LIVE SKETCHING — Sketch Fearless: Loose Lines & No Apologies

Hello, happy Monday, June 8th, 2026. Hope you're having a great day. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inkspired Life, where I love sketching, especially architecture. Sketching is a way I guess a way of life for me. I just love sketching as a way of problem solving, brainstorming, capturing a moment, a place, a, um, a feeling, a vibe. Um, it's just a great, great tool that I use pretty much every day for one purpose or another. So hang with me for— we're gonna do a quick stream tonight, maybe 20 minutes, and we'll do some loose style sketching. I'm not sure where we're headed, but that is the fun of live streaming without a plan, because I feel like sometimes we plan too much about what we're going to create and it stops us from creating. So I'm winging it, you're winging it with me. Thanks for joining me on this journey. Let's see where we go in the next 20 to 30 minutes. All right, let's put some music on. Uh, I'm gonna play a song from my podcast. So I have a podcast, new episode dropping this weekend, check it out. It's called Simply Being Human, and here's kind of the theme song for it. So we'll start the show with that, and we'll open up the Lockbie folio and do a sketch in there. All right, thanks for joining me. I'll check in, make sure you say hi in the comments, ask questions. I like to always, uh, check in and chat with you while we're together.

Watching through, trying to figure out what humans do. I'm stumbling, I'm rising, falling, realizing. I'm changing, still fighting, still learning, still trying. No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human. I've carried doubts like heavy stone, felt the weight when I'm alone. I've lit the dark with smallest sparks, found my strength in Inside the marks, every flaw, every bruise I've earned, every lesson painfully learned, all the moments that left me torn made me someone worth fighting for. I'm stumbling, I'm rising, falling, realizing I'm changing, still fighting. Still learning, still trying. No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human. I'm not here to be flawless. I'm not here to pretend. I'm here to keep moving. Again and again, I'm here to keep choosing a life I can stand in, a life that's my own. I'm still becoming. I'm still becoming. I'm stumbling, I'm rising, falling, realizing. I'm changing, still fighting, still learning, still trying. No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human.

Alright, so, um, you may have noticed I actually did something I rarely ever do, is I traced something and I had straight lines on here. So I thought it'd be fun maybe to do some really small sketches in these boxes. Um, so I have a little perspective going here. These are like thumbnail sketches. So let's spend a few minutes just kind of filling out these boxes with different sketches. Um, we'll see what happens. And they're pretty small scale. Let's just zoom in a little closer. And I do see— I see Edie is in the house. Edie, always great to see you. I hope you're having an awesome day today. Thanks for tuning in. So yeah, let's do, uh, some thumbnail sketches. Just have fun. We'll throw some lines down in these boxes, and then I think— tell me how much time— I'd like to hit an NYC sketch here underneath. So maybe we'll block something out. I don't know what I'm going to sketch yet, so if you have any ideas of an NYC, New York City building, or— I am looking for my cap, I don't know where the heck it is. Um, put that there. If you have any ideas for an NYC building or structure, let me know. Maybe I will sketch that because I don't know what I want to sketch. All right, also, if you're listening, if you like music, say yes. If not, say no. If you don't care, that's cool. I never know if I should play music while I'm sketching or not for you guys. And it would be music, uh, I can't play any commercial licensed music, so because of copyrights. Anyway, if you'd like to hear background music, let me know. Cool. If not, I can just put it on my phone and listen to it in one of my most favorite inventions. The AirPods. Love my AirPods because I need music when I'm creating. I just— it's hard for me to create in silence, and maybe that's something I should work on. All right, I don't know, we have some kind of buildings happening here, some kind of scene. I'm not sure. Let's move to the next box. Um, I should have put a timer on, maybe. Do quick little vignette sketches. So we're just gonna actually— we're gonna just fill this whole thing with blue, and then we'll sketch with a gel pen on top. I want these to be just really quick, me not thinking too much type of sketches. And again, they could just be lines, they don't even have to be anything— shapes, lines, just marks on paper. I kind of like that idea. I think I'm going to fill the boxes in with colors, and then we'll just sketch on top of the colors. All right, so we'll throw down some red, um Got some orange here. Oh, oh, that, that is not the way to put a cap on. That is a cap— cap-tastrophe. I just had a cap-tastrophe happen where the cap didn't go on the marker, and you can see the results. So guess what? It's officially art because I am wearing it on my palm and wrist. A catastrophe. What color is this? I don't even know what color this is. Let's go for it. What do you— what do you— what do you call this color? Tan? I guess it's like a tan color. I don't think I've ever used this, like a sand color. Hey Sally for Art, great to see you on Instagram. Hope you're doing well. Always, always good to see you. I like messy. Yeah, we're just doing messy stuff. I'm just quickly throwing down lines. No, I have zero plan. Zero plan. I guess that is my plan. Having zero plan is having a plan. So I do have a plan. It's a no plan. It's like Seinfeld. Seinfeld was a show about nothing, but it was a show.

Um.

So this exercise I'm doing right now, it's kind of a fun way to loosen up. Make boxes, throw down a timer, which I did not do. Throw down a timer and, uh, just randomly put stuff on paper. And it's also a cool way just to try different colors out. Let's see how this red looks on this kind of beige background. I'm seeing a beach here, so It's like a beach, beach kind of color. I don't know, maybe some kind of palm tree or something. Maybe a beach happening here. I'm gonna get a little cheesy and throw down a sun. We're gonna put a sun on here. I'm just grabbing and going. Let's throw some— how's this? Whatever, that didn't work. The highlighter didn't work. That's aight, aight with me. All right, you don't usually see me do like cheesy stuff, but again, I'm just throwing down ink and color. And who says you can't have a fun little sun? Boom, we got a fun sun. Nice sunny day here in New Jersey, great weather today. I love 70 degrees, a little breeze happening during our evening walk. It was so nice. Can't see entire yellow cube. Oh, sorry about that. Thank you for telling me. Oh, let's use the dot, the dot end. All right, I got one more box to fill. Hmm. All right, we went a little outside the box on this one. No rules, no boundaries, just creating whatever the heck we want. And I know I want some— I know I want this color on top of the red because this is gonna be a cool contrast. Holy moly! Oh yeah, that, my friends, right there is worth the price of admission. Throwing down the turquoise on that red is an amazing color combo. My brain, my brain loves it. My body loves it. I'm just loving that color combo. Let's get a little zoom up on that. Boom! That is a great color combination right there. Edie says the Palm Tropical sketch would look great on a Tumblr cocktail glass. There you go. See, I love that you found a use for my sketch. That's cool to me. Um, almost as cool as wearing— I am, I am just making a mess. Look at that. Um, I love that. I love that you're finding like uses. Find uses, not excuses. So I love that you're finding uses. Let's throw a little bit of the turquoise here. It's kind of a cool little graphic, just that horizontal line. I'll get close up on that. Yes, an NYC water tank. Exactly. That's exactly where I went with that one. Thank you for picking up on that. You're picking up what I'm putting down. Love it, love it. I also love it when my gel pens work. So when I, I have my sketching workshop in Brooklyn August 1st. At Stationery Fest. Link is in the notes, also on my website. Um, reason I'm mentioning the workshop is I— one of the sketches we're gonna do will be an iconic NYC water tank, so that'll be fun. Yeah, it's a cool— I like that. This is a cool little graphic happening there. Hey Andrew, good to see you. Hope you're doing well. Andrew is on the Insta. Always good to see you. I hope you are well, dude. And I, uh, and sorry, I will not be seeing you tomorrow. Cool. I like that. I like the little water tank. This might be my favorite sketch. Let's, uh, frame it. With a frame. Let's frame it with our frame. This is too big, but it's way too big. Can I do this? I'm going to make a slider thing. I'm going to 3D print a sliding mechanism where I can kind of create mini frames when I need to. It's kind of cool. I like that red background. Yeah, you guys like that? I feel like I'm— all right, I'm gonna put some yellow on this one. It needs a pop of freshness. So whenever I want a pop of freshness on my sketches, I go for yellow, um, whether it's yellow marker, neon yellow, highlight yellow. My favorite yellow here, let me show you. When I'm— I gotta use watercolors. I'll do some watercoloring this week. So stay tuned this week, Wednesday night, Friday night. Maybe we'll break out the watercolors. Haven't used them in a while. But my favorite pop of yellow right here is like a lemon yellow color. So think about lemon. When you throw lemon down in your cooking, it adds that zest, that freshness. And that's what yellow does on my sketches. It adds that pop of freshness. Let's break out the, uh, Let's use the highlighter. There we go. Pretty cool. I still can't find the cap to that purple What the heck? How, how do I lose a cap to a marker within like 30 seconds? Yeah, it is probably somewhere wherever that green jacket is I lost 3 months ago. And I know I talk about it all the time because I don't know how the heck I lost an entire jacket. It was my— one of my favorites ever. And I found the cap. All right, all right. So, um, actually, you know what, I think I know what I want to do for the NYC Sketchbook. Maybe we'll do a water tower in our calendar sketchbook. So if you guys want to stick around for another 10 minutes, let's, uh, let's bang out a water tower sketch in our NYC Sketchbook underneath. So again, this was just a real quick way to warm up. I threw down some squares and just did some random stuff in the squares. Um, I do want to throw— I'm gonna throw some green on here, and it's just a fun way. If you're gonna try this, I suggest putting a timer and maybe spend a minute at the most in each square. I would probably do 30 seconds a square. All right, so we got some green on there. Pretty cool. Yeah, we'll throw some green here. Maybe there's grass. Use a perspective view. We have maybe a lawn area happening or something. Awesome. All right, bye-bye thumbnail sketches. We'll see you soon. All right, we're going to the New York City Sketchbook, and I forgot my water. I'm thirsty. Dang it. All right, all right, so we have the New York City Sketchbook. Alright, I think we're gonna do a water tower sketch. Why the heck not? Let's just do it. I'm not even gonna look at a reference picture. We're just gonna sketch from my brain. So that would be fun. Let me look in the chat, see if you guys have questions or comments before we move on to NYC. Um, New York City's reservoir is only 60 feet above sea level, so any building taller than 6 stories needs its own water tank on the roof. That is an awesome fun fact. Love that. Edie, Edie, um, is always, always filling in with the facts. So good. JLM, good to see you. Hope all's well. It's been a minute. It sure has. I'm so glad to see you in the chat. Rod Sterling wants to tell you to look for your jacket in The Twilight Zone. A man. This is a story about a man who had a green jacket. The jacket went everywhere with this guy. Then one day the jacket vanished. Where has it gone? It's a mystery. Can he survive without it? How can a man survive without his most favorite jacket? Stay tuned. For another episode of The Twilight Zone! Doo doo dee dee doo— Alright, thank you very much. Alright, let's sketch out... um, let's sketch out a water tank. Usually I'll start with a white Creative Marker. And we'll see. Maybe we will do that or we won't. Let's try this new marker. It's 9:30. Okay, I'm gonna give myself a time limit. I'm gonna sketch for 10 minutes. I'm gonna put my timer on. All right, 10 minutes. I'll give him 11. All right. All right, I got a timer there, 11 minutes going. That way by the time I get back to this, it'll be 10 minutes. All right, here we go, let's do it. All right, I'm loosening up here. All right guys, I'm loving this. I have 6 minutes left. This is— this has turned out to be pretty, pretty cool. Um, what do I want to do in 6 minutes? That's a great question. What do I want to do to bring this home? Well, I know I need to do something on the roof of the water tower. So in my brain, I know what I want to do there. My elbow keeps hitting all the stuff on the left side there. All right. I have an idea for this. I want to make it look more curved, so let me rotate that a little bit. I need more space. Oh my gosh, I'm running out of space here. All right, this gel pen is kind of sucking right now, so I'm gonna grab a different one. Um, let's do this one. I hope my head's not in the way. If my head's in the way of the camera, I am so sorry. Just bear with me if it is. There we go, much better. This is one of those new gel pens I had recently got. I'm loving this brand. I think I'm liking this better than, yeah, Gelly Roll. Um, the Gelly Roll white gel pens. Just a personal opinion, I feel like these go on thicker, and I love that so much. How much time? 3:43. Here you go, just so you know I'm telling the truth right there. 3, 4, 3, 3, 3, 8. I am liking that. That is so cool. I got 2:51, 2:51. We're in good shape with time. We are in good shape with time. I have time to think for a sec here. I don't usually like thinking when I'm sketching, I just like to keep going. Um, let's grab and go. Speaking of that, let's just grab some fluorescent orange, pull out some of this, pop out some of that fluorescent, some of the orange happening. Make it more intense. I wish these fluorescent colors would show up more intense on camera for you guys because they're pretty, pretty vivid here in person. They're just really bright like me. No, I am kidding, I'm kidding, that was a joke. There we go. Chartreuse, where have you been my whole life? I have missed you. Chartreuse was an amazing discovery I had maybe 2 years ago. I didn't discover the color, but I was— I started using the color about 2 years ago and haven't looked back since. I always love saying that I didn't know what chartreuse was. I didn't know how to spell it. I thought it was a much different color than it is, and I love, love, love this color. So that was a fun discovery, and again, that just happened by being playful and trying different things, different colors out. You never know what you're going to discover unless you just throw ink, pencil, whatever, paints, whatever you want to use. Just throw stuff down on paper. Don't be afraid. Just go for it. You'll love some things, you'll hate some things, you'll laugh, you'll cry, but in the end, you'll grow in different ways as a human being as a creative, your soul will grow. Oh, how much time? 27 seconds. Oh, we're in a home stretch. I'm just throwing down some— let's layer some of this kind of here. Oh, this is cool. I'll show you a close-up of what's happening because I actually really like that. I'll show you a close-up when the timer goes off, which we have 2 seconds, we're done. All right, we're done. Water tower is done. There's one thing I would like to do. I want to pull the edge out a little bit more, so give me some grace of another 2 seconds. Definitely just got to pull this edge out. It got lost. Let's pull this edge out here, make it pop off the page a little bit more just by bolding the outline. All right, there we go. We got a water tank. Um, here's what really happened that was kind of cool. Let me show you a close-up. So when I put that light aqua color pencil on the paper, it picked up the texture of the acrylic paint underneath, and you get— see if I can angle it so you can see it better. We'll try there. It just pulled out some of the lines of the acrylic paint, and I like that. And it picked up some of that rough texture on the right. So that's one of the cool things about acrylic paint is they have texture and you can kind of play with that texture a little bit. Um, and then you can see— we'll just get it— here's a close-up. Sorry, my hand's a little shaky, guys. I could have left it on the table and zoomed the camera in, but I didn't. Um, let's put a frame around it. So this is kind of fun. There's some things I think I still would do to it. I will do it to it as we're still together here. Let me— 9:43. Aye, aye, aye. Let me throw some lines here. I want to continue some of the white lines to just to call out some of the wood planks a little bit more. On the tank here. So these water tanks, water towers, are made out of wood. Wood. Would you believe it? Would you believe it, Chief? All right, um, here we go. All right, cool. I think that just helped us pull out some of those planks a little bit. Let's frame this bad boy. I think this is looking pretty dang cool. I am maxed in with my camera. That's weird, usually it gets closer. We'll start off with small frame. That is too small of a frame. Womp womp womp. Next step up. This is going to be too big, but we'll get the idea. All right, let's go into questions here, see if you guys have any comments, anything, uh, any questions for me. If I missed some of your comments, I'm sorry guys, I don't— I can't see everything on screen. Um, congratulations, you completed a 100-day art challenge! Kudos for consistency! Um, that is awesome. That creative consistency is really going to build a, a muscle memory, um, into what you're doing. So awesome, awesome job. Round of applause. Great, great job. Um, you're asking how each other are. I love that, that's so fun. He says the, the cross beams under the tank look like a Confederate flag. Oh, that was not my intention. Not at all. I don't really want it to look like a Confederate flag. Um, that's an interesting observation. Now I can't unsee that, but That's okay because it gives me a chance to use a color I wanted to use before. We're gonna throw some blue in here. Nothing wrong with that. But actually, this is a good lesson that you— these acrylic markers are cool because look what I can do. It's kind of cool. And one of the things I actually like about the blue marker is it's going to show, um, I can keep the yellow, um, it's going to show like the rivets. And the rivets are really important like structurally, right? So be a fun way just to kind of— and use an excuse to use my favorite tip here. So we got these kind of rivets maybe happening structurally. Boom. So yeah, good lesson. Acrylic markers, you can use them and go over them and cover things up if you want. Um, Lovely. What new pen is that? These are— I will show you the box. It is a white pens set, and the company is— I'll zoom up because it's hard to read the— it's in script, but I couldn't read that the other day. I had trouble. So it's called Broussard White Pens. Check them out. Pretty cool pen set. Um, love, love, loving them. And they are now in my EDC, everyday carry. I have them in my, um, keep them in my Lockbee, usually in the front pocket. I'll keep some here so I can grab and go and they're with me, just like all of my other favorite colors. We'll throw in there as well. And I restocked on purple, which is— which makes me a happy camper. Never leave home without it. All right, cool. Yeah, so, um, I like this water tank. It looks really cool. Perfect fix, thank you. It's the dots, Jason Nicholas Nicholas. Oh yeah, the dots, the dot end. I don't know what I said, the dot end of that brush. Um, perfect fix. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I honestly, I think I would like to add more blue on here too, so I think that was a good call because it kind of forced me to pull out the blue. And there's the UN building. Aight, let me know if you guys have any final questions or comments. We're going to wrap up. Um, one thing I did on here, I didn't— so as I was working on this, I was thinking about coloring the tank solid purple and then drawing the white on top of it, but I like the background so much, the acrylic abstract background, I wanted to let it show through. So that's why I didn't color it all solid. And I started thinking about that when I was doing the roof. See, I purposely left some open space to see the color underneath. Um, so that was kind of a strategic thought as I was sketching in my brain. I could have done it solid like this. It still would have came out cool, like kind of like I did the Guggenheim, right? There's solid purple horizontal bands of color. I totally blocked out the background, which I think works here. It's very graphic, very iconic looking. But I think in this I was— I wanted a more weathered, aged kind of aesthetic. So I think by letting the color show through and not covering them, it gets that kind of weathered, aged kind of look to it. So that was an intentional Sketch Decision. I don't know why I am tapping my paper, but I am. Cool. All right guys, before I wrap up tonight, I just want to give a count and see how many sketches we have in our book. We have tons of pages, so we're going to continue to fill it up throughout the year. Let's just count how many we have. All right, so water tower, we have 1, uh, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. We are at 24 sketches in our NYC calendar sketchbook. That is so cool. You have been with me on the journey since the beginning. Kudos to you for sticking with it. Um, cheering me on, positive words of encouragement, telling me things you like, you— things you don't like. Feedback is— I have to take feedback as a— as an architect, as an artist, as a human being. Feedback is part of life. Um, we don't have to accept the feedback, but always be open to listening to it. Um, and some of it can help you grow in new directions, and some of it is just feedback for people that are just being haters. Um, so, but be open, and you guys are not haters. Your feedback is always so helpful, and suggestions. So I appreciate, appreciate that. Cool. I'm so excited, so excited. I don't even know what the next sketch will be. We have another page that we will fill next time we get together. We'll do another NYC-inspired sketch. My list, I have Little Island and South Street Seaport I still haven't tackled on this list yet. So maybe the only building I really know in South Street Seaport is the Tin Building. So maybe we'll do a sketch of the Tin Building, soon to be a balloon museum. Um, or a Little Island I've sketched a few times. We could do that. As well. Cool. All right guys, I hope you like this. Uh, this has been a lot of fun. Oh, I gotta switch camera. Let's switch to the other cam. Sorry, I like to wrap with the— I call it the heart-to-heart cam, just a more personal way to end things. How are we looking? Not me, but how is the camera set up? I don't care how I look. All right, I think it's a good spot. All right, let's change. There we are. All right, cool. Sorry, it's a little shaky. My screen's a little shaky-baky on my laptop. I'll stop it. All right, um, so as always, I couldn't have done this without you, your support, your positivity. Especially. I love when I have people in the chat that I can riff off of. It's so much fun. It makes it more energetic for me. I have livestream with nobody watching and it does not have the same vibe. It's really interesting. With that being said, tonight we did a couple things. Let's just do a wrap-up. As a quick warm-up exercise for anybody out there who wants to loosen up with your sketches, get the brain going. This is a cool exercise right here. Oops, where's the camera? Draw some boxes, set a timer, and do quick little sketches. Um, great way to warm up the brain and get your kind of blood flowing a little bit. And then this was awesome. This is an example of just throwing down colors quick, loose, fast, not really pre-planning, and not pre-planning is a great way to help you stay loose. I get a lot of questions about how, how do I sketch loose? Don't pre-plan. Pre-planning for me can shut me down because then I want to be too precise, too technical. And that's okay for my architectural blueprints. I need to be technical and precise. This stuff here that we're sketching, no. Set a creative intention when you're starting. Maybe that intention is, hey, I want to throw color down on paper, or I just want to put 5 lines on paper. They could be crooked, straight, wonky, it doesn't matter. Set an intention. Don't pre-plan. Set a timer. Sometimes if you sketch really fast, you can't think. You have to go on— you have to create on the go. All right, a couple of tips. I appreciate you so much. I know there's a big basketball game going on. We have a lot of Knicks fans, or I know a lot of Knicks fans, NYC people. That is awesome. I hope you're enjoying the game and enjoying the energy and the vibes. I am not a basketball watcher or fan, but I still can appreciate the excitement that true fans have because we're all different, we're all unique, we all have different interests. And you know what? Because someone else likes something different than I do doesn't mean I cannot like that person. Embrace uniqueness, embrace difference, embrace each other with positivity through creativity. Until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and embrace imperfection. Until we sketch again.