The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud

Hey Heather, hope you're having a great night. Happy Friday, everybody. Hope you're doing awesome. Welcome to Friday, January 13th. It's 10:20 PM here. Sorry, I had two different songs going on, so I had to turn one off. Hope you guys are doing well. Thanks for tuning in. I'm popping on a little bit late, but, um, I wanted just to add some— I worked on this earlier today. I just wanted to come back and add some ink on top of it after it had dried. I was using some water-soluble graphite here for the different colors, and it was wet, too wet to do any ink work on top of So now's a good time to do some ink work. A couple different pens here. Sharpie, I have a Sharpie marker, I also have a Sharpie gel. Is it a gel pen? No, I think it's a Sharpie, a Sharpie roller pen. I haven't really sketched with these too much. So I thought it'd be fun to kind of break this out and play with it. But again, I hope you guys are doing well. Heather says, "Glad to have survived another week." Yeah, I hear you. This was such a long week, uh, for me at school this week. It kind of dragged. I'm not sure why, but it did. We have a long weekend here, which is great. We don't have school Monday. So I'll take it. Definitely no complaints. So this is the H&M building in New York City that I'm working on right here. Just a representation of it. I'm not counting windows. I'm not adding out all the details. Just want to capture it here with this sketch. I'm gonna pull out the edge of this building, so I have my Lamy pen with some black ink going. I want this to kind of look like it's more in the foreground, so I'm gonna darken it up. And then I'll just take, um, some water on the brush here. We'll just let it bleed a little bit just to keep the kind of loose feel, style, trying to get going here with this. It was a little too much water. That went a little crazy on me. I can just blot it back a little bit. That went cray cray. There you go. So I think that edge kind of pops out a little bit more. Hopefully this building looks like it's in the foreground. I'm just gonna pull that ink a little bit. There we go, let's pull it over a little bit more. That kind of works. Heather says, I love, love that bleed with the Lamy. Yeah, thanks. I'll zoom out a little bit. Yeah, this, uh, just Lamy black ink. It does bleed really, really well, so Yeah, it's definitely a fun ink to bleed. And what's cool is if I come back and add some more water, the ink will actually change a little bit. The color seems to turn a little more bluish. It's one of the cool things about that black Lamy ink. This is wet there, so I'm going to flip this. Being left-handed, I don't want to smudge anything, but I just want to make some vertical lines, I think, on this. Facade of the building. Let's see, how do I want to do this? Nope, I was going to work on this piece here. I just want to pull out some of these lines here a little bit. Just taking my Sharpie and just lightly dragging it down. This is Canson watercolor paper, 140-pound. It's actually a fairly large sheet. It's 18 inches by 24 inches. Um, just want to go a little big with this piece. I didn't know exactly what I was going to show. This is an H&M building. Here's the H&M logo, which is red. I think I want to pop that red out. And how do I want to do that? I think I'll just use a red Pilot Precise Pen. And we'll just kind of, just kind of bring this out, this red lettering. Here we go. So that's kind of the HM logo happening on the sign up there. It was actually black around the letters. Let me see, I'll take my Sharpie. Actually, I have an old— I have a, uh, man, this is an old-school Paper Mate Flair pen that was actually given to me by an awesome friend. So if Rue is out there in Rue land. He sent this pen to me, this marker. I used to sketch with these in architecture school all the time. So it's an old school flare pen that actually has the ribbed, you can hear that. So it has the ribbed casing on it. Can't get these anymore, sadly. Now I'm gonna use this flare pen and just kind of kind of fill this in here. I only save this flare pen for special occasions because I think it's almost out of ink. It's fun to crack it out. There we go. I like the way that looks, kind of loose and sketchy. They do make— they still make flare pens. I have one of the newer ones here. But it just doesn't feel the same. This actually says H&M on here as well, this billboard. Can't really see it because of the angle, but we'll try. Let's see. There you go. I'll just throw the red up there so it looks like there's some lighters happening. There's this— I love the noise from those ribs on the flare pens. Yeah, right? I agree with you. These flare— there's nothing like that sound. I used to do that all the time. I'll bring you back. Here we go. Let's mute the music. There you go, a little ASMR with the Flair pen, the ribs on it. Glad I could bring that memory back to you. That's cool. So fun. Let's keep using this Flair pen. So this sketch started off, you know, as always, I just like to be playful. I had gotten these new things, these, uh, these new water-soluble graphite Sticks. Well, not sticks, they're actually called tailor shape. They're shaped like tailor's chalk. Um, just got these today. I got them with a gift card I had and I wanted to play around with them. And so I just started off playing and this is kind of where it's going. I really like the way this is looking. I think I might add— I'm thinking about adding some kind of color here where the sky is. Um, I'm not sure yet though. I'm just gonna keep— I'm gonna keep just adding some pen on this. There are some windows on this building. I just wanna see if the Flair can— the Flair is gonna— Flair is not gonna really work well on top of that soluble, um, I guess it's chalk. I think it's chalk. Where's my cap? So I'm going to cover up the Flair pen and we'll go back to I think we'll just use a Sharpie. I just want to pull out these kind of windows here with the Sharpie. Again, I'm not counting windows. They're not even the right proportions. I just want to indicate that we do have windows on this facade. There's a little darker up here. Just adding some hatching lines just to maybe show some shadows. I'm gonna pull out the sign a little bit.

There we go.

Oh yeah, this is fun. This is cool. I think I'm going to leave this. There's, you know, the building continues down here. I might just give a wash to this and I don't actually— there's some more, you know what I'll do? Let's sketch. This is how my brain's working. There's actually a big sign here I didn't sketch. Um, I'm just going to draw— there's a couple more lines here. There's another one over here. I think I'm just going to give that a wash. I'll probably just wash it. It's a different building than here. Actually, it's part of this building. I might wash it with this— more of this graphite. Stuff. Heather says awesome. Awesome. Cool. Yeah, I really like where this is headed. There are some— I was almost tempted to use a ruler, a straight edge, to draw the lines here, but this is all freehand, so I'm going to keep it freehanded. The man says as he reaches, I rarely break out a ruler for this work. Should I, should I do it or should I go freehand? Let's see, there's some pretty long lines. I'm going to go freehand since everything else is freehand. I don't want to have those hard edges. I'm just going to sketch it on here, just going to be brave and do it.

Here we are.

Cool. There we go. That works. So I'm trying to keep this drawing— there's kind of a perspective looking up. So I'm trying to taper my lines going up the sheet this way to a point, vanishing point, somewhere up off the top of the page of the paper, just to give you a feeling like you're looking up at the buildings. So I— that's why you can see these lines I just sketched all kind of going up at these angles here. So hopefully, um, it's getting that feeling of kind of being down and looking up. That's kind of cool. I don't want a lot of detail on the front. I really, I really want the H&M building to be the star of this sketch, so that's why it has the most detail here. I'm going to leave this kind of blank. This is going to be kind of blank as well, just to frame the H&M building.

Happening.

Cool. Oh my gosh, I have— you guys, look here, I have like all these pens and stuff, just things just accumulating and gathering as I'm sketching, which is part of the fun. I have my watercolor here, which I'm not using for this, so I can move that. Actually move that over here.

Cool.

Aquabrush. Here's my Lamy. Stuff falling off the table over there. All right, great. All right, cool. So, um, let's, uh, I'm gonna add some more wash, I think, here to continue this building down. Okay, it'll help to frame that a little bit better. So let me get that, this ArtGraph stuff here. If I can open it.

Here we go. All right, cool.

Let's see, I'm going to move this up a little bit. And I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to put some of this on my palette and I'm going to lift it off the palette. Let's rub that there for now. Let's take our brush, dip it in water, and I'm going to grab some of that. You see how it changed there? And we're just going to throw this on here just to continue that building down. Just kind of blend it in a little bit there. And I like— I actually like these white spaces. I'm not going to even bring it down anymore, I don't think. Let's just, just kind of dab some more color here. You pull this edge out a little bit darker just to contrast with more with the yellow. It's actually an ochre color behind it, which I like. I don't usually— I rarely use ochre. Um, I don't actually— I don't know if I've ever used ochre, to be honest with you. And that's that yellow color, which I kind of like. So these buildings are not the same colors as they are in reality. It's just my take on it. Just, just being playful and having fun. There's something I want to do. I'll show you on this here. I think that's all I need. Honestly, I don't need to really throw too much more on here. Awesome. Hey, D-Ray says hi. D-Ray, good to see you again. D-Ray's back in the house. As they say in Canada, the hoose. I actually have been saying hoose this week in school. I don't know why. I'm not Canadian, but I like the way it sounds. So I hope you don't mind me saying it that way. Heather says broken lines are great for bigger areas. Yeah, Heather, I agree, especially when you're doing loose style sketching. The broken areas help to keep that loose feel. So that makes total sense. Hey, Becky's in the house! Becky, how are you? Haven't seen you in a while. It's awesome to see you. So cool. Hey, DB's in the house! Hello everyone. Wow, so cool to see you. I haven't seen you in a while either. Awesome. You guys are amazing. Becky says, good evening, Inklings. DB says, what was that type of paint? Let me show you what I just used. Because I don't even know how to describe it. Um, so this is what it looks like. This was not cheap. I got it from Michaels. I had a gift card and a voucher— is that the right word, voucher?— or some kind of store rewards points. So I put it towards this. Um, I think this was like $60. if not more, um, without the discounts. But anyway, so it's called Artgraf, Artgraf, Viarco, tailor-shaped, water-soluble. I think they're chalks. If anybody out there can let me know. Here's the back of it. I don't know if you can see that. I'll read it. Says inspired in the traditional— take two. Inspired in the traditional tailor's chalk, ArtGraph Tailor Shape is a rich pigment block prepared for drawing and painting. Extremely soft and water-soluble, provides the artist a wide range of shades from light ones to deep and opaque colors. Art graph, tailor shape. It's an excellent tool for drawing and painting. So that's what it says on there. This is, this is like earth colors, and you can see the different colors in the pack. The color I just threw down was Sanguine. Sanguine. It's not sanguine, it looks like linguine. I'm very hungry, I guess. Linguine, it's maybe— I guess it's sanguine. I don't know, if anybody knows, let me know. Isn't sanguine or sanguine like a wine or something? It's like a wine color, maybe? But there you go, so hopefully that helps. I'm really loving it. It is messy, it is messy. I've been smearing it all over the place. I like the shape, it's soft to the touch. But you will get it all over your fingers. I've used it a couple different ways. You can put it on dry. You can put it on dry and then add water to it. You can do what I did tonight. You can put it on a palette and lift it off. Earlier today, I even was holding this with a wet brush and just lifting the color right off of the block and painting with it. And I actually like the shape because you can draw thick lines, thin lines with it. It's pretty cool stuff. First time I've used it was today. So hopefully that helps, DB. Hopefully that was worth the price of admission.

Cool.

I'm gonna move this here so I don't get it wet. All right, awesome. What did I want to do? What did I want to do? This is looking pretty good. I'm debating whether or not to add some— I'm thinking blue. I'm thinking some kind of blue just between the buildings, just to pull out a sky. Let me know if you guys think that would be cool. Some kind of blue in here just to pull out the building shapes a little bit. Bum bum bum. D-Ray says pizza time, he's hungry. Yeah, right? I actually had pizza. I made bulbuli pizza for dinner. Came out alright. Uh, DB, you are welcome. So I have— this is an Art Graph water-soluble graphite stick. Same company that made the thing I just showed you. So I've used these, I've been using these for a long time, the graphite sticks. I saw those online, you know, the, um, Taylor ones, and I wanted to try them out. So cool. Do I do the blue? Man, I'm actually, I'm going to zoom out so you guys can see the full scale here. This is how big this piece is. So vertically it's scaling about 12 inches tall, and then the width maybe 8. I'm imagining this framed. I think this could be a really cool little framed piece, actually. Do I actually— do I have a mat? I might have a mat. Let me check my drawer. Hey guys, it's time to go into the magic drawer. I wish I had the magic drawer cam available, I would show you. I'm gonna go right in here. I think I have some mats with openings. I don't know how big the openings are. Let's check. What do I got here? Um, these are pretty big openings. These are courtesy of my friend Art, had given me these. So Art, if you're out there, thank you so much, aka Mr. B. Oh no, these are huge. It's in plastic still, but actually, actually you get a sense of— actually it isn't huge. You can kind of get a sense of what it would look like with a mat on it. The only thing though is now if I'm look— this would be matted. If I did this blue for the sky, it's going to look weird because then it would be all this white with a blue patch, and I don't think I'd want to do blue around everything here. I don't know if that makes sense. This would all be blue. It was matted. Maybe, maybe white is the best, uh, choice for this one. Oh, DB says, I think blue. Yes, Magic Shore needed some special theme music. Becky, I love that. All right, wait, let's do that. All right guys, we're in creative mode. Let's see if we can find some Magic Shore music. Hold on a sec, let's go to the playlist. Love that idea, Becky, love that idea. Where's my playlist? Here it is. Let's see, magic drawer playlist. Let's— how about this one? This is good magic drawer music. All right guys, it's time to look in the magic drawer. See what we have in here today. Actually, let's pull this out of the magic drawer.

You know, play around with this.

Alright, so out of the magic drawer I pulled this water tower. Sketch. This would be really cool. Those— these would work really well with my grunge kind of look I like to do, the industrial vibe. I think these colors will be perfect for grunge-ifying or industrializing sketches. I like to do that kind of industrial look sometimes. That was fun. That was fun music. Where the heck were we? Let's see. Dun dun dun. I don't know. We'll just put this on. Nice matted, no blue. Yeah, you know, I don't think I'm going to add the blue. I'm going to hold off. I would trim this off. You could see I was only playing around earlier and I didn't know this would turn out. I actually really like it. Um, there's kind of smudge marks and things happening in here, so this might even end up being cropped down. I don't know. Yeah, so there you go. I think, I think this piece is— I'm going to leave it. I think I like it where it is. You guys don't usually hear me say that, although I— no, I'm not done, not done yet. Sorry, I'm jumping all over the No, you know what? I'm done. He's backing away.

I'm done.

I don't want to do any more. I like it where it is. Cool guys, so let me zoom in and show you a close-up. Kind of see what's happening here. Sorry, my big head's in the way. Let me move my head to the other side of the screen. Oops, let's move my head over here. There we go, you can see this better now. Yeah, this was cool. I love, I love the looseness of this. Oh, I'm zoomed way in, I'm sorry.

There we go.

Cool. Yes, industrial grunge. We're playing the Magic Drawer music. Don't like that zooming. Cool, guys. Look at this close-up. I even just love this piece here. This is, this is fun. A little HM sign kind of happening. Pop of the red. The lettering. The line work is pretty cool on here. I love the hard edge here. Maybe we'll just play around and do another sketch tonight. I'm feeling like doing a factory sketch or something. We'll see. But that hard edge is beautiful. I'm gonna zoom in. God, this stuff gets me so excited. I'm Sorry, I'm like geeking out about this. Actually, this— I— let me zoom in. Let's talk about this. Hopefully it's clear. This way I don't have to hold it. I don't know if this is showing up really well on camera, but I am loving what's happening. Um, Right in here, this ochre with the sanguine— sanguine, I'll have to look up how to say that— we'll call it the wine color. The wine color and the line work here, this is looking really awesome. This little spot, there's something about it I really like. Even this area here, I like how these colors kind of combined. It's looking pretty cool. And then here's the hard edge. Oh my gosh, this is the stuff I live for. I am totally loving this. Oh, where's my little— hold on. Wait, it's magic drawer music time. Going back in the drawer, guys. You're gonna think I'm crazy. Let's see, where is it? Alright, magic drawer time. I wanna pull out something again. You guys can blame Becky for the magic drawers. This is fun. Alright, so here's what we got from the magic drawer. Just my little cutout frames. This way I can kind of focus on the areas I'm talking about. So, uh, if you've been watching me, most of you guys have seen me many, many, many times. I love talking about finding artwork within your artwork, and I love using these little frame cutouts to do that. So we have a 2-inch square— what is it, 2-inch and a 1-inch square? I don't think it's 2 and 1. We'll call it 2 and 1. But I just love putting this over, and you can just see little pieces Um, which is really cool. That's that area I was talking about before that I thought was really cool looking. And also if we come over here and move it up a little bit, this is the area I was talking about I thought was really cool. Very abstract, but I like the way it looks. And we could also take this frame here, zoom out, We can kind of just crop pieces of this. So maybe like right— just looking with my eye, let's see. Do I care if that's cut off there? I kind of like the white showing a little bit. All right, I mean, this would look kind of cool even if this was kind of cropped here as a little sketch. How cool is that? I am almost— I don't know if I like this better than the whole image. I might actually just like this little piece. Actually, if I include some of that brown, I think it frames it. There we go. I think I like this piece better than the whole thing, this little small section. Let me know what you guys think. Do you like the small framed area better than the entire Sketch. So this is my vote. I actually like the small one better. That's cool. I might— I'm going to put a pencil line around here in case I want to come back to it and just crop this out and just cut this out. Just tracing the frame. That way I know where it was. Cool. Heather likes a small one. DB says like the small framed area. Oh, thanks guys. Becky says Urban Awesomeness. Ooh, Becky, I like that. That's cool. That would be a great name for, for this painting. Urban Awesomeness. That would be a great name for Like the Inspired Life, like another offshoot of the Inspired Life. Urban Awesomeness, UA. There's something to it there. Yeah, guys, I'm liking the small one better. I think, I, I think we might end up— I'm gonna end up cutting this out and, um, putting this up for sale. Just a small little piece. All right, here's the whole piece. I'll definitely photograph the whole thing before I cut it. I wish I had a scanner this big, but I don't. And then we'll crop out this area right around here. Boom. So maybe that's a good tip for tonight. Good tip is maybe draw, sketch an area larger than you're anticipating because you can always scale back on it or crop it back. Rather than drawing something too small, right? It's easier. I think it's easier to crop out something than to expand it and make it bigger. So that is pro tip number 1. If you have any, if you got any other pro tips from tonight, let me know in the comments. Cool guys. Um, let me know if you guys wanna stick around. I'm willing to stay on for a little bit more and maybe we'll play around with these. I don't know what to call them. I keep thinking chalks, but I don't know what this is made of. They feel chalky. So maybe we'll play around these and we'll do some kind of industrial, maybe a quick factory or something. Who knows? Cool, guys, thank you for your feedback on that. So we'll definitely crop this out. Boom! Oh, he just knocked over his pens. All right, let's move this over here. Now let's bring this book out. We'll put some tunes back on. Bum bum bum. Ah, here's a sketch of the Empire State Building I did last night. I think I was online and I did this pretty quick. I'm just going to clean up, move some of these pens around. I got so many things happening here. And as always, let me know if you have any cues. I'm just reorganizing a little bit. And by the way, this was a Sharpie roller pen. I haven't used them too many— too much. Very, very fine point on it. You can see that. So adding to my Sharpie stuff. Hey, my head's on the left. I just looked on screen and I thought I was looking at it reverse, but I forgot I moved my head over. Yeah, this was a fun little sketch. Um, take it to Office Depot and have it scanned. Ooh, DB. That's interesting. I— yeah, do I have any— I guess Staples would do it too. I think we have a Staples I could take it to. Good point. One of these days I want to invest in a large format scanner and a large format printer that I could put almost like watercolor paper through. All right, cool. Let's do another sketch. I'm having fun. So let's use the next page in this sketchbook and we'll play around with it. This is, just so you guys know, this is not my typical Canson. This is actually a 1264 Fabriano watercolor sketchbook here, 140 lb cold press. And I'm actually, I'm starting to like this more than the Canson paper, only because it has a little bit of a rougher texture. All right, cool. Keep these here and we will break these out. I know I'm asking guys a lot of questions, but do you prefer my face to the left, right, or turned off? So it's all good if you want it turned off. All right, let's sketch something else. I like to start with Sharpies a little break out the Sharpie. I'm just gonna make something up here on the fly. I'm not looking at anything. I was contemplating— or maybe we'll do this— I was contemplating playing around with this old piece I had here. And just adding to this and grunging it up a little. Should we do that? Why don't we do that? Let's play with this piece. We're working on the fly here. Yeah, let's— this was an old piece. I don't— I didn't write the year. Probably 2021. Probably 2021. And let's just play with these. Graphite. Oh, I'm pretty— I think I'm dumb because it has the word graph, which was probably for graphite. These are probably graphite sticks. All right, anyway, let's, uh, break that out. Let's take out some— there's a sepia. You guys know I love using sepia stuff. Uh, sepia, I think, is which one? Does this— doesn't say the colors on here, does No, I'm gonna guess this is the sepia one here. That was the brown I used earlier, is this one. So I'm gonna guess this is the sepia one right here. And let's play with this ochre as well. I want to see what we can do with this water tower. We'll have fun with it. I like pulling out things from the drawer, the archives, and messing around with them. Just looking for my brush. Where'd the brush go? Uh, this, this fell down, this fell down. Here's the brush rolled under the tabletop. All right, cool.

All right, awesome.

Alright, cool. Let's, uh, let's throw down some stuff. Actually, let's just sketch right on here and we'll put water on top. Maybe add some rust to this water tower. We'll rust it up a little. So this is actually what you see on here This is like a blue silver. It's a metallic acrylic ink. I don't know how well this is going to bond to acrylic ink, but that's what you see, all this blue color, silver color. It actually has, um, it sparkles. It's metallic. So we'll see. I don't know if it'll stick to it or not, but this is where we just get to play and have fun and see See what happens. I'm just skipping this across and letting the texture of the paper— actually, in the texture of the acrylic ink underneath— come through. Let's, uh, let's rustify some of this up here as well. Oops, I didn't put any. We'll just, uh, let's see, we'll just throw some of this on here. So see what I did? I added some water right on the paper and then just kind of brought this on here. Let's rustify it. Gotta be careful not to overdo it too much. We'll just— let's throw some maybe down here as well at the bottom. Let's lift it off the canvas, just kind of dab it on here. You know where that leg, that support comes down. Oh, actually, let's do some across this cross beam here. Cross bracing. We'll just add some water here and we'll pop those out a little more. Ooh, this is fun! This is cool. There we go. I mean, look at, look at how much this changed just by adding that. Starting to look pretty, pretty rusty, which is the look I really wanted to go for originally. Kind of cool. To the left. You guys like my face to the left? DB says to the left. I'm glad he didn't say to the left out, like leave it out. Yeah, we'll stay over to the left. That's kind of cool. It gives my hand— because I'm left-handed— it gives me more area to put stuff here and then focus on art to the right. So I think I think that might be a good decision. Water towers always make me think of our dear friend Cat. Oh yeah, yeah, Cat is awesome. I wonder how Cat's doing. She comments on some of my artwork, so, and we did message a little back and forth. So Cat, if you're out there or you're watching a replay, hope all's well, and we know she loves Water towers. We want— we need to do a reunion Zoom. Um, I'm willing to do one tomorrow night if, if DB's out there, any Inklings out there want to do like a reunion Zoom, just get together and create maybe for an hour or so. Um, I wouldn't— I could host the Zoom. Let me know if you guys are interested. For doing— maybe doing something tomorrow night. What would happen if you use rubbing alcohol instead of water? Ooh, I actually have some here, believe it or not. I have it here to clean my 3D printer baseplate off. Let's see, so I do have some right here. So, uh, DB, so you're— are you saying to paint with— instead of using water, dipping my brush in this and painting with it? Let me know if that's what you mean, because I have the— I have it here. We could try. Rustify is an excellent word. I'm glad you like it. Let's throw some ochre down. I'm actually going to put it on my board and just paint it on. I do have a paper towel. I recommend keeping a paper towel or some kind of cloth or something nearby to not only wipe off your brush but also maybe to clean your palm off. So this is the ochre yellow color. Let's throw some of that on top and see what happens.

Piece.

Maybe something was dripping down the side here a little bit. Love that piece of music. Um, D says allowing the texture roughness of paper to rustify and add to the rusticness. DB says yes. So using the alcohol to paint with. All right, let's, let's try it. Let me just add this here and we'll give it a shot. I'm totally up for it. This is really adding a lot of depth. Putting these colors on here. So it's actually pretty, pretty fun. All right, let's do this. All right, so we're gonna take— I'm gonna put some of the rubbing alcohol in. I have here— I'll use this. I have a lid here. It has— I think this is iron oxide acrylic ink ink in here. So let's just put a couple drops of this. So I have some of the rubbing alcohol in here, and then let's paint with it instead of water. Wipe the water off of here, and, uh, let's, let's throw down some sepia. So let me rub some sepia on here. And let's do the rubbing alcohol and see what happens. This will be fun. So it's probably going to dry quickly, right? Rubbing alcohol. But let's just mix it in here. That's the sepia. And then let's throw some sepia on here. Again, I'm just flicking my brush across here. I wanted to pick up the texture. So this is with the rubbing alcohol happening. So it is drying fairly quickly inside the lid here. I don't know if you can see that. It's kind of hard to see it with the light. Let's throw down some more of the graphite, some more of the sepia. Ah, let's see, I want to darken under here, so let's throw that sepia under here, the bottom of the tank. It's interesting, I feel like it's— rubbing alcohol is kind of sticky. It's— it feels like it's thicker than the water, so, uh, the graphite's not flowing on here as smooth. Sorry, I think it was off screen, but— so I'm just adding some of the sepia down here. Oops, I actually just put it in the water. Cool, there we go. Dab that there. It's kind of maybe just kind of put some sepia here on this crosspiece. Dab some here. Let's dab a little here. I feel like I want to pull the edge of this out a little bit on this side. That's looking cool. Please don't try the rubbing alcohol on your painting in case it messes it up. Hey, DB, it's all good. This— it's about being playful, so, uh, no worries. I, I don't mind if this got messed up. You don't know what's going to happen until you try it. So, um, yeah, didn't mess anything up. I think you guys, you can see the metallic. You see that with the light. It's actually kind of cool. I, I'm liking the way this is looking. No difference, just dries faster. Yeah, so the rubbing alcohol dries faster. Um, it felt thicker to me, so trying to spread the graphite out. It didn't really spread out because it wasn't water, watery enough, didn't have enough, wasn't liquid enough. So that's kind of my feeling of, of it. I could see using maybe rubbing alcohol. I could be wrong, but could it be used if you want to lift spots off, maybe, instead of using it in an additive way? Using it to remove areas. That might be a way to use the rubbing alcohol. You know, sometimes when we think about painting or sketching, we think about it as an additive process where we're just adding layers on top of layers on top of layers. But another tool we have is subtracting, taking things away. Right, we can start with a lot of color and depending on the medium of course, but strip stuff away from that. So, think of subtraction as another, another tool that we have that we can use. Of course, some things you know you won't be able to remove after they're down. This is cool. I'm liking this. I feel like this made it feel more rounded by doing this piece here and adding this up here. Let me know what you guys think. Did you notice a transformation when we added the art graph on here? D-Ray says breathe. Ah, yes, breathe. Let's go into Zen mode. I might be hyper because this is so much fun. It's good to take a breath once in a while. DB says, I like the added colors. Oh good, I'm glad you like the colors. That's awesome, so fun. I'm not too crazy about the background on here. I think intentionally— originally, I think I wanted to look like rain coming down. Trying to remember way back when what the idea was with this, the black. Excuse me, I don't remember. Where's— where are my frames? I put them away. Oh, here's the one. I'm looking for the bigger one.

Here it is. It's zooming.

Yeah, I feel like this, this actually works as a whole piece and not really cropping anything out of it. Although it's interesting, when I do this, I'm getting— man, I'm almost getting a barn silo kind of feeling. I'm almost feeling like this could be the top of a barn silo here. This is the bottom part, you know, the cylinder that curves. So that's interesting. Yeah, somewhere in here it kind of has like a— almost a dome shape on the top. Or like an observatory kind of structure. An observatory with like the telescope. Area.

Interesting.

No, I'm not digging it. It's not doing anything for me that way. Uh, no, not seeing anything there either. I kind of like this. I like the idea of cropping it here. This down a little bit. I'm totally getting silo or observatory when I do, do this, like right here. That is so funny. So I just love how our imaginations work. It just fascinates me. That is so cool. But here's the overall piece. I don't think I'm going to do anything else to this one. I don't like the background here. Maybe we could change it. Let's see. What could I add to it? Maybe we'll just sketch. I don't think the Sharpie— let's see if the Sharpie works on here. So I'm just doing some vertical lines with my Sharpie. I mean, I'm trying to pick up on that rain idea I originally had. So, you know, maybe we have some rain just falling down here. I'm just lightly sketching these vertical— vertical-ish lines on here. Let's get some on the side as well. This black stuff is, uh, watercolor stick. Daniel Smith Graphite Watercolor Stick. That's what you see here, the black stuff. This is looking better. I just, I didn't like the background. I think it was too— I think it's adding more movement. It kind of looks more like it's in a rain, a rainy day here now, just by doing these vertical-ish lines from arcade-ish. It's amazing the freedom that I-S-H, ish, has given us. You add ish to something, it gives you a lot of leeway. Love it. So this is looking sketch-ish. There's some rain-ish vibes happening. I don't want to overdo it. Might be enough.

There you go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that is— that's much better. That's much better. That's much better. It looks like maybe there's some kind of rain falling down. D says barn silo for sure. Oh, you guys, you saw that too? So cool. The light area looks like a man waving or hand up. Light area looks like a man waving or hand up. Ooh, let's see, where, where is that? Where's that frame? It just had it. I'm going cuckoo, guys.

It's right here.

Let's see where— if we do this, zoom in. So this was kind of— I think I had it like somewhere in here. Oh, it's weird. I see, I see a figure here. I actually see a figure here. Like a side profile. Oh, oh, yeah, the hand. Wait, I see, uh, D-Ray, maybe I see like a hand happening like right in here. One like kind of like something like this happening like right here. That's interesting. I love that you saw something up there. Flying to D-Ray. D-Ray, we're flying to D-Ray. Yes! All right, cool. So I found the area. Yeah, good call. That's your creative brain at work. Love it. Down on main body. Oh, down on the main body. Oh, okay, let's go back. This is fun. Down on the main body, down here. Oh, here, here, right in this area. This almost has a hand kind of look to it, right here below the red rust. So down in this area here, right, this looks like a kind of a hand right here to me. That's what's so cool about this is, um, you have— your drawings are loose and sketchy. Everybody can see something different in them, which makes it fun because it keeps you wanting to look at it longer. So, good call. I think the last thing, I think the last thing I want to do is on this, I think I do want to pull this edge out, make it a little darker. Do I want to bleed it with my Lamy or Sharpie it? Let's put the Lamy on there, and I don't have to bleed it if I don't want. We'll see. I don't know if it'll write over this acrylic ink. It might not. Oh, it looks like, looks like it's working. Darken it just a little bit here. So you can see I'm just pulling this edge out a little a little bit by just running the Lamy down. I got some gunk in the tip there. Um, let's do the same thing on this side. There we go. So that just pulled that out a little bit. Yes. Face with hair and eyes. Yeah, D-Ray, I love that you're seeing that. That's awesome. So cool. Hey, awesome, guys. I guess this is done. Let's look at Where's my bridge sketch from tonight? I'll show you guys that. We'll do a show and tell. So this was my bridge sketch from today. I think this is bridge— oh gosh, 44? I'm losing count. I think this is bridge sketch 44, I think. I wrote it in my post, Facebook post. I don't remember. So this is the Astoria-Megler Bridge. It connects Astoria, Oregon to Megler, Washington. A different view. I've sketched this bridge a few times, not this view of it. It's cool. It's a little more compressed than I would like it to be. It should have been a little bit longer. But this, I'm trying to keep it simple with this one. It's just Sharpie. I didn't bleed any ink on it. I think it's fun. I kind of like the shape of the road curving, going across the bridge and down. So that's fun. Um, you see the background? I lightly— sorry, I'm shaking this, I'm moving it all over. Um, we have some landscape or forests or hills in the background, which I just lightly— just like the rain technique I did on here, it's the same idea with those vertical lines. I did the same thing here just to kind of just to indicate that there's some kind of vegetation and mountain that's going on back there. And I think it works. I want the bridge to be the star of this, so I didn't want anything to compete back here, but I wanted to add a little bit of texture. Um, what would I do? Oh, you know what I didn't do? Actually, something I wanted to do on this— I'll do it right now because we're talking about vertical lines. I forgot to I want this bridge to look like it's sitting in the water. Right now it's— it doesn't to me. So this is water. But I like to do the same thing with vertical lines. Just to throw some down on here. Just to give it almost like a reflection happening. And it helps to anchor this bridge down in the water.

Water a little bit.

So you can kind of see what I'm doing there. Very light lines, I'm not drawing a lot of attention. I just wanted to anchor this here, so let's drag that down a little bit. It's a little dark. I'm gonna pull this, darken that a little bit, darken that edge. And let's pull this down a little bit here.

Cool.

And that just for me helps to anchor those structures down into the water a little bit. Alright, now I feel better about it. This I want to darken up. So I sketched this in my living room while watching TV tonight. We had the lights pretty dim in there. Now that I see this in a brighter light, I can see areas that really should be darkened a little bit more. I love sketching while I'm watching TV. I don't know, TV is just a background. Not all the time, sometimes I like to do that.

Cool.

Just pull this edge out, pull this out a little bit. Cool, maybe it's a hazy day out there, foggy day. Yeah, so there you go. So now the bridge to me looks like it's a little more secure or a little more anchored into the water, not just floating there. And then I did a similar technique last night, different bridge, but a technique where I just only used a Sharpie. I didn't bleed anything. And that was this bridge right here, the Pont des Avignons. Avignon. I'm not good at French. Avignon, France. But same idea, this is just Sharpie. I didn't bleed anything. But you can see I did the vertical lines here just to kind of anchor that bridge down in the water, give a hint that there's a reflection happening. I actually like the way this came out. This is the first time I sketched this one. If you ever look at my sketches and my sketchbook. What I've been trying to do with the bridges, I'll put like 1.0, so that was the first time I sketched this. Next time I put 2.0, just so I know. I didn't do that with the Megler Bridge. I should. I'd have to go back and look at all my sketches though. What else? This is Venice. I've been doing some sketches of bridges in Venice. Where's my favorite one? This one came out cool. This was a cool— this was a quick sketch. It was like 8 minutes, may have been 10, 8 to 10. I just popped a little red there for the awning. Where's that one I really like? Oh, this one came out good. This one came out pretty cool. This one I did bleed some ink. Which I— and I like the shadows it created. What's cool is once you start coming up with it, it's almost like a toolbox, right? So I have a toolbox with these different lines or line types that I use throughout my sketches. So it's a library of these lines that I can pull out of the library and use to create similar effects. All right, so these vertical lines are really important for me with these bridges and anchoring things into the water, trying to create the idea of reflection without getting too detailed or technical. So that's kind of a line type in my vocabulary— or not my vocabulary, but line type in my library. Which is really helpful. Oh man, alright, this is the one I like. Let me show you guys this one. And then this one, this one I really like. This is the Bridge of Sighs in Venice, built 1600. I gotta work on my lettering. This came out really, I think this came out really cool. And if we talk about that library of lines, another thing in my library of lines are just hatching, diagonal hatch lines to help create the idea of shadows. So I did bleed some ink on this one, which helps with the shadow, but I like going back over it with these hatch lines to make it a little bit darker, add some more depth. And again, you can see the vertical lines for reflections. So that may be pro tip number 2, if anybody's counting tonight. 2 is have a library of lines that you can pull out and use to help you convey ideas of things. Yeah, that was 10.

Technical.

That was technical. Excuse me, I got the hiccups. Um, I think you know what I'm talking about. So that's cool. Yeah, that came out really nice. So sorry I went down the show-and-tell path. I thought— I think it'd be fun though just to kind of, since we're talking about line types, we can look through some of these, see if there's any other line types I want to point out. Put this down here. You guys have taken workshops with me, you know, we talk about line, line types. There's at least 5, if not 5 to 7 different line types I like to use. This one came out really cool. I do— I just did notice though, I didn't do my reflection here on the water under there. I can add it, but I'm not going joy to right now.

All right, cool.

All right guys, let's, uh, last thing I want to do is let's take a look at how this is drying and we'll wrap up for, I think, tonight. So glad you guys are tuning in. Thank you for watching. This See you, you've out there. I do appreciate your time and hanging out. So this is how this one's kind of ending up that we worked on a little bit earlier that we're going to crop out. And what we decided is we're going to crop out— that's the whole thing— and then we're going to crop this area out. Right, my guideline's right here. Somewhere in there to be talked about. Love this Western music while we're looking at New York City. It's pretty interesting combination. I guess, is New York City the Wild West of the East? There you go, cool. D-Ray says, "Impressive vertical lines, it works." Heather says, "I lived on the Astoria side years ago." Heather, that's so cool! Wow! So Heather, have you crossed that bridge? Where did I put it? Have you crossed the Astoria-Megler Bridge? It looks like an incredible bridge. I probably have sketched it 7 times now. I have a friend who lives out in Washington and she sent me a bunch of pictures of some of her favorite bridges out there. So that's how I got inspired to sketch bridges out west. So it's a pretty cool bridge. Do you race as line tapes 5 to 7? Hmm, looks great, Jason Nicholas. Oh, thanks. I appreciate that. Hey, you guys are awesome. I do appreciate y'all so much. I think we're gonna wrap up. Oh, here's another— actually, let me show you this. Sorry, hopefully you don't mind the show and tell. Just getting some of you guys caught up if you haven't seen my Facebook posts. Facebook has done something weird recently. I was getting— I'm not a numbers guy, but I do like— I've been looking at the numbers a little more closely. I was getting, I don't know, 30, maybe I'm exaggerating, 30, 40 likes on posts. And then within the last week, 5, I only get 5 or 6 posts. I don't think a lot of people are seeing my stuff anymore, which is weird. Um, and also I had like, I had a 988, yeah, I had 988 followers And then 2 days ago, somehow the followers dropped down to 900 and— oh man, 79. So I'm down to 979. I was trying to hit 1,000 just as a personal milestone, and the numbers just dropped, which is really weird. So I think Facebook did something with their algorithms because I haven't really changed what I'm doing. So it's really freaky. So I know Becky and DB, I don't know if you guys have been seeing my Facebook posts. Let me know if you have been. I know D-Ray, you've been seeing them. And these are posts on my Inspired Life Facebook page. I'm just curious. Anyway, this was a cool— this was a sketch of the pedestrian bridge inside Grand Central Terminal near New York City. So when we think about bridges, they're not only bridges outside, but they could be bridges inside of buildings. So here's a pedestrian bridge here. Um, I gotta go here and photograph this place again. Um, but yeah, this was a fun sketch. And here, that's not water, but they had a really highly polished floor happening, so I tried to create reflections and the idea of reflections on that polished floor. This person came out really badly. I wish this person— I don't know what I did there. I wish I could do something with that person. We'll cover them up. But anyway, I love the reflections on there. Cool. Hey guys, thank you so much for watching. You are awesome. Um, Inklings, let me know if you want to do a a reunion tomorrow night. We can log on and Zoom for a little bit, maybe an hour, hour and a half or so, and just get together, maybe do some artwork. Let me know. And if anybody else out there is interested in— if we do it— in joining, let me know. You can send me a message on Facebook. It won't be a class, it'll just be a get-together. Where we can go on Zoom and sketch and show each other stuff. But it usually ends up being— it usually ends up into a food conversation, which is fun. And again, we'll play that by ear. I have to do— I do have to see how my day goes tomorrow. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for watching. I know I tried to say goodbye 10 times. That's a record for me. Heather said, I have an even more stormy— you crossed the bridge and the waves crashing over the road on the bridge. Wow, Heather, I'm glad you crossed the bridge safely. That is so cool. What I love is that you saw that bridge and you connected to where you used to live and some memories. So that is fun. Bridges are about connections on many levels, and that was a really cool connection. Cool. DB says cowboy and bridge. Cowboy and bridge. Ah, cowboy. Oh, um, DB, you lost me. Whistling— DB, do you want to do the Whistling Cowboy? Let me know if that's what you mean. I have— I totally— I forgot about the Whistling Cowboy. I haven't done them in a while.

He said—

I don't know if cowboy— you meant Whistling Cowboy. Wild West of the East, referring to the Western music. Oh, as we look over the New York sketchings. There you go. Heather says, sounds fun. Awesome. Tonight is a go with me. Oh cool, pickup. That's what happened. Yes, with a bridge. Oh, you want me to do— we could do Whistling Cowboy with a bridge. Yeah, that'll be fun. Um, pick a song number, anybody, from 1 to 20. And the first number I see, we'll do a— we play that and do a whistling cowboy sketch. So cool. So if we do it, if the Zoom does happen tomorrow night, I'll let you guys know. I have to see what's up with our schedule tomorrow. I also want to pop into NYC either tomorrow Tomorrow's Sunday or Monday since we're off. I want to get in there one day, um, and it's probably too cold to sketch outside, but I definitely want to photograph.

Cool.

All right, let's do Whistling Cowboy. This will be fun. I haven't done him in a while. Let's see, where, where's the last place we left him? That's so funny you said Whistling Cow— So DB, right there we have a, uh, We have a sketch from December 9th of the whistling cowboy on a bridge. Hey, look at that, I'm done. Don't even have to sketch one. I just found one in here. That's so funny. I did not put a date on there. I'm really bad at dating my artwork. This was December 16th. I don't know when the heck this is. Sharpie sketch tonight. Number 4, I see 4. Awesome, thank you. Great visit as always, D-Ray. Thank you, it was great seeing you. Good night, keep warm, keep safe, and feel better. Guys, give, um, some positive thoughts to D-Ray. Hope she feels better. I appreciate you so much. Thank you. All right, number 4, we got it. Let me go to my song list. I love this piece of music, guys. Just listen for— just listen here. All right, I just want you to listen to that. I love that piece of music. There's something about that song that, uh, it touches me. I don't know what it is, but yeah, it's, it's, I love that song. All right guys, here we go, song number 4, Whistling Cowboy. 1, 2, 3, 4. This is called Montevideo. Montevideo. Oh, I think that's the artist, maybe. Montevideo is the artist. The song is called Sight of Wonders or a Sight— no, no, Sight of Wonders is the artist. The name of the song is Montevideo. Oh my God, I'm getting punchy. I must be I'm losing it. He's going crazy right here online. He's gone wacko. All right, here we go, guys. Whistling Cowboy. I gotta start over. Would have been nice if I had the music not muted. 1, 2, 3, here we go. Montevideo. Hey, thank you guys so much for watching. Have an awesome rest of your evening. Enjoy your Saturday. And I appreciate you guys. Keep paying it forward with positivity and creativity. Peace, and live creatively. I'll see you guys really soon. Take care. Have a great, great night. The finish button. I got the finish button right here. Boom.