Friday Sketching - Spring

about what humans do. I'm stumbling, I'm rising, falling, realizing. I'm changing, still fighting, still learning, still trying. No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human. I've carried doubts like heavy stone, felt the weight when I'm alone.

I've lit the dark with smaller sparks, found my strength inside the marks.

Every flaw, every bruise I've earned, every lesson painfully learned, all the moments that left me torn made me someone worth fighting for. I'm struggling, I'm rising, falling, realizing I'm changing, still fighting, still learning, still No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human. I'm not here to be flawless. I'm not here to pretend. I'm here to keep moving, again and again. Again. I'm here to keep choosing the life I can stand, the life that's my own. I'm still becoming, I'm still becoming. I'm stumbling, I'm rising, falling, Realizing I'm changing, still fighting, still learning, still trying. No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human.

Hey guys, happy Friday! It is, um, April 17th, 2026. I'm Jason with the Inkspired Life. It is awesome to be here on a Friday night sketching live with you. Yeah, I'm talking to you out there. Um, it's been a crazy busy week, but it flew by so dang fast. OMG with a capital T for time. Um, I lost track of it, but it's good to be here. I'm gonna be doing some sketching tonight. Um, just starting with a quick— this is a Barcelona-inspired sketch from the Uh, oh my gosh, is it the Gothic Quadrant? Oh man, Gothic Quarters, part of Barcelona. And, um, I don't know, I think, I think we're gonna do something a little different tonight. I'm— I don't think I'm gonna do a New York City sketch tonight. I think we're gonna do something inspired by the spring. The weather has been really warm here in New Jersey. We had a bit of rain today, which we need. So yeah, it's been pretty, pretty good. So just want to kind of celebrate the, the springtime. So stick around, we'll do some kind of sketch inspired by spring. Let me know how you're doing, where you're watching from. I always love to know that in the chat. Always feel free to say hello, ask questions, comments. I am here for you. I'm here for you to help inspire and infuse maybe your creativity, maybe, uh, just someone you want to hang with during your chill time tonight. Maybe I'm a little ASMR putting you to sleep. It's all good. No matter your reason is here, hopefully it's, uh, you're getting something positive from this show. I always feel weird calling it a show. I don't know, should we call it a show? What do we call this thing we're doing? I know, besides livestream, or do we just stay— say livestream? Let me know in the chats. Hey, Edie is in the house! Good to see you. I hope you are doing well today. Always, always fun to see you pop into the chat. Hope you're doing great. Um, also, and just let me also know, do you music, no music, do you not care? I want to know what you guys think. I need to listen to music, but I don't have to play it for you. But I— music just fuels me, my creativity, um, and I can just play it, uh, in my— right here. Right in that thing in my ear so you don't have to hear it. Yeah, all right, this is cool. So anyways, it's kind of a quick loosey-goosey sketch. I don't know why I keep saying that. This whole week I've been saying loosey-goosey. It's kind of weird, but it is what it is. Um, all right, all right, cool. I'm feeling kind of ready to go. This was just a quick warm-up, just wanted to throw some lines down. I do want to do one thing on here. I want to put a nice blue door here. And as simple as that, we have a blue door. So I wanted to start with a red pen. No particular reason, I just kind of grabbed it. I didn't really look for my Sharpie. And, uh, it just goes to show, you know what, sometimes we think we always have to start off with using black ink on a white page. That is so not true. You can use any color you want, whatever you're kind of feeling in the the moment. Just grab it, grab it and go. Yeah, this arch, I did not do a good job with this arch, but I don't care. Me no quiero. I just want to have fun throwing some lines down on paper, throwing some color down. Great way to unwind from a busy day. I just want to show a little bit of texture on here as well. Edie says, I love being here. Shout out to you, thank you so much. I always appreciate your time. So cool. If anybody out there is lurking please hit that thumbs up button, that like emoji, share, care. Let's get more peeps watching the live stream. It's so much— it's just so fun when I see people in there, you guys interacting each other with each other in the chat. So cool. I'm just gonna keep messing with this one. I— why not? I'll eventually get to my spring sketch. All right, I'm gonna throw some music on here in my ear. It's going to jump onto Spotify. If you guys want to follow along, I think it's public. You can follow with my Inspire-1 playlist. This is what I'm listening to, and I think, I think it is public access, so feel free to listen. Um, we have some Shinedown right now. I was listening to Shinedown, so I'm kind of right here on the playlist. I so wish I could play it over the live stream, but social media doesn't like it and they will flag me and probably turn off my volume, which is a blessing for some people. Yeah. Oh, I got tea here. Hold on, hold on. I got some tea. I forgot. I've been trying to drink tea at night just for get some probiotics in. This is lemon ginger plus probiotics. I put some honey in there also. Oh, I love lemon ginger tea. So good. Okay, I'm the type of person that will make a cup of coffee in the morning. I will take 2 sips, the coffee will sit there 3, 4, 5, 6 hours, then I'll remember, oh yeah, I had coffee that I didn't finish. So now it will— then I'll go back to the coffee and it's cold, but I like iced coffee. Um, so if I don't drink that tea now, it will— same thing will happen. Right now it's lukewarm because I did forget about it. Y'all do that? Y'all just make a cup of tea in it or coffee and it just kind of sits there and goes to cold land and just kind of gets cold? So hope you guys are doing really well out there. I think I'm finally recovering from my jet lag from my trip and whatever cold or whatever thing I got from the dude sneezing on— there was some guy sneezing on the plane, like, all the way from Munich to Newark, New Jersey, and I think the guy got me. I'm not blaming him, but I think I got a cold from that. But it's good to actually start feeling back to normal. Whatever normal is. Gonna zoom in a little bit. There we go. At fun? Oh my God. At school? At school we had a fun day. We had, um, what was called Spring Fling. Spring Fling was basically we had classes up until about 11:15, and then the rest of the day was, uh, given over to some food trucks, and there was a lacrosse game and activities for kids and just kind of just chilling out. It was just a cool way to unwind, uh, on at the end of the week here. So, you know, shout out to the school and people that set all that up. Sometimes it's really great just to get a break from the world of academia. Not macadamia, although I like macadamia nuts, but the world of academia. So that was a kind of a fun day today. I'm liking this sketch the more I add to it. Maybe we'll just spend our whole time on this one sketch and add so, so, so much to it, and we'll see what happens. It'll be one of those things that you either end up loving or hating. Anybody watching on YouTube, I have a fave to ask. If you go to— on my YouTube page, if you go to my posts, I don't know if it's under community, but maybe just posts, I have a poll on there. I'm looking for feedback on titles for for a workshop I'll be doing in Brooklyn this summer, a sketching, loose style urban sketching workshop at a pretty big stationery event. Um, but yeah, if you go there, there's a poll with 4 different titles and I think I had had 2 people vote, which is awesome. So thank you. Um, go on there, let me know which of the 4 titles do you like. if any. And you'll be hearing much more about the workshop in the next couple, couple weeks or so. All right, what else do I want to add here? I feel like I want to do something in the background. All right, here's what I want to do. I want to do— this is where I was almost said Mr. Nick. That's what the kids call me in school. This, which I like. I was gonna say, this is where Mr. Nick— I— do you guys talk about yourselves in the third person? I maybe once every few years I'll do that, so I don't know why I just was referring to myself in the third person. But I'm gonna throw some pink on here. And speaking of Pink, I do— do you guys like the musician Pink? I like her music. All right, I am rambling, and but what else is new? Hey, I see Gigi popped in the house. Gigi, so good to see you. Hope you're having a fab day today. Thanks for popping in. I really wish this fluorescent color would come across on screen for you guys. I, I think the lights wash it out, but this is really a cool, like, a neon pink. I just wanna throw a little pink in there just to pull the edge of those buildings out a little bit. There we go, kind of cool. Sorry, I know my— whenever I work, I'm always moving my sketchbook around. Hey, lauriejean64 is in the house! Hello, Laurie Jean! I drink my coffee in a Yeti cup, keeps it hot for hours. I love Yeti cups. I always like to say, never forgetti your Yeti. I have a Yeti, but I dropped it, I don't know, a few months ago, and now it leaks a little bit out the top. But Yetis are amazing. Good thinking, good thinking, Lincoln. Never forgetty your Yeti. Gigi says, uh, that looks like our front gate in Mexico. Really? That's phenomenal. I love that. I love when my sketches connect with you guys in different ways. So dang cool. The turquoise color, I love that turquoise color. Um, I know I've talked about Louis— Luis, I'm sorry, Luis Barragán, Mexican architect. I've talked about him a few times. His colors are spec Spectacular. Check out Louis— I think the S is silent— Louis Barragan. Yes, guys, please vote. Thank you, GG. Yeah, guys, vote, vote, vote. I need your feedback. I trust your opinions. Well, most of you. You voted for Sketch Fearless. Oh, thank you. All right, Sketch Fearless, that's a good one. My coffee doesn't last long enough to get cold. There you go, Edie, that's what I like to hear. But I, um, this is, this is definitely my favorite tea flavor right here is lemon ginger. I love it, so dang good. All right guys, I'm gonna do another minute on this. If you want to see another sketch or How about if you want to see a spring-inspired sketch, put spring in the chat. Spring. And, uh, we'll, we'll take a break from New York City and do a different— I'm thinking of flower. Well, I already picked out a picture, so I know what I want to do. But if you want to see spring, or you can vote for NYC, it's up to you in the chat. I could do either or. That's not working. Oh, I think I killed this. I think I killed this Sharpie. This is so sad. This is— I love this color Sharpie. I might cry. I may cry here live on air. I think I'd like to visit Mexico. Mexico City looks like a really amazing place to, um, to visit. I don't know, I don't know where else would be— I don't know where else I should go in Mexico if I ever visit. I love Mexican food, I love the culture. All right. All right, I just randomly grabbed this pencil, so we'll go for it. And I'm also going to probably do a little ASMR with the spring sketch, or the next sketch we do. Less talking, more sketching. There's one last thing I want to do on this sketch. Let's sketch some of the— let's use brown, I guess. Let's use this pen. All right, cool. Just want to throw a little bit of texture, maybe some kind of a stone streetscape there. Alrighty. Spring, spring tea. Yeah, I haven't drunk tea in years. I, I love a good tea. Love a good tea. All right, this came out cool. I kind of like this Barcelona-inspired sketch. These are— these have been fun to do, these kind of quick perspectives. I really like— not that one, not that one. I really like this one. Look at the vibe between this one and this one. They're both like one-point perspectives, right? Kind of just going back, boom, to focal point. And then this one's going back— not that one, right? This is kind of going back to, to a focal point. Pretty awesome, right? All righty. All right, let's, um, spring. I see spring. Let's do a flower. Yeah, I think I did one maybe a month or two ago, and we're gonna do it, uh, let's just do it on some watercolor paper here. We'll just use this. We'll zoom up, zoom in on it. I don't need to. All right, one of my favorite flowers, and the deer love to eat them, so I'm lucky if I get to see one during the spring. And I'll show you on screen. I love, I love me, uh, some tiger lilies. Love I just love tiger lilies. Irises are my first love, and then I think, I think I'm, I think I go to tiger lilies next. But the deer eat these things like crazy. Um, so let's do like a, let's use this as inspiration. I don't know what color it's going to be. I don't know if it probably won't even look like the picture, and that's perfect. And I'm actually going to even turn the picture off. I'll make it smaller. Let me get bigger because I'm going to actually look at that. All right, let's just, uh, do some kind of sketch inspired. Again, the keyword is inspired. I'm not duplicating or replicating. Um, what color do I want to use? I like this Metallica song a lot. All right, now I'm looking for Sharpie. Sharpie, where are you? Sharpie, come home. Here we are. I hope you get the chance to visit Mexico. I'm sure you will love the architecture. Uh, without a doubt. Yeah, I, I haven't been there and I know I love it already. So that's— there's no question I'm gonna love the architecture. Um, go to Guanajuato. Guanajuato. Am I saying that right? Guanajuato. To see the mummies. Try to take a souvenir but don't get yourself arrested. Sounds like an Indiana Jones thing. If I— am I Was it like, if I try to take a souvenir, is the giant boulder gonna roll down after me? Do I need to wear my fedora and bring my whip? My— the first with blue sky is my fave. Oh, Gigi, I'm glad you like that one. Gigi, I owe you, I owe you a sketch, so You're gonna have some choices. You have an Empire State Building choice. Let's do a loosey-goosey sketch here. You have an Empire State Building choice. You can have that sketch that you just said you like. I'll leave it— I'll totally leave it up to you. Again, I am just kind of If you kind of look at what I'm doing— I know I said I was going to be quiet ASMR, but I lied, sorry. If you look at what I'm doing, I'm actually looking more at the photograph than I am at the paper. Um, and one of the reasons I like doing that is it's helping me keep my sketching looser. If I was staring at the page, I'd be really I think I'd be more tight with my hand and my lines and try to be more precise, and that would be more frustrating. So I'm looking at the picture more, and I'm just kind of letting my hand dance around a little bit. So this is a really fun practice if you want to keep loose. Definitely try this technique. We got these cool little pods kind of happening here. Boom. And I think we're gonna use watercolor tonight, guys. I'm just gonna do an outline, just throw some color on, zoom in. I am totally turning this off. Bye-bye. All right, let's, uh, I got some watercolor. Whenever I watercolor stuff, I like to work at an angle, so I'm just going to put it on this. I'm going to prop this up with this very, very fancy system. Not really. I like to prop it at an angle so the water runs down the page, the paints run down the page, the ink runs down the page. And that's one of the fun looks I like when I do ink and watercolor washes. I don't have a paper towel, do I? All right, so I'll just use a cloth to wipe off the brush. Let's do it. You know what, let's use Mr. Bamboo Brush. Mr. Bamboo Brush is my fave brush for watercoloring. And at Michael's the other day, I found a— in the bargain bin, look what I found. I found for $2, I found another bamboo brush. This is a 12-inch round. It's bigger than this one. I think this one is a 10 or 8, I'm not sure. But yeah, I love using these. ¡Qué! ¡Qué bueno! All right, so this is just kind of like layer 1, um, so this needs to dry. After it dries, I'll come back and we'll I'll add some more detail. I'll pull stuff out with a pen, with a— probably a Sharpie, I mean. A little bit more color, maybe some creative markers on here as well. But this is just really kind of just the base of where this one's going. So I really— I have to let it dry. So what we'll do is I'm going to put it aside and I'll hit another sketch, and I think I'm going to We're gonna revisit one of my faves. I think I'm gonna just sketch a, uh, let's do a Liberty Torch. I haven't done one in a while. All right, let me see if you have any questions or comments. You guys are talking about Aztec ghosts. I love that, that's so funny. All right, let's do a— I love, I love when you guys chat in the chat because that's what the chat is, that's where it's at, it's at the chat. All right, let's do, um, a torch. I haven't done one, I haven't done one this week yet. Usually I do, I don't know, 1 or 2 a week. I do some of my lighting, it's really washing out. Oops. I started this torch up too high on the page, but I don't care. I'm not stopping. Ain't no stopping me now. Isn't that a song? Ain't no stopping me now. Ain't no stopping me. I don't know, I got this song in my head now about ain't no stopping me. I don't know if that's a song or am I making that up. Oh, maybe— wait, I think I'm thinking of the theme from the TV show Perfect Strangers. I love— do you— has anybody watched that show, or has anybody seen Perfect Strangers? It's a, it's a current obsession of a show I grew up watching. I love that show, but I don't— maybe that's what I'm thinking of. I don't even know. Alright, so we kind of have the beginning of a torch sketch. Not near being done yet, but kind of just the beginning. Now the fun part is where I could just start throwing color on here, and we're just gonna see— let's use some creative markers. We got boom, boom, boom, boom. All right, I'm almost done with this, I think, for now. Alright, cool. Alright, I think I'm done with this quick Liberty sketch, torch sketch. I'm gonna add some stuff here. Those look like Chinese calligraphy brushes. Yeah, they do. They're bamboo brushes, definitely can be used for calligraphy. I am not— I have not a calligraph— what's the word? Calligrapher? Um, I respect and admire and appreciate people that could do calligraphy. That is such a fine art. I mean, that is a skill that I have never really tried to develop. Yeah, they— those brushes can definitely be used for calligraphy. Ain't no stopping us now, we're on the move, from a disco song. Is that what it's from? Gotcha. I was thinking Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now by Starship. All right, all right, I like that. So maybe, uh, ain't stopping, maybe it's in a bunch of different songs. That's cool. Pop quiz: who gave us the Statue of Liberty and what's it made of? I know the answers, ding ding ding ding, but I will let— I will let you guys answer in the chat. Thank you for the pop quiz, I love that, that's so fun. We should do more of that. Speaking of doing more of something, let's— I'm gonna go nuts and break out— I'm gonna use some of this, one of my new fave colors, fluorescent orange. You know, now I'm going off the deep end now. Or maybe I— maybe I've been there the whole time. But this is about playing around, right guys? Just doing things that make you smile. This is not about perfection. It's not about, oh, is this the right scale? Is this line in the right place. Oh my gosh, does this color make sense? That's great for some people, some artists. I love it, appreciate it. That's not what this is. This is— we are now in the creative playground, the creative sandbox, building a sandcastle of lines and color. And if this sandcastle gets washed away by the waves, so be it. Because you know what? It's the experience, the journey, the creation part that's going to stick with me and stick in my heart and stick in my brain longer than the physical end product. So yeah, sandcastles are beautiful, they're fun to sculpt, right? If you ever made a sandcastle and you wanted to, you You know, when you make a sandcastle, it's go— it's not going to be there forever. It's going to get washed away, right? But you still make that sandcastle. Why? Oh, I just lost something. I'm going to add, why? Because it's fun. You know, if we're older and adults and we're doing it, it's because it Brings us back to our childhood. It brings us back to our sense of play, wonder, curiosity, building, creating. And we know, we know the waves are going to come in and take it away, but we still build it. Think about that. It's the process, the, the journey that's going to stick in our hearts. And the castle will go back into the ocean. That's right, we can get deep here on the Inkspired Life. This is an amazing color, guys. It's called Inferno Orange. Color names don't get much cooler than Inferno Orange. This has gold— I don't think it's real gold, but like gold color flecks in here. When this dries— not flecks like Yeah, I'm flexing for you. But gold flecks, so when this dries you will see sparkly, shiny, goldy things happening. You know what we're gonna do? Wait, I'm gonna— I don't care, this is gonna be fun. I'm gonna just— I'm gonna throw some ink down here. I'm gonna kind of just blow it around, see what happens. Put a little bit of water though. All right, we're going to make these flames go cray cray, and I'm going to get orange paint everywhere. Sorry, light fixture. Yeah, that was fun. So I just took the orange Inferno Orange, and we're just making a mess with it. Why? That's the fun, the childlike spirit coming out in— coming out right now. And that's okay. There's plenty of a time for adulting, guys, you know, paying bills and working, and you got to make more time for play. Yeah, I gotta— all right, my next project in here, note to self, fix this light. I don't know why it's so intense. If I push it back a little, I think that's actually better. All right, cool. So we got a nice little torch sketch. Almost done. I'm sure I'll come back and do something at some point. I tend to do that with my torch sketches. I just leave them and I come back and add stuff. Uh, just prepping for whenever I— when I go to NYC. I don't know if I'm gonna go to NYC tomorrow. We'll see. But yeah, so I just got a few here, right? And they'll always come out different. Some are cooler than others. I'm not really digging tonight's, the end product, or the almost end product. But you know what, IDK with a capital Z, it's all good. Boom, boom, shakalaka. All right, we're gonna wrap up in a couple minutes. Let me know if there's any final questions and/or comments. All right, this still needs to dry a little bit, so we'll play with the tiger lily on another live stream. We'll be revisiting some more flowers, and I'd like to do more butterflies this spring. I had fun doing a butterfly. A while ago. So definitely more flowers, more butterflies, and of course more NYC, because I can't get enough of this book right here. France and copper. Yes, you got it! I knew the answers, I was letting people, uh, in the chat answer. But yeah, France gave it to us, and it's made of copper, and it has just weathered and oxidized over the years, and that is the beautiful kind of green patina that we know the statue to be, that color, right? So I love copper. I love when it weathers and it turns that, that kind of patina, bluish-greenish color. All right, I don't know why I brought this out. I'm not using it tonight. It's just fun to look through. I do have one blank page, so tomorrow, when I— next time I do a live stream, we'll fill this page in here with a building of your choice. Alright, let's look at our very first sketch and we'll wrap up what we worked on in this book, right? That's right, we were talking about Mexico a little bit. Gigi said the color reminded her of her gate in Mexico. Let's go back. Bum bum bum bum. That is not the one from tonight, but that's a cool one. I lied for a second. I want to try something on here. Alright, so I was, as I was flipping through, Um, in my brain, the color, the color blue just kind of popped in into this head of mine. Um, and I think it's because I wanted— we had a lot of warm colors, we had the pinks and oranges on here. I feel like that we needed— I feel like it needed blue to kind of balance it a little bit, and I like the way it transformed. So I think that blue really just actually took this up a level. All right, pretty cool. Edie, have a great night. Good to see you. Take care until we meet again. Thank you for popping in. All right, and then we actually did this one tonight. Not that one, this one. And maybe it's because I did this at the beginning, I had this in my brain. And I took that idea and brought it to that sketch we just saw. All right, guys. I'm just darkening the outline. I really want the edge of the buildings to pop out, and I think it looks really nice against the blue, against that pink sky. I really love that contrast. Opposites, right? Opposites are— opposites attract. I think that's a song. Isn't that a song too? Is it a Paula Abdul song? Opposites Attract? Maybe. Might be a Paula Abdul song. I could be making that up, or something like that. All right, cool. All right, and this was inspired by, uh, in Barcelona. So let's write it on here. Bar— let's put it here. Barcelona. Barcelona. Barcelona, España. Barcelona, España. 2026. Cool. All right, guys, I've been on for an hour. Wow. Um, I hope you liked tonight's show. I hope you had fun. I hope you maybe chilled a little bit. Maybe you had fun in the chat. I'm not sure, but I hope you're leaving tonight a little— feeling a little bit better, a little bit more positive, maybe a little bit more relaxed for an end of the week vibe. If so, my job is done. Or maybe it's just beginning. You guys are awesome. I appreciate all so, so much. Uh, tomorrow we'll see. Tomorrow is a possible NYC day. We'll see how, uh, if I sleep in or not. Um, you guys are amazing. Other— I will live stream tomorrow night or Sunday night or both. Till we meet again, sketch. Boldly smash that like button, subscribe, share this stream out. I had one person on Instagram. Um, anyway, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly. Appreciate you all so, so, so, so much. Hearts to y'all.