Friday Night Sketch and Chill

Hey, happy Friday! It's Jason here from The Inkspired Life, where I love sketching architecture and urban sketching. It's, uh, 9:02 PM here in awesome New Jersey. Hope you're having a great day. Hope you had a great week. Um, it's been a good week, but a long week. Crazy busy week, and that is all good. So tonight, uh, I think I'm gonna start off— I'm gonna kind of show you guys what's on my tabletop here. I'm going to New York City tomorrow. I'm going to be doing some sketching, and I thought it'd be kind of cool just to, uh give you an inside peek into my brain, my thought process, what I'm taking with me, do a little packing. So, uh, let's do that, a little kind of show and tell and pack. Um, great to see you guys watching live. If you're on Instagram, hello. I'm sorry on Instagram if you're only seeing part of the screen, but I appreciate you sticking along. And please watch and leave comments, love to say hello to you. I see Sally4art is on Instagram. Hey Sally, good to see you. Um, hope all's well. And I see Yandi. Oh my gosh, is that Yandi? Yandi, hello! Hope you're doing well. It is awesome to see you. We'll have to catch up one of these days. Really cool. Wow, exciting. All right, so I have a lot of gear here on my tabletop, and let's kind of go through it, and I'll go through my brain of what I'm taking. Um, first of all, I like to travel light. When I'm going to New York City, I do a lot of walking, like tons of walking. So to dress, I always look at the weather and I dress appropriately based on the climate. Usually try to bring an umbrella, and I wear comfy shoes as well. I walk blocks and blocks and blocks. If you want to count steps, I could put in probably 22,000 steps tomorrow. That's just a guess, somewhere around there. But let me show you, let me grab it behind me here. This is the bag I like to bring with me. This is my backpack. It's— this isn't, by the way, not sponsored video. Any products I mention, I'm just mentioning because I use them. No one's paying me to, to plug their products. Just the stuff I use. I want to share what I love with you guys. This is a bag by Waterfly, and I can pack— my goal is to pack everything I need in this one bag so I can strap it on my back. It's easy to carry around with me. So I'm going to show you what I pack in this thing. Pretty cool, has some zippered compartments, opens up, put some stuff in there as well. So, um, yeah. We'll pack that up. Yandi says hi. Hi, Yandi. Hello, hello, hello, my friend. Cool. So we have our backpack, and the most important thing I need to bring with me tomorrow is either my Lockbee Folio, which is this here, or my Lockbee Field Journal, which is this one. I love them both. The folio is a little bit bigger, and I like the folio because it zips closed, um, and I like to carry this in my hand. It's not— oh, I don't always leave it in my backpack, so I'm probably going to bring the folio tomorrow. Um, Field Journal, I still love you. Um, yeah, I know, I know, a little cray cray. All right, so Lockbee Folio is great in here. I keep all kinds of stuff, so I'm just going to pack and you guys can watch along, and I'll narrate a little bit here and there. I have to test these first. So in the folio, I am putting some Sharpie Creative Markers. Love, love them. I have a red Pilot Precise Pen in here, and of course, never leave home without them— Sharpies. I do want to test them to make sure they, uh, they're working cool. And in the folio, I keep— I like to keep one Sharpie there, and then I'll put another Sharpie. This one might need replacement if I remember. Nope, it's working. And I like to keep one over here on the end, so I have, I have two Sharpies ready to go when I need them right in the folio. Boom. Um, I have to replace the paper. I know this— there's not many pages left in this. You can see some sketches from my last NYC visit. I did a whole video, so feel free to go back into YouTube and you'll be able to see a video of kind of a sketchbook walkthrough. But I'll show you how to— how I replace these. So I'm going to take this one out. Um, this one is also— this one's also filled up, so we're going to take that one out too. I like to keep field notes in here, um, usually a dot grid or graph paper version. So I'll keep this in here. I use the field notes for brainstorming. I love to do mind mapping. Gets my thoughts out. So I'm going to keep that in there. But here, let's put a new paper in here. Lockley, Lockley Plain Paper, 5.8 by 8.3. Love this paper. It holds, um, you can do really light washes with it and it doesn't bleed through. But this is how easy it is to put these in here. You can— I could fit 4 notebooks in here. So it has these cool elastics, and all I have to do is open the book up. I try to open it somewhere in the middle-ish, doesn't have to be perfect. You just literally just slip it in. How cool is that, right? And then, uh, let's grab another one since I could fit 2 in here. I have a whole stack of them and I got one right here, so we'll put another one in. I've learned to keep extra pads of paper on hand, so when I buy this stuff, I usually will buy in multiples. Same thing, we'll just do that. We'll lift the band up and slip it in. And that's, that's all I think I need in here as far as paper goes. Got some paper, cool. I also do keep some watercolor sheets here on the side. These are 4 by 8 inches that is— I don't have a cover here, but this is Fabriano 1264 watercolor paper, 140-pound. It fits in here nice, couple of sheets. So we got our pens in there. Um, in the back, sometimes I keep sketches I've done with— that I bring with me. So I have some sketches here, and I have some— you can keep notes or paper in here as well. Cool. All right, so that's the Lockbie Folio. Um, I also like to keep paper clips in here. So I got a paper clip. This is really helpful if I want to keep this open when I'm sketching. I just take the paper clips and boom, right there. Helps to keep the sheets open because I will often sketch holding this book in my hand, and I can clip the pages down. And if it's windy out, it helps keep them clipped down. You could also do binder clips. I, I bring both with me. I do. I keep the paper clips in here, and I usually have them on a little card. Where's that card? Either a Post-it notepad like here, and then I'll just keep the Post-its and I'll clip it to the Post-its. I could clip the clips right in here But they sometimes will get stuck on the seam, so I just clip them right to a Post-it pad. So there you go. And we can zip this up. Oh, I got another marker. Sometimes I'll put colored pencils in here instead of markers. It just depends. All right, this is zipped up, ready to go. Next up, to fit, that'll go in the Loungefly here, so I'm gonna actually just slip it in. Boom. So that fits right in there. Next up, I like to bring colored pencils with me, so I'm gonna put the colored pencils right in— this is a Lochbie Quattro. You could put pens, colored pencils in it, watercolor brushes. So I typically will use it for colored pencils, and I'll also put the Sharpie markers and Creative Markers in these as well. I have a few of these, but tomorrow we'll just bring this. I wonder— I've got these two new pencils, let's throw those in there as well. And I could fit more in here. Um, pro tip: I like to sharpen both ends of my colored pencils. That way I'm ready to go if one end breaks. I do pack a sharpener with me as well. This is a cool sharpener because you can just do this. Close the lid, and you can keep all the shavings right in here. All right, so I think that's good for the Quattro. I usually bring two Quattros. I'll zip this, put that there for now. And then I have another Quattro. If I'm going to do watercolor painting, I'll bring this with me. I'll have Aqua brushes in it, and I'll bring this. So I'm not sure if I'm going to do watercoloring tomorrow. I, I've been just doing more colored pencil and markers, uh, on location. And then this is the watercolor palette I like to take with me. It's small, it's compact. Let's see. All right, let's pretend I'm watercoloring tomorrow. I don't know if I'm going to, but let's say I am going to watercolor. We'll kind of put these in here. Actually, you know what we're going to do? We're going to change it up. We're actually going to use this Venture pouch, and this is really cool. One side I could put markers in there, it has these kind of elastic, um, binding binders in here, and the other side is where I like to keep my watercolor stuff. So I could put this in here. I could even slip— I want to— now again, a little crazy, we're putting bags inside of bags. I like to be neat and tidy, so we can put our watercolor pens, uh, watercolor brushes in there. You can fit a lot of stuff in this pouch, but I'm looking around, I think that's all I really need in here. Again, I want to travel light. This will be a good test. Can I fit this and this in here? Let's try it. Let's see if I can fit the Quattro, the Quattro in here, and then we'll throw that in there as well. So, so far we're doing good. That's awesome. I don't think I need any more pens, pencils, markers, or anything like that. That's all I need to take with me as far as that goes. Um, pencil sharpener I could throw— I could throw actually in the Venture pouch bag. Cool, doing really good so far. Let me grab this off the shelf here. All right, so inside this case is something really, really important. I love doing videos, I love taking a lot of pictures. I need battery backup like no other. So in here I have this really cool Powerpack, slim, um, easy to carry. That I usually stick right in here and in the front pocket. Let's see, we'll put it in, uh, here. Doesn't matter which one. So boom, I have my portable charger in there. That's essential. Very, very cool. Um, if I'm going to watercolor some, I will take bottles of water with me. So these are two just kind of travel bottles. They're flexible, which is cool, and I keep water in here. Hey, Paula's on Instagram. Paula, great to see you. Hope all's well. Welcome. So you can take these water bottles and fit them in here. Again, I don't, I don't, I don't know if I'm gonna watercolor. I'm probably not gonna watercolor tomorrow, but I can fit these in here if I need to. Starting to get a little heavy. Um, I'm always paranoid I don't have enough paper. I know, right? Who's out? Who else is with me? Any artists out there? When you're on the go, you, you're sometimes worried you don't have enough paper. I like to carry one of these Moleskine watercolor albums with me. I love the size. It fits in my pocket really easily. You can see I brought it— Brooklyn Bridge sketch there. Um, I like the elastic on it, keeps it closed. And I could put my Pocket Ore on this backpack. This is meant for, I think, cell phones, but I like to put— I like to put my Moleskine watercolor album in here. That way I'm ready to go if I run out of paper. And actually, sometimes, honestly, I'll just take this little sketchbook out and this is all I'll use. Maybe I'll even— maybe I'll challenge myself just to bring this Moleskine and 2 Sharpies and sketch with that. Now that I'm thinking about it, we'll see. Might be a cool challenge for tomorrow. All right, so that is all I need to put in here. Let's zip it up. Let's tuck this in here. All right, zipped up. We got everything fitting in there. How cool is that? Um, there's a zippered pocket in front, and what I like to put in here, um, my AirPods. So I usually slip those right in there. I have one in here, but You get the idea. I got AirPods ready to go. My phone I usually will just keep in a pocket, a zippered pocket, or I'm honestly, I'm just carrying it most of the time, so it's in my hand. But if I wanted to, I could put my phone in here, zip it. I could put it in this section, but I, I don't— I'd be afraid it would slip out. But you can put something in here if it's going to rain. Tomorrow it's going to be a nice day, but if it's going to rain I have this really cool small umbrella that I can fit in here in the elastic, carry it that way. And on the other side, I usually will put a— just a bottle of water right here. I don't, I don't have any nearby, but you get the idea. And that, guys, is what I will be packing tomorrow when I go to New York City. To do some sketching. Uh, hopefully that was helpful. Let me know in the chat or the comments if you have any questions, or did you find that kind of helpful? Um, or I'd also love to know what kind of gear you carry around with you. Um, if you're interested to know more about this gear, I do have some of it posted on my website. There's a link in the description of tonight's video. Feel free to click the link, it'll bring you to my web page. Where you can see a lot of these things that I do use. Um, I don't know if I have the Waterfly on there. I might need to add it. So really cool. And guess what? I'm packed up and ready for tomorrow. I don't have to get up early and do it. Um, all right, let's do some sketching. Now I have to unpack my bag to get my stuff out. No, I got paper here. Let's do, uh, we'll do a quick sketch. I'll zoom in a little bit. Thank you, Paul. I appreciate that. I really appreciate that so much. So cool. Hope you guys on Insta can see the page okay. If you're watching from Facebook or YouTube, feel free to say hi. I'd love to, uh, check in with you guys. All right, we're going to zoom in a little bit and do some sketching. So yeah, I thought it was really cool. I just wanted to kind of give you guys this inside peek of what I'm bringing tomorrow. With that video. Let me zoom in. There we go. We'll sketch on that, and I'm gonna go back into my— the bag I just packed and grab— we're gonna grab, uh, let's see, you know what, we're— we'll leave everything in there. I'm just gonna grab and go. So right in front of me I do have a Sharpie. I feel like I sometimes manifest Sharpies. It'd be nice if it was like thousand dollar bills, but I'll take Sharpies. Um, sometimes I just feel like I just say the word Sharpie and then one shows up. I know that's kind of weird, but I'm not normal. Paul says, I love seeing what people take out to sketch. Thanks for sharing. Oh, you're welcome. Yeah, my, my pleasure, guys. What are you gonna sketch? Um, we're just gonna do— I know what we're gonna do. I'm gonna practice a little perspective here, a little Brooklyn Bridge-inspired perspective. I think I will not be going to the Brooklyn Bridge tomorrow. Not in that area, but definitely in the near future. I think in 2 weeks from now, actually, I'll be going. I think I manifested a Sharpie that doesn't work. Wah wah wah. All right, we're gonna sketch with our Pilot Precise Pen. Never give up. Just grab and go with what's around. This will be fun because I really— I rarely sketch with a Pilot pen on this paper. I also have a red pen here, so let's break that out too. Maybe got some peeps on the bridge talking to each other. Zoom in a little closer if I can get tighter. There we are. Chip's Essential Park awaits. Yes, Chip, Chip, I'm so excited that we're going to be doing that sometime, um, pretty soon, I guess. End of the month, right? End of this month, or, or Beginning of June, Chip and I have an adventure plan to meet up in Central Park and do some sketching and even, even selling. I want to— I'm going to bring some sketches and sell them. Wish me luck. I'm going to bring some Statue of Liberty torches with me, and maybe we'll do some Brooklyn Bridge sketches too. And just for fun, we'll see what happens. But most, most importantly, I'm excited to hang out with my buddy and just get out and do some sketching. Chelsea Piers. I love the Chelsea area. It is one of my favorite areas. I will be there Um, when am I gonna be there? I'm definitely gonna be heading there in the summer, I know that. Um, I love the Chelsea Piers area. I love walking the High Line to like Pier 57, Little Island. Yeah, 100%. I could never get bored sketching in the city because the city is vibrant, it's busy, lots of lines, lots of buildings. Lots of this, lots of that. And I love just trying to break the world down, simplify that crazy, energetic, frenetic world. Just try to simplify it in my brain by putting it down one line at a time on paper. Um, it's kind of my way of dealing with the chaos that's sometimes around us is by capturing it and processing it in simple shapes, simple lines. It's— I don't— I can't explain it, but it really is something that, that has become really an effective tool for me for processing the world around me. So that's one of the reasons I love sketching in the city, is it's a challenge for me to take the busyness and simplify it. But simplify it in kind of my own unique way. Man, that kind of sounded poetic. Um, oh boy, cool. Hey, Sketches and Some joined. If you're online still, great to see you. Hope all is well, my friend. Sketches and Some is a very talented— Mel is a very talented sketch artist. And I loved sketching with Mel, and I don't know if I'll see you tomorrow or not. Cool. So this is really just quick kind of perspective of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's an image or a view I go to all the time when I just want to either loosen up, start sketching. I kind of have this in my brain from doing it, you know, muscle memory. The more we sketch something, the more we retain it. So you, you may have seen me sketch this over and over. It's never the same sketch again. I'm just literally using what's here. Because I packed all— I packed my other materials, um, before. And if you're just joining, feel free to go back, watch the replay. I kind of did a little show and tell and pack up session to show what I'm going to be taking into the city with me tomorrow, kind of my typical urban sketching gear. Cool. All right, what else do I have around here? Let's throw something else on here. Color, color, color, color. Highlighter. You got a yellow highlighter here. Let's, let's do it. Hey Cindy Fleischer, if you're over there on Instagram, great to see you. Thanks for joining. So I like to call this grab it and go creativity. Literally, I'm grabbing what is around me on my desk here and just throwing down colors. My goal when I'm sketching architecture, especially iconic architecture is to never sketch it realistically. I just want people to identify the iconic structure or building. I'm not trying to capture the colors, I'm just kind of capturing a vibe that I'm feeling at the time. Because I get that question a lot. I have had people say, the Brooklyn Bridge isn't purple, why are you using purple? And I'm like, well It's either what I had with me at the time, or it's kind of what my gut feeling, my emotions were saying, just go for the purple. Um, that's kind of how I operate when it comes to color. Grab, go, and gut. The 3 G's of my color thinking. Grab, go, and gut. Sketch with your gut. Very cool. It's kind of cool, you can take the Sharpie highlighter and you can actually— I'm kind of mixing it with the red a little bit here, just getting some orangey colors. Um, you could all— I also love using highlighters because they're water dissolvable. So if I had an Aqua Brush, I can kind of put water on right now and kind of paint a little bit with the highlighter. What else do I have in grab-and-go distance? Anything else? It's a challenge. I could— I have stuff around me. I could go over there and grab anything off the shelves, but I'm trying to challenge myself right now. So if you ever want to challenge yourself when you're sketching, whatever you have at arm's length is what you're using. Don't get up and grab anything. It also— it also— I'm going to grab a carpenter's pencil. It also keeps me in the flow, the creative flow. If I have to stop and think about what I want to use, sometimes I lose my vibe and it's hard for me to get back onto the sketch. So grab-and-go creativity allows me the freedom to just keep, keep on going, stay in that state of flow that creatives, artists, athletes, we all, we all love that state of flow, where just the magic happens, the love happens, the vibe happens, right? Um, I want to show the cables on the bridge. That's a huge element. So I'm going to use the red just so it stands out a little bit. There you go. I think that's kind of a cool, quick, uh, perspective sketch of the— I almost said Eiffel Tower. Oh my gosh. Not the Eiffel Tower, the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm thinking Eiffel Tower because I— fingers crossed, I'm gonna actually be going to Paris towards the end of my winter break this year. Fingers crossed for a real quick visit. Hey, Becky Snails! Becky, great to see you. Hope all's well. Purple is awesome, I agree. Sally says, I see the back of your hand. That's awesome. Usually I charge extra for that, so I'm gonna let it slide tonight. You guys can see the back of my hand for free. Um, sorry about that. Sometimes I get carried away and cover things up, but you can see the image now, I hope. Um, that's funny. Jody's in the house. Jody, if you're still out there on Instagram, hope, hope you're doing well. It's great to see you. Artist Absalom joined. Hey, uh, hey, Artist Absalom, hope you're doing well. You guys are funny. I love the comments. All right, let me know if you have any final questions or comments before I wrap up. Um, I have an early start to head into the city tomorrow. I'm gonna pull out my bag. I'll show you guys one more time if you're interested. Let me zoom out. We are zooming out. Zoomed out. All right, cool. Again, on Instagram, if you're watching on Instagram, I have a feeling you're only seeing part of my screen. I don't think you're seeing my entire, um, layout here. So that's something I got to figure out in my brain if I'm gonna keep streaming to Instagram. How can I get the whole image on the screen? So thank you for watching on Insta and sticking with me if you're only seeing part of what I'm talking about. I have to— I really don't know what you're seeing out there. It's kind of funny. I'm just— I'm winging it. Oh, all right, so again, here's my backpack I'm bringing tomorrow. I don't think I need the umbrella, so that'll probably stay home, but AirPods in there, my battery backup. I got a water bottle for if I get— if I do watercoloring. My Lochbie folio is here. I got my Lochbie Quattro Adventure pouch with colored pencils and creative markers in there. Um, yeah. Oh, I usually put a granola bar or something in here too. Um, there we go. So if you want to see how I packed that all in there, check out the beginning of the video, watch the replay. And that's going to be a wrap for tonight, I think. Sally says better. Thanks, that's so— I'm so glad. Um, you guys are awesome. I appreciate you so much for watching and joining me tonight. It's always fun doing these live streams. My goal is to keep doing them Friday nights. Um, shout out to, um, to Maddie if you're out there. She's been helping me with my, uh, my postings, social media posting, and it's been amazing. So I love that. Just trying to spread the word, bring happiness, bring positivity through creativity. That's a mission that I have. I just want to spread the joy through being creative, and you guys are helping me do that by watching and commenting and being dang nice. Um, I appreciate you guys so, so much. It was great seeing you on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, the other— if I was— was I streaming? I was maybe streaming places I didn't even know I was streaming. Um, I, I don't know who— you never know these days. But anyway, you guys are awesome. I'm going to be taking videos and pictures tomorrow in my New York City adventure, putting some videos together. I might do a quick live stream. I did one last or two Saturdays ago from St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was cool standing out there just doing a quick sketch and giving a like a 1-minute spiel about what I was seeing. So, uh, yeah, stay tuned. You might see me pop on the socials tomorrow. Becky, great to see you. Jody, thank you so much. Sally, awesome to see you. Chip, um, great seeing you. And Yandi— Yandi popped on. Yandi was a former student of mine. She graduated last year, I think. Yeah, last year. So Yandi, it was great seeing you pop on as well. All right guys, appreciate y'all. Remember, you too can sketch architecture. And the crazy world around us, one line at a time. Keep using your creativity for positivity. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas for the Inkspired Life. I will be back again until we, uh, till we sketch together.