Jason Nicholas sketches inside Grand Central Terminal's main concourse, focusing on capturing the vibe—the feeling, colors, sounds, and scale—rather than making a photographic copy. He breaks down the intimidation of drawing such famous architecture by reducing it to its emotional essence.
Snippet number 3 for the day. Here I am inside Grand Central Terminal, the main concourse. It is an epic, epic space. I'll let you take it in for a minute or so. So I love this space. I have sketched it. Usually I'm up there sketching, but I'm kind of on a main level right now, and I love, love this view so much. I probably actually will sketch from here. I have a nice wall I can lean against. Um, this is just a small part. I mean, this is the main attraction of the terminal. There are other spaces, there are tracks, there are platforms, there's a whole new wing. So I'll be making my way through, but just wanted you to get inside my kind of sketching brain. What I'm looking for, um, here is just a pure volume of space. That would be— it's fun to try to capture. It's the shape of the space. You got that barrel vaulted ceiling, right? The windows in the background. It's iconic. And sometimes it's intimidating if you are sketching an iconic building. It can be intimidating because you want to do it justice, right? So in my brain, I'm just thinking I'm not here to capture this as a photograph. I'm not here to capture it as a carbon copy. I'm here to capture it as a vibe. You know, what am I feeling? How am I processing the space? You know, am I resonating with the colors, the sounds, the scale of it? So don't let sketching an iconic building or space stop you. Just break it down into a vibe, a feeling that you want to make for you. That's kind of how my brain works when I'm in an overwhelming— in a good way, overwhelming— but architectural masterpiece. All right, cool. All right, so I just want to give you kind of a snippet of this. I'll be back with more snippets throughout the day. Please like this if you haven't, share it, all that good social media stuff. Sketch boldly, live creatively, inspire endlessly.
