Friday Night Sketching

Hey, Jason Nicholas Nicholas from The Inspired Life, take dos. Something's up with my internet. I'm not sure. Welcome to the world of tech. Um, I love tech. Without it, I wouldn't be able to livestream right now. But, um, so if I'm cutting in and out or signal's slow, let me know in the chat. I'm— I think I'm up and running again. Let's, uh— I was working— I am working on the Statue of Liberty torch. Let's just keep moving forward and, uh, throw some lines down. All right, so tonight I have, I have some watercolor here. I have colored pencils as well. I have pens, um, I have some dirty water. I'm just gonna throw down colors and have fun tonight. No particular order, I'm just kind of grabbing and going with my gut. So I like to call it grab-and-go creativity, just be in the moment. Whatever is around, kind of use it. I am just— I want to tilt this up. I like to put my sketch at an angle so stuff kind of runs down. You'll see what I mean. So I'm going to prop it up. Um, just looking, we could use to prop it here. I got, I got a little book here. Let me just prop this up at a little bit of an angle. There we go, that should work. That's kind of cool. All right, we'll give it a shot. I have a bamboo brush here, and here's the dirty water. I like sketching with dirty water. It adds some character, uh, especially if I'm doing like rusty industrial, old, old school, or old building, um, sketching. It just has that kind of cool weathered look to it. And if you see color on here, that, that is actually the Dirty Water, so it's a cool base. All right, so I'm grabbing, um, I have some Apple Snail ink. I'm going to throw it down on our torch. I love this color. This is my absolute favorite ink color in the world. It's called Apple Snail, and I just love the kind of the caramel color. Or think about cutting an open— an open— cutting an apple open, and you know, after the apple kind of oxidizes, the inside turns that brownish color. That's the color, the vibe of this ink. Hey, Sketches and Some over on Instagram, awesome to see you! Hope all's well. I, I'm, I was— I'm hoping to get into, uh, to join sketching tomorrow. You guys will be sketching in one of my favorite locations in the city. Unfortunately, I have a lot of grading to do. I have grades due Monday and I'm kind of behind, but I'm going to try to join if I can. Great to see you, hope all's well. All right, so that's Apple Snail Ink. I'm going to dip into my watercolor here. This is turquoise. Turquoise. I love turquoise as well, so this is, this is a fave color of mine. And I'm just gonna— I'm not even really painting, I'm just kind of dabbing this. We're doing wet-on-wet technique, letting the colors just bleed together and kind of let their magic happen. And if you hear any knocking, my dog— I think my pup is outside the door here. Kiko! Oh my gosh, great to see you, Kiko! Hope all is well. Long time, man. Hope you're doing good. I often think about you in school. Um, actually, I think I talked about you this year and your, your basketball figure you created that I still have not 3D printed. I think we tried and it didn't work. I will try again at some point this year. All right, cool. So check out how these colors are just kind of melding together. Um, it's— and I, I love— notice the colors are running outside my lines here where the Sharpie is. I like that. It keeps that loose flow that I really, really love. I, I do not sketch within the lines. I don't paint within lines. I don't color within the lines. The lines for me are— they tell the story. Every line we throw down just adds a layer to the story of how we created our sketches. As an architect, for me, I just— lines are really important in architectural storytelling. Whether it's blueprints or the lines of an actual building. And I want to see the lines. I'm going to use this cool ink here. I haven't really used it. It's called Rail— Railroad Worm. Let's throw some Railroad Worm on there. That's a tongue twister. I'm just checking my internet connections because I earlier— I, I don't know, I lost connection, so might have a bad signal tonight. One thing I like about using bottles of ink is that they can really last a long time. Same thing with watercolor. These pans for me usually last a long time. I might have this angled up a little too much. It's running down quickly. I think I just figured out my next 3D— my next 3D object I want to design and print. Some kind of a, um, an angled piece of plastic or something that I can rest this on. Maybe, maybe an adjustable angle thingy. We'll lay it flat here. Flat-ish. This will definitely be interesting to see how it dries. I have a lot of water on here. I'm going to bleed some red ink on here. I like using, um, Pilot Precise Red ink pen. I, I'm just looking around. Hmm, time to improvise. All right, we're just going to improvise with this. There we go. I may have let the ink sit a little too long for it to bleed it. No, it's bleeding. I think that's enough ink and watercolor for now. I'm going to dip into— I have an itchy nose. Um, I'm going to dip into some It's just some pen here. Alright, so I'm throwing down some ink here. I got the watercolor, I'm just kind of letting it dry a little bit. I'm actually shift onto something else while I'm waiting for that to dry. So let's see how it goes. Hey, if you're watching on YouTube or TikTok— not on TikTok tonight— YouTube or Facebook or Instagram, let me know. Say hi in the comments, love to chat with you. Let me know if any questions what I'm working on here. Be fun to talk to you guys. And cool, so I'm going to bring this closer so you can just kind of see how it's looking right now. Yeah, it's definitely taking longer to dry. I may blot some— I may blot some of this back a little bit. One of the cool things about watercolor and ink is you can kind of lift it off a little bit. You can see I'm pulling, pulling some of that color off. There we go. Here's kind of a close-up. I might, uh, I think I'm gonna let this dry and come back to it. It's at a point— yeah, I think it's a good stopping point to let it dry a little bit. So I'll put it to the side. We'll just put it here for now, I guess. And, uh, what should I do? So another sheet of paper, I'll just do some sketching, or I don't know, maybe break out some color pencils. We'll see what happens. Let's actually do this. I don't know what my pup— what she sees or hears out there. Hey Andrew, how are you? Good to see you, man. Hope you're having a great night tonight. Good to see you. All right, so the, um, Statue of Liberty torch is still drying. You guys can see what it looks like. Boom. You see it's still kind of wet there, so we're gonna let it keep drying. And I'll— I'm just kind of sketching this lighthouse for fun. I'm throwing down some— this is actually chartreuse. I had no idea what color chartreuse was until about 3 years ago, and I love it. It's this really cool green color. So it's probably— it's— I would say it's one of my top 3 favorite color pencil colors. Pretty cool, right? Andrew, I'm so glad you're doing well. That's awesome. Thanks for watching. I appreciate it, man. Cool. Uh, I'm gonna bleed some of this ink. I threw down just regular ballpoint ink, so I'm gonna dip my brush in water and let's just Let's just bleed some ink. Um, here's what I mean. You'll see. Well, so it's kind of dirty water, but bleeding ink is just a really cool way just to, um, kind of— it kind of allows you just to paint with it. So you can do this with just regular pens. Sometimes it works better right after you kind of throw the pen down on the paper. Before it dries too much. You are so played over there on— you're so played over there on Instagram land. Love it. I have some stones down here. I'm going to mix up a gray color. I actually I like to mix blue and brown to make my grays, so I'm not just not using a straight up gray. Um, you could use lead graphite, you know, just a regular pencil, but I just— I kind of like this color combo of the, the brown and the blue. Notice I'm leaving a lot of white space. I'm not trying to fill everything in solid. I think it's more interesting to look at a sketch when you have white space. It allows kind of you guys, the viewers, to use your imagination to fill in, kind of fill in some of those areas. So you'll notice on pretty much all my sketches here, the Statue of Liberty, same thing. Right, a lot of white space on there. Once this dries, once the torch dries, I'll come back in with a Sharpie. I'll add some detail to it, um, and maybe I'll pop out— I definitely want to add some more red or even yellow in the flame. Let's throw this kind of shadowy color. We'll throw on the lighthouse to make it look a little more rounded. Hey, if anybody's watching, has questions, let me know over on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram. Thank you guys for watching. I appreciate you all watching. So by adding that shadow, hopefully you can see that it's a little more rounded. I'm just gonna make this little kind of side building red. I'm going to throw down just some, um, Pilot Precise Red ink. This is my go-to color for red. I just, I really love it. I'd rather use this than actual watercolor red, just a preference. There was a wonky sort of chimney, maybe like, um, there was a stovepipe inside here, some kind of vent. So we have a wonky kind of chimney coming out the roof here. This is just based on my imagination. This isn't a real lighthouse anywhere. Just looking for a green pen. I don't think I have one. That's okay. Nope, I do not have the green. Hey, cool, someone. Good to see you, Cole. Hope all's well. Jason Nicholas, great to see you. So maybe we have some kind of like flowers or weeds kind of growing up along the base of the building. Just trying to keep it kind of really just loose and wonky looking. Um, I should wait for it to dry, but you know what, I'm just going to throw some I'm going to throw some hatch lines here. Hatching lines help to turn this a little bit. Yeah, we'll go for it. Just to help, I want to make it look even a little more curved. So some vertical kind of hatch lines, and then we're just going to add— I call these contour lines. I'm just going to kind of curve it around the base of the lighthouse. Boom! I think it's looking kind of cool. I'm gonna break out some neon yellow. This is a really awesome color pencil color. If I love using highlighters in my art, I don't have a highlighter here, so I'm going to use a neon yellow, um, color pencil. It looks just like a yellow highlighter. It's a really fun color. I'll throw some on here, you can kind of see it. Bring it up closer and you can see that neon yellow just kind of popping on there. So it's a really, really fun color. You know what, here's what we're gonna do. We are working on two things at the same time, which is kind of fun. Switch that over here. Boom. Let's break out the torch again. Let's use some of this neon yellow. I kind of want to pop this flame out a little bit. Color pencil doesn't play well with, um, kind of wet ink or wet watercolor. If this was a watercolor pencil, yeah, but this is a straight-up color pencil, so I kind of have to wait for places to dry before I add it. It's kind of hard for me because I am not always patient when I'm, when I'm sketching, when I'm in sketch mode, I'm kind of hyper, I'm fast. Um, for me to slow down is sometimes challenging, but we make it work. You can see, you know, adding that yellow So if you can see that adding that yellow really kind of helps just pop, pop out the flame area a little bit more. I'm not going to go too crazy with it, just want to touch it, touch it down in some places, and then we'll, um, we'll touch some, we'll throw some down, maybe, maybe down here at the base of the torch. Just kind of tie visually together from the top to bottom. We're just kind of linking it with our eyes from here to here. Some yellow. Boom, we got some more here as well. So we can kind of trace, trace a path. Now for my number one favorite watercolor— not watercolor, well, I do love it in watercolor, but my favorite color pencil color Drum roll please! Light Aqua is always the star of the show for me. I'm going to zoom in so you guys can see this closer. Zoom in. Boom. So you can probably hear in my voice, I am— I'm exhausted. I'm overtired. So this is a good way for me to kind of wind down before I go to bed. It's just been a crazy, crazy day, long day, busy, busy week, and, uh, I'm just in a state of over— being overtired right now. So instead of me just going to bed right away, I wanted to kind of just wind my brain down a little bit and do some, some sketching, some painting here. It's kind of a fun way just to kind of change your, uh, state of mind, energy level. I can use sketching to bring me hyper hyper mode, or I can use sketching to kind of bring me in kind of zen peaceful mode. Kind of quiet chill-out mode, which is what's happening now. So it's kind of— it's just a fun tool. All right, I just want to throw some on the fingers here on the torch. I'm really liking the colors in this torch. It's— it is what's fun about doing these torches. Let me show you. Here's a digital one I did. Um, every time I do the torch, it's different, and that's what makes it fun for me. So here's a digital one, and here's today's. I've probably— I probably have sketched and given away, um, I'm gonna say maybe close to 20, 20 torches. It's just a fun piece of art to sketch. Like, when I go to New York City and I'm on the bus for just over an hour, I'll sketch. And I'll often sketch a torch on the bus, which is fun. And then when I get into the city, I kind of have a goal or mission to at least give one sketch away to somebody. Um, hey, Paula's over on Instagram! Great to see you, Paula. Hope all's well. I did learn an interesting lesson in New York City. Um, I was on the High Line Park there doing a sketch of a building, and I happened to hear a family, and they were talking about this building, and the little kid was saying to his dad, "I really love that building, it's so cool." So I sketched the building, and then I went over to give them the sketch just to give it away, and the father thought I was trying to like scam them, and I'm like, "No, I just want to give it to you." Um, it's kind of a different mentality, right? In New York City, there's a lot of people that scam, and, uh, the guy was kind of very defensive. So it was interesting for me to see kind of that social dynamic of just trying to give something to somebody, uh, out of kindness and having them be defensive about it. So interesting lesson for me. So like when I give sketches away in New York City, um I'm more cautious of who I give them to, and I've given a couple away to different shop owners or shop employees. I gave one away to a guy that worked at Shake Shack, um, over, uh, to an employee, um, over at Dough Donuts by Rockefeller Center. Shout out to Dough Donuts, not a sponsor, but I love you guys, you're awesome. Um, just fun to make connections and give this stuff away. I love how this is drying. Here, there you go. Actually, I'm going to show you the top. I do want to put some more red in here. Let's make it more vibrant. I'm going to be brave and bold. I'm going to go and grab right here— do I have a red? I'm going to grab a Sharpie Creative Marker. We're going to throw some red marker on here. It's going to be super, super red, and that's okay. I think you just could afford to have a little bit of super red on it. Sounds like a superhero. Super red. I am super red. I have my Batman shirt on today. There we go. I'm just— and I don't want to throw too much of it down because it's powerful, but just enough to make it pop and look interesting in places, right? So I don't know if you can see, but you know, the red— this red is really strong. Paul says, I'd be happy if someone gave me a piece of art like that. Oh, you are so kind. I, I appreciate that. That's awesome. It's cool to hear. Yeah, you know, I I can't blame the guy. It's just kind of just different vibes, vibes there in the city. Um, but yeah, so anyway, I ended up keeping, keeping the sketch. Um, it was just funny. It wasn't funny at the time. I kind of was like, oh, I didn't really know what to do, so I just kind of, I backed away politely and said, okay, no, no problem. Um, but yeah, good stuff. All right, so boom, we got— here's what we got going tonight. We worked on two different sketches. Why? Well, we want— I wanted one to dry while I worked on the other one. I don't know, on Instagram I know it's hard for you guys to see my full, um, what I have on my table here, so I appreciate you guys sticking with me on Instagram and seeing what you can see. I'm always, always streaming on YouTube as well, so if you ever are frustrated and you can't see everything, feel free to go to the YouTube channel and check it out there as well. I am on YouTube at The Inkspired Life. I-N-K-S-P-I-R-E-D. Um, pretty cool. Hey, cool pieces! Thank you, I appreciate your comments. Yeah. They were fun to sketch. I can zoom out so you can see them better, no problem. Boom. Two, um, two very different subjects. Let's, let's kind of look at these, kind of compare them a little bit. Both have some verticality, right? We got the torch, which is pretty vertical. Obviously the lighthouse is very vertical. Up and down. Um, one thing that you're not really seeing on the torch yet— it's not quite dry enough— is, you know, they're both cylinders, right? They're both kind of rounded. We got a cylinder shape, and the torch is kind of a cylinder shape. Um, when this dries, I can add some contour lines and shading so it looks more curvy. So we got vertical cylinders, basically. Colors, you know, light aquas in both of them, neon yellows in both of them. We have some red in both of them as well, um, and Sharpie, black Sharpie as well. Lighthouse is— you know, I didn't actually— I'm lying, I did not use Sharpie on the lighthouse, did I? Yeah, I did a little bit. Um, I will go back with a Sharpie when this dries here. And just outline the torch a little bit more just so we can see it better. You zoom in, zoom in. We're gonna get a close-up and we're gonna wrap up. What time is it? 10:39. Oh my gosh, time flies when I'm sketching. You guys find that? You find when you're doing something you love that time just goes so fast? It's really interesting. It's kind of like you want time to go slower when you're doing something you love, not fly by. How do we switch that? Hmm, how do we switch that? Interesting to think about, right? I'm starting— if I, if I had a superpower, I think I'd like to be able to control time. Sometimes, sometimes I find time to be an enemy working against us. Um, interesting, right? Yes, we go, we go very deep here on the Inkspire Life, and not only do we sketch We philosophize. Is that a word? Philosophize. It is fun to think about though, time, and, uh, how it works, how it was invented. What does it really mean? I, I find time fascinating. All right, let's see if I can add some boldy lines around the torch and wrap up for the night. Andrew says slowing time would be cool. Yes, 100%, right? If we had that power, think about it. When, when would you guys want to slow time? When would you want to speed up? And I have a feeling some people out there would say school should— they want school to speed up faster. And I'm there sometimes. I'm on that page sometimes. And sometimes there are moments that I, during a school day, I want to slow down and last longer. Um, cool, right? Just fun to think about. All right, let's pull some of the lines out on here, and then we'll wrap up. I like to say I'm going to wrap up about 10 times before I actually wrap up. But I am, I'm going to outline these right now. Let's see, can I actually add some hatch, hatching, um, hatch lines in here? There we go. So if you guys are watching, you notice how as I'm adding these, I call their hatch lines. It's not solid, it's kind of, there's some spacing in between the lines. And that adds to the loose sketchy style I like. But you can see it's kind of adding some shadows and it's gonna help the torch to look curved. It's kind of like an optical illusion, sort of, sort of-ish. And one thing I did not sketch— I like to sketch on the torch, by the way. I love what's happening here. I am a guy who geeks out on watching paint dry and ink dry. Not even kidding. Um, I love the colors that are happening right in here. Really, really beautiful. But one of the things I like to sketch on the torch, kind of on the underside here I should learn my, my torch parts. I don't even know what you would call this part of the torch, the top. I'm sure there's a fancy term for it. I have homework now. I gotta learn the parts of this torch. But anyway, I like to draw these contour lines, these kind of curved lines in here, and It just helps to give the illusion that the top of that torch is kind of flaring out and curving just by doing these contour lines. Yeah, I'm really— I'm loving this torch. This looks really cool. Hopefully the colors are showing through on screen pretty well for you guys. I'm gonna have a drink of water here and then we're gonna wrap up. I do— I am going to show you my favorite torch sketch I currently have with me. Which is right here. I'm thinking this might be the wrong book. It might not be in this one. I might be kidding, maybe I might be lying to you guys. It might be in a different sketchbook. What the heck? Let's check it out. Let's see. Nope, it's in this one. All right, cool. All right, so, um, here's how this torch is looking. I think it's a wrap on the torch for tonight. I'll show you one quick last sketch that's already done. Um, this is about 99% done. A couple more things I'll do to it when it fully dries. So we got a cool torch, cool lighthouse, just a fun loose wonky lighthouse. Those are fun. And then I'll zoom out and I'll show you the last sketch here. Some of you guys may have seen the sketch already, so bear with me. I just kind of want to show, like, show you that even though I'm sketching the same thing over and over and over again, I'm not making copies. I'm not making, uh, duplicates. They're each unique in their own special way, and I love that. So this is, this is my favorite torch I have right now, is this. I don't even know if you can see the whole thing on screen, but it's pretty long. Um, I love this torch. This is really awesome. It's on, it's on this accordion journal, so you can see how it folds up. Um, this was a fun one. This has a lot of white space we were talking about on the torch, so not everything's colored. This has some oil pastel on it, which I like because it's really intense, but it's just a fun, fun piece. Actually, let's put this out and then we'll put the other one right here with it so you can kind of compare. Sorry, Instagram, if you guys can't see the side by side here, um, but there you can kind of see the scale, right? We have this really big torch and got a smaller one, same subject. Um, both my similar loose style, but they look different, so it's just kind of fun to see. Awesome. And the more you guys sketch, the more you draw, the more you paint, you'll develop your own style. You'll do things you like. Sometimes you do— you'll do a thing do things you don't like, but there are no mistakes. Embrace it, embrace that. That's why I throw Sharpie down, because whatever happens on here, it has to stay. Sharpie is not going to go anywhere, and I just embrace it and I move forward with it. It's a really good mindset trick, um, to kind of go with the unexpected and take it and make it your own direction, right? It's kind of a big lesson for tonight. All right guys, thank you so much for watching. I appreciate y'all. Um, again, I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inkspired Life. Until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly. See you real soon. I should be live streaming again over the weekend. I think I'm going sketching a little bit on Sunday. Tomorrow I would go sketching, but Someone's got to catch up on their grades. All right, take care. Have a good night, Paula. Thank you for joining me, Andrew. Thank you for joining me. I appreciate it so much. Have a great night, everybody on YouTube. Thanks for saying— for, uh, sticking with me. I appreciate you. And Facebook as well. Take care, TikTok. You know what, I might just reactivate, do a little TikTok now for just for about 10 minutes. All right, take care, guys.