Tuesday Loose Style Sketching

Hey, it's Tuesday, September 8th, 2026. Hope you're having an awesome day. Jason here with The Inspired Life. It has been a while, to say the least. I have been so busy with, uh, end of summer stuff. Back to school stuff. It's been crazy, but um, it's good to be here. I'm gonna do some sketching. I'm let's let's continue on our journey of lighthouse sketches, paintings. Here are some I've worked on recently, and then here let's pull out the accordion journal. I love this one. Shout out to my friend Key who. Uh, inspired this painting. She sent me a photo and she was here this summer. This is in Maine. So this has been a real fun one to, uh, create. I think it's done finally. Um, so it's cool. I have more pages in this accordion journal, so maybe we'll add some more stuff as time goes on. But yeah, let's, uh, let's just do some sketching. I'm just gonna make up something. I don't have any particular lighthouse I'm sketching. Um, just going from my imagination tonight, and we're gonna sketch in this— what is this paper? I don't even know if I've used it. Um, this might be the first time I'm using it. It's called New York Central Art Supply 100% cotton watercolor block, 4 inches by 10 inches. Really cool size. 140-pound cold press, so it's perfect for watercolor. The pages are glued together so they'll lay flat when we add water to them. And here we go. Just gonna pick up my Sharpie. We have a bunch of pens here, some watercolor. I don't think I'll be on too long tonight, but I want to get back into the groove. I have missed live streaming. It's been, like I said, so crazy. School started September, um, 1st. Off to a good start, but man, I am tired. In a good way, a good tired. All right, cool. Feel free to say hello in the chat. I'd love to know how you're doing. Also, let me know if you can hear me. I have music playing. It might be too loud or I might be too quiet. Feel free to let me know in the chat. All right, let's do it.

Um.

Sharpie or no? Actually, let's start with— we're gonna start with this II pen. My friend Rue gave this to me, so I don't even know where it comes from, but it's like a— it looks like a fairly inexpensive fountain pen, which is, uh, which is cool. So I'm just going to sketch kind of a— some big blocky rocks, maybe. All right, so we have some kind of rocks happening there in the foreground, and, um, just sketch a little bit of— let's just get some kind of trees back here. We're gonna be really loosey-goosey on this. That's the idea, guys. I don't want to create anything perfect. I'm not using any rulers. This is loose, just loose style sketching. And we'll add some water. I think we'll bleed this a little bit. And that's kind of how all these started, the same way. Hello, Grace. Good to see you. Hope all's well. Grace is over on Instagram. Hope you're having a great day. So, uh, these are how these all started, right? Boom. Again, this is just my imagination. I just want to throw some trees on here. Let's bleed a little bit of ink. So I'm going to take this watercolor brush and just dip it. I have some water right here. Boom. And we're just going to throw some on here. Please, what are you sketching? Yeah, I am sketching a lighthouse scene. So right now I just threw in some rocks, some trees. I didn't draw the lighthouse yet. And you know, this, this is how this one started as well. I'll show you this one here. It's upside down. Boom. Right, so there's a good example right there. So my goal tonight, within, you know, the next 10 minutes I'm on is just be loose, fast, throw some color down, throw some ink down. Let's just sketch a lighthouse. Let's say we want our lighthouse to maybe to be— I don't know, maybe it's somewhere over here. So I'm just going to sketch it with a Sharpie, and I'm purposely using a Sharpie so that when I add water later the Sharpie ink is not going to bleed. I don't want the lighthouse to become like a muddy mess of ink. I want it to stay kind of clean, so I'm just making this up. Again, just keeping it really simple. So maybe our lighthouse is somewhere in here.

All right, cool.

All right, let's throw down some, some color. So I'm just going to dip into the water and we're going to just throw some watercolor down. I'm going to start— I have some different greens here. Honestly, I don't remember all the names of the greens. I can definitely post it later on. Let's just start with this one.

And every passing lighthouse, every weathered sail was another page unfolding in a story.

So the goal right now is just throw down some color, kind of block it out. These kinds of sketches are about layers, so today we're working on kind of the first layer, blocking things out, throwing a little bit of color down. You know, if we look at this one again here, you know, this, this took about an hour and a half maybe, I think, to do the whole thing. So I did it in 3 or 4 different sessions. This one is smaller that we're working on. But I like how it looks kind of messy here, right? Appreciate you guys watching. I know that I see some people watching on YouTube as well. Feel free to ask any questions, say hello. Let's, uh, throw a bit of color down maybe on the rocks. I'm gonna grab this orange. I love this orange color. What I love about watercolor and ink bleeding is I love how it dries. It's going to really change character as it dries a little bit. I think this is Periwinkle. This— I love this color. This is a real fun color. I think Periwinkle was also the name of Blue's friend on Blue's Clues. Is that true? Any Blue's Clues fans out there? I think periwinkle or magenta. Maybe they were all Blue's friends. I'm letting colors kind of bleed together here.

He learns what it's trying to teach.

I'm not really forcing anything. I'm just letting these things roll together, kind of talk to each other. The colors are having their own, their own party here. All right, let's throw down some more green in the background here. Again, I'll be— I will be sketching on top of these Blocks of color at some point. So think of this as background.

3 good days behind my stern, every wave a lesson learned. I thought I'd found the ocean's pace, like I'd finally earned my place.

I think I want some more rocks here.

And sometime after break of day, the faithful wind just slipped away. The sea was quiet, too quiet. Even my thoughts began to drift. The wind has other plans than the ones Cool.

All right, let's throw down some, uh, maybe some water on the bottom of this. We'll use a blue color.

Then it came from off the east, cold and strong and wild and free. Not the wind I hoped to find, but the one that changed my mind. Every sail began to sing, every rope became a string. The boat leaned hard into the sea as if it knew more. You can't command what was never yours, only learn to move with it. The wind has other plans than the ones I drew. Sometimes the longer way leads you somewhere true. Every course corrects Every unexpected turn becomes another page. The sea insists you earn. The wind has other plans. And I'm beginning to understand.

Ooh.

Not every change is a setback. Sometimes it's the tide carrying you where you belong.

All right, let's throw down, uh, I like this color. It's called Sage. I think it's sage and amber, or amber and sage. It has like a mossy kind of feel to it, which I really love. You might notice we're losing some of the shapes of the rocks. Um, I can always come back later and add some ink on top of it to pull those shapes back out, so I'm not really worried. Think of the ones I sketched originally as a guide. They're not set in stone, pun intended. Somehow I want a punch of green. Let's actually— let's go with, um, I like this green. I wish I remembered it. I wish I could remember the name of it. It's like a minty green here. There we go. I like the way that green just kind of I like the way it's kind of spreading out there. I threw a lot of water on it, doing a lot of wet-on-wet techniques. When you add wet paint on top of wet paint, it's gonna roll, it's gonna dance, it's gonna go wherever it wants to. I could let it dry in between adding colors. It would be— things would blend less, they'd be more separate. Colors, but I'm just going for. I kind of like the blend that's happening. I think we need some yellow here, so let's throw down. I have some lemon yellow. Let's grab that. Trying to really load it up on the brush here because I want that yellow to pop. I would definitely be coming back and adding more layers of, of the yellow. I might even use a highlighter to kind of make that pop a little bit more. All right, cool. Uh, let's see, I got another minute or two. We'll keep working. Feel free to ask any questions before I head out. And just like I said, the rocks were kind of blocked out. The same thing with the lighthouse. It might morph, it might change a little bit as I'm working on it. It is Sharpie, so the black ink's not going to bleed. So I'm just throwing some of this red on here. Maybe I'll punch a little bit of that red, maybe just a little bit down here, maybe some over here as well.

Cool.

I'm punching some, like, a violet color here.

Whoa! Whitecaps racing toward the shoreline, rain like handfuls thrown from the sky. The lighthouse standing through the thunder, never asking the Just kind of a close-up.

So I really like the colors just kind of bleeding into each other. It's really awesome. I think my favorite colors happening right now are actually right here in this section. It's looking really cool. So this is just layer 1 of a few, right? We have to start somewhere. That's how kind of these, these all started the same way. But these, I really didn't, um, I didn't let the colors be really wet and really mix like I did here. These were kind of a little more controlled. This, I'm just letting it— I'm just throwing it all out there.

Cool.

All right, we might be at a good stopping point where I can let it dry. Um, we'll just sketch maybe a few trees on there and we'll— then I'll head out. So if you have any questions or thoughts or comments, please feel free to paste them Paste them? No, post them. I was thinking of like copy and paste. That is just tired brain talking. Teaching is— I love it, love it, love it, but it, it knocks my brain out. I'm excited. I have 6 classes this year, 3 3 Architecture 1 classes, 1 Architecture 2, and then 2 CAD classes, which I think of as a, like, a product design class. So I'm super excited. We're just on week 2 here. I think it's going to be a fun school year, some really cool projects. And yeah, some great kids. So I'm just literally just sketching in some trees real fast here, kind of, kind of scrubby looking. Even have one that's really crooked here. Hello, Easy Wonderland on Instagram. Hello, how are you? It's a cool name. I like that, Easy Wonderland. So you can see I'm just adding more lines in here. It's, it's starting to take more shape. Be patient with your artwork. Um, I know mine definitely goes through an ugly duckling phase where I, I'm like, what is this? I don't really like it. But be persistent and patient. Keep going through, push through. And there's a point where, at least for me, there's a point where everything changes and I kind of like what's happening. Um, so fight through that ugly Duckling, period. Something will come together. You might not like the entire sketch or painting. Maybe there's a part of it or a color or a line somewhere on there. Um, so it's not a waste of time. There will always be something you can pull out that you like. So you can see I'm just kind of outlining some of these rocks a little bit more. To bring the shapes back, and this is a cool pen to do that with. This is a Pentel EnerGel pen. If you ever want to know the tools I like sketching with, painting with, if you go to my website, the Inkspired Life, I N K. Inspired Life. Go to my tools page and you can see some of the latest stuff I'm kind of using for sketching, urban sketching. Definitely check it out. All right, cool. I kind of like the way this is looking. Here's a close-up.

Ta-da!

And I think it's at a really good point to stop for today, and I will finish it at some point later in the week, maybe tomorrow. Um, yeah, in the meantime, I want to thank you for watching. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them. I'll go back and look at them. If you're on YouTube, I would love for you to give me a thumbs up if you liked what you watched. If you haven't subscribed, please subscribe. Let's grow this awesome, awesome thing which I like to call positivity through creativity. It's a great way to just get some more positive vibes out in the world, right? Uh, Instagram, thank you for watching live as well. I had some people on there and Yeah, thank you for your comments and participation on Instagram. That was awesome. Appreciate it. Till we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and embrace imperfection.