Monday Night Sketch Chill

Hey, happy, um, Monday, January 26th. That's the camera. I hope you're having a good day. Hope you, uh, if you had the snowstorm come through, hope you did okay. Um, yeah, pretty messy, messy snowstorm, right? Um, I think we had— from what I'm seeing, I think it was about 16 inches. I think it was more. I think it was like 21. Um, it was a lot of snow, a lot of shoveling and snow blowing, and no complaints. It's a winter wonderland. Got a day off of school and delayed opening tomorrow. So it is what it is, but I hope you were safe and warm and, uh, did okay. So if you don't know me, I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life. I love sketching. I love sketching architecture, sketching anything, but mostly architecture. Sketching is just a great way for me to transform my state of being, capture moments in time and a way to slow down and just kind of wind down a day. So I thought I'd pop on tonight, we'll do a sketch. I'm thinking St. Patrick's Cathedral-ish. So on the screen in the upper left— am I pointing to it? You'll see an image of St. Patrick's Cathedral, a picture I took back in— on December 7th, 2025. Um, So let's just do a sketch inspired by St. Patrick's. Let me know where you're watching from. And I'm actually going to sketch in this Moleskine paper, this Moleskine paper. So we'll put Mr. Lockbie aside. And what I might do is I might— well, I'll show you, I'll show you an example. Let me put some music on as I'm talking here. Now let me know if you're listening and watching live, let me know if the music is too loud. If it's drowning me out, then maybe that's a good thing because maybe you don't want to hear me talking. All right, let me, uh, let's play this playlist here. All right. Hey Jeff, good to see you. Hope all is well. Good to see you. All right, very, very cool. All right, so I have this cool Moleskine— I say Moleskine, I don't know if it's Moleskine, Moleskine— um, sketchbook here. And here's what I'm thinking of doing tonight. I might use 2 pages to do the St. Patrick's— St. Patrick's Cathedral sketch on. Try saying that fast. Um, here's an example of a sketch I did I can't fit the whole thing on screen, so I gotta kind of angle it. Um, this was done at Grand Central Terminal in the new, new part of the station. So I was there sketching one day, and here's kind of looking down. You can see the top of a subway car here, kind of the platform area happening. So I like this kind of format with the two pages. So it's pretty, pretty big. How big is this thing? It's about 16 inches. 16 inches. Boom. So, and then here's a single sketch, single sheet sketch. This was in Grand Central Terminal. If you know the— if you know the terminal, you know the area where the flag is hanging, big chandelier behind it. So this is a small section of it.

Cool.

So let's add— let's do some sketching. So again, I'm going to start with a Sharpie, and I think I'm going to use this brown pen tonight actually too. Hopefully the lighting's okay.

I'm going to start with—

maybe I'm going to start with You know, I feel like sketching— I'm, I'm breaking my own rules. I am not going to start with this Sharpie. I'm going to start with this brown pen. I just feel like using this kind of sepia color. It's a Sarasa. Come on, camera, pick it up. The lighting is wonky in here. I don't know why. Um, it's a Sarasa pen by Zebra. Gonna really exaggerate the height of this, kind of the corner tower or turret or spire. I think it's more— I think a turret is more of a castle. This is more of a spire. My goal is to never— I'm not trying to duplicate all the details. I'm just trying to sketch a vibe here. This is, this is a very, um, this is a very fun building to sketch. I love all the points on it when you look at it. So it's built in the, uh, neo-gothic style. We have these pointed arches here. It's kind of a doorway entryway area with a gothic arch happening. Every time I'm in NYC and I pass this building, I, I take pictures of it. I have so many pictures. It's not like the building's really changing, but it does— it's not true, the structure itself isn't changing, but this looks so different in different kinds of light. Um, so it is fun to capture the building at different times of the day, different seasons, you know, rainy days, sunny days. It always has a different vibe to it. I'm kind of drawing an angle a little bit here. So that snow was kind of crazy, huh? Crazy snow. More on the way, apparently. Yikes, if I can say yikes. Yeah, weather's insane. This, this angle is kind of a corner angle looking at the church. Sorry, cathedral.

This is simply being human.

Let me see if I can zoom in a little bit.

My words couldn't even dare. Hands trembling, knees weak. I tried to speak, tried to speak. Spent my shot, spent my chance. Locked it down, my shot, not a second glance.

Um, I really like these pens. They glide on the paper so nicely, and I love this Moleskine paper as well. It really takes the pen nicely. Gonna move it up a little bit here.

Burn by the heat, burn by denial. Eyes locked just for a beat. I felt the fear, felt the fear. Spent my shot, spent my chance. Lock it down, my shirt, not a second break.

This building has so much detail when you see it in person. Um, you can, you could stare at it for the longest time and you just see so many things happening on it. It's really an incredible structure and it's just, it's a gem amongst these, um, skyscrapers around it. Walk along Fifth Avenue, you know, uh, all these kind of tall buildings, modern buildings. When I see St. Patrick's Cathedral, it's like a breath of fresh air. It's like a space, right? It just kind of opens up around the building. It's a really cool place to pause. Yeah, sometimes really, really, really busy with people around it, but visually it's a place to kind of pause your brain, right, from the, the buildings that are right next to each other. This has breathing room. It's almost like a— I want to say a piece of jewelry surrounded by a box of buildings. That's kind of how I view it, and that's one of the things that really draws me to it, is just that, that time to pause take in the beautiful Gothic architecture in a busy city. You know, it's right across from Rockefeller Center area, right, right across from the Atlas statue. I love the Atlas statue, huge fan. I think it's beautiful. Um, so it's just an award-winning location for so many reasons. I hope you're just getting kind of cathedral vibes looking at it, right? Um, so if you look— hey, GG's in the house, great to see you, hope all's well. Jeff says, I love that building. Yeah, it is so cool. Um, notice the picture and look at my sketch. They're very different, and that's okay with me. I'm not going— I, I am not going for duplication. I'm not a Xerox. Machine. Do people still say Xerox machines? I'm not a copy machine, um, I'm a me machine. I just— I want to sketch this the way I want to sketch it, what I'm feeling. Quick, loose, scribbly kind of lines to it. As I'm sketching it, I'm imagining being there, and the photograph tells you exactly what's there. And I really like this photo. I'm going to make it bigger. So you guys can see that the photo, it looks really cool. Um, happened to go there really early in the morning and not a lot of people were around. This was December 7th, so beginning of the holiday season. Um, I love the, uh, the yellow school bus and the yellow taxi against the, like, in the foreground. The building behind it. So I love the contrast of the pop of color. That's so fun. So I am that guy you see stopping and taking lots of pictures in the city, um, which is fun. I, I'm not even looking at the pictures anymore, guys. I'm just gonna come add some hatching, some lines on here, pop some things out. I'm feeling like red as well, I don't know why, so we'll throw some red on here. Just go with my gut. So, uh, feel free to leave questions, comments. I will check the chat in a sec. Also let me know, is the volume level okay between my voice and the music? Should I turn the music off. I'm open for suggestions. All right, let's just throw some lines on here.

Oh, we can stay in tonight, or we can leave right now. I don't really care as long as I'm with you, girl. I can feel your eyes on me like a magnet. Oh, I can feel your eyes on me like Cool, cool.

Hey Jason Nicholas Nicholas, great to see you. I hope all's well. You like the Met, the library as well, St. Pat's. Yeah, Jason Nicholas Nicholas, um, with you, I love all those buildings. I'm definitely, definitely got to get back to the Met. I think I might head there this Saturday. I was going to go this past Saturday, but Mr. Snow got in the way, so maybe we'll be back there. Um, great, great. And the NYPL, classic, classic buildings. Um, you should visit the St. John's the Divine Cathedral. Oh, that is— that's on my list. That is definitely on my list. Isn't it the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, if I'm correct? Yeah, I definitely want to go there. That would be— that'd be such a treat. I love that suggestion. Awesome. Mike is a little low. Thank you. Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with the— let me know if you can hear me a little bit better. Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it so much. Always appreciate the feedback, guys. Thank you. So, so much. I don't know, this one might be, uh, I kind of like this sketch. I don't know what else I want to add. Do I want to— we could try to add this. Let's see. I know we got kind of a thingy happening here in the round window. I think they're called an oriel. Oriel window. 112th and Amsterdam. I photographed that last year. GG. It is beautiful as well. Awesome, awesome, cool. Hope you guys are liking this sketch. But turn it sideways, right? So it goes back to the idea I was saying here for the Grand Central Terminal sketch. This was a fun one to do. I sat there for a while doing this sketch just at the platform in the new section of Grand Central Terminal. Let me add some— actually, I did kind of something similar. I have red on here as well. I just realized that. Um, I like the perspective kind of looking down at the subway, the train here. It's kind of fun. This was cool sketching and sitting there and just listening to the trains and this constant announcement that kept saying the same thing over and over. I'm trying to remember what it was saying. It was just like an announcement and it was really interesting. Um, I would definitely— I'll definitely go back to GCT and sketch the old section and the new section again. I actually need to explore the new section more. There's a lot of cool artwork installations. I didn't check them all out yet, so I'll be back there. I didn't— I didn't mean to actually start adding to this, but I did. So again, the instinct— just go for it. If your gut is telling you to do something, just do it. Especially when it comes to sketching. Just go for it, it's only pen and paper. So it came out kind of cool. GCT there, um, we have our church. So I'm going to add one more color to this. I kind of, I kind of want to break out some of these markers. Let's break out— I'm actually looking for a purplish color. Maybe that one. Is this purple or pink? I think it's purple. I think that's pink. I think it's purple. We'll go with it. All right, cool. Let's do that. Let me stop this. I'm going to put some music on as I wrap up. I'm going to finish at 10 tonight. We have a delay tomorrow, which is awesome. 2-hour delay. Um, I actually have to do schoolwork in the morning before I go to school. Let's just put some music on so I can— that's weird, I need music when I am sketching. It's so weird when I don't hear music. Music is in my soul. It just helps my creativity, my thinking, energy levels. It's just— music is so powerful. I'm just gonna go with the, uh, my typical list here I always use. Unfortunately, you guys won't be able to hear it. I don't want any copyright issues. Although it's not going to my AirPods, that's weird. Let's try again. AirPod Connect. Boom, says it is. That's bizarre. Why the heck aren't you going to my AirPods, dude? Would you like to see me have a conversation with my phone right now? Why the heck are you going to my AirPods? This stinks. Let's try this one. Connect, connect. No. Dang it, this is bizarro. They never have issues connecting. All right, it's working now. That is not the color I was looking for.

A highlighter.

Let's try a purple highlighter. Negative, negative. Let's go with purple Creative Marker. There we go. I wanted to put some drama on here. I think purple's going to be some drama. Ooh, Hans Zimmer, Inception. All right, you're on. I'm gonna do it. It's a good one. I love Hans Zimmer. Oh my gosh. I love his, uh, Dark Knight album from Batman. I love, I love The Lion King music he did. I love pretty much anything he does is genius. He did some James Bond stuff. Inception is a really cool movie too. Thanks for the suggestion, I appreciate it. Have you guys seen Inception? How What a cool movie, right? I think I had to watch it 2 or 3 times to actually understand everything that was going on.

Let me zoom in.

There you go. So you can see I'm just adding some purple here just to pull some things out a little bit. Pirates of the Caribbean. I love the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtracks. Yeah, he's a— Hans Zimmer is a— he's a genius. He did a really cool MasterClass. If you guys— I'm sure you all know what MasterClass is, you've probably seen the commercials. Um, I had to see— I had watched the Hans Zimmer one, and it was really interesting to see, you know, how he does what he does. As a creative, I love seeing what other creatives do and how they approach their crafts and how they're inspired. So it was really fun to see. Jeff says, I love purple. Awesome, Jeff. Do you, uh, do you know that's a quote from Batman? 1989 Batman, Tim Burton. They're on the, uh, maybe you know that, the church tower. Kim Basinger, the Joker. And I think she's— she has a line where she said she loves purple. Yeah, lavender. Interstellar is pretty good too. I have not seen Interstellar. I have not seen that movie. Can you believe it? I hear so many good things about it. And the music just switched to my phone, not my AirPods. What is going on? This is crazy. 4 minutes till I'm done. But do you like the purple, right? I think the purple is kind of adding just a little bit of detail to it, a little bit of interest. This stinks. What's up with Spotify or my AirPods? I don't know. Play. It's crazy. Why aren't you playing in my ears? So bizarre. All right, there we go. Dream is Collapsing. It's a good piece. I wish I could play the, um, I wish I could play like the electric violin or electric cello. I wish I could play anything. It's always been a dream of mine to even the guitar or play something. Pretty cool, right? All right, this one might be a wrap. What else can I add to it? We zoom out, we'll take a look at the overall one, and we'll, um wrap up for the night. And I'll just pull out— uh, let me pull out this one here. And I have a St. Patrick's one in here also. They drive me bizarre, guys. Well, here's, here's a St. Patrick's one. Here's a kind of a quick— this one I did on location. This is back in August. This is— so this was last summer when I was in the city. So pretty cool, right? So you can see this similar concept that we sketched tonight here, right? We got kind of the spires, the points going on. The idea is to capture the feeling of a Gothic, neo-Gothic architectural building with the pointy spires on it, um, some Gothic arches as well. For cathedrals, we have the round windows. So architecture is a language, just like talking is a language. Architecture is a language made of, of words, except the words are doors, they're windows, um, stairs, walls, roofs, right? So that's kind of the vocabulary of architecture. So when you put those words together, those pieces together That's how we make, make buildings, right? Um, and we'd have infinite styles, infinite designs, because you could put those pieces together in so many, so many different ways. So that's one of the really cool things about architecture for me, is that it's building blocks, components put together in different ways, creating the built environment around us that can really affect or impact how we feel, how we think, how we live, how we're protected from the elements, right? So that's one of the reasons I just love architecture. There's more than one. I probably just said like 10. All right, cool. All right, this is— any final questions or comments? My AirPods are not cooperating. C'est la vie, AirPods. Um, that kind of stinks. And what else? Just looking around. I think that's it, guys. You're awesome. Thank you so much for watching. I appreciate it. Thank you for the questions, comments, the feedback. You're awesome. GG. Jeff, great seeing you guys live in the house, as they say in Canada. Uh, Jason was over on— not me, a different Jason was over on Instagram, so shout out for having a really cool name. Um, yeah, I guess I could play favorites with that, right? Awesome. You guys are amazing. Thank you so much for watching. Until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly. See you soon. Start sketching. Let me see what you guys are doing. We'll have a sketch group— we'll have a sketch session one night.