The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud

Hey, happy Wednesday! Hope you're having a great day. It's early for me to be on, it's kind of my lunchtime, so I wanted to do a little lunchtime sketching, painting today, because I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it on later. So I wanted to just pop on, feel like doing something creative during my little lunch break Jason Nicholas here. Hope you're having a great day. As always, I appreciate you watching and tuning in and commenting and saying hello. So I'm just working on this kind of abstract cityscape piece I started working on last night. It has graphite on it. It has— what else does it have? Graphite. I used a watercolor stick on it. You'll see red and blue watercolor paint on here as well. And now I'm just kind of sketching and painting and playing with ink. Hey Becky, good to see you! Hope you're having a great Wednesday today. Always nice to see you pop in. I have been seeing posts on our workshop page. Oh my gosh. Incredible. You guys are— I don't even know what to say. You guys are amazing. Those sketches, especially of the gingerbread castle and the habitat building. Wow, you guys are just taking it to a whole other level of just playfulness and sketching it. Really, really cool. So I love what I'm seeing you guys post on that page. Keep up the awesome and inspiring creativity. So I have to give my hand and sketch those buildings as well. So I still have to do my homework, along with my college course homework and my teacher certification homework and my curriculum writing I need to do for high school homework. I have mucho homeworko. How come teachers have more homework than the kids? I don't get that. How'd that happen? I was supposed to be off this summer. All I have is homework, homework, homework. I'm not complaining. It's a choice I made. It's just interesting. And there are people out there that think teachers have it easy in the summer. Well, maybe some do, but this teacher does not have it easier in the summer. I wish I could— some people would appreciate that. Instead of making comments about how they're paying me their tax dollar money and I'm only working 10 months out of the year. If they only knew how many hours I worked during the school year and outside school year, I would say I'm underpaid. But I love doing it, and it's about the kids and the inspiration and them inspiring me, and that's what it's all about. But enough of that. I don't get politics and all that social commentary stuff. I'm here for creativity and fun. You guys are always awesome. This is kind of an interesting scene. I don't even know how to describe it. It's almost abstract, but it's almost— I don't know. I don't know if it's like a modern— like an old city or a modern city, or it's a blur. I like to explore my paintings and sketches, you know, old and new kind of mixed together. Maybe that's what it's turned out to be. Hey, I love all the different takes on both buildings. Yeah, Becky, dude, the takes on seeing those buildings are incredible. You guys are all inspirational. I just, I love it. I couldn't be more blessed to be part of. I don't want to say I'm leading it. I mean, it's my workshop, but I feel like I'm just part of an amazing group of people. You guys are awesome. Awesome. So thank you so much. I just gotta get a drink of water. Old vintage, old world vintage grunge. I like that. Old World Vintage Grunge. Yes, I like that a lot. So let's see, I'm gonna keep playing with this ink a little bit. So I'm using this bamboo brush and it has a, I guess, pen on the other side to dip it in the ink. I like it I'm just finding that it doesn't hold a lot of ink on it, so I feel like I'm gonna burn through a lot of ink using this. But you know what? It's part of playing and learning. It's fun to just see what kind of effects I can create using it. It's always fun to try new things, right? I'm sure there's a way to do this, use this, that I haven't figured out yet.

I am having fun playing.

This is so cool. It's looking kind of cool. All right, let's put the ink aside, I think, for a minute and cover it up. Oops, wrong cap. Looks wicked cool, and your color palette is really working. Hey, thank you, Becky. I always appreciate your feedback. Thank you so much. Zoom a little closer.

There we go, that's a little bit better. Cool.

Put that aside for a sec. And I'm just adding some more graphite on here. I'll come back with water, uh, and go on top of it and just kind of paint with it a little bit. I'm just gonna use a water— an aqua brush. This one doesn't have water in it. That's okay. I have some water here I can use. Dirty water, which is— you can see it has the red from this painting, so I'm just gonna use this water.

Oops.

Helps if I take the cap off. There we go. I do feel like I want a pop of yellow on here somewhere.

What do you think?

Do you think yellow would be awesome if I did some pops of yellow? Maybe for like where the windows would be? There's some light coming through window areas. I love this fun jazzy music. This is good lunchtime music. I'm gonna blot some of this out in here. I got too much black going on in one area, so I'm just gonna blot a little bit out with a napkin here. See, it's good to sketch during lunch break. Great, because you have napkins on hand. You're definitely getting the hang of your new bamboo brush pen, thank you. You like the double windows idea? Alright, since you like it, I think we're going to give it a shot. I'm going to blot off some more of this black a little bit here. I like the way it looks better now. It was a little too intense. Cool, all right. I think let's break out some yellow. I'm going to use this yellow, it's just called Sunshine Yellow. It's watercolor ink. Move this ink over here a little bit. This is interesting. This was some ink I poured in here, and it was kind of old ink. I have to— I've had this, gosh, 15 years or something, this ink, and it finally— it's all dried up. There's just a little bit of watery residue in here. Let's see what that looks like. See if we can use that for something on here. Just maybe grunge some areas up a little bit.

There we go.

Just adding some gray kind of wash here. Buildings really aren't defined on the right-hand side, kind of blurry. I'll come back and define them. I'll probably use a little more ink from the ink brush or maybe even a pen. First the music reminded me of Monsters, Inc. How's Stephanie Morley's newer movie Soul? Yeah, we got Pixar on the brain. Yeah, there's a song in here somewhere that sounds a little bit like Toy Story 2. Well, not Toy Story 2, but Toy Story also, but maybe Toy Story 2. I don't remember the music in Toy Story 2. Good observation. I want to be careful and I don't want to mix this with the black ink too much here. Because the black ink will definitely bleed into the yellow. Sometimes I'll just paint— take the paint right out of the cap. I'm liking the little touches of yellow in here. It's just, it's brightening things up a little bit. Definitely have to come back in and add some more definition to these buildings on the right-hand side. That's no problem, that could be done later. Getting a little regular with where I add the yellow. I don't want it to be everywhere, I kind of want it to be spotty. Spotty, popular dog name, Spotty. See Spotty run. Wait, is that Spot? I think it's just Spot, it's not Spotty. Could be Spotty. Beam me up, Spotty. That's from Star Trek, right? Beam me up, Spotty. Wait, I meant that's Scotty. I know, I better give up with the spotty jokes.

Alright.

Just gotta be careful not to— I don't wanna— I'm taking the paint right out of the paint container here, but I don't want to contaminate it with with all the black ink, so that's why you make sure to brush it off once in a while. Cool, I like the way this is looking. This is neat. Maybe this is some kind of a square or plaza area in the city surrounded by buildings. I think that's enough yellow for now. I might add some more later. Uh, you might get some rusty orange. Yeah, there is some rusty orange. Looks going on here. Yellow is adding more life, looking great. Hey, thank you. A little closer. There's one area I really like what's happening with the color and I'll— actually, we zoom in this way, it's probably easier.

Yeah, there we go.

I really like what's happening down in this area here. Play with this. Love what's happening right in here. This kind of color palette and the texture. I love seeing the texture, kind of the roughness of the paper. Let's pan around a little bit. This is probably— there's probably too much ink black in this area. Looks like I'm gonna blot some of that out. A little too, too heavy. I don't know if I can go again. We'll get some of it off.

A little bit's coming off. That's a little bit better.

This is gonna dry really cool here. I'm just gonna let that dry just like it is on the paper. I love the orange— I'm sorry, the yellow over— it's like what Becky was saying, yellow over the red, kind of rusty orange. You can really see it nice down here. So it's a really interesting color palette.

Cool. Here we go.

I think I want to pop— and pop some more blue watercolor just in some places on here. So I'm just using— I have a Winsor Newton watercolor palette here. This is the palette I like to use. Here's the blue. I honestly can't even tell you the name of the blue. It's— I think it's whatever came with the palette. I've just been kind of working at it using that. I think I put acrylic paint in here one day because it's all like dried. This compartment, but I'm gonna be pulling the watercolor out of here. And I just want to touch it down a few places. That's kind of cool. I actually pulled some of the— yeah, this one right here, I kind of pulled some of the ink along with it. It's an interesting gray color that's happening. Fun thing with watercolors is just adding layers on top of layers. Get all kinds of really interesting effects happening. Here you go. Just some light. There we go. So I'm just touching the watercolor down here and there. Throw some downright kind of this plaza type of space. I might come in with a pen later and just add some detail in this area. Right now I'm just blocking it out.

Cool. It's looking awesome.

Yellow's adding more life. Oh yeah, more comments. Yep. Kind of feels like storyboard for old movie set in Europe. Yeah, I love that description. I would love to have been a movie designer, a production designer, designed all these movie sets. That would have been an awesome job. A vintage movie's poster background. Becky, I love your imagination, it's on fire today. Good suggestions, I love what you're seeing in this. Awesome day to drink water. So if you're just watching, be sure to say hello. Say hi in the comments. I always like to know who's watching. You guys are awesome. If you're watching on YouTube, say hi too. If you want to be silent, just kind of watch in the background, you can do that. It's all good. Love that piazza. Reminds me of a piazza of Piazza Bologna. Sounds pretty awesome. I have never been there. Google some pictures. It's in Rome. Now I'm hungry. Bologna. I see pizza and bologna. Yes, that's what I got at Piazza Bologna, pizza and bologna, I guess.

I don't know.

Um, but that's so awesome. I love that you're seeing, seeing that. I have to Google that later, look up some images. So cool. Uh, what am I going to do? What am I Good question. What am I going to do? I think I want to just kind of define a little bit more what's happening on the right here. And we'll break out the ink again. So I think there's enough color on here for now. I'm not going to add any more. Let me put the cap on here so I don't spill the water. You know, could I get into adding these? I don't— I'm not feeling the vibrant fluorescent stuff on this scene. So we'll save those for another time.

Here's the ink.

I don't know if I can add anything into this old dried-up ink to make it work. I'll have to look into it. This is Winsor Newton ink. I'm trying to see if there's a year on here. I know this is old. This is, I'm gonna say like 15 years old. Actually, I need the water open. Silly me. That was how our tour guide told us how to get back to our hotel, Pizza One. Ah, that's so funny. That's awesome. That's so cool that you went to Rome. It's on my list. I'd love to get there. So awesome. I would be in sketchbook heaven there. One of my dreams is to travel with me, a sketchbook, and just do sketching across the world.

It's a dream.

That would be so awesome. That's why you see me just creating a lot of sketches and places, but from my imagination. These are just places coming from here and putting it on the paper. I love the fact that these remind you— some of these remind you of real places. That's so cool. I wanted to put a church in there somewhere, so this might be the church structure here. I'd love to go to— hmm, where do I want to go? Spain. I was in Spain many years ago. I'd love to go back. I went to Madrid in high school. It was so fun. I wasn't really so much into architecture a lot back then. So I don't remember the buildings, but I did take a lot of pictures. Barcelona. Welcome to Barcelona. Amazing architecture there. So sketching for me is a way of just traveling without even leaving home. Some people ask me, "Why are you always drawing cityscapes and skylines and buildings?" Well, I'm an architect, but it's more than that. It's just— I'm just fascinated by buildings and the world and how they affect the world. Kind of memories they can create, creating a sense of place. And they're just kind of fun to sketch, these imaginary— imaginative— imaginative places. Is that a word? Imaginative series? I don't know.

Imaginative, I think it is.

We have a bunch of cathedrals or something happening on the right here. This is like Ratatouille music. Back in high school, '89. That is so cool. '89. Does it speak to you like trees speak to me? That's Yeah, exactly. You get it, Becky. Buildings speak to her. You don't want to know what they say, but they do speak to her. It's so cool that trees speak to you. Trees are amazing. They're all individual individuals like people, right? No two trees are the same. They have such great character. Love Ratatouille! Ratatouille is a great movie. I can't wait to go on the Ratatouille ride when we go to Disney in December. That's going to be so cool. I hope it's open.

I think it's supposed to open in October.

So my vision back here is to have this grand set of stairs. So this is gonna come— this is like a plaza or piazza, like that description. These are gonna be stairs in the background here, and going up to some buildings set on top of the platform. I'm probably blocking it with my hand. So these would be stairs back in here, and these are some buildings kind of set up on a pedestal. So I'll come back and add add more line work and you'll be able to see those better. I think the buildings on the right are kind of taking more of a shape now. I added some line weight to it. You can see a cathedral here. Some of it's a little ambiguous, which I want. Like, is this a cathedral, is it not? I don't know. I'm not sure. So, I like the way this is looking on the right now. I don't wanna get too crazy. It's too late for that. I already am crazy. But I think that's enough black ink on there.

I'm happy with it.

I feel like there could be a— yeah, a fountain or statue. Yeah, that would be awesome. There's so much space in here. I could definitely see something happening. So that's a great, great idea. I'm gonna get a sheet of tracing paper and kind of overlay it. Clean my brush off. So that's enough paint on there for now, I'm gonna let it dry. Enough ink on there. Some of it's drying really cool, like, zoom in a little bit. I kind of like this, I kind of like this big blob. Blobby thing happening there. That'll dry interestingly. I like what's happening down here.

It just looks—

whatever, how this is drying is looking really cool in this area. Let's pan around a little bit. "Brace Crazy is where creativity comes from." Absolutely.

I agree with you.

Cool. Let me see, I have a piece of trace here. Let me do a little trace on top and wrap it up for now. A little scrap piece of trace. Well, not scrap, but— It's a little wet, so it's bleeding there.

Let's try to piece this off.

So maybe in here. I don't know, maybe, let's see. Let me sketch with my— sketch with my Sharpie just so it's a little bit darker. The Sharpie's not working. Hello, good Sharpie, where are you? Uh, did you hear a good sharp— oh, it's over here on my desk. Make a fountain here.

Let's come—

paper there.

That's okay.

Some kind of sculpture or something happening on here, maybe. Fountain with some kind of swirlies going on. This is just a real quick, rough, very, very rough idea of maybe something that could happen in there. I don't like the scale of it.

Let's try something else.

You could do that. Something here in the plaza. Steps are going to be back here. So that's kind of where I'm picturing steps going up. So here could be some kind of a reflecting pool, and in the pool, maybe there's a statue coming out of the reflecting pool.

I have to look at a picture or some kind of reference for this, but let's say—

statue, big having a sassy pose. I don't know. Some kind of a statue in here. I gotta turn on to that cowboy dude I sketched, the one cowboy hat. Anyway, maybe some kind of a statue or something happening in there. Maybe it's this globe, maybe— I love the statue of Atlas in New York City, over by St. Patrick's Cathedral. It's one of my favorite sculptures ever. Some kind of like, globe or something.

Just in here.

I'm not really sure what it's gonna be, but there we go. That's kind of the idea. Just breaking out some markers. There you go. I gotta sketch with— I have to sketch with markers more. I really love them. All right, maybe something like that. Let me zoom out, see what it looks like. It's made of some kind of sculpture or something like that happening. Fun shadows in the inky spots. Yeah, I agree. Have you ever read kids' book Lyle, Lyle Crocodile? Set in New York City, I think. You would like those. I'll have to check it out. I don't I don't recognize the name of it, but I, I'll Google that. Definitely would love to check it out. So maybe something like that as an idea for some hand sculpture. I like the idea of the reflecting pool, kind of gives a little bit of order to the grid around, city around it.

Awesome.

All right, it's 2 o'clock. I am going to wrap up. So I'm going to, uh, I really like the sculpture and pool combo. Hey, thank you. Cool. Yeah, thank you for the idea about saying something about sculptures or fountain. That was a great idea. I think it would help to add a little other level of interest. I kind of want it to be a little off-center. I don't want it to be right in the middle. So I think I would shift it— I think actually I would shift it back to the right— ah, to the left. Somewhere back in here. It's not quite on center. I think that would look interesting, having that back in there. Cool. All right, I'm gonna switch to the Western outro sunset music. Again, I don't know if I'm gonna be on tonight because I have a lot of homework to do. So I wanted to do some sketching now during my lunch break. And we'll see how much I can get done between now and then. Uh, realistically, probably not too much. We'll see. Tons to do. Hey, you guys are awesome. Thank you for watching. Um, Becky, thank you for all your participation in the chat and your feedback and your Pixar references. Good, good stuff. I love it. For anybody watching out there who didn't comment, you guys are awesome as well. I always appreciate you watching. Feel free to like this and share this. Give a thumbs up. That would be so cool. We'll spread the word. Positivity— Creativity for Positivity. I'll get it straight one of these days. Creativity for Positivity. You guys are awesome. So I'm going to do one last sketch as the music is playing. Let me find a tune. Let me move this to the side actually first and we'll get the sketchbook out. I will— this is not done yet, so this is a work in progress. And I either work on it live, or if I don't, I'll post pictures of it. I'll probably post pictures anyway when it's done. I'm just grabbing my little sketchbook here. So I always like to play this little Western whistling kind of music when I wrap up. It's just a fun thing to sketch to. Um, usually I use one of these pens, but I think Let's try something different. What should I sketch with? Should I use, uh, yeah, we'll play around with the ink, I guess. Let's get this ready. You can see some of the other things I've been doing. Usually it ends up being some kind of quick perspective type of sketch. Ooh, almost out of paper on this one. All right, we'll just use this sheet. Let me zoom in. Yes, it takes a lot of prep work. Work to get this final sketch up. Hey, thank you. Good luck with your homework. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. I got— I'm in the homestretch. I got— I have 2 more weeks of college, my last college class. 2 more weeks till I have to submit a different thing for my college, for my teaching certification. It's a whole big assessment. That's taken forever for me to do because every time I go to work on it, it's hard to want to work on it. So it's partially me and it was also partially just a lot going on at the end of the school year. So I'm way behind. Anyway, not complaining, just gotta get it done. Just like we're gonna get this sketch done. Alright, let's do it. You know what, I'm not feeling— I was feeling that but I'm not feeling it. Let's use this instead. I have one of these with these little brush pens here. Play around with this. Alright, here comes the music. Guys, thank you so much for watching. I appreciate you all so much. Keep paying it forward with creativity and peace. Live creatively. Let's hit that button and do one sketch and we're outta here. That's not the song.

Wrong button.

There it is. Turn up a little bit. I like this too loud in my ears here when I'm sketching. Here we go. Hopefully this pen works. Have a great day, guys. See you later. Take care.