LIVE SKETCH SESSION : Loose Lines & No Apologies

Hey, Jason Nicholas from The Inspired Life. Hope you're having a great day today. It's June 22nd. I don't know if I'm streaming. I think I'm live. I was— got a weird error message, but I'm back, I think. So, um, hope you're having a great day. I'm gonna be on just for a few minutes. Um, I want to do some sketching. I haven't done any sketching yet today, so I figured I'd kind of pop on, do some quick sketching, and, um, it's a great way for me to end the day. It's been a busy, busy day, um, in a good way, so no complaints. All right, let me start that. Let's put some music in my ears here. So summer is officially here, how awesome is that? School is out. That's good too, I'll take that as well. Nice little break. Hey Em, I see you. I hope you're doing well. Good to see you. I, um, let's see, I'm gonna put some music on in my ears. You won't be able to hear it because it's copyrighted and I don't want to get shut down by the shutter downers. Um, anyway, it's great to be here. Edie, good to see you as well. So this would be kind of a quick stream. It's— I know it's late. Um, just want to pop on, say hello, do a quick sketch. I know what I want to sketch. I'll show you. I want to sketch this flower. Um, these flowers are awesome. I don't know, it's getting washed out from the camera, the light, but it's cool. It's a daisy. So let's do a daisy sketch. We'll check we'll check in with, uh, each other and see what you're up to. There we go. Cool. And it's good to see you. I know school is out. How cool is that? And congratulations to you again on your amazing, amazing accomplishment. All right, so here's what we're going to sketch with. I am going to sketch in my ugly book here. I love— I am loving the ugly books. Oh yeah, they are so awesome. I love the colors and I'm just having fun with them. So let's drop some ink on this ugly book. I'm gonna start off with some white, white gel pen here. Let's zoom in. Yeah, it's great, it's great to be here, guys. Um, So summer's here. My goal is Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays to livestream, probably around 9 PM Eastern time, between 9 and 9:30. We'll see. Um, I know I'm not good at keeping a regular schedule online, and that's my bad, but, um, yeah, that's how I roll. Sometimes I just gotta play it day by day. I'm actually gonna sketch on this page. This is something I started to sketch when I was out walking in the park the other day. It was very hard to sketch. I was trying to hold the camera in one hand, video myself sketching, and it— well, you see what happened. But let's just mess around on this page and see where we go with it. Super excited. Summer's here. I am working on some architecture projects which are— I'm so blessed to have, and, um, I will do my best with them. So it's nice to be able to just kind of lock in and focus on architecture for, for a couple of months here. I'm actually having— I'm having fun. Sometimes you forget how much you enjoy something. Like, you're in it for years, years, years, and it loses its magic. But I am rediscovering the fun of architecture and design. And yeah, so it's, it's a win-win right now. I don't know if we'll be going anywhere this summer. We'll see. I'm hoping to go see my friend, um, in North— my friends in North Carolina. That'd be amazing if I can get out and do that. And maybe we'll go to Maine. We'll see how things play out. Definitely be popping into NYC this summer a bunch of times. I'll be in Brooklyn teaching sketching workshop at, um, Stationery Fest 2026 in Brooklyn. I'll be teaching August 1st, which is a Sunday, from 10— I'm sorry, 11:30 AM to 1 PM is my workshop. It's, it's called like Sketching Fearless, sketching loose lines of New York City. Any level can join, and we'll be just— I'll just kind of walk you through how I like to sketch architecture in a quick, loose way. And throw down some color. All right, cool. All right, so this is— I'm just gonna— this isn't the, uh, Daisy I talked about. I'm— I forgot I had this in here, so I figured we'll take this sketch I started somewhere. Let's see where it goes. And my intention, my creative intention tonight really is— honestly, I just wanted to throw some lines down on paper I was in architecture mode all day, which is very technical, precise, some researching, which I love. And then this is another thing I love, just the whole freestyle, do what I want, loosey-goosey sketching. So it works both sides of my creative brain. This is one of my favorite views of the, the park I walk in. You probably have seen me live streaming from there, watch the replays. There's this really cool tree, and then there's a bench back in here. I call it the thinking bench. Sometimes I'll sit and just think there for a couple of minutes, and I've really never sketched it, so I figured we'd give it a little try. Oh, let's break out my, um, yeah, I love— I am loving these white markers and gel pens, and I love the dot end here. So let's throw some dots on here. Give a little more texture. So cool. It's very therapeutic just to kind of stipple. Stipple is dot— throwing these dots down. So stippling is very— for me, it could be very therapeutic, just kind of dropping them down, and it adds a nice little texture. It's looking kind of cool. Trying to create a little feeling of a perspective, maybe with kind of a walkway or path here. Let's play with the brush tip on here and see how, uh, maybe we get some kind of grassy textures here. A lot of grasses grow in this area, which I love. There you go. I just want to throw a little bit of texture down— not texture, a little bit of, uh, I call them growies, kind of these weeds growing here, and these kind of flowers, maybe wildflowers as well. Cool, I'm liking this. What do you think if you're watching at home? If you're watching live, you think this is cool? I think it's a, it's a fun little sketch going on. I think I'm just going to stick with the white on this. I was thinking about breaking out some other colors, but I'm just liking the the two colors on this sketch. Sometimes simple is better. Keep it clean, simple. Um, you know how my sketches can get pretty complicated and a lot going on, especially my NYC calendar sketches I've been working on. So this is, this is restraint for me, keeping it really simple. Um, but I like it. I think— I don't know, I still think my favorite sketches I do are just simple black Sharpie on white paper, but sometimes we got to branch out and try different things. See what I did there? Branch out. As I'm working on a tree here. Maybe, maybe we'll have the foreground. Maybe we'll do a Hmm, I'll do something kind of in the foreground. I want to do a big— I'm gonna leave that kind of blank. I think I like the balance of kind of some blank space here with stuff going on up here. I think it balances a little bit, so we'll keep it that way. But I want to do a— I was going to do a daisy. Maybe we'll do like a daisy kind of in the foreground here, or so-ish. Edie says, what about the daisy? Yeah, I know, I was gonna sketch that daisy I showed you guys, and I started to work on this thing I forgot I had started. Yeah, but we're gonna throw the daisy, I think, over— I kind of want it here to make this path seem a little more in a distance. I'm gonna leave— I'm gonna leave this kind of blankish other than some contour. Let me do some contour lines. Hey, Laurie Jean, how are you? Good to see you. So we're gonna do some contour lines just so it looks like there's a hill maybe coming down this way. So just some contour lines. Maybe it's going uphill a little bit. Just give the idea or the illusion. I kind of like that, kind of anchors it down a little bit more. And then, uh, let's do that daisy in the foreground right here. We're gonna do it, the man says, as he, as he listens to the Pirates of the Caribbean. I love this version of the Pirates of the Caribbean song by Rodrigo y Gabriela. So fun. Maybe like some kind of daisy or something here, kind of in the foreground-ish. So like an— oh, it's like a Daisy homage. Yeah, I kind of like that in the foreground, right? I think it gives a little more depth what's happening here. Definitely a, a fun kind of little landscape sketch here, and I'm able to do just a couple of high grasses there, and I don't Something like that. I don't want to overdo it, so we'll leave, leave that. And then we'll just add, as he says, not to overdo it. Let's do some, uh, I want to give these kind of— maybe these are flowers or something, just little kind of dots here, just give them a little kind of a topper. I like, like, like, like. Pretty cool. I think this one might be Dawn. What should I call it? What do I call this place? My favorite place to walk around here. Hmm, I'm gonna call it the Thinking Tree. This is the, the Thinking Tree. Y'all know that story, The Giving Tree? Um, great, great story, great message. This is— I'm gonna call this the Thinking Tree because I do a lot of walking and thinking here. Let's kind of sign it here. Feel free to let me know if you have questions, comments, thoughts, anything about art, architecture, sketching, creativity. The Thinking Tree. The Thinking Tree. And I, I like to put the year, sometimes I'll put the month. We can do that. What month is this? Uh, 06, right? 06. There we go. The Thinking Tree. Hey! Laura, good to see you. How are you? Hope all is well. Laura Abbott's in the house at Heartsong Studio. How the heck are you? Long time. I always, uh, I see your posts on Facebook and your seismic posts and your— I think you had a post about the weather today. So that's so cool that you post that stuff. I hope you're doing well. Cool, right? Hey, Jeff Anderson is at house. Middle-earth, Jeff, you know. Yeah, Middle-earth is the level right below this one. Jeff, good to see you. How are you? Long time no see. Hope you're doing well. Yeah, Middle-earth is, uh, that's the level down from here. I love that you know that. Yeah, I still haven't figured out what to call upper earth. Upper level? I don't know, I called it something the other day on my livestream. I don't even remember. It didn't stick though. Um, pretty cool. So you guys might notice as I'm sketching, I am sketching— it's just the way I guess my hand gravitates. I'm left-handed, so I tend to sketch at an angle a lot. So if it's driving you crazy on your end, I'm so sorry, but this is legit how I'm sketching. I could fuss with the camera so it looks perfectly straight to you guys, but I think it's more fun to get behind the scenes, the reality of what— how I'm actually sketching this thing, which is really here. Um, you know, we're gonna do a— we're gonna do another sketch. We're gonna go right to that Daisy I was looking at. And we'll just do like a solo Daisy sketch. Wait, Daisy Solo, was that a Star Wars character? And maybe we'll just do it on, uh, do it on this page here. Laura says doing okay, keeping busy. Yeah, no, yeah, definitely. I do, uh, read your— and enjoy seeing your updates. So I think it's very fascinating and cool that, you know, you're into the seismic, um, tracking. Wait, do you track? I guess it's tracking, like tornado tracking. I don't know what you— I don't know what you call it in the seismic world. Is it tracking? I'm sketching with the music, guys. I'll tell you what I'm listening to after. This is probably one of my favorite, most favorite pieces of classical music by Vivaldi. Vivaldi, The Storm. I was just listening to The Storm. I love it. It's so frenetic. It gets crazy. It gets so crazy, that song. So much energy. That's why I'm— that's why I was bebopping, moving my head around. Sometimes I just let the music take over when I'm sketching, and that's usually the really fun part. That's when the magic happens. You get into that state of creative flow that we just sometimes— sometimes we try too hard to get into that creative flow and it never happens. I think sometimes we just gotta Let go, let it happen. There you go, kind of a little flower there. Daisy Solo was Han Solo's sweetie. Is that true? It could have been. That's so funny. It could definitely have been. Could have been, kid. That's my Harrison Ford impersonation. Doesn't get better than that. Sorry, you know what I'm saying, kid? I'm just saying. Yeah, I don't do a good Han Solo. All right, cool. All right, I'm gonna— I wanna, I wanna throw some blue on here. I don't know why, there's no blue on it, this daisy. But do I ever sketch according to what I see? No, I go with the flow. I grab and go. It's easy to grab and go when I have my markers here, but they're not— the heck are they? Where are my markers? Oh, they're in my bag because I took them with me. By the way, if you want to see, um, here we go, uh, check out my live stream from Saturday if you want to see the sketching gear I brought with me. Um, it was a really Fun little video you can check out. Uh, you'll see the Fieldfolio, Lockbie Folio. You'll see the ugly books here. You'll see my alpaca bag I love using, a portable little seat thingy as well. So check out the video. You may have to look in the live section in my videos. And, um, yeah, you get a firsthand look at the things I like to use. All right, no, there's no blue in this, and I'm going to put blue on here because I want to. I thought I just want to pull out some detail. I thought blue would be kind of fun to put on there. Laura says independent monitor— monitoring and reporting. Yeah, that's a good way to— that's a good way to call what you're doing. That's so cool. You love when you realize, uh, you completely lost track of time when you really get into that flow. That is— I don't know, maybe that's the ultimate goal for any creator, is to get in that stage of flow and just, just lose yourself and When I get in a stage, something takes over, takes over me, and I don't know, it's just, it's magic. There we go. I think it looks kind of cool just having the blue on there. This is just a fun quick sketch here. You know, let's throw some blue on here. Why the heck not? I think I just need a little bit of contrast on here. Maybe don't be afraid to go back over sketches and add stuff if you want. Why the heck not? Yeah, I think that blue really took that up a level, right? He says Princess Leia. This is the Princess Leia quote. Oh, okay. Princess Leia says, "I love you," and Han Solo says, "I know, I know." Trying to be dry. I'm trying to be dry like him. "I know, kid." I gotta work on that one. Thank you, Edie, for the Star Wars quotes. They're always fun to see. I like Star Wars, especially the— I like the original episodes. I guess Episode 4 was the very first one that came out, right? A New Hope. I like that one. And then Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, of course. I love them, and I also really liked Rogue One. I think that was my other fave. This is cool. Let's put a little bit of shadow on this. Let's add some shadow, kid. Laugh it up, fuzzball. All right. There you go. Yes, yes, you're getting the bad Harrison Ford impersonations for free tonight. Not charging any money. And my face is off camera a lot. I'm so sorry. It's all good. You're here to see this, not me. All right, cool. What do you guys think? What do you guys think? I think I'm gonna wrap in a minute or two. Um, oh, we should call— what should we call this one? How about a really exciting title like Flower? We'll call it Solo because it's alone. It's just a lonely flower here. We're gonna call it Solo. Dang it, why the heck not? This one we're gonna call Solo, and I'm gonna write it. I feel like writing it here. S-O-L-O. There we are. Yeah, Solo. Why the heck not? That was fun. I got a little bit of texture here. We'll do some hatch lines, give a little bit of movement to this sketch. I always like to add a little bit, a little bit of a vibe, a little bit of a movement happening, a little bit of energy happening. There we go. Solo 2026. 2026. We'll just do here 2026. Here we go. That's fun. What do you guys think? It's really— I find it really interesting for me, these hatch marks, these hatch lines right here. After I threw them— when I— after I threw them down, it just really took me to a different place. It's— I feel like it took this to a different level. Just those simple kind of angled lines bring a movement, uh, an energy, um, to the sketch. So I don't know what it is, I just love making marks on paper You know, marks like these hatch lines or the dots we've been doing here. Um, sometimes I think of my sketching as more like mark making, right? We're throwing down lines, we're throwing down dots. Um, those are marks, right? And when we throw those marks down and how we throw them down and what patterns and randomness or organization there is to them helps to build that story, that sketch, right? Sketches are nothing more than— then it's nothing more than mark-making lines, right? I'm getting really deep on a Monday night here. Huh, pretty cool. All right, this has been a fun sketch session, guys. What do you think? So we have so far in this book, I have these two. Wait, well, I gotta name this one. This is called Solo. What should we call this one? Any suggestions out there? Any Star Wars kind of puns we can use? This is like a group of flowers and this is an individual. What could we call this in Star Wars world? Solo. Um, even— I know there's a sky here, but I don't want to call it Skywalker. Um, I don't know, I'm not sure what we can call these. Call this Sketch. Maybe I'm thinking too hard. C3, C3 flowers. Oh no, it's not good. R2-D2. Um, if I draw a B, it could be like R2-B2. No, I'm not gonna draw a B. Hmm, I don't know, I'm just going through all these Star Wars memes in my head right now. Jabba the Hutt, Yoda, Darth Vader, Darth Maul, Leia. Oh my gosh, so many names. General Grievous. Hey, DB's in the house! DB, good to see you. Hope all's well. DB says fleet. Oh, I like that. Like the Star Wars fleet. A fleet of ships. A fleet of flowers. Done. Thank you, DB. I hope you're doing well, and I got your message, and I appreciate, uh, your feedback the other day, and I agree with you. Yeah, if the people knew when I was going to be on, I'd have more people watching. That's so— that's so legit. So that's awesome feedback. I always, always appreciate you and, um, your kind of pro tips and feedback. So thank you. I'm going to call this Fleet. I like it. Thank you for that. I also like that it's just one word, right? Keeps it simple. Solo, we have Fleet. Cool. I already called this Thinking Tree, so we can't really rename this one. Leia. Oh, they say Leia. Princess Leia. Is it Leah or Leia? I don't know. I have a student, her name's Leah. If I call her Leia, I get in trouble. So my student's name is Leah. I guess it's Princess Leia or Leia. I don't know. I don't know anymore. Um. I do know when I say it wrong in school though. I get instant feedback. Oh, that was just fine. Cool. I like this. Now I'm wanting to add some blue on this. What do you guys think? Should I add some color on this? Should we, should we break out the blue like we did here? All right, let me know in the comments, yes or no. Do we break out some blue on this? Here's the blue. Or do we just keep it white? I'm not sure. Again, here's what— here's what this one looks like with the blue, and then here's this one with the white. I'll wait to see what you guys say in the chat. I'll get a drink of water here. And there's no school tomorrow, so I can stay up late, although I have work to do in the morning. Um, C-3PO, chrysanthemum and 3 peonies and oleanders. That's clever, Edie. That's very, very clever. I might have to save that for a future sketch. Very cool. What is the white, uh, pen here? The white pen is— and I'm gonna do this for you as well. Give me a sec, let's see. All right, I'm going to throw a link in the chat. I don't know if you can see this on Facebook or not. Um, Laura, it's good to see you, great to see you. I appreciate Appreciate, uh, seeing you in the house. Yeah, it was good to catch you live as well. Thank you. Hopefully you can tune in more over the summer. Be great to see you in the chat. Love that. All right, so I put in the chat— I don't know if you could see on Facebook, DB— but if you go to my inspired— inspiredlife.com, my tools page, you can see them, the exact pens they're on there. Uh, let's see, maybe it'll show up on here. Nope. I have a box. Here's the box. So it's a great, great question. I don't know about you guys, but I cannot read that script. It is the worst script I've ever seen. I, I don't know what that even says, so I have to look down here. Sorry, I'm commenting on the packaging. And by the way, I'm into packaging, package design, and as well, I don't know if you guys knew that, um, I love package design. It's called Bruce Sarth. You can't really read it there. Here's kind of the front. I mean, if you guys can read the script, that's amazing. You're a better person than I am. It's called Bruce Sarth, B-R-U S-A-R-T-H, Bruce Sarth. Uh, go to inspiredlife.com/tools, you'll see it there. It's on my Amazon store. If you use my— if you click my link on my store, you'll— well, it won't cost you more and I'll get like 2 cents from Amazon. Edie says keep it white. Laura says keep it white. DB says keep it white. All right, I'm gonna keep it all white. Thank you guys for your voting, I appreciate it. Edie says Leia. Leia. All right, my student is Leah, Star Wars is Leia. Thumbs up, I think we got it now. Thank you so much. Thanks for the compliment. Of course. Thank you guys. Of course. Jeff says we blocked Nightbot so good that you posted the link yourself. Thanks, Jeff. That's a good pro tip as well. Um, Yeah, people were hating Nightbot and I kind of— it was out of control. I was playing around to put it on. I don't really know how to use it. I have to talk to— I have to talk to my friend CFot and get some inside scoop. I'd love to get together with him over the summer, uh, meet up. But, uh, yeah, so thank you guys for blocking Nightbot. And it's really only necessary if I get like a lot of viewers and people are saying stupid things. Thanks for blocking Nightbot. All right, so you guys like it? White? Awesome. I think with that, I think it's going to be a wrap. Um, just double check. Yeah, I don't know if I showed you guys this sketch. If I did, just bear with me. So I am loving these ugly books. Yeah, I'm giving a shout out, and I am also a, um, what do you call it, and I have an affiliate link with Ugly Books because I love these sketchbooks so, so much. Also, if you go to my inspiredlife/tools, you'll see these on there. Check them out. But, uh, here's a couple sketches I did. Here was my first one of Little Island. This was when I was waiting in line last weekend, or not past Sunday, the Sunday before, to get an autograph. So that's kind of a cool sketch. And then the last one I did was on a live stream. This was a lighthouse. I think it came out kind of cool, pretty fun. All right, so my goal this summer: Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, 9 o'clock PM-ish. When I can. I won't— it might not be all the time, I'm depending how the days go. Those are my goals when I'm going to try to livestream. I want to do a couple, 3 things. One, I want to have one sketch session where you guys can follow along with me. So that probably would be Fridays. I'll post during the week what we'll be sketching Friday, and there'll be short 20-minute bursts of sketching something together. So I want to do that this summer. I want to do like what I do now all the time as well, just kind of off the cuff riffing, sketching. And then this last thing I want to do this summer is I want to focus, focus and start breaking out my sketch framework, S-K-E-T-C-H, share that with you guys, and we'll do one letter at a time, maybe. Well, I'll walk you through the sketch framework. Um, so that's my kind of goal this summer, and I want to build this up to a different level. So I appreciate you, your time, your support. So if you're watching now, please give me a like, a thumbs up on YouTube, Facebook, wherever. Share this. If you haven't subscribed, please subscribe. Uh, YouTube seems to be where the most engagement is happening as far as conversations go. So I'm kind of locking in and focusing a little bit more on YouTube. So I'd love to see you guys there as well. Awesome. All right, let me know if you have any last final questions as we wrap this show. Um, Edie, great to see you. Have a great, great night. Thank you guys, I appreciate all so much for watching and commenting. Um, until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and embrace imperfection. See you soon.