The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud

Good morning, happy Friday. Hope you are all doing well. I'm on just for a few minutes today. I want to do some quick morning sketching. Before I do some architectural work today. Hope everybody's doing well. So I'm going to sketch. I've been sketching these industrial sketches. I just said sketch a lot of times. From my trip to the steel stacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I've been having a lot of fun with these. So here's one of them. Here's another one as well. I'll zoom in. And I'm just going to do another sketch this morning. And these sketches are based on being there in person. I have some— took a lot of photographs as well. So let's just have fun and do some sketching. Alright, so on a beautiful spring day, it's gonna be like in the 80s today, almost like a summer day here in northern New Jersey. What a great week to have had spring break. I've been so lucky. Been catching up on stuff. House stuff, paperwork stuff, and creative stuff as well. So I just want to make some time, carve out some time this morning and do some sketching. So these sketches are based on the SteelStacks, really, really cool facility that's no longer in use. It was a steel manufacturing plant. They made steel. Steel that actually went into, I think, the Golden Gate Bridge. They made steel that went into, I think, the Chrysler Building as well, and also in naval vehicles or ships as well. As you can see, if you look closely— so I'm not really sketching exactly what's there, I'm kind of taking my spin on it. And I mean, there were— there was no fluorescent pink there. But I thought it'd be really cool. I love this color combination, these kind of rusty colors, and just adding a pop of color just to make it fun. So this one, I didn't add some color yet. I think I'm going to add some. We'll do that right now. Add some pink, just a, just a splash of it. And then I'm going to do a new sketch. So let me know if you're watching, where you're joining from. I had an update on my Ecamm live software. I hope everything's working okay. I just updated it. Sometimes after you update software, you know what happens. Things can get kind of cray-cray. Um, so the sketch you're looking at here is basically a Sharpie along with— there's— I have Apple Snail colored ink in this Lamy pen. Also, we have some light aqua color pencil on there. I have a yellow Preppy. So this orangey color you're seeing here is actually from this yellow Preppy pen. I love this ink. I love bleeding Preppy pens. There's— it's so fun. And what else do I have on? I think that's all I have on there as far as colors go, but I'm going to throw just a splash of pink and I'm going to use a colored pencil. Hey, Cameron's in the house! Good to see you, Cameron. Hope all is well. So sometimes I get this question like, why, why, I mean, what you're sketching doesn't look like what's really there, which is great. I love that question because I usually respond, you know, yeah, it's not like what's there. That's why I take photographs. But it's how I feel. It's kind of, you know, what I was just like in the moment when I was sketching the colors. Um, so I don't like to sketch realistic things. I like to base my sketches, not all the time, but lots of times, on just real structures that are out there, giving my own spin. So I feel like this needs a pop of pink, and I'm not going to overdo it. Let's see. So I think I want to have a little splash up here at the top. Of this stack here. So I have just put some right up in here and just a few more, just maybe 2 more places just to kind of balance it out a little bit. So I want to bring one down, I think, on this pipe here. And then it'll bring your eye here. And then I think I would like one over here, kind of a triangle shape, just to kind of balance it. So let's just add a splash, thicken down in here. Boom. And that's it. I'm not going to throw any more on, but I— if I just had the pink there, your eye might go just to spot, so I kind of wanted to balance it a little bit. Really cool. If you look here, this— I literally took the cap off the pen, took the ink cartridge out that's in here, and I put my brush in the ink cartridge and I kind of threw it off the ink on here pretty heavy and just let it run down the page. Came out really cool looking. Alright, let's do another sketch. I'll show you the image I'm working from, I'll pull that up on screen. And this is meant to just be a really quick, loose sketch. I might even just time myself. I'm gonna give myself 10 minutes to work on this sketch. I'm gonna set a timer, actually. But yeah, let me know if you're watching, let me know if you have any questions or comments if you're watching the replay. Always feel free to post that as well. Post your comments. This is unscripted, as you can tell. Um, alright, so here's the image I'm gonna bring over. See if it uploads. Oh, there we go. Gonna shrink it. So I'm gonna just use this pic I took as inspo for the sketch I'm gonna work on. And I'll actually— I'll just leave it up while I'm sketching. Usually I don't show the images, um, because I don't want you guys— I don't want the viewers to get fixated on the me trying to replicate this exact photograph, because that's not what this is about. It's just inspo. Okay, really cool. Let me zoom in actually so you can look at some of the cool details on this weathered building. I just love the colors. I love the shapes. There were some really cool shadows when I was out there that day. I love how weathered buildings dictate— they tell a story. I mean, I could literally sit here and look at this one photograph probably for at least a good half hour, if not even longer, just looking at all the fun nuances in it. Hey, Mickey's in the house! Good to see you, Mickey. Hey Jason, good to see you. You can change this into a roller coaster. This would be such a cool— Jason, I love that idea. If they repurposed this into some kind of roller coaster, that would be so cool. Um, so right now it remains as a historic artifact. You can get tours of it, walk around it. There's actually a an arts center right in this area as well. There's a lawn, a concert area out in front of the building, so they do concerts here. Um, really, really cool venue. All right, enough of me chatting. Who wants— let's do some sketching. So I'm going to use a Sharpie. I'm going to actually take— I don't like to sketch with my watch on. I know it's kind of weird. Let me take my watch off. I feel like it Just bangs into the paper too much. Although if I can get extra steps from drawing, that might be a benefit. Maybe I should keep it on. Actually, it would be kind of cool if it counted every line I drew. Um, alright guys. Let me make some room here. I need a bigger work area. I'm learning that. So I'm sketching in my Lockbie Field Journal. I know I talk about this thing all the time. It's only because I love it so much. This is probably the best product I've bought for art and creativity in the last couple of years. So I love this and I'm using— this is a thin paper. What is it? I don't even— sorry, I don't know the weight of the paper off the top of my hand. It's thin. You can see it. It does bleed through, but it's cool for doing these washes on. So we're just gonna mess around with it. Alright, let me zoom in and give you guys a better view. Warning: I like to move the paper and stuff as I'm sketching, so you might get dizzy. Alright. So I have a larger image on my screen I'm looking at. I'm gonna actually shift it over here. So I can see it better. Awesome. Where was this at? So, Cameron, this is in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. If you Google steel stacks Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, you'll find it. The colors the environment has produced are amazing. Yeah, Mickey, these colors are— they're astonishing. I took It took, uh, I'm sorry, I'm thinking. I took a video walking the whole trestle. So this isn't— there's an elevated walkway. I'm gonna— you know what I'm gonna do, guys, in the future? I'm gonna put together a Google slideshow. I'll, I'll do a Google slideshow and I can kind of walk you through it. But there's an elevated walkway. Took me about 20 minutes to walk across it all, um, taking a video. But I literally spent 3 hours taking my time looking at all the colors and textures. Jason Nicholas says no school. Yeah, no, Jason, my school is on spring break this week, so no school today. We are back next week. I figured it. I believe there is a casino. Yeah, I think, I think there's a casino nearby, Cameron. I'm honestly not sure. I don't know. I'm not a, I'm not a casino guy, so I don't know if there's a casino there.

Alright.

So I'm holding the pen very loose, I'm holding it towards the end of the barrel here. I don't want tight detail, so I'm not going to hold it tight at the end, I'm going to kind of let it loose a little bit here. If you have any questions, let me know. Oh, I think I need another Sharpie. This one might be a little dried out, let's see. There you go, just gotta get started. Alright, so I'm going to pick up the speed. So I wanted just to kind of capture just an outline. Again, you can see my perspective isn't 100%, my scale isn't 100%, and That's fine with me. I'm just going for— just for fun and a feeling. I have these amazing photographs which really have all the detail I could ever want. The scale of this building is just— it's mammoth. It's huge. This is just a really small section of it. Now I'm just kind of looking for some shapes. To pull out. To get the curvature— look, to get the pipes looking curved here, I'm going to just kind of do some contour lines that are kind of curved, just to give the idea this is wrapping around. We'll do the same thing on the towers here, except I'm going to kind of just do loose kind of dotted in lines. Almost to indicate the structure or maybe the riveting between these panels on this building. But if you notice, I'm not drawing these— them straight. I'm giving a curve to them just to give the illusion, you know, that this— these towers, these stacks are curved. You can even do the same thing on these pieces up here. Am I missing some things? Yup. Am I being selective about what I'm sketching? Absolutely. I am— there's no way I could sketch every single detail on here. And I forgot to set the timer. That's okay. Alright, cool. That's enough Sharpie for now. We'll start throwing on some color.

Uh, Cheers.

Hey, Jennifer. Cheers from Arizona. Great to see you. Hope all is well. Jennifer's in the house. All right, so I threw down a Sharpie. Why did I start with a Sharpie? Because I know I wanted to add some color and bleed some ink on here and add some watercolor. If this was water-soluble ink I put down first, then I would go back and add splash of water on here, it would just start bleeding and become too mucky. So that's why I typically will start with Sharpie. Now I know I want to bleed some different colors. I'm gonna hopefully have some in here. If not, I'll go right to the bottle. But I know I want to bleed this kind of brownish-greenish ink in here, so I'm just kind of layering it on. And then we'll take a brush and I'll show you how it bleeds. So I'm actually just dipping my brush— I have dirty water here, so I'm dipping my brush in dirty water and let's just bleed some of this. I want it to be quick and kind of fast. Again, we're not going for realism. I'm going for feeling. So a sketch from you like this would probably take, probably, maybe 3 layers, or 3, yeah, we'll call them layers, 3 layers of work on here. The first layer being the Sharpie I start with. Second layer is going to be kind of this ink wash I'm doing now. It might be 4 layers. The third layer will be coming back, maybe adding some colored pencil, um, and then the fourth one would be to add some more detail with, um, probably either my Pilot pen or a Sharpie. And I mean, those 4 layers can take anywhere from, you know, 10 minutes to an hour. It depends how much time I want to spend on these small sketches. This is just meant to be a quick wash, so I'm not going to spend, I don't think, more than 20 minutes on this total. All right, so we got that nice brown color. I'm actually going to dip in the bottle and grab some of this ink out of the bottle because it's darker. It's coming out of the pen kind of light, but I want this darker, almost— it's almost like a caramel color. And I'm just letting it run down the page. I'm just kind of blotting it on here. I have my paper at an angle, so I like to use gravity as a creative tool, and I'm just kind of letting it run down a little bit. I'm not staying in any lines. I think that's good enough for that right now. Um, Mickey, may we use your photos to paint and draw the steel plant? Yeah, Mickey, if you want to use my photos, that's cool. If you just want to give me credit for the photo, I would appreciate that. That would be cool. You can put— if you just want to put @theinkspiredlife or my name, that would be cool. Yeah, I'd appreciate that. And also, if you're going to use the photos, I really would love to see what you guys are sketching or painting. So if you want to share those, that would be So cool. You can share them on the Inkling— our Inklings Facebook page. Or maybe I should put together— I don't know, maybe I can have a separate webpage. I'm working on creating a creative sketching community on my website. So in the future, that could be a good place to post things. Alright, so I got some of that. I'm gonna throw down some aqua— or I'm sorry, turquoise. I always mix up the name. This is turquoise in here. I like the color combination of the turquoise with this caramel color. I always have— I love binder clips. These are probably my favorite office supply product. Binder clips are just so many uses. I like keeping them in my journal just to tie the pages down or bind them. I have a bigger one somewhere. Here it is. The bigger one's better. Um, these binder clips were really helpful when I was out sketching. It was a windy day when I was here. All right, cool. All right, let's throw down some turquoise. Wet this a little bit. I do appreciate you guys watching. Thank you so much. This is so fun. Uh, Jason Nicholas Nicholas says you're an amazing artist architect. Jason, that is really, really kind of you to say. I appreciate that. I appreciate that so much. I appreciate that. Um, so here's just dipping into my watercolor palette. Sorry, it's off screen, but I'm just dipping into here, lifting up some of this turquoise, and I'm just gonna put it down. Sorry, my head's in the way there for some of this. We're gonna get these funky greenish colors happening, which I don't mind. Maybe we'll— let's see. And here's the water I'm using. It's dirty water. I like using dirty water, especially for these industrial sketches. Pop some turquoise here. We'll throw some on here as well. I want to leave a lot of white space on this one. I love what's happening right here. Let me zoom in. I love what's happening right here at the top. Pretty cool. You know, another color I use— I should have mentioned it— one here was orange. So sometimes I'll throw orange on this as well. Mm, just grab some. Alright, I think that's good. Just a little on top of here. I don't want to really throw any more watercolor down until this dries. So we're going to let that dry a little bit. Alright, so let's see. Layer 1 was the Sharpie. Layer 2 was adding some ink. Layer 3 is adding some watercolor, and maybe there's 5 layers, I don't even know. I will be— I'll be adding some color pencil after it dries and definitely be adding some more details with one of these tools here. So I just pulled out this Pentel, this EnerGel needle tip pen. Shout out to Roo for introducing me to these pens. I like them because they— I can use them on the wet paper. So I'm just sketching in these stairs here, and I like that they're bleeding. I just want to create the idea we have stairs coming up. And then there's some more over back in here as well. Doing something like that. We have some more in here. I'm gonna sketch a railing. I guess we're gonna railing here. Alright, so we got a railing going on. What else do we have? What else do I want to show at this point? So you can kind of see the inspo, you see the pic there. I'm actually going to turn off the photograph at this point. Let me see, where's my button to turn it off? I have so many windows open. Alright, it's all fun. Hey, if you guys have any questions, let me know. This is so much fun, I'm glad you're joining me. Feel free to share this out. I'm just looking for my switch to turn off that photo. It's right here, I think. Boom. Perfect. So I like the way this is drying. I'm actually going to blot some of it out a little bit. Don't be afraid when you're doing ink washes or watercolor to blot some of the color back. It's okay. Sometimes we think painting is just an additive process. But it's subtractive also. You can remove areas if you want to lighten some things. Just gotta be careful not to get too crazy. I felt like it was getting a little too mucky in here, so that's why I just blotted some of the colors back. One of the cool things I like doing with this EnerGel pen on these industrial sketches is It shows rivets really well. It's a great way if you wanna show some rivets going on. So you get these cool little dots happening. These rivets can also kinda help give the illusion of curves happening. I didn't put them in a straight line, I kinda curved it a little bit. So it's fun to throw these on. So some right here, maybe. I think I already heard— I think this song already played today. I'm gonna just throw some contour lines here, these curved lines, again, just to help show that these, these stacks here are curving. This is something I also do if I, when I do a lighthouse sketch. I'll do one here, I'll show you. "I'm really wanting— I am really— I really am wanting to paint it." Yeah, Mickey, that's awesome. I'd love to see what you make. Thank you. "Holidays." Yeah, negative space. Yeah, holidays, right? Rue talks about holidays. I'm gonna leave a lot of white on here. But when I draw, I'm gonna do a really quick lighthouse. Let me move this here for a sec. Just to show you what I mean by the contour lines. Sketch a little hill here, maybe something going on. All right, let's just sketch a lighthouse. So I kind of have a lighthouse started, but if I want to make it look curved, I could draw these contour lines. I'm going to exaggerate here. So if you see those lines, they're not straight. If I did the lighthouse like this, right, if I did the lighthouse like this and I did my line straight, some hatching lines like this. They're very different, right? This looks very flat. Here, when I take my lines, I'm just kinda curving them like this. And it's something you have to practice. Your wrist will get used to it. So these contour lines, these curved lines, help to give shape. It's actually kind of therapeutic to do. So just, you can sit there and practice. I'm not even, I'm not lifting the pen up, I'm just kind of wiggling it. So that's, that's when I say contour line or curve, that's kind of what I'm talking about, that idea, which is what I was doing on here. Just sub— I'm just doing it kind of subtly. I'm not drawing the curved lines all the way across. There is— you have sheet metal in here, or steel in here, with rivets, and the rivets are kind of helping with that curved look. Actually, let's show some up in here too. You do have some vertical pieces where they connect. So this is layer 3 or 4, I lost count, guys. Layer 4. I'm just kind of starting to show some pen details now as it's drying. I do want to pull the edge of this out a little bit, so I'm going to throw down some of that. I might bleed some of that black See how it works. Just want to bleed some of that black. If not, I can come back later with my Sharpie to make it pop out. See if it's dry enough to throw down some of this color pencil. Um, actually, I'm gonna let it dry. I want it to dry more before I throw in a color pencil. Let's see if I get some of this yellow in here. I really love this Preppy, this yellow color. I'm gonna bleed some of it. I might be running out of it. Here's what I did yesterday, actually. Took the cap off and I took it right out of the cartridge. And if some spills, that's okay. Yeah, you can see it's so more intense when I just take it right out of the bottle. I really like it. Alright, let me zoom out. Cool. I think this is at a point where I'm just gonna let it dry now, and then later I'll come back and I'll throw some color pencil on it. I'm probably gonna continue the idea of just like adding pops of pink like I did on these other ones. Right here, here, here. Boom. Just makes it fun, more whimsical. Here we got some pink in here as well. And I want these to be— I want them to have a whimsical feel to them.

All right.

Let me see if there's any final questions or thoughts in the chat before I head out. Well, before I'm not— well, not like heading out. I'm here, going to be here, but working. "Your technique with the colored pencil on the watercolor is quite intriguing. I do believe I will experiment with this. Learning new things." Hey, Mickey, I'm so glad you're learning new things. That's awesome to hear. Yeah, go for it. I love throwing watercolor— I mean, colored pencil on top of these sketches. One of the reasons I kind of will sometimes do the colored pencils last is because if I throw them down first, they're wax, they're resistant. So if I try to throw ink or color, it won't go where the colored pencil is. Although you could use that to your advantage as well. So, but typically I'll pop in these colors kind of last. Let's just do it now and we'll find a dry spot. I know I've been wanting to do this pink. It's kind of a little— it's actually a little platform area here. All right, so we pop that on. Again, I'm just looking for small touches of pink. Paper's really wet and buckling. Again, this is thin paper. This is not watercolor paper, and it will go through, as you can see on this sheet here. But I don't mind it. I like doing these sketches on this paper. It's been really fun. All right, so we got pink, pink. I need to have another splash one more place, kind of, I think, low somewhere. So maybe, maybe right down in this area, we'll just kind of, just kind of pop some in there. These are Prismacolor color pencils, Prismacolor Premier. I love using these, they go on really smooth. And there you go, I— that's all I'm going to throw on for the pink. Awesome. Hey, thank you guys so much for watching, I appreciate you tuning in. I'm gonna head out and do some work. Um, It's always fun seeing you guys in the chat and talking and asking questions, making comments. So thank you so much for that. Yeah, keep creating, guys. You know, pay it forward with creativity. It's a great thing to do. Mickey says Prismatic is what I use as well. Awesome. Yeah, the Prismacolors are really cool pencils. I hate to say this, but I almost want to do a pink I think after it dries, I might pull out this kind of zigzaggy line here where the stairs are. I'm not sure. Something— I want to pull that out somehow. I don't know if I'll use pink. Actually, I might pull that out with aqua. We'll figure that out, guys. Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your day. Um, yeah, keep, keep being positive. I know, I'm just thinking about something here. Sorry, see, this is inking out loud, so my brain's thinking about creativity here. My brain's like playing with ideas of what do I want to do for that zigzag. So, all right, I don't know. Actually, I'm thinking orange. Now I'm looking at my orange here. I don't know, I'm gonna pull that out somehow. Maybe a purple. You guys are awesome. I appreciate y'all so much. Thank you for watching, liking, and sharing this. I'm also on YouTube as well. If you're over there, feel free to like my YouTube videos and subscribe. That would be so cool. Let's keep this thing growing just to have fun and spread the funness. Hopefully that's a word. Take care, guys. I'll see you later. Peace and live creatively. Have an awesome Friday. By the way, the coffee hasn't kicked in yet either. Alright guys, take care. Finish button's right here.