LIVE SKETCH SESSION: Architecture Loose Lines & No Apologies (06-13-2026)

Hey, it's Saturday, um, June 13th, 2026. Jason Nicholas Nicholas here with The Inspired Life. Hope you're having an amazing Saturday. Really hot here today, um, which is good, I guess, right? It's always good to have some hot weather with cold weather and rainy weather. It's always good to have the weather mixed up because, um, life would be boring if the weather was the same every day. Unless it was 70 degrees with a light breeze on a bayfront or oceanfront somewhere. That's just my brain. Anyway, hope you're doing well. I'm going to be on really, really quickly, um, real random time for me on a Saturday. Um, I want to sketch a building in Chicago that is, uh, was featured on one of my favorite sitcoms called Perfect Strangers. Um, this building is— was the Chicago Chronicle where they worked. And, um, I want to do a couple sketches of it, I think, tonight because I am— I am, uh, well, I'll let you know tomorrow, but I want to sketch them today because I will probably need them for tomorrow. So yeah, stay tuned. Let's do a couple of, uh, sketches and, um, maybe for 20 minutes or so. Hope you're having an awesome, awesome day. All right, I am going to sketch, um, what do I want to sketch? I think I'm going to sketch on— we're going to sketch here on some Fabriano 1264 watercolor paper. I'm going to zoom in, get closer. Boom. I've never sketched this building before, so I'm going to just do a quick rapid-fire sketching, just get the feel of it, see how it comes out. And I might do a close-up view at some point, either— probably later tonight, actually, because I have dinner in the oven. All right. So I think we'll break out the trusty Sharpie. We'll use stuff in the Lockbie Quattro's, plural, because I got a couple here. One with pencils and some pens, one with markers and some pens. Common theme there, right? All right, let's do this. Alright, just wanna click on Instagram because I'm streaming there as well. That glare, that glare. Alright, let's do it. Uh, it's a neo-gothic style building in Chicago, built early 1920s. Um, really, actually really beautiful building. It has a kind of a curved facade on it, which I'll try to capture with my sketch here. It's always fun for me to sketch a building for the first time because, well, I don't have any expectations. I never sketched it. I don't know how it's going to come out. I'm not striving for perfection. Never, never strive for perfection in my sketching. That's not why I sketch. That's why I create architectural blueprints. That's where the technical precision comes in that I love. That part of me as well. But I love this loosey-goosey, more expressive part of me as well. So it's kind of a good mix. So I thought I'd pop on here on a Saturday while I'm waiting for the oven to finish cooking, cooking some dinner. It was either that or take a nap, so I Opted for sketching versus a nap. That's rare. I love my nap time. My brain loves my nap time. So this building is actually called the London Guarantee Building. I believe it's currently a— it's a hotel. Um, but it was used in the TV show just for exterior shots of, uh, I guess it was a fictitious newspaper, um, the Chicago Chronicle. Yeah. All right, I think I'm gonna— I think I'm gonna break out, um, some watercolor on this. Why the heck not? Let's do it. Hmm, the man says as he— well, I guess we'll use the— my Aqua Brush. Oh wait, I got some dirty water here. We can use some dirty water, really dirty water. Um, my aqua brush here in case I need it. I have some watercolors and a, uh, I don't have paper towels, but I have this I can use right here. All right, let's throw down some color on this. So the colors I'm going to use are not the actual colors of the building, it's just me kind of being me and throwing down colors I like. There you can see that kind of dirty water color. I'm going to mix up some purple, so I'm going to throw some blue in here. All right, we've got some blue going up there. Let's throw some red in. Oh, we got red right next to it already. Perfect. And let's throw down some more blue. There we go. So it's one like a purpley color. I thought it'd be fun to maybe throw some on here. Uh, it's more blue than I wanted, so it's gonna throw a little more red in there. There we go, that's more purplish. I just want to pull out some, some of these window areas with this purple color. Really, really super loose. Like, super loose. And I'm just using that dirty watercolor now to put on the building. I kind of like it. And this will be layer 1. After it dries, I'll come back and do some more stuff to it for layer 2. I'm not sure what I'll do yet. Um, yeah, we'll see when that time comes. I'll probably clean up some of the lines a little bit, pull out some detail with a Sharpie, maybe use some Creative Markers on some parts of this. Cool. So I think this is a good start to the building, just kind of a quick throwdown session. Um, like I said, it's always fun trying to sketch a building for the first time. Um, it's interesting for me to see what I gravitate to. Um, yeah, just how it comes out. So without kind of pre-planning, just kind of going for it, throwing lines down, letting them go where they will. Same thing with the color, just letting it go wherever it does. And that's the fun thing for me, is not pre-planning and just letting it kind of flow and happen. And I do want to— I want to add some yellow before I wrap this up. Let me grab some yellow. I'm going to dig into my favorite yellow color. Well, one of my faves. I have Taxi Cab Yellow, which is this one, and I also have Lemon Yellow. I don't know the real names of the colors, that's just what I call them. I want some of this kind of lemony fresh color. And if you've watched me before, you know I like to dig into the lemony lemon kind of zest here. Just adds a pop of freshness, pop of brightness to, um, my watercolors, my sketches. Sometimes I'll even use a yellow highlighter to do that as well. And again, the building is not these colors. It's just when I'm feeling kind of in the moment, when I'm vibing with— boom. Yeah, of course, of course, now that I see, um, I always got to throw down some turquoise. I love turquoise. I'm being a little too careful, actually. And this will just serve as a background wash. Like I said, I'll come back later and add some stuff on top. I think that's— I think that's going to be good for now. Let me just kind of bring some of that back up a little bit. Boom. Gravity is your friend whenever you're doing washes, watercolor. Use gravity as a tool, right? Kind of move your paper around, let the water move around. Let the colors flow. Yeah, I like that. Just kind of mix it together a little bit. And I love— I just, I love when colors puddle up like you see here, here at the bottom. And we'll let it dry like that. So I know that camera shot through here, the light's kind of being a pain, but there you go, you can kind of see it. All right, so that's round 1 of this quick fun sketch, and, uh, we'll see where it goes next time. Until we sketch again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly, and embrace imperfection.