Friday Night Sketch and Chill - 05/30/2025
In this live‑stream, Jason Nicholas (The Inkspired Life) walks viewers through an impromptu urban sketch of Brooklyn’s Domino Sugar Refinery, using mixed‑media on kraft paper. He introduces the session, greets his audience across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, and shares his personal back‑story of a sleepless, stressful day that he counters with sketching. Jason demonstrates his material setup—Sharpie Creative Markers, Sharpie gel pen, colored pencils, and a black Sharpie—explaining why he chooses thin kraft paper and how each medium behaves. He sketches the building’s outline, adds loose, expressive color (favoring aqua, chartreuse, neon pink, and occasional whites and blacks), and highlights details like the curved glass roof, chimney, and a taco stand in the foreground. Throughout, he offers creative‑process tips for staying loose: setting simple creative intentions, using music, sketching quickly, timing sessions, and avoiding the “comparison trap.” He engages directly with live chat, giving shout‑outs to viewers, encouraging likes and subscriptions, and reiterating his goal of reaching 1,000 YouTube subscribers. The stream ends with reflections on how sketching transforms his mental state, a call for viewers to try sketching themselves, and a warm sign‑off.
Chapters
Hey there everybody, happy, uh, Friday night, May 30th, 2025. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life, where I love sketching architecture and urban sketching. Yeah, just capturing the world around me one line at a time is, uh, it just transforms my whole thinking process, my creative process. It transforms how I process the world around me. So stay tuned, uh, for some Friday night sketch and chill. I think I know what I'm gonna work on tonight, so I'll tell you in a sec. So hello anybody watching on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and am I missing someone? Facebook! How could I forget Facebook? Um, hope you all had a great day today. It's been a very crazy week. I am exhausted. I literally slept like 2 hours last night. And, uh, you know what, I should be in bed, but my brain, my heart, my creative spirit wants to do something, some kind of sketching before I go to bed. So that's why I'm on. So let's do some sketching. Um, if you're watching on TikTok, hello! I can't see your names, but please comment, like, and all that fun stuff. So this weekend I'm going to, uh, be heading to Brooklyn, uh, the Domino Park area, and being— and doing some urban sketching. It's going to be amazing. Here is my favorite building in Domino Park. It's the Domino Sugar Refinery building. Here's kind of a really loosey-goosey sketch I did of it, um, last year. Uh, what year was this? This was from 2024. This was an old sugar refinery that's now been transformed into kind of really cool office space. I was able to take a tour of it when it was under construction. So, so cool. So that'd be fun, just do some sketches of it, loose, quick, fun. I am going to throw down some color. I have my Sharpie Creative Markers and I have some colored pencils and of course my Sharpie. So, um, let's do it. This is just brown kind of craft paper, like almost paper bag type of paper. Um, Soho is the brand I'm using. It's pretty thin, it's only 65 pounds. You can't really do heavy watercolor or ink washes on it, so— but I love the way colors pop on it. Here's some examples. Oh, this is from, uh, I had a lighthouse workshop I did. Here's some lighthouse sketches. There's a really cool one, let me see if I could find it. Here, this is my favorite one. So check out how the colors pop on this paper. This is Sharpie and Sharpie black marker and Sharpie Creative Markers. So I thought it'd be fun to do some sketches in this one tonight. Here's another cool lighthouse I did. This is, um, Pemaquid Lighthouse in Maine. Again, this is a black Sharpie marker and Creative Markers. So let's do it. Let's, uh, just throw down some stuff, some lines for the Brooklyn Bridge sketch. And hello, TikTok people, great to see you. Sam and Grandma is on there. I can't see all the names, guys. Um, if you want to know what I'm listening to, I have a playlist in the comments. Check it out, it's on— you can see what I'm listening to on Spotify right now if you're interested. I can't play it because it's copyrighted, so you can't hear it, but I can hear it in my ear. AirPod. All right, let's do it. I think I need a new Sharpie. This Sharpie has— seems like it expired. So now we're actually going to use— I'm going to use a Sharpie gel pen. I have one of those right here. Sharpie gel pen, pretty cool. So this building, um, one of the iconic things about it is this curved glass roof on it, which I believe is now just kind of open hangout space, recreation space for the people that work in the building, kind of maybe like lounge area. And there's an iconic chimney kind of on the side of the building here. I should have pulled this out a little bit. Not to scale, but all I want to do is throw down some lines tonight. I was kind of having a rough day. Did you ever have a rough day and, um, you got to get your brain in a different place? So I had a one of those days today. I just want to get my brain into a different place before I go to bed, and sketching— sketching is one way that kind of just transforms the way I'm thinking, that state of mind. So it's a real powerful tool for me. It's actually— it's a game changer. So that's just one— that's one of the reasons I just love putting my pen down and just letting it kind of be loose and scribbly. So I'm just, I'm just kind of outlining the shape of the building right now, and then we'll throw down some colors. That's cool. I just want to throw down that to start with. And now the fun— the more fun part. Well, I shouldn't say more fun. The next fun part is let's throw down some color. I am grabbing and going with colors. These aren't the colors of the building, colors I just feel like using. Um, always want to use the aqua color somewhere. It's one of my favorites, if not the number one favorite color. It probably is number one, is aqua. Got some orange. What else? I was gonna grab and go. I don't, I don't like to pre-plan. I just like to grab and go, and that keeps me looser and more just kind of winging it in a way. Way out in the park, kind of in front of this building, there's a little— there's a taco stand here called Tacocina. You can kind of see I captured it here, just the idea of it. So that's what I'm just kind of sketching that in the foreground. Hey, Raquel! Raquel Itau! Itau! Hey, on Instagram, if I said your name wrong, I'm sorry. Great to see you on Instagram, Chip. Great to see you on Facebook. We got some cool people hanging out on TikTok, it looks like. I see Christopher and Wayne and Wendy. Awesome. Kimberly is on there as well. Thank you guys on TikTok for tuning in. Hope you guys, if you like what you're seeing, feel free to give me a heart out there, give me some likes, follow. My goal is to hit 1,000 subscribers on YouTube before before the summer is over. I'm at 951. I think I could do it. Close. And it's not really so much about numbers, it's really more— I just want to get— I just want to put it out there, spread positive vibes through creativity. Um, I want to show you, I mean, don't be afraid to express your stuff and put it out there. You know, I'm not Picasso, I'm not da Vinci, I'm me, and I'm just bringing myself to the table. And guys, if I can do this, you can. This looks like a cool color. I don't even know if I use this one. This is, um, so the Sharpie Creative Markers do not have the color names on here. We're gonna call it like a sky blue color. So the Domino Sugar Factory is, um, It's along the, um, oh my gosh, the East River. Really cool views of the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge. Really cool kind of little park area around this structure as well. Um, it is, it is probably in my top 3 favorite places to sketch in New York City. It's so hard to pick favorite locations. The city is so amazing, it's so incredible. So many opportunities. But I am— I love old industrial architecture, whether the buildings are old and falling apart or they've been restored but have that industrial character, that vibe. I think that's the kind of design architecture I'm most attracted to. I feel like old buildings have a lot of stories they can tell. So you might notice I'm throwing down color, but I'm not coloring everything solid. I'm leaving a lot of open space, and that's just my style. I like to show, show my buildings that way. Hey, uh, TikTok people, how are you? Good to see you out there. Instagram as well, Facebook and YouTube. I'll hold this closer so you guys can get a kind of a closer view of what's happening. I'm gonna zoom in, I think, a little bit. There we go, that's cool. I think that's a better view. I need some yellow. Let's throw some yellow down. Do I have a yellow? I do. Oh, I actually have this All right, I'm trying some colors here I haven't used yet with the Creative Markers. We have kind of a brown color and yellow. I like these brush tip markers. You can do really thin lines like this, or you can kind of use the side, push down and get kind of wide swaths of color. That may be the first time I've ever used the word swath. I don't know if— I don't think I've used that word before. Um, here's that brown color. Let's see what this looks like on the, on the kraft paper. Pretty cool. All right, let's pick— let's break out some colored pencils. So I have a whole bin here. That's kind of pretty. Let's just hold that on screen for a sec. Soak in the colors. C'est magnifique. Um, then we have some more in here. These are, these are, uh, this is my little Lockbee Quattro I carry around, and I have just usually put my favorite colors in here. Yeah, let's use chartreuse. Yeah, let's just use some chartreuse. I'm, I'm just going crazy with color here. All right, throw down some windows. What do I want to do for windows? No, actually, I'm going to use a white— let's use a white creative marker for our windows. It's kind of hard to see the white on— get against the yellow, so I might change that to, um, let's do black. Do I have a black creative marker? I do. Bingo! So I'm going to use the black for the windows in this area just so they pop a little bit. There you go. We have the iconic Domino kind of sign on top of the building here. Hey, Allah and Bourbon, Mary Lana. Hey guys on TikTok, good to see you over there. I'm going to take this Sharpie Creative Marker and just— I want to pull some areas out with the black ink. This is a cool chimney structure here. I kind of like it. This, this one might be done. I don't want to overdo it. You can kind of see it close up there. I'm almost done. I do want to— I gotta throw in one of my signature colors, neon pink. Oh, I typically like to throw pops of neon pink somewhere. Um, it's just a fun, vibrant color, adds a sense of whimsy to things. I don't want to overdo it though. I usually put it in 3 places, so I have 1, 2, and we'll just pop a little bit maybe up in here. There we go. So I have some pink on there. You guys can see it there. Pretty cool. So this is just a quick sketch of the Domino Sugar Factory. Um, where's my— that's right, we use the gel pen, right? I'm just going to throw a little bit of hatch lines on here just to give it kind of a shade— shading effect. I really like using Sharpie gel pens. They just kind of glide right onto the paper. There we go. I think this one's done. I mean, if you have any questions or comments, I'm gonna check the chat in a sec. Let me go to YouTube here. I'm gonna— you and TikTok people, I'm moving you. Hold on tight. I'm gonna move you closer. Boom! There we go. You can see a little bit better. Pretty cool. Hello, Charlie and Jean. I see you on TikTok. Annabelle, good to see you guys. I appreciate you for watching so much. So you can see the Domino Sugar Factory sketch we were just working on. So, good question, here's what I used. I used a Sharpie gel pen, colored pencils, Sharpie creative markers, on this sketch. So it's a mixed media sketch. I love doing mixed media. It's really exciting just to put different, different materials together. They react differently, they show up differently, they make you think a little differently as well. So it's— if you want to challenge yourself when you're sketching, do mixed media. It'll, it'll really make you think outside the box in a lot of different ways. One of my challenges is when I do this is not to go too, too crazy and overdo it. Um, some people may think this is overdone, but for me, this is actually restraining myself when I do mixed media. So yeah, it's a good way to challenge yourself if you're looking for thinking outside your creative wheelhouse. Hopefully that makes sense. All right, let's see, what time is it? Maybe I'll do another quick thing here. What else do we have in here? We have a water tower kind of thingy we did. Um, I used this when I was doing my lighthouse workshop, teaching that. Here's a— here's actually a cool sketch of the Brooklyn Bridge. I kind of like the way this one came out. This is the same material as the Sharpie. This wasn't a Sharpie gel pen, this was a Sharpie black marker, but you'll see the Creative Markers as well on that. And if you're watching me live and you see my face over there, I may have seen me— I just spilled some coffee. Cold, cold coffee. It's cold now. Um, what else? Anything else I want to show you guys in here? Here's a— this is a cool sketch. This is of the Brooklyn Library, and just was playing around perspective on here. Uh, this— the red on here is my favorite red to use, and my favorite red is a Pilot Precise Red pen. So that's the red you see on this one. All right, let's throw down another quick sketch. This sketch, guys, I'm just gonna go wherever I imagine, whatever comes into my brain, my imagination. It may end up looking like nothing. And that's fine. So I'm actually going to be quiet for a couple minutes, believe it or not, and we'll do, uh, some more sketching. So again, I'm just, I'm just winging it, guys. I'm just throwing down lines, throwing down colors. I don't— I'm not going for anything specific here. The only, the only creative intention I have right now is to have fun throwing down colors. That's where my brain is at. Yeah, it just It puts me in a good mood just to be playful. Sometimes I think we're— we think too rigid, we think too stiff, we think too, too, uh, set on an end result, and it kind of can shut down our, our looseness. You know, a big question I get is, how, how do we keep a loose style? How do I sketch so loose? Um, one of the things is I set creative intentions. So oftentimes I'll say in my brain before I start something, or I'll be like, for this sketch, I just want to throw color down. Done. That's it. The only expectation is to throw color down. Or maybe it's, I want to practice, I want to do some arches, some curves. Maybe I want to show some brick. Maybe you want to sketch a window. So it gives your brain a focus, kind of an end target. Without being too specific. Specificity can, for me, sometimes shut me down and not make me want to do anything, or, or, um, just kind of freezes my brain. So to keep loose, I sometimes like creative intentions. Another way I like to keep loose is, um, music. Music helps my style to Just go with the music, keeps it moving. Another thing is sketching fast. Sketching fast helps keep me loose because there's less time for me to stop and think. Once I stop and think, I start pre-planning, and, um, sometimes pre-planning can can shut me down because I'm thinking too much and not doing anything. Does that make sense? So maybe a pro tip, maybe set a timer, maybe say, okay, I'm gonna give myself 3 minutes to sketch something. Timer on, go! Don't think, just go throw stuff down on paper. Another way I like to keep kind of loose with my style is I not compare myself. I call it the comparison trap. It's hard. This is so hard, guys. This is so hard. That's what a hard concept— it's hard to follow through. But if I sit there and I'm like And I say to myself right now, oh my God, this sketch is horrible. Look at Pietro's— whoever Pietro is— look at Pietro's sketch. It's beautiful. I can never be like Pietro. Why am I doing this? That just shuts you down. Shuts your creativity down. Shuts your mental thinking down. It just freezes you. It's okay to be inspired by other creatives and artists, you know, use their inspiration as fire and fuel to light you up and do your thing. So like, I don't— this— I'm just having fun. I don't care if people are gonna hate on this, that's fine. And it might sound selfish, but I honestly, I'm really just doing this for me right now. And when for you guys, because I want you guys just to see my creative thought process. This is actually looking very cool. I'm going to hold it closer, uh, so you guys can see it. I'm kind of liking it here. It's kind of just a little perspective view, maybe looking down an alleyway. Maybe there's a garden wall on the left happening. On TikTok, you can see it closer there as well. Hopefully you guys can see that. Okay, cool, right? Hey, D-Ray's on! D-Ray says, very true. Thanks, D-Ray, great to see you. Love it. Yeah, this is fun. I, I didn't know where this was going to go, but as I was working on it You know, this garden wall thing kind of popped in my brain. Honestly, it popped in my brain after I just grabbed the green. Hey Linda, I see on Instagram. Hi Linda, good to see you. So I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna add some Sharpie on top of here just to pull some shapes out. It's okay if you're sketching and you're adding color, and this applies to watercolor or ink washes, you can always come back and pull out shapes and details. So I often like to come back and do that, um, 9 times out of 10 with a Sharpie or a black Pilot Precise pen. Do a little keystone up here, maybe we'll show some stones on top of the arch. Just to add a little interest to it. I'm going to zoom in. D-Ray says hello everyone here and there. Hey D-Ray, thank you. All right, let me zoom in. You guys can probably see it better. Pretty cool, right? I like cold decaf coffee. I know that sound might sound weird, but it's pretty dang good. All right, and I'm just adding some lines, get— pull some texture out. These might be some— these might be stairs in the background. So I like to just do these vertical lines to help indicate maybe we got some stairs happening there. Anybody who's watched me knows I like to add growies, growies to the— to my sketches, especially along the foundation or the base of buildings or walls. So let's throw some growies down here. What color should I use? I want something that's going to pop, pop, pop, pop. Maybe we'll break out— look, let's use the Chartreuse color pencil. Here it is. See if it pops. I'm not sure if it will. Maybe we got some growies. No, it's not really popping enough. Actually, I'm just gonna do it with the black. It'll pop. So growies is like, or like grasses or weeds growing up along the base of a building. Um, I like to show them. It kind of anchors the, the base to the ground. This is a doorway here. Let's see, I want to We'll hatch this in. Maybe it's kind of dark in here, just create a little bit of depth to it. Boom. Maybe this— maybe this walkway has some stones. Maybe it's either flagstones or slate, or maybe some kind of cobblestone pathway in here. So I'll sketch some stone shapes happening. Um, to help create the idea of depth and perspective and illusion, things in the front towards the bottom of the paper here are going to be bigger as you go towards the middle, or the perspective towards the back. If you look at the stones, they're actually getting smaller as I go back here. So it just creates the idea, the illusion that this is going back in perspective. I'm going to pan this up a little bit so you can see, maybe see it a little better. TikTok folks, what's up TikTok land? If you like what you're watching, be sure to give me a heart out there, leave some comments. I'll check them later for sure. But you can kind of see it there a little bit better, right? Pretty cool. You got the perspective happening, kind of a, almost a funnel going back towards the middle. Then here, YouTube, Facebook. Instagram, you guys can see it kind of better if I hold it here. I'll hold it, let's see, like this. So boom, right? We have the bigger stones in the front, and as we're going towards the back on this path, you're getting smaller, smaller, and smaller and smaller. It's just all about creating the idea, the illusion of some kind of depth and perspective. Nothing's measured, nothing's scaled, nothing's— no rulers. It's just creating an idea or a concept. I think I want to pop out this railing on top. So this is a railing. I imagine a bridge going across here. Um, so let's pop that railing out, and I think I'm going to use the Aqua to do that. Look, look how that Aqua pops out, guys. That's— this is my— that's why it's my absolute favorite color. Whether it's a marker, color pencil, watercolor. This is, this is number one for me right now. You can maybe you can kind of see that railing pop out a little bit more. I also love the way the white pops against the red. So I'm playing with colors and contrast to make things pop out and read. So the white against the red kind of pops a little bit. Same thing here, we have the green with the background with red and pink and white on in front that kind of pop a little bit as well. This one might be done. Let me zoom out a little bit so you can get an overall of it, and then we'll do one last close-up. I'll pan, you guys can see it close, close up. TikTok, stay tuned, I'm going to show you guys as well. So here's the overall. Just again, this is just for my imagination, just for fun, just wanted to throw down some color. Um, I like it, like it, like it. And TikTok, you can kind of see here's the overall view, and I'm going to go close. Might be a little blurry, sorry, my phone's making it blurry, but you, you get a sense of all the different layers happening there. And then you guys on YouTube. Here you go. TikTok— not TikTok— YouTube, Instagram, the other socials. Well, uh, I'll get close so you can see it as well, to see the different layers. Yeah, D-Ray says working with contrast. Exactly. And I think you can see it better when I do this Ta-da! Boom! All right guys, I think that's going to be a wrap for, uh, this Friday night. It's 10:30, almost 10:30 PM here. It's been a long day. Only got a couple hours sleep last night, so, uh, I am tired. But you know what, honestly Um, my brain was not in a good place today, and this whatever last hour or whatever time we spent here together, my brain is in a totally opposite state of being, which is amazing. I love it, love it, love it, love the power of creativity. Love the power of putting ink on paper, color on paper. Just getting stuff out of your head onto paper, it's transformative for me. It really, really is. And I hope by watching this it transformed you guys. Maybe, uh, you're having a great day now, and hopefully a little bit of positivity rubbed off on you and a little bit, a little bit of inspo. That would be so cool. All right guys, thank you so much for watching. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inkspired Life. I love sketching architecture. I love, uh, urban sketching as well. And remember, you too can capture the world around you. You can sketch architecture, you can sketch random scenes, you can sketch flowers, anything you want. Just break it down into one line at a time. And you know what? The lines can be wonky. There you go. All right, until we meet again, have a great night. Appreciate, appreciate all you guys.
