The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud

Hey everybody, hey Chip, hey Cameron, good to see you guys. Hope all's well. I'm doing my bridge sketch here for the night. Let me turn off— I have Spotify on. Let me turn that off and let's put on some other music. Boom! Hope you guys are doing well. Happy Wednesday. So yeah, it's late. I'm popping on really, really late, but I didn't do my bridge sketch, so I wanted to come online, just kind of sketch online for a few minutes with you guys and say hello before I head off for my beauty rest. And that's gonna be a long sleep because I need a lot of beauty. No, unfortunately, I have to get up at 5 AM. I hope you guys are doing well. Hope, uh, You're being positive, you're being creative, you're doing good stuff out there. Just paying— putting good out in the world however you want to put good out there, whether it's a simple hello to someone or a wave or a kind gesture. Yeah, that's all you can do. And that's one of the reasons I love teaching is I feel like I can put good out there by being a teacher. Hopefully it's working. So I am sketching. This looks a little odd, but I'm actually sketching. This is the Copper Building in New York City. It's a portion of the Copper Building. And there's actually a skybridge on that connects. There's a building on the left, a building on the right. It's kind of hard to get what I'm sketching without knowing the building. But hopefully if I add some more lines, it'll start making sense. Uh, it's a building I love, building I would love to go inside and check it out. It is a residential building, so unless I'm maybe going to buy an apartment, I can't get a tour of the building. But if anybody has any connections, let me know. But, uh, it's a building that I find beautiful, and I'm pretty fascinated by it. And there's this cool sky bridge, so keeping with my bridge theme. Sky bridges count. So this is the sky bridge right here. These are kind of windows here. I'm just doing a real quick kind of sketch here. Never, never drew this building. I've been wanting to sketch it. And, uh, yeah, so let's keep it quick and loose. I think it's 70— trying to think of the height of it. I think it's 70, 74, 74 floors, something like that. It was constructed, I think, completed in 2017, designed by Shop Architects. I love shop architects. They do really beautiful work. So there's some windows. It's an enclosed skybridge, obviously, since it's way up in the air. Oh, that's cool. Let's bleed some ink on it. Uh, Linda. Hey, Linda's in the house. Linda, good to see you. Hope all is well. I'm so glad to see you pop on. You guys are amazing. I hope you guys are having a great night. I'm trying to look at my screen here. I don't know how many people are watching out there. I have a creative confession to make. Creative confession. So all of my creatives out there, artists, doesn't matter if you sketch, paint, play music, I have to say, I didn't really want to sketch today. It's okay to take breaks. I just wasn't motivated to sketch. I'm trying to honor a commitment I made to myself to sketch a bridge a day. I didn't put a time limit on it. But sometimes as creatives, I feel like it's— we lose our creative drive. I know for me I do sometimes. Sometimes it's good to step away a day or whatever and just take a break. I think it's fine, although I'm kind of contradicting myself because I'm pushing myself to do this. I'm pushing this because I'm trying to develop a habit, but sometimes we do need to step away just to get recharged and refreshed. Yeah, and I didn't know what bridge to sketch, so I was trying to think of something outside of the box, a little bit different, and that kind of just fueled me up a little bit for tonight. I'm like, yeah, I love this building. I've always loved this bridge on the building, the SkyBridge. Let's give that a sketch. So sometimes maybe just changing subject matter or topic of what you're sketching, that could help. I know I'm not making a lot of sense. My brain's tired, but inside it's making sense. I'll put together a podcast or a video about more kind of what I'm talking about. But here, let's— I'm just going to bleed some of this ink. This is Apple Snail ink, probably my favorite ink color. That's not black. It's called Apple Snail. I love it. I thought I would use it. This building's called the Copper Building because it's clad in copper. Go figure, right? It's pretty logical. So I figured this Apple Snail kind of has a coppery, uh, tone to it. Yeah, I really dig in this building. Let's bleed some of these lines where the windows are here. I have some more windows kind of happening here. It's a funky perspective, so I'm just kind of get it simulating what's happening here. Windows coming at an angle. We also have vertical lines. I'll sketch those in. After I kind of bleed these here. Those I don't want to bleed. Let's just bleed that. This is kind of dark in here. Cool. Hey Jennifer, cheers from Arizona. Jennifer, cheers to you. I hope all's going well. Awesome to see you. Hope you're doing well. Hope the weather's cooperating out there. Cool, there we go. All right, let's, let's show some of the vertical lines on here. Let's just kind of— we're going to keep it really simple and we're just going to just do this here. I'm not going to draw all those squares for the windows. Um, these look more horizontal in nature. Structure here. The glass expanses, these kind of come down this way. We have some vertical lines. And then here we have the same thing. So these buildings actually are at angles here. That's one of the things I love about the buildings. They, they kind of bend. They're not just upright rectangular buildings. They have an interesting angle to them. So I'm hoping to go to NYC. I will be going in the spring, and at least we'll take a walk to where the building is and see if I can photograph it from the outside. You can get a really good view of it on the— on a ferry, so I could take a ferry ride and see it from a distance, get some cool photos as well. Cool. There you go. Interesting. Cameron says, "If I find when I do my drawings, I only draw when I want, not when I force it." So I'm with you, Mr. Nick. Yeah, sometimes, yeah, I agree with you. Sometimes when you feel like you're forcing something, it is harder to do. I try to make what I do fun, even if it's a menial task, like taking out the trash. And you don't have to— you know, it's a good point, Cameron. Cool. Just kind of outline this a little bit here. So see, I'm going to just hatch, just hatch in some lines here to create some shadows. I'll zoom in, you guys can see a little better what I'm doing. It's probably— should have had it zoomed in at the beginning. But it's never too late. So that's kind of zoomed in. The bottom of the bridge here, line cuts across like this. Let's, um, this is interesting, but how do I want to hatch this? Let's just show some hatching lines. Maybe we'll do— actually, I don't think I'm going to hatch that yet. A darker area going there. Just want to draw some light lines in here. So notice I kind of flipped— I rotated my pen just to kind of create a finer line. Yeah, that's cool. I'm liking the way it's looking. [FOREIGN] So I'm just coming back, thickening some of these lines up here. Let's just kind of bring these down here like this, just to indicate there's a little verticality happening there. I have to say, it's looking pretty cool. I'm just trying to figure out how I want to show the windows on here. I have a grid, you know, do I want to bleed? Maybe let's try this. Let me just try here. Let me see if I can bleed some of this ink and see what happens. I don't want to get too fussy with this sketch. It was really meant— it's really meant to be a real quick like 15-minute sketch. How long have I been on? 13, almost 14 minutes. So right around the 15-minute mark. Let's do some of these, uh, some more hatch lines here just to kind of create sense of depth. This is like a little fin that sticks out past these windows, so I'm creating just like a shadow just to kind of look— so it looks like it's popping out a little bit past. I should sketch just a little edge on here as well. Yeah, I'm digging it. I'm really liking this sketch. I wanted— actually, you know what, let's— I'm gonna hatch under here. I want to show that this is kind of sticking out a little bit. So just by that adding that hatching underneath, I think it added some depth to that sky bridge. And I do want to bleed. Let's add add some ink here, and I think I want to bleed this down a little bit here. I'm just kind of squeezing my aqua brush and just dabbing it down. Now my board is at an angle, so the water is going to run down a little bit. Cool, I'm liking it. Hey, Becky's in the house! Good to see you, Becky. Becky, my deepest condolences to you. Sent you a message earlier today, so prayers and positive thoughts to you and your family. Hang in there. It's great to see you on here, Becky. Guys, if you can give us some hearts or something to Becky in the chat, that would be awesome. Yeah, and Becky, I love that sketch, the tribute sketch you did. That was really, really cool, very, very touching. So I love how, you know, I love— gosh, I mean, I love sketching, and what you did, Becky, is just a great example of, you know, taking some moments in our lives, even, you know, even some sad moments or or taking a chance to honor people we love through our artwork. I think that's a beautiful thing. So awesome. That was really awesome to see that tribute sketch. Loved it. Yeah, this is cool. I don't know how much more I want to do on the sketch of this building. So if you're just joining me, this is a Sketch of part of the Copper Building designed by Shop Architects, constructed or finished constructing— is that a word? Finished being built night— night— oh my God, where's my brain? 2017. It's a residential apartment complex, two separate buildings here that are connected by a skybridge. So I just kind of wanted to focus on this, just this area, just to keep my bridge sketch theme. This is Bridge Sketch 49, guys. 49 days consecutively. So I— so Cameron, I did push myself today. I didn't want to sketch. I pushed myself. I wanted to keep the habit going. And I have to say, um, saying that I just sketched 49 bridges, 49 days in a row, let me even— yeah. I mean, that sounds really good to say, and it's okay to pat yourselves on the back. So I am patting myself for, for just having that going. So it's a really good feeling. So sometimes we do have to push ourselves a little bit. And then you guys always help to give me encouragement and keep me going. So I appreciate you for that as well. Yeah, this is, this is actually very cool. I'm digging this. I keep fussing with it. I think I'm just going to keep— I was contemplating using some black on here to kind of, kind of fill in some of these rectangles to make the windows pop. I don't want to do that. I kind of like the simplicity of this, and simplicity is my word for 2023. So my reminder thing I had on the wall fell off. I had a big sign up there, it said simplicity. Must have fell down. But I'm trying to be simple, keep my sketches with my style but kind of simplify them a little bit. Um, and I think this is staying with it. I could add a little more shadows, but for now I think I like it. Hey Kathy! Kathy says looks great, Jason. Kathy, good to see see you. Thanks for tuning in. Becky says thank you, my kind friend. Becky, thank you. Becky, uh, Becky and I, we go way back. Becky was one of the first, uh, I think people made to follow me or start watching YouTube, um, which was awesome. So Becky's one of the OG Inklings. So Becky, I appreciate you sticking around all this time. So thank you so much. And, uh, everybody else, I appreciate you guys too. Deborah's in the house! Deborah, good to see you. Hope all's well. That's so cool. There are sure to be many more dad-inspired sketches. Love that. That is so— that's awesome. Love it, love it, love it. I can't wait to see them, Becky. Becky is, uh, Becky could definitely illustrate children's books, not only with her people sketches, but with her scenes, her architecture. Becky's horses are incredible. So keep your creative juices flowing. I can't wait to see what you come up with. Hey, great buildings. Thank you. I appreciate it, Deborah. Congratulations on your bridges. So fun to see your progress. Thank you. It's going to be really cool. I think one day I wanted to kind of— I guess if you go to my Insta page, Instagram, you can kind of see my tiles of the different bridges. But I kind of want to just put them all out there, maybe on a wall or something. A lot of them are in sketchbooks, but really cool just to see, you know, see the styles over the past 49 days. I don't know what number I'm going to stop at. 50 sounding good. 100, I would think 100 maybe max. Um, I do want to show you one thing. I love how this is drying. This is 10:13. That's cool. I love this. Where's my little frame? I'll show you guys. Hopefully it shows up on camera. Let's use a small one here. I love the hard edge, um, right here with this ink and the way it's drying. To me, that's just— it looks even better in person than on camera, I'm sure, but it's really beautiful just the way it's drying, the color of it. Uh, hands down my favorite color ink. Yeah, so that hard edge is really awesome. Ooh, just got, just got some stuff on my finger. I love this. Here's another example. I kind of like what's happening in here. If you look in this frame, I love the hard edges happening. Let me zoom in even closer. That's all, that's as close as I can get. I love the hard edges happening here. They're irregular. Notice when I washed this, I didn't try to do even washes. I don't care that it's kind of I don't know what you call that shape. Circular, wave-like. I like it. For me, that adds to the loose look of it. Yeah, this is drying really nicely. I can bring it up. How close can I get? Oh, there you go. Holding it up to the camera. So if you look at that, you can kind of see how it's all drying, right? Really cool. Kathy says, I'm loving that ink color. Hey, thank you, Kathy. Yeah, this is, this is called Apple— wait, Snail Apple. I'll show you the bottle. Snail Apple. That is not Snail Apple. It's over here. Where did I put it? Here, Apple Snail. I was close, Apple Snail. Birmingham Pen Company, I have a bunch of their inks. I really love their stuff. It's not cheap, but I feel like it's high quality, so for me it's worth the price. I mean, and this bottle has lasted, it lasts a long time, so. I did try to order another backup bottle, but it was out of stock. So hopefully they'll let me know when it's back in. But yeah, this is called Apple Snail. Really cool color. OG Inkling and I am 50th. Oh, it's your birthday today! Happy birthday, Becky! Holy cow, I didn't even know that. Happy birthday, the big 5-0! That is so cool. So cool, Becky! Happy birthday! Wow, looking around, I feel like I should pull out some kind of sketch for you. All right, you know what, Becky, I will be popping something in the mail to you. I'm gonna be popping something in the mail to you. Happy birthday! So cool. So cool, man. Did you have any cake, any ice cream? Somebody— Becky B-day, Becky B-day. That is so cool. Everybody wish Becky a happy birthday. I love this. Good stuff. Yeah, I won't talk about when I turned 50. Way back when, when Way back in the day when I turned 50. I think I'm going to leave this, guys. I like where it is. Let me zoom out a little bit so you can kind of see it. So I sketched this in my, uh, this is a Strathmore Visual Journal, 140-pound watercolor cold press. 5.5 by 8-inch sheets of paper. I'm really liking this sketchbook. One of the things I like about it is spiral bound so I can flip it, lay it flat. I also like the COVID It's just really thick cardboard on here, which is a nice cover on both sides. You have that. I love the— I am loving the texture of the paper. I'm actually liking the texture of this excuse me, a little bit more than the Canson paper I usually use. Let me see if you guys can see the texture. I think you can see it in that shot. So I like the, the texture on here for kind of doing these quick sketches, these watercolors, these ink washes. By the way, I'm gonna throw something out at you guys. I had a— which is cool— I had a comment on one of my social media things Um, so you guys know I love sketching with Sharpies. So the comment or the feedback I had, and if this person might see this video, which is cool, and it's fine, I love comments. Um, they said sketching with a Sharpie is not considered ink, ink sketching. So, um, I don't know what the definition of ink sketching is, if there's an appropriate technical art definition of it. My definition is that this has ink in the marker, so to me it's ink sketching. Um, maybe ink sketching applies to more of a fine art term, which is great, but in my world, I, I'm calling this ink sketching. So I appreciate the feedback from the viewer, and so I'm always open up— open for feedback. But yeah, I don't— I wasn't sure what they meant. So yeah, I mean, I do use ink. I mean, I also use Lamy pens and I bleed ink. So this person said I wasn't doing ink sketching. Interesting. It's just interesting what people think about what you're doing and creating. Don't let that stop you. Don't let that stop you. Keep moving forward. If you're having fun, enjoying what you're doing, keep moving forward. Um, some people are, are fine artists, they're purists, and that's great. I love that. And this person was very polite, so it was a polite comment, um, which is cool. But yeah, don't let people shut you down. If you're having fun, keep going for it. Uh, Becky said she had chocolate cake and strawberry ice cream. Nice. Oh, you're too kind. No, I am not too Um, this is happy birthday. Awesome. Cameron says you do such nice sketches, all sorts of artistic creations, and yet you never heard of lightbox models and you call yourself an architect. Cameron is dissing me in front of the public here. Cameron, Cameron, Cameron, I— in college we never created lightbox models. It's true, I admit it. Um, what could I say? I still think I turned out pretty okay. I know you're messing with me, Cam. Cameron came into class, did really cool presentations for 3 of my classes. Cameron brought in models he made from architecture school. He brought in these cool little study lightbox study models which are really really interesting to me. So I learned a lot from Cameron's visit, and Cam, I appreciate you doing that. It was really, really cool. I am eyeing up this graphite as we're talking. Do I want to put any on here? Sorry, my nose is itchy. It's dry in here. Ah, no, I'm leaving it. Put it— no, I'm done. Done. Um, Cameron, you're funny. I think Sharpie sketching is ink sketching. Hey, thanks, Linda. That's cool. I appreciate that. Guys, this is great. I think this building's good. I'm going to leave it for now. Uh, let me just write the date on here. Do I have another sketch in here with that ink? I did one recently. Maybe it was in my other sketchbook. So sometimes when we're sketching architecture, we think we have to sketch the entire building or the entire subject. Just, you know, think outside the box. Maybe focus in on part of a building or a detail that you really like and don't worry about sketching the entire building. So my architecture students sketched the Chrysler Building last week and a lot of them sketched just the top of it and that was cool. They didn't try to sketch the entire building. They focused on the details that they thought were iconic or that they— that resonated with them. So next time you're looking at a building or a house, just focus on something you like. Maybe it's a door, maybe it's a window sash, maybe it's the brick on the house, maybe it's a crooked chimney. Just sketch that detail of the house. Becky says, agree, Sharpie ink— Sharpie is ink. In my opinion. Yeah, it is for me too, guys. Here's an example, right? Here's the Empire State Building. I didn't try to sketch the entire building. I just wanted to focus on the top of it. But if we look at a subject and we go, oh man, I got to sketch the Empire State Building, it's huge, how am I going to sketch that whole building? How am I going to fit that whole thing on a sheet of paper? Yeah, I mean, could I do it? Of course I could I could fit it on here if I wanted, shrink it down. But instead I'm like, you know what, I just want to sketch. For me, the iconic part is the top of the building. I just want to show the top. Took a lot of the pressure off. I didn't have to worry about the whole building, how it steps out at the bottom, all the proportions. So sometimes just kind of narrow your focus a little bit, like I do with these frames that I use all the time. You know, look at the big picture, but then just frame a section out. And do that visually when you're trying to sketch something. You know, I'm talking about architecture, but it can apply to anything. So I think that's my— that's probably my tip of the day. I just wanted to look in here, see if I had used that ink for another sketch. I wanted to show you guys. I did it in one of my books. I don't know which one. I am so bad at labeling and dating my sketchbooks. I wish I had— was more disciplined with it. I'm gonna have a heck of a time going through all my sketchbooks in here and trying to figure out when they were done. And I don't know where the sketch is. It's not here. Oh no, it's in here. It's in— it's in this. I think it's in this one. Yeah, yeah. So here's another example of that same ink I did with this used for this sketch on this bridge. If I hold them next to each other, you can see it's the same. Different, very different paper. This is very thin paper. You can do very light washes. You can see it went through on the other side, but it is the same ink. I actually like the way this dried. It kind of has a hazy effect to it, which I think adds to it. Cool. Alright guys, I think I'm gonna wrap up. I have school tomorrow. It's almost 10:30. I mean, if there's any final cues in here— Becky says good advice. Thank you, Becky. Thank you so much. Let me know if you guys want me to end with one quick sketch. I could do something really uber quick, maybe the Whistling Cowboy. Uh, this was a sketch I had done last night. This was actually a fun sketch. This, I used my Lamy pen right here, and I tried to do like a, almost a single line drawing sketch where I would just kind of start it here, right? And I was trying to keep like everything a single line. So it's not 100% single line. I had to pick my pen up in some places. But a lot of this was done with a single line here. And single line sketches are cool because it keeps— for me, it keeps everything really extra loose. I was actually holding my pen at the end like you see here. I wasn't holding it tight at the bottom. So really loose grip. And I was just kind of going around and trying to create this bridge and this archway. Structure just with doing a single line. So you can see the railings, what I did here, boom, just kind of did like, like that to keep the rail going. So it's almost like curves. Same thing here, same thing back here. Down here you can see as well, I kind of did this with the pen just to keep the single line going. Just kind of loop the lines. So it's a fun exercise. So if you want to do something really loose, grab a pen or pencil, hold it by the end, and try to do a single line drawing. Actually, maybe we'll do that. Let's do something fun. Maybe we'll do a Whistling Cowboy. Try to do a single line drawing with it. Bum bum bum. Cathy says thanks. You're welcome, Cathy. Cameron says good night. Hey, have a good evening, Cam. Take care. You've been missing Whistling Cowboy in retro. Hey, we're gonna do it, Becky. Becky, if you can give me a number between 1 and 20, because you could pick tonight's song and we'll do a Whistling Cowboy sketch. Since you haven't seen him in a while, we'll flash back a few pages. You can see what we've sketched. I haven't been doing as many. I haven't ended every show with a Whistling Cowboy sketch. So you can see kind of Whistling Cowboy up on a bridge, Retro is down underneath hanging out, going backwards. Do you guys find yourself looking at books backwards? I always flip through a book and I look at the end and then I just flip through to the beginning. I don't read books. Well, I shouldn't say I don't. I mean, I don't read books a lot and I don't read read them backwards. But any kind of like book, architectural book, I'll flip through from the back to the front. Here we did the Whistling Cowboy in retro on a bridge, suspension bridge. So yeah, they've been around, they've been around the block here. Actually, we will use this pen and we'll do a sketch. Becky says 18. Becky, you got it. We'll do Whistling Cowboy song number 18 and we'll do a sketch. You guys are awesome. It's Wednesday night, uh, probably will not be live tomorrow night. I'll try to be live Friday nights. Um, yeah, and I still would love to have a Zoom with my Inklings if I get my act together and set it up. That would be so cool. We can do a little get-together sketch fun. So Becky and Linda, um, all the inklings from the workshops will get together and do a Zoom. Really, I hope maybe this weekend. All right guys, number 18. I'm rambling. Just looking through the music list here. 18 is a song. It is called Boots of Glory. Excuse me. Boots of Glory. Let's do Boots of Glory. I'm trying to do the Whistling Cowboy. Oh, I lifted my pen up. Now we did mostly single line there. Alright, let's do the Whistling Cowboy down here. Put him in the foreground. Oh man, I'm out of ink. No, I'm out of ink. Darn! Dang, I got so close, I just ran out of ink when I was catching Retro. There you go, so that's kind of a single line drawing, real quick, loose, Whistling Cowboy, Retro, ran out of ink in the last sketch here. Darn, so close. Love the lively look of single line. Yeah, give it a try. It's fun. It keeps you loose. It's really, really cool. Becky, I'd love to see you do a single line drawing of a horse. I think that would look really, really awesome. Hey guys, thank you so much for watching. You're amazing. I appreciate you all. Again, positive thoughts out there to everybody. Jennifer, hope you're feeling well, feeling better. Becky, positive thoughts to you as well, and happy Happy birthday. Hope you enjoyed your cake. Have some extra for me. Guys, keep paying it forward with positivity and creativity, and I appreciate you all so much. Peace and live creatively. I will see you soon. Have a great night. Feel free to share this out and spread some positivity. Take care. Deborah, good night to you. Good night, Becky. Good night, Cam. Kathy, good night to you as well. Jennifer, good night to you. Uh, Linda was here. Good night to Linda and Chip also. Did I miss anybody that was live in the chat? And for any, uh, if anybody else was watching, thank you also. Take care. Good night. I'm not very good at saying goodbye. Oh wait, no, don't go. Wait, let's look how this dried. Wait, wait, wait, wait, one sec, one sec. All right, so we usually like to show how the stuff we worked on dried. So this is how this looks as it is pretty much dry now. And yeah, came out cool. All right guys, thank you, take care. Great, have a great night and an awesome rest of your week.