Friday Night Sketching - 2026-04-24

I'm here to keep moving again and again. I'm here to keep choosing the life I can stand it, the life that's my own. I'm still becoming.

Hey guys, happy, um, Friday. It's April 24th, 2026. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas here with The Inkspired Life, where I love sketching architecture, buildings, places. Yeah, it's just, uh, when I sketch a building or a sketch a location, it does a bunch of things. It triggers my memory of places I've been. It allows my imagination to explore places I want to go or places that I just dream of in my brain. Um, sketching architecture is a way for me to capture a moment in time, and it's a way for me just to kind of decompress from a busy day and just let my brain wander. So if you're into letting your brain wander after a busy day, hang out with me for a few minutes. Let's do some sketching together, even if you are— if you're not an artist and you have no idea where to start, or you don't want to start drawing, that's okay. Chill out. There's a lot of positive vibes, a lot of, uh, great mindset, a lot of fun community chat here as well. So hang out with us. If you want to join along, grab a piece of paper, a pen, pencil. You don't need any fancy tools. I like to call it grab and go creativity. So grab whatever you have and just Sketch something. Okay, that'd be so much fun. Uh, this is the Ponte Vecchio bridge in Florence, and I just— I forgot I had these markers, midliners. They were in here, so I just found this package over on my shelf, um, and I forgot to play with these markers a little bit. Do y'all ever— just artists out there, creatives out there— do you just tend to stock up on supplies, tools, materials, and forget you have stuff on your shelves? That's me. I am definitely one of those people. I am not perfect. I am just simply being human. Great to see you all. I see DB is in the house. DB, so good to see you. Hope you're doing well, my friend. I always, always love seeing you, and I I miss seeing you on Zoom, my friend. I hope you're doing well. Um, you love this drawing. Thank you so much. This is— thank you. Um, I love this sketch. It was a fun one to do. I did this last night here on Facebook. Yeah, and I just wanted to throw some color on it today, so let's spend a couple more minutes throwing down some color and then we'll move on to— I found a book on my shelf that we're going to take a look at, do some sketching from. Um, also the yellow sketchbook you see here, I need to create a couple of pages because, well, I'll show you. Let's just skip around. We can skip around a little bit, right? So here's, uh, here's what I'm gonna do, what I want to do before the show's over. I need to create some backgrounds in my NYC sketchbook. I am going to I am so excited. I will be in Grand Central Terminal sketching tomorrow. I've promised myself I'm getting out there and doing it. So what I want to do is I want to prep some pages in here and just create some abstract backgrounds so they're dry and ready to go for tomorrow, because I'll bring the sketchbook with me. Um, we do— we already have a Grand Central sketch here. But who says we can't do another, right? So, um, stick around, and towards the end of the show, we'll just paint a couple of pages and prep for tomorrow. I have, I have one here, but we'll do a couple more. All right. Hey, Edie's in the house! Great to see you, Edie. I hope all is well. Always great seeing you. All right, so, um, let's just throw a little more color on this, and then we'll move on to a quick show and tell. And take it from there. Let me zoom in. Why does my camera do that? It wonks. It wonks out on me. Can you guys see that? Whoa, is that too big? What the— what the heck? That is not what I wanted to do. My zoom thing is like jumping all over the place. All right, I think that's good. We'll just kind of do it There, stop it, my camera's dancing. All right, so you can see kind of a closer up image. So these are Midliners, I guess they're kind of like highlighter pens. Um, they're two— they're double-ended, so there's a bold side, there's a fine side, right? We got like a chisel point and then the other side is a more like a bullet tip there. And this is the first time I've actually ever used them, so, so far I'm digging them. But I want to add— punch out some areas. Oh, I grabbed the wrong color, but that's okay. We don't have to tell anybody. I meant to actually grab this one. There we go. We'll just brush it out a little bit. There we go. I kind of mixed it, which is interesting. The weekend is here. TGIF. OMG, this week has— it's been a strange week. It felt like it dragged and it felt like it went fast all at the same time. Do y'all ever get stuck in that vortex of, uh time that it just— it's going fast and going nowhere at the same time. Yeah, that was my week. Put some music on here if you want to follow along. I am listening to my Inspired playlist right here. It's on Spotify. Feel free to find it, follow. I want to pop these windows out with some purple, which is kind of my favorite new Creative Marker color, although I still love turquoise. Turquoise will always be number one, but I think this would be nice just to pop out some of the shadows, some of the windows. Very cool, I like it. I don't want to— don't want to do water. I don't want to get cheesy and do like blue water, but you know what, I'm going to. Actually, I'm going to use this highlighter. I don't know, it's called Shuttle. I don't even know where I got this. Never even heard of that brand. Let's throw some Mediterranean blue on here just to give a subtle hint of water. All right, I think that works. That's okay. So this is the Ponte Vecchio bridge in Florence. Uh, it crosses, I believe, the Arno River. A-R-N-O. Florence is an incredibly beautiful city. Definitely need to get back there. There we go. Let me throw a little bit of orange on here. I just want to pop out This is more like— this is like a terracotta color, which is really cool for doing like, um, you know, barrel tile roofs, Spanish tile roofs. Cool, I like it. All right, yeah, so that's the Ponte Vecchio bridge. I don't think I'm going to do anything else on this. We'll leave it. All right, let me zoom out. I'm gonna do a quick show and tell. Zoom, zoom, zoom. All right, so I will be bringing my, my Lockbee field journal with me tomorrow. It always goes— it's with me 90% of the time, but always on my sketching journeys. Um, of course I have in here— I always like to travel and give out some storage. Torch sketches, um, some torch sketches. So I have some ready to go and hand out. I'm gonna go visit my friends at Dough Donuts tomorrow. Hopefully they're there, I could say hello. All right, and I might just change up some of these pens. And do I have enough paper? I'm always paranoid. Do I have enough blank paper? I think I do. And then I have my dot journal. I like to take notes in here on the bus. All right, so I think this one's ready to go. Oh, I was looking for this. Dang it. I'm so glad I'm doing this with you guys here. I was so— what is in here? Oh, this is a cool artist that I met in Barcelona. Met this, uh, one here in Barcelona. Really cool artist. Forgot I had that. But I was looking for this because I want to do some vertical sketches in GCT tomorrow. GCT, Grand Central Terminal. Um, so this is kind of a vertical format, and I have, I have a Grand Central here I did. But you know what, we're gonna bring it and do some more. Cool. All right, I think this is ready to go and bring, so let me zip it up, put it over there so I don't forget it. It is missing something though. It's missing a Sharpie. I'm a paranoid, um, travel sketcher, I always bring— I always bring extra Sharpies, extra paper. All right, this is good to go. All right, let's do a quick show and tell. DB says, I miss your barns and fishing shacks. Oh, DB, I'm so— I'm so glad you said that. I was actually looking at one of my barns on Instagram earlier tonight. Um, we will— you know what, DB, just for you, my next live stream I will do, uh, let's do a wonky fishing shack next time I'm on. All right, cool. Here's a show and tell. You can see that kind of glare from that light. That's a little better. I don't know where I got this book, when I got this book. Part of me thinks my grandmother brought it home from Italy for me when she went many, many years ago. I think the copyright 1995. So honestly, I don't, I don't really remember where I got this. Um, I could have got it when I worked No, you know where I got this? I got this in the bargain section of the bookstore I worked in. Yeah, it's coming back to me. This was in the bargain bin at the bookstore I worked at in, um, just when I just finished college, or a year or so. It's called Italian Hill Towns. So on my trip to Italy, um, it was cool just driving we, you know, we were on a bus and just driving down highways and we saw these cool like hill towns up on the hills, obviously, uh, off in the distance. We didn't get Toledo. We went to— I don't know if Toledo is in here. No, because Toledo's in Spain, so it wouldn't be in here. Um, but anyway, saw these cool like hill towns. They're beautiful. So I found— I remembered I had this, went to my bookshelf tonight, pulled it off. So let's just look through here and maybe, um, I don't know if we'll do a sketch tonight inspired by one of these pictures or not. You're welcome, DB. I would love to do, um, a barn and fishing shack. That'd be amazing. I probably will be live streaming. I don't know if I'll be on— probably not tomorrow night, maybe Sunday night or Monday night. But check out these pictures. I'm just changing the music here. Here we go. Hey M, good to see you. Hope you're doing well. Always good to see you. So these are really beautiful. Here, let me get closer. I love the pictures in here. They're all black and white. Reminds me of like Ansel Adams photography. Let me check out— just check out the architecture here. This would be so fun to try to do a sketch of this. Um, and then, I mean, I love, I love this rooftop view. And then you got these really cool perspective street views. Obviously I must have liked this one years ago because I have a piece of tracing paper in there. But check that out, right? No, this is a cool picture. Look how the church is kind of framed in the background. You got the marketplace here. Okay, we'll just skim through some of this. I mean, each one of these is like definite sketching material for me. I love the archways here. Pretty amazing. Look how beautiful this is, right? Spectacular. Let's skip ahead a little bit. Ah, this is— I love it. Look at this. I love this picture. And this one too. These are— oh wait, is it the same I guess it's the same place. Really amazing. Here you can see kind of this building stacked. Love, love, love this book. So much inspiration. I love the staircase here, kind of the perspective with the stair going up. And this— none of these are AI-generated, back in, back in 1995. Huh, pretty cool, right? So it's a fun book. It's called Italian Hill Towns. Norman F. Carver. I don't know if it's still available anywhere. Again, I got it back in 1995. Uh, we'll be seeing more of this in future live streams. I just love this. Just like anything with a bridge just grabs my attention. All right, cool. All right. Let me put this up here in my bookshelf that needs organizing. Hopefully it doesn't fall off. All right, let's, uh, prep some pages here for tomorrow. So we just throw down some acrylic paint. We'll keep it loose, fun, wonky, and all that jazz. Okay. All right, let's do it. Got some water, my brushes here. I need to grab a paper towel. Oops, I got one. Perfect. Never mind. I got to prep this stuff for tomorrow, see what I'm bringing. Just put that there for now. All right, cool. All right, so we're just going to, uh, just create a couple of backgrounds, maybe just 2 pages, let it dry overnight, and I'll bring it with me tomorrow. I love the colors here, really, really nice. So let me just put this stuff away, we'll grab some acrylic paint and throw down some color. Hope you guys are doing great. Let me know how your day went. What are you— is anybody doing anything cool this weekend? Let me know, I'd love to hear in the chat from y'all. I think I'm going to keep this color here. All right, well, you guys are getting a little sneak peek of me organizing. How exciting is that? All for the same price of admission, you get to see me organizing my stuff a little bit. It's kind of cool, you get to see kind of inside studio what I'm using, how I'm storing things. All right, blank page, blank page, blank pages. Here we go, just kind of keep them both open and we're going to grab and go. I so need to clean my desk off here. All right, we're good. All right, so we got some acrylics. Let's just grab, go throw down, uh, let's see, we'll just use a flat, one of my flat brushes here. I tried using a palette knife last time and I wasn't crazy about it. I'd rather just brush on here. So no particular order, we're just throwing and going. I like that, it rhymed. We're going to throw and go. So this is just a fun way to be playful, not thinking too hard about anything here at all. Again, I just want to create some abstract backgrounds that I can sketch on top of. So let's just throw the paint down. And Nirvana came on. This is good music to get cray cray with. Hey, Linda's in the house! Linda, great to see you. Hope all's well. Always good to see you. So if you are just joining me, I am just prepping some abstract backgrounds because tomorrow I'm going to Grand Central Terminal to do sketching. I'll bring this with me, and I just want backgrounds that I can sketch on top of, like we've been doing in my NYC Sketchbook. So I figured we'll just prep some stuff and bring it tomorrow. Why the heck not, right? And I'm literally just grabbing and going. I'm looking for some fluorescent red. Oh, the cap is— oh, the cap is stuck. I can't tell you how much fun it is just to literally throw down color. Spring's here, things are starting to bloom outside, my allergies are starting to bloom, but it's worth the price of admission. To see the flowers. It's gonna be amazing when my irises bloom. I am so looking forward to it. Oh yeah, I love my irises. So I'm guessing in 3 weeks maybe I'll see them. I feel like maybe we're a little behind the times here. We've had frost this past week. It's been a cray-cray week weather-wise. Tomorrow we're supposed to get tons of rain. Let's throw some blue. I need some like cool colors on here. Let's throw a bit of coolness on here. You know what I need? I am going to do a little scraping action, so I need to make myself a scraper. Do I have an old I think I have a little gift card here I can use. Actually, we'll use either my Met card or MoMA card. Let's use a— let's use a Met card, do some scraping with it. Why not? It's all art. I'm really liking the colors on here. This is so cool. This is going to be fun to sketch on top of when it dries. Iris is in Ohio mid to late May. Yeah, same here. Yep. So that's why I'm, I'm guessing about 3 weeks here I should see them starting to pop out. I'm so excited. I can't wait for them to, to bloom. And then they don't— then they only last like 2 weeks, maybe 2, maybe 3 weeks at the most. So irises have taught me a lesson to really savor the moment because they don't last too long. So I am pretty much out there every day when they bloom, looking at them, taking pictures of them. Yes, I take pictures of them. Video them. Yes, I video them. Um, I just find them so beautiful. All right, here we go. Get the Mech card. It's got some paint on it, little bit of character. Um, let's see, what else do I want to throw on here? I do, I do want to pop some of this I'm going to bring some of this red back on here that I lost. I just love this fluorescent red color. All right, there we go. I just love that kind of in-your-face red. That— if I could give— if I can name a color, I would like to name red like in-your-face red. I think that's a cool name, name for a color. In-your-face red. Boom. All right, I don't want to get too cray cray here, meaning like I'm going to want to start getting fussy and be like, oh, I need to add this, I need to add that. There is one last color I do want to add, and I just want to put some yellow on this page here just to pop a little bit of freshness on here. And then I think that's going to be it for these pages. I think they'll be good enough that I can come back tomorrow or the next day or the day after and sketch on top of it. But my goal is to— my goal is to do maybe to at least do one sketch, uh, GCT tomorrow. In my NYC sketchbook here. These paintings are going to become prints to sell and a calendar series for 2027. So if you've been following along my adventures for the past month, you— or if you haven't, you can just go back on my Instagram— not my Instagram, my YouTube— and see kind of the creation, the behind the scenes, you know, how were these How do we make all the sketch paintings in here? We'll take a quick look before we wrap tonight. Cool. All right, so here is— you know, here's, here's the last one I did of Grand Central Park. Grand Central Park. Oh my gosh, I am so tired. Central Park. I'm going to Grand Central Terminal tomorrow, but here's a bridge in Central Park, and you can see, right, I'm just sketch painting on top of these abstract backgrounds. Something totally new for me this year, a new style. I'm trying to step out a little bit. So don't be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone. You may love things you're doing, you may not love things you're doing. But you don't know until you try, right? You don't know until you try. I kind of want to scrape. I just had a thought. I'm gonna scrape. So acrylic paint dries super fast. All right, I'm having too much fun. I gotta stop. I guess I'll keep going on and on. All right, so I think we have enough on here for now. Um, you can get different varieties of iris with overlapping bloom time. Oh, I didn't know that. Love the gardening tips. That is so cool to know. Um, you guys know I'm in love with my deep, almost like purple-black colored irises. They're so amazing. I'll have to check into that. You love the orange, yellow, and turquoise together. Yeah, so here, right, let's take a frame out. We can kind of mark— kind of frame it. I mean, I love the colors in there. This is a cool little composition right here. Of course I see buildings in there. So we were just talking about Italian hill towns. I'm seeing— I am in my brain seeing a hill town in here. That's so funny. Uh, you have a cool color and a hot color page. Yeah, good point. Let's move this. Boom. Yeah, that's so funny, right? So it's all the same colors, it's just how they went down. Yeah, good observation. I love that. I'm going to zoom in a little bit. You can see some of the textures happening as well. I'm, I'm kind of really liking the colors in here. I have kind of that grunge kind of grunge industrial weathering building kind of colors happening here, which I, you, I love rusty industrial metal and all that stuff. But yeah, if you look in here, I'm loving— let me put— I'm loving the colors right inside the frame. That's a pretty cool color palette. Like, see, like, cool as in like awesome cool. Um, even if I do this, I'm loving the colors. A little more red, I think. I'm loving the colors in this frame. So I think I'm liking the page on the left more. Maybe those are so different. All right, cool. So it'll be fun to let this dry and we'll see what we sketch on it tomorrow. What time is it? 9:36. Aichiwawa, do you still use your Apple Snail ink? Yeah, I have some right here actually. I sure do. Great question. I love my— it's still my favorite ink color. Yeah, I haven't used it in a while, but I still have it. I still have my, um, one, two— I still have this and two unopened bottles. I stocked up when they were— when they remade it last year again. I stocked up and got a few bottles. Great question, love that question. Yeah, all right, let me put this aside to dry. Let's kind of revisit a little bit what we started this— this— not this morning, it is not morning. You guys can probably tell I'm pretty tired. Um, let me put this here to dry. I am like out of desk space there, back there. All right, here's— so here's what I'm planning on taking tomorrow. You guys want to— here's my kind of travel— here's like my sketching gear for tomorrow, I think. Definitely my Lochbie folio. With some pens in here, right? Got some pens in here, uh, multicolor pen, my paper. Of course I need a binder clip to hold pages down. We'll bring those. And of course a Sharpie in here as well. So this bad boy's coming with me. There's a— there's a Moleskine store in Grand Central Terminal. So if I happen to run out of paper, they have a— they have a shop in there, so I can always get more. So I'm not too paranoid about paper. Let me just clip these back here. Loch Befolio is still my number one go-to carrying EDC sketching gear, so we're going to bring this with us. Um, maybe. I'm not sure. I want to— I think I'm going to bring an accordion journal. I don't know if I'm going to bring this one or not. I'm actually— I probably will. So I'm going to bring an accordion journal because I want to do something similar to— I don't know where my other one is. Yeah, I want to do something similar to this One I did, uh, this actually was Grand Central Terminal as well. I think this is from last year when I went last year. So I want to do that. This has one of my favorite torch sketches in it. I love this sketch. Anyway, so this is a Moleskine, so I could pick one of these up tomorrow if I need to. All right, so we got that and we got that. I don't want to carry too much stuff. I'm going to bring that yellow sketchbook we just worked in. I definitely want to bring creative markers, so I'm probably going to bring— probably going to bring here my Lockbie Quattro with my creative markers. So this will probably come with me. Boom. I want to bring some white gel pens too, and maybe color pencils, right? So this, this, not all those pens. White gel pens, I'll just take them out so I don't forget. And so this will come with me tomorrow. And then also, no, I'm not going to bring any watercolor kits. Um, and I'm going to use this backpack right here. Let's get this backpack. I'm going to take— boom! Can't fit it all on screen, but it's a pretty good backpack. I actually bought it right before I went to Italy and Spain. Uh, plenty of room in here. To put stuff in, uh, pretty compact. So I'm gonna bring this bad boy tomorrow. It's got some pockets in here which I like, easy access pocket, a couple of deep pockets. I threw in here, I have all my like phone chargers, battery packs in this kit case. Yeah, and there's a zipper area here as well which I like. Kind of zippered area here, grab and go. I have a— this is my wallet. I have a neon orange wallet, which I, I love this thing because I don't lose it. So I have that, and it's strapped in here with an AirTag. I've learned to use AirTags since I went away. And I could put some pens in there. I got a pocket for stuff. Yeah, and actually I could fit a water bottle right in this pocket inside. Put a water bottle right in here. So it's a cool little backpack. That is my gear for mañana. I'm so excited. Even if it's gonna be raining, I don't care. It's gonna be fun. All right, see if there's any questions. Let me go through the chat. We'll wrap up with questions, comments. Feel free to throw stuff in the chat for me before we head out. Um, do you still use your Apple? Yeah. What's your favorite paper? Oh, good question. So that's a really good question because I've been— I've changed it up a little bit. I think I still am using I still like to use for watercolor inkwashes. I still love using the Fabriano 1264, um, whether it's 8x10 or— I actually love using the 4x8 sheets here. So I'm using this for watercolors, inkwashes, and my torch sketches are done on this paper. So this is a cold press. Uh, the switch I've made is, is, um, well, the yellow sketchbook here, you know, this, this is not cold press paper, it's, it's a hot press paper. And what's the company in here? I forget. Oh, this is the company, Lek Lecturm 1917. I don't even know where I got this, but I am liking this for these mixed media, um, sketches I've been doing. So that's what you see here. So they've been working really well for acrylic washes, ink, creative markers, color pencil. Sharpie. So I'm really liking this paper, to be honest with you. So yeah, that's kind of a big change for me. Good, good question. And then my Lockbee, just for everyday quick sketching, I have been using the paper right in here. This is the Lockbee plain paper. Um, it's really thin, but I can hold a little bit of a light wash. So if you look here You can see I have some paint on here that it— and it didn't go through. Sharpie goes through a little bit, but I'm loving this paper as well for just everyday sketching. This is what I brought to Spain, Italy. I sketched in here with a Sharpie here, did some Colosseum sketches in there as well. Here's another Colosseum. Um, here you can see another example. I added color and then, uh, that is not color that went through. I think I just painted on there. Here's acrylic paint. So there you go. So that's kind of the paper I've been using these days. Hopefully that helped. All right, I think with that, guys, we're going to wrap up for the night. Oh, I'm throwing pens around. Um, I appreciate y'all so, so much. Um, thank you for watching. I always appreciate your time, your comments, your positivity. Um, you are awesome, and I am blessed to have been able to spend just a few minutes with you talking creativity, positivity, and just being here. That was not a good ending. Anyway, you guys are amazing. Take care until we meet again. Sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire Endlessly.