In this on‑site tutorial at the Steel Stacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, artist Jason Nicholas walks viewers through his personal process for urban sketching industrial architecture. He begins by describing the site’s rich visual and sensory qualities—rusted steel, towering beams, railroad tracks, and ambient sounds—highlighting why such environments are ideal for sketching. He demonstrates how to break a massive, complex structure into manageable shapes and perspectives, encouraging viewers to look up, down, and around 360°, and to focus on striking forms rather than exhaustive detail. Throughout the sketch, he emphasizes a loose, fast line‑work style, using a single‑line, wonky approach that captures the essence and “vibe” of the scene. He shows how to create a compositional frame using existing structural elements (pipes, I‑beams, staircases) to isolate a focal area, and discusses the role of hatching, shading, and later color to make the sketch pop. Jason also stresses the importance of engaging all senses—sights, sounds, smells—to inform the drawing, and reflects on the childlike curiosity and storytelling power of hand‑eye‑brain connection that differentiates sketching from photography. The video concludes with encouragement for viewers to explore their surroundings, sketch with wonder, and capture the spirit of a place one line at a time.
Chapters
So I'm here today at the Steel Stacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I love this place. This old industrial architecture has so much excitement and energy and history to it. Rusted metal, flaking metal, steel beams, landscape. This is a perfect situation for urban sketching. It has a little bit of everything. If you look at this structure, it looks so incredibly complicated. There's so much happening here, and that's what fires me up. I'm gonna show you how to take this massive structure, how to break it down and create really fun, cool, and creative sketches. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life. Come with me on our journey today. We're gonna have a lot of fun sketching. So, the first thing I'm seeing here there is a lot, a lot of steel, a lot of rusted metal, and I think that's really amazing. Um, my eyes looking around, my brain's looking around, what is striking me right now? And the first thing I'm kind of seeing is this really awesome perspective view looking down the length of the facility here. There's a lot of interest, a lot of depth going on, but my brain's all over the place. I have creative brain, so I see that, but now I'm looking over here and I really love the kind of the steel structure here, the cross bracing as it goes up. This is a really cool forced perspective looking up at the top. It really allows your imagination to run wild because it's distorted, right? And since it's distorted, I like to sketch wonky style. It's already wonky for me. So that would be a really cool perspective. So when you're looking around, don't feel like you have to always look at eye level. You can look up and also look down. So as I'm looking down here, I see some really cool railroad tracks in this old railroad car. So make sure you're always looking around your surroundings in 360 degrees. So embrace your surroundings, look around, take your time, look in front of you, behind you, and sketch whatever captures your interest. It could be something small little detail, even if it's just you want to paint or sketch this railing, this crisscross pattern. Don't think you have to start big. You can focus on one little thing. Now that I kind of have a real quick look around, I think I want to go and start back at the beginning because when I was over here at this platform, it really gave me a good understanding of the overall layout, actually the scale of this facility. This place is massive and back here, you get a really, really nice view of the overall layout of the structure and certain shapes are really pointing out to me like those towers. Those towers are really projecting against the sky. We have a nice overcast day which I actually love sketching on overcast days. So, I'm gonna start sketching this and I'm gonna start with those towers. So, when I sketch this, I usually like to sketch where either the roof or the stacks are meeting the sky because I get a real clear line of it and I'm almost doing like a single line drawing. Notice I haven't really picked my marker up and I'm looking more at the structure than I am my page. That just keeps me really loose and I'm not worried about detail right now. I'm just trying to get overall shapes. What I love about the structure is it's old, it's history, the weather. It is what it is, right? It's not trying to hide that it was an old industrial building. So that's one of the things I love about industrial architecture. It's the functionality isn't— it isn't hidden. So I'm just looking at all these kind of shapes. You have a lot of these pipes going on here. There's a platform happening here. Notice I'm being really wonky with the lines. This isn't a technical architectural drawing, it's really just capturing the essence of the place. I'm not looking at the paper itself, I'm looking at the building as I'm sketching this. That way it keeps me more loose and I'm not worried about all the details. So, as I get down to this wishbone structure, I'm just looking about how it separates and spreads out here. I'm not worried about all these connections happening. It's the overall shapes at this point and that's what's really fascinating for me are just the overall shapes here. I'm not capturing every detail, it's impossible. I could be here forever and not capture everything and I don't wanna capture everything. I'm just capturing what really is calling my name or what my eyes are seeing. There you go. I think that's just a quick way to capture the basic outline of what I'm looking at. As I'm walking down this walkway, I really love this cluster of stacks here. Um, it is so cool, but what's really capturing my eye is this perspective view looking in the distance. There's a really cool elevated brick building with broken windows. And there's just something about the way the vertical chimney here, stack, and that steel beam, they form a frame, and it's really capturing that building in the background in a really cool way. So let's, let's just get this on paper. So let's get this little perspective down here, and I'm going to use the frame we have in front of us, which is this really massive vertical steel pipe. And then to the left of it we have another steel I-beam and then there's a spiral staircase in here. Let's just kind of do this, we'll just loop it like this and then the building I'm talking about is in the distance. If you notice, I am sketching kind of fast. That's because I don't want to stop and go slow and think about the detail. So for me, the faster I sketch, the looser it is. Again, I'm here just trying to capture a vibe of what I'm seeing. You know, the spiral staircase— you can come back in and fill in details, but I want to get this catwalk that goes and connects the steel stack to that I-beam because that's going to help form our frame. I think we'll eventually come back and add some color on this. It'll pop things out even more. We're just kinda setting the groundwork right now for our future development of the sketch. You might notice my pen is kind of jumping all over the place. I'm not focusing on one area. I'm just kind of going with, uh, kind of going with the flow. And then I just want to capture the bottom of the frame, which I see are these steel conduits or pipes that are kind of running back in perspective. And that'll form the bottom, and this is the framed area. When we add color, this will really pop out. You'll also notice I do go back over lines a lot, and I'm not tracing them exactly, which is fine. I want it to be loose looking, but I'm going to darken this because I want you to get a sense of that framing I'm talking about and how when we're looking around, we can use elements in our scene, whether they're buildings or trees or even people, we can use them to kind of frame the view, sort of like a view within a view. So it's really— it's a cool way to kind of focus a big area, a big subject, and focus it into one smaller spot. It makes things a little easier on your brain by creating these— this idea of a frame. And there you go. I think this one is good for now. So, I've been wandering around here looking for really cool places to sketch and I feel like this would be a really nice location. What I like about this is it has a really cool staircase going up on the right-hand side, really awesome perspective looking up and what's really different about this than some of the other things we were sketching, this is more square, right? We've been sketching the stacks. The stacks are round, so we have a square shape here. So let's kind of change things up. One of the things I do look for when I'm out sketching are shapes of objects, and that's a really great starting place. If you— if you want to break a complicated subject down, start with shapes. So the first thing I think I see that's drawing my eye is this horizontal walkway up there. So I'm going to start with that. So we have a railing that kind of does this. So we got a railing, we have a beam that comes across, it's the bottom of that walkway, and I have this angle piece, and then we have this huge I-beam that's slanted, kind of coming down at an angle here, and I see a cross bracing that goes up like this to another beam across here. So you can see how I'm just breaking this down into separate components. Here's another diagonal kind of piece here. Then all the way on this end, we have another I-beam that's slanted. So we'll sketch that like right in here. Notice I'm drawing at an angle. The line isn't vertical like this, it's slanted, and that's what it's doing in front of me. It's slanting. I'm not trying to match exactly the angle. I just want the viewer to know that it is a little bit wonky. It's not straight. And then let's just add some hatch lines under here, cuz there's— this is the bottom of the platform, it's kind of in shadow. Gonna bring that out. Don't be afraid to go back, extend your lines, go over your lines. For me, one of the interesting things about sketching architecture is seeing kind of the thought process. Notice I'm not using a pencil. I'm not trying to be perfect. There's nothing to erase. I'm just going back over lines. So, just like this building is telling a story through its weathering, its aging, I'm trying to tell a story on my sketches by letting lines happen. There you go. I think that's a quick good capture of the area that really interested me about this view. Um, thank you for joining me today in our journey around the steel stacks. You know, this really goes to prove my theory about— oh, hold on a second, you hear that train? One of the really cool things about urban sketching is the sounds. It's not only what we're looking at, but it's also what we're hearing. Um, the sights, the sounds, the smells, everything really can have an impact on the outcome of your sketch. So just embrace your surroundings. That was really cool. Um, one of the things I really like about this place is it reinforces my idea of exploring your world with a childlike sense of wonder, right? Be curious with what's around you, and being able to sketch what's around you captures it in such a different way than photography. I love photography, but when you're sketching There's really something that's special between your hand-eye and brain connection that really captures the spirit and the soul of a place. If you look at the pipe behind me here, um, look at the paint. This tells a story of history, of aging, of weathering. The texture, the colors, the flaking paint really, really has such a unique vibe It would be so hard to capture this in a photograph, but being here in person, you can almost feel it. I know that sounds weird, but you can almost feel, feel the building kind of talking to you in a way. I think we're gonna wrap here. It's been an amazing, amazing time sketching this facility, the steel stacks at Bethlehem. If you're into urban sketching and you're in this area, definitely stop by. That's why I'm excited to show you the sketches that I'm gonna create and maybe you'll create them with me from this beautiful location. Remember, if you wanna sketch architecture, you can. Just try to capture the world around you one line at a time. Alright guys, that's it. Jason Nicholas from the Inkspired Life. I'm off headed out with my sketchbook. Why? Cuz you never know where the next adventure is gonna take us. Have an amazing rest of your day, and I appreciate you.
