Uncapping Creativity Thru Sketching

Hello, happy Wednesday, August 28th. It is 9:12 PM here in the Garden State. Hope you're doing well. I am going to do an uncapping tonight. You've heard of unboxing videos, um, yeah, I got some new markers here. So I thought it'd be fun to break them open, play around with them. Um, I could— I just messed around with them just for a minute or two here, but yeah, we'll break those out and, uh, we'll see how they are and talk a little bit more about them. Let me know how your day is going, where you're watching from, and all that fun stuff. Um, I am Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inkspired Life. I love sketching architecture. I love urban sketching, just capturing the built world around us one line at a time through sketching. This here, this is a sketch, uh, it was a demo sketch we did in a Zoom meet the other night. It's based very loosely on a building in Spokane, Washington. It is the— oh my gosh, it's a newspaper building. I'm drawing a blank of the name of it right now, but it's in Spokane. I can cheat and look because I did a sketch of it while I was there. So this is my— one of a really cool journal I kept when I was in Spokane doing some urban sketching. This building here is— let me just go back. Here it is. It is the Spokane Washington Review. Let's zoom out a little bit. There we go. Spokane Washington Review, built in 1890. The architect was Chauncey B. Seaton, S-E-A-T-O-N. So this is a really fun building. It's on a corner, it's huge. This is just a small section of it. I just like the tower. So in a quick demo, I kind of recreated it here a little bit. Let's zoom in so we can see the marker stuff. All right, so I have just— these just came in. I got them off of Amazon, um, based on a recommendation from one of the— our fellow Inklings. Patty out there was talking about these one day. These are Sharpie Creative Markers. Y'all know I'm a huge Sharpie fan. This sketch here is Sharpie, um, so it's called Sharpie Creative Markers. They're acrylic markers, they're water-based, so they don't have a stink or a smell, um, unlike regular Sharpies. Check out this— check out the Sharpie Maximum, by the way. This thing is huge. Mungus. Oh, if I can get it open. Yeah, here's— this is a Sharpie, big chisel point. So let's just throw down some color and play around with these. You can say I use some red. So I got a package— how many are here? I got 12 in here. There's kind of the package of them. Paint effect, no bleed. Um, these are bullet point tips. They also come in— I was reading the back You can also get these in a brush tip as well, which would be fun to play around with, but I don't have the brush tip yet. So I thought it'd be fun to add some color to this sketch. Let's just pull out some— I'm not going to go through all these colors in here. Let's grab a yellow. Um, of course we got to grab like a turquoise, and let's try their white also because I'm always looking for a a good white marker or white gel pen. So see how the white is on here. All right, cool. Let me zoom in a little bit. I don't have the comments on. Let me put the comment window on in case anybody is out there and wants to say hello. I would love for you to do that. Window, let's see, window and then comment. Here we are. Boom! Hey, I see Dylan. Dylan, great to see you. Hope all is well. And Cameron. Cameron, what's up? I was thinking of you, um, just the other day, Cam. Hope all is good. And I don't know if you started school up yet. Linda's in the house. Linda, great to see you. Yes, I'll have to try the brush tip soon. Cool. All right, so let's throw down some randomness. I threw down— this is a red color. Does it say what color it is? Well, you can tell from the cap. Here's the tip. Um, you don't— I didn't have to shake these, unlike a Posca paint pen. If you use the Posca pens, they're really cool, but you need to shake them and depress the tip a few times to get the juices flowing. This, I took the cap right off and it worked, which is so cool. I'm gonna get— let's get even closer on this. All right, cool. Um, let's just throw a little more red in and we'll just play around, add different colors. This stuff comes out and goes on so easy. I'm doing it on cold press watercolor paper right now. I want to pop out some yellow here. So this is brand new, I have not used this yellow yet. Just took the cap off. So let's see how it, how it comes out. I'm really liking it. I actually even like the fact— so let me zoom in on the yellow. You can see some of the black lines underneath. If I was to go— and let's see, does it dry? Oh, it dries pretty quick. I can go back over it, layer it, make it more intense if I want. Let's just throw some of this yellow over the red, see what happens. So you can see it's, it's not 100% opaque because you can see through the red underneath, which I actually like. So if you wanted to make it more opaque, you could just layer on top. I can't tell if this is focusing or not. I feel like it's a little out of focus. Not sure what's up with my camera. Yes, you can come back and dab on top to build up the layers. One of the things I love about markers and pens is, you know, it's good quality if you hear the— if you hear this, right? When you go to put the cap on, you know it's going to sit on and lock on there. And there's something very therapeutic about that sound. Cool. Uh, let's see, I got the— let's break out some more. Yeah, we're just throwing down some colors, having fun. On this is cold press paper. I'm sure on hot press paper it's going to be slick and smooth and go down really well. So I have to say, I am digging it. I really love mixed media sketches. Throwing down some ink and watercolor, or ink and colored pencil. And I'm loving these markers as well. This is the white one. Let's do it. Let's try some white. I threw down a patch of just some black down here. Let's throw some colors on the black. We'll just do, uh, some lines here. Oh yeah, this white is— I love the way this white is covering. This might be my new go-to white marker. There are some other gel pens I really like, but sometimes the gel pens, I don't know why, but they get clogged a lot for me. So that white goes down really smooth. Hey, Karen's in the house! Karen, great to see you. That was the white. Let's throw down some green. Ooh. That is, that is a real nice green. So that's the green on black. Let's just throw down some green here off to the side. Uh, this is really good, really, really cool. I'm digging these. It would be cool to play around with the brush tip, so maybe down the road I'll get the brush tip ones. Um, let's throw down some pink. Uh, is this pink? Yeah, let's throw down some pink. You know I got to have pink somewhere on these, right? There we go, got some pink happening. So I would say that, I guess depending on the colors, they're not 100% opaque. You can see through when they go down. Here, I'll zoom in. You can see the pink, you can see some of that black underneath, which is a look some people may like it, some may not. I actually like it. And I can come back and just intense it if I want. Ink tense it up. Get it? Ink tense it. Um, and then we got purple. Let's throw some purple down on this building. Maybe we'll do some shadows in purple. Let's see, let's just— um, do we want to do this? Maybe under here we'll do some Maybe under here we'll do some— oh yeah, let's do some windows, kind of purpley here. That, that is a real, real nice purple color. Yeah, I'm liking it. Uh, let's go through more. We see we have some blue in here. Blue we have right here. I like the fact that they don't stink. You can't smell them. Although Sharpies, you know, regular Sharpies are my favorite, they do have, um, an odor. So sometimes, so make sure you're in a ventilated area. Hey, Chip's in the house! Chip, great to see you. Let me know what you guys think. Are you liking these, uh, markers? You like kind of the intensity of the colors? Hopefully it's coming through across on on the airwaves, as they say. We got another green here. Let's try this one. Let's just put it next. There we go. I'll zoom in. You can see these two greens next to each other. Yeah, so I thought it'd be fun to do this uncapping tonight of Sharpie. Here's the package, Sharpie Creative Markers. Again, these are the bullet tip points. They also have a brush tip. This is totally unsponsored. I went out, bought the markers, opened the package up today and wanted to share, uh, share this with you. Um, black. We got black here. Let's come up here. Let's show some black. Let's do some black in here. Oh, that— this is a slick black color, Chip. This might be great for, um, kind of this a side project I was talking we were talking about. This black— yeah, this black marker could be really awesome for that. And then the last color here is a gray. Let's throw some gray on here. Um, actually, I'm going to take that back. It looks silver. Looks silver to me. So it's a silver color. Let's throw that down. Let's come back on top of it with another color. So this does dry pretty quick. I don't know, let's throw down— let's see what— oh, I didn't try orange, did I? Let's break out some orange. I think I like the orange. Yeah, I do. This looks like Miami Dolphin colors here with the, the, uh, turquoise and the orange here, if the Dolphins are are still that color. I don't— I haven't watched football in a long time. That's, that's it. I think I used them all. Let me zoom out so you can kind of see. I hear all the markers. There's 12 different ones. Don says very cool. They are the large size. Karen says yes, I believe these are the large size ones. Here's the package for it. Pops on light and dark surfaces. I don't see a size written on the package, but they are— I'll hold this marker next to my regular Sharpie. So yes, I would say they are large. I don't even know if they come in thinner sizes. They might. I got really excited on Amazon the other day. I'm like, oh, I like these, let me click on them. So they might have other sizes. Let me know if you see other sizes on there. Great question. They're definitely— I love the— I just so, um, I'm so excited, I'm tongue-tied here. I love the way the paint just flows on the paper. It's really, really smooth. And especially on a rough texture, it's hard sometimes to get that smoothness with a pen, but this just kind of flows nicely. So guys, I am super excited. Tomorrow, tomorrow I am going— I won't tell— I won't say the location. Let's just say I'm going somewhere really cool. I've been there before, um, did sketching there. I've done sketches online as well, and I am super excited because one of my awesome, awesome friends is coming with me. He's going to do some video footage of me sketching. It's going to be such a fun, fun day. I can't wait to share more with you guys about it. But it's gonna be awesome, and the weather looks good, so that'll be fun, fun times. Actually, this yellow would be cool for like lights in the window here. Let's throw some yellow in here. This is fun. I like all the colors on here. Cameron says jury duty. Me? I am not going to jury duty. Not me. Are you going to jury duty, Cameron? I am definitely not going jury duty. This is cool. This actually— I wasn't even intending this, but this almost looks like a little— well, this I was trying to make like a little scooter, but the background is starting to look like a cityscape, right? Let's throw some yellow lights here, maybe some buildings. Got some lights going on here. I don't know if you guys remember when I first started sketching online about— gosh, was it 3 or 4? 4 years ago? 3 years ago? I would do these really cool abstract city skylines. I should do them again. They were so fun. So maybe I'll start doing some of those abstract skylines because you never knew what was going to happen and how they would turn out, and that was so awesome. Oh yeah, this color is sweet. Oh yeah, inky inky. Linda says inky. They are definitely inky inky. Remember the ink? Do you remember the inky— you might be talking about the Inky Inky, um, the Inky Inky Night sketches I did on tracing paper. These would be actually fun to try on tracing paper. We will save that for another time because I don't have the paper right here. The Inky Inky Nights, those were fun sketches. So let's do a little like water tower up here. Yes, tracing paper. Yeah, that— yeah, those were the Inky Inky Night, uh, sketches. I have them in my drawer here. I love— let's see if I can pull one out. Let's see. Uh, here's one. Yeah, so these were the ink— these were the Inky Inky Night. Here's a— here's an example on the tracing paper. Hey Linda, should we do an Inky Inky Night workshop? What do you think? Let me know if anybody out there would be interested in if we— if I did a like a 2-hour workshop sometime where we do an Inky Inky Night. So this is on tracing paper, um, with— these are— I used AD Design markers. I just love the way they bleed on here. Yeah, this is pretty gorgeous. I'll zoom out, you can kind of see more of it here. Yeah, so it'd be fun to try these markers on this medium. Cool, right? All right guys, so that is, uh, kind of the Sharpie Creative Marker uncapping tonight. Little show and tell. They're a winner in my book. I can definitely see me using them a lot. I want to do mixed media stuff for sure. And this— here's— this was in the package. It says no bleed, um, which— this is thick paper, so watercolor paper, but there is no bleed on the other side. All right, the man, the man's throwing down even more color. He's just getting, he's getting crazy, getting crazy with color. Yeah, there you go. Nice page. Yeah, nice. You guys like the Inky Inky Night sketch? That was— it is pretty cool. What time is it? 9:37. Um, should I do a quick sketch? Let me know in the chat, yes or no. You can put yes, no, say yes, quick sketch, no. Uh, let me know what you're thinking. Let's see some love out there in streamland. While we're thinking about it, let's do— what do I want to break out here? Got a couple of small sketchbooks. This is a cool one. These are some New York City sketches, uh, started in 2023. This is my Zaros. Zaros makes incredible black and white Cookies. Their logo is a Z. I got a yes. I got some yeses for a sketch. Cool. MoMA. This is the MoMA. It goes this way. Museum of Modern Art. Part of the building outside. Yes. So I— in my sketchbooks, I— some people are very, um, organized. They like to keep all their sketches facing the same way in their sketchbooks, so you don't have to do this. When you're looking through. I am usually not that guy. I usually have to flip the pages. A little stairway, Empire State Building. This is a nice— this is a Moleskine. I love this little Moleskine sketchbook. Just has a thick cardboard cover on it. Here's a quick St. Patrick's. Let's do a— let's do a quick St. Patrick's. Maybe I'll just use this sketch. As kind of a ref, and we'll do a St. Patrick's and we'll throw down some of these Creative Markers on it. You guys, you guys up for that? Thank you for the yeses in the comments. And we're just going to use— it's going to use the back side of that sheet. Throw this down. All right, let's throw down a quick sketch of St. Patrick's. I'm going to sketch using a Sharpie. And here's my original. I'm just going to base it off this sketch from— this was done March 2023. And the fun thing with this is we'll throw down some colors again. All right, here we go. I'm going to do a quick loose— I'm holding the marker pretty not in the middle but towards the other end, so it's a little bit looser. And we'll sketch some spires here. We'll just kind of make this into a Gothic-looking cathedral. Speaking of which, I am starting to see Halloween decorations everywhere, all the stores. I guess it's not that far away, but I haven't even started school yet. Let's just draw kind of a gable here. We'll do a big arch in it. Maybe we have a— some kind of stained glass thing happening in here. Maybe we got another gable here. I'm just gonna— I just want to keep this really very loose and have fun with some colors on it. So I'd love to do another workshop this fall. Thinking of ideas, we might do another wonky building workshop. I'm not sure yet. Maybe, or maybe we'll do iconic architecture of the world or something. Just drawing this stained glass here. There we go. That's cool. All right, so we just got a kind of a cathedral-looking thing. Let's throw some crosses up there. Um, what else? All right, we'll leave it at that. Let's play around with those markers again. So one of the things I want to do is let's throw down some black, let it dry, then we'll come back, add some color on top of it. Where's that black marker? Here it is. There's— again, these— so again, these are the Sharpie Creative Markers, fresh out of the package. I'm just going to randomly throw some black in here and we'll come back and add color on top of it. And the idea here is just to be playful and see what these markers can do. You know what might be fun? Let's do some of this— let's do some of this black, the stained glass, and we'll put color on top and see what it looks like. Let's see if we can get a cool kind of effect with it. All right, that's cool. I don't want to overdo it with the black. Hey, D-Ray's in the house! Great to see you, great to see everybody out there. Thank you for, for tuning in. Alright, I'm just gonna grab and go with colors. I'm just picking stuff out of the pile. So I'm just grabbing and going. Just— we'll throw all the different colors on here. I really do love the orange. Let's see how well it covers. Let's break out some green for Linda. Linda is our, our green fan. So yeah, I am, I'm intentionally going really crazy with the colors. I just want to use them all on here. We've got a different green here, it's a darker green. So if you're just joining us, welcome. Tonight I am just doing an uncapping of these Sharpie Creative Markers, first time using them right out of the package. This is a non-sponsored I just went out and bought these and wanted to give them a try. So you're, you're joining me for the first time using these. It's always fun to break out new art stuff, right, and give it a try and just be playful with it. I really love the purple. I'm thinking so far purple and orange and the aqua, or I don't know if it's aqua or turquoise. Those are my 3 fave colors. I'm always looking for a good red. So far my favorite red to use are Pilot Precise Pens. This is my favorite red to use on sketches. Or these pens, but I'm kind of liking this red also. Just for fun, let's just cross some of these over and see what happens. All right, we got— let's see, we use the black, we have, uh, silver and then white. Let me throw on some more black because then I want to put white on top of it. Let's see, let's, uh, let's do a little test here. I'm going to go— can I go back over? There you go. So I can go back over those colors if you want. Alright, let's throw down some silver. I can see— have— I can see having a lot of fun playing with layers, just kind of layering colors on top of other colors. All right, cool. And then let's throw down some of that white. We're going to do it right on top of the black so it pops out. Let's check it out. Ready? Oh yeah, this goes down so nice. Very similar to the Posca white paint pen. All right, so there you go. This is our, uh, just creative playtime with our uncapping with the Sharpie Creative Markers. Let's break out the good old Sharpie and just throw in a little more lines on here. Let's throw down some, um, let's just make some tile roof on here. There we go. Yeah, so the Sharpie writes really nicely on top of the acrylic markers. A little bit of texture. Let's do some hatch lines, maybe. I used to be afraid of using color. I would never show it on screen. Everything was black and white. And that's— that is until I realized These sketches can be whatever color I want them to be. I don't have to replicate something I'm seeing exactly, or not even closely. Um, color for me equals another way to play. So color is playful, it's creative, it's getting your energy out, your feeling out. Um, yeah, don't be afraid to throw down some color. No, I still love black and white sketches, and they might be my favorites to do, actually. But color opens up another, like, another, another roadway in my creative mind, another outlet. This really needs yellow. So when I was using the yellow before— where's the yellow? Um, it was picking up some of the black, so it wasn't a nice clean vibrant yellow. Let's zoom in. I'm wondering if the black was not dry enough before. Let's try it again. So I'm going to go on top. I want to pop in some vibrant yellow. Yeah, there we go. I I was using the yellow and it hit some of the wet black, but I want to intensify it, just brighten this up a little bit, this yellow. There we go. Oh, sorry, off camera a little bit. There you go. Wah wah wah, the man's off camera. The man's off-kilter. All right, so there you can see it. I actually— I'm actually digging this kind of funky looking cathedral-ish structure. Awesome. Hey, Michael Marin. Michael, great to see you. It's been a while. Michael's on and over on the tube. Um, I'm, I'm loving these markers. I'm loving them. I, I can't find any faults. The only, the only thing I'm going to say is that if you really want— so if I really wanted to cover the black here big time, I'm gonna have to throw down a couple more layers of the yellow. Which I don't mind. I like that you can see through underneath. Like here, the red, I like you can see underneath my sketch lines. So if you're expecting something to be 100% opaque, um, not all these colors are. I'm going to say the purple is close and orange might be close to that. But just look at this close-up of these colors, right? How fun! They're really vibrant, they pop, they're fun. Hey, DB's in the house! Let me check the chat, guys, and we'll answer some questions. And you can take a look at this again. These are the Sharpie Creative Markers. Today's the uncapping. Here's the package. These are a big size. I don't know if there's a smaller size. This is a bullet point. They also come in a brush tip. This is the bullet. Um, let's be playful. Yes, I love all the comments here. I'm gonna go through, see if there's any questions. Are you Yeah, DB, are those new style Sharpies? Yes, they are. They're actually— Patty had mentioned these, I think. I honestly don't remember which, if Patty had the thinner points or exactly which ones, but these are, they're new to me. Yeah, green for Linda. I think this is silver. It's looking silver, not gray to me. I'll zoom in. So I'm going to, I'm going to call it silver. Maybe it's gray. Maybe as it dries it looks gray. I can't— it's kind of silvery gray, like some of my hair. Um, all right. Yes, D says he's a little off. Yeah, we, we all know that for sure. Awesome. So guys, I hope you, um, I hope you're liking this. Let's do our magical transformation, throw a frame around this. Even although I feel like I could use a little more, just want to pull out some of this a little bit. We'll make it a little more cathedral— cathedral-y here, gothic-y. Put some points on it. Get the point? Get that? Get the point? Let's just bring this point up here, make it Put a little finial on top. Cool. I always have fun just coming back in and pulling out some shapes, adding some hatch lines. Gives a little texture, maybe a little shadows. I want to pull this gable edge out. Just want to pop that out. Let's pop this side out a little bit more. This is kind of fun, actually. All right, let's take our frame and see what it looks like. Uh, we got some frames coming out. Frames are transformational. I was doing a sketch last week— which one was it? Um, we threw a frame around it and it transformed the entire image. It was astounding how dramatically it changed it. Let's just throw a little black frame on here. There you go. This actually looks kind of cool, doesn't it? Wow, that is fun. Let me know in the comments, what do you guys think? Do you like the vibrancy? Um, what are you thinking of these markers just based on what you're seeing? I'm really curious to know. I think it's a really good way to throw color down quick. So if you're looking for a quick, like, hey, boom, I want to throw this down, uh, in a kind of a vibrant, intense color, this is probably a great way to do it. Just for comparison, let me grab my, my neon pink color pencil. Let's throw some of that on here. You guys know I love my neon pink. Nothing's ever going to take the place of this, this color pencil. Just want to pop some of that pink on there. All right, I'm just putting on one more song and this will be the last song here. We'll wrap with this. All right, cool. So let me know if you have any final questions, comments, or thoughts. Hey, Jim Gypsy Minstrel Caravan, great to see you. Gypsy says looks great. Thank you so much. Michael's like, the black frame set it off. Yeah, right? Pro tip: throw frames around your sketches, it'll take them up a level for sure. DB, we'll have to get a set in case we do a fall workshop. DB, I will. Yeah, you know what, in the fall workshop we will probably use these. I don't know the topic yet. So guys, stay tuned if you're interested in joining a one-day, maybe like a 2 or 3 hour online Zoom workshop where we'll be sketching architecture together. Stay tuned. Make sure you sign up for my newsletter at, um, www.theinkspiredlife.com, uh, where you'll— I'll be posting when the workshop's coming. The next issue of the newsletter is happening on Monday, so newsletter will be coming out twice a month. It's free, usually on the 1st and somewhere around the 15th of the month. We'll have a newsletter out. The first issue is out there already. Hopefully you're enjoying it. If you subscribed and you're liking that first newsletter, let me know. Something new I'm trying. We all have that one favorite color, DB says. Yes, DB, we all know DB's favorite color. It pains me to say the color. It's Payne's Gray. See what I did there? It's Payne's Gray. DB is our Payne's Gray aficionado. Love it. Dearest is a frame, uh, did push out the sketch. Looks great. Yeah, heck yeah. I might try doing some NYC, New York City scenes like this. I can see a Brooklyn Bridge in this color, all these colors. Empire State Building. How about a Statue of Liberty? Hmm, I haven't sketched that in a while. Maybe we'll do that. All right guys, uh, DB says, I thought I subscribed to your newsletter. I, I'll go on the back end and see on there. I'm not sure who subscribed and who didn't, but I can check into it. For sure. So I'll, I'll check. I hope you did. If not, I'll let you know. And, um, I can subscribe you if I have your permission. It's free. Um, I can do that for you. I would just need your email, so you can always leave that in our chat on Facebook if you want to let me know. That'd be so cool, guys. You're amazing. I am super, super excited for tomorrow. I'm going to a really cool place I've been to once before, doing some urban sketching. My friend's going to do some, some video footage of me sketching so I could put together some promo pieces. I really— here's my goal. I'm sharing this with you guys because you're awesome. My goal is to take this, what I do here, what I love, I want to take it to the next level. I want to be able to serve on the next level using my passion and love of sketching, put it out there and serve in some way possible. That's my goal. I'm working hard on it. And, um, just push yourself every day to try something new, to take one more step, spend one more second, um, one more minute working on your art. There's a guy, there's a motivational coach, a guru out there. His name is Ed Mylett. And he has a concept of just doing one more. So, um, just one more will take you to that next level. Cameron, you're awesome. Hope you're doing well. We'll have to catch up. Good luck in your new semester. I hope it goes really well. DB says permission granted. Excellent. Thank you for the hearts on there. Uh, YouTubers, great seeing you. Michael was out there. Gypsy King was on there. Not Gypsy King, sorry, Gypsy Minstrel Caravan. I like the Gypsy Kings, um, they do great music. So sorry about that. And Dylan was out there. Thank you guys for watching on YouTube. Make sure you hit that subscribe and like and share this. Let's get the numbers up out there. Um, yeah, that'd be so cool. My Facebook people, you're awesome. Thank you everybody for your support. Remember, keep using your creativity for positivity. That's it, guys. I will be bringing you some fun stuff soon. Keep sketching the world around you one line at a time. All right, guys, peace out. We'll see you real soon.