Monday Night Sketching

Hey, happy, um, happy 2026! Happy New Year! Hope you're doing good. Jason Nicholas Nicholas here from The Inspired Life. It's been a while since I've livestreamed. I really hope everybody's doing well today. It is January 5th, 2026. Let me know if you can hear me okay. Hopefully I'm not lagging. My internet might be a little wonky. It seems to be wonky on my end. I'm not sure why, but that's the way it goes sometimes, right? So I hope you're doing well. Hope everything's off to a great start for you. Popping on here on this Monday night just to do some livestream sketching. Let me move my microphone. Testing, 1, 2, 3. Hopefully you can hear me okay. So yeah, I can't believe the new year is here. It's crazy. This 2025 is gone, right? In the blink of an eye. It's, it's crazy how fast time can fly by. And I know it's so cliché, but it's true. So, uh, I would often say if I had a superpower, I think my superpower would be to somehow be able to control time. You know, there are times when we want to slow it down, savor the moment, um, times when we want to freeze it, times we want to speed up time, right? Skip to the Future. So I think that'd be a really cool superpower to have. But I don't have that superpower as much as I wish I did. Um, but we all do have one superpower that we're going to talk about right now. Everybody has this superpower and is the power of creativity. It's a gift. We all are creative in one way or another. We all express our creativity in different ways, and one of the ways I love using my creativity is, is sketching. Sketching architecture especially. So we're gonna do a quick street sketch inspired from my recent trip to Paris last week. I was there for a few days. It was awesome. Really, really, really amazing experience. I'm gonna dedicate a full livestream or even a couple of livestreams just to talking about Paris, talking about What did I see? What did I sense? What did I observe? Did I sketch when I was in Paris? If I did sketch, what did I use and how did I capture the feeling of the place? So yeah, join me future live streams real soon, this week, next week. I'll try to make advance notice if you wanna join those live streams where we'll be focusing on sketching Parisian things. Did I say that right? Parisian. Um, feel free to say hi, leave a comment, questions for me. I'll be checking in. I'm going to put an image on screen, and this is the image I'm going to use just for a little bit of inspo tonight. So let me do this. Also, if I'm not looking in the camera all the time, I, I'm using a different camera. The one I usually use, the lighting looks really not cool, so I'm switching to my my laptop cam right there. But let's put an image on screen. Is it this one? Yeah. All right, cool. Um, so this is a little streetscape in, in Paris. Um, this is close to where I was staying in the hotel. Um, not in the heart of Paris, but this isn't a— I'm gonna get my pronunciation wrong, um, in a place called Vilhuyf. Vilhuyf. Um, I'll post that later, but this was just like one of a discreet kind of street that was there. So I thought it'd be cool to sketch this, maybe just get the vibe of a one-point perspective. Um, yeah, just sketch for a few minutes. All right, let's do it. I got some music on here. I'm going to move this so you can see mine. And this is just an inspo pic, guys. I'm never trying to duplicate, replicate exactly what I'm seeing in my sketches. It's really just to capture a feeling or a vibe. So, um, it's a starting point. It's a starting point. All right. So maybe I should turn it more kind of horizontal. Let's zoom in a little bit. I haven't live streamed in, uh, man, I don't know, I think it was right before Christmas. Maybe I am trying to find my zoom control. There we go. Boom, got it. Got too many windows open. All right, cool. All right, let's just do some sketching, guys. So, um, basically it's a one-point perspective. It kind of comes in this way, a little bit of this way. And the word perspective scares people when it comes to sketching, and I get it. But when you're not trying to be perfect, it takes the pressure off, right? This is an interpretation. Um, it's not going to be to scale. It's definitely not going to be perfect. It's going to be loose and wonky, which is my style. I'm actually going to start here. And we're going to draw a little frame. So if you're new to my channel, um, I love sketching kind of quick, loose style architecture. It's something I learned to do in college. Um, I studied architecture in college. I'm I am an architect as well by trade, which is cool, but I had to sketch really quickly in architecture school because our professors would go around and give, you know, students feedback on their projects. But if you didn't have something to show your professor, they'd be on to the next student really quickly. So you had to always make an effort to have something. Or even when you were talking to your professor and you wanted to communicate, it was all— not all, but mostly just through graphics, through sketching, more than talking about it. So you just have to do kind of quick, loose sketching, almost scribbling sometimes, to get your ideas out on paper. And that's why I always like to say, just, it's better to get your ideas out of your head and onto paper. Another thing I kind of picked up in college. And I'm just capturing some kind of the perspective going back here. I'm not going to capture the entire photograph. It's not my goal. My intention, my intention tonight is just to come online, say hello. Loosen up a little bit, practice sketching. I'm gonna do some streetscapes this week for a friend of mine that asked if I'd be interested in sketching some Parisian streetscapes. So I said, yeah, I'd love to do that. So this is just my way of kind of loosening up for the week, getting a feel of some things. And seeing where it goes. Hey, DB's in the house! Happy New Year to you, DB. I hope all is well. DB, your marble jar painting, mind-blowing! Oh my gosh, uh, you can't probably see this on screen, but I literally have goosebumps. Thinking. I'm visualizing your painting right now. I have goosebumps, honestly, as I'm talking about this amazing detailed work. You, my friend, are a detail expert. I love that about you. I'm so opposite. I am not a detail expert. And, uh, I love that everybody approaches their creativity in different ways. Awesome job. Oh man. Hey, I also see Chip is online. Chip, Chip, always great to see you. Thank you for your endless inspiration in many different ways. I appreciate you more than you know, my friend. So thank you. I'm actually going a little bit out of order. You see, usually when I sketch, I'll focus on the roof lines. Do this block-in shapes, coming to do windows, then some doors maybe. I guess I'm kind of doing it that way. Um, again, I'm gonna have some live streams where we're focusing really on Parisian architecture. I'll talk more about styles and details that I've noticed when I was there. Um, I have to say, I, I have I've been in New York City so many times, and I, I love New York City. It is a place that fuels me, it fires me every time I go. Um, Paris is probably the first city I've been to where I saw architecture that literally made me stop. I was speechless, and, and I'm not afraid to admit this, I even I even shed a tear or two looking, feeling, and being around this architecture, especially Notre Dame at night. I'm talking about right now, and I just— it was wow, it was incredible. Um, I did not get to go inside this trip. This was a quick whirlwind kind of training tour trip. Um, so next time I'll make sure I can tour inside. But I was able to walk around at night and it was kind of peaceful there. Crowds weren't there, so I was able to really just savor and soak in the moment. And that's one of the things I love about architecture It has— design buildings and places can impact us on so many different levels, um, physically, mentally, spiritually. It's— design is really powerful, and it's something we just take for granted sometimes. So I am, I'm just, it's something I'm very sensitive to. I am always looking at my surroundings, my buildings, sensory overload. Um, that's why I take a lot of naps when I can. I'm always in sensory overload mode. All right, I know I'm talking a lot here, but I'm just excited and happy to see you guys. So you can kind of see, just kind of have some street. I'm actually going to literally turn off that photograph because I'm not even I'm really not even gonna look at it. Um, hey, Becky's in the house! Happy New Year, Becky! So good to see you. Hope all is well. Hey, GGNYC, you're here also. So great to see you. Love when you guys all pop on. Thank you so much, always great to see you. I'll just put in the comments, hey, let me know if— would you guys be interested if If I give advance notice of maybe, uh, some Paris-focused livestream sketching, maybe you guys can even sketch with me. We'll sketch a lot of, uh, not a lot, but we'll sketch maybe some iconic things, non-iconic things. All right, that's enough ink on there. Let's— I'm gonna have fun with colors tonight. I don't have any water. So I am not prepared to use watercolor. Womp womp womp. Yeah, I wasn't thinking. I kind of said I was gonna go online and just went online. But we'll break out some maybe creative markers, pens. We'll use some pens over here. We're just gonna use what we have. Grab and go creativity. Got my— I love— I have multicolor pens. I love multicolor pens. Pro tip: if you like sketching with ink and pens, just grab multicolor pens. They're compact, easy to carry. I love, I love this pen actually. Let me grab this one. Let's just do a pen sketch right now. I do want red. Red is a very popular color in Paris, especially on the awnings. And I need to look at the history of that. I'm not sure why red is the chosen awning color. I love visiting locations and leaving with questions. Um, I— it's interesting, I don't like to research a place too much before I go to it. I just want to go and explore without really knowing a lot. I'm talking about like about history or the especially the architecture, um, because I want to be open to what piques my curiosity and what I see. So I'll always leave with questions. So one of my questions is, why is red such a popular awning color? And if you know in the chat, you can put it in there. Okay, we're just playing around colors tonight, guys. Let's see, I got some green on here. Turquoise is— or I guess it's turquoise, maybe it's French blue. I don't know the certain name for it, but it's a real popular color I noticed on shutters and doors. It's like a turquoise and it's beautiful. I don't really see any in this picture here. Again, I'm just playing around. Got some music going here. I'm gonna break out some Creative Markers. I just want to pop some punches of color on. There we go. Let's just break out some of these fun markers. Feel free to, uh, leave questions, comments. I'll be checking in the chat as we're going through here a little bit today. Can you guys see that okay? GG says, what street is that? Hey GG, great question. This is, um, so I— our hotel was in, uh, I guess a town. I'm gonna say it wrong, Villejuif, which is about maybe, if I'm remembering, a 30-minute bus ride to like the heart of Paris. So this is on the outskirts. This was a street near the hotel we stayed. So I don't think it's really— it's just a nondiscreet place. So it's a really good question. So this trip, guys, was a 3— I was in Paris for 3 days. It was a training tour. Um, I'm gonna be a tour leader, a group leader for a trip end of March, beginning of April, where I'll be having 7 students and 7 adults on this trip. The trip is hosted, or it's run through a company called EF Tours. Anyway, on this trip, being a tour leader, group leader, I'm responsible for certain things. So this was kind of a training tour to give me a taste of some of the things I can expect when I go on my trip. My trip's going to actually be to— we're going to be going to Italy and Spain for 10 days. So that's why this trip was a really condensed training trip. I didn't really, um, we were doing some classroom work, some workshopping, and a whole lot of snippets of different places. Looking for my markers, so where the heck are they? Right here. So I'm gonna throw down some purple here. I don't have any music playing today, which I think is cool. Sometimes you guys can just hear the— I should just do a stream where I don't even talk. We'll do like an ASMR sketching session where you guys can just hear me like things like this. Scratch of paper, clicking of pens. That'd be kind of fun, right? A little ASMR stream. I got some Coldplay going on here. I, I love me some Coldplay, guys. Just get some people here, just give a sense of scale happening. We've got some people kind of hanging out in here. One of the things I really loved were all the cobblestone streets. Um, they can be a bear to walk on. But just imagine all the history that you are walking over, all the— just all the feet that have walked on these streets. People, horses. Some barrel tile kind of roofs happening here on this building. There's a lot of beautiful ironwork even on this most modest of buildings. Like on these— outside these windows, we have some beautiful kind of scrollwork happening here. Definitely lots of architecture in Italy and Spain. Yeah, Gigi, 100%. I am, I am most excited to be going to Barcelona, um, see the, the architecture of Gaudí, um, La Familia Sagrada. If you guys have— if you don't know or haven't heard of La Familia Sagrada, Google it. It is, it is a, um church that's been under construction, cathedral, uh, for over 100 years. Still not done. Was supposed to be done, I think, in 2022, this year, but I don't— I think they've extended it now. It is a masterpiece of a building. Check it out. I literally have goosebumps thinking about it. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to going to Barcelona the most. I have never been to— I was in Madrid back in high school years ago, so which is— and that's a beautiful city as well. I don't remember it that well, but, um, it's been so long. And then, you know, Rome is classic. I have never been there. Just to see all this, these iconic locations in person I feel like I want to break out some purple. Kind of like using purple for shadows. Hey, Patty's in the house! Patty, great to see you. Happy New Year, hope all's well. Long time. It's good to see the Inklings. Inklings, I want to do a— I would love to do a, um, a Zoom with you guys and a little get-together. And I know I say that all the time, but I'm game this January. I'm game this coming, um, Saturday if anybody's open. Maybe a Saturday night little Zoom, we can just chill for an hour or two and do some sketching together, catch up. That'd be so fun. Let me know if you guys are interested. I think I still have Zoom. I have to double-check. I may, I may have actually stopped paying for Zoom, but we'll figure it out. We'll get it working. Patty, did we sketch that church in, um, a workshop? Yes, I think we did La Familia Sagrada in one of my online workshops. That's right, Patty, we did. Yeah, it has a lot of, um, I think I also did a quick like slideshow. It has a lot of organic shapes when you're looking at it. Uh, the interior is inspired by a forest, so the light coming into that building is spectacular. This structure inside, the columns look like they're, uh, meant to replicate the trees of a forest. Got a lot of— trying to— I'm thinking a little too much, guys, about colors. You know what, I'm gonna break out this color. I didn't even— let's just throw it on here, why not? We'll throw some here. Just want to take away some of the white here off of the page, add a little bit of color. Oh, I like it, I like it, like it. Hey, is Karen in the house? Wow, all the Inklings are showing up. Hey Karen, how are you? Great to see you. So when I do my Paris livestreams, guys, I'll do a quick slideshow. I'll show you. And let's— let me know in the chat now, do you guys want to see some pictures? I can share some pictures. If not, that's cool. Just put in the comments, say yes or no, and I'll Well, we can show— I took over 500 pictures in 3 days. We will not look at all 500, I promise. I'll just skip through some. I'll skip through a lot and I'll show you a few. Let me know if you're interested. If not, it's, it's all good. Sketch more people. I like— where's that blue? I'm going to add some color so these people pop a little bit more. They're going to be a little smaller back here because I want this to look like a perspective. So add a little bit of depth. We're going to scale down kind of the people happening. Um, this here was a— they had like some fresh veggies and stuff out here and kind of boxes and crates going on over here. Lovin' this music. All right. This marker is— this Creative Marker, it is aqua, my favorite color, is dying. It's dying out finally. I got some yes, yes for pictures, yes for pictures. All right, let's do it. I'm game. All right, let me, uh, let's go to share screen mode before I do that. Boom. So the idea here is just one to try to capture the idea of a perspective. Quick, loose, some different colors happening. Um, I like you, like you. All right, enough of my chatter. Let's just share my screen. Hold on a sec. Again, I'm going to skip through these pretty quick. We'll do more deep in more detail kind of look in my Paris album, and then I just got to share All right, share screen. Let me make sure I share the right one, or we'll be looking at me, looking at me, looking at me. Um, oh, it's thinking, it's thinking. I have to get special permission to bypass security on my computer to share my screen. This might not work, guys. Hmm, I might have to go old school and just hold my phone up to the screen. Hopefully I'm still live. Yeah, Karen, long time no see. Hope all's well. I loved, uh, all you guys. I love seeing all your artwork posted, um, over the holidays. I love, love seeing your stuff. All right, let's see. Show primary display, I guess. Oh, I think— can you guys see that? Let me know in the chat. You should be able to see my, um, screen. Might be lagging. I'm sorry if I'm lagging. Let's see, I feel like it's lagging a little bit. I can see the image big on one screen, not the other. I really am good at this tech stuff, I swear. I know it's not letting me. Interesting. So I'm zooming on one screen, I can't zoom on this one. Thanks for your patience, guys. Might be a time, time to go get a— make a cup of tea or grab some water, Doritos, bowl of ice cream while my tech is doing tech things. I'm gonna go back to the live camera. I had to give permissions to it. Uh, maybe that's why, because there were software updates. One more time. If it doesn't work, I'll just hold my phone up. Fingers crossed. All right, it says primary display. Yes. Oh yeah, I think you guys can see that now. Cool. All right, sorry if I'm lagging. All right, I'm going to keep going. I'm sorry if I'm lagging a little bit, guys. Um, Please also let me— if I'm freezing, let me know too. Uh, this, the— this is, uh, near where the hotel was staying. Um, just want to get kind of just a typical street scene here. Let's go back. Yeah, my computer's getting stuck. All right, we're gonna We're going to go back to live mode. All right, I'm back to live mode here. Um, not enough resources. I'm just going to show you on my phone a couple quick things here. Sorry about that. Next time I'll actually prep and we'll have a— I'll have enough power to show everything. I had way too many windows open. So let me just go to my photos, and I have a whole Paris album here, and I'll just hold it up to the screen. Uh, we'll just start off with Notre Dame. Here are some really cool pictures. I'll hold it— we'll hold it right under here so you guys can kind of see Notre Dame right there. So it was nighttime and hardly anybody was there, so I was really blessed to have been there at night. Um, check that out. So I was not able to go inside, which is okay. That's— I don't take good selfies. Here's a quick video. Look at the details. This is, um, I can't describe I just can't describe. You had— this is something that has to be seen in person. It was, it was magical. That's— magical is not even the right word. Surreal. I won't go through all these. I have so many. I spent a good deal of time here one night. Um, here's a really— here's kind of a nice shot. You can see along— here's the, the San River. Unfortunately, it was the dark of the— the building was dark on the sides. There's still scaffolding and stuff. Um, remember they had a fire here back in 2000 17? Was it 17 or 15? 17. Um, so I don't think it's 100% unfinished with the rebuilding because there's a lot of scaffolding on the exterior, and the side was dark at night, so I couldn't really see the side. But this is the main thing. Oh, that was some food we had. Food was pretty good, pretty good. Um, Eiffel Tower, you know, we, we see the Eiffel Tower so much, the image of it. Um, this is it lit up at night. Uh, it's just incredible seeing this in person. Um, you know, you think Paris, Eiffel Tower is cliché, but seeing it in person is so amazing, and lit up at night is beautiful. This was a river cruise we did on the Seine. My thumb's in the way. So pretty, pretty amazing. Um, what else do I want to show you guys? Um, this is, um Montmartre. Hopefully I'm saying it right. Montmartre is the kind of a hilltop village. This is the basilica there called Sacré-Cœur. You see up there, Sacré-Cœur. Um, so this is like a hilltop village, a lot of shops up there. Um, there's a whole square where artists will display their artwork and sell their stuff. And, uh, pickpockets are a real thing, guys. Pickpockets. Yeah, I, I was almost pickpocketed. Um, I was not, fortunately, but people— one of the teachers on our trip, she had her whole backpack stolen in our hotel lobby. I think she literally left it for a minute to go get a cup of coffee, and she came back, all her stuff was gone. So you really have to be careful when you hear about pickpockets. It's true. This, this is in that same hilltop village, but check out this cool building. Let me— guys, let me know also, am I back live or am I still frozen or Maybe you guys logged out, and which is cool, I get it, I get it. Uh, what else I want to show? Uh, this I can't— this was in kind of the heart of Paris. I forget the name of the shopping— I'm going to say it's a mall, but it is— it's basically an amazing shopping mall. This is kind of what the space in the central of the mall, the center of the mall, decorated for Christmas. This incredible glass dome at the top. Yeah, that is amazing. Also, what's cool in, in that mall, um, this is a view looking out through some of the windows. Like, I forget which floor we were on, but this is just looking out a window of one of the shops in that mall. Cool view of the Eiffel Tower in the distance. That's fun. Um, what else? Just a couple more and then we'll wrap up pictures. Um, Arc de Triomphe. So I was only able to see that— see it as a drive-by on the bus, so I got these weird angles on it, but here is the amazing arc. Um, it's the best I could do from the bus. I definitely need to go back to this place, 100%. So like I said, it was a real small taste I had. Um, the Louvre was just a drive-by, so I did not actually go to the Louvre. Uh, oh, check out the— this is the, um, I'm gonna call it the Paris Opera House. I mean, this is a small part of it. This structure is amazing here. Could you imagine going to see a show here? Be cool to see Coldplay here. Um, wow, I would love to go inside this building too. Here's another view of the Les Palais Garnier. Magnificent, right? Cool. Hope you guys are enjoying this, uh, these photos. Here's kind of the— here's— I'm going to go back to Momart. Um, this is kind of the area. This is that hilltop village, we'll call it. You can send it. This is like the center square up at the top where you can see artists have their wares on display. Uh, we were there just right before sunset, and then we had dinner here after sunset. This is where I almost got pickpocketed, um, by— I would say, shoot, probably a girl, probably like in her 20s. Yeah, and then here you can see from that center square, you can actually see Sacré-Cœur in the background there, the dome. A lot of people there, a lot of— here's some artwork here. I really kind of like these sketches I saw. This place was crowded. By the way, I need to work on my French pronunciation. I took Spanish in high school and middle school, went to college in Miami, so I learned a lot of Cuban friends, so I'm okay at Spanish, but not French, so I gotta work on it. Um, this was a cool— I don't know, I learned more about this place. I think it's a restaurant, but there is this cool like windmill on, on top of it. So this is another one of those things I left curious about, and I want to learn more about it. All right, and then here you can just kind of see, um, well, same thing. It's the same thing. All right, anything else? I could, I could spend an hour easily if not two, going through all this stuff. Those were some of the highlights. Actually, one last thing I do want to show you, um, the Château of Versailles, the Palace of Versailles. I did a live stream while I was there, so check out my YouTube channel. Um, I think it's still on Facebook as well. You can kind of get a glimpse of this amazing monstrousity, and not in a bad way. It's just, it, it's just, uh, here. So this is the Versailles, just part of the palace. Uh, OMG with a few exclamation points after it. Uh, I have never felt so small. And I love New York City and the skyscrapers. Oh, I always feel really small in the city, but standing next to this building, you can see people. Oh my gosh, talk about, uh, showing your wealth, your action of it. And, uh, so it's in— it's wintertime, 30 degrees, 40 degrees there. The gardens here are humongous. Uh, unfortunately, you know, nothing was really planted because it's not planting season. This is just a fraction of part of a garden. The moon was out, which was really cool. So I definitely need to go back here when it's in full bloom. I mean, this is an entire day just at this one place. Uh, here's some pictures of the inside. I know Patty was here. I mean, look at all— I mean, this is how this place was packed. This is the famous Hall of Mirrors room, the Hall of Mirrors. I didn't break any, that's a good sign. Um, let me just check this. Yeah. Cool, right? All right, so guys, that is just a quick glimpse of some of the places I saw. Grab a drink of water, I'm gonna wrap up. It's 8:49, definitely 9 o'clock I'm logging out because I got school. Let me see if there's any questions or comments and then we'll work on this for a few more minutes. All right, kind of looking at the wrong camera. I'm sorry, I usually use the camera here. It was looking wonky, so I'm using my laptop in front of me. Let's see what you guys are saying in the comments. No worries, Jason Nicholas Nicholas. I almost always have too many tabs open in my brain. Yes, Becky, I get it. In my brain, on my computer also. Yeah, we'll, uh, again, I'll have a dedicated live stream where we can We'll do some sketching together and we'll talk more detail of this stuff. Looks better at night, she says. Looks better at night. Yeah, um, Notre Dame or Eiffel Tower or both, definitely so much more dramatic at night with the lights on both locations. Patty was in Notre Dame with her mom in 2004. Before the fire. Awesome. Linda, hey, great to see you. Hope all is well. Happy New Year. Thank you again. Um, I sent you a message earlier today, so I appreciate you. I could look at that building over and over again. I am partial Notre Dame as candles were lit there for my wedding. Wow, what— that's a story I gotta hear. That's incredible. Dang. All right, I— mic drop. I can't top that one, guys. That's incredible. Wow. Eiffel Tower. Pickpockets were a big problem in Rome. Hey Becky, thanks for that tip. I— yeah, I'll be on the lookout for those pickpockets. Mom didn't want to go to Montmartre, so I must go back. All right, Patty. Field trip, let's go! Anybody want to go to Paris with me, let me know. We'll set something up in the future. How cool would that be? Let's go do like a travel sketching excursion. Um, you can fill 10 sketchbooks in a week there easily. So here's the thing, I, I didn't really have time to sketch. Can you believe that? This was a non-stop thing. And then I could have kicked myself, the one time. I actually had time to sketch. Guess what I did? I didn't bring my sketchbook. That is— you guys that know me, that is so rare. I always have a sketchbook with me. So this was the one I was at, um, the Versailles. That's okay, I still had a blast and took pictures. Um, I did a few rapid-fire sketches and Nothing to write home about, but I did capture the memory a little bit in my brain. I don't know if I can pull them up here. Um, snippets like here's Sacré-Cœur and Montmartre. That's, that's quick. That's all I was able to sketch quickly. And then Eiffel Tower and then a little bit of Versailles. I was trying to be cute and use, um white, blue, and red. A little bit of Notre Dame. And then this was inside a cathedral we went into, not, um, I can't think the name of it. I think it was Saint-Séverin. Saint-Séverin. I did a quick sketch of the inside here, but I didn't really have time to, to do sketching. Um, so yeah, next time will be a sketching excursion, 100%. Stunning decor inside the mall. Yeah, that mall was like mind blown. Um, I wish I had taken more pictures, but I only took that one of them all. Tons more people than when I was there. So here's, here's an interesting thing. Um, COVID, as we all know, shut the world down. I'm gonna sketch while I'm talking. COVID shut the world down, but now that things are reopened, people are getting out more and more and more. And I think here's what is also— I'm going to use the word over-popularizing. I don't even know if that's a real word. Over-popularizing, um, travel, social media, all of the posts. Even I do it, I'm guilty, posting, um trips everywhere, posting these amazing beautiful shots of, of Paris or Rome or New York City, right? People are seeing all these images, they're like, FOMO, fear of missing out, FOMO, right? They're like, I gotta go, we gotta see this, we gotta capture it, we gotta be there. I think social media is having a huge, huge impact on the, um, excuse me, on the increase of travel. And that's just a theory. I was thinking about that when I was away. And then, you know, like, we go places, we're like, I wish this was my kind of little secret part of the world, or I wish this was my secret cinnamon roll bakery in New York City that no one else knew about so I don't have to wait 5 hours online for a cinnamon roll. But that's not— that's not how the world's working. So it's— that was really interesting to see. I don't know, what do you guys think? Does that make sense? I get excited. Oh, you guys want me to zoom in closer, by the way? I mean, let me zoom in closer. Sorry about that. There you go. Make some room. All right, so you go just popping on some color. Can't go wrong with Paris. Amazing. Yeah, GG, 100%, you cannot go wrong. I will definitely be going back. I am so excited as I'm talking to you guys, so if I'm talking fast, I'm just being me. I'm in rapid-fire excitement mode. Rapid-fire, see, RFEM. I'm in RFEM, rapid fire excitement mode. Let's put some shadows on here. Let's use some hatching. Break out some black Sharpie. Um, you know what, I'm not gonna use a black Sharpie. I'm gonna use— no, I lied, we use a black Sharpie. Let's just add some hatch. This one, I don't want that one here. I want this one. Add some depth to like these roof overhangs. Can you guys somehow get me a snow day tomorrow? I could use a snow day. I'm tired. Hmm. So just by adding these kind of vert— these, uh, diagonal hatch lines. It's helping to create some shadows. Excuse me. Um, you're welcome, Gigi. You took time to take it and enjoy the city. That's good enough. Yeah, Gigi, I love your positivity, so thank you. I have to say, I'm not really upset that I didn't sketch a lot. Um, it was really a trip for— again, it was kind of a training trip. Uh, it was a trip to process and just kind of be. And now I know that I definitely want to go back and explore and take my time. It was definitely, um, well worth it. 100%. I feel like I want to— what do I want to add here? Let's draw some texture on the streets, maybe some cobblestones. Um, I want to use— I wish I had— what do I have? I'll just use this. I wanted a lighter. I could actually— I can use a pencil. So what's really cool about some of these multicolor pens is they have pencils. So if I push this down, click— why isn't it working? There we go. There's actually a lead holder here. That's a pencil. So let's sketch the cobblestone with the pencil. My music stopped. I need music when I sketch. All right, I just want to create some texture here. So I do want the stones to get a little smaller as I go to the right, only because that's the perspective, to give the illusion of some depth. And we'll make them a little bigger as we come this way. We're just going to shade some of this in a little bit, do a little variation. I'm gonna add some texture to the buildings. We're gonna do some stippling. All right, before I wrap up, can anybody tell me what, what color do you not see that I usually use? There's a couple, and I will end with one or two of those colors. All right, cool. So you see how the stippling just adds a little bit of texture to the wall, right? So it's like a, like a stucco kind of finish. What? No sketchbook, but you were in the moment and enjoying? Yeah, Linda, I know Versailles did not have my sketchbook. Um, I kicked myself for only a brief minute, to be honest with you. I felt like I wanted to get a lot of photos when I was there this time so I could bring them back as references. And you know what, it just was just wandered. There we go, to get some texture there. I mean, some, uh, contour lines to give this awning a little bit of shape. What if I build graphite stick would make a good texture for cobblestones? Becky, I love that, 100%. I would— I actually have one here, I just— I don't have water. Oh, that is an awesome idea. I love that you said that. So cool. Pink, you guys are right. Yeah, let's throw some neon pink here. 10 points, 10 points, ding ding ding, 10 points. All right, we got some neon pink. I know, I know, there's no, uh There is no pink. I did not really see neon pink anywhere I went, but this is my world, my interpretation, my sketch, my fun, right? Also gonna break out some neon yellow. No, it's stuck in there. Come out. Here we go. And this is the perfect blue color for like the shutters and the doors. You guys are awesome. You knew I was— you knew I was thinking pink. Uh, one fun thing I did was I gave out— I gave out a couple of Statue of Liberty torches while I was away, so that was kind of fun. Just giving away some of my artwork. I will never get tired of this color combination, guys. Neon pink on top of orange. I don't know how well it's showing up on camera with the lighting, but I love these two colors on top of each other. It's magical. Not magical. I'm not using really great words tonight. I wouldn't say it's magical. Uh, it fires me up. Some of us are wordsmiths, some of us are baking smiths, some of us are knitting smiths or photography smiths, music smiths, blacksmiths, sketching smiths, right? I am definitely not a wordsmith. There we go, a little more pink than I usually throw on, but I kind of like that. Let's throw some neon yellow in the windows. I always like to add that in kind of the window areas. It would have been cool to pop out some of these veggies down here. We'll just— we got some red veggies going on here. I don't know, tomatoes, apples. I did notice a lot of like fresh flower shops. Which was kind of cool. I also saw at least 7, uh, wedding proposals. They're like 5 in a row along the Seine River. There were, uh, Eiffel Tower, there was a wedding proposal going on. It was, it was pretty interesting to see all the wedding happenings, the proposal happenings. All right, I think we're gonna wrap up. All right guys, so this is just kind of my quick loose style interpretation of one of the pictures I took of a nondescript street in Paris. I appreciate y'all so, so much for watching. Stay tuned, I'll be doing— we'll be doing a lot of Parisian sketching, um, inking. Stay tuned. If you're interested in a Zoom, let me know. Um, I mean, we'll invite some other people if they want to join us. That'd be cool to grow the group and get together, hang out, do some sketching, talking, and just chill online for a couple hours. Gigi says, did they all say yes? Um, I think they did. Yeah, I know definitely the one about Eiffel Tower, um, said yes. The one— the ones I saw along the Seine River, um, so you know from watching the NYC live streams, um, you see them setting up for the proposals, like the displays and things. So I, I saw the display set up on the Seine. I didn't actually see the proposals happen. The only one I saw happen was at the Eiffel Tower, and they said yes. So, uh, how cool is that? Awesome. It is a beautiful city to get engaged in, apparently. Um, you guys are awesome. I appreciate all so, so much. Um, your time is valuable, I know, and just spend it with me for a little bit is— I honor that. I honor you so, so much. Till we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and Inspire endlessly. A lot of big things happening this year in 2026. You're going to be hearing the word sketchology, sketchology, a lot, uh, something I'm working on, working on trademarking sketchology. More about that, um, yeah, and more about some online courses coming up and some coaching type of stuff, creative coaching. I really want to take what I love doing and serve on a different level. Appreciate you guys. Peace out. Awesome, great seeing you all. Linda, great seeing you. Yes, Zoom, yes, awesome. GJ, I appreciate you and your time. Thank you so much for your positivity. Becky, Becky, always great to see you. Um, I got it right because it didn't say Rebecca. That was funny last time I saw you online. Patty, great to see you, it's been too long. DB, always a pleasure. Chip, likewise, man. Um, Chip says look up the history of the Moulin Rouge, incredible windmill. I, I will. We drove past the Moulin Rouge. I did see the, um, I saw the building, which was cool. And if I missed anybody else, Karen, I think Karen was in the house, always good seeing you. You guys warm my heart. Until we meet again, take care.