The Inkspired Life - Sketching : The Statue of Liberty

Hello out there, if you're watching. Hope you're having an awesome Thursday night. It is 9:57 PM Eastern Time. Hope you're doing great. I'm on, uh, just for a few minutes or so. I haven't done That's actually not true. I did do a daily sketch. I'm gonna do another sketch tonight, and I'm just trying to find— I have a reference pic here. Boom. All right, I'm gonna look at that. Anyway, if you're watching, feel free to say hello in the chat, whether you're live or a replay. It's always awesome to hear you guys, and, uh, well, not here because I can't hear you, but I can see your comments. There you go. If I seem disheveled, that's because my screen has like 15 different windows open on and got some music going on here. I can't play the music because it'll be copyrighted, but I need to, I just wanted to hear it. All right, hope you guys are doing awesome. Let's just do a real quick little sketch here. I'm just gonna practice. As always, I'm going to start off with a Sharpie pen because I might bleed some ink on this or throw some watercolor down. And if I start with a Sharpie, I don't have to worry about it getting too mucky if I add water to the black ink. Hey, Karen's in the house! Great to see you. D-Ray's in the house. Great to see you also. Hope you guys are doing awesome today. It's always great to see you guys pop on. So I am looking at a reference picture as I'm sketching here, but I'm going to do my usual style, kind of quick and loose, and see what happens. Not looking for perfection, just looking for progress. Ooh, that was good. That was deep. Now, if you're taking notes, I'm looking for— I'm not looking for perfection, I'm looking for progress. That's all I'm doing. And if you think you know what I'm sketching, throw it in the chat. This is really wonky here. Holy cow, I'm thinking too much. I just want to draw this thing. You know what, I'm gonna put some music on so you guys can hear it. It's not fair. So I'm gonna change it up and play tunes that are not copyrighted. Let's do that so you guys can hear some music too. There you go. Cool. And my light turned off behind me, so it's 10 o'clock. It's all good. And you can see where I let my Sharpie sit on the paper for a minute there, kind of bled into a little circle. So what I'm sketching, I have sketched before, but not this viewpoint, actually. So it's fun just to try new things and play around, and we'll see what happens. I'm sure it's something I'll have to practice and revisit, which is fine. I love just trying different takes on things. Remember, it's not about perfection. I don't know what my quote was. I forgot. I said something really wise and now I forgot it. Oh, it's all right. It's all good. Um. So I'm sketching on 140-pound watercolor paper. This came in a sample pack. I think it is— uh, trying to think of the brand. I think it's Fabriano, if I remember. So I thought it'd be cool just to try it out a little bit. So we got a big kind of swoosh, swooshy thing happening here. Swooshy is the technical term. Got more swooshy things happening here. This swooshy thing kind of comes up in here, maybe does a little something, something like that. These are all technical sketching terms. Swooshy, something, something. Feel free to take notes if you want. Got some more swooshy things happening here. Swoosh there. Come across here, we got all these little swooshy things happening here. I'm just gonna keep saying the word swooshy as much as I can because it's fun to say. Try it at home, guys. Swooshy. Sometimes I feel like, um, well, let me start off with this. I have never taken an art class. So, I have not studied fine art, so I don't know all the technical words for painting and drawing and sketching, which is okay with me because then I'm not getting bogged down on knowing all these terms and I'm having more fun just creating my own words. So sometimes I feel like we get bogged down in the technical aspects of what we're creating instead of just creating. I don't know if that makes sense. Same thing kind of applies with colors. I do not remember— I don't remember any of these colors in here. I, I know a couple of the names, but I don't remember the colors. If it's something I like, I'll definitely make a note of it. But you know, for me, I just see— I see red, I know teal or aqua. I always mix that up, turquoise. Blues. I don't want to use my brain space to memorize things like that. I feel like if I do, it's just— it's kind of weighing me down a little bit. And that's just my take on it. I don't know if that makes sense to you guys. All right. Hey, that is not too shabby. Does anybody know what I sketched? Let me look in the comments. D-Ray captured my quote. Thank you. Drawing for progress, not perfection. Boom boom boom, love it. Hey, Linda's in the house. Linda, good evening, great to see you. Angel, good evening to you, welcome. Jennifer, cheers from Arizona, love that. Jennifer, hope you're doing well. Sailing Extreme Adventures, love that name. I wish I was out sailing. I always had a dream, I always, always wanted to I always dreamed of being like this amazing nautical person that could, that could sail. I always had a dream of just getting the sailboat and going for it. Love your name, welcome. Greetings from North Carolina. It's so, so cool. I was, uh, recently down in North Carolina, uh, I guess, was it 2, 3 weeks ago maybe now, in Montreat for an art workshop. It was awesome with my hero and friend and Mentor Michael Han, aka Roo. Swooshy, technical term. Yes, D-Ray, that is the technical term, swooshy. I think you even spelled it right. Angel, Statue of Liberty. Yeah, Angel, this is the Statue of Liberty. It's not a view that we often kind of see. I'm gonna zoom out a little bit here. I'm sketching the back, the back view of the Statue of Liberty. I love this statue. I was really blessed to go here, maybe, um, I guess it was the weekend of April 15th or something. So I went here and it was— this statue is even more impressive than photographs. It is just really cool. So yeah, I just wanted to kind of play around and sketch this angle, or I'm sorry, this viewpoint of it. It's not perfect, you know, but I think— I'm glad you got it, Angel. So that makes me feel good that you were able to figure out what I was sketching. So thank you. So cool. I love the folds and the fabric things happening on the Statue of Liberty. They're just so fun. I mean, there's a lot more going on here and My scale is off and I don't care. Her head's a little flat. Maybe I can round it a little bit more. Jennifer, you got it too! Statue of Liberty. Karen got Lady Liberty. You guys are awesome. D-Ray is waving. I'm waving back. So this is really cool. On the back of the Statue of Liberty, let me go go up. Her foot is actually— this is her, I guess, right foot, right? It's kind of— the toes are down here and the heel's up here. So, it's kind of a dynamic pose. Our park ranger— I went on a little tour, the park ranger was kind of telling us a little bit about the statue. And he was saying one of the theories about the foot being upturned is Maybe it indicates motion. That Lady Liberty is motioning or moving forward. So her foot's kind of raised. She's kind of, you know, keeps moving forward. Hope is always moving forward. Light is always shining forward. Freedom. There's so many different symbols and just really incredible statue. I kind of like this. I didn't— you notice I didn't actually fit the whole pedestal in, and that's fine. I really wanted to focus Originally I was only going to focus on the top half, but I sketched it at a scale where I was able to fit all this. I kind of like this the way it is. I don't know, maybe I'll add some more just lines in here for the folds. Apparently the Statue of Liberty does not like to iron her— her robe, I guess. Her robes. Which I totally appreciate because I hate ironing my clothes. So, Lady Liberty, I am with you. The freedom to not iron our clothing. Uh-huh. Love it. And we got some lines. I'm looking at— I am looking at a reference picture that I took. This is something I haven't committed to muscle memory to sketching this. Statue of Liberty without looking at a pic. But whenever I sketch it, I usually will start with the torch here just to give me a sense of the scale of maybe what I want to do with the rest, just to keep it close in proportions. Did I say pur-portions? Proportions. You notice the hand is a little wonky here. So I definitely have to work on my anatomy a little, but the idea comes across. You guys are awesome. Toga, thank you, Linda. It's called a toga. Yeah, I am, I am not a fashionista for sure. If you saw what I wear every day. So I appreciate the, uh, the fashion feedback. Good thing I'm not doing like a fashion vlog. Toga. Awesome. I'm just going to throw in some lines just to create some ideas of shadows maybe happening. And I'm probably going to keep this black and white. I was thinking of throwing down some turquoise watercolor or even using my light aqua pencil. But I'm kind of liking the black and white on this one, so I don't think I'm going to add color to it. And black and white is, it's my go-to. I always, when I started sketching and for many, many years, I only did black and white, and I still love black and white, but I was always afraid to add color. It took me, I don't know how many years, 4 or 5 years before I started getting confident enough just to throw down color like you see on this one I did last night. Because I always felt like if I put color on a sketch, you know, it had to match exactly what I was sketching. This factory, this, um, the steel stacks, this is not the real color. I was just having fun and being playful. So I've kind of learned just to, just to be playful with what I'm doing. I'm not, I'm not doing anything realistic. And kudos to everybody who does realistic portraits or sketches or landscapes. That is just so awesome. But my style is I just want to keep it loose and fun. And that's mindset. Creative Mindset is one of the things, or one of the reasons that I started adding color. I just felt like it was time to be playful and not obsess that my colors match what I was sketching. I don't know how much more I want to add to this. I kind of like it. The man says it. Zoom in so you guys can see the texture of this paper. So this is what I'm using. This was sample paper I got in a pack. Artistico Traditional White, and it is, um, Fabriano, I believe, is the brand. And here's the texture of the paper. It's cold press, so it has a little bit of roughness to it. I'll show it over here where the sketch is. You can see it a little closer. And I like the texture because it makes my lines look even wonkier. I love the loose wonky look. And the texture of the paper helps. If you look here, it helps to break up the line. So the line is not precise. If this was an architectural technical drawing, you know, I would want I would want my lines to be like this, right? Let me draw it down here. Crisp. You know, straight and crisp. You know, this would be more of a precise technical drawing. And you could use a ruler, obviously. Sorry. So if I want to do the same thing in a loose style, I would do it like this. Let's just pan this up a little bit here. You know, so this is kind of the same concept except that's a looser style. And when I hit— when you have texture on a paper, it helps to create that loose kind of sketchy look. Cool stuff. Freedom not to iron my clothes. That is tonight's big takeaway, everybody. That, that will be the, um, that should be the quote for this one. Give me— I don't know the exact words for the poem. Give me free— give me liberty, or— well, we'll put give me the freedom to not iron my clothes. That's, that'll be the caption. I'll write on the side. Red and blue. Jennifer says red and blue. Yeah, those are my color names, red and blue. On there, just a hint, just a hint of red. Oh, oh, Jennifer wants me to put just a hint of red and blue. Interesting. Didn't I just mail— I just mailed the Statue of Liberty sketch out that had a red and white and blue background on it. Um, cool. Maybe, maybe, Jennifer, I'll think about it tonight. I'm just going to leave it black and white, but I'll sit on, I'll sit on the idea of maybe adding color. Um, Angel says, what about a few close-up vignettes of the torch and hand and foot, and you can add color splashes to the line work? That's a cool idea. Yeah, I like that idea, Angel. I love sketching vignettes. That's a really cool idea. So I'm working on, um, sketches of New York City icons: Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, um, what else, a couple more different iconic buildings and scenes, um, with the idea that I'm going to take these sketches the originals and go to Central Park and see if I can sell some original sketches. I think, how cool would that be? So I'm working on just creating a bunch and going to Central Park one day this summer, just see if anybody's interested in what I'm doing. Great idea, Angel, I really like that. Linda says hot press watercolor paper will give a smoother line. Yeah, I have in that sample pack I got. Let's see. So here's the sample pack. I got it when I went to the workshop in North Carolina. In here, I just was looking earlier. There is, there is a hot— I do have some other hot press paper, but I saw this one today. Oh, uh, is this hot press or cold press? It's really— it's— no, it's cold press. There is texture. Cold press. I thought there was a hot press in here. Oh yeah, so here's a hot press sheet. Really smooth. This is— says right there, hot press. Yeah, it's very, very smooth. So if I was to sketch on here It's a totally different experience. So yeah, good point. And I've been using hot press more and more. So I'm just gonna pull this here. Let me maybe, maybe just sketch the torch here or something. Actually, I'm gonna go in my pictures and see if I can find a close-up. Alright, we'll just kind of use this. Something really quick here. So I'm still using the same Sharpie. Kind of do a little curvy thing here. Kind of a little curve here. Got a curved line here. Another one. This actually kind of comes around a little bit. We have another thing kind of happening here. I'm just, I'm just looking at a small picture of the torch. So if we did something like this, then we have a flame. So we have our flame here. We got some frilly, frilly things happening here. I can't really tell. I'm just going to kind of make this up. I can't really see in the photograph. Maybe we have some You have a pattern like that going on. I should have did that close-up. Sorry guys, my bad. I should have zoomed up on it. Yeah, so here I show you that torch. You can see on the smooth hot press paper Still looks cool. And then here's the cold press. So cold press, the lines are more broken and interrupted lines versus the hot press, they're more continuous lines because there's no texture on the paper. Cool. There you go. And hot press and cold press take color differently also. All right, cool guys. I think, um, I think that might be a wrap for tonight. Let me go sketch on here for another 10 seconds. I just want to pop on quick. I really appreciate you guys joining in. It's always fun to see who's watching. I love that we have some YouTubers watching as well. That's so cool. And face the Facebook peeps. So fun, guys. I just want to grow this, just grow this and spread positivity through creativity. And I have allergies as I'm sniffling. All right, so one thing I really got to practice on is really— I really need to study kind of the the, uh, not physics, anatomy. That's the science. Just the anatomy of the human body if I want to get this really better. So I want to work on this, definitely this part, but it's because I'm thinking too much and just instead of just sketching. And on this, I'm gonna just throw down some color pencil. On hot press paper, the color pencil just glides on so smooth, which I love. Uh, I have this here. I'm just gonna throw this on for the flame, which is really gold, but I have this yellow right here, so we'll throw this on. And I'm actually gonna bleed this ink and we'll see how that looks. Where's my aqua brush? Where's Mr. Aqua Brush? Where'd he go? There we go. So let's just bleed a little bit of this. There you go. And the paper's nice and bright white, so the colors are going to really pop off of it. Just for fun, let's throw down some turquoise watercolor on here also. See how that looks. I have some yellow. That's okay if the colors mix. So there we go, we got some watercolor on there also. See if you guys can see that. There we go. Cool, cool. Oh, Julio, awesome! Hey, um, Sally, thank you for your inspiration. Hit that, Sally. Thank you for watching, I appreciate that. Angel, thanks for sharing. Keep the light of liberty shining for all to see. Ooh, Angel, love the That is so cool. Thank you, thank you for sharing. Enjoy your evening, everyone. Thank you, Linda, take care. Hey, you guys are awesome. I'm gonna head out. Thanks for tuning in. I hope I can see you real soon. If you're on YouTube, I would love for you to like and subscribe if you like what you're seeing. That would be so cool. Um, always appreciate that. D-Ray, great seeing you. Karen, was great seeing you in the house as well. Jennifer, Always a pleasure. Angel, great to see you back again. Linda is back again. Sailing, I think this is the first time I've seen you, so I appreciate you joining us. Hope you had fun. Thanks guys, hope you took something away from this short little session tonight. We'll just take end up, we'll just kind of show you what we did as a wrap. There you go. Keep paying it forward with your creativity and positivity. Even a nod, polite smile, or nod to someone, or wave hello can make a big difference in someone's day. You never know. It's the simple things in life that can go a long way. Guys, take care. I appreciate you all so much. Peace and live creatively. See you back on soon. Tomorrow's Friday night. Yes, Friday night. I'll probably be on sketching tomorrow night after 10. Take care, guys. Peace and live creatively. D-Ray usually likes to tell me where the button is. So D-Ray, my, my finish button is hiding because I have like 15 or 16 windows open on my screen. So I'm really looking for the finish button, I swear. Um, I think I need better outros. All right, I found it. Take care, guys. Have a great night.