath, and then you might hear the buckle go down. All right, so we got some ink on here. I think I'd like to throw in— I want to add a little more color. So a couple things, we're going to dip back into some watercolor, and then, uh, we're going to break out some color pencils and wrap this one up. So I just want to move it so you can see most of it on screen. There you go. Hey, you're welcome, you are welcome. Happy birthday, love it, love it. All right, we got our watercolor palette and let's take you on a watercolor journey. See, I don't know how many sounds you can hear, but I'm going to be quiet again. We're just going to try to listen to the sounds of creativity, the sounds of creation in action. I don't know if that makes sense. Alright, so, um, I just mixed up some gray on here, kind of a brownish gray color. I wanted to add that in the background on the walls to just to pull some of the other colors out a little bit. So there you go. Hopefully you heard some of those sounds going on in the background. I love the sketchbook paper sound, has a deeper sound than the paper underneath. Oh, awesome. Yeah, right? So cool, good observation. Love that you're saying happy birthday, that's awesome. Very, very cool. All right, so this is drying a little bit. I'm going to come back. Let's throw down some colored pencil on this. And this one might be a wrap after I do that. So let me just let it— I might move on to something else while this is drying, actually. Let's zoom in so you can see some of the details. So let me zoom here. So I actually really love— let's get some framing out. Where's my frame? So if you look at the top square, I love what's happening up here. The colors are really cool. Look at that orange and the turquoise and the ink underneath kind of blending together. Some yellow. I don't mind that it's running out here. I like that look. So I'm trying to capture an industrial grungy kind of vibe, which is probably— it's probably my favorite aesthetic to try to capture in these sketches. Um, let's, let's see, where else can we look? Let's look here. Let's keep it zoomed in, it might be better. So this is, I think, is a 2-inch by 2-inch square. Look at all the little patterns you see in the square, the squiggly lines, the colors. It's really, it's a really fun way just to kind of see parts of a painting. I mean, I actually really even love this little composition. In here. Very cool colors. It is dry time. Yeah, this needs to dry before I add some color pencil. Here's another kind of cool square. I like the blue on the left. That blue was a Preppy, Preppy pen. You see, I'm going to push this up a little bit. A lot of fun things happening kind of in this square here. So oftentimes in these large sketches, you can find smaller sketches within it. So don't be afraid to kind of make a frame, look at smaller sections. It's a lot of fun. I could sometimes get lost looking at sections here, but here's a bigger frame. So let's just kind of wrap this in a 5— what is this, 5 by— wait, 3 by 5? I should know. I should know what size opening this is. I am drawing a blank. Dum-da-dum-dum. Yeah, 3 by 5. I got it. 3 by 5 opening here. Look how cool this looks with a black frame around it. Just— let's find— let's see, where's it— what's a good way to frame this one? You see, up a little bit. I'm kind of liking— I'm kind of liking this composition here, just this kind of little corner. And what I like about it is I can put it down Um, I like that it's kind of busy here, but we have a blank space here to balance out the busyness kind of diagonally. Um, we have some busyness here if you look diagonally. We have some emptiness here. It's just kind of balancing each other out. I might shift this vertical piece. It's a little too centered for me, actually. Um, so when you're doing compositions, there's a rule of thirds where you break your frame into thirds. So I would have a line here, a line here, a line here, a line here. So like, I want this vertical kind of steel column to be a little more off-center. I think I don't want it right in the middle because it divides this in half. It's kind of static. I want this to have more movement, more energy to it, uh, more drama. So I'm going to shift it let's intentionally shift it to the right more, maybe something like this. So let me bring this down a little. So this for me is creating more interest, having this vertical steel column over more towards the right. Um, it has— for me, it has more energy than focusing right in the middle. So I kind of like that composition. So don't be afraid to play around, you know, and nothing says I have to go to the floor. I can just kind of find any section here I think is cool. Like, I like even something like this is kind of almost abstract, which is fun. It's a whole different interpretation than looking at the whole picture, right? We can even do it sideways. Actually, actually, I like this sideways here. I like that better than the vertical. This looks kind of cool. What do you guys think of that horizontal, that landscape composition? Yeah, Linda says the black makes it pop. It does. There's something magical about black frames. It's, it's really, uh, so fun. Let me bring that down, you can see it better. I agree, the balance attracts your eye. Yeah, right. I don't— do you guys like this horizontal composition? Let me know. Let me see. No, I don't. I, I'm kind of liking it. My eyes and my brain and my heart are saying— my gut is saying that this is really— let's just blank this out here— that that's a really nice composition. Pretty interesting, right? Hey, Janice is on! Janice, great to see you. Janice says, I like the framing. Hey, thanks Janice, that's great, great to see you. Janice says, I am on the train so I might lose connection. No worries, I'm so glad that you're tuning in. It's interesting, I think my broadcast is streaming out to two— on two different streams on Facebook. I see Janice on one stream and I see everybody else in the other stream. Really weird. It's all good. Janice says, how are you? I'm doing great, Janice, I hope you're well. Long time no see. I'm so glad you're tuning in. You guys are awesome. All right, so let's see if this is dry enough so we can throw down some colored pencil. So I'm going to go into— I have this tool roll here. I love it. Again, Lockbee. I know every show I mention the word Lockbee, the company Lockbee. I use their stuff. I love their stuff. I'm an ambassador, so I'm not ashamed to promote this. If you guys ever buy anything from Lockbee.com and use my discount code, I, I do get a small little kind of a commission, but the price is the same for you guys. Although— sorry, it's not the same. If you use my discount, you get 10% off, I think, of regular price purchases. Um, so sorry about the commercial, but I love this thing because if I open it, let me just show you, I have so much in here. It's so easy to carry this around, and I love putting my colored pencils in this one. And I have another one that has my watercolor markers in it. So I do want to use some of these. I want to, of course, use my light aqua. Uh, we're going to break out the neon pink, and let's bring out chartreuse. You guys have heard me say these colors a bunch of times because they're my faves. Um, this is a new one I've been using, new color, Sunburst Yellow. I've recently added to my favorite color pencil colors. And there's another one here as well I'm really liking. This is called Sky Blue Light. I don't know if we use all these on this sketch, but I just want to show you guys. I also have a cream one in here I like a lot. Well, I like all the colors in here, but, um, these are my faves. Neon Yellow is in here as well. Oh, and Process Red. I like this Process Red color. It's almost— it's like a pinkish reddish maroonish. It's called Process Red. I love the name, actually. I wish I knew more about the name. All right, cool. So we got some colored pencils. Let's throw down some color on these Yeah, Janice says it's raining here again. It's a rainy day here in New Jersey. In New York, it's rainy. It's like a fall day. It's so cold. Just crazy, crazy. Luna says, love these colors. Cool. All right, guys, um, let's do a little more of the ASMR. ASMR are these cool videos that are pretty much all sound and no talking. So let's do a little more sound experience as I add some color pencil. Right. Cool. So I added some color on there. As I'm looking at this, I really am— I'm loving the way the pink, neon pink is popping on here. Of course, we would expect neon pink to pop. Let me zoom in. One of the things I love doing with the neon pink color pencil is using it over orange, whether it's orange ink or orange watercolor. Um, you get a really amazing color that's happening right in here. Get my frame out. So right in here, I hope the camera and lighting are picking it up. This color is really— I love it. I love the neon pink mixed with orange. It's one of my absolute favorite color combinations. It looks so cool. So that's a fun color. And one of the things I also noticed is when I brought on the Sunburst Yellow here, is— let me bring this down a little bit. Uh, where did I add it? Right in here. I'll do it again. I, I like the way that it just kind of pops or darkens or intensifies that color, the orange color underneath. So you can kind of see here, it's really vibrant, but I let it light there. And I like the variation. I'm not going to color it all with the pencil. I want to see darkness. I want to see light. I think it adds more interest when you're looking at a sketch. I added a pop of it here as well. So that was really cool. What else? You know what, I didn't throw any Chartreuse on there, but that's okay. Maybe I will. And if we zoom out, I'm liking the colors. I like the way this brownish gray color has dried. Looks really cool. Hope you guys are liking it. Let me grab a drink. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. Feel free to sing happy birthday to D-Ray. That would be so cool out there. Janice is on Facebook. Yeah, Janice, I hope you're still out there. So for some reason, I think my stream is broadcasting to my Facebook It's the same Facebook page but two different streams to the same page. I don't know what the heck's going on. That's crazy. But I hope you're still out there watching. And if anybody's on the YouTubes, let me know. I— it's kind of weird. I've just been streaming and I usually have at least one or two people on YouTube. No one lately. So I don't know if it's even hitting, hitting the YouTube page. Yeah, I grabbed the chartreuse. I did. I want to pull out just some of these window frames a little bit here. So let's pop some of that green on. And this one, I think this one is almost done, guys. I don't know what else I want to do to it. The man says as he— this is actually an interesting color combo. So let's just listen in again. I don't even know if you guys can hear me sketching or the pencil on the paper. I can't get the microphone any closer, but I'm just playing around seeing if it's capturing any of these sounds. Next time we're going to do the silent stream where I am not going to talk at all. Oh cool. Hey, um, Karen says, I— on your iPhone you see Linda and D-Ray, on your MacBook Pro you see Janice. That is so funny. All right, that's cool. Thanks for telling me, Karen. Yeah, I got to figure out what's going on. Janice can hear it. Awesome. I'm glad you guys can hear those sounds. Look at this chartreuse on top of that gray color. Holy moly. This is, um, this is why when I do this stuff, I'm thinking of it, thinking of this as playtime, and I'm not really expecting any results. So if I was, I probably never would have used the chartreuse, but I am loving the chartreuse on top of that gray background. Especially, I think it looks really cool on this piece right here. Um, it's— it just adds another layer of interest and texture to this. And notice I didn't do it everywhere. You know, I kind of stopped it here. I didn't continue it to the left. I didn't continue it all the way here. Again, I'm just going for that variation. Maybe it's a little busy looking, and I don't mind that because I want some energy. I want this to feel like it has life happening to it, even though it's an old building that's been repurposed. There's a lot of life that happened in there, and there's a lot of, a lot of life that's happening currently in it. So I want to kind of capture an oldness but also an energy about it. And it was a steam plant, so there you go. Hopefully that makes sense. The chartreuse is cool. On your shopping list? Yes, I highly recommend it. I did not know what chartreuse was until about 2 years ago. I have heard of it. I had heard of it. I didn't know what color it was. It is. You can tell it's one of my faves because it's one of my shortest color pencils here. I have, I have a backup. I've learned to always have a backup, so I, I try to keep 2 of every color in at all times. Um, so cool. I'm glad you're gonna try Chartreuse. Let me know if you like it. Janice is loving it too. Awesome, you guys are— this is so fun. But in my humble opinion, I'm thinking this one is done for now. So I'm probably going to leave it. I'll let it be just like the first sketch we worked on. You know, this one sat here for a couple weeks, I'm sure, but I came back tonight and I wanted to add some ink lines, inky details on top. You never know, I might revisit this one. And I'm going to wrap up. I'm going to do one more thing, uh, in case your sharpener— yes, in case my sharpener eats it. Yeah, Janice, my, uh, I love this sharpener. Check this out, guys. Here's another pro tip. One of the things I like to do is sharpen both ends. So the reason I like to sharpen both ends is this will go back in that tool roll or my, uh, Lockbee Quattro or whatever I'm carrying. And if I'm out in the field and I don't have a pencil sharpener, I have at least two sharp ends, right? So if one snaps, I kind of have a backup. So you'll, you will see lots of times I'll have both ends sharpened. Um, it's just another tip, something I like to do. Uh, I'm looking through— can you guys see this? If you look through this paper, you can see there's a tree. I was messing around and just sketching a tree, really loosely sketching a tree. Um, let's add some color to this. I feel like it. So this will wrap up doing this. I wasn't planning on it. I usually don't plan on stuff I'm going to do during these streams. Let's throw some colors on here and have fun with it and just see where it goes. Cool, right? QQQ, what kind of colored pencils? Linda? Yeah, these are— I'll hold it up here. Prismacolor. Premier. They are not the cheapest color pencils, but they are my favorites. The Prismacolor colors for— I— they kind of just come off and glide off onto the paper, um, like butter. It's so smooth. So I love these. I've used other brands, um, I guess other brands are coming to mind, but they just feel different and look different. So I— my choice would be the Prismacolor. Ta-da! And I think if you go to my website, theinspiredlife.com, you go to my page that I talk about my tools, you might be able to find a link there to Amazon. I think maybe I added these on there, um, so you could check it out there. Cool. All right, so let's just add some colors. I don't have music playing. Do you guys want music going? Or let's actually— you know what, let's just do a little meditative. Let's try to pick up some more sounds. I'm going to be playing around with this whole sound idea, probably going to get a different mic next time and put it right down by the paper. Alright, let's do it. Let's add some color, guys. Alright, cool. Um, there you go. That was fun. So I was trying to just use kind of the same color palette I used for the the steam plant sketches on this tree. I'm, I'm loving the way the orange is kind of drying. You'll notice it pooling or puddling in certain locations. Um, it started off by accident, but then I realized the more water that I can add in certain places, it'll cause the paper to buckle. So it kind of is buckling and it's capturing or pooling the orange in places. And I like the texture it's adding. It's actually drying really interestingly here as well. So that's kind of fun. And then it's doing it down here as well. I'm not digging it so much on the bottom, so I'm just going to kind of come back with my brush and dab it a little bit. That's better. So you can, you can remove some of that if you want. And when this dries up, there's, there's some rocks in here. I'm going to pop those rocks out. I'll probably bring in some pink maybe to do that. How cool would that look? I think it'll look pretty awesome. Janice says, "Love, love that tree." Hey, thank you, Janice. I appreciate it. I'm glad you're liking it. That's so cool. Yeah, this is a fun little sketch here. I'm trying to let it dry so I could add some pink. Maybe I'll just kind of dry it myself a little bit. Just block this out a little bit. I'm going to let this dry. We'll see what happens there. So let's put this over here and we'll throw down some color pencil, then we'll call it a day on this one. So guys, let me know if you have any final questions, comments, or thoughts as I'm wrapping this up. On this awesome Friday night. Let's see if I can get some colored pencil down. It might be still a little wet. Yeah, it's still wet, so I don't want to rip the paper, so I'm going to actually wait. I'll wait for it to dry before I throw down some colored pencil. It's a pretty wet sketch. Um, I am not going to even— I'm going to leave it right where it is. Let's kind of zoom out. Let's throw that frame around it and take a look at it. Where's that magic frame? Where are you, magic frame? Isn't that funny? I don't know where I put that black frame. I'm, I'm going cray cray. Did I put it here? Yep, I got it. Cool. This one's a little small. Yeah, this is a little small to— I think I have a bigger one in here. Let's see, I got this one I made. I got— we could try this one. This one's a little bigger. If I just kind of crop that out, I kind of just made this out of a piece of cardboard. Better if I zoom in. Yeah, you can kind of see it zoomed in, right? So we can crop this one out also. This is a bigger frame and just kind of get a hint of what it looks like or how it pops with the black next to it. Alright guys, thank you. Thank you so much for watching. It's 10 o'clock. I'm gonna wrap for the night. I appreciate you all watching live, or if you're watching the replay, that's cool too. Feel free to like this, share this out. If you're on YouTube, I'd love for you to like this, subscribe if you haven't, and share it. Can you share? Share the link. I'm at 728 YouTube subscribers. I would love to get to 1 1,000 before the end of May. That is a personal goal I have. So if I can hit 1,000 viewers before the end of May, that would be spectacular. I appreciate you guys for your support, your comments. Thank you, thank you. Um, keep being good, keep using your creativity for positivity. Let's put good vibes out there. We definitely could use it in the world. Um, yeah. And remember, you guys, you can sketch architecture too. One line at a time, one scribble at a time. You've got this, and I'm here to help you along the way. Thank you guys, take care, have a great, great rest of your Friday. I will be popping on over the weekend. If I know ahead of time, I will put it as a post in Facebook, on YouTube, on Instagram. I couldn't connect to Instagram today, I don't know why, but I'll try to give advance notice if I can. Thank you guys, take care, peace out. And D-Ray, enjoy the rest of your birthday. I'm looking for the finish button. You guys know my routine. I'm just going to keep waving and looking and smiling until I find the finish button. There we go. Good night, guys.