From Spain to NYC: Studio Sketching & Real-Time Q&A ✍️

Hey, how are you? Um, Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inspired Life. Happy— man, what day is it? Friday, Friday, May 1st. Happy May 1st! Wow, where the heck did April go? I have no idea, but it's good to have a new month. Um, summer's getting closer and I'm always excited about that. So hope you're having a great, great day. Thanks for joining me on the Inkspired Life, where I love sketching, love sketching architecture. It's my thing that keeps me sane, it keeps me inspired, it just unlocks my core being. So, uh, join me for a few. It's a very short stream right now tonight, um, probably about 15 minutes or so, and I'm going to start off sketching. Um, this is a picture I took of Toledo, Spain. Toledo, pretty cool, cool, um, hilltop town. I love it. So I thought this would be a fun sketch to, to create tonight and just loosely based on the vibe that you see here. All right, so if you're watching, say hello. Always love this chat and take some questions or comments. And, um, my approach to sketching is very loose, usually quick style. I'm not trying to be precise or technical. For me, imperfection is perfection. Being imperfect gives me a freedom, allows me to not stress about putting down crisp, clean, beautiful lines, matching colors, um, beautifully or perfectly. This is not what this is. It's capturing a vibe and a spirit of a place and a location. All right, let's do some sketching. Let's see, we can put this here. And, um, let's do— I'll just do a small section. We'll keep the format vertical. I am using a Pentel EnerGel 0.7 pen, and it has, um, it's like a sepia color. So we're going to keep that kind of a sepia tone tonight. And I'm also going to break out— I love using this for terracotta type roof this color Creative Marker. So again, this is kind of what I'm just loosely gonna base my sketch on, is this scene from Toledo. And you can see that terracotta colors here, really cool. All right guys, let's do some sketching. And I see Edie is in the house. Edie, I hope you're doing well. Awesome to see you, always great to see you. And I'm just gonna capture— let's see, we'll just start here. And see where we go. So tonight will be a fairly short live stream, so I appreciate you guys tuning in and hanging with me for about 15 minutes or so. And maybe I'll be on later tonight, but I, I can't promise. I'm pretty beat. So I'm going to try to actually just kind of sketch without taking the pen off the paper, so it's almost— so it's almost, uh, like a continuous line type of sketch. And I love continuous line sketching. It's a great tool for me to stay even looser than usual. Because I'm letting the pen kind of just stay on the page, letting it dance around a little bit. And I'm actually looking at the photo more than I'm looking at the page. And it's kind of fun. It's almost like, um, almost like scribbling, right? I do— if you've watched before, I do something called med ink-tation, med ink-tation, where I Um, I'll put some music on and I'll close my eyes lots of times and I'll just let the pen dance on the page for a minute or so without even looking. It's a good way to loosen up, just throw some lines down. It's kind of what I'm doing right now as well. I don't want to be precise at all. I want to feel the music, feel the energy, and just let go with the ink flow. So I can't believe it's May 1st, guys. It's crazy. This year is really It's kind of flying by for me, and I don't know if that's good or bad. Sometimes I wish time would stop, and sometimes I wish we could speed it up. Cool. All right, let's throw some windows on here. It's okay if it's not all continuous line. I don't, I don't mind. And I'll check the chat in a minute or so, so feel free to say hello, leave a comment, and I'll be checking in with you. I appreciate you guys so much. I was contemplating going to NYC tomorrow and sketching, but I think it's supposed to rain, and I really— I have stuff I need to do, so I don't think I'm going to head into the city tomorrow. As much as I love sketching, especially Central Park. All right, cool. I'm almost ready to throw down some of that— I'm calling it terracotta orange— this color here. Maybe if I had a little more, maybe a touch of red in it, be more terracotta-y, but it's, it's fine for what I'm doing. All right, cool. So kind of like this hilltop village happening. So this, if you watch last night, this is what we did last night. No, not that one. We did this last night. This was entire— and tired. Oh my gosh, emphasize tired because I am tired. This was inspired by, um, a book I have called Italian Hill Towns, and it was a scene in that book. Hey, Jen's in the house! Jen, good to see you. I hope, I hope you're doing well. It's always awesome to see you. Long time to see. Hope you're doing well, my friend. And it looks like Gigi's in the house. How are you, Gigi? Always awesome to see you as well. I appreciate you guys so, so much. Thanks for joining me. It's going to kind of be a short stream tonight for now unless I pop on again later, but I haven't sketched and I wanted to do it and spend the time hanging out with you. Yes, you, and you, and you. Was that— there was a TV show, um, oh my God, which show was it? And the lady would introduce or say hello to like all the kids, or she would say like 5 names, like I see Johnny and I see Cindy, I see Pete, Sue. I forget what show it was. It was a kids show. I want to say that wrong. I want to say Romper Room. Romper Room? Yeah, Romper Room. Does anybody remember that? I think she had a magic mirror. Cool. So you can see that orange kind of pops those roofs out a little bit. Gigi says rain in the morning and then clouds, so no bueno. Yeah, thanks for, thanks for the weather update. I was, I was going to be in Central Park tomorrow, um, sketching about 10, 11 AM, but it's not really great sketching Central Park in the rain. Although, I mean, I could go and do other things in the city, of course. I might just use my time to do some adulting here. I have a project, an architecture project I'd I want to work on. Cool. All right, let's throw some texture on the roof here— of the roofs. I'm going to zoom in. Stop. I'm panning my camera. It's very sensitive controls. There we go. Yeah, was it Romper Room? Time's flying. The year is about one-third over. Yeah, I think, I think today also marks the halfway point to Halloween, or maybe that was yesterday. Isn't that, isn't that crazy? And please welcome Nightbot to the chat. Nightbot is a new addition to our group. I was testing it last night. GG was really helpful testing some links with me. I don't think they're all working right now, but thank you for bearing with me. I just want to start, you know, put some messages out there and some info. So hello, Nightbot.

Ah, water.

Actually, it's not water, I'm drinking lemon ginger tea. All right, let's do some texture here. My imagination gets lost sketching these, like, townscapes and cityscapes. So as I'm sketching, I'm just kind of imagining, you know, being here, walking around this place. And let's throw some, kind of like we did on last night's sketch, some hatch lines just to give a little shadow, a little depth. And it just helps to pop out some of these shapes, give a little depth, a little definition. I'm gonna bring this roof here out a little bit more. There we go. I think I hear my pup outside my door. She got a bath tonight. Let me tell you, that was an adventure getting her into— in the tub. But she's nice and clean, and I think she likes it now. Cool, right? I like this. I'm digging it. I feel like I want a pop of red. Believe it or not. So we're gonna break out a red creative marker. Oh, hey Jen, I don't think I set up the weather. Yeah, Nightbot could function as a mod, but it's also just, uh, delivers info. We need the full commands. Oh, okay. Let's just— guys, let's try— let's test this out. What if we do, uh, exclamation point— thank you for being my testing ground, uh, command. Let me, um, I'm going to open— I'm going to open Nightbot on my computer and let me see if I can, uh, let's— if you guys don't mind. The heck? Default commands. So, uh, _commands. Let's see, this should give you a list of the commands if we do this. I hope it's working. Thanks for bearing with me, guys, with the, uh, Nightbot stuff. Again, I just tried it yesterday, so I guess there's a link you could try. If that link gives you access to the commands— I don't know if that was supposed to be broadcast or not, so let me know. Thanks, guys, for testing this out. I appreciate it so, so much. I'm trying to be fancy schmancy, but, and, uh, I just, I haven't tested it out myself. I just haven't had time, so your help is really appreciated. Oh, you see them? All right, thank you, GG. Thanks, I appreciate you guys. Got you guys got my back. You guys are amazing. All right, this red is kind of dirtied up. Let's just, let's just clean it up on this page. It's kind of a, kind of a throwaway page. There we go. I just wanted to clean this marker off. It had some black or something mixed in it, but I want just some brighter red.

All right, cool.

Oh, that's weird. ED doesn't see commands. Um, hmm. Um, I'm not sure why you're not seeing the commands. Hmm, yeah guys, let's just keep me posted in the chat what's going on with the links. I really appreciate it. All right, cool. All right, so, um, what else we want to do on this? Maybe a little more orange, pop some of the roofs out. I want to pop some of that out up top. There we go. Pretty cool, pretty cool. All right, I'm liking the sketch. I like its simplicity of lines, actually. And when I say simplicity, I mean just— well, simplicity. There's not a lot of lines on here, you know, kind of like this similar vibe to this one. It needs a little something something up top though, a little something up here. Alright, cool. I'm liking this, guys. Also, if, if Nightbot's obnoxious, let me know. Also, I, I don't know if I set the timing like some of them are supposed to pop up like after 20 minutes or 30 minutes or 40 minutes, so I'll have to play around the timing. I don't want to bombard the chat with, with, with, um, Senor Nightbot, so If Senior Nightbot is a pain in the nightbot, let me know. I'm here to help. I'm here for you guys to help serve you the best I can. So yeah, your feedback is always helpful and taken into consideration. And I want to throw some yellow on here. I'm going to use— actually, I'm going to use Sunburst Yellow. I think we're just going to keep working on this sketch tonight, guys, because I'm going to wrap, uh, let's see, I'm going to wrap in about 5 minutes maybe. But yeah, look at that Sunburst Yellow. I like the way it's popping out the buildings. That's really cool. What would be another good color for this? Hey, take care, Jen. We'll see you. Be well. All right, cool. Trying to think what other color would look good on here. I'm actually going to flip back. I want to— I like that so much, I'm going to throw some on this sketch too. Yeah, I think this color just gives it another level. So this, this is Sunburst Yellow. Sunburst Yellow. And I just broke the point. Get the point? You get the point? I just broke the point. Cool. Oh, EDM Blocks, uh, Naipa. Awesome. You blocked another channel because it kept telling me I was using emojis too much. Gotcha. I don't have that thing, that command set up yet. Maybe when we reach like, you know, hundreds of viewers and people are spamming the chat, we'll do that. I hope, I hope it actually gets to that point where people do that and we need to actually block them. Just, I guess that's not what I meant. I guess what I'm trying to say is let's get the views out there because I want to spread creativity for positivity. I think it's a really important thing that we need, um, in the world, and I'm just trying to do my small part to get that vibe out there. So does it work if you block Nightbot? Can, can you get crazy and spam the chats? GG. All right, cool, guys. Do you like— I hope you like this little sketch. And we'll just kind of write, this was inspired— this is Toledo, España. Toledo, España. We kind of write it down here. Oh, you saw my tea? Yeah, I'll be careful. Thanks for the tea warning. Uh, it's been done. I've painted with tea on purpose and by accident. I love the color. I love that color of tea. That color would look amazing on here if I painted it on. I appreciate the heads up on that so much. Toledo. Wow, is that my handwriting? I don't, I don't usually write that neat. There you go, Toledo, Spain. Beautiful place. And I'll show you the reference picture one more time that I loosely based my sketch on. So here it's Toledo, and I kind of just focus really on something, something like that, maybe.

There we go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, I really like this little sketch. Very, very cool. Awesome. The photo on your phone looks, uh, like a postcard. Oh yeah. Yeah, I could see that totally. Let me zoom out. You can see— let me tell you, this, uh, in person, this view was breathtaking. Let me show you guys a couple more. Let's see, I'm trying to find some. I mean, here's another view. Oh, that's— that'd be a— that'd be a kick A sketch right there. I love that. Look at that. Oh man, yeah, that's a— we'll have to hit— we'll have to hit that sketch one night. I really love— I love the geometry here. I love the, um, kind of the boxes. We got the boxes, we have the spires here. Um, just— I love the big mass, the big block here. Boom. So we got a block, boom, another block on top of that, and we have a little— just all these windows kind of in there. Sorry, I'll hold it closer. Um, definitely need some blue and green maybe for the next sketch stream. Oh, on here you're talking about my sketch here? Yeah, so there were tree— there were trees in there. I could, um, I could pop in some trees so we have some trees happening and the blue background. So good, good point. Um, you know, before— let me just throw in a couple of these. What do I want to use for the trees? I'm just going to grab a Creative Marker and we'll just throw like some greenery on here. We'll see what it does. Alright, so we got some greenery happening. Um, get some more over in here-ish. All right, so we have some greenery happening, and then let's pop some blue in the background. I wish I had— you know what, I'm gonna use— I'm gonna use our turquoise for the sky. Why not? I have a cerulean blue marker somewhere, but I'm just going to use the turquoise. Let's see how this looks, guys. Let's flip it upside down. We'll do some sky. Do not adjust your cameras or your monitor at home or your phone. I am actually doing this upside down. How do I want to do this guy? Vertical or horizontal? Uh, I'm changing my game up. We're going to do it horizontal. Alright, let's flip it over. Alright, now we got the blue, uh, sky on there. See, my marker is running out of a little bit of juice there. What I like about the blue is— so thank you for the suggestion— is it's pulling out the shapes of the roof line, roof lines, uh, in a really cool way. So I like that. Nice view, but the population density is probably really low. Um, good question. Uh, that's a good point. I think, you know, it's definitely a touristy spot, uh, and people do live here. There's actually a new part of Toledo, like a new city part as well, where I think where the density mostly is. I could add clouds if I wanted with some white gel pen or a white creative marker. Yeah, I actually like that. Now we talking. You like the blue? Awesome, I'm so glad you like it. Yeah, it does. It really makes a huge difference. Should I do it on this one? What the heck, let's do it on this one too, guys. Shout out to, um, Gigi, I think that was your suggestion, so thank you. Shout out to all you guys in the live stream, you are awesome. Let's do the same thing on this one. It's very therapeutic adding this. Um, I should zoom out so you guys can see how I'm doing this. I'm kind of locking I'm gonna zoom out a smidge. I want to show you guys what my— what I'm doing with my hand and my arm. So I'm literally kind of locking my hand in position. Notice my wrist is locked in, and I'm kind of just moving my forearm back and forth to get those straightish lines. So keeping the wrist kind of stiff and just moving the forearm back and forth, and that's how— that's how I'm kind of locked in to get these horizontal strokes on the page. I'm going to flip it over in a second. We can see how the blue worked on this one. I really love this color. It's probably— it is my favorite color marker and color pencil and watercolor. Check that out. Score! Score! Um, According to the 2020 census, density in Manhattan is 74,870.7 per square mile. Whoa, holy cow, that is incredible! Those numbers are staggering. Shout out to Edie for the fact— the fact— you're like our fact checker. You're a fun fact person. Shout out for the fun facts. Those sketches call for some Jesse— Jesse Cook music. I don't know who Jesse Cook is, but I'm gonna find out. I'm gonna put on some Spotify. Let's see, Gigi with the music suggestions, let me check it out. Jessie Cook. Any, any song that I— you should— you would recommend I listen to? If I had to pick one Jessie Cook song, that, that is a name I don't know. It's always fun discovering new music, right? All right, so I am looking. Let's see, you have the Best of Jesse Cook playlist. You have people up, down, left, and right. New York City. Oh my gosh, everywhere there's people. Bogotá. I'm going to listen to Bogotá by Bus. Bogotá by Boss. Oh, all right, I'm loving the guitar music. Oh man, you nailed it, Gigi, you nailed it. Love this. I love, I love like Spanish guitar music. I love the music of, um, I think they might be Mexican, I'm not sure, um, Rodrigo y Gabriela. I love their music so much. I'm not sure where Rodrigo and Gabriela are from. All right, this is an awesome suggestion. This is going on my playlist. Thank you. This looks great, guys. Thank you for the, uh, the suggestions. So cool, that really livened these up. Dang nabbit, these may be some of my favorite sketches in here. It does dry— so here's a marker note— it does dry streaky, so you can definitely see the streak lines. Which I don't mind. I like it because it gives a horizontality to the sky. But if you don't like to see this, it really is obvious here. If you don't like to see the streak, um, you have to do it, I guess, in really long strokes across the page. Be careful not to overlap. I just saw a marker on Tik— was it TikTok? Yeah, on TikTok I saw a marker— I can't think of the name, the brand— um, acrylic markers that don't streak like this. They come out smooth. Let's see if I can find that TikTok. I may have saved it. Yes, nice to have neighbors around. I wonder if that 0.7 is just a math statistic or an amputee. Oh man. It's weird when they do like censuses, right? You have like 0.5 of a person. Yes, he is good. Luna, Luna Elena is my fave. Luna, Luna, is it how you say Yena? Luna Yena is my fave. Yes, they are from Mexico. Rodrigo, Gabriella. I thought so. Yeah, I love their stuff. What I love about them, I guess, I guess maybe a lot of Spanish guitar is, um, is, uh, I love the sounds they get from just banging or tapping on the guitar. Like, guitar, we think it's just a string is the sound, but also just banging on the kind of the body of the guitar is really cool as well. Guys, this is really cool. I, I like it. I don't know what else to add. I, I don't know if you think the trees did anything. I don't know if the trees did anything. Maybe there's not enough. Maybe instead of trying to draw the trees, I should just throw in blocks of green, make it very abstract. So I'm not digging the trees here. Yeah, I'm wondering if I just kind of do solid blocks of green. Edie does not like suburbs apparently. I live in a rural area, you know, we have like, uh, maybe under half, half an acre of property around us, neighbors. And I live in a cul-de-sac, so I'm pretty lucky. But yeah, it's not like— it's not like typical suburbia. When I hear suburbia, I pictured Edward Scissorhands and where they lived. I forget the town, but that— I love Tim Burton's suburbia in that movie. The architecture, the colors, the cars. So if you ever watched Edward Scissorhands, check out the architecture design of the suburban town they live in. It's cool. All right guys, about to wrap. If you have any final questions, let me know. We did some fun sketches tonight. Love this. Just while I'm talking to you, I will just take a picture because I, I post this stuff on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook. I try to do it every night after I sketch. So let me just do that while we're wrapping up here. Prop it up. Props. I'm gonna prop it up a little. I hope you guys have had an amazing time. I hope you did something fun— did something fun or learned something fun, or I don't know. Said something fun to each other. What am I trying to say? Does anybody know what I'm trying to say? Because I have no idea. I had to put a clip on there. I'm propping this up. It looks better in the light if I prop it up. And whoever invented live photos, I love that person. I use live pictures for pretty much everything. It's great for doing videos. So, so thank you to the live photo person or people. Uh, I don't, I don't know if I posted this. Did I post this one? I don't know. No, I think I posted the Brooklyn Bridge from last night. Guys, if you haven't seen it, check out the Brooklyn Bridge from last night's live stream. Uh, you can see it on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or go back to YouTube and watch the replay. Skip through it if you want, but I think last night's Brooklyn Bridge came out really cool. And let's take a quick look at it. And this is my— gonna be my exit for the night. All right, let's take a look. Ta-da! It's a little squatter than I would like. Usually I draw my bridge, my Brooklyn Bridge, taller. It's hard to say fast. Brooklyn Bridge taller, Brooklyn Bridge taller, Brooklyn Bridge taller. Um, but it works. I like it. It's kind of cool. All right, let's see if there's any final comments, and we'll go— so we go to the, um Let's go to the heart-to-heart cam. I like to call it the heart-to-heart cam where I can just look at you guys in person. You can see I didn't do my hair, and we'll just kind of look. And on a more personal note here, great music, by the way, and I will check out the other name you put in there. I forget now. Well, Lena, Yena, something. Let's go back and look. Yeah, you guys, um, sometimes I think about living in the city. Let's, you know, let's go to the live face cam and we'll end here. We'll talk about living in the city. All right, bear with me. All right, there we go. I didn't adjust the camera. Perfect. Alright. Um, so I sometimes think about living in like New York City. It would be a really interesting experience for me. I love going to the city very much so, but I always am trying to imagine living there, and I think it's such a different vibe than what I grew up in. That would be a really interesting learning experience. So with that being said, I'm ending my Instagram because it's freezing. Okay, yeah, so I love that you guys are talking about environments, where we live, right? Where we live can affect how we are, who we are, um, our mindsets, our philosophies. It's interesting, right? So just like our— where we live can affect our lives in many different ways, um, so can our environments that we work in. So for me, a creative environment is really important. If you were to look around this studio, it is a mess, kind of— it's kind of too messy, but there are things posted around here that remind me and inspire me and inspire my creativity and remind me of reasons of some of, you know, maybe one of my purposes in life. Um, you know, I have paintings from friends here, I have, uh, thank you notes from students here, I have some artwork I love here, and more importantly, I have you guys out there watching. Thank you so, so much. I appreciate your time, appreciate your help. Thanks for the Nightbot feedback in the chat. Thanks for the color suggestions on our sketch we did tonight, which is here. And until we meet again, guys, until we meet again, let's look at this. Sorry. Until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire. Endlessly.