Architecture + Urban Sketching : St. Patrick's Cathedral

Happy Sunday, September 29th. Hope you're doing well. Um, 9:36 PM here. I am getting ready to go to bed, but before I do, I want to just do, uh, do a sketch. I haven't sketched anything today, so I need to get it out of my system. I love sketching. Architecture. And I think I'm going to sketch, um, just something inspired by St. Patrick's Cathedral. So thank you for watching. Let me know if any questions or comments. Hey Linda, good to see you. Hope all's well in Ohio. Hope you're doing okay. So great to see you on I love it. It looks like you're over on YouTube, which is really cool. I appreciate that. If you're on YouTube, I would love for you to hit that thumbs up like button. That would be so cool, and that way it gets shared out and maybe more peeps on YouTube will, uh, tune in. That'd be so cool. So I'm just doing a sketch here that's kind of inspired by St. Patrick's Cathedral. It's fun to pop on here at random times, and it's— what was I saying? Oh yeah, it's great to be here on this Sunday night. Oh my gosh, I got lost in this sketching, forgot what I was saying. Hey, Karen's in the house! Karen, great to see you. Karen's over on the Facebook side of things. Love it. We have Linda on YouTube, Karen on Facebook. You guys are coming in from all angles of social media. Love it, love it. All's good here in New Jersey. It's just been very, very busy, crazy with school. Which is okay. I love teaching. It's just been a very busy start to the school year, but everything's going well. Time is flying by. I can't believe October is— it's here. Fall's here, my favorite season. We fortunately fared well with the weather here, just some rain, but my heart goes out and prayers go out to those that were, uh, were devastated by Hurricane Helene. So sad. Let's all send positive vibes and prayers out to those who need it. Weather is crazy. I remember being at the University of Miami. Forgive me, I'm gonna forget the year. Uh, Hurricane Andrew, 1992. I was on campus when a hurricane came through Miami. Um, fortunately the campus fared fairly well, but not too far away there was total, um, devastation. A lot of trailer home parks. Um, it was just— it was crazy. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about being there. And we were, uh, I guess quarantine the word, we had to stay in our dorms. So I lived in a 12-floor dormitory building made out of thick, thick concrete walls. We had hurricane shutters on the outside of the building. So we were, uh, we were— it was, uh, back-to-school time, so students were moving in, there were parents there, we were all kind of sheltered in place. And I can remember, you know, losing power, and I remember just hearing things flying and debris hitting the hurricane shutters. And, um, I mean, that's just a minor experience compared to other devastation. So prayers, prayers out to all those. It's crazy. You never know, right? Hey Karen, thank you for, um, sending stars on Facebook. I know you do that and I, I appreciate it. It means so much to me. I, I thank you so much. That is really, really awesome. Cool. So you can see, hopefully you can tell this is a cathedral. This is, uh, inspired, inspired by St. Patrick's. I love St. Patrick's Cathedral. I'm just changing. I'm listening to some music here. Cool. If you're ever in New York City, I highly recommend checking out St. Patrick's Cathedral. It is open, so you can go inside and look in there. It's right near Rockefeller Center, so you could work that into a nice trip. Such an amazing space inside. I love it, love it. I've only been inside of it twice, but, uh, it's, it's just so beautiful. I love sketching these kind of Gothic cathedrals because there's so many angles and points to them, and these spires are so cool. You know, so I'm just kind of keeping it loose and fast, and hopefully you guys can tell that if I didn't tell you this was St. Patrick's, hopefully you'd be able to tell it's some kind of a cathedral building. And if so, my job is done, is successful. Just like I tell my students in school, they have weekly sketchbook assignments, and I'll usually assign buildings for them to sketch. Um, and I always say the end goal is if someone looks at your sketch and they can get an idea of what building you were sketching, that's all that matters. We don't need precision, we don't need to be precise, just capture some of the main features of a building or the overall shapes. I love this, uh, I think it's called an oriel, O-R-I-E-L, this round window. Correct me if I'm wrong. O-R-I-E-L. I am sketching on cold press paper tonight, 140-pound. Here's the paper I'm using, 1264 Fabriano, my go-to kind of sketch paper. And I'm just— I just have the Sharpie out. I'm going to zoom in so you can see a little more of the line work. I am so happy just going back over lines many times. It kind of is how my brain works. It's how my, my hand-eye coordination works, and it really is effective for that loose style sketching I love doing so much because I am not— I'm not worried about precise clean lines. I'm really sketching with feeling and kind of energy right now. And a lot of sketching for me is about expressing feelings, emotions, energy. It's not really about clean precision. That's where my architecture brain comes in when I'm drawing, creating floor plans and blueprints of buildings, houses. This is my let go, let loose, let the emotions fly time. And this does go on, I mean, this goes on, building continues back, back in here. So let's just draw some of the kind of these pointy spires we have going on, and I'm going to just let it fade off a little bit. I really want to focus on this piece of the, of the cathedral. Hey, Chipson House. Chip, great to see you. Hope all is well. Chip, this is St. Patrick's Cathedral. Working on doing a little bit of St. Pat's here, as the cool people call it. St. Pat's. Not saying I'm cool, but the cool people say St. Pat's. Trying to sound hip, trying to sound like a hip dude. I'm Um, I just want to show a little bit of the side here. I'm not really— again, I'm just going to let it really be simple over here. I want this piece to kind of read. I think I'm just going to stick with Sharpie for tonight, so I'm not going to break out any colors, any other inks. Let's just, let's just, let's just do shading with Sharpie. It's a tongue twister. We got some stairs going here. Let's just draw some. Oh, how are we going to draw these? Let's see. So keep them pretty loose, pretty light for now. I'm just going to hatch in some shadows and shading. Sometimes I just love keeping my sketches black and white. I— for me, they're— it can be really dramatic. Have a really cool kind of punch to it without worrying about throwing down color. Although when I do color, I don't really worry about it. I just kind of throw it down. But yeah, my brain, my brain is tired. My brain's tired, but my creativity wants— is saying go, go, go. Do you ever have that? Hey, D-Raising House! D-Ray, great to see you. So now I'm just going to throw in some details here and there. You know, there are windows going on, so maybe for the windows I'm just going to do just some vertical kind of slits here, just give the idea that there's kind of windows going on. It'll darken these up a little bit, these kind of circles. There's a pediment here, a pointed gable happening. Can exaggerate some of these pointed pieces of the building. For me, Gothic architecture is very pointy, has arches and a lot of, uh, especially cathedrals, a lot of points to them. So I'm kind of exaggerating some of these kind of spikes here. Let me zoom out a little bit so you can see it, kind of the piece. I'm kind of liking this. Um, I'm going to leave a lot of white space in here. I, I'm liking the form, the shape of it. We'll darken some more areas and I think we'll call it a day on it. Yes, Asheville, I know. Yeah, again, prayers, prayers. Um, Prayers for all those that were devastated by the hurricane. Um, I was in Asheville. When did I go to Asheville? Yeah, I was at the Biltmore. Dang, was that last year? I think it was April of 2022, somewhere around there. Yes, dramatic when using black and white. Yeah, I just like— I'm just going to go and add some hatch lines. I'm liking just the black and white on this one. I'm not feeling the need to add any color. I do want to pop some of these shapes out a little bit more. Feel free to ask me any questions or leave some comments. I'll check in again before I wrap up on this tonight. Again, I really appreciate you guys tuning in and popping on here. It's so cool to see you guys out there. Would, um, Chip said, would like to send you some pics of Oxford, England, known as the City of Spires. Your skills would really enhance the whole experience of that city. Chip, I would love that. That would be so, so cool. Yeah, if you— I would love for you to send me pictures and, um, we'll sketch. We'll definitely sketch what you send. That'd be amazing. Thank you so much. I don't know, guys, I'm, I'm almost feeling like this one's kind of done for tonight. I love the presence it gives, black and white. Hey, thank you, D-Ray. Me too. So I am doing some artistic licensing— license here. There's definitely— there are skyscraper here, another building in here, another building back here, buildings over here, but I'm just kind of pretending they're not there. I'm just going to skip this song. Let's see, we'll put one more song on and I'll wrap up. I'm just going to go through which I pick out here. Sorry you guys can't hear the music. I would be, uh, flagged for copyright infringement if I played the music I'm listening to. I stopped paying. I used to pay for a service to stream music. It was getting too expensive, so I stopped streaming music. You may have noticed my live streams have been music-free. It was, uh, yeah. It's just a financial decision. And let me know if you guys even miss the music or not. I need to listen to it. I'm creating— it motivates me, it drives me. Let's try this song, maybe. Oh, what'd I do? There we go. Cool. I'm liking this one. Let's see, I'm going to pull, pull another St. Patrick's Cathedral sketch. I think I have one, I have one right behind me. Let's take a look and compare. So here's, here's another St. Patrick's Cathedral sketch. You can get right, and you could pick up this— I did the same thing on this sketch, you know, I left a lot of white space, but it's really the shape, the spires, the pointy lines and arches that speak to me when I look at St. Patrick's. So you'll notice that's what I tried to pick up here, and I did the same thing, bigger sketch, same idea. So it's the same building from looking from, uh, two different viewpoints of it. I'll keep it here so you can see it. Let me see if there's any other questions or comments, and we're going to wrap up. I was glad to see you on, got me away from the news. Oh yeah, D-Ray, I'm glad I could take you away from the news. I, um, I, I don't watch the news anymore. I haven't watched the news in years. I can't deal with the news, so I'm pretty much news-free. I find out what I need to find out when I need to find out about it. Um, so I'm glad I could help you escape from the news for the night. A lot of crazy things going on out there, which is really good point. Sketching for me is a way of— it is a form of escapism, and I admit it. And Lately I've been thinking maybe I sketch too much. Maybe I'm escaping too much. Um, I don't know if that's a possibility or not, but sketching is definitely a way for me to escape into a happy place, a place I can create, whether it's an existing building or a fictitious imaginary place. It's a— sketching is just a great creative escape for me. Oh, that's cool. You baked a birthday cake for your grandson. Well, happy birthday to your grandson. I love that. Hey, DB's in the house! DB, good to see you. Hope all's well. Hope you fared well through those storms. I know, I believe you're pretty close to, um, the Boone area, right? I hope you're doing well. Hope your family's safe. Hope your community is safe and your friends. How— you're welcome. I'm more than happy to check on you. You, you guys are my friends out there, my peeps. And, uh, hope you don't mind me calling you friends, but I feel like we are all friends. And, uh, I care, so least I could do is reach out. Both great, but I like that— the one tonight. Chip likes the one better tonight. Hey Chip, What do you like about the one tonight that's better? I'm curious. What's your— I would love your feedback. That's so cool. I always appreciate your guys' feedback on my work. No such thing as too much. That's true. No, you don't. Love watching you create, DB says. Cool. Yeah, and also notice this, I left this one black and white. I have a thing with leaving St. Patrick's black and white. Maybe that's interesting. I never noticed that. I keep looking over here on my board on the wall. I have, I don't know, 20 sketches over there. I don't see any St. Patrick's on that wall. Trying to see if I could find another one if I left that one black and white. Not seeing any other ones. So cool. Um, darker lines and more 3D, love the depth. All right, that is so cool. Yeah, Chip, same with you, Chip. I know you're in the area where the hurricane had, uh, all that junk came through. I'm— hope you guys are doing well, your friends and family are all doing okay. Cool. Hey, my light went off behind me. I just noticed that it's after 10 o'clock. All right guys, so that is St. Patrick's Cathedral. What do I have next to me here? Um, I am going to be having a— I was going to say auctions, that's the word. Yeah, auction, or auction or pop-up sale. I'm not sure which way to go with all of my New York City sketches I have. I am surrounded by well over 100 New York City sketches and they need to go to good homes where people can appreciate them. So maybe I might do like a pop-up sale online or some kind of auction at the end of this week. So stay tuned, I'd love for you guys to be part of it if you're available. Um, yeah, and we'll even put some St. Patrick's sketches out there as well. I'll zoom in so you can see some details before I head out, just so you can see what all these lines look up look like close up. I'll just kind of pan up and you can kind of take a look at it. DB says, I like tonight's better, agree with Chip. Awesome, well thanks guys. It's nice visual, the focal point agrees with me. All right, D-Ray, you guys are liking tonight's, that's so cool. Bruno and Ash are devastated, prayers please. Yeah. Guys, let's all please send prayers out, please. It's— yeah, my heart goes out. Crazy, crazy, crazy. There you go. I'm gonna get even super, super closer so you can see the lines. Just so you can see how, um, you can see how I leave lines unfinished. You can see how I'm very kind of scribbly. I go over lines more than once, and that's just being kind of quick and loose, not worrying about being detail-oriented. It's just, uh, it's how I roll with the Sharpie and some paper. I like to say, if you can scribble, you can sketch architecture. And this kind of shows it. A lot of scribbliness going on, right? A lot of scribble scrabble. Let me move this over a little bit. There we go. So here you can see the hatching. I did, um, I did a quick demo in school the other day about hatching. Let me see, I'll just do it on here. So I sometimes will hatch a couple different ways. To create shadows. Let's just kind of— we'll do some in here. So one way is I could do some just diagonal lines, kind of clean like those. It's kind of how this is down here, but then I mixed it up. Sometimes I'll go clean lines, but if I'm doing really quick loose sketching, it'll be more like this. I'm just— I'm really just scribbling these lines in here. Can you see that? Uh, personally, I like this, the scribblier look better versus the cleaner diagonal lines. So a couple different ways I like to indicate overhang, you know, to add depth or shadow, especially under overhangs. Here, this is kind of a doorway. I just want to make it look— have some depth or recess to it. That didn't help. I'm talking with my hands and covering the picture. I should do this. Some depth to it. There you go. Can you see that depth? I use my hands a lot when I'm talking. I'm half Italian. I guess that the Italian half is my hands. Um, so just a couple of ways. You could also color things in solid. So let's just Uh, we could do that here. Let's just do here. I'm going to just shade this in solid. There's a reason I don't normally color in shading solid like this. Um, I'll do that with windows, but shading, not usually. It kind of takes away from that loose look for me. So I'd rather keep the shading loose instead of a solid black in there. Hopefully that makes sense. Hey, Judy Morgan's over on the YouTube side of things. Awesome, welcome to the YouTube side. Hope you're doing well. More inks, po. Very cool. I'm glad you like it. So this is what it looks like close up, guys. So sometimes it's fun to see that, and when you zoom out, just look what happens, right? We'll zoom out. The magic of the zoom button. Zoom out again. Zoom out again. Zoom out one more time. Boom. So that's how all of that comes together. Loose, fast, wonky, sketchy. Um, I was looking at a reference picture, so on my phone I have a reference picture I took right here. This picture I took of St. Patrick's Cathedral, so I didn't do this from memory. I did look at a picture, but I do think I'm at a point where I can actually sketch the outline of St. Patrick's from memory, and maybe we'll try that some other time. You guys are awesome. I appreciate y'all so, so much. Again, prayers out to everybody that was in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Helene. Um, Durex is— loose is better. Yeah, I agree, loose is better. Very cool. Hey, you guys are awesome. I have school tomorrow, so I'm going to get ready for bed. Busy week coming up. I do appreciate you guys so, so much. If you're on over on YouTube, please hit that like button, that thumbs up. It'll share it out with more people. Um, also, I've been putting out a lot of shorts, not the kind you wear. Put up video shorts and reels. Uh, hopefully you guys are catching some of them. And then basically there are clips and highlights from videos with some key points or some inspo or some creative mindset tips. Um, so hopefully you're checking out those short videos. If you like those, be sure to like them and thumbs up as well. I want to put this out there. My goal is to get to 1,000 subscribers before the end of October, which is my birthday month. So close. I think I'm at 8— what was that last time I looked? 869, I think. So let's get this up to 1,000 just so we can share positivity through creativity. That is an important mission to me. Peace and prayers to you all. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much. Have an amazing and blessed week. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inkspired Life. I'll see you guys real soon, and stay alert for, uh, towards the end of the week I'll have a pop-up sale or auction on my NYC sketches. I'm not sure which one yet. Peace out, everybody. Appreciate y'all. Take care.