The INKspired Life

Happy Saturday, hope you're doing well. It's time to do, uh, some sketching before I head off to bed. Hope you're doing awesome on this great, great Saturday. So this sketch I'm working on is, uh, inspired by a water tower not too far from where I am. I love water towers. I think they are amazing structures, really beautiful to look at. And, uh, yeah, I love the ones that you see here. I love the water towers you see in New York City on top of buildings. Which is so fun. There's just something about the proportions, and I love the kind of utilitarian industrial vibe. You know, sometimes for me, um, I love just sketching utilitarian type structures like water towers because I finally have a lot of character and age to them and stories about them, right? Obviously this, this is not the color of the one that's there. I'm just using my colors to kind of just bring my own feeling to this sketch. I started this earlier today outside, and I was videoing it, and my phone kept stopping. So sadly, I don't— I only have little snippets here and there of me sketching this. I'll put them together into a short— unfortunately, really short video. But, um, yeah. So I happened to see this one yesterday when I was out after I left a job meeting. I saw this and, uh, pulled over side of the road, got out, did some walking. Some photographing. That's one of the reasons I just love carrying a sketchbook with me. Usually it's my Lockabee field journal. That's what I had yesterday. I'll show you some, some of the sketches I did while I was out walking around. Yeah, this is kind of cool. This is a brick building down here. I'll zoom in a little bit so you can see how I'm trying to show brick very, very fast, very, very loose. So these horizontal lines here, I should space them a little even closer together, but The idea is that this is brick on here, and then I'll just show some verticals here and there randomly just to indicate, or just give the help— give, give the help. Whoa, good thing I don't teach language arts. Just to, um, help indicate some texture, some material on this part of the building. This was done with ink, watercolor, and color pencil. I love using those three, uh, mediums together to make mixed media sketches. That's my I'm gonna dot in some— these are little dots like rivets to show that these are metal panels. So just have these little rivets kind of going around, a few here and there. There's all kind of power lines in front happening. This I think is some kind of a walkway up here, maybe. To get across. I think this one is actually almost done. I just want to come on and wrap it up really quickly here. Uh, hey, hope you're doing well out there. Thanks for watching.

Cool.

And actually, I'm not done. One thing I'm going to add is some blue, and I used this yesterday on a different sketch. It's actually a watercolor pencil. I think it was a— I think I got it as a freebie when I went somewhere. Phthalo Blue. So I'm actually just going to dip this. I'm dipping this right here in some water. Let's just kind of sketch with it for a second. I want to add some dark blue in the shadow area here, so it'll be fun to try this out. So I added, added water because it's a watercolor pencil, and this way It'll just kind of melt off onto the paper. So I could have, you know, I could have put the pencil, dry pencil on the paper, then came up, uh, you know, came along with water and put it on top. But I find when I actually dip it in the water— you can't really see there, there we go— when I dip in the water, it just dissolves and it gets— it has a For me, a more powerful effect. I just really like it going on kind of thick here. I just want to do this edge here a little bit. I'm not going to overdo it.

There we go.

I think that might be all it needs. The shadows are— let's zoom out. I think I'm going to call this one done for now. Let me get a frame. Let's kind of frame it, see what it looks like. I don't know if I like all the white in the background. I feel like I might want to come along with a gray gray it out a little bit, but I'm not 100% sure yet. Usually I just do it and don't think too much, but my brain is in thinking mode and I don't know why. Actually, I wanted—

I want to see what it looks like framed before I do anything to the background.

I think I need to get some bigger black mats. Let's zoom in, let's matte it up. I mean, this looks cool just if I just did kind of the top of the tower by itself. Notice how I'm not centering it. For me, when I put this in the center, it's too static and rigid, so I kind of want to move the frame over. So the tower's hugging the side. Um, I like that composition better. Like this, we have stuff happening here, some blank here. It kind of balances out a little bit versus if I do this. It's the rule of thirds. So if we break this frame into 9 equal squares— or I should say equal squares, but 9 squares. Rectangles. I like this over here on this side, kind of the two-thirds with stuff, one-third with nothing. Let's see what it looks like if I kind of shift it down. You know, what if I just did part of the building, part of the water tower? I mean, that's actually kind of interesting, interesting too. I like how the top is cut off of the tower. It leaves, um, leaves it open for imagination and interpretation to see what is actually happening off of the frame, right? So that's kind of an interesting layout too. And let's see, I don't have— this is kind of a You can look at it here. It's not black, but it's all right. Zoom out. If I kind of frame this— no, I'm not liking that. Me, maybe. No, I'm not really digging those. I think I'm liking— it was a little longer, it'd be better. I mean, they're like in a water tower by itself, but I think I'm really liking this. Maybe something like this. It's where my, my, uh, brain keeps going back to this image right here, or this framed version. There you go, kind of cool. Sorry, let me just show you some of, uh, the sketches I did yesterday of this water tower. Let me just grab my, uh, field Journal behind me. All right, so I think this one's going to be a wrap for now. Actually, before I pull it off, let me just go in close, just kind of pan around so you can see it closer. I'm really loving the colors on this, really fun. Alright, so I brought my field journal. I try to bring this with me pretty much everywhere I go. You can see it's gotten some good use. It's wearing nicely. I love it, love it. Yeah, I'm probably gonna, uh, be using this thing for a very, very long time because I really enjoy taking it with me. So I had it yesterday when I was out driving around after a meeting. I saw that water tower that we just looked at, so I'll show you just some of the sketches I did, um, when I was there out in the field. So this is— this was— these are really, really quick sketches I was doing. It's kind of a hot day, but here I was just trying to get a sketch or a feel of the building and the water tower behind it. It was fun while I was sketching this yesterday. There was some like, I guess there's a kind of a, almost like a little park area or greenway area. The grass was all being cut by these big mowers. One of the guys stopped to take a look at what I was doing and I got a thumbs up, so that was cool. But yeah, I really like this one. So this is my favorite field sketch from yesterday. I love how quick and loose the lines are in this. You know, it's only the top part of the tower. So don't feel like you always need to sketch the entire structure or building. Most of the time I actually don't. I'll just focus in on part of it. I really love the energy of this, this sketch. I like it black and white, so I think I'm going to leave it that way. The next page here, I actually— the color I added later, but I did all this, the field, all the line work while I was looking at the building. So you can kind of see Quick kind of scribbly lines happening, and then I went, came back, threw down some color. I really, I really like what's happening. Let me get closer. I like what's happening at the top there. That is so much fun. And this was cool too. I was just playing around because it's a brick building, so So I keep moving this, um, kind of the blue, blue kind of dashes there just to give a hint or idea that maybe there's some brick on the building. And I actually created those using this pencil I was just using before. So I took this, I wet it, put it in water and I just took the tip. It was a little more sharpened yesterday, and I just kind of, kind of just pressed it down like this, just tapped it down sideways, and that's how I created the brick kind of effect happening there. So I think that was a fun piece, a fun sketch to do. So that is The water tower. I will be doing a lot more sketches of this now that I have photographs of it. Um, so let's actually— let's just take a look at this one and the one I just worked on today. Let's see, fit them on camera. There we go. Ta-da! Oops, that didn't work. So you can kind of see, uh, two different sketches, two different views, one color, one without color. Um, I like them. I think they both came out really cool. This one I love. This really gives you an example of kind of my typical way of sketching, urban sketching, when I'm out in the field and I'm trying to get— capture something pretty darn quick. This is usually what they look like. Pretty, pretty loose, right? This one's a little more tighter and cleaner. Cleaner. I like this style here better. I can come back and throw color on, on this if I want. But there you go, two, you know, two different kind of styles of the same subject. So don't feel like if you have to always sketch or paint things the same subject the same way. It could be the same subject, try different, you know, look at it and sketch it or paint it in different ways, different colors. Different lines, different types of feelings, right? And that's what for me makes creativity a lot of fun. Awesome. Let's see if there's any question or comments in the chat. Grab a drink of water here. Hey, Faded Ink. Hey, how are you? Great to see you, Faded Ink, over on YouTube. Um, I've been doing this exercise where you just watercolor random washi and then pen over it, finding things within the colors. I like that, right? So just throw it. Yep. Yeah, I know what you're saying. I've done that. It's very, um, throw down colors like an abstract, right? Let it dry and then see if you can maybe sometimes pull shapes out of it or patterns out of it. So That's a really fun exercise. I really like that. Thank you, Faded. Faded Ink is over there on YouTube. I love that you're watching YouTube, that's so cool. And I have Linda over on Facebook. Hey, Linda S, how are you? Hope all is well with you. Um, really, really cool. So yeah, so I think I really, I really like these, uh, water tower things. Came out kind of cool. And let me just show you the photograph. I'll show you a reference photograph I took that I was using. If you guys are interested, let me pull it up on screen. I changed it to black and white because I actually— or sepia, actually, because I thought it would be cool. So this is— here's that water tower, and I sepia-ized it, if that's a word. CP edit, CP-ized it. I'm not sure what the word is. Um, so I did mod this photograph. Let me zoom in closer. But I really, I really actually love this photograph in sepia tone. It's pretty cool. But there you can see the water tower with the building in front, all the overgrown kind of grasses here in front as well. So it's a pretty, pretty cool shot. So next time I sketch this, I'm going to I'll probably just try to capture the setting a little more. You know, this looks like it's kind of old and abandoned with the overgrown stuff here. Um, I don't— I don't know 100% if this is still functional or not, to be honest with you. I would have to do some research. And what— one of the things I do love about architecture and discovering these, these buildings, or any building, is there's always something to be learned about the building and the people in the building, how it was used, the history, the stories about the buildings. So, uh, architecture intrigues me that way on many, many levels. So that is one of the reasons I love sketching them. So there's that kind of water tower image. So if you guys are on, let me know where you're watching from, what you're up to. Please ask any questions or comments. I'm going to do a quick sketch tonight. I didn't, I didn't do anything new, brand new. I just wrapped this one up. If you're just joining us, I was wrapping up this sketch that I started earlier today, and, uh, I don't even have anything planned to sketch right now, and that's okay. So we'll figure it out. What can we sketch? Let's see if we flip this over. What else do we have? Anything else interesting in here? Um, just sometimes I like to look back in the sketchbooks. This was my, uh, Galaxy's Edge inspired sketch. I love Galaxy's Edge. It's Disney Hollywood Studios, the Star Wars world there. Really, really cool place. I could go there and sketch the entire day, the entire week we go to Disney. I love just architecture and designs. That's kind of a fun sketch. This is just some instructional stuff I was doing the other night for fun. All right, all right, got a blank piece of paper. Hmm, do we want to do another water tower sketch? Do we want to do something out of our brains. You know what? Yeah, I'm just gonna sketch out of my brain. Let's do a, um, summer's here. One of the things I love to sketch during summertime are these like fishing shacks, especially, um, you know, ones I've seen in Maine. So let's just sketch a fishing shack and we'll just kind of let the music take us away for a little bit and See where we go. This will be real quick and loose because it's almost 9:30, so I'm going to wrap up in a few minutes. But I'm going to put some peppy music on. And you hear my pup barking. Not sure what she's barking at, but that's okay. She's just talking to us, letting us know something's going on. She is awesome. All right, let's put, uh, some little peppy music on, do some quick sketching here. All right, let's do a— what did I say we were doing? Some kind of fishing shack. Again, this is just nothing planned here. Keep it quick, loose. I'm gonna have a saggy roof. I want to sag a little bit here so it looks kind of old. So a big bow in the roof happening.

Maybe kind of have that kind of vibe happening to it.

Um, what else we got going? Let's see, you guys want to overhang happening here. Maybe some vertical siding there, vertical boards. One thing, one of the things I love about these fishing shacks are, um, you could see, especially the old ones, you can see how they've been cobbled over the years and bits and pieces of this and that kind of patching, repairing it as it's been beaten up by the weather. Let's do some kind of maybe metal roof on this. We got some kind of metal roof happening here. I really want to exaggerate this kind of bow on the roof. I just feel like it would be a cool detail. Maybe on this side we have, uh, I don't know, I'm just letting my pen move, my pen move around here. I wonder, we're going to put this on top of some kind of— let's see, maybe it's just hanging off up here. Let's bring this down. Maybe it's on top of a kind of a dock area with these piers coming down. Got some piers happening. Of course we need some diagonal bracing. You know, let's just bring this one across. We'll bring it straight across, you know. So maybe these— maybe this pier is a little wonky. It's been there a while. Still trying to hold on for dear life, but it's slowly slipping away into the water. They've braced this thing here, trying to keep it propped up. Maybe this comes across here like this. Maybe we have a— another kind of wood pier coming up this corner. Maybe it steps up a little bit. Maybe it could be a place where they maybe have a rope around here to— maybe a rope to tie off a boat or some kind of something, tie something off there. Maybe some kind of boat. Um, yeah, this is just— I am just winging this off my brain. I really want this to look old, so I'm going to exaggerate this wall instead of having a wall vertical. Boom! I'm gonna really make it angled. It's gonna be a crooked, really crooked looking wall here, almost like you'd see on a barn, like a corn crib building where they always had to have these like angled walls. And that's a fun detail. I just wanted to look wonky. So this is really, uh, this is kind of an exercise in wonkiness and When I really want things to be wonky, I exaggerate. So I'm exaggerating this angle that— well, I'm exaggerating the belly or the bow in this roof here, right? Let's see, um, what else? You know, maybe there's a sign here, maybe I don't know what it says yet, but maybe there's some kind of sign hanging up here. Maybe it's a, uh, some kind of, I don't know, bait shop or something. And I, you know, I feel like drawing this big old, almost like barn door here. Let's make a big old barn door. Now I could have angled the barn door as well as the wall here. But if I angled both, I feel like this would not be as special and it wouldn't be as powerful to have this one vertical— I'm sorry, one angle. So I want the vertical kind of close to it. So really exaggerate this, this angled wall here. Hopefully that makes sense. Maybe this door has a window or a light at the top. Do you ever see those sliding doors, old barn doors, and they have like these windows? Sometimes they're called transom windows up top there, right? So we have those old transom kind of windows there. So this is kind of just dilapidated. And then down here we're going to do, uh, I'm not sure. Maybe I'm liking the idea of kind of some more diagonal bracing. Hey, Chip's in the house! Chip, great to see you. Hope all's well. Linda says, I hope you use your sunrise sunset colors for the sky. Linda, that's— I love that you brought that up. Yeah, right. I love, um, using these sunset colors for for these, uh, my gosh, my brain's definitely after 8 o'clock. My, my memory brain is shut off. Creative brain's going, what am I trying to say? For these fishing shacks, I like the, uh, sunrise, sunset colors. Maybe there's some kind of wonky ladder coming up here. Yeah, that's a great idea with the— I'll pull those colors out. Well, actually, I'll pull them out. We're just gonna— we'll use what's right here. We'll use some of the orange and yellow. Um, pink, I might have to find. I don't know if I have any pink Preppies or Varsities. I might. So you got this kind of wonky thingy happening here. Um, What else do I want to draw? Sketch on here. Some kind of buoy type things maybe on the wall here. Oh, buoy! We got some buoys kind of hanging on the side there. Let's just start showing some of my hatching for shading. Show some overhang depth there. So we're going to say the sun's coming this way. So that means to me I want to show some shading here. I'm just going to scribble in, literally just kind of scribbling in this hatching to help give some depth to a roof overhang there. Right. Hey, Lydia. Great to see you, Lydia. The wonkier, the better. Awesome. Yeah, right? I could wonk this up more. So we got the wonky here, the wonky here. Good to see you guys popping in, I appreciate that. I think this is enough ink, um, Sharpie. Let's just throw down some fun colors and we'll see where it takes us, right? You know what, we'll wonk it up because when you will do some horizontal clobbered or clapboard or siding here, whereas over here it's starting to kind of goes vertical. All right, let's just grab some colors. Grab and go. Got some watercolor. Where's my brush? I found it before. Here it is. I dropped it on the floor, but I, I saved it. Uh, let me move this over. I don't have a paper towel. Let me grab one here. And I do want to see if I could find a pink— do I have a pink Preppy or pink Barseki pen? I have— I definitely have the pink It's been a while. Just looking in this tool roll, let me see if I have it. If not, that's okay. We'll, um— ah, there we go. All right, so I got some pink— oh, actually I have both. Alright, we're good to go. Alright, let's just throw down some colors. Do like a little sunset, sunrise. Let's change the tunes up again. I wanted that peppy music to pep me up. Let's go to— there, I don't know, let's go here. No, let's go jazz. It's a little jazzy music. It's nice for a Saturday night. All right, so watercolor. I'm just going to dip in. I have orange and yellows in here. Before I do that, I'm just going to throw down some kind of water on the sky. Sometimes I'll turn it upside down when I'm doing skies. I actually do want to prop this at an angle. So let's do this. All right, cool. All right, so I'm just throwing down some water. It's dirty water, which is fine, and this is going to help let the colors move a little bit freer. So let's dip in and grab some orange. So good idea, Linda. Thank you so much for mentioning that. We'll see how well I remember how to do these skies. Actually, you know what, it's okay that I don't remember because that'll just make it even looser and freer and wonkier and more playful because I'm not trying to create a sky that I've created before. Right? No sky is ever the same twice. Or, or is it always the same sky, it just never looks the same twice? I guess it's the same sky. I'm now getting deep. All right, so we got the orange. I'm dipping into the dirty water. I'm gonna grab some yellow, two different shades of yellow here. I have kind of a— sorry, you can't really see it too well— lemon yellowish, and then I have orangey yellowish. So let's just spot in some of this. I'm just dabbing it in, and then we'll throw down some pink. So sometimes skies for me will be a couple layers. I'm just kind of rolling it around a little bit, let it work its way down, right? So you can see the yellow. So you get— the sun is almost like in this area, which makes sense because I was saying the sun was here, so there's gonna be some shade happening. All right, let's, um, let's throw it. Let's try some pink. So I'm going to use the Varsity because the Varsity pen for me works better. I hope there's pink in here. It's not empty. Let's try it. Yeah, for me, the Varsity pen works really good at dipping into wet areas and just letting the ink come out and flow. If I try it with the Preppy, it's not going to happen as as much. A little bit. For me, the preppy works better in dry. I'll show you up here.

I just do some pink.

See how I can get the bleed a little bit? But I'll probably actually come back after this dries and with the pink and just kind of go on top anyway. Give it some lines and texture. Although I could do this too. He's gonna do it. I'm doing it, guys. I hope you're wearing your ponchos because we're about to enter the Shamu splash zone. Hopefully there's pink in here. Let's see. Enough. We're doing it. Ready? Yeah, there we go. Now we're talking. That is one way to get it out, and we're just going to roll it around a little bit. So that was an example of just doing it. Don't overthink it. Don't worry about it. Be brave, have fun, and just throw it down. We can just roll it around a little bit more. Hey, D-Ray's in the house! D-Ray, great to see you. Love these colors. Awesome. This is going to dry very interestingly. I might end up even blotting. Believe it or not, I might blot a little bit of this out. You'll see when I'm blotting it, look at— just look at those colors, right? I don't want to blot it all, but just pulling it back and blotting a little area gives the pink a little bit of, uh, more interest. Great to see you. I'm so glad you guys are here watching. This is so cool. I'm going to dip into more orange. I want some really strong pops of orange on here. So you see, I'm just kind of throwing it here. I'm just going to mix these together a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

Skies for me are always really interesting. Um, they're more interesting after they dry. Actually, I could say that about a lot of the watercolor and ink washes. They just take on a different life after they dry. I'm loving the hard edges happening here. Looking pretty cool. I'm going to dip into more of this kind of lemon yellow, and I'm really just loading the brush up. I don't know if you could see it. Let's see, can you see if I do that? Really loaded up the brush, not a lot of water, and I, I want this yellow to pop. More. It definitely pops against that pink. Oh my gosh, this is so cool. So I haven't even talked about the building yet. So let's just throw down— I'm going to start throwing down a little bit of color on here. So this will, this will be a case of a sketch where I need to come back after it dries So I'm not going to finish this tonight, but, um, just throw down a little bit more color. I've been waiting to use turquoise, of course, my fave, my fave fave. So let's throw a little bit of turquoise on here, maybe. You know, maybe this is a— maybe this is somewhere in the Caribbean, this, right? The bright colors. So I can imagine this being in the Caribbean, this little kind of structure. Um, I have this green. So Linda, if you are still there, because Linda is our green fan out there, I have this car— I have never used this color. It's called Boxcar Kiwi. I believe it's kiwi. That would be a greenish color. I haven't used it, so This is the first time I'm using it. Let's see what it looks like. Just clean my brush off. All right, this is Boxcar Kiwi. No idea, we're just gonna throw it on here. Oh my gosh, that— this color is awesome. Wow, dang! Any of my green fans, you, you will, you'll like this color. Oh yeah, let's see what it looks like. Just dipping into the bottle, just taking a little bit out. A little bit of this goes a long way. I just want to tap it on here and see what it looks like on the blue— on the aqua turquoise, I mean. Really cool. So guys, let me know if you have any questions. We're gonna wrap up in 2 minutes, 2 minutes.

Um, trying to think, let's—

I want to see what some yellow looks like on here as well. That's interesting. So the yellow and that green, we get almost like a lime, this really beautiful lime green color, which I really think goes well with a kind of a Caribbean beachy vibe, right? Check out that. So that's a little bit of yellow with that green. Intensify some of this turquoise here. Trying to create the idea of kind of almost like a worn-out painted look here. So if you look at the brush stroke here, I'm just kind of pulling down and dragging. Lightly to get that kind of faded or uneven look at the end. I'll leave it close so you can kind of see the colors drying up here. All right, almost looks olive, like olive green. Yeah, so this Boxcar Kiwi, I would say, is, is close to an olive green, especially. Yeah, I totally see that. Love your color choice. Hey, thank you so much. Are you guys getting it? Are you feeling like a tropical kind of, kind of beach shack vibe here happening? That's kind of, uh, what I'm— my gut's going for right now is this tropical feeling. The two greens adds fabulous depth, depth and texture. Hey, thanks Chip, I appreciate that comment. I'm, I'm itching to add some This is really going to pop things when I add that. One thing I'm not too cray-cray about is this is a little too even here, so I'm going to pull some of that out a little bit. There you go, that's better. Just pulling a little bit of that off. It was too— it's too even, so I wanted to get more variety texture. I'm also feeling purple on this one, so I think for purple we will bleed some Varsity. This will be the last color we add for tonight, and I think I'm gonna use the purple. Let's maybe do it in the shadows here. I like this music. You guys like the music? So here's that purple. I'm gonna bleed it. You can see that better. There you go. This is— again, this is why I like the Varsity pen, because I can do this and the ink comes out really nicely. I'll just bleed some of this. Alright guys, I think that's gonna be a wrap on this one for tonight. Zoom out a little bit. And let's just pull one of our frames out. Let's see, I think, I think tomorrow I'll be in the area of a big box art store. I'm gonna buy some frames. I'm just holding this over here, see what it looks like if I was to frame it, crop some of it out. Where's my black frame? That's so weird, I just had it out. Half hour ago. That's okay. All right guys, thank you, thank you so, so much for watching. Let's see if there's any final questions or comments. Popping that color, you got it. Awesome. Hey, thank you guys so much for watching. I appreciate you all, whether you're on the YouTuber— the YouTube side, the Facebook side, the Instagram side. Where the flips— well, I guess I'll catch you on the flip side. Um, you guys are awesome. Keep using your creativity for positivity. Um, I love doing this stuff. I love when you guys watch and comment, and I appreciate you all so much. Thanks. Have a great, great rest of your Saturday night. And, um, it's a long weekend for me, so I'm gonna hopefully be back on once or twice more before the Holiday break is over. Before I do that, I just want to move this up. See, I'm using gravity a little bit here. I'm moving the water. Kind of just want to backtrack it a little, and we'll let it go back down. There we go. All right guys, thank you so much. Take care. Have a great, great night. Peace, and live creatively. I will see you real soon.