In this live‑stream session, artist Jason Nicholas sketches a whimsical, "wonky" fishing‑shack‑style building while narrating his process. He begins by outlining the structure with a Pilot pen (or a Sharpie when the Pilot runs dry), emphasizing bold, imperfect lines that give the sketch character. He adds depth with hatching, contour lines for rounded elements, and repeated line work to reinforce a loose, free‑hand style. Throughout, he explains why sketching irregular, aged buildings feels liberating—there’s no need for perfect symmetry. Jason also showcases his material kit: Pilot pens, Sharpies, Prismacolor colored pencils, Faber‑Castell Pitt Artist pens (brush‑point and chisel‑point), and thin brown paper (also a black version) he bought at a big‑box store. He demonstrates how the paper reacts to ink, colored pencils, and white India‑ink pens, highlighting texture and color vibrancy. The stream includes casual audience interaction—checking viewer counts, addressing technical glitches, and acknowledging his puppy’s interruptions. He wraps up the sketch, mentions plans to add color later, and promotes upcoming live sessions (tomorrow at 10 PM EST) where he will sketch more Maine‑inspired structures. The overall tone is enthusiastic, instructional, and conversational, offering both artistic technique and a glimpse into his creative routine.
Chapters
Hello, if you're watching out there. Happy Thursday evening. I'm on pretty, pretty late. Just wanted to do a quick sketch before I head to bed— head off to bedtime. It's been a long day. So if you're watching, let me know, say hello. Again, this will be a pretty quick little sketch here. I haven't been on in a while, so I figured I'd pop on quickly. I have a puppy who has set my new bedtime hour, so I'm up late. Um, anyway, hope you're all doing well. It's great to be on here, and I will be on more this summer. So summer's here, I'm inspired. I love doing these kind of fishing shack type of buildings, and since I'm not headed to Maine this year, um, next best thing for me is sketching these things, right? So I love sketching architecture because it can transport me to all kinds of amazing places, whether they're real or in my imagination. Doesn't matter. It's just a great way to kind of travel around my brain. So I kind of like this, it's looking cool. I'm just— I want to darken the outline of it a little bit more. I'm just going to keep it black and white tonight. I might add some color maybe tomorrow or the next day. So I'm going to boldy up the outline here, and I think I'm going to use my Pilot pen. So let's just use the a Pilot, and, um, hopefully there's ink in here. I haven't used it in a while. Hm, and maybe we're not going to use the Pilot pen. It's— I don't know if there's ink in there. It might be dried up. I haven't used it in a while. So let's go to plan B. Uh, what is plan B? Good question. Plan B is going to grab and go— let's see, I have some, uh, oops, I just dropped some stuff. Let's see, I'm going to grab— let's try a 0.5 maybe, see how that works. There you go. You can see I'm just— let me zoom in a little bit more. I'm just bolding up the outlines building. I love these old wonky structures. They have a lot of charm, a lot of character, a lot of personality. And also when you're sketching them, you don't have to worry about straight lines. They're old, they're wonky, they're crooked. It gives you extra permission to be just free and just go for it, right? I'm not drawing a symmetrical classical temple or something. It's just a real fun old kind of beat-up wonky building. It's kind of settled here and there with the land. The weather's beating around a little bit. I just like, love the character. So that looks cool. Let's add some hatching on here. So I'm going to hatch with my Sharpie. If you guys are out there, let me know if you're watching this. I have no comments, so I might not have anybody watching. That's fine. I can't always see if people are watching. And if no one's watching, it's okay. I talk to myself a lot. But if you are watching, that's great. I do appreciate it. I know I'm on here unannounced, but the recording will be up. Cool. So I'm just adding these kind of hatching lines just to give a little depth and shadow to it. Let's add some under here, under the roof overhang. Just kind of quick boom, throw some of those lines in here. There you go. And then there are windows. The windows are kind of hard to see. So since I'm keeping this just black and white for now, let's try to pull this window out a little bit more. You guys can see one of the things I I guess, I guess kind of a pro tip for me for loose style sketching is I don't mind if I'm going over the same lines again and again. And even if I'm not exactly on top of them, like I have window panes here, but I'm going to go over them and just notice I'm not staying exactly on top of them. And that's cool. Again, that kind of adds for me to the loose style. And I'm actually going to shade in some of the window panes kind of black here. They're not reading quite as well as I wanted right now, but that's okay. You can get— kind of get the idea of what I'm trying to show. Um, this is a round kind of pipe, maybe a stovepipe coming out of the roof. So I'm going to do some contour lines. So contour lines are these curved lines to help just give the illusion that something's rounded. So you see, just by doing that, it looks a little— that makes it look, look a little more curved right in there. That's cool. Liking it, liking it. Let's catch this flag. It's a little big, the proportions of it, but that's okay. That'd be fun. Just have a flag kind of coming out of the roof there. This is actually some kind of shuttered panel, or maybe— maybe this is a shuttered window opening that they can open. Maybe they're selling— maybe they're selling baits out of this building. So the door into the building is not on this view. Obviously, it's raised— the building's raised off the ground, so the door would be there on the back side or this side here. So I didn't show that, but we will show— let's pretend it's coming this way. So I'm going to sketch in— just sketch in some wonky steps here. We'll put the ground like that. So we got some wonky steps happening, maybe off to the side. And I'm actually going to bring this roof down like this just to make it a little wonkier. We're going to curve it out and then we're going to do a bracket. So maybe there's overhang comes out and it's kind of protecting the door into the, um, kind of the building here. We'll make this wood, so we'll just kind of show our stringer there. And I'm not going to show a railing on there. This is a stone retaining wall I have kind of off to the side here. And let's just color some of this in, shade it in black just to give it some interest here. What time is it? 11:03. All right, I'm going to wrap up in a minute here. And this is looking cool. We have cedar shingles on the side of the building here. We have some kind of wood, maybe 6x6 posts on the bottom supporting our structure. Let's just shade these in. Maybe the side has a little bit of shadow going on, a little shading over here as well. And then I'm liking it, liking it. Um, maybe a wrap on this one. I might come back at a later time and add a little bit of color to it, but I think for now, I think that's going to be a wrap on this kind of wonky cottage or wonky bait shop, tackle shop. Don't know exactly what it is, but it's a wonky kind of fishing shack building maybe you'd see in, uh, up in Maine. My, my favorite place when I'm not home is Maine. All right guys, Thank you so much for watching tonight. I hope all is well. I will be, uh, hopefully back on this weekend sometime. Till then, take care, keep paying it forward with creativity and peace, and live creatively. I will see you guys real soon, and I hope the microphone was even on. I think it is. It looks like it's on because I hadn't— I did not check the settings before I tuned in tonight. I just hit the live button. All right, anyway, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much. Take care. Have a great, great night. Thanks again for watching. Peace out, Cub Scout. I am looking for the finish button. If DeRay was on, she'd be like, hey, where's finish button? I see 10 people watching. Is that true? Holy cow, I just moved my cursor and I could see 10 eyeballs, down to 9. This is awesome. So weird, I have no comments. If someone is watching, just type hi maybe. I just want to see if the comments are working. It's very possible they're not working. But you guys are awesome. You can always comment on the video as well, or probably if I go on Facebook, maybe I'll see comments. Um, let me know what you think of this one. You guys are amazing. Actually, I'm going to sketch some growies. I know I said I'm going to wrap up here, but I like to show these growies kind of just popping up here. And it gives it some character around the base of the building. Growies, they could be plants, flowers, they could be weeds just growing up. Pretty cool. I'm liking it. Dang, I see 13 people watching. This is so awesome. You guys are amazing. I'm sorry, I can't see any comments. If you are commenting, I'm having tech issues. I don't— not seeing anything. I will check the chat later on Facebook and YouTube. Cool. Let me know if you guys like this fishing cottage. Yeah, I'm gonna leave it at that. Actually, before I wrap up, I do want to talk about one other quick thing that's on my desk here, my creative station. Real flimsy, thin paper, almost looks like— what would you call it— like a— almost like a brown paper bag. Bought a whole package. Here's the package. Package I bought at Michaels, or I'm sorry, the big box store. Um, this is what it's called. Um, really fun paper to sketch on. I'm, I'm liking it for a couple reasons. One, I like the size of it. It fits really well in my, in my— I was in the other room— it fits really well in my Lockabee field journal, so I could put these in there. I love the look of sketching on this color paper with black ink. So let's just draw something really quick on here. Here, let's do like a really kind of basic looking house thingy. Real quick version of that, right? So where is my Pilot— my Sharpie here? And then let me show you what else I really like about this paper. I'm going to zoom in closer. Again, it's really thin. I haven't tried adding an ink wash to it or watercolor to it. I've only been sketching with pen, but— well, not only pen, but here's the other thing I want to show you. So I love the way colored pencils look on this. Here we go. Got my— you guys know I love this neon pink color. So check out how the colored pencil goes down on here. I love the way— I don't know if it's coming quite across— I mean, coming across quite as well on camera, but in reality, this is a really cool neon pink color. Um, and I love the way it's looking on the brown. So this paper is awesome for colored pencils. Here's my other favorite colored pencil color, light aqua. Okay, let's just throw some on here. I mean, this— these Prismacolor pencils go on here like butter. So dang smooth. I love the texture. And another thing, um, right here, I just bought these pens as well. I got two different ones. Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pitt Artist Pen. Try saying that fast. Pitt Artist Pen. Pitt Artist Pen. Pitt Artist Pen. Alright, so it's India ink, waterproof. It's white. I have two different ones. I have a— this is B. B has a brush point on it. And I love the way this white kind of looks on here as well. And you could layer it on after it dries if you want it more intense. And then the other one I got is— this is labeled C, and that's for a chisel point. There, you can see it, right? So this is really fun. Let's just throw some, uh, let's just go over this. So chisel points are cool if you wanted to just, you know, kind of straight lines, thin lines, boom, right? Or we can turn it sideways and get some wider lines, right? So anybody that does calligraphy, you guys are masters at points like this. I am not a calligrapher. I envious of people that are because I think calligraphy is beautiful. But I thought these pens would be really fun for sketching, and I even bought this paper in a different size in black. Oop, my pup is barking. I have to go check it out. So I bought another size— I bought this paper in black as well, and this white looks awesome on the black. Alright guys, so those are my things I just wanted to show tonight really briefly. I hope you guys are doing well. Thank you for watching. I'll go back and see if there are any comments. Again, I couldn't see anything live, um, so I apologize if I didn't respond. Thank you guys so, so much. I appreciate you all. Pay it forward with positivity and creativity. And yeah, peace and live creatively. I'll see you guys soon. Take care. Have an awesome, awesome night. Tomorrow's Friday. I'm gonna be on live tomorrow night. I'll pop on probably around I like coming on around 10 o'clock, so I figure around the 10 o'clock time I'll pop on tomorrow night and do some sketching live. Feel free to share this with your friends and come back tomorrow night, 10 o'clock Eastern time, and we'll sketch. I don't know what we'll sketch. Maybe we'll do— we'll do another kind of wonky fishing building. We'll take a little break from our New York City-inspired sketches and we'll do some more Maine-inspired sketches. All right guys, take care, have a great night. If D-Ray is on, D-Ray is saying hit that finish button. So D-Ray, this is for you, I found a finish button, I'm gonna click right now. Good night guys.
