Friday Sketching

Hello, um, happy Friday night. Hope you're doing well. Happy Friday night, hope you're doing well. It is March 20th. Yeah, March 20th. I am, I am on kind of late here. It's been a busy, um, busy night. I wanted to pop on just for a few minutes. I haven't done my sketching yet today, so yeah, I thought I'd pop on for a few and do, um, some sketching, check in. Hope everybody's doing well. Welcome to the Inkspired Life. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas. I love sketching architecture. It, uh, it's a way of kind of, uh, it's a good way for me to get downtime, wait for me to change my state of mind, a way to capture a moment in time. Sketching is awesome for thinking and brainstorming. I just love it so, so much that it's become a daily, daily practice for me. You know, whether it's 2 minutes a day, 5 minutes a day, half hour, an hour, um, I try to make room for it wherever I can, however I can. And, uh, that's why I'm kind of on right now. So if you're watching, say hello. I'd love to chat for a few and, um, feel free to ask questions. Let's see, I just kind of popped on here, wasn't 100% prepped, but we're always good to go. I have my— always have some stuff nearby, especially I keep these guys handy. My Lochbie Quattros with colored pencils and markers in them. I have a bunch of Sharpies next to me and some acrylic paint. That way I can just kind of grab and go on the spur of the moment. So we're continuing this series. This is just an exploratory sketchbook for me, trying something new, um, this season, and that is just doing abstract backgrounds and sketching my, uh, sketching architecture on top of the backgrounds. It's been really fun. So I'm sketching one of my, one of my favorite buildings in New York, NYC. This one's in Brooklyn. This is the Domino Sugar Refinery building, which is really very, very cool. They've taken this old refinery and it's now become an office building. Kept the historic fabric of the outside, and it is an incredible kind of industrial building from way back. And I was lucky enough to be there when they're doing construction and renovating it. It was kind of fun to get a tour, got to wear a cool hard hat and go inside, so that was a lot of fun. So I just want to do a kind of a quick homage to it on tonight's sketch. So I hope you guys are doing well. Um, D-Ray, looks like D-Ray's on. How are you? Good to see you. Always good to see you. Nice to see you on the YouTube side of things. Hope things are well for you. Thanks for popping on. And in front of this building we have the Taco Cena stand. Tonight's livestream will be pretty short, I think, just because I, I'm exhausted. I am so tired. All right, let's grab some other colors here. I'm going to grab some Uh, let's see, let's grab some of this. Boom, boom. It's really cool, on top of this building they have this glass kind of, um, barrel vault. And this is all glass on the top. It is incredible, the views up there of Manhattan. Really, really spectacular. This is a very good example of adaptive reuse architecture where they keep old structures and give them new life, new purpose. So I think, I think they've won awards for this project. I could be wrong. They didn't, they should. It's just, it's incredible, um, to see this, the old walls intact, and they kind of built a superstructure inside the main structure, the old fabric of the building. There's all kinds of green, kind of green walls in there, which, you know, vegetation growing. I think if I remember, there are some trees growing inside there as well between the existing outside walls and the new interior walls. So if you're near Domino Park and you're in this area, check this building out. It's definitely worth it. D-Ray says you made it through the work day okay. Hey, thanks for checking in. Yeah, I made it through, I made it through. Just a tired, tired dude today, but I'm— we made it through. Thanks for asking. I hope you made it through your day as well. There's a classic sign here. This is Domino. D-O-M-I-N-O. Domino. Domino. Everything's good. I'm getting excited. I will be, um, one week from tomorrow I will be on my way to Italy. So I am super excited for this, this trip that I am privileged to be a part of and kind of a— one of the, um, not tour leader, I'm like just a group leader, so I'm just in charge of my group. But we will be with a full-time, 24/7 tour guide. I have 7 students and 7 adults going on the trip, so it's going to be really fun. A lot of planning behind the scenes. Hey, we're going to be seeing a lot of things in 10 days. Well, 10 days, not all those days are sightseeing. I guess 2 are travel, so maybe like, um, 8 days. So I don't know how much sketching I'm actually going to get to do. I will of course have my sketchbook with me, but I will take tons and tons of photos for sure. So that's really exciting, that's coming up, and I have to make sure I get some rest this week. So I was supposed to go to the city sketching tomorrow. I think I'm going to skip it, um, I'm just feeling a little run down, and you have to catch up on adulting stuff like taxes, so I gotta get that stuff done so I have to skip the city tomorrow. But that's okay. But enough about me, I'm talking a lot. Hey Gigi, good to see you. I hope all is well. Always great to see you. Happy Friday. Hey, thank you for your pro tips about, um, cafes. I think I'm gonna skip tomorrow. I'm kind of tired, and I'm so sad though. I really wanted to get in. Who knows, I might change my mind in the morning. But yeah, thank you for the pro tips, and it would be awesome. It would be awesome to meet up with you, um, sometime. That'd be so cool. So, so cool. I appreciate it. All right, so yeah, I'm just— I'm kind of just throwing down some Domino Sugar Factory love here. I should say some sweet love. Get it? Sugar Factory, sweet. Um, yeah, I was trying to be— I was trying to be silly. I don't know, I don't— am I sillier when I'm tired or I'm not tired, or am I just not silly at all? That is the question of the day. I got to loosen up a little bit. I'm a little too tight with my lines here tonight. I've been itching to get into the city to sketch. The weather has been so crazy, but today— I think today is, uh, first day of spring, right? Is that true? Happy spring, everybody! Happy, happy spring! Let the good times roll! I don't know about you guys, but I am so ready for some warm weather. I really hope everybody had a great week. I hope you have some fun weekend plans coming up, or even just some downtime to chill. It's always a good thing, right? Plenty of time, my friend. Yeah, I agree, I agree. Thank you. Enjoy your moment overseas. You can always sketch when you come back. 100%. That's why I'm definitely going to take a lot of pictures. Yeah. And I'm sure I will be going back again at some point to, uh, the places I find and love the most. If you guys have been to Italy or Spain, let me know. I'm curious. So I'll be going to Madrid, Florence, um Vatican City. We'll be exploring, uh, we'll be going to Madrid, Barcelona, and Toledo. So how can I not, how can I not be excited? I don't care about all the TSA issues, airport, it is what it is. I, I can't sweat it, got to deal with it, right? I know the airports are kind of crazy now, and but gotta go with the flow. This is Tacocino. It's like a taco stand in front of the sugar refinery, like right in here. So we're just gonna write taco I have never eaten at the Tacocina. Tacocina. What does 'cina' mean in Spanish? Cina, cena, cocina. Isn't cucina kitchen? Maybe something about kitchen. Tacocina. Maybe it's like a— the taco kitchen. Any of my Spanish friends, let me know. I'm just trying to guess. I think cucina is kitchen, if I remember. It's cool, I'm loving it. Hey, Lori Jean 64, good to see you. We still have snow? Oh my gosh, I am so sorry for you. It snowed today? Oh geez. Wowzers. I'm sorry you still have snow. That stinks. Unless you like it. Cocina, kitchen. I'm sorry, uh, cocina, right? Cocina. Is it cocina or cocina? Cocina. I'm gonna say cocina. No, cocina is kitchen. Thanks, Gigi. Gigi, I know you'd be able to help me out. I'm so— I'm sorry if I'm butchering Spanish. So one of the cool things about going to the University of Miami for 5 years— very international school, a lot of Cuban students. I had a lot of Cuban friends, got to go to their homes. Uh, it was so cool to me to experience different cultures while I was at the U of Miami and, um, going to my Cuban friends' homes and hanging out with with them. I got to pick up some Spanish, um, despite having a little bit in high school, which is really cool. This is looking cool. I'm kind of liking the sugar factory. What do you guys think? You know what just came on my— on the Spotify? Neil Diamond. I don't know about you guys, but I am— I'm a huge, huge Neil Diamond fan. And it's just so amazing just to hear his voice right now. Neil, Neil Diamond got me through college, through my hard times in college. Neil Diamond was my go-to artist. Oh, is this one not working? Next. Maybe Taco Kitchen, you're right. Oh, did I get— did I get that right? Did Ding ding ding ding ding! 10 points. I, I need a good taco. I want to try, um, oh, in New York City, what's the taco? Los— is it Los Tacos or Dos? Dos Tacos? I'm drawing a blank. I've heard it's really good. Why am I thinking of food so late at night? That gel pen— my gel pens have seen better days. Let me zoom in for you guys a little bit. Sorry, my creative brain is fired up. That's why I'm jumping from topic to topic. So just hopefully you can bear with me. When my, uh, creative synapses are fired, my brain is like a pinball in a pinball machine. Boom, boom, boom, boom, bouncing all over the place. It's been that way my whole life. And, um, so if I'm jumping from topic to topic, yeah, just hang tight with me. It happens a lot when I when I'm excited about something and I'm fired up. But you guys, you guys kind of know that by now. I should have a disclaimer at the beginning of the show. Warning: when man's synapses are fired, be prepared for the pinball machine roller coaster ride. Warning, this livestream, you can get motion sickness on this livestream. Yeah, this is looking cool. I'm liking this sketch. Let's break out some colored pencils. Um, what part of Italy does your family originate from? Hey, D-Ray, good question. Wow. So my mother's side of the family is Italian. Um, I'm going to say Naples. I'm going to say I believe it's from Naples, the Naples area. I could be, I could be corrected, but I'm thinking it's Naples. It's a really good question. We originate from Whatever part of Italy makes the best food? Good question. Cocina. It's cocina. Thank you so much for the pronunciation. Hey DB, good to see you on the Facebook. How are you? Enjoying watching you work. Hey, thank you DB, I'm enjoying seeing you in the chat. I hope you're well, my friend. I hope you're well. So DB, you've known me for a long time. Um, curious, what do you— what are you thinking of like my new sketching style? Do you like it? Not like it? I'm up for any kind of feedback. I'm really just trying to be experimentive. Experimentive, is that a word? Experiment, I guess. Experimentive and playful. Um, kind of working, bringing in my love of color and love of architecture and trying to let the two worlds collide a little bit. Maybe, you know, maybe I'll go— we'll see how I feel in the morning. I could even just go for a few hours. I like to go in the city earlier, so usually I'll take like a— there's a 7 o'clock bus, get in the city about 8:15. Uh, tomorrow's gonna be like in the Lincoln Center, Columbus Circle area for a few hours. I think it's gonna rain. I have to look at the weather. And I feel like using, um, here, guys. I love, love, love this art crayon. So fun to use. Yeah, warning, warning. Part of my curiosity, but are you a fan of spicy Mexican food? Um, I am not good at spicy. I love Mexican food. Love, love, love Mexican food. But I am not too good at— let's just say I had some, um, um, what do you call it? The other day I was eating— not salsa, I'm drawing a blank. Pico. Pico de gallo. I had some pico de gallo, and I think there was a hot— some kind of tamale or something hot in there, and it knocked— it knocked me out. So I'm not good at the spicy food, but I do love Mexican food. And you are always allowed to ask questions. I love that. Mix— yes, I'm from the part of Italy that makes the best pizza, which is, um, Chicago deep dish. No, which It's New York pizza. No, New Jersey pizza. I think I know when I retire we're going to do the pizza tour. We'll do some livestream YouTubing and we'll just do like a pizza tour around the nation. That would be so fun. I, I haven't— I just, I'm addicted to pizza. I love it. Laura Jean says, I, I get drawn in and your strokes start to make sense. It's relaxing to watch. Wow, thank you for that feedback. I love that. Anybody have any song suggestions or an artist suggestion for me? I'm up for some suggestions tonight. Um, I love your style. Just when I think you are finished with a piece, you add to it and take the piece to a whole new level. Oh, you're so kind. Thank you so much. You guys are so kind and Thank you. I hope I can repay a little bit of that kindness through the technology, through our tech here. Tacosina, tacosina. Yeah, I'm liking— I'm really liking this. This one's close to being done, I think, guys. Kind of— what do I want to do up there? It's, uh, let's break out— where is it? Let's break this out. No, I like the white. You know, I'm just gonna leave it. Happy spring. I saw some crocus. Is it crocuses or is it croci, the plural of a crocus? I have some growing in my yard finally, so to me that says spring is here. Plus the robins have been out doing their robin thing. Not like, not robbing as in stealing, but like robin as in like the birds. The birds have been doing their bird thing. I want to pump up this domino yellow. I'm going to see if this neon, uh, neon pencil is going to do it. My nose is itchy. Thank you, DB, for your kind words. Um, and you know I'm a huge fan of, of your— you're, you're the master of pencil, and I'm going to add to that, you're, you're the master of detail. You are just so great at detail. This one might be— this one might be close to being finished. I like it. Me gusta, me gusta, me gusta. I'm just practicing my Spanish for when I go to Spain. Me gusta. My chaperone happens to be the Spanish— one of the Spanish teachers in our high school, so, um, that's a bonus. I want to pop out some of this pink, so we're throwing some neon pink down just to kind of pull some of this out a little bit more. I just love the pink next to the, the aqua. Or is it turquoise? We had mentioned— it may have been Gigi or Jen, I'm not sure— one of you guys had mentioned the idea of a calendar. Um, these, these could actually be These could become the calendar pictures, you know. Now I think about it, we're gonna— I'm gonna— I gotta do something to this. Don't ever be afraid to come back to your old sketches, paintings, add stuff to them. I feel like this needs a little something something. Whenever I look at it. Yeah, so maybe, right? Just kind of a New York City inspired calendar. Maria, so ready? We have 1, 2— I love the Oculus— 3, that's cool too. We have 4. I think Lincoln Center might be my One of my faves so far. 5, St. Patrick's. 6, Manhattan Bridge. 7 would be the domino. So we already have like 7 possible calendar images, right? Muy bien, Jason Nicholas Nicholas. Muchísimas gracias. Feel free to Feel free to correct my pronunciation. Gracias, señorita. I agree, looks good. Great experimental color art. Enjoy yourself. Thanks, D-Ray. 2027 calendar. Yes. Yeah, you're on board with— you're on board with that. Yeah. Yeah, have you ever thought of that? You have some awesome, pretty good, um, some good NYC photographs. That'd be kind of cool. Great idea about using them for a calendar. I think you guys may have talked me into it. Yeah, this one might be done. So I am always open for suggestions, other New York City buildings you might like to see me sketch. So these are some of my Domino Sugar Factory sketch paintings I've done before, so I was kind of looking at them as references. There's my Manhattan Bridge. Oh, we got to put a frame on this too. Let's grab a frame. I'm just looking. Um, I'm thinking the Empire State Building should make this calendar somewhere. Maybe the Statue of Liberty somewhere as well. Let's check this thing out framed. Thank you guys for watching and staying along with me for this ride tonight. I appreciate it. I popped on super, super late. Yeah, let's zoom out. This is going to look pretty sick. Central Park. Yeah, I— Central Park is amazing because there's so many options, especially all the cool bridges, you know. Even if I go tomorrow, just even to— I'll be right, right at the south end of Central Park. Oh man, this Look at this framed— these colors pop, especially. Look at that, man. Sorry, how many times did I just say man? Let's play the— let's play a game. Every time I say the word man, we'll do like a— so you can guess how many times I say man during the rest of the live stream. I think yesterday was— word was dude. I think today is man. Yes, I'm a child of What am I, a child of the '80s? This is totally rad. This is gnarly. Totally gnarly, dude. Yeah, this looks awesome. I don't usually like— I don't like to talk about like— yeah, I'm not like— yeah, I'm What am I trying to say? I'm not someone that's— I'm a very humble person, so when I'm saying this looks awesome, I'm not saying it to brag, but it just, it just makes me feel really like cool. The vibes are really awesome. Let's just try a small frame, maybe pop out a small section. This actually even looks cool with a small frame around just part of it. I could do the top, right? That could be kind of cool. Not the— I'm digging more of a vertical frame on it. Maybe I cut out some of the— we do— so the Tacocina, we'll just do Acoina. Crop some of it. Do I slide it over and get some of the Domino sign? This one has a few different possibilities. Lori Jean says, I love the colors. Thank you so much. Reminds me of artwork I see in Cuba. Really? That's, that's a cool comment, really. I have to look at— I have to look at some artwork from Cuba. What is it? Um, trying to think of Cuba. There's a part of Cuba that has really, really cool architecture and is really nice colors. Um, I'm guessing— I'm forgetting the name of the area or the street. And I apologize, but yeah, I'm gonna— let me zoom in, guys. I think I just want to get like a really cool appreciation of these close-up. Just kind of pan it around a little bit. I want to pop out the word Domino a little more. It's kind of lost. So what can I do to pop out Domino. And I have a trivia question for you guys. What color, what color have I not really been using on these sketches? I just— that totally just hit me. There's a color that I have not used. That is really weird. Not by any intention. I'm going to use this dark blue, see if this pops it out. It's not really writing that well on the textured paper. That is so bizarre. Could we have— could we possibly have broken up and separated? I might start crying. I feel like a long, long-time love of mine has disappeared from my life the past week. I might start crying on live, live streaming here, guys. Yeah, you know what, you know what's missing? And maybe we broke up for a reason, I'm not sure, but my beloved black Sharpies. I'm so sad. I have not used my Sharpie on these sketches in a while. What, what could it mean? No, Sharpie, I still love you. You're still my— you are still my bestie. Yeah, I'm being— I'm just being silly. All right. You like the black mat? Yeah, DB, the black mat does this thing justice, right? Here's kind of a close-up of the mat and kind of you can see the colors here with that mat around it. They paint colorful. Havana. Thank you, Havana. Black. Yeah, GG got it. Ding ding ding ding ding. 10 points for GG. GG is like up to a million points right now. What are you going to do with all those points? Do tell us in the chat. What are you going to do with all of those millions of points you have racked up? In the chat, um, you definitely have a sketch coming your way, so you could turn some of them in for a free sketch. Google pics of Havana's electrical grid just for laughs. You'd love it. I'll do that. Thanks for the tips. All right guys, I think we're in the wind-down part of this sketch session, so we open it up to a little Q&A as we end here. A little Q and A as I start cleaning up. But check this out, if I just kind of crop this part out Yeah, this looks really cool. Love it. And then here's a sneak preview of the next two pages that'll be filled. That is a nice crop. Oh, you like that? You like the vertical crop? Was it the vertical crop or the horizontal? I always forget there's a time delay. I kind of like the horizontal crop. Oh my gosh, I just yawned on live streaming. Sorry, it's not you. It's definitely not you guys. All right, here's a sneak preview of pages yet to happen. Ta-da! And that is it. So we have 2 more. These are— we're gonna— this is what I was gonna take tomorrow and do some sketching in. But if I do— if I don't go to NYC tomorrow, I will, um, I will definitely livestream at some point in time, probably at night because that's when I usually am on. Sometimes I'm on in the morning or Sunday mornings too. Check out the Lockbee gear, guys. Love, love, love my Lockbee. All right, let's put— just going to clean up a little bit as we're wrapping up. Horizontal, yeah, you like the horizontal. Thank you. Yeah, me too. It might be cool to try to get prints of these made. No, if I could do a high-res scan, I do some high-res scans and try to sell prints. These might, these might actually sell. It'd be hard to sell the originals because they're all in this book. And I kind of want to keep the book together, but I think I could sell prints. Like, how cool would it be to sell like Lincoln Center prints at Lincoln Center? That would be— I— that'd be amazing. It'd be so cool to go tomorrow and just kind of have this book there and maybe show some people, show some, uh, some cellists as they walk into buildings with the building with their cellos. Yeah, it's so cool. All right, you guys, you guys having fun watching me clean up? Is this— is the cleanup— is the cleanup part of this show therapeutic? Let me know. It tastes like it could have been a cleaning day. I was sweeping my classroom. I was starting to wipe off the desktops in my classroom today. I don't, I don't know, maybe, maybe they got the spring cleaning bug. This is a cool— this is a— you guys guess what's in here. A little show and tell. I don't know if I ever showed this. Do you know what's inside this cool metal container? It is a cool travel paintbrush. Look at that. Boom! How cool is that? This has hardly been used, but I love the container. It's really cool. All right, when are you— when am I leaving? So, um, I'm leaving a week from tomorrow, Saturday the 20th. The 28th. The 28th is when my trip starts. Yeah, so I'm hoping, uh, I'm hoping this whole TSA thing kind of calms down, gets resolved. I don't— I'm allowing 3 hours to wait and 9-ish. Um, we have to meet as a group and we all have to check in as a group. So, you know, just the logistics of having everybody meet, check in at the same time. Um, a little nervous, a little nervous about it, to be honest with you guys. I'm very, very excited, but I just think getting there through, um, checking in and getting on the plane, um, I think that's going to be The— probably the trickiest part. Um, yeah, how cool! I'm so, so excited. Yeah, I, I don't even know what to say. I'm kind of speechless thinking about it. I just— it's always, it's always been a dream for me to go to Italy. Um, Barcelona has been on my bucket list for years. It's like the capital of architecture in the world, so I went to Madrid in high school. In high school, I went on a trip, kind of like a trip I'm going on now. I went on a trip to Spain. We went to Madrid, we went to Toledo. Oh man, there's a city, a city along— oh man, not Puerto del Sol. It's Puerto del Sol in Madrid? It was a coastal city we went to as well. Malaga. Malaga. Yeah, I think we went to Toledo, Malaga, Madrid, um, back when I was in high school. So it's really cool to be able to now travel with some students, and, um, I'm really more excited for them than for myself, to be honest with you, just to, um, let them explore a small taste of the world. How cool is that? You have some cool art gadgets. Go Go Gadget paintbrush, guys. Do you guys know Inspector Gadget? Um, yeah, I have some fun art stuff. This is a cool— last, last cool show and tell is this. I think I've showed this. Can you guys guess what this is? We are excited for you. Thank you. You deserve this trip. We will miss you, but it will be worth it. Thank you so much. I don't know if I can livestream data. I might try to pop in with a livestream or two and just to check in, maybe on Insta. Or I think they've reactivated my Insta Live, which maybe it means I have enough views finally, so I could do that. Obviously I could do YouTube. Did they reactivate my So it looks like I have the capability to do Instagram Live again, so that'll be cool. Yeah, I'd like to pop in maybe with some quickies. Um, we'll see how it goes. Anyway, here we go, last show and tell of the night. This is a cool little fountain pen. I just love this sound. Ready? It's magnetic. Perfect, right? I'm just gonna keep talking until my viewers— I see 5 people watching. I'm gonna keep going until that gets to 105. I'm just gonna stare at the screen. Um, yeah, that's awkward. All right, uh, DB, thank you. Jason ASMR. Yeah, I would love to do some ASMR. Art videos. How about next time I do a live stream, I will not talk at all? Deal? You guys up for that? So if I live stream tomorrow night and you watch and I'm not talking, um, it'll be the ASMR live stream. I'll put it in the notes and comments so people know. You guys can comment as much as you want. But we'll let the sound of art play its own symphony. That would be really cool, wouldn't it? You know how it goes— viewers join just when you are about to depart. Yeah, wait, it says that— that means when I'm departing this planet, I'm gonna have a lot of viewers. No, that's not— I think you mean when I depart the live stream, right? Yeah, I'm being silly now, guys. You are awesome. I could talk to you forever. I'm so excited. I'm actually wired up even though I sound tired. Thank you so much. I hope to see you tomorrow, um, live streaming. We'll do maybe a little ASMR. Until we meet again. Thank you kindly for being amazing human souls putting positivity in the world. Um, I feel it through the live stream, and if I can feel it through the airwaves, I'm sure the people around you, in your lives, that you come in contact with can also feel your positive vibes. Until we meet again, Sketch boldly, live creatively, and, and if I'm in NYC tomorrow, I'll live a livestream. Till we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly.