Holiday Sketching - Finishing the Christmas Tree
In this live-streamed sketching session, artist Jason Nicholas completes a mixed‑media Christmas‑tree illustration that is loosely inspired by New York’s Wall Street holiday tree. He walks viewers through his material choices—Sharpie markers, Pilot Precise ink, watercolor, graphite stick, colored pencils, and Fabriano 140‑lb watercolor paper—demonstrating how he layers each medium, adds texture, and manipulates white space. Throughout the session he engages with viewers (Laura, Judy, D‑Ray, etc.), answers spontaneous questions about techniques such as grid journaling, and shares personal anecdotes about his teaching schedule, cooking, and recent drone sightings in New Jersey. Jason experiments with framing and cropping, testing various mat sizes and orientations before settling on a final presentation. He reflects on his annual “tree” series, comparing this year’s vibrant, semi‑transparent style to earlier, more monochrome versions from 2020‑2023, and hints at future mash‑ups. The stream closes with thanks to the community, a preview of an upcoming “Best of 2024 Art Tools” video, and a promise to return with more creative content.
Chapters
Hello, happy December 15th, Sunday afternoon. I'm, um, back on, gonna I think wrap up this sketch, so feel free to join me and, um, ask questions, leave some comments. Hope you're having a great, great day today. Let's see, just want to open this window and let's get some music going. So I started this sketch yesterday. It's mixed media. It has Sharpie on it. We have some watercolor on here as well. We have red ink from my Pilot Precise Pen, and we also have some graphite as well. So I'm gonna be throwing on a little more color, another layer today, and I think I'm gonna break out one of my most favorite finds for 2024, Sharpie creative markers. So stay tuned and we'll, uh, we might be adding some of those on here. This scene was inspired by the Christmas tree located in Wall Street in New York City. I'm very loosely inspired. The colors are not the same as the colors you would see there. They're just colors I like using and just having fun playing around with. All right, I want to add some, um, let's add a little more detail. Now this is all dried, we'll break out the Sharpie. And these are columns, so I'm going to pull these columns out a little bit. I'm not looking at any reference images, I'm just kind of winging it, and that's what keeps it loose and fun for me. I'm not trying to replicate something that is there, just kind of an idea. And I kind of like the white space, so I'm going to leave that space kind of happening. Let's see, I'm going to pull this edge out a little bit more. I really like how undetailed this is. I'm going to leave it that way. I'm just kind of curve the top here so it looks like they're roundish type columns happening.
Dig dig dig! Dig dig dig! [MUSIC] Dig dig dig!
Here, um, just to soften the bright white that's happening. So I'm going to use the graphite stick and we'll do that, do it that way. I'm just going to zoom out so you can see how I do this. I like to take my graphite stick, kind of put it on my board here I'm just dip into my water with the paintbrush and I'm going to lift up some of that graphite and we're just going to kind of spread it on here. All right, cool. So, um, I just added some graphite stick for a gray background. So let me add some actually purple Varsity Pen as well. And I just broke out some Sharpie creative markers. I'm gonna do some kind of Christmas lights or bulbs on here. Um, looks like Laura's in the house. Laura, I like the tree. Hey, thank you, Laura. I hope all is well with you. Great to see you out there on Facebook land. Thanks for your comment. All right, let's dig out and see if I have a red. Yes, I do. Laura says, oh, I'm hanging in there. Good, I am so glad you're hanging in there. I always love to see when you post your, um, hearts and your artwork. Good stuff. So this is some orange, um, again, this is the marker. Yeah, I'm liking this tree. I like the kind of this little spots on here for the lights. I'm not gonna get too crazy with detail. I might not, I might not do too many more. Alright, let's zoom in and take a closer look at this. Let's go even closer and bring it up. You can get a sense of the layers, the textures happening. You can really see the hard edge. That looks really cool, the watercolor there. Love that. This one might be done. This might be done. Yeah, I don't, I don't want to overwork it. I kind of like the simplicity of the building here. I like the white space here on this building. Um, I really just kind of want to bring your attention, the focal point, into where that tree is right here. I kind of like it. I kind of like that it's not kind of like in your face, right? It's not a green, bright green tree that's there. It's kind of almost disappears a little bit, right? Kind of like the holidays, they're not here, uh, for long. They kind of are here and they disappear pretty quickly. So, right, so my tree is kind of almost transparent, right? It's here but it's almost fading away at the same time. It just makes us— it's a reminder just to appreciate every moment that you have. Laura says, uh, I like the suggestions of the lines behind the tree. Oh, thank you. So I'm gonna grab a drink here. I'm drinking some hot chocolate. Um, yeah, so I'm just I was debating about these back here. These are buildings in the background. I'm not sure. Originally I was going to put some lights, lighting in the building, use the— using the yellow to show lights happening in there. I might end up shading these darker for the outline of the buildings, um, so I might come back in with just my graphite stick here and we'll just kind of maybe just add a little bit of darkness. Well, I'm doing it now. I'll just kind of add— make these a little bit darker. I don't want to make it too crazy. That was kind of the question mark on my head as I was wrapping this up. What do I do with those in the background. I might just add water on top of that and soften it. Okay, uh, yeah, let's do that. So I'm just dipping my brush into some water So make this a little bit darker here and maybe here. Again, this is loosely inspired by the Christmas tree located in, um, located at Wall Street in New York City. Awesome. Let me see if I have a mat here with a frame, like an opening. I want to see what we got in here. Put a little frame around it. Um, I only have small ones. I need to get— I think I just— where's my other one? Oh, I just gave away my one of my mats, so we'll just use these. I wish I had a bigger one. I just get the idea of what it would look like if we crop it out or frame it. Excuse me. Let me just get rid of this thing here too so we can see it better. All right, there we go. Cool. There we go. So here's an example of what it could look like if we put a mat around it. I kind of would rather have a rectangular proportion. That's a square opening. I have these, they're pretty— openings are smaller than I'd like, but, um, we'll check it out and see what it looks like anyway, just for fun.
That's—
that is actually not too bad. Let's just do a vertical on the tree, maybe capture part of the building. No, I'm not really digging that. We shifted it over. No, I'm not really digging that either. It really needs to be a horizontal opening in there. Let me take one more look for the mat. I don't, don't think I have it anymore. It's just a cardboard. We can use this. This isn't black, but this is a cardboard mat. This could— this gives a better idea. I think I kind of like it. Maybe something like this would look cool. Maybe with that kind of opening. Definitely better. All right, I am not— I thought I was done, but I am not done because I'm going to add some colored pencil on here. Um, let's see, I'm gonna grab some neon yellow. I need to add some signature neon pink. I like, I like this pink against that gray background. It kind of pops out nice. All right, maybe I put a little bit more than I wanted, but that's okay. I like it though. We'll just keep it there in that area. Alright, cool. I think this one is almost wrap now. I'll see if there's any final questions or comments and thoughts. Hey Judy, I see Judy's over on YouTube. Hi Judy, hope all's well today. Great color choices. Have you ever done grid journaling sketches? Hmm, interesting. So I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Are you— do you mean, um, pages that have squares, like a, like a graphite paper— not graphite, the graph paper with squares on it, maybe. So I have done, you know, sketches on graph paper or grid boxes before in the past. Sometimes, lots of times, I like to use dot grid grids to sketch on. I don't know if I have any right here, but that's a really good question. I just want to pull out some of these details.
I will—
they got a little bit lost.
Cool.
I'm gonna take this one out of the sketchbook. So this was sketched on watercolor paper. I used this paper right here, Fabriano 1264 watercolor, 140-pound paper. Um, this is my go-to watercolor paper. I love this spiral-bound sketchbooks. I love that the sheets are perforated, easy to tear out. I love this paper, and I especially love the 4 inches by 8-inch format. It's a nice landscape size, which is really cool. Maybe I'll do a sketch on that coming up soon. Yeah, let's take a look at this. We'll zoom in so you can see all the details close up again. And then I am going to, um, be making a video of some of my favorite things this year, some supplies, a book, maybe a couple of tips that I'll be putting out on YouTube later this week. So let me just zoom in close. You can kind of see I like the— I like the pink on the edge there. It just really kind of pulls the edge out of the tree a little bit more against the background. I just love using neon pink. It's a fun color, makes me feel good, and I do use it just limited on sketches. You don't see a lot of it. I'll just pop it in on some places just to bring a sense of whimsy and fun to, uh, sketch. But look how scribbly my lines are here. For the windows, I did not sit there and try to draw beautiful rectangles. They're really just kind of scribbly, not proportionate. Then I threw some color in there just to give a little definition to it. Yeah, Laura says the back makes it look like it's kind of backlit. The pink makes it look backlit. It does. Good call on that. Judy says not exactly. Not exactly. I'll have to— I'll definitely Google, um, I'll Google grid journaling sketches and take a look at it. Thanks for letting me know about it. It's always fun to learn about different techniques. So that is the tree for 2024. I've been doing a tree every year now for, uh, it's the 4th or 5th year. Basically city-inspired trees. Um, I don't have yet— I have last year still, I think. Um, I think I've sold the other ones. I may still have last year's, but it'd be— it would be really cool to see all these trees kind of in a series and how they've changed over the years. I really like this one, and I also like that there's— there's no people in this. I just realized that, but I— it doesn't bother me that there are no people. I could definitely draw some people down here to give it scale, but in my brain, you know, this might be continuing down a little bit off the paper. So I guess the head of a person might be somewhere, maybe somewhere in this area. We'll see. Maybe I'll come back and sketch someone on there, or some people. Let me, let me, uh Oh my God, I can't talk. I'm so tired. It's usually my nap time, believe it or not, when I get home from school. Even though it's a Sunday, um, I go from school, I usually am sleeping this time of day until like 5, and then I get up and cook dinner. I'm so tired when I get home from teaching that I take a nap. Anyway, I hope you guys like this sketch. Judy says, "They're examples of style, but using sketches, colors in the smaller yet unified sequence of individual mini. Might be my next adventure, thanks to you. Oh yeah, Judy, I'm definitely going to check that out. It sounds really interesting. Thank you for the info on that. Maybe I'll check it out, maybe I'll give it a try too. All right guys, thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this Christmas tree sketch inspired by the Waltree Wall Street Christmas tree. Try saying that 10 times fast. Wall Street, Wall Street Christmas tree, Wall Street Christmas tree, blah blah blah. I do appreciate you guys. Thank you for tuning in on this Sunday afternoon. I think we're getting a little bit of snow here in New Jersey tonight. Maybe a couple of inches, maybe enough for a 2-hour delay tomorrow morning, just saying. Um, I don't know if we get any at all, but you guys are awesome. Laura, thank you for tuning in on Facebook. It was great seeing you. Keep on your— with your art adventures. I love seeing your, your posts. Um, Judy, thank you so much for inspiring me with this new idea, and keep it, you know, keep continuing with your creative adventure as well. And I'd love to see some of your stuff. One day. All right, thank you guys so much. I, uh, peace out and have a great rest of your day. Um, I'm gonna try to be on— see, it's a Sunday, just trying to think of the week ahead. I'm gonna play it by ear, so I might pop on, uh, one night during the week and we'll see how it goes. Then I am off all of the following week for a break. Yippee! All right guys, keep using your creativity for positivity. This is— hey, D-Ray's in the house! See, I kept talking because I knew D-Ray would pop on. D-Ray popped on Facebook. D-Ray, how are you? Good to see you. I can't leave right now, D-Ray just got on. Um, D-Ray, you are awesome. Always great to see you as well pop in. And I'd love to find the other tree and show you guys. It might be in my drawer if you want me I'll take a second look in the magic drawer here. I have so many sketches piled away. Oh, hold on a sec, I found it. Found it, found it. Oh, this is from 2023. Okay, so here's, uh, here's the tree I did back in 2023. So I must have sold last year's. I didn't sell 2023. I think I started in 2020, if not 2019. Um, this one was really simple, right? Just black, basically black, white, gray, and some green on there. So it's kind of interesting to see last year's tree and then this year's tree. Very different. I like something— I like about the simplicity of this, but I like the tree on the right. To me, if I were to do another version this year, it would probably be maybe, um, black and white simplicity with this style tree. And maybe the tree would have the punches of color. So I would kind of do a mashup of these two. Teresa says you better get on, no school. What about those drones flying in New Jersey? Oh my gosh, that is the craziest thing. I don't know if you guys have been seeing the news and all these drones in New Jersey. Um, I've seen them, so it's a real thing. It's It's really happening. No one knows what they are, who's flying them. Yeah, I have seen them up here. Actually, last night I saw one, so it's crazy. I don't know what to think about it. I just think it's weird. It is a very strange story. It'll be interesting if we ever find out what— who's doing it and why they're doing it. Yeah, crazy. I like that first one, green tree and everything black and white. I like that first one, green tree and everything black and white. Gotcha. I do like the greens in this. One thing I didn't— oh, I didn't bring out— I love this color green ink. I did not bring it out for this one. I forgot to. It's a cool color. Praying for all your safety. Yeah, I don't think there's anything to worry about with the drones. I think someone just goofing on us. So thank you though, I appreciate that. All right guys, I am peace outing. I got to go finish dinner. I am making a nice pot roast. It's Smells delicious. I want to go just put some— how do you call it? Sauce? Not sauce. Some of the juice that's in the Crock-Pot, just kind of ladle it and pour it over the roast. Do that. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope to see you real, real soon. Keep using your creativity for positivity. Okay, especially this time of year, uh, warm wishes and peace out to all of you guys and your friends and families. I'm thinking about you all, and I'll be back soon. Take care and stay tuned for this week to watch my Best of 2024 art tools and supplies and technique video. All right guys, peace out.
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