The INKspired Life - Architectural Sketching

Hey everybody, how you do— hope— let's start over. Hey everybody, hope you're doing well on Monday afternoon at 2 o'clock PM. I'm actually off of school today, so I figured I'd pop on, just take a quick break. I've been trying to catch up on paperwork and other fun stuff, so I just need kind of a little creative infusion, and what better way than to do some sketching? So hopefully you guys are doing well. I see Jennifer is in the house. Jennifer, I hope all is well. It's always great to see you. Hey, Linda's in the house. Off to see you. No school today. Yeah, so we are off, we are off today, so we're very lucky. Uh, for me today, I'm just kind of catching up and getting things going, but hope you guys are doing well today. Close this. So you can see I have a new format here on my screen. Um, just trying to organize, do things a little differently, try to get the branding going up a little bit here. So you might notice some tech glitches. That's— maybe the volume is off. Um, let me know if you can hear me okay. And on the screen, I noticed I might have a glitch here. I was trying to get a live chat feed going, but it's not going right now. So if you see me kind of fiddling off to the side, I'm just pushing some buttons and we'll see what happens. But I am going to do some sketching. Uh, Jennifer says My PET scan came back clear. Yes, that is awesome. I love that, guys. Give it up for Jennifer. I love that. So, so cool, Jennifer. That is awesome news. Congratulations. Hang in there, man. You guys are awesome. Jason's in the house. Good to see you, Jason. Hey, so, um, let's sketch. I'm gonna sketch the city skyline today really quick and loose. Again, I'm just taking a break. So I've been doing paperwork and organizing and some schoolwork and about to do some architecture work. I'm got to work on a project, but I do want to just take this little kind of quick sketching break before I get back to it. I find when I sketch quick and loose, it just gets my creative juices going, gets my energy level up. It's just what I love doing. It's my thing. We all have our thing, right? And this is just my thing right here, and I'm glad you guys tune in and kind of watch me do this. It's a privilege. So I am looking at this photograph I took in New York City. Sorry, I have an itchy nose. A photograph I took in New York City of a skyline. No iconic buildings in the scene, but I just want to kind of sketch what I'm seeing here really fast, and then I'll take a look at some comments in a minute. Let me just get this kind of going. I am using the Sharpie pen, and this is, um, Fabriano. Let's see, what are you using? 1264. Did I get the number right? Yeah, I did. From me on a 1264 watercolor paper. Why do I like this paper? I like the texture. Whenever I'm sketching, I feel like the texture just helps to create some bumps in the line, some gaps. The lines aren't so continuous, and that adds to the quick loose style that I try to go for. I mean, yeah, this is so cool. Let me know where you guys are watching from. Feel free to leave some comments. I love New York City and I am planning on going back there in October once, maybe twice. I definitely want to go in and do some sketching. And I have— I have not been to the World Trade Center. I haven't seen One World Trade since it's been built and I've seen it from a distance but not up close, so I want to go to One World Trade. Um, also the Oculus Building. If you guys don't know what the Oculus Building is, it's a really awesome, um, building that has a shopping mall in it and it leads into the train station. It's right near One World Trade and it looks like a dove. Taking flight. The building was designed by Santiago Calatrava, a really cool architect. I guess— I don't know if he's architect/engineer, but, um, really cool building. Here we go, so I'm sketching in some windows here. This building here has a lot of windows going on. I feel like this song is— has this song been like repeating since I've been on? I have it on repeat somehow. I mean, I like it, but cool. So when I'm looking at the skyline picture, I just noticed a lot of horizontal window bands on this high-rise building here. This is a big glass facade right here where my pen is sketching. Alright, cool. Let's take a look at some comments. Jason Nicholas Nicholas has, uh, you had a post on Facebook about where to sketch next. I mentioned South Street Seaport. Yeah, Jason, um, that would be a great place to sketch. That's actually on my list. You just reminded me there was a— I think there was a tour there of the Tin Building that I meant to sign up for, so I have to see if that's still available. I have not been down in that area in years. So Jason, that would be a great, great spot to do some sketching for sure. Yeah, congrats Jennifer, awesome, awesome. Ian's coming the second week of October. That's right Jason, thank you for reminding me. That's, um, definitely one of the days I'll be there. I'm not exactly sure what day, hopefully it's on a weekend. If it's during the week, I can't make it unfortunately because I have, um, I have school. But I hope it's a weekend. That'd be great to go just hang out for that, kind of sketch along. How fun. Got some water towers happening here. Linda says, I'm a YouTube channel watcher. Awesome. Yeah, so my live chat feed thing is not working up here. I gotta figure figure out— I don't know how to get it to work, but I'll— let me play around with that while we're on the chat here. Um, Jason said took the wrong week off. I took the third week off because I never really gave dates. Oh, gotcha. Oh, that stinks. Yeah, so again, I just have to go look to hope to see— hopefully it's on a weekend. All right, so guys, you can see this is kind of quick, loose, wonky here. I'm actually going to break out a thicker Sharpie, a wider one. This is a Sharpie Extra Fine Point, which I love, but I'm going to grab the, um, Fine Point. I, I have to say, the Sharpie naming convention confuses me because this is a Fine Point. I guess Extra Fine means it would be smaller, right? I just kind of wish they had like a small, medium, large, extra large kind of naming system. So you can see here's the two different point sizes. So I'm going to break out this big one. I haven't sketched with it too much here live. I think I did last time I was on, but let's just pull this out and bold up some of these lines and see if we can just pull out some of these shapes a little bit more. Again, I'm just going to hold it. I'm going to hold the Sharpie really close to the end of it because I want to keep my sketches— my sketch really loose. If I hold it down here, it's going to be tight. So I'm going to hold it back here, and I'm just going to trace kind of the silhouette of this. And when I say trace, I'm not exactly staying over the lines I just sketched. But you see how just adding that Sharpie, the thicker one, kind of just pulled the outside edge of the buildings here where they meet the skyline, which I like because this kind of creates an interesting shape. And one of the things I do love about New York City and skylines in general is I love the shapes of the buildings against the sky, the silhouettes, right? So we have this really cool kind of— and I think I'm going to color in just the sky here just so we— you can see, um, the shape I'm talking about. What do I want to use? I have some colored pencils out. I have my favorite color colored pencil, but I don't know if I want to do a— I want to do pink there. I kind of do a wash. Let's use a— let's let's do a watercolor wash. So I'm just gonna open my watercolor palette here and, um, let's just pull out some blues maybe and just make a wash on here. So I got some water, it's probably dirty because I haven't used it. Yeah, it's a little bit dirty, I haven't cleaned it in a while, but I like using dirty water. It adds that kind of grungy vibe I like sometimes. And, um, let's just grab a brush here. Let's shift this over a little bit. It says the chat is ready for me to display. Oh, I— so the chat is working. I see Chip. Hey, Chip's in the house! Great to see you. Yeah, man, I miss you too. Chip is awesome. I had the pleasure of meeting with Chip in person. Um, in the summer. It was really— it was one of the highlights of my summer, Chip. It was so cool meeting you and getting your little tour of Princeton. I loved it. So yeah, so it looks like that little chat box thing's working. Let me know if you guys can read the chat panel I have on the display. It's like right— I'll point to it here. It's this little box here with the chat. I don't know if it's readable or not, if it's something I should keep on here. I'm just experimenting today with the setup. All right, let's throw down some sky color. I'm jibber-jabbering a lot. I'm just going to throw some water here. There we go. All right, cool. So we got some water on there, and let's just throw down some color. I am, I am just grabbing some turquoise and some of this blue. I'm just mixing them together. I'm not going for anything particular. I just want to— the goal is just to kind of pull out the skyline a little bit here by adding some color. I don't know if there's— might be too much glare on that. Let me move this over a little bit. I think that might be better. There you go. All right, cool. So we have a— some sky going on there. I'm gonna make— touch in some darker blue. You know what, maybe we have, uh, maybe we'll add some gray and we'll make it kind of a fall day sky. By the way, I hope wherever you're, you're watching from, you're staying dry if you're in the rain that's happening. We, we've had rain here, I guess, 3 days in a row. It's just crazy. All right, I'm just mixing up some gray here, gray it up a little bit. So when I— I like to make my own gray, and lots of times I'll just take some kind of brown and some of that blue and just mix it. You can see I got kind of a gray color happening. Let's make this maybe more into a ball kind of gray sky. I actually, I, I love gray sky days, gray rainy days. I can't explain why, but I really do. I actually really do. I sometimes feel more vibrant and energetic on a gray fall day and a bright sunny one. I know that sounds kind of weird, but it's kind of— I'm wired. All right, so I just— I'm just throwing some gray down in here. We'll let things mix a little bit there. That was really cool when you went to Princeton. I really like the doors as well. Hey Jason! Yeah, yeah, Princeton was a fun, uh, experience for sure. Definitely loved that trip. It was awesome. It was so fun. Chip, uh, Chip has a great eye for detail, and he's the one that turned me on to all the really cool doorways there. Definitely will make a trip back. I think next summer I'd like to go back to Princeton. And I do, do some, some urban sketching there. That would be so fun. All right, cool. Let me fuss with the sky a little too much. It's a song, Rainy Days, Rainy Days and Mondays. They do go well together, right? Just going to zoom in a little closer. You can see the sky. Going to move some of that paint around, just kind of— so typically when I paint skies, I usually have it upside down, like, and tilted down away from the buildings. Don't forget, gravity is our friend. Gravity is a great tool to to use to move the colors around. It's kind of therapeutic watching it. Cool. Yeah, like, I like it. Like, it's kind of dark right in here. I feel like a— I feel like a purple would look cool in here. What do I have for purple? Do I have a, um, Purple Preppy? I have a Purple Varsity pen here. Just going to take— I have a purple Varsity pen, it's made by Pilot. Um, I like the Pilot pens. I was just kind of dabbing— I just feel like dabbing in some purple. I don't know why, to be honest with you. My brain was saying to go for it, so why not? One of the things I do like about these Pilot Varsity pens is, um, You can kind of dab them over the wet areas and the ink will come out. It works a little more effectively than the, the, um, Preppy pens when you put wet on top of wet here. Oh, that's cool. This is fun. I'm liking it actually. Not gonna get too crazy. I think I'm gonna kind of blow it around a little bit. Okay, let's run it back next summer. Hey Chip, I'm there. You want to meet in Princeton again? I will— I will meet you there anytime. That would be so awesome. Count me in. All right, cool. Now let's see, uh, let's just— I'm gonna actually go to my Pilot Precise. Let's just kind of sketch these window areas in a little bit here. And I'm going with my Precise because I, I know I'm not gonna do an ink wash over these areas, so I don't have to worry about the ink bleeding. And it's going to be— I can get darker and get a darker black on here with the Pilot Precise than the Sharpie on this paper. So that's why I jumped here to the Pilot pen. Hope that makes sense. In my brain it made sense. I don't know if what I said just made sense. My brain got it though. I hope you guys got it too. All right, cool. Notice I'm not finishing this building. I'm kind of just letting it stop. A lot of white space there, which I think is nice because it's kind of balancing the color out. I'm actually, actually going to blot some of this out here. Let's just pull back. I want to pull back some of this purple. Just a little bit. There we go. Um, I really love the way this is drying. Let me zoom in and show you guys here. I love the way this is drying up here. It almost looks like the sun's trying to peek through in this area because I was using that dirty water. The dirty water actually had a, um kind of a yellowish tint to it, so you can see that yellow poking through, which is kind of cool. This is going to dry really, really awesomely, and I'll be sure to show you guys, or I'll post pictures after it dries. And it says, very nice. Thank you, Linda. Thank you so much. It's going to add some shadow to these water towers here. Gotta love the iconic water towers on top of these, these buildings. Um, I think this one might be almost done. I kind of like I like it. And then let's see, I'm just shading some of these glass areas here. Almost like a checkerboard kind of thing happening over here. Our windows here, got that window. And I'm just going to darken some of these horizontal window bands in here. Cool. All right, I think I'm putting the pen down on this one. And, uh, there we go. We have a quick skyline here. Just tilting this up so I can let this kind of bleed a little bit to the left. So I can blow it a little bit. Awesome! I like the way it looks. So hopefully you can still see how I— the darker Sharpie here, the, um, fine point— I just traced the outline here to give us that shape. And I thought it'd be fun just to, just to add color in the sky on this one and leave the buildings all black and white. Sometimes I do the opposite, I'll just color the buildings, leave the sky black and white, and sometimes I'll color both or leave them both black and white. There's so many options. Don't be afraid to play around and try, try different techniques. That's what I love about having fun doing this stuff. That's what makes it fun for me. Yeah, I think I'm rambling. Hey, you guys are awesome! Thank you for watching. It's almost 2:30. So again, I wanted to pop on quick, say hello, take a break before I go to hit some architecture drawings. So I got my free loose craziness out here, creativity going. Now I'm going to go work on some actual technical precise architectural drawings. So, um, very, very different mindsets for each one, but They both have their advantages for sure, and I do love doing both. Hey, I see Double's in the house. Good to see you. Where is this drawing from? Great question. Yeah, so this is, um, this is just a skyline from New York City. Um, so good question, and I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. The color was fun on here. Chip says, chat soon, brother. You got it, man. Take care. It's great that you were able to join us. Linda, it's great seeing you in the house as well. Yeah, you enjoy your week ahead as well. Jason Nicholas, great that you popped on. I always love your comments, positivity. She says, would you ever do the technical stuff live? Yeah, if you guys are up for it. I think I've mentioned it. I haven't done it yet though. If you guys are up for it, I would love to show you, um, I could definitely show you some technical stuff. So I'm actually doing stuff on the computer. I use software called Chief Architect when I'm doing my technical drawings. I would love to come on and show you guys sometime. So yeah, let me know if this sounds interesting, interesting to you guys, so I can do that. I'll just— I probably just share my screen and just live stream and share my screen out so you guys can see what I'm working on. Linda says yes, do it. All right, cool, I love it. Maybe I'll do it with the project I'm working on here. Um, not today, but maybe I'll do it soon. That'd be fun. Or actually, you know what we'll do? Maybe we'll create a project from scratch. That would be fun. Yeah, it's very cool. Talk to you later. All right, thank you. It's great seeing you, Doubled. Thank you for joining us as well. Um, Jennifer, you were the first in the house, and Jennifer, thank you for sharing your great news. Um, Love it, love it, love it. Thank you guys, take care. I will be on real soon, I hope. So peace. Oh, hold on, before I leave, let me know, is it worth having the chat display on the screen over here? I don't know if it's legible or not. Let me know, I'm just trying something new. I respect your opinions. So I'm pointing right there to this box. All right guys, thanks again. Take care, keep paying it forward with creativity. Peace. Live creatively. I will— I'll be on soon because this is so much fun. How could I not? Take care. Where's the camera? Wave into the camera. All right, looking for the finish button. Good to see you guys. Take care.