The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud
In this hour‑long live session, artist and educator Jason Nicholas greets his online community (D‑Ray, Patty, Sue, Becky, etc.) and conducts a spontaneous sketching and in‑king demonstration. He begins with a quick warm‑up on a thin Fabriano sketchbook using a Uni‑ball Vision Fine pen and a Pilot Precise V7, improvises a city‑scape bridge scene, and experiments with a variety of markers (Chartpak AD, highlighters, metallic Sharpies) and a bamboo brush pen. Throughout the session he emphasizes a multisensory approach to creativity—listening to the sound of pen on paper, noticing the smell of Sharpie ink, feeling paper texture—and argues that these senses enrich the artistic experience. Jason repeatedly returns to his teaching philosophy, coining the “A‑to‑Z” concept that celebrates the journey between the start (A) and the end (Z) of a project, encouraging students to value process over final product. He shares workshop logistics, student feedback, and personal anecdotes (e.g., being invited to a top‑20 student dinner, receiving Ben & Jerry’s ice cream). When he encounters a creative block while attempting to sketch a tiger, he demonstrates a strategy of switching tools (pen → brush → marker) to reset his mindset. The session concludes with reflections on community support, the importance of positive reinforcement, and a reminder to pause, reflect, and celebrate creativity over the long weekend.
Chapters
Hey Dawn, D-Ray, and Patty, hope you guys are having a great, great, great evening. Happy Friday. Hope everybody's going well. Hello Amazon and Inklings. Amazon, although correct knows my shopping habits. It should be Jason. That's awesome! Amazon and Jason. I wish I owned Amazon. That would be so cool. Hope you guys are having a great, great Friday night. Hope you had a great Friday day. Just popping on, doing some inking out loud, some sketching for a little bit tonight. It's been a very busy, crazy busy week. And, uh, yeah, so I'm going to make some time tonight, just pop on. Let me know how you guys are doing. Oops, little out of focus. I apologize. There you go. I'm just sketching on some small paper here. There we go. I need to restock on my favorite sketch pad, my favorite watercolor pads. I didn't realize I was out of them, my Canson watercolor pads I like to do my sketching in. Maybe that's, maybe that's why Amazon popped up on there, just to remind me to get some more watercolor pads. So I'm just using a red Uni-ball Vision Fine pen and a Pilot Precise V7 pen. Just doing some pen sketching here. Just kind of loosen up, warm up. I'm seeing some kind of a cityscape. I'm sorry if it's really small on screen there. Focus is not really Keeps going out of focus, it looks like. Maybe some kind of bridge over here, some kind of buildings. I'm not sure. Nowhere in particular. I just thought it would be fun to break out two different color pens and play around for a few minutes with them. Maybe just kind of reflection, maybe water down here, the buildings are reflecting in the water. Try to get closer. A little bit closer. I've got to be careful not to hit the camera. It's pretty low there. So if things start shaking a little bit, it's not an earthquake. It's my hand hitting the camera. So maybe, I don't know, maybe this is California or something. West Coast. West Coast city going on. Not really thinking about what I'm doing, I'm just letting my hand do some scribbling. Not pre-planning it, just want to loosen up. A good way to get into the creative mindset for me is just to do these quick sketches and not pre-plan it. And if it doesn't end up looking like anything, that's awesome. If it does, that's awesome too. Doesn't matter. That's what I like about just doing these quick sketching, sketchy things. What the heck, where's the blue pen? It's like breaking out a blue pen. Mm, I had a nice one at school today. I don't know if I put it in my bag or not. Let me see. Where's my nice blue pen? Well, I don't see my blue pen. I must have left it at school. That's odd. I really don't have any blue pens around. So I have pulled this highlighter out of my school bag, so let's play with this. I was gonna put some blue on here, but I got the highlighter, so let's play around with this for a little bit here. I don't know, maybe there's some kind of sky here in the background. Here we go. Cool. Hey, let's see, let's check. Oh, I should have brought some water in. I am thirsty. I might have to bolt out of here and grab something to drink. Hey, and it's on. Maybe autocorrect knows, yes, my hot buying habits. Friday night sounds of pens on paper. Hey, Patty, that's right. It's like music to our ears. I actually have music playing in my ears right now. I wish I could play it out loud, otherwise Facebook would shut me down because it's copyrighted music. But yeah, you know, part of sketching and creating for me is You know, it's— of course it's about drawing and sketching and painting, but it's about the sounds. It's about the way the paper feels in your hand or the way the pen or the brush drags across the paper. This is a Fabriano little sketchbook. I don't even know what— it's 60 pounds, so it's very thin paper meant for quick sketching. Not for watercolors. But this is so smooth, and the way my pen drags across here is so different than if I break out some watercolor paper and it has a rougher texture on it. So for me, creativity, really, I try to use— incorporate all my senses, even the smell. Like when I first opened my Sharpie pen tonight, you know, you have that Sharpie smell. All that stuff combined It's like a recipe, right? All this stuff combines, you know, to create not the perfect dish, but to create some kind of a dish. Obviously I'm not gonna eat this. It's probably very low in calories. But you kinda, I think you know what I'm saying, right? Let all of your senses play into your creativity. Sketching and painting, it's very visual, but it could be so much more than that. And when you experience it and let those senses take a role in it, your artwork will transform and your experience will transform. And that's the most important thing. Sorry, off camera a little bit. I'm kind of wonky here. It's about the experience, the creating experience. And that's something I'm so hard trying to drive home with high school students. It's so hard. For them, it's about the quickest way to get the end result. And I guess my classes are very different. It's about the process. It's about the journey from A, right? If we have A here to Z. It's about this journey. It's about what happens right here in the space between A to Z. And you might not always end up at Z. And that's fine. And you might not always start at A, and that's fine. But it's the design process, the design thinking process, the creative thinking process that I believe is a skill that anybody can develop. And it's an experience that will make things much more memorable. So I'm going a little deep here. It's inking out loud. We don't know where I'm going to talk, what I'm going to say. Um, but it'll be positive because I'm a very— trying to be— I'm a very positive person. That's why I'm out here to spread positivity through creativity. And you guys are awesome. Thank you for spending Friday night and tuning in with me. I see D-Ray, Patty, Sue. Hey Sue, nice of you to join in. Awesome. I, I'm sure it's morning over there, Saturday morning in Australia, so thank you for tuning in. That's awesome. I appreciate all you guys. Patty, I was searching for your Saturday class, couldn't find the link because today is Friday. Haha, yes, today is Friday. Tomorrow is our last workshop session, 7:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time. And it's gonna be kind of a, not a loose session. I'd like to talk a little bit about perspective, look at everybody's show and tell. Your homework is out. Outstanding, is smashing. We'll definitely take a look at that and critique each other. And I'd like to do maybe bring in some color and just play around with color for a little bit. Kind of keep it a little open and relaxed and just a fun last session. And we'll recap some of the concepts we talked about. So I'm looking forward to seeing you guys in the workshop tomorrow night. I'm working on another one. For after school ends towards the end of June. I will talk more about that if you guys are interested. D-Ray, hi, say, I like you guys saying hi to each other, that's awesome. Love the loose sketching, it looks like buildings reflecting water. Yeah, Sue, thank you. That's exactly what we're going for here. Cool. Yes, and a bridge, yep, that is a bridge on the left-hand side. So I started off loosey-goosey, and for me, I could always come back home to making something into buildings. That's just where I naturally can gravitate to. But it's just, we're just playing around with pens tonight. You guys are incredible. D-Ray, creative, creativity experience, the journey from filling in the space. Awesome being here on a Friday night. Thank you so much. Spreading positivity through creativity. Hey, Sue, I'm glad you like that. Very cool. You guys are awesome. So this is just a quick warm-up sketch. Let's do something else. I'm not sure what. So this is actually— I'll show you what's in here. I pulled this off my shelf. I bought this back in 2018, and I know that because the only thing I ever sketched in here was this image. It actually goes this way, and it's dated August 2018. So here, this was a— I guess I was— looks like I was playing around with markers. And I have these figures I sketch every once in a while, these kind of angelic winged— I don't know what to call them. Angels, I guess they're kind of my— how I sketch angels maybe. So this was something I did back in 2018. This was using pen and Actually, let's break them out while I'm talking about it. I have some markers that I use for this. Let's play with them. Put that there so the page stays down. So these are my Chartpak AD markers. Um, used them in architecture school all the time for sketching and illustrating. So some of these might be dried up, but I use these pens to— these markers to do this kind of sketch. So let's just play around with the markers and create with those a little bit tonight. You'll see the paper is really thin, so it does bleed through. Actually, it looks kind of cool on the reverse side too. So this paper is really not meant for this kind of wet work, but we could break the rules, right? I'm gonna get close. It's a secret. Shh. We could break the rules. This is our world, our creative world. Let's do whatever we want. As Bob Ross would say, "This is our world. You could do whatever you want. Make it yours." Alright, that's a bad Bob Ross impersonation. I'm just gonna grab colors. I don't know, I feel like grabbing this color right here. So I'm just going to throw some color down and then maybe I'll come back on top and we'll put some pen on it. Uh, a warning, these markers smell very bad. They're very intense. If you're sensitive to odors, um, I don't recommend these, they're very powerful. Like, this could knock me off my feet. So make sure you're in a well-ventilated area using these things. Wow, that is powerful. If I pass out, you'll know why. Hey, Tamberley, good to see you. Let's hope I don't pass out. I like playing with these markers and overlapping them sometimes to see what happens. I'm just randomly laying the colors on here. So I used Bright Orchid, this is called Chrome Orange. I feel like I need a blue, a cooler color. Let's break out this Process Blue. I love this color. Probably one of my most favorite ones for AD Marker stuff. I don't do a lot of markers these days. In college, I did a lot of marker kind of sketching. We would do a lot of this— these markers on tracing paper, actually. I do have some tracing paper. Maybe we'll try it. So this is kind of cool. You can see where it's overlapping. I have some green kind of coming out in this area, some black where the blue is overlapping the orange. This marker's drying out on me. Uh-oh. Ruh-roh. We're losing it. I think we lost the Process Blue. Let's see, what else do we have in here? Banana. I got a color called Banana. Yeah, this one's dried up pretty much too. That's strong. What else? Maybe one more color. Let's break out maybe a darker blue. I have Dutch Blue and Space Blue. Let's try Space Blue. Love the names. I always thought it would be cool to have a job where you could name like colors. If you ever went to buy paint for your house or even watercolors, but especially paint for your house, there are so many different color names. It's like, who gets paid to come up with these creative names for all the different colors? It's pretty amazing. I remember when we were going to paint our house a few years ago, it's like, you know, I forget what we used. I think we used like a Heritage Gray or something. We were looking for a gray color. Paint, but there was like Heritage Gray and there was Space Gray, there was Nantucket Gray, and there was Mom's Old Soup Gray, and Old Leather Shoe Gray. I'm making some of these up, obviously. I like this blue. Space Blue is cool. And you'll see it does go through, it's bleeding through, but that's okay, it's thin paper. Just messing around a little bit. I really like this Orchid color. Let's go back and lay some more down, make it more intense in some places. What's fun with these markers is adding layers on layers. You know, I have this highlighter here. I'm going just crazy, guys. I'm using what's on my desk. I have a highlighter here. Inking out loud is just about playing around, right? And this is sometimes how I'll create backgrounds for paintings. Where's that one I could show you? Oh, it's up here. Let me grab this. So I know a lot of you guys have seen this one. So, you know, this was created— I did the background, the blue and the red here a long time ago, and it eventually became the black background. By the way, here's a very cool Rue sketch right here with it. So I love this. This is called the You may have seen Rue do this called the kitchen sink. This is awesome. So this is, I was fortunate enough to have purchased this one a while ago. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. I love it. So inspirational. But sometimes I'll, to create backgrounds, I'll just lay down colors and I'll come back a day, a month, a year, who knows, 2 years later and I'll pick up that sheet of paper and I'll do something on top, some kind of a sketch or painting. I like the way the highlighter looks over the orange down in this area. I'm kind of geeking out a little bit about the color. This has a really nice— I don't know if it's picking up on camera, but this looks really cool down in this area. Cool. So I think that's enough color in the background. I'm just gonna take— do some kind of sketch over it. Put these markers in here. Make sure they're closed so they don't dry out. Hey, uh, Tambourlee, good to see you. Sue, looking forward to your impersonation of an Aussie accent. Hey Sue, it's funny you said that. I actually was doing that in class today, in my CAD class. Someone made a dad joke. We were using a CAD software program called Onshape, and one of the things you can do on there, one of the tools is called a fasten mate. It's where you connect two objects or shapes together in the software. So he's like, hey, Mr. Nick, I have a good dad joke for you. Like, yeah? He's like, yeah, what is, uh, what is an Australian's favorite CAD command? I'm like, I don't know. He's like, "Fascin-mate." But I'm not gonna do Australian, but he did an Australian. It was kind of funny. Anyway, sorry, yeah, that was a funny joke in school today. It's funny you said that, Sue. Yes, wonderful roo. Smell maybe, yeah, D-Ray, the smell's getting to me. I had to close them up. Sometimes I have a fan on down here. I don't have it on now. I probably should. I need a drink of water, gosh. Sue, great you got that roo. Yeah, it was awesome. "Let's see, I was watching the auction that night and said the only person who should have that is Jason Nicholas Nicholas. The kitchen sink is perfect." Oh yeah, I remember who said that. Hey Becky, good evening. Yeah, I threw, I guess, you know, 'cause I'm an architect, he thought it was really cool for an architect to have that, which makes sense 'cause all the parts and different components are labeled on it. Awesome, good to see you guys. All right, so let me do some sketching with some ink here and then what I'd like to do is I'm gonna work on a piece I did earlier this week, maybe add some more stuff to it. Hopefully, if I'm talking too much, let me know. Say, "You're talking too much, do some creativity." That was some feedback I had in class the other day. I said, "Guys, if I gave you a survey right now, what is something in class that you'd like to change?" And some kids like, 'You talk too much.' I'm like, 'What? I talk too much?' But it was pretty funny. He meant in good humor. It's a great class. Some of my faves. Some of my fave kids are in that one. I haven't sketched a castle in a while. Maybe do a castle. I was— where's my Sharpie? I'd break out some ink on this with the bamboo brush, but we'll play around with that later. It won't— this paper won't sustain that, it'll just rip it. Actually, I'm gonna grab my— let's use this Sharpie. So I always have my Sharpies here, always on standby, my go-tos. I love, love, love my Sharpies. It's a sharp kind of world. There we go. I just want to use this— it's a little bit bolder, the point on it. It'll stand out a little bit more. This is to me some kind of a castle line. I don't really want to think about it too much. I just want to sketch it. I'll use some of the shapes in the background to kind of guide maybe where I'm putting down some of the pen lines. For example, in here there's a horizontal line. This could be, you know, part of the castle. Could do something like that. Maybe I'll trace the blue up here. It kind of steps in. This comes up. So lots of times I will use colors in the background as a guide where I want to put some lines. Just a loose guide. I don't— you'll see I'm not really sticking to it 100%. I feel like I want to be— I feel like I want to— if you guys look at this, here's an example. Right here, there's almost a cone or triangular shape. If I come up here and I come down this side, I don't know if you can see that. This actually is lending itself to being another peak for the castle right here. So I'll draw it now. Maybe you'll see it once I put the lines down. I'm going to kind of follow it down this angle. It does something like this. So I kind of use that in the background as a castle turret. And that's okay. And if you don't see anything that works, you make up your own. I love drawing fairy tale castles. They're so much fun. It's fun to think about the stories that happened or the adventures that could happen here. Actually, I'm seeing almost like another spire shape I could kind of play off here. Maybe there's a big spire in the front, goes off the page, and maybe it comes up here. Maybe it comes here. It just goes off the paper. So it's really way in the foreground. I love sketching with these medium— this actually says fine point, which is weird because this is extra fine, this is fine. There's a huge difference in the point tip— the tip sizes, point sizes. I haven't quite figured out how Sharpie names their points. That's okay. With this, I like using the thicker one sometimes because I don't think in detail so much. I'm just being really loose with it. So hopefully you can see the castle shape kind of taking place now a little bit. Let's see, this is the turret, and I think I just want to do like a diamond— indicate some kind of roofing on it. Do like a diamond pattern. So you guys in the workshop might recognize some of the line types I sketch with. I'm doing some broken kind of hidden lines, or mystery lines I call them. They're not continuous. Keeps it open for the imagination to fill in the blanks. I like that. It allows the viewer to engage in the sketch a little bit more, fill in their imagination with what they're seeing. And it keeps it loose looking. So this is just adding a little bit of texture. With this roof in the front. So I have this turret back here, so let me just do maybe some smaller lines to indicate some kind of roof texture. Do the same thing here. This is called cross-hatching, where you hatch lines in one direction at an angle and then coming back in the other direction. So this is called a cross-hatch pattern. I love the way the colors are coming through in the background and the ink is in front. "I just saw something about plaid sneakers." Where is that plaid? "Plaid summer shorts with those colors." That's awesome. That's so funny. Yeah, I can see what you guys are saying. "Awesome, plaid reminds me of cadet Girl Scout uniform plus pink." "80s did love Modra's plaid." I gotta check out, "Check out these links for plaid textures." That's so funny. That's cool. I love how these colors are reminding you guys of some past fashion trends. Who knew? Who would have thunk it? I always thought it would be cool to design fashion. Something I have thought about. I always love looking at fashion sketches and fashion drawings for outfit designs. Cool stuff. I have a teacher that I work with and she, she has designed fashion stuff. Pretty cool. You'll notice that when I sketch, I go over the lines sometimes. I'll draw it once and I'll come back. Go over it. It creates a loose look. I am going to switch to my— let me try this Sharpie. I want— just because I want to draw some smaller stonework in the background here, so it's not as bold, I'm going to use a finer point. Let's see, I need some kind of arch. I need an arch somewhere on here. Where could I put an arch? Here, maybe in this area, just kind of arch. Let's do it. I kind of see almost an arch shape happening here with the colors in the background. Let's do it. Let's make this our arch. There we go. Cool. And maybe it just continues down through here. I'm just gonna put close hatch lines in here just to give a little shadow in there. I don't want to totally color in black. I'm gonna leave some of that color in the background showing through. Cool. All right, I feel better. I needed an arch in there. I like to draw narrow slit windows on my castles, so you'll always, always see windows that are narrow, just rectangles like this. Show some stonework in here, just to add some more detail, some interest. I'm not going to fill the whole thing with stone. We'll put a keystone up here, top of the arch. Here we go. Cool. I think that's a cool little sketch. We got texture! Yes! Houston, we have liftoff! Yes, we have some rockets here. 3, 2, 1, liftoff! Whoo! I love that. What kind of paper are you using? Hey, yeah, so Becky, I'm using, it's Fabriano 60-pound paper, so it's really thin. Not really meant for a lot of wet type of work. More for just, you know, sketching. You can see it definitely bleeds through. So, good question. I actually had this since 2018 and I just pulled it off my shelf today. I ran out of my regular Canson watercolor pads I usually use. Spire towers could become rocket ships, absolutely. Ice cream cones, yes. This could be the palace à la mode or something. "Palace." "La palace." "Automobile." I love that. You guys are awesome. Love your comments. Thank you for watching and on Friday and spending some time. What I like about this is I love how the color does come through. You know, we just sketched a quick background with markers and did our ink on top of it. Looking on camera, I think my favorite— I always like to find a favorite section. By the way, this paper size, what is it? 4x6? Oh, I'm way off. This is 5.8 inches by 8.25 inches. That's the size of it. I really like my— I think I have two favorite parts. One is I like This in person looks very cool with the way the colors coming through the background. I just like the way this looks. And I actually really like something about this spire here that in— that inkspires me. I just love something. It's very small and scribbly, but there's something about this shape in here I really like a lot. And I like how it's pops out with the kind of orchid background color. So I really like this shape. I like what's happening in this area here. So those are my two favorite focal spots on here. If you were to shrink them down and just look at smaller sections. Cool. Let me sign this one, put a date on it. Just so I remember when I flip through here again when we did this. This was when What is today? 28th? I think it's the 28th. As long as I have the year, if I have the year I'm usually good. Or the month and year. Let's put it here. So let's assign it. I like to put a little heart. Just put my name, Jason Nicholas. And I'll put a, let's put 05/2021. It's always fun to look back sometimes and see when these things were done. Uh, are you guys good at keeping your drawings and your paintings, your sketches organized? I am so bad at it. I gotta work on it. I have drawings scattered everywhere. I was kind of I kind of should be keeping these like organized in maybe chronological order or subject matter, medium. So I really, this summer, got to focus on getting stuff organized. In my sketchbooks, I have stuff from, you know, from mixed years in one sketchbook. I'll have something that's from 2001 and then 2021 in the same sketchbook. So I'm not even organized that way. I just kind of grab and go. Cool, this is a fun piece. I'm gonna do one more thing tonight and we'll wrap up. This is our quick warm-up, just loosey-goosey sketching, scribbling, my meditation, just to get warmed up tonight. I do like this, this piece came out neat. Put this aside. Um, so I was working on this. You guys may have seen this. I did a real short video the other day. Um, this was done with the bamboo brush pen that, uh, that Ru was kind enough to, to send to me to try out. Here it is. So this is my first crack at doing anything ever with this pen. It also has the brush on the other end, which is cool, which I messed up because I didn't put it back in carefully. It'll be okay, I think, when I wet it. So I had ink, I actually had Lamy ink, black ink, came in a big bottle, which is somewhere. Where the heck did I put it? I am so glad we have a long weekend. I need it. Here it is. My brain needs a break from school. But I have a great school story I will share with you guys. Yeah, so this is Lamy. This— they make pens. You guys have seen Lamy pens. I have them here. I have not mastered the Lamy pens. I'm finding them challenging to use, to get the ink to continue to flow out. So I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I think I gotta practice this. I love the look of the pen. When I get it to work, I love it as well. But anyway, this is the ink that came with it, so I've— this is probably 3 years old, I'm guessing. So this was the ink that I used for this first crack with this. Why am I talking so much? Well, here's the setup. I'll tell you why I'm talking so much. Student in school. Because I can. It's my show. Darn it. Ha, I'm just teasing. Actually, I was gonna add some color to this tonight, but I— we'll play around with the brush for a minute or so, and I'll show you how I used it to do with this. Maybe I'll do another— let's see. Maybe I'll do something on another sheet of paper. 'Cause I wanted to add some color to this. Actually, I'm all over the place. I wanna add some red to this. We'll come back to it. Actually, I'm so indecisive. Oh no, he's indecisive. What's he gonna do? What's he gonna do? New sheet, use this sheet? Actually, you know what, I'm gonna use this sheet because I do want to add some things to it. I don't know, I haven't read instructions on this. I don't know how to use it. I'm just kind of going with my gut feeling. I'm just taking the brush, I'm gonna dip it in here. So you can see I have some ink on here now, and I'm just going to sketch with it. What I wanted to sketch is like a monumental staircase on here. So when you first put it down, you get this really thick ink layer, and you can see as I'm using it, it's kind of drying off the pen. Ink, ink, ink. So it's— that's something I have to practice and figure out, you know, when you first— maybe I have to do it on scrap paper and then kind of blot it and then bring it over. It's not holding ink as long as I want it to. Maybe I have to dip it in here deeper. So it could be something I'm totally doing. Again, this is new, just playing around with it. I do like the way the other piece came out. You guys, used words like ethereal, dreamy to describe the way this looked. And I love the adjectives that I saw in some of the comments. So thank you guys for your comments. I might not respond to all the comments, but I do read them all. So I do appreciate you taking time out to leave some words. I actually even got some nice emails after our last workshop from some of you guys, and Thank you for your feedback about the course and the class, classes, the sessions. You know, up here, I don't always know how I'm delivering, and it's awesome to get feedback so I can be better and better at what I'm trying to do to describe. So thank you guys always for that and taking your time out. I appreciate it. All right, so I'm just sketching maybe some kind of staircase here. Then I could also maybe do some lines down this way. I'm just dragging the ink that's on here, I'm just pulling it down. So I think Patti mentioned something about the sounds of the pen against paper. So this has a different sound. I'll be quiet and let you listen. It also has a different feel when you're dragging on paper. I don't know if you'll be able to hear it, but we'll see. If you guys can hear it, give me a thumbs up or put in the comments, "Yes, we can hear it." Whoa, that is a lot of ink I just put on there. Holy cow. Wowzers. That was an inksplosion. We just had a big inksplosion over here. Woo! That was fun. Holy cow. Wow. Alright, that's a good learning technique. We'll make it work somehow. I dipped the brush way into the inkwell and that's what happened. You might have to blot it out before you put it on paper. Alright, let's brush some of that. So I'm going to flip over, use the brush side. I have some water here. It's pretty powerful ink if you look at it. It actually looks kind of cool. It's really— look how thick that went on. Here's the explosion area. Talk all you want, Jason. Hey, thank you, Becky. Cool. Yeah, so Becky, you can hear the scratching sounds. Awesome. Yeah, it's a totally different feel using this versus the pen. So that adds to the experience. Cool. Let me just dip in some water here. So one thing I like about this ink, it does— it has interesting hues to it. It has— there's almost sepia and purple tones in it. If you look in the background here, this is just the way the ink dried when I brushed it with the water. So it has really interesting background, uh, has interesting colors to it. Yeah, this is actually a little too dark for me. I probably could blot some of that if I wanted to. We're just playing around with this pen brush, trying to learn how to use it. We could turn it into a— maybe the hillside, maybe there's a hillside coming down here in front of the background. So let's pull the ink across. Actually, I'm going to blot it. Yeah, I feel a little bit better. I just wanted to blot some of that out in there. That works. So I also would like to try this on different types of paper. This is 140-pound Canson watercolor paper. This is actually the smooth side of the paper. I did some other stuff on the rough side the other night. So this is the smooth side of the paper. So it would be interesting to play around with this on different textures. So that'll be the next thing I try. That's cool. So that's just a little taste of the brush, how it works. I'm looking to see, uh, do I have other paper? Maybe we'll play around with a different texture. Actually, you know what I'm curious to try it on is water, uh, tracing paper. So I have just a sheet of tracing paper here, very thin. Paper. I'm curious to see how this works on tracing paper. So I'm gonna let this dry. Let's just give it a try on some trace. And I am gonna blot it, maybe. I'll have to keep this here to blot it off a little bit. Maybe I'll do a, uh, We'll do like a little thumbnail perspective. So for perspectives, right, I'll start with my little box kind of shape. You can see how the ink's kind of— there we go. So we've got our frame, maybe our vanishing point. Or sometimes I call it the focal point, maybe is over here. So we're gonna do our little connect the dot thing, which we need to bring the boxes, one of the boxes to there, just kind of dot it in. And let's just draw a simple, just simple perspective. Just wanna see how this pen works on this. So maybe this is a roofline of a building, maybe it comes down like this. Maybe the roofline jumps across. We're going to connect it back to this focal point. Maybe it comes across like this. You can see it's kind of drying off my— the ink is leaving the brush, the pen, pretty quickly. So we have this. Maybe it steps down like this. We'll call our building— this is our building shape. Maybe this is the bottom of the building. Here, maybe there's a sidewalk. Sidewalk is like here, continues back, maybe it wraps the corner. So this is kind of our sidewalk. As it gets further away, we'll put the lines closer together. Actually, we kind of turn it— there'd be an angle here because it probably would change and go back this way. May have messed it up, but that's okay. Alright, so we got this. Quick, loose perspective. Let's throw some windows in here. The top of the windows are here, bottom's here. Throwing the ink on pretty heavy there. Maybe there's a door, couple doors here. Couple doorways happening. Maybe over here the road is over here. So it's— there's texture on the board underneath. This is an acrylic canvas or palette, acrylic board I just use as my palette, and it's actually picking up the texture of that underneath here, which is interesting. I think I do love the fact that there's like two different ends on here. It's quite cool just to be able to flip it around. That's really handy. Again, this is tracing paper. It's probably not meant for this application, but I wanted to give it a try. Now I'm just adding some water just for the heck of it. See what happens. You don't really want to add water to trace paper. It'll buckle up really quickly. As you can probably see, it's all wrinkly. It'll tear very easily if I do this. It tears very easily. Cool. Anyways, I just wanted to play around and see what it looked like on this tracing paper. So that's a quick demo of the brush pen. I need really to practice it and use it more and more. I do like it. I think the more I use it, the more I'm going to like it. It definitely can do really cool things. I like the way this is turning out. I like the way this drawing is actually looking pretty cool down in here. So I close that so I don't spill it. Awesome. Check the chat, see if there's any questions or comments going on. Cool scratching sounds. Hear it scraping. Building in center reminds me of King Louie's Lost City in Disney's Jungle Book. Oh really? That's interesting. Let's bring this one back out. That's a cool comment. Not that they aren't all cool comments. Asian architecture and landscape would be fun to try with that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's what I've done with the regular bamboo brush I have. I've done some Asian or Japanese type of sketches with it. Pretty cool. Alright, so I think I'm gonna add some color to this. I'm gonna pop some bright colors on here and call it a day. Put this over here. I'm gonna put the markers away. Actually, you know what? Alright, I am not putting the markers away. I'm gonna use the markers on here. Why not? Let's try it. Do I have any other ones? I think I had a couple loose ones around here. Where did I put them? I had bought some for the Inky Inky Night sketch we did one night. Where did I put them? Oh, here we are. Okay, here are some other colors. Some other colors over there. Okay, so I'm going to put down some marker on this and just see what happens. I am losing my mind. I don't even know where I put the cap for this. I just took it off. It's on the other end of the marker. Cuckoo, cuckoo. Someone hit the cuckoo clock sound effect for me, because I am cuckoo. It was right on the— right where it's supposed to be. What I like about these markers is they have a chisel tip on them, so I can get really broad strokes or very pointy strokes with it. Hey, if you're watching, say hello out there in virtual land. I see some peeps out there, some eyeballs. I don't mind you lurking, that's always cool, but feel free to say hello. Join in on the Inkling comments and chat going on. It's always a good time in the chat. I'm gonna kick back and be in the chat sometimes. I want to be in the chat and not sketching so I can participate. Cool. I love the way this is looking. I have— I'm using Banana right here, Banana marker, and this is Chrome Orange. I love these colors against the gray and the blacks. Wow, this is really cool. This is a real nice surprise. Definitely not my typical color palette, and it's fun to step out of your zone, right? Wow, this is looking really cool. Wow. I'm sorry, I'm geeking out over the colors sometimes. I always do that. Do I want to? I don't know. Aqua? Do I want to? Alright. Do I want to do it? Alright, I'm doing it. I'm throwing down some aqua. Alright. I'm doing it. I'm gonna just do it. I keep saying it, just do it. Oh, this is aqua. It has— it's looking more green to me. Almost looks like a spearmint to me. Not so much an aqua. Aqua to me would have a little more blue in it. Maybe it'll dry that way. Ooh, I like this. I feel like we need to have a Bengal tiger somewhere in here. Like a nice Bengal tiger somewhere in the foreground. Maybe. That's something I would have to look at a reference to do a pre-sketch of before I threw it on here. Wow, man, this is awesome. Sorry guys, I'm not patting myself on the back, I'm just, I'm amazed. I think the colors are looking really awesome. So cool. I'm not gonna, those are the only colors I'm gonna add. I'm not gonna even think about putting other ones in. Putting them aside, moving the markers away. I don't wanna get too crazy. I think this is enough. Just these 3. Wow. This is fun. What I like about these markers is when they dry, you can keep just adding layers. You can mix them wet too, actually. I don't know how well they would mix on this type of paper, but on marker paper that's slick, you can mix the colors, or even tracing paper. I don't think— It will really mix well, I think, on the work on this paper. I'm just adding some kind of growies on here, on this kind of slope area. I'm gonna put some growies over here as well. It's just another way I like to add detail. To these sketches. I'm not drawing every little flower or plant, just a suggestion of some kind of grasses or something maybe growing. This— I think this sketch painting has started to take on a mood for sure, some kind of a feeling. Which is something I'm working on trying to do in my artwork. I want people to get some kind of a feeling from the place. Not just see a building, but see something a little bit more, feel something a little bit more. I have to get more, I have to get more banana markers. I'll get at least one more. Awesome. Cool. All right, let's go look at the comments. Hey, you guys are awesome. Uh, Patty, I just got some Sharpie water-based paint markers. Cool colors: turquoise, pink, blue, peach, and lavender. Sure, Patty, rub it in, rub it in. You got some new Sharpies, colors I never had in my Sharpie arsenal. Man, now that's awesome. I love it. Yeah, let me know. I can't wait to see how they look. Let me know what you think of the Sharpie water-based paint markers. I have never used them. Let me know. That's awesome. Um, your colors make it look like a golden palace. Ooh, yeah, I love that. Golden palace. Thank you, Sue. Colors look great. Sue, Sue, your colors on your things I've been seeing lately, your paintings, incredible. Aqua, yes! We did it. And a giraffe! Hahaha. Actually, a giraffe would go well on this, wouldn't it? I'm never gonna outlive the giraffe sketch. Never gonna outlive the giraffe sketch. I did see it tonight when I was putting some sketchbooks away. I love that. Hey, it looked great with a touch of the copper you used on the roof domes. Ooh, copper. Mm, Sue, that is an awesome suggestion. Hmm, hmm, hmm. I think that, I agree with that. I think that metallic would be really awesome. Let's see, I have it right here. You got me thinking now, Sue. See what you did? Got me thinking. Where is, why am I thinking I have a copper pen somewhere? I know Sharpie has these cool metallic pens out. A student in my academic period, she was sketching with them today. She showed them to me. I don't have any Sharpie metallic pens yet. Yet, I don't have them yet. Where is my copper? Yeah. Bronze. Alright, here we go. I need you guys to help me. I need your opinion. I have two different colors. I have on the left is copper. So this is copper here. On the right I have bronze. Copper is more red. Bronze is more bronze, I guess. Which one do you think would look better? Copper? Or bronze? Let me know in the comments. Hey, how you doing, Chris? Good to see you. Patty, love the wonky tower in the middle on the right. Middle on the right, this one here? Yeah, this one has a— this is definitely wonky. I love that, I love that. Chris, you are never late. You can never be late when I don't say what time I start. So that's awesome. Thanks for showing up. That's right, D-Ray. Good to see you no matter when it is. Bronze. We gotta vote for the bronze. My nose is itchy. Allergies. Allergy time. Yes, I— oh, I'm putting these markers away. I picked up other markers. Not touching them. I used metallic silver Sharpie on your Lane's Cove Fish Shack. Oh, Becky, that looked, yeah, that looked awesome. That came out really, really great. I gotta get me some metallic Sharpies. Can you believe it? I'm like the Sharpie guy and I only have black Sharpies. And oh, and I have some Sharpie highlighters. Sharpie highlighters. I gotta expand my repertoire. Is that the word? Repertoire? Alright, so we are gonna try, we're gonna go with the bronze. Let's go with the bronze. I'm just gonna throw a little teeny dab on here. Chris also says bronze. Let's go with the bronze. Thank you, Sue, for the suggestion. I'm just gonna dab it on. I'm not gonna do the dab dance. Apparently the dab, if everybody remembers the dab, it's out of fashion. I found today was a very good day in school. I learned a lot. I found out the dab is no longer in style. That was so like 4 years ago, they told me. But they couldn't tell me, oh, they said TikTok. TikTok is what's in now. Not a specific TikTok dance, but apparently just teenagers dancing on TikTok. That was the response I got. So I'm glad I have these students to keep me in line with what's going on, and my son to keep me up to date, hip, and current. All that fun stuff. I'm looking for my paintbrush here. I'm going to just use my brush pen. I like the tip on here. And I'm actually just going to take a little bit off You can see— oh, you can't see it. I'm just wiping some off here onto the brush. I don't really need a lot. I'm gonna close and move and let's just throw some on the domes. As it dries a little bit, I'm gonna Oh yeah, look at that. Wow, good suggestion, Sue. Thank you for suggestion, guys. Thank you for voting or picking a color. Good teamwork. This one needs to be a little more domey. That's okay. Oh wow. This really has a cool— I'm gonna touch it. I'm gonna touch the copper in some other, just some other places on here, I think. I don't wanna overdo it. There's some copper in the windows. I'm picturing like an arch, an archway over here maybe. Arch doorway. I'm gonna throw a little bit of copper on there— or bronze. I keep saying copper, sorry guys, it's bronze. One person's bronze is another person's copper. I'm just going to touch the buildings here with some of the copper. Typically, if I do have color in one place, I will like to put it in other places on the painting as well. Just to tie things together a little bit. Doesn't have to be overpowering. Cool. Time is it? 9:42. 9:42. I am so happy there's a long weekend coming up. Hope you guys are— have a nice weekend ahead of you. And we remember those who have served and honored and protected us and fought for us. That's what, right, Memorial Day weekend. So please, even if you give a silent thank you or prayer to someone you know that maybe has served, and take some time out for yourself this weekend and just reflect and enjoy and take a moment for yourself. Maybe slow down if you feel like you've been frantic and running around crazy like I have been this week. Just take some time for yourself, slow down, take some deep breaths. Maybe art is your Zen place, do some creativity. Art does both for me. Art can be my Zen, relax me. Art can be my energy, my boost, my power, get me revved up. So, depends how, you know, what I'm using it for, what purpose. So, enjoy, have some zen time this weekend. Cool, here we go. Alright, I'm not gonna throw much more on here. Just some touches of it. I'll hold it up close to the camera so you can see it a little bit better. I just want to put some bronze on this side. It's okay, I'm brushing some of the ink over there. That's cool. So apparently you can re-wet this ink, which I just discovered because that's what's happening. So I can re-wet it and kind of pull it out a little bit if I want. Cool. Alright, so let me hold it up to the camera. So it definitely has like a metallic-y look to it. Probably needs to focus because I'm so close. Just give me a sec. Turn my fingers. So you can see it has a little metallic shimmeriness going on. Right, it's kind of bronze-ish looking. Metallic-ish. Awesome, it looks really cool. I don't know if it's showing on camera that well, but it looks cool in person. Great suggestion, thank you. But I think that's enough. I don't want to put any more. I actually kind of want to wipe some of this away, to be honest with you, if I can. I want to see— oh, you know what I'll do? I'll leave that. I'm going to add some After it dries, I want to add some more Sharpie, a little bit of Sharpie black on top of it, just to give a little texture. But I can do that after it dries. Cool. Yes, for those who did not make it home, the ultimate— yes, Chris, absolutely, the ultimate sacrifice. Yes, take a moment of silence this weekend at some point and just remember those who have served. Awesome. Do you seal your ink paintings? Great question. I do not. I have not sealed any of my paintings ever. Maybe I should be. I honestly don't know, but I have never sealed anything. I'm lying. In college, when we did graphite work, we did seal our graphite and our— not graphite, our pastel drawings. We sealed our pastel drawings with a clear spray. I can't remember the brand of it. Man, let me go back 30 years. Let's see. When did I graduate? Was it 30 years? 20? I'm not gonna do math. Too late for me to do math. But no, I haven't sealed any drawings. That's a really great question. It's probably something I should look into. I feel like if they're framed or, you know, behind glass or acrylic frames, I think they'd be okay. Without the clear coat. Good questions, I love your questions, guys. Hey, D-Ray, thanks, looks great, Jason Nicholas Nicholas. I appreciate that. I just got a notice on my phone, there is a bear wandering through the neighborhood. That could mean 20 miles from here. The Ring doorbell thing has notifications, so apparently there's a bear wandering around somewhere. Somewhere, I'm just looking at the notifications, somewhere around, could be miles away. Patty, I have an uncle I never knew but I have all his journals. Wow, he was an artist, poet, musician. Oh wow, that is so awesome that you have his journals, Patty. I have goosebumps, literally. That's incredible to have that. Holy cow. What treasures. Incredible. Wow. I love putting these sketches in floating frames, but only when they are on sale at Michaels. Um, so, you know, I love floating frames. The only problem is when they sink, then the water gets in. That was a bad joke, I'm sorry. That was stupid. But floating frames, yeah, floating frames are cool, you know, just having your image in there in the glass. I don't have any around here that are floating, do I? Nah, I'm looking in my room to see if I have anything like that, but I don't. Yeah, that's really cool. Cool. Sue, that is stunning. Thank you, Sue, I appreciate it. I'm glad you, Thank you for your suggestion about the bronze. Good stuff, guys. I'm liking this piece maybe as is, to be honest with you. If I did do anything, I was serious about maybe adding a Bengal tiger somewhere. You know me and animals. I mean, the camel I did didn't turn out too bad here. I mean, it's very small, so I guess it was hard to mess up, but at least you can tell that's a camel on this one, right? So I would do something similar with a tiger. I keep— every time I talk about it, I keep pointing in this area, so my brain, I guess, subconscious is thinking maybe in here somewhere would look good. I don't think I'm brave enough to do a Bengal tiger on air. I might try a sketch on tracing paper tonight, though, just to get to see if I can sketch it. Cool, you had the Bengal tiger idea. Awesome. Yeah, guys, I'm really loving this piece. Wow. Good stuff, good stuff. Again, I'm not patting it, this is not me. I am a very modest person, but I just love the colors on this. It's really exciting. Alright, I'm going to go for it. I'm going to look up a picture of a tiger and see if I can do a sketch. Like a pre-sketch and something I would eventually put on here. So let me do that. That'll be the last thing I do tonight. You guys are awesome. Thank you for spending time with me on your Friday night. I know we all have things we could be doing or places we could be. If you're listening to me in the background and also if you're using me for some ASMR, you know, audio and you could fall asleep to my voice, that's awesome too. Whatever purpose, positive purpose I can serve, that's what I'm here for. If you're eating snacks and you're listening to me, that's cool. I'm just making some room. Sometimes I like to clear off my desk area a little bit while I'm working. Not all the time. Alright, so I have this tracing paper I had before. I'm just gonna mess around with it and try to do a tiger sketch. I gotta pull up an image here, so give me a sec. Hey Teresa, how are you? Good to see you. Sheer Khan, yes! Yeah, that's the whole vibe, you got it. Cool stuff. Alright, so I'm here. Sorry, you got like half of me on camera. You don't need to see me, you guys know what I look like. I just shifted over because I'm Just going on Google here for a sec. I am— Bengal tiger. Hmm. I'm picturing— I'm actually picturing 3 tigers on here. Maybe one laying down somewhere. Maybe a couple standing up. I wish I could just pass this over to one of you guys over there and say, "Hey, could you put like a tiger, some tigers on here for me?" 'Cause you guys are so awesome at animals. I am so not awesome at animals, and that's okay 'cause it's not my thing and I haven't practiced. But you guys are just so amazingly talented. Talented. I don't know, I'll just try to maybe find one standing up or do a sketch. I'm definitely not going to put it on here tonight. Wish me luck, wish me luck. Alright, so this is off camera a little bit, that's okay. You want to— would you rather look at this looking at this nice painting or me trying to sketch a tiger? I hope you vote for looking at this. I had to Google image bison this afternoon. Yeah, Becky, I loved how you added those bisons. That just added a whole level of life, you know, to the building, to the whole scenery. That was so cool that you did that. What a transformation. It made a huge difference. I mean, the building is incredible, but just adding the bison took it up a whole nother notch. So that was really cool. Cool, cool, cool. All right, let's do this. All right, so I am, pardon if you see the top of my head. I'm kind of leaning on my desk here. You can let me know if I have any bald spots up here. You can't see up there. Probably a little bit thin on top. It's all good. It's all good. What I love about tracing paper is I love the crinkly sounds it makes. I love that. Alright, here we go. This is me attempting to sketch a tiger. Oh my— point is bent on my— can you see that? I'm procrastinating. Yes, I'm stalling. Can you see the tip on this pen is all bent? That's interesting. See if I can straighten it out a little bit. Hey, if you're just joining us, hello! Good to see you out there. Don't be afraid to say hello. Say hi in the comments. I always love to know who's watching so I can personally thank you and give you a shout out. Um, feel free to join the Inklings. The Inklings You guys are incredible. Yes, I'm pointing at you. It's rude to point, but I am pointing. Give yourselves, give you guys, give yourselves a shout out. Give some thumbs up or smiley faces to you guys. You deserve it. As I enter uncharted territories. So when I sketch buildings, I kind of look at the overall shapes, right? So I'm gonna try to look at overall silhouette. Take the cap off of this. I could trace it actually. If I print something out and trace it, it's probably a better idea. So I'm just kind of looking and I'm actually sketching. I'm looking at the image while I'm— I'm not even looking at the paper while I'm sketching. At least for that I didn't. Do some kind of snout or something. We got a jaw going on. Ooh, that is looking like a— that is not a tiger snout, which is true. Looks like a camel. I think my tiger is turning out to be a camel. Oh my gosh, help me. I think my face is as red as my shirt is. All right, hey, you know what? It's about creative process. Embracing the journey, it's not the end result. Practice what I preach. It looks like a llama face. Alright, maybe I'll just put a camel on here. Just put a camel on here, forget the tiger. Gosh. Alright, alright, I'm thinking too much, I just gotta sketch. Belly, we got something doing this. Alright, I'm gonna do this many, many more times. Actually, I'm gonna let it happen here. I'm purposely scribbling this. Alright, this is not a tiger. I don't know what this is. Alright. Alright, next. A lot of this is mental, right? A lot of what we do, sketching and creating, a lot of it's a mindset. It's a mental thing. I've already set myself up for failure. Why? Because I'm not practicing what I'm preaching. I talk about having an open mind and trying things, but in my brain I've already told myself, "I can't draw this." So I am shutting myself down. That's not good. That's not how I learn or how anybody can learn, right? We need to have open minds and try it. I'm also doing this live for a few people, which is another added level of pressure. But we're all friends here. So, yeah, let's look at the sketch. I'll be quiet. Actually, you know what? I'm gonna eliminate the crinkly sound. I'm gonna go just on this paper we have here. I'm gonna move this painting to the side, give myself more room. There we go. Alright, step number 2. So one thing I like to do is, if I do my little frame, I'll just focus on sketching this area. Kind of like we do with perspective drawings, a little frame area, just so I know I want to stay in that little zone for now. Tiger has kind of a flat— it kind of curves down, kind of a flat here, rounds off like this, kind of rounded a little bit, some kind of an ear or something going on here. Wow. I know what I need to practice this summer. Holy cow. Just gotta have fun with it. Oh man. What if I try to draw him without looking? Belly coming across here. Leg coming down something like this maybe. You have these paws, right, these kind of paws that come down, maybe something like this. Think of it as a building, but one that looks like a tiger. The form here comes down, shape across here, boom. This connects like this. Kind of a tail that wraps around. It's not a very lean-looking tiger. It's okay. He's got a belly or something here. This kind of— this was a building, maybe this is a support column. I'm talking in terms that maybe that I kind of understand. Shapes, we got kind of a half circle, kind of a quarter round shape here. This kind of comes up like this. Oops, I think it's kind of a thick neck here. Let me draw that up. So I'm just gonna put hair back in there. Looks like a wolf. It's looking more like a wolf to me. All right. I try another one down here. I'm actually going to try it with a bamboo pen. Where did I put the ink? Let's try this with the bamboo pen, sketch it. They're gonna need to be looser. There we go. I'm just looking for a bigger image. Proportions are off a little bit here. That's okay. So the Tom Petty song "You're So Bad" is playing right now. "You're so bad." Hmm, what are the chances of that? What irony, right? I don't think he's singing about me though, right? Some kind of tail happening over back in here. Boom, boom. It's looking a little more lion— I mean, uh, tiger-ish than the other ones, I think. I like using this pen, it keeps me looser. This is a little funky. I need to tilt straight down a little more. There's an ear happening here. Nose thingy here happening. Got her eyes. I don't even try to do the eyes right now. Some kind of shape happening here. Chin, whiskers. Looks like an otter face. It's like an otter tiger. Some kind of stripes going on. Alright. It's getting there. I think it's looking better, looking a little better than the other ones. Who says you can't have an otter tiger in your paintings, right? You can have whatever we want. I need some water. I'm gonna use my water brush. Again, in my painting, in my sketch, it's gonna be, they're gonna be pretty small. So if I can at least get this silhouette or shape down, that would be awesome. Because that's all I think I would really need for what I'm doing. Proportions are off, the legs need to be longer for sure. Alright, that is my last tiger attempt. I think I'm getting a little bit closer, at least from where I started, right? We go from this to this. What really helped me, at least mindset-wise, was just switching tools. I think with the pen I was trying to be more detailed, like switching to this, maybe just kind of be loose and just play with more of the shape, the outer shapes of it. So sometimes switching your tool can help with mindset. So that's a good lesson for me for tonight. Not a tiger. How about a tiger lurking back by the trees? Ooh, almost like Where's Waldo? That's cool. Good body. Think of triangle for face maybe. Yeah, Becky, I like how you're breaking that out into shapes. So triangle, right? If I overlay, reserve red pen. Triangle, really a triangle on there. So Becky, I like how you're breaking it down to shapes. That's excellent. Excellent. Cool. Alright, so I definitely will work on that, the concept of it, or the actual execution of it. Yeah, lurking in the trees, we can put something lurking, we can have the trees kind of hide it. But I will definitely add something on here. So I have a friend, he's an amazing, amazing gifted comic character illustrator. He has— his work has been featured in Marvel products, Lego movie concept art. He teaches with me. He actually has a convention he's gonna be at tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get out to visit him. I see him every day in school, so I'm blessed. But maybe I'll pick his brain and see what he thinks. Or maybe I'll get him to draw a tiger on here. That would be cool. Hey, you guys are awesome. Let's wrap up for the night. Let me talk about a couple of key points. If you're watching and didn't say hello, make sure you say hello so I can say hello back. Isn't that a song? Hello? Isn't that Lionel Richie's song? Hello? Is it me you're looking for? I don't know the words. I could be mixing up a lot of different songs. Where do we start tonight? Let's go back and wrap up. Sketchbook. Oh yeah, we started. Okay. Yeah, so I found a sketchbook on my shelf from 2018 because I ran out of my regular paper I use. So I'm like, what do I have that I could work with? So I pulled this off the shelf. Um, the only sketch I had done in it was in 2018. It was actually an angel. I haven't really done one of these in a while. I should start doing them again. I would do these kinds of angel-type figures. Um, so this is from 2018. This is all markers. So I'm like, okay, oh cool, markers. I had that in my brain, I think. But then I, this is my quick warmup, just playing around with red pen, black pen, and some yellow highlighter. Uh, we talked about A to Z, right? It's, I think this is a really big takeaway. I want to reemphasize it. Hope you guys are cool with that. I think for me this is probably the absolute most important takeaway I want my architecture and CAD students this year to have in school is this concept right here. It's A to Z. I gotta come up with a cool name for the concept. I didn't make it up, that's for sure. So A to Z. Sometimes we are so fixed on this, the Z, the result. What do we want our end thing to look like? The tiger. I really wanted that thing to look like a tiger. I don't know where I put it. I think I hid it. Oh, it's right here. I thought it was in here. But anyway, it's, you know, A to Z. It's about this part. It's where the arrow is. It's the journey of getting from A to Z. This is the journey, the creative process where the magic happens, the emotions happen, the creative mindset happens, the tools, the knowledge, the lack of knowledge, the exploration, the journey, right? This is the journey. This is the moment we're in right now when we're creating. So we don't always start at A, we don't always end up at Z. But we're always in this creative journey. So learn to celebrate and treasure this part of the process right here. I think in the end it will end up— you'll end up having better results at Z. And again, you might not even end up at Z. Maybe you'll end up at T. I don't know. But the point is, celebrate the moment. Celebrate the journey. Embrace the creative process. Right there. Boom. I said something earlier. I forget what it was. I'll have to go through the comments. I kind of paraphrased it. So I think that's a real huge takeaway, something I will probably repeat many, many, many, many times if you keep watching me and following me and talk to me. Then we went to this, right? Played around with the markers. I said, okay, we did markers here, why not do some more marker work? So I laid down some— you guys described it as some cool summery plaid colors, plaid pattern. I love that. Um, with the markers. And then we just— I did a little castle sketch on top with some Sharpies. Came out kind of cool. And I just like— sometimes I'll use the background colors and shapes to help guide sketches. So I used to help guide where this turret— this tower was, um, the shape of kind of the steps here. I used from the background shapes and colors this as well. That was a fun piece. We came back to this, did some work on this, broke out some of those markers right here. Got these three. So the common theme tonight was using markers in unexpected ways. I would never have thought of using markers on here before, and I'm really lucky and pleased with the way it turned out. So don't be afraid to mix your mediums. You don't have to stick with watercolor. You can use watercolor and ink, watercolor and acrylic, which I do, or ink and acrylic, I do a lot, markers. So don't be afraid to throw different things in the mix. And lastly, oh yeah, and Sue, thank you for your suggestion for the color copper, that was awesome. Lastly, guys, I encountered my own creative mindset block tonight doing the tiger. I set myself up saying I couldn't do it, and shut myself down for a couple minutes. And in order to get out of that negative space, I switched tools from the pen to this thing, and I feel like I made— actually feel like I made a big achievement going from here to here within a few minutes just by switching a tool. So sometimes if you're in a negative creative mindset, switch the tools, switch the music, take a walk, come back. Don't get stuck in that funk. It'll bring it down more, just shift gears one way or another. Hey guys, that's my takeaways for tonight. Hope that was helpful for you all. Uh, Chris, take care, have a great night. Patty, the A to Z concept, we'll talk more about it. I'll definitely be talking about it in our workshop tomorrow night. Appreciate all you guys. Thank you for sharing, uh, this. Um, I've had some more people join. That's fantastic. Thanks for your thumbs up, your your inspiration. Keep paying it forward with your creativity. Love that. Yeah, thank you guys. I will see you in the workshop tomorrow night, 7:30, if you're in the workshop. It'll be a fun last session. Guys, take care. If I don't see you, have a great weekend. Enjoy it. Celebrate. Take a moment of silence to reflect upon those who have served serves for us. Peace and live creatively. I will see some of you guys tomorrow night. Take care. Thanks, guys. It's Ben Jerry's time, so— I had one of my students drop off Ben Jerry's for me tonight. How cool was that? Oh, quick story. If you're still on, that's cool. If not, I'm going to say it anyway. So I was really honored, invited to a top 20 dinner last night where the top 20 20 students in class with their GPAs. They were— we have a dinner, they're allowed to ask a teacher to come to represent them or as your guest. I was fortunate enough to have, not bragging, but I did have 3 kids that asked me. I accepted one invitation, but it was an incredible event. It's an event that is needed more often. It was an amazing reminder of how inspiring these kids are. They're absolutely incredible. It's just a confirmation that I did something right in my past 2 and a half years to have been asked to this. So it was a great reward. But the cool thing is he brought ice cream to my house tonight for me. Ben Jerry's. Like, what? That was so cool. His family came, they dropped off that. So that says it all, guys, right there. That is love. Good stuff. Anyway guys, I wanted to end up with that nice story. I'm going to go enjoy some of that treat that he gave to me and I'm going to celebrate. Go Mr. Nick, thank you. Yeah, I love how they all call me Mr. Nick. I love it. Guys, you're awesome. I appreciate you all. Take care. It's always hard for me to say goodnight. Peace and live creatively. See you soon. If anybody wants to draw a tiger for me, let me know. Put in the comments, say, "I will draw a tiger for you." Take care. See you tomorrow. Thank you, Sue, for watching. Thank you, Patty and Chris and Becky, Theresa, D-Ray, uh, whoever else. If I've missed you, I'm sorry, but thank you all. Good night, guys.
