The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud

Hey, D-Ray, good to see you. Hope all's well. Janice, good to see you also. Hope you guys are doing well on this Thursday evening. Nice warm day here in New Jersey. I think it all Maybe it hits 60. Um, it's so great to see you guys. I know, D-Ray, you've been having some snow out there in Alaska. I guess, uh, I guess that's normal, right? Alaska. Janice, hope you had a nice, maybe small taste of spring today out there in New York, in this city over there. It's so great to see you guys. So, I'm just popping on to do some quick loose sketching as always. I haven't been on a lot this week. It's just been a really busy week. I wanted to get on tonight and do some sketching. Just change my state of mind before I go to bed. I've been prepping for school tomorrow and my brain said, "Hey, enough schoolwork. What's—" do some creative play. So that's why I'm on, and it's always good to see you guys. Janice, it was, uh, it was fun meeting Denise the other night. On our Zoom workshop. She's awesome. She fits right in with the crowd, the members of the workshop. It was a lot of fun. So I thank you for, you know, for recommending and sending Denise our way. Really appreciate it. Good stuff. Zoom out a little bit here. There we go. Linda, good to see you. Hope all's well. You guys can hear me okay? I was fiddling around with the volume of my AirPods and my microphone earlier. I hope it's all working. What am I sketching? I have no idea. As always, I'm just kind of throwing down some ink. We'll see where it goes, if it takes us anywhere. Well, it always takes us somewhere. It takes us down a creative path. It just feels good to be on— letting loose, letting the ink flow. So it's Thursday, hope you guys have had a great week. Hope you have maybe some fun weekend plans coming up. They're just quiet and relaxing. Something I've come to appreciate much more the older I get is quiet time. I really, I just really treasure, um, just peaceful time, not hectic running around trying to keep up with the Joneses. Although I don't, I don't think I've ever met any Joneses. I just want to go at my own pace and not be pressured, not be pushed. I got the old thumbs up thingy. The A-okay from D-Ray. I think that means like okay. Thank you, D-Ray, I appreciate that. Okay, you guys are A-okay. Oh, I have my messages on. I forgot to turn off my notifications. So if you hear some dinging going on, it's my notifications. They pop up. I don't know if you can see them. You can't see them on screen, but I can hear them pop up. I don't know if you can hear them. Some dinging, some dinging sounds are happening. I wish they were exciting announcements. They're just You know, like bill reminders and fun stuff like that. Wow, there's a lot of line work going on here on this one. I'm just looking at it, uh, from different angles. Seeing things from different perspectives. Let's just take a look at this. There's a, there's a lot happening. You could tell I wanted to get some inca ink on here, throw down some ink tonight. I'm just taking a step back looking at this. I have thrown a lot of lines down here, more than usual. We'll zoom in, just take a look at some parts a little bit closer, see what's kind of standing out. Hey, Becky's in the house! What's up, Becky? Hope all's well. Good to see you.

Cool. All right, that was a good warm-up.

Got the blood, the creative blood going here. I'm liking it. I'm gonna let this dry. I think I'll— I don't know if I'll come back to it or not. I'm not too keen. On it, but it was fun to get the red and black ink out. But I actually, I kind of like the white spaces on here as well. There's some interesting, interesting things happening. I was thinking about throwing another color down just for the heck of it. I don't know, what should I throw down? What's that? Let's throw down some blue. Why not? See what happens. So we have some black, blue, and red. So I like that I put the blue on here. I'm liking this better. The blue is somehow tying this all together for me visually. I'm picturing a— just a conglomerate of different buildings kind of scrunch together here, maybe some kind of waterfront harbor area here, which I kind of like. There's a lot of movement, a lot of energy happening. I like the way the blue and the red are kind of making some purple colors happening. We got the whistling MUSIC. Some happy music.

Cool.

This is going to be one of those ink sketches I feel like I could keep coming back and just looking at it and seeing a lot of different things happening, which I like. I just get lost in these abstract, loose kinds of scenes happening. It's almost like a puzzle here I'm trying to solve. I'm trying to bring out details, connect some things. You can see I'm just kind of— I was just scratching in some You know, some vertical lines roughly indicate maybe windows going on. So, adding these little kind of just marks can really transform the looseness that's happening here. I kind of find this shape interesting happening right up in this area. I kind of want to do a curve here, almost as a, uh, it almost looks like part of a bridge. My hand's like telling me sometimes I'll— it's kind of weird, sometimes I won't use the pen or the brush to draw strokes and draw lines, I'll sometimes just take my hand and I'll just kind of let my hand move around the paper and just let it do its thing. And here, it's kind of— I keep coming back to looking at this shape and I want to continue kind of this curve area. So, I'm just gonna go for it. Sometimes the hand speaks for the brain. I know this sounds kind of weird, but— I'm just gonna turn it this way because I want to get that shape. So let's put on a different playlist here. So here's where I want to do that curve thing. Maybe it's coming out behind this red building. Maybe it's just coming something like this. I just kind of put it on there lightly because I want to— I'll wash it with ink. I would think with water. Yep. Yeah, I know my ink from water, I swear. All right, so kind of have this piece coming like down, coming across here, and maybe it's kind of coming down here as well. And all right, that's a good base. Now I can kind of add, you know, if it is a bridge structure, I'm gonna add some vertical cables here. So we just sketch some lines like this. I like the lot. I like the fact there's a lot happening on this. Sketch. Sometimes it'll be very clean with a lot of white space, but this is kind of busy. I just like the energy and the vibe that it has. I'm just gonna pull out more lines like that. Let's give them a wash. And it's just to suggest maybe there's a structure or a bridge structure or something happening. I'm gonna add a little more red to the sides of this building. Bleed it a little bit just to define the edge a little bit more. Now pull it down here a little bit.

Cool.

Zoom out. Conducting, yes, I'm conducting my sketch. Yeah, it's like conducting the sketch. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, sometimes, you know, it's just— I'll just have my pen or brush and I'll just— mostly, usually my pen. I'll just kind of let it feel its way around the page before I actually put it down on the paper. I think I might put this one aside for now. I'm starting to get a little too fussy. I'm actually starting to think a little too much about it, and I don't want to do that. I start thinking too much about what I'm going to put on here. Um, uh, for me, sometimes it's a mental block, a creative block with these kinds of sketch paintings. I just don't want to think too much, I just want to kind of do it. So I'm really starting to find myself thinking about it, so that's usually a good sign for me to step away from it and do something else. So that's what we'll do. Take one close look, I'll zoom around, see how some of it's drying. There are some really interesting spots happening on here, the way it's drying. I do like the black, blue, and red. This is fun music. Cool. I think I'll do one more sketch. We'll put this one aside. Oh, it felt good to do that. I honestly haven't done one of these in I think 2 or 3 days maybe. What's this page? Maybe we'll play around with this. I started something here but we'll just play around with this sheet. Do some tango music. What was I using on this? I guess it was my lamb. Yeah, well, I don't— we'll mess around with this. I'm not sure what it is. Hope you guys are having a great night. I hope you're creating something fun. I hope you're just chilling out, maybe you're winding down for the day. Maybe you're waking up for the day. Maybe you were sleeping and you somehow turned this on while you were sleeping. It's kind of like sleepwalking, but you're sleepwatching, maybe. Or maybe I'm just putting you to sleep by my low, quiet voice. I could amp up the energy. Let me know, should I amp up the energy? "Hey Heather, good to see you. Hope all is well. Love the pictures from your art show at your school." Oh, thank you. Yeah, I love being part of the student artist of the month program. So, our local arts committee, we partner with our art teachers in our high school, in our elementary, middle, and high school in town, and our teachers will pick out 2 or 3 students every month, and we hang their artwork in our local library, and the students will come to a presentation. We'll give them a medal and a certificate. It's a lot of fun. It's so, it's so cool to see the arts being recognized. I feel sometimes we focus a lot on the sports in schools, which is fine. I was an athlete and my son plays sports, but I— it's just nice to see the visual arts being recognized. So it's a really cool program. I'm glad you guys like that post. I have no idea what I'm sketching, as always. I am just putting lines on this thing. Throw it down. Throwing down the lines, but it's so much fun. So yeah, I'm glad you like those posts. I do have close-ups of the art pieces. I'll post some of those as well. We have amazing— there was a portrait that an elementary school girl did, a self-portrait. It's incredible. I wish I could draw people like she did. Just all sorts of talent out there. It's just so fun to see, you know, see them, these students being recognized. And what we do at the end of the school year, so we do this November, October, October through May or November through May. And then in June we have a year-end reception where we take all the student artists that won, we take all their artwork that was hung in the library, we set it up in the media center at our high school, invite all of them to come back, students and their parents to come back. Um, we have a guest artist who is a speaker and we have a list little reception with some snacks, but it's a really fun opportunity. Our teachers bring some of their artwork and they'll talk about what they do, so we get to see, you know, what they're creating. And it's just a real fun evening. And I think I have a guest speaker lined up this year. I just have to— I'll have to get back on his radar and see if he's still available to do it. If so, it's going to be an incredible, incredible speaker this year. So it's just one of the ways I like to pay it forward with creativity. Oh my gosh, this is crazy. I'm adding blue now. I'm going crazy. Um, so good to see you guys in the house. As of right now, it looks like a huge fishing boat. Yeah, kind of a fishing boat, kind of. I could totally see that. I was drawing it this way and then I just turned the paper. Honestly, I'm just throwing ink and colors down but I think I'm gonna switch to— I feel like doing smaller sketching. I'm gonna switch to my Moleskine book and we'll do some small sketching. It's fun just to kind of loosen up, get some ink out on paper. I'll come back around, you know, you guys know I like to come back to these things and play around with them, come back to scrap pages, scrap pieces of paper. So I'll come back and play around with that. And then the same thing with this one, I'll probably come back as well and do some more with it. Well, let's switch books. I love this. This is still, I think, one of my faves. This came out really cool. And this is actually— this has been getting some pretty good comments and reactions, this kind of a mixed media piece. So it's always fun for me to see what people react to. All right, let's, uh, we're gonna zoom in close. We're gonna work small, guys. Something I don't really— haven't shown too much on camera. I kinda work small when I'm chillin', sometimes watching TV, I'll have my sketchbook or waiting. This is the one I talked about having with me when I wait in line at places. This is my favorite carry-along sketchbook. I need a better word than that. I gotta zoom in as you can see. Take-along. Portable travel— we'll call it a little travel watercolor sketchbook. So let's flip through. Let's do such a small sketch or something in here. I've been really enjoying using— I can't find it— um, felt tip pen, a felt tip pen in this book. Of course I can't find the one I was looking for. What the heck? I don't think I have any more. I just had the one. Somehow I ended up with a Walmart felt tip pen, but I actually like it. But it ran away. My pen's gone!

Hmm.

Let me take a quick peek over here. No, no. I don't know where I put it. Oh, I know where it is. It's by my nightstand. Ah, you guys are in for a rare treat. So if you're watching, you're watching at a great time. I'm about to bust out a pen that I have kept aside. I hope it works for a long time. You may have heard our friend Roo talking about this type of pen. It's a pen I used to use all the time in architecture school, and they don't make them the same anymore. It's right here. You can tell it's been well used. Jason scratch the barrel on it. It has this ridge on it. You can probably hear that. You can scratch the side. But, um, this is a Paper Mate, Paper Mate felt tip pen. I hope it works. So let's play around with this pen. I haven't used it in a long, long time. What I like about using felt tip pens in this Moleskine Skinda Sketchbook. I like the way they feel, that they run across the paper. Let's see, what do we want to sketch? I want to do something architecture. That's normal. I'm actually looking for something, some inspo, something inspo tonight. What do I want to sketch?

Maybe there's something in here.

I'm looking at some inspo here. Alright, let's just sketch. So fun to see everybody in the house here tonight. You guys are quiet in the chat, I like that. You're focused. Who's watching reruns of Monk right now while you're online?

Oh my gosh.

I'm just doing some freestyle sketching here. I didn't find a reference to look at, but just see what happens. Oh my gosh, this— holding this pen here and sketching is bringing back so many memories of school. These were my go-to sketching pens before I discovered the Pilot Precise pens right here. I hope I'm zoomed close enough for you guys to see this. Let me know if you can see this okay when I'm sketching, or if I should zoom in closer. I love Monk. Heather says yes. I've only seen like 2 episodes, but I hear it's awesome. I have to watch it. Um, because of Monk, we have Bedknobs and Brewsticks on. Oh, that's so cool. Red Knots with Brewster 6. What a classic that one is. I haven't seen that one in years. So fun. You guys are doing some fun things. I love it. Really having fun with this pen.

Cool.

There we go. Just a quick little abstract building there. Um, Darius is loving it here. Loving it here. I'm loving it. I'm loving this pen. Alright, cool. So we have some ink on here, just some kind of abstract, some building type things happening. I don't know, remember if these bleed or not. I think it does. Just curious. Should be like a purplish color, I think, right? Eyes are going wonky. Yeah, we have some bleeding going on. It's like a purplish color you get when they bleed. Kinda like me. No, no, I don't really bleed purple. Now, if I was a Vulcan, I think I would bleed— was it blue blood? I have to go back on my Star Trek trivia. I used to love watching the classic Star Trek episodes, and then The Next Generation episodes, and then Deep Space Nine. I don't know if there's any Trekkies out there. I feel like going back and rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation. So many incredible episodes. Yeah, I like the way this bleeds. It has a purplish kind of tint to it. I think I heard the song already. It might be on repeat mode or something. You can see— I'll zoom in— you can see the purple. I like the tones that are happening here. It's really— this is a really cool ink for creating shadows. I think this adds just another level of interest. I don't think the camera's focusing. Focus, focus. There we go, now it's in focus. Uh, looks good. We got some true bleed here. Looking better and better. Oh good, I'm glad you like it, D-Ray. That's cool.

Yes, looking interesting.

Love this music. Reminds me of, uh, The Lion King. Ah, let's break out some of the Walnut ink, throw some of this on here. Ooh, my pinky just locked up. Ouch. Alright. Alright, put this one aside, let it dry. That's fun, just throwing down some of that, yeah, Paper Mate clear pen there.

Awesome!

Hydrated. My hands do that when I have overworked them outside yard work. In case you're painting work, stay hydrated. Thanks for the tip, D-Ray, appreciate that. I will stay hydrated, really appreciate that. So this was something I worked on the other night, just want to pull it out here quick. You can see how it dried. I like the way it actually dried, really interesting look down here. I think I like the pink on here. As well, that touch of yellow. And then this was something I was playing around with the other day, just using some different Preppy— are these the Preppy pens? I think this is a mix of Preppy pens and the Varsity pens. I was playing around with different colors, just trying to create an abstract floral kind of effect going on. Um, came out pretty interesting. I could probably go back and mess around with it, pull out— like, I want to pull out some of these edges here.

Let's try it.

Let's actually do that. I don't use that, it's the brown ink. Actually, just wipe it off down here. "No, while it is working in school, no bathroom breaks." That's okay. I don't know if I'd want to use the bathrooms in my school. That's not an issue at all. I could use more time to work on actually prepping for school and grading. That would be awesome. Cool. All right guys, I'm gonna wrap up with Whistling Cowboy. It's, I know it's a short show here. This is really, I forgot about this. This is really a cool little tropical abstract tropical scene going on. Kind of wish I was here right now in this nice warm beautiful location wherever it might be. Oh, so you limited your drinks. Yeah, that makes totally make sense. Totally, totally makes sense. Yeah, this was a cool piece. Tropical, we do have tropical. We're all over the place tonight. So I just want to come on tonight, just do some— break out some ink. As always, I did a bunch of different things. It's just I haven't done it in a couple days and, uh, I just wanted just to get back to it. Sometimes we get distracted and we have other obligations, or sometimes we're just tired. From the day to day. That's what's happened to me. I get tired from the day to day and I don't always make the time I should for sketching something. So it's good to pop back on. So I'm gonna do Whistling Cowboy if somebody wants to give me a number. By the way, this is a cool little book that, uh, one of my friends gave this to me. It's called Architecture in Art. So I actually have not gone through it all yet. I've just flipped through it a couple times. He was cleaning out his in-law's house and he saw this book and thought I'd like it. It's a really cool, really cool book, especially for someone that's into architecture. What do we got in here? You know, even just a window, a little window painting. I'm not sure who the artists are, I'd have to read all the titles, but this is really cool. This is William Wordsworth, Night— oh no, that's the poem. The artist is Jacob van Ruysdael. A cottage and a hayrick by a river. How cool is this? Wow, if I could paint like this, I would. That would be awesome. This is really, really awesome. There's a poem here by William Wordsworth. I don't know if the poem was written specifically about this or they just kind of paired the words up with the painting. Really cool pieces in here. Book review: Architect Art. Book review. Yeah, I should give it a book review. I haven't really read through it through it, but first impressions, we'll do a very informal book review. So it's called Architecture and Art by the National Gallery. Sold for $14.95. When was it published? Published in— I need book review music. What's good book review music? I don't know if I have any. 1999. Excuse me. That's attractive coughing during a book review. I should add that, edit that. We have some towers going on. I love the artwork. Christopher Wilhelm Eikensberg. So I'm not gonna go through all this, I'll just flip through a couple pages. So I will give this a glance, give it a read-through, give you an official review of it. So what I like about it, first of all, is I do love the size of this book. It's so convenient, easy to carry around, paperback, easy to flip through. I just saw something that caught my eye. Oh my gosh, wow. As an architect and artist, this is filled with endless inspiration for me. Sure. I love this right here. I love this page. Let me zoom in.

Wow.

Camera's not focusing. All right, there we go. Look how incredible this is. I love this. Even look at the detail of the sculpture. Who was the artist on this one? I gotta look, I'm really curious. Francisco Guardi, 1712 to 1793. Francisco Guardi. I love, I love this piece right here also. I love the pers— look at the perspective view. One of the cool things you can do in perspective views, or in any painting I guess, any kind of view, is you could do like scenes within a scene, or a frame within a frame. And that's— this is a really good example, right? We have the main kind of frame here looking into the vaults. We have another frame that frames the vista beyond. So it's a really clever architectural natural device for framing views and paintings. And even look beyond, there's even an arch all the way back here, actually a couple of them. There's actually another little view happening through that arch. How cool is that? So, it looks like this covers all different art periods. Wow! Holy cow! Alright, this is— there's some serious good stuff in here. I'm sure we'll be coming back to this. I'll break it out once in a while and I'll probably have some references and maybe use, you know, use this as as reference. I love this piece here actually too. Not a lot of detail but it's still kind of telling a story. Cool. Hey, you guys are awesome. I'm gonna play the Whistling Cowboy and head on out. I need to get to bed. I have a review— a I'm being observed tomorrow as one of the— it's just a requirement for the teachers. We have to have a certain amount of reviews or observations every year, so I have one tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it. I want to make sure I get a good night's sleep and a darn good book. Thanks, D-Ray, for capturing what I'm saying. I appreciate that. You're awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. All right guys, Whistling Cowboy's here. Hey, Cat's in the house! What's up, Cat? Cat says hello, fellow Inklings and the big anchor. The big anchor. I don't know, I don't know if I can get out of this room. My ego just grew. Operation tomorrow, you better rest up. I will, no worries. I'm just, just gonna be myself and teach like I usually would teach, that's all. Um, I'm sure it'll go okay. Um, so glad the cat made it in. You almost missed all the fun. Oh no. Yeah, I just popped on here. Um, actually, since I have a few of you, you guys in the workshop I posted something tonight that I can actually do live streaming now directly through our workshop community page. It's a new feature. I haven't used it. So I was looking for any, if anybody's around tomorrow evening, maybe around either 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock PM Eastern time, I just want to try it. If it works well, I'm thinking about maybe just using it for our workshops. So if anybody's up for giving it a test run, that would be cool. Just let me know. Um, might be awesome, it might not be. I'm not sure yet, but only one way to tell. Just do it. All right guys, so Whistling Cowboy, I'm just gonna pick a random one here. I'm not looking. This one right here. We're gonna do, uh, this one's Shadow of a Gunman. It's called Shadow of a Gunman. Let's do it. I'm so glad you joined us, Kat. I'm so glad you made it before I popped out. You're awesome. Everybody else, D-Ray and Becky, you guys are— we're here. And Heather. I don't know who's still here, who's not, who is not here, but shout out to everybody that tuned in and said hello. That means a lot to me. Um, the simple hand wave goes a long way. So thank you guys so, so much. I know Linda was in for a bit, and Janice as well. And, um, I missed your name. I'm sorry, but thank you guys. You're awesome. All right, here we go. Uh, was it— which one was I doing? My brain is like turned off. The switch has turned off the gears. The gears are in pause mode in my brain. Uh, which one? Oh, Shadow of the Gunman. Hey, thank you guys, you're awesome. Hope all is well. Uh, yes, tomorrow is Friday. D-Ray says it is Friday. Um, I will be on in one way or another tomorrow. It would be so fun to pop in again. You guys are awesome. I got a good job from T-Ray. Thank you, D-Ray. Good job to you as well. Thank you for all of your comments and you're taking notes down there. I appreciate it. Um, this, this, this, uh, has a— I'm gonna say Dr. Seuss feel to it. I don't know, Dr. Seussian kind of feel, maybe, maybe not. A little wonky. All right, cool. You guys are awesome. Thank you for watching. Have a great, great night. Peace and live. Creatively. Yeah, Cat, short but sweet. I'm so sorry, I would love to stay on. You're awesome, but I gotta get ready for bed. Uh, thanks for tuning in, I really appreciate you all. Have a great, great night. And just because Cat's on, I gotta do this. Where is the finish button? Where— how do I end this? How do I end this broadcast? You guys in the workshop, you know it's all long. It's just a running joke that I never know where the end button is. No problem, I'll catch you tomorrow. Cat, that's awesome. Thank you so much. Take care, guys. I did find the finish button.