LIVE SKETCHING: Loose Lines & No Apologies

Hello, it's, um, Monday, July 6th, 2026. Hope you're having an awesome day. Jason here with the Inkspired Life. I, I'm here. I said I was gonna be sketching tonight around 9, but I am early because, um I just am in the mood to sketch right now. And sometimes I think, you know, um, when you're creative and your brain wants to do something, just go for it. So I didn't want to fight, fight it, so I'm giving in, going a little, going on a little bit early. So let's do some sketching tonight. Hope you're having a really awesome day. It's been so rainy and crazy, uh, weather here, so I just did a nice walk outside in the rain. It was cool. Um, I was looking for rabbits. So check out the livestream replay on my YouTube channel. You could check out and see if you know what the answer to this question is: will the bunnies come out in the rain? That is what the walk was inspired by. So, uh, go back, watch the replay, and you can check that out. Uh, so tonight, so, um, speaking of the, the live stream I did earlier, uh, I think Jen brought up on the live stream in the chat, asked if I could sketch the Eiffel Tower. So I said, yeah, let's, let's do the Eiffel Tower. I haven't sketched it, um, in a long time. I've sketched it once or twice. So we'll sketch the Eiffel Tower tonight. Just want to make sure I'm going live on the Insta. So Jen, shout out to you, thank you for the inspo. We're gonna sketch the Eiffel Tower, and I don't know what I'm gonna— am I gonna sketch in my Lockbie? Am I gonna sketch in the ugly books? I don't know. We're gonna— well, we're saving the yellow one for— that's our NYC calendar book, so we won't use that one. But before I sketch, I'm gonna pull up 3 images of the Eiffel Tower that I took back in this end of December beginning of January this year. Um, check them out, and I'm gonna show you the one I'm gonna sketch, but I want to see if you guys can guess the one I'm going to pick. So I'm going to put 3 Eiffel Tower images on the screen and, um, let me know if you can guess which one I'm going to pick to sketch. Hey, Jen is actually here in the chat! Good to see you, thanks for popping back in.

All right.

Here are the different images. We have, um, 1, 2, 3. All right, so these are all images I took of the Eiffel Tower. Um, I, I was— I'm kind of speechless. I don't know what to say. We've all seen thousands of images of the Eiffel Tower, and to actually see in person was so different than in the photographs. Um, it was really quite something to, to see in person. I didn't get to get really close to it. I didn't get to go on it. Um, but you can see the picture on the left was taken from— I think I might get the name wrong. I think it's the Galeries Paris. Galeries Paris. It's, it's a huge, huge shopping mall. In Paris. Beautiful place. So that was taken from looking out one of the windows in, uh, that mall. The one in the middle was from an unforgettable river cruise at night on the Seine River and seeing the Eiffel Tower lit up. Wow. Yeah. And the one on the right is— we were able to stop Um, I don't remember exactly where, but that was a view we got looking at the Eiffel Tower. So 3 images. If you're watching live, let me know in the chat, do you think I'm gonna sketch 1, 2, or 3? 1 is the left, 2 is the middle, 3 is the right. Um, Jen says, I learned the creator of the Eiffel Tower created the Statue of Liberty.

Yes.

Yes, that is true. Um, was that Gustave Eiffel? So yes, it is the same creator. How cool is that? That's a great fun fact. Uh, the Statue of Liberty is, uh, it's— it came from Paris, right? Came from France as a gift. I don't know if it came from Paris, but it came from France as a gift to the U.S. And you guys know I love the— I, I love the Eiffel Tower, but you also know I love the Statue of Liberty because I'm always sketching The torch. And my latest torch is right here. Oh, you can't see it because it's on screen. Number 2. Jen says number 2. Um, so actually number 2 is the most beautiful photograph up there. I, I love that image. If I was to make like a poster and print this out, I would print number 2 out. Um, I'm actually going to sketch the one on the left, number 1, and I know it might sound weird, but let me tell you why. Let me cross— let me close the ones we're not going to sketch. Boom. So why am I picking this image? It's probably not the prettiest image that I showed you. Um, what I like about this image is You know, the sketch framework— I would like to do the sketch framework. S-K-E-T-C-H is something that I've developed. I'm always working on it, um, but the S is seek curiosity. S in sketch, my sketch framework, is seek curiosity. And what I find really intriguing about this image is, one, it's not the entire Eiffel Tower. And 2, it's kind of grungy looking. It's in the distance, it's kind of foggy. So there's atmosphere in this image. Number 3, being an architect, you guys see me sketch all the time, New York City stuff, right? I love rooftops. I find the rooftop in the foreground really intriguing with the shape of the roof and the chimneys. So I, for me, you know, again, S in sketch for me is seek curiosity. I'm really curious. This is a curious image to me because of the shapes happening. Um, there's a, there's kind of a foreground and a background. So we're going to sketch something based on this picture. That's kind of my gut feeling. Um, let's, let's start with our Lochbie. Let's do a little sequence, do a sketch on Lochbie folio here. And I'm going to make the image smaller. I'll leave it on screen. I don't usually leave the image on screen, but we'll do that today. Hey, Edie's in the house! Edie, good to see you. Thanks for coming back. Let's zoom in. Yeah, so I came on earlier, guys. I was just feeling it. I got home and I'm like, you know what, I'm just gonna do it now. And I was I'm charged up, so let's do it. All right, um, I haven't sketched this one in a while, have I?

Here we go.

All right, let's pull this here. Boom. And, um, you know what, we're gonna— we're just gonna start old school. I say old school because it's what I usually start with. Sharpie. And we're just gonna, I'm gonna just sketch it based on that image. Again, I'm never trying to replicate, duplicate, copy. It's just my vibe on that photo. So I need to pull up a bigger image. I can't see the one on that screen, so let me go into my photos here. Um, I just gotta open my photos, so give me a sec. But I hope you are having a good day today. And, uh, yeah, let me know, what are you up to right now? What are you up to? Oh, I gotta use my, uh, hold on a sec.

All right.

Eiffel Tower. All right, looking through my images here. Do you know why they call it the Eiffel Tower? Do you know why they call it the Eiffel— the Eiffel Tower? All right, I found the image. Why is it called the Eiffel Tower? You know why? Because, because I fell in love with it when I saw it. I fell in love with it. Get it? The Eiffel Tower. I fell in love with it. All right, that was a bad joke. All right, let's sketch. We're gonna just do a quick down and dirty kind of sketch here. It's like looking at a small photograph on my laptop here. Well, actually, you know what, here, let's do something. If I was to sketch the entire Eiffel Tower, what letter does the Eiffel Tower look like, right? If I just did a really quick down-and-dirty Eiffel Tower sketch, boom. Oh, it's really small. Sorry. Right, it's kind of like the letter A, right? So we just have like a— maybe if you did kind of like an A. It's really interesting, when I look at buildings, sometimes I look, um, I think about letters and what letters I could use to sketch the buildings with. So if we did like a quick A, a point at the top, and we got our cross bracing here, boom, right? So hopefully someone looking at that could say, okay, that's the Eiffel Tower. This down dirty letter A, done, right? So we could take that same idea for that other sketch we're going to do and kind of I'm not doing the whole thing, but we have the top, and we got these cool kind of chimneys in the foreground. And stick with me, guys, we're going to throw some color on this and just have fun with it. And we'll do another sketch probably as well. It's just really just down. How many times— how many times I say that? Down and dirty. We're just kind of out on paper. Throw some color on this, bring it, pop it up a level. I'm just grabbing and going, what colors? I don't even know what is what. Oh, I know what color I want to break out. Where's that cool terracotta color-ish I may put it away. Uh, let's see. Nope, that's okay. I don't have it out, so we're just going to grab and go with what we have. Alright, cool, let's do that. Ah, blue. I need blue. We got it, right? Red, white, blue. I'm gonna stick to some Parisian colors. All right, let's see. Uh, crazy, the couple climbed the ESB. Oh my gosh, what an insane news story that was, huh? People are like cray cray. Can you, can you believe that? Pretty insane. All right, they climbed the Eiffel Tower, got engaged up there and arrested, and I don't know what they were charged with, if they were charged yet, but what a real cray-cray story for sure. I'm gonna bring out some purple. I'm going to show you what I want to do with this roof edge here. Yeah, it's very crazy. I will say the cool thing for me, the cool thing about that whole story is not the people, not the proposal. It was the, uh, yes, I'm a geek. It was seeing, uh, the close-up footage of the top of the Empire State Building, the spire. That was what really intrigued me the most about that news story, all the video footage of the top of the ESB. I found that really fascinating. The A-Full Tower. I like that. Can I steal that? I'm gonna steal that. The A-Full Tower, that's good. All right, this is just a fun quick sketch here. Hmm, what am I thinking? What am I thinking? Can anybody tell me what I'm thinking? You know, here's— here's what I'm thinking. All right, I'm gonna go do something a little crazy, guys. What, what the heck is the man doing? What is he doing? He's lost his— he's flipped his lid. He's gone cuckoo. Yes, thankfully they were safe. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they were, um, not gymnasts, daredevils. I forget what they are, what they do, but let's just say I would never do that. All right, see what I'm doing? Just trying to give a little interest. So I thought the Prunepp Blue background would be cool with the white gel pen on top. Just to make things pop a little bit. I wanted— I know I did some sketches on the side here when we were talking. Should we try to cover them up? Should we do an orange sky? Let's do it. Oh, I'm running out of marker juice in this one. I'm burning through my Creative Markers, guys. Awesome! I see it, Jason Nicholas. I see it. That's cool. What do you see? What are you seeing? You see my vision? All right. I want to pop these chimneys out here and kind of exaggerate them a little bit here, bring them up. These chimney pots on the top. So you can kind of, um, maybe get a sense of why I picked that photo out of 3. I found this one really just a little more interesting. I'm not going to say, um, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or the eye of the e-holder, however you want to say that. Um, the photograph of the Eiffel Tower at night, this one is really— I mean, that's just, that's, that's a beautiful picture. That was nothing because I took it. It just Right place, right time. Came out really good. Um, but I don't always like to sketch the beautiful. I like to sketch the, the lesser. Is that the— was that way to put it? The different. I like the grunge, grungy.

The—

for me, this is more eye candy. I don't know why. So many things kind of happening in the foreground. I love that, and it sets the stage for the tower behind it. Looks like an advert for a World's Fair. Oh, that's cool! I love that, Edie. That's really cool that you said that. I like you, like you. You guys are awesome. I'm going to add some little more detail on here. We're not quite done with it. And while I'm doing this, I could use some feedback. Do you, eh, prefer— do you like when I show the image on the screen that I'm kind of basing my sketch off of? Is that helpful, or doesn't make a difference in your world, you can let me know. I usually don't have the image on screen because I get those haters online. They're like, why, why does your sketch not look like the picture? Which maybe is a good thing because then I can go through my whole— well, it's about style, it's about I'm not trying to copy, it's about sketching with emotion, picking colors out from my gut. Grab-and-go creativity. So maybe it's good to have that image on screen because I can get— have that conversation, which I think is really, really important when we're trying to sketch and we're afraid to sketch loose. We want to be perfect and tight. And see, I'm gritting my teeth as I say that because I'm feeling that tightness, right? But that's not what this is about. My style, what this show is about, is being loose, sketching in the moment, just grab-and-go creativity. Um, Embracing Imperfection. I gotta change this song, I don't like this song. Oh yeah, we like this one. All right, I'm going to zoom in closer and then we're going to put a frame around it so you guys can see it closer. Looks like the Eiffel Tower at sunrise. Ooh, I like that. And I want to pull out— watch here, I'll show you. I'm going to pull these chimney caps out a little bit here. I'm actually digging this sketch. I don't even really mind the towers in the background. But this is kind of cool. I think it's got some flavor to it. It's got some French cuisine to it. Trying to think, what was the best thing I ate when I was in Paris? Hmm. Can you, can you believe it? Nothing's popping into my brain. What was the best meal I had? Best food I ate in Paris? Wow, I had some good crepes. Good crepes. Obviously the, like, the any of the patisserie— patisseries, I don't know what I'm trying to say— pastries. Any of those were really good. Croissant, some— of course, some great croissants. Um, that's so funny, I am drawing a blank. Actually, no, I'm drawing a tower. This is kind of cool. I don't know what else I want to add to this. Let's put a frame around it and check it out. Oh my gosh, I'm— I, I can't believe I can't remember what I ate when I was in Paris. Yikes. I need to be that person that takes pictures of their meals. I have to start doing that when I travel. Paris was such a whirlwind trip. We were there— I think I was there 2 full days.

Wow.

Anyway, let's put a frame around it. It was beautiful. I would love, love to go back to Paris and just explore it and take my time. And oh yeah, look at the frame, guys. Check that out, framed. How is the coffee? The coffee in Paris. Um, I had Starbucks in Paris. Does that count? It was probably the most beautiful Starbucks I've ever been in. Um, coffee was fine, it was good. It was, um, I remember being bitter. Guys, I am drawing such a blank about what I ate in Paris. A part— what part is All right, so I love Paris. It was amazing. The trip was— it was a learning trip. I was with 30 other people. We were being trained on how to do lead our own groups in the future, and that's what I did, uh, in past spring when I led a group into Italy and Spain. Paris was a training for that, so it was a whirlwind. We covered a lot of stuff, but I was sick. I was so sick on that trip. I arrived in Paris and I was not feeling— it was not good. So I think part of the issue was I, I wasn't able to fully process the amazing and the beauty of it all because I was not— I was feeling so, so bad. Popping! You guys like the frame?

Cool.

Hey, if you guys are liking this, give me a thumbs up on that YouTube thingy. Smash that like button if you like this stream. You're not a subscriber, please subscribe. I'd love for you to do that. You can see more live streaming videos of me sketching architecture. Sometimes you'll see me sketching out urban sketching in New York City or other places. I love to sketch live outdoors. Um, well, I'm— good thing I'm alive. I don't know if I could sketch if I wasn't alive. Um, obviously sketching in my studio, also hikes and mics, walks and talks. I love to share that kind of stuff, so check it out. Which we title this one, guys? Should we put I Fell— I Fell in Love with Paris? I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with that pun. This is cool. I likey. I think this is the right size frame too. It actually crops out some of that— we can crop out some of that scribbly Eiffel Towers in the background. And I like the tower being off-center in the frame for composition. It makes it more interesting if I have the tower right in the middle of the frame here. It's kind of boring. So just by shifting it to this way, shifting it so the tower's more towards the right, it just makes the photo— not the photo, the sketch— more interesting to look at. You know, we could do the same thing. We could shift it over to the left. That's not bad either. I just, I wish I didn't have the practice sketches on there, the scribbly sketches. Although actually they're not bad, they don't bother me that much. What I like about the frame here, I kind of like catching some of that purple. I like the turquoise roof back there as well. So that actually, like, that composition I think better than this. Do you guys agree? Do you like the Eiffel Tower on the right, or do you like it better on the left? And we're going to wrap in a couple minutes. Starbucks, no, I mean coffee made by a French person in an independent cafe or restaurant. Oh, that's sweet. Oh, that's what you meant. Um, That's what you meant. Yeah, no, the coffee was good. The coffee was delicious. Um, I'm still trying to think of— I'm distracted because I'm trying to remember what I ate. Okay, wait. Oh, oh, wait, it's coming back to me. It's coming back to me. Okay, I'm reliving. Okay, we went to— oh man, oh my gosh, I must be tired. My brain's tired. I can picture— I could picture where we went.

Just—

we walked. We were going— so we were going to, um— oh my God. Wait, wait, let me have a picture. It's coming back to me what I ate. Crepe. It was a crepe. It was a crepe. It was the best thing I ate. I'm trying to remember where the place was. I was at giant place, that giant palace in Paris, the giant huge Versailles, Palace of Versailles. All right, so when we were going to Versailles um, the town that Versailles is in. I'm drawing a blank, I'm drawing a blank, I'm so sorry. We had, uh, a little nondescript kind of crepe place. It was— they had like, I don't know, 30, 40 different— I'm exaggerating— styles of crepes. I never had a crepe before. There's a crêpe. How do you say it?

Crêpe?

Crepe? It was so amazing. It was a savory— I had a savory one, and, um, to remember what I had, man, I should contact the people I was on the trip with. I still have— this one lady took pictures of all her food. Um, savory crepe, and then we had a dessert one. It was spectacular. Wow, I'm so— I I'm so sorry. Hey, Jeff's in the house! Jeff, good to see you. How are you? I, I fell— I felt Towers the name. I felt Towers the name. I felt Towers the name. Talk to me, talk to me about that. Um, go back, see some comments. Have you sketched tall ships before, Jason Nicholas Nicholas? No. Let's do one. You guys want to— I'm not— you want to sketch a ship, put yes in the chat. I will stay on. I will sign off at 9. I will try to sketch a tall ship. I'm game. I'm not really a ship sketcher, but I'm definitely down for trying. Yeah, all the tall ships in the harbor from, uh in NYC. I love seeing the videos and the pictures everybody posted. So beautiful. Jenna is obsessed with tall ships now. Oh boy. Left. You guys like the left? Yeah, I like the left framing better too. You'll remember what you ate, Jason, 3 seconds after the stream ends. Yes, and that's when I'll see the rabbits also. They'll pop out when the stream ends. My mouth— my, my mouth is very close to the microphone, so if I'm loud, I'm so sorry. Yes. All right, let's do a tall ship sketch. Um, I will need to pull up a reference image. I love this, you guys are— this is fun. All right, so here's our Eiffel Tower sketch. Pretty fun. Thank you, Jen, for the suggestion. Very cool. Um, I, I really like this. And let's put the year, let's put here 2026. Oh, you didn't see that. All right, all right, I need to find a, a ship, tall ship. Do I have any books with tall ships? I guess I can Google a tall ship. I guess we'll just Google one. All right, are we looking for any particular tall ships? Are we talking like a, um, like a Titanic type thing, or are we talking about like a sailboat type thing? A schooner. We talking about like a schooner? Oh, I might have pictures from Maine. Am I going to Maine? Let me go to my Maine pictures. I might actually have one I could use. All right, let me see if I could find it. I literally just put ship in my photos here. Oh, why? I put ship in, but I don't know why the Brooklyn Bridge is popping up in my photos here. I knew I would have something from Maine. I don't know if this is what Jen's talking about, but I'll use one of my images. Um, I'm just— I'm going to sketch more Maine photos this summer. So sketch photos, I'm going to do more Maine sketching this summer. Stay tuned. Oh man, I want to go here so bad.

All right.

Um, all right, Jen, here's a picture of a tall ship. I don't know if this is what you mean, but go for it. All right, here's a picture of a ship from, um, when I was in Maine. Like one of the '20s in, in New York City. Oh, gotcha. Christopher Columbus type ship. Navy ships.

We're—

we are We are— we're sailing now, guys. We're sailing now. All right, I'm gonna use this one since I found it. I just want to— let's go back to this one for one second. We know it's really interesting. Remember I started with a black Sharpie? Not much of it's left, right? All right, let's do it. We're doing a tall ship. Um, this is new for me. New-ish.

I need—

do we have any good ship songs we can— I can listen to? What's a good ship song? I just want to make sure I'm saying that properly. How about, um, I don't know, sure, Green Day, why not? Let's do it. Just like a building, I'm going to start from the top, kind of work my way down. What's actually— what's really interesting about this, before I sketch Check this out. If I just showed you this, what did we just sketch? Eiffel Tower, right? We kind of have the, like, a frame, right? The Eiffel Tower had that, has that steel, that, that, um, I don't think it's steel. This is steel? Iron? Cast iron frame? Has that, uh, that frame, right? The skeletal structure. If you look at this, we have a skeletal type of structure happening. So really interesting observation.

All right. Ooh.

All right, we're gonna, we're gonna throw some color on this. Like we did on the last sketch, just kind of blocking things out a little bit. So a little dinghy here next to it. I don't mean me, I'm not the little dinghy here. We got kind of a little, another little boat thing happening there. That is not a good boat. Wow.

Ships are—

let's throw some color on here. We're going to go back to that blue we used earlier. Mm, do I want to do that? And we're gonna— I'm gonna do what I did last in the last sketch. We're going to pull out some of these shapes by going on top of it with a white pen. Ah, it's kind of a ship. All right, let's pull out some lines on here. Oops, sorry, my ship was sinking off the screen. Um, thank— I love these challenges, guys. Thank you for throwing out these, uh, things for me to sketch that I don't really sketch. This is so fun. Um, let's break out some lines on this here, on this here thingy. I hope it's looking like a ship. I feel like it's working out okay. Here we go. You guys think, does it look okay? It's a fun— it's a fun one to do. So let me go through my creative thought here, what's going in my brain as I'm sketching something I don't really sketch. A couple things. One, I'm looking at the shape, overall shapes. You know, I mentioned the skeletal frame on here, so I had like the kind of framework. I like to start my sketches— buildings, apparently ships also— I like to sketch from the top down, um, because for me, if— let me bring that photo up— it's easier for me to see what's happening where the, the top of the ship or the top of buildings where it hits the sky. I can see the clean kind of shapes there, so I usually will start with the top and work my way down. Um, when I'm sketching, I'm looking really quick at the picture, but back to here. So really quick, really quick, and I'm just trying to capture what I'm seeing first. Um, and that's what I'm bringing to the page. I want to look at the photo, things I see first, or what I'm trying to capture. Um, the bottom part was the hardest for me because here's what was running through my brain. Let's— let me bring out, um, I think I'd have paper here. I do have paper. Just kidding. Let's see here. So it's so easy to be cheesy, easy to be cheesy when— for me, this is my— what my brain is thinking. It's easy to be cheesy when I'm sketching a ship because my brain wants to do this. Let's just pull it out with the— here, we'll use red here. My brain wants to do something like this, a boat, and like really kind of cheesy looking. So my brain's thinking, okay, ship, and this is what's popping into my brain as I'm sketching it. But that is not what we're seeing, right? Here, here's my cheesy version. So I was fighting inside my— inside here between sketching this and wanting to do that. Does that make sense? So it's a kind of an internal creative struggle. Sometimes, um, sometimes I have to use a filter because I could have gone the cheesy way, which is no problem, and still come up with a ship, but I want it to be more interesting, more elongated, more— not realistic, but more realistic in a way. I don't know if that makes sense. I hope it does. It makes sense up in this— in me loco cabeza. All right guys, we're going to wrap in a minute. Let me know if you have any other questions or comments, um, as we wind down for the night. I love being here live with you guys. Thank you so much. It's always fun. Hey, Kara Mulhern had joined. Kara was on Instagram.

Um, all right, let's see.

So Jeff, if you're still out there, yeah, it would be cool to— I would love to sketch a Columbus, uh, type of ship. That would be— I did a painting. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, do I I did an abstract— oh my gosh— years ago, and in the abstract I saw a ship, and I tried to pull out the ship from the abstract. Do I have it? Hold on, I have a portfolio thingy here. Let me see if it's in my portfolio. I'd love to do show and tell with you guys sometime. Show you this portfolio. This is a portfolio. All right, I'm going to go to the live face cam. I didn't do my hair. I want to show you what's in this portfolio thing. Hey, how are you guys? Good to see you. What's up? Let's see. All right, cool. All right, check this out. This is a portfolio of stuff. I'm not going to show everything. I don't even know what's in here, but I want to see if that Chip painting is in here. There's some really cool stuff here. This would be fun to do. Here, this isn't the ship painting, but here's like a cool abstract thingy. All right, I'm going to look through here. Go back to here, switch, boom. I'm gonna go back, see if I can find it quick. One day we'll do a show and tell. I miss my abstract paintings. Oh my gosh, there's some cool stuff in here. It might not be in here. I should do some cool stuff, guys. Um, this is a fun one here. Oh yeah, we'll do, we'll do a show and tell another time. It's the ship one is not— the ship one is not in here, so We'll save that for another time. Sound cool? All right, guys. All right, uh, wow, you guys like this boat? That's Chip. Thank you. Impressive. Wow, you're so generous with your comments. Speaking of outside your comfort zone, you are great. Uh, you're too kind. You really handle challenges well. I appreciate the challenges. Thanks for throwing stuff my way. It keeps me on my game and so I can practice what I preach. Jen says hi, Jason. Hi, good to see you. Um, oh, because I was on the other camera. Nice. All right guys, thank you so much. Today has been a fun, fun day filled with two live streams, one with our hiking Mike and one right now sketching. Um, I kind of like the way this It's kind of a very like, I think, I think Edie said it was kind of like a World's Fair poster. I like that description of this sketch. This was so much fun spending time with you today. I appreciate, I know you're busy. We all have different things going on in our lives, whether I'm in the background, foreground, middle ground, upside down, it doesn't matter. So I'm just spending some time with me. And just spreading positive vibes. That's what this is about— positivity through creativity. Um, until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and embrace imperfection.