In this informal live sketching session, artist Jason Nicholas experiments with an inverse color technique by drawing on black paper using a white colored pencil. He explains his choice of materials—a thin black paper from a big‑box art store, a white colored pencil, and optional white gel pens, crayon, and Posca paint pen—while adjusting his lighting to reduce glare. Jason sketches a winter scene of Bryant Park, focusing on the Christmas tree in the foreground and several iconic New York landmarks: the black, gold‑accented American Radiator Building, the Empire State Building, and the New York Public Library in the distance. Throughout the demo he interacts with viewers, asks for feedback on visibility, mentions a brief technical glitch, and concludes with a positive, gratitude‑filled sign‑off encouraging viewers to “pay it forward with positivity.”
Chapters
Hey everybody, happy Monday, November 13th. It's almost 9 o'clock PM here in New Jersey. I see Linda is on. Hey Linda, good to see you. Um, yeah, I'm just looking at my screen settings. I was looking for a window to turn on, but I can't find the icon. But no worries. Hope you guys are doing well. I'm on really, really briefly, um, I'm gonna do a little bit something a little bit different. I'm actually going to use black paper, sketch with white. Why not? Sometimes it's cool to mix things up, be different, get your brain going in different directions. So let's give it a shot. Hopefully it shows up. I have no idea. So I'm just using this type of paper paper right here, and, um, I bought it, I think, at one of our big box art supply stores. And so it'll be fun to give it a shot. It's pretty thin paper, and let's do it. Hope you guys are doing well. Let me know where you're watching from and how things are going. All right, let's sketch this here. You might have to zoom in. Let me actually zoom in. Again, I don't know how well this is going to show up. I usually have two lights on. I only have one on right now. I think the other one was causing too much glare. So I'm just using a white colored pencil here. It looks like it's showing up pretty well. Let me know on screen, can you see this okay? To me, it looks like it's showing up all right. So I'm sketching another scene inspired by Bryant Park, looking up at some— looking at the Christmas tree that they put up there, some buildings in the background. This is kind of the wonky, loose style Christmas tree here that I'm looking at, that I'm sketching right now. Which is really kind of in the foreground of the scene. Actually, I think you can see it okay if I zoom out also. It says, I'll need to watch the replay, I'm in class now. No worries. Replay will be available for you. Enjoy your class. I'm just sketching some people here, kind of in the scene. This is the American Radiator Building. I think it's still called that, I could be wrong. This building right here is the Radiator Building. It's actually, um, it's a black high-rise building with gold accents on it. Really cool building. And over to the right, back in here, would be the Empire State Building. Kind of happening. Cool. Alright, I just got some kind of weird error message. I'm going to keep sketching. I'm almost done anyway. I don't even know if I'm live right now, but that's okay because I'm going to sketch anyway. I'm loving it. Always fun. And over here we actually have the New York Public Library kind of back in the distance a little bit. Beautiful building. Alright, I don't know how much more I'm gonna do to this scene. I did bring out some other white drawing equipment here. I have some gel pens, I have a white— what is this, crayon? Art crayon. I also have a white Posca paint pen. I think I'm just gonna stick with the white colored pencil. I like the way it's looking. I want to pull out the tree a little bit darker, or say brighter, a little bit whiter here. Kind of go around the outline, just pull it out. Cool. There you go. I like it. So a quick scene inspired by Bryant Park and the Christmas tree on black paper with a white colored pencil. Thank you guys for watching. I appreciate y'all so, so much. Have an amazing rest of your month. Keep paying it forward with positivity. Take care. See you soon.
