The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud

Hey, good morning Heather, Deborah, and D-Ray. Good to see you guys. It's kind of weird for me to be on a Monday morning. Um, yeah, so I'm off of school today. They gave us one of our snow days back and So we're off, which is awesome. So I'm gonna start my day with just some sketching here. I wanna add some color to another SteelStacks sketch. Hope you guys are having a great morning. I also saw our friend Roo is not on till PM tonight, so be sure to check him on tonight at 8:57 PM. I hope you guys are doing well. So this is a sketch I started yesterday, or maybe the day before. It's actually the last page in my kind of my Lockbie field journal here. So I'm just adding another to my SteelStacks series. Yeah, this will be, this will be fun. Let me zoom in. Hopefully you guys can see it. Boom, I think that looks good. And let's just have fun and throw some color on. Let me know if you have any cues. Let me know what you're up to on this awesome Tuesday. We're expecting, I think, 70, 74 degrees here today. How awesome is that? I'm also going to do a live stream later today, uh, showing you guys my irises that are blooming. I'm not a big gardener, only because I've tried and I'm not good at it. But my irises are blooming and, uh, I love them. My favorite, favorite flower. So later, later this afternoon or early evening, I'm going to be doing a little live just in front of my house and I'll show you the irises. It should be fun. Cool. So you might notice I'm actually kind of just dabbing the ink on here, letting it kind of pool up. I like the way it's gonna dry here, the hard edges. So I'd like to— I like to let ink and watercolor gather and puddle up. For me, it's just really fun to see how it dries. We'll splatter a little bit on here, and I'll switch to a different color. Dear says good morning. Dear says I will switch back to the Facebook version. Hey, you know where it is? I'm on Facebook and YouTube. Whatever you guys want to watch on is awesome. I'm trying to build my audience on Facebook and YouTube. My goal is to have actually 400 YouTube subscribers by the end of this month. What is today? 22nd. Are there 30 days in May? 31? I think 31. So I have 9 days to get— I think I need, um, 10 more subscribers. I'll hit 400 on YouTube. This is a little personal goal, a little challenge I'm setting up for myself. All right, let's throw on some teal, aqua. Turquoise. I always get this color wrong. It's turquoise. And this is just, this is just a watercolor I'm gonna throw down on here. Heather says, awesome to get those extra snow days back. Yeah, Heather, it is. Yeah, it's awesome. So our school system is not obligated to give us days back if we don't use all of our snow days. They were very, very nice this year and gave them back to us. Not, uh, did we get them all back? I think we got 3 snow days back, but I'm just very lucky. I, we have a really— I like our school system. Yes, I'm biased, I live here and work here, but I do, yeah, I do appreciate the days back for sure. Especially since I have like real adult work I need to do after I'm done sketching this morning. I got a lot of organizing and paperwork stuff to do and prep for school tomorrow. Alright, cool. So there's some turquoise on there. I might be getting carried away with splatters on this, but that's okay. Let's just have fun with it. Heather says, um, get to go in for a blood draw this morning. Oh, fasting. I'm sorry, man, you're fasting. I get it. Black? Oh, I can't do black coffee. No, no, no. I have— here's my coffee. You could probably see in the top, it's like separated because I have coffee creamer in there. I can't do black coffee. Good luck with your fasting and your blood work. Hope it goes well. I'm due for one of those this summer. D-Ray's back over here on the Facebook side of town. Call it like you see, I like to call it teal. Thank you, D-Ray, I appreciate that. D-Ray, you posted some really nice flower pictures the other day, really cool. So I'm going to throw down some orange. So if you've been watching this SteelStacks series, you notice— you'll notice I'm using the same colors on all of them, um, just to help tie it together as a series. I mean, it's all the same subject matter, but I think the style and the color also can help to tie things together as, as a series. I don't know what's going to happen with the series, but I'm going to try to— I think I'd like to try to sell some prints of these, even postcards. Maybe it would be awesome if I could sell them at the SteelStacks facility. That would be so cool. But we'll see. I'm just right now just having fun doing it. I'm just dipping into some Winsor Newton, um, orange watercolor And honestly, guys, I'm just painting with my gut. People sometimes ask, how do I know where to throw the color down, where to add color? I wish I had a scientific or, or a logical answer. I don't have one. Usually it's just kind of gut feeling where the paintbrush is going. I will sometimes strategically pop in You guys see me use the neon pink here. That'll strategically pop on, sometimes the yellow as well. But for now, I'm just kind of going with my gut. All right, so we have the— that was orange. Let's dip into some yellow. Hey, Linda's on. Linda is— I was going to say Linda is on the house. Linda, are you up on my roof? Linda is in the house. That is why, my friends, I do not teach language arts. I am pretty— my grammar is not the best. I don't really know my prepositions, do I? On the house versus in the house. Hmm. That'd be a fun thing to paint. All right, cool. All right, I'm throwing down some yellow. I like to add yellow to pop, uh, a little bit of vibrance, a little bit of, uh— for me, yellow adds freshness. Think of adding lemon to, uh, squeezing some lemon juice onto a salad. Maybe, um, it has a little bit of freshness to it, right? Or maybe you squeeze a little bit of lemon juice into your sugar cookie dough. It just adds a little bit of, a little bit of brightness. So lemon— so when I think of the lemon yellow, I think of brightness. Maybe I should do a cooking show. Maybe I should do a bake— love baking. All right, there we go. Cool. So we got some yellow going on here. We're gonna do what I call bridging. I'm sure there's another technique another name for the technique. I don't know what it's called, but when I say bridging, I'm basically just taking my brush and I'm gonna just tap where some colors are. Right here will do it. Bridging is just connecting the two different colors with water, letting it mix itself on the paper, kind of like I did here. So I just— I like to call that bridging because I like to sketch bridges, as you guys know. There's a technical term, let me know. Cool. So you can see it's starting to come together with the different colors. Then it says cards would be fun. Yeah, that would be really cool. Not on the roof, no thank you. Deborah says need to race. Hey Deborah, have a great day, take care. Thanks for checking in, appreciate it. Alright, so typically I kind of do have a pattern when I work on these sketches as far as the colors I put down. Uh, typically next I'll put down my Preppy Yellow, but as you can see, my Preppy Yellow cartridge is empty. I think I have more, so let me go into my magic drawer here. Hopefully I do. I have another yellow waiting. I'm burning through these yellows like crazy. Put this here so I remember to get some more on Amazon. Put that there. And the reason I'm burning through this Preppy Yellow is because I'm doing a lot of this with it. See if there's any in here. No. I'm just doing a lot, I'm really just shaking it out of the tube. Because I like the way it looks when it comes right out of the tube. It really has a nice pop to it. Oh, here's a new one. Here's the Preppy Yellow, the cartridge. To me it's more of an orange yellow, which I love. There's what it says there. I guess P is for Preppy, yellow. 21L. 20— I don't know what that means. 21 liters? I am not good with metric. I'm thinking liters would be a lot, so it's probably not liters. Preppy pens are cool. It has a little marble ball at the end, if you can see that. So you got to really push it in. Here we go. So we got some orange in there— I'm orange, yellow. We'll throw some down on here. We actually— I'm going to zoom in so you guys can see it closer. There we go. So I'm going to throw down some of the yellow and then I'll bleed it. I'm still using my dirty water from about 2 weeks ago. I find Preppy pens don't like to write on wet areas, unlike the, the Pilot Varsity pens. Pilot Varsitys do pretty well if you just dab them on wet areas. Uh, but the preppies don't like that. And then we're gonna do my famous— yeah, it's not really famous, but my— we'll call it the, uh, Inspired Life poncho moment. So make sure you have your ponchos on, because here's what I really love about the preppy ink. The yellow ink. Be careful not to put too much on. So I'm just going to literally just take it out and we're just going to kind of— we're going to want to throw some. Uh, let's do some here. Oops, you missed it. So it kind of just drops some on there. It's really vibrant. I just want to throw a little more down the bottom here. I'm being a little cautious today. I think that's enough for now, and I might just grab some And I'll just throw some down here. I feel like that was not enough splatter. Linda says, I love that preppy yellow. Yeah, right, Linda? It's, it's a fun color. Absolutely. Not the preppy yellow, get on Amazon. I know, if anybody out there wants to make an Amazon shopping list for me, feel free. Just kidding. There we go, now I threw some I feel better. I really wanted to get more on there. That's awesome, we'll take it. Actually, I'm gonna zoom in. I love what's happening right here, these colors. Pretty cool, pretty slick. Already into Dirty Water, on a roll. Yeah, we're moving quick today. It's 9:41. I'm probably gonna log off in a few minutes because I have, like I said, I have adult responsibilities I gotta take care of, like paying bills and paperwork, all that fun jazz. That's what I get to do on my day off. But you know what, it's a day off and I get to be home, so no complaints. Alright, we got some pink on there. So if you notice, I was actually kind of strategically putting the pink. I wanted some here. High, kind of want some low, and then up in the middle, just to kind of bring your eye in this kind of a pattern, looking at the pink, to bring your eye kind of across the sketch. So that's why I, I kind of separated them and have one high, medium, and low, just to balance it out a little bit. Oh, I love the way the pink looks over the yellow. Let me zoom in. Zoom. I don't even know if that's gonna show that well, but there's some pink. I mean, I'll make it bigger. There's some pink over the yellow. It looks so awesome right in here. It's a beautiful color. Love it, love it, love it, love it. Hey Heather K, digging that orange splatter. Hey, thanks Heather, glad you like it. I gotta be careful not to put my palm in it. Yeah, I like it too, thank you for saying that. All right, so we got the pink on there. This one's coming together pretty quick. Let's throw some neon yellow. So we got some neon yellow happening here. Um, if you don't have a neon yellow colored pencil, you can always Course, Sharpie. It's gotta be Sharpie, right? Always use a Sharpie highlighter too. For the heck of it, let's just do it. I haven't used a highlighter on these yet. Yeah, there we go. That's cool. So it looks to me like the— this color pencil, to me, it looks like it has a little bit of green in it. Looks— I know it sounds weird, but looks like there's a little bit of green tint. I don't know why, compared to using the straight-up highlighter. And I could also do the same with, you know, a Sharpie pink highlighter if I didn't have the color pencil. Alright, cool. Next I'm gonna come back in with Let's use my Lamy pen and we're gonna just outline some of this a little darker. Time's at 9:46. Awesome. If you have any cues, let me know. I'm gonna air off. Air off at 10 o'clock. Is that broadcasting speak? I don't know. Log off, sign off, maybe sign off. I don't know what air off is. You guys are awesome. T-Rex is looking good. Thank you. Yeah, so I have a bunch of— let me show you guys. If you guys want a little peek at my desk here, I'll show you what's going on. Kind of my microphone thing just dropped off. Anyway, if you look over here You can see right there I have a bunch of Sharpie highlighters right here, ready to go. It's got my Sharpies. I have my— I have a lead holder here. It's probably the most organized layout, but it's alright. Just got kind of grab and go, so I have it set up this way. I have my Varsity pens here, got some Preppies up here. These are all different color inks I have down here. And then, um, see, I got a paintbrush, got my— some Sharpies. I gotta refill the Sharpies, I'm running low Sharpies. Some Pilot pens, red ones here for my Precise Pens. This, I think Linda— if Linda's still on, I think Linda had sent this to me. Is that right, Linda? I haven't used this in a while, a Feud pen. I'll have to break that out. And then I have some other stuff over there. That's just a little inside peek of what's going on on the other side of this drawing. Now to get back to where we were. Hmm, how do I do this? Let's see, let me zoom in. There we go. All right, cool. All right, let's throw some Lammy on here and we'll wrap up. Hopefully that— I might have to refill it. Let's see. I'm trying to be really careful. I don't want to put my palm in that. Usually I wait until this is dry before I do this, but we'll just do it now. So why am I throwing some black Lammy on here? I want to pull out some of the shapes darker from the original sketch. Sometimes the shapes will get lost when you throw color down. You can see I'm not being accurate, I'm not really trying to stay on the lines that are there. And I'm using the Lambie because I could bleed it if I want to soften some of it rather than a Sharpie at this point, so I have an option to either leave it or bleed it. Sounds like a game show. Leave it or bleed it, the favorite game show of vampires. Um, I don't even know where the heck that came from. Um, so you can see how I'm just kind of going around this outline here. I don't think I'm gonna bleed any of it yet. I'm gonna leave it dark. Actually, no, I am gonna bleed some. I lied. And then I have to come back and add some hatching with my Sharpie or Pilot pen. I'm probably not gonna be able to do that now because I want it to be dry. And I'll come over and I'll add some light aqua. Pencil too. Let's just bleed some of this so you can see it darken up a little bit. This is for dramatic effect. I kind of like it, actually. Yeah, I'm liking the bleed on this. It's fun. It's adding like kind of more of a grimy industrial vibe to it. It's not so clean and perfect. So that's it. So we'll leave that. You can see how it just kind of pops the top silhouette out. Um, yeah, I could come in. There are definitely other things in here I would pull out as well. But I'm going to try doing that when I add my hatching on there. So let me throw some gray on here. I'm gonna— there we go. Take some of that black, dip in here a little bit. There we go. All right, cool. I don't want to get too carried away. Boom! Boom shakalaka! Nice organization. Hey, thanks, Linda. Yeah, it's usually more organized, to be honest with you. I've gotten sloppy. But what I like about what I just showed you guys is it's just easy for me. I'm like, oh, green Sharpie highlighter, boom, it's right there, right? Or purple flare pen, boom. So it's just really easy for me to grab and go. And it, because it's so linear, it's like this linear, it's not taking up a lot of desk space. It's actually, um, the thing all the pens are in is actually a Tombow marker, I guess, case you would call it, but I'm using it for all these other things. Q: With using the Lamy, why not splatter black, or have you done already? D-Ray, good question. Why not splatter black? I haven't done it. Should we try? Should we try? If I see some thumbs up, I'll give it a try. I'll splatter some black on there. I haven't done it. I'm willing to give it a shot. So let me know if you want me to splatter some black. Give me some thumbs up so we'll do that. And that's how we'll wrap up today. Hatching After Bleeding of Lammy, going dramatic. Yes, going dramatic. It's all about the drama. So let's see, I'm just going to use a Sharpie and maybe pull out some of these shapes in here a little bit. Some of this cross bracing. I didn't do any contours yet, so contours are— I think that's too wet. I think I could do some here. Contours are what I'm trying to make things look curved. I'll do these contour lines. Boom. So on the pipes, the pipes are curved, right? They're rounded. So contour lines are really just curvy lines to help give the idea that something is rounded. Like, there's some pipes up here, so let's I feel like these would— you would go this way. I think, I think— let's see. No, this actually does splits. Yeah, I'll have to wait till some of this dries for sure. I can hear the dramatic even. Yes! Black. All right, I got a thumbs up. Got a thumbs up there. I see one. We'll do it just for you, just for you guys. All right, let's splatter some black. Um, so I could use my Lamy, or I actually have black ink here. Let's— this could be, uh, this is scary. I have this black here, it's called Heavy Crude. Heavy Crude. Does that— doesn't say industrial. I don't know what does. Heavy Crude. I'm scared, I'm scared. But you know what, this is where creative mindset comes into play. Have fun, embrace the process, right? Have fun with it. If I need to reach— you know, it could be amazing, it might not be amazing, but you know what For me, it's the process, it's the excitement. That's the part that I'm going to remember about creating this. So let's do it. I think I'm actually going to use the crude, and I'm going to just splatter it with, uh, the bamboo brush here. Let's do a little— I just want to see what it looks like on a little sample piece here. Let me dip in. I feel like this is going to be really powerful. So here's the— you can see he's black. Looks like there's a little metallic— metallic-y, is that a word? Metallic-y-ness? Not the, not the band. Metallic-ness to it. I don't know the word, but if I— so you could definitely see it here. That's the crude Sorry, it's not looking great on camera, my lighting. Anyway, you get the idea, it's black. Let's do it. I'm actually gonna throw a little water on the brush. Here we go. I feel like I need something down here. Put your ponchos on, guys. D-Ray! I'm actually— I'm really liking it, actually. It's very cool. You guys see it? Bang! That is awesome. Let's throw a little bit more maybe here. All right, I think that's good. I don't want to do too much. Hey, give it up! Thumbs up to D-Ray! It was a great idea. Thank you so much. Now, should I go back to my other ones and splatter some black on there? Hmm. So I'm actually just diluting the brush and I'm just gonna— here we go, put some of that diluted ink on there so we have gray happening. Very cool. That's gonna dry nicely. I put the cap on. I don't want to spill this. Oops. Um, man, that's black. This is— this splatter is like when Bob Ross had a nice painting, then would decide to put in a big tree. It always worked, but a bit scary. Yeah, so if you watch, right, Bob Ross, oh, usually towards the end of his paintings, right, he would do those huge trees. Either to— usually on, I think, the sides of the painting to help frame and give some distance to what's going on. Yeah, he was— he's a whole nother level, that guy. Amazing. Yeah, right? So that was fun, guys. Awesome. Hope you guys like it. Let me know in the chat if you like the splatter. Did it work? So this is— I think I'm done for today. I want it— when it dries, I do want to come back in with, uh, Sharpie or my Pilot. I gotta get more Pilot Precise Pens. Where the heck are they? Where the heck are they? Here we go. Oh, my Pilot pen. Hold on a sec, I gotta stock up on some pens. Here's another, here's a Pilot. So I'll come back with these, add some hatch lines, pull out some more of the shapes, and this will be done. So I probably just need another 2 minutes on it to finish after it dries. Um, cool. So I'm really excited. This Saturday I'm gonna be heading to Central Park in NYC and doing some urban sketching with a workshop I signed up to take. So that'll be a lot of fun. I can't wait to show you guys what I sketch in the workshop. Hopefully the weather will be nice, so that'll be a nice treat on Saturday. And this summer, I would like to maybe have— if you guys want to join me in New York City for a few hours, maybe we'll find a spot and just go sketch. Um, let's talk more about that. Thank you guys so much for tuning in on this Monday. It's a great way for me to start my week. Snow day— well, snow back day, I guess. I think snow back day with you guys, a little bit of creativity. For paying bills. Life's great. I appreciate you all so much. Thank you for your likes. Thank you for your words of encouragement. Thank you for getting my YouTube up there, almost 400. I think I need 10 more, 10 more to get 400. That would be so cool, guys. Keep paying it forward with creativity, or pay it forward with just a smile or a nod, or say hello to someone. You could really just change their day by something really simple. Um, yeah, that's it for today. Maybe tonight I'll be on. Oh, well, I will be on later live streaming my irises, so don't know the time, probably after I get back from my walk after dinner. I'll just log— I'll tune in for a minute, a couple minutes, and show you guys how the irises are blooming because I love those things. All right guys, take care, and I have black splatter on my wall. How did that happen? Oops, it'll come off. All right guys, take care, have a great, great day. Peace and live creatively. See you soon. The black splatter works. Thank you. The black splatter is an eye point. I like it, and it— for me, it adds that industrial vibe, what, you know, what this facility is all about. So thank you guys, and that was a great idea. Thank you, appreciate y'all. Take care. I know where the finish button is. It's right here. It's right in front of me this time.