Monday Sketch + Chill

Hey, happy Monday. February 16, 2026. Jason here with the inspired life. I hope you're having a good day today. I don't know when the last time I was on at 3:30 in the afternoon was. Probably a while ago. Just felt like coming on a little bit earlier today. Day off of school for President's Day. So shout out to all the presidents that gave us this day off. Anyway, hope you're doing good. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I have my lock B here. I have a thing that I started to block out earlier today. Maybe I'll sketch on that. So just join me for a little bit and we'll see where this creative journey takes us today. Yeah, so a couple of things. I went to the City on Saturday, which was awesome. Went to the Met, did some sketching there and I walked around afterwards. Central park, it was a really busy day. Went to gct, Grand Central Terminal. Love that place. Where's my sketch? Trying to think of where I put my sketch from Grand Central Terminal. I could show it. So it was a really fun day. So in the Met, apparently you can only use pencils to sketch. I don't really like sketching with pencil. So one of the things I might do today is I have some sketches that I did at the Met. Some of them, they came out kind of cool, but maybe I'll add some color on these. See, this is from the. I guess it's the Temple room. This is. They had a Frank Lloyd Wright room there, which is really, really cool. Love that. Seeing that. It was so awesome. So just some fun sketches. Quick, quick sketches from the Met, which was just a great day out just to be amongst other people sketching. And I haven't been to The Met in 20 something years. So I was honestly just more wandering around looking at the Met than. Than wanting to sketch. I wanted to explore and see what they had. And I barely covered maybe like a third of it. It's a huge place. So cool. Then this I threw down today. Just some random. I've been just being playful and doing stuff I never really do and throwing down colors and textures and patterns and being really abstract. This is kind of cool. I like this one. So, yeah, so I threw this down today. I thought maybe I'll break out a Sharpie. Let's just sketch on top of this and see what happens. I just want to throw some lines down. I'm also procrastinating from doing my tax work, but we'll get back to that. So how. How do I Want to orient this? I have no idea. Do we want to sketch on it this way? This way? I really have no idea. Maybe we'll sketch like this. We'll orient it this way. I have a Sharpie here. Creative marker. Maybe we'll just kind of use those two and play around for a little bit. Feel free to say hello if you're watching in the live stream. I know it's a weird time for me to be on leave. Questions and comments as well. And I have to open a window here. All right, cool. So no rhyme or reason. We're just going to throw down some lines on here and just have fun. This is really about just being playful. Not even going to try to create anything specific. And we'll see. We'll see where it takes us. So my brain is seeing a. Maybe a. Maybe we'll do like a fishing. Some kind of fishing shack structure on top of this. This kind of abstract background. So maybe we have a. A dock or something that this building is sitting on. Maybe it's on a bayou somewhere. It's just kind of what my. What my brain is seeing in this. And I think I want to keep the lines to a minimum on this. So you can kind of see it come together. Hey, Dirk. Good to see you. It's been a long time. I hope you're doing well. Wow. It's good to see your name. Hope you're doing well, my friend. So this could be the structure maybe of this dock here. Do some cross bracing going on maybe. Boom. So I just want to give a shout out to everybody that watches and supports and likes and subscribes and follows and does all that amazing social media stuff because we are at. We are at 995 getting so close to 1000 YouTube subscribers. I'm so excited. 1000 is just like a fun kind of just milestone or a goal for me to hit. And I just love knowing that, you know, I'm growing and hopefully growing by just sharing positive vibes through. Through creativity. That's kind of what I want to do. Not an amazing artist. I'm just a creative person. Love to share my creative brain and positive insights and personal development and all that positive stuff. And I just use artwork sketching as kind of my forum to. Yeah. To show what I do and just put good vibes out there. It's kind of a way for me to connect and communicate is through the lines. Through the lines and colors I throw down on paper. So I do appreciate you guys always popping in and saying hello and sharing and all that good stuff. So thank you. So. So. I like the way this is looking. And you know, I did break. I brought it a black Sharpie. But sorry, I think I'm just gonna stick with this white Sharpie. Creative marker. I really like it. Dirk says it's better time for me now because the time difference. Six hours ahead. Oh, that's right. That's right. If I remember you, you're in Germany, right, Dirk? Is it Germany? Well, I appreciate you tuning in. Thank. You. It's. It. Yes. In Germany. In Dortmund. Hopefully. I'm saying that right. Dortmund. Very cool. I have never been to Germany. I would love to visit. I was fortunate enough to be. I went to Paris for a few days over our winter break. That was awesome. And I'm heading to Italy and Spain for 10 days. Yeah. During my spring break at school. So I'm really looking forward to do that trip. I think Germany would be another amazing, amazing place to go visit. So I like the minimal line work here. Very loosey goosey. I wish I had a thinner. Let me try something else. I like the white on here. I want to. What do I have? Let's see if I have a thinner white marker. I have these gel pens. I don't think they're gonna show up. I'll try them. See, I also have this kind of china pencil. Let's try the white gel pen. See if they work on here. Here we go. I just want to zoom in. There we go. Hey, Gigi. Quick. Hello. Great to see you still at work. Awesome. Have a great, great day at work. Always awesome to see you pop in. Yeah, I'm early today. I may be doing another live stream later tonight around 9. But just had the urge to get some creativity out of my brain and onto paper. Appreciate you so, so much. Oh, I pronounced it right. Dortmund. Awesome. So cool. Dirk, where would you suggest if I go visit Germany? Where should I go? Do you have any favorite locations? Now obviously, you know I love architecture, so anything archae. I'm sure there's so much inspiring architecture in Germany. So actually the gel pen is working on here. I am happy about that. It. This is a fun type of creative exercise. It's just throwing down kind of a really abstract random background and sketching on top of it. Wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I have to say that this is really fun and that's my goal. I just want to have fun doing this. I'm just being playful. Not trying to make anything amazing. Never trying to make anything amazing. I'm just. I just want to make something. Put something on paper. That's what makes me happy. And hopefully it brings some joy your way as well. Cool. Check that out. What else? Let's. Let's throw a quick frame around here, see what it looks like. I think I finally got smart and decided to keep my frames right in front of me since I'm always reaching for them. Ding, ding, ding, ding. 10 points. I did something smart for once. There's always hope, my friends. Always hope. Frame's a little small, but I just want to see what the colors would look like. Let's move it over there. Yeah, I like these colors. Let's see. I have a. This one has a bigger opening. Yeah, I like. It has, like, a bayou kind of feel. Maybe a. Some kind of sunset happening in the background. I'm going to zoom in. I'm going to show you what I really like about the. Excuse me. The random background. I really like. I love what's happening in here. Where's my little mini square? Let's do this. I love this as a little mini painting. I love the colors happening in here and the textures. If the lighting is kind of wonky there, maybe here. So I like what's happening in there very much so. What else do I like about this? I like what's happening here with these colors too. Something like this. I really like those colors as well. That red, by the way, is called fluorescent red. It's acrylic paint. The whole entire background is acrylic. I shouldn't say that most of the background is acrylic ink Paint. Acrylic paint. And I do have some inferno orange ink on here as well. And inferno orange, you can see, is kind of the color up in here. So that's what I used to create the background on here. You should also think on East Germany as well. Plus Berlin, Hamburg, and different parts of Bavaria, perhaps. Oh, Frankfurt, Maine, is our little Manhattan because of the skyscraper. I have to Google that for sure. That sounds really cool. Yeah, I would love, love to go. That'd be so fun. Castles. I definitely need to see some castles. 100%. I'd love to see castles. I'd love to see some modern architecture. I'm trying to think of. Do I know of mt of any modern buildings in Germany with anything coming to mind? Nothing is coming to mind. I also love this color palette here too. All right, so we just pulled out literally, like, 1, 2, 3, 4 mini paintings, and there are a lot more. I like how the red is sitting on top of the Kind of the blue here. I'm just debating. I'm tempted to throw some blue on. I usually like to use like a. Aqua or turquoise for my metal roofs and give them a little patina like. Like weathered copper. But I don't know, I might. I might just keep the entire building white. There we go. My brain. My brain is saying I need to have black on here somewhere. I don't know why, because I guess I'm always used to using a black Sharpie. No, I'm not gonna do it. Not gonna do it. I do want to throw a little bit of texture. I think I'm gonna. I'm using something I rarely ever use. And I pulled these out of my. The magic drawers behind me. The magic flat file cabinet. Kreypos Junior Artist Student quality oil pastels. This I think my friend had, had given me these a long time ago. I don't know where they came from. Trying to see if there's a year on the box. I don't even know where they came from. So I've used them once in a while, occasionally. So they were. I think they were kind of donated to me. They were pre used instead of throwing away, I guess he gave them to me, which was so nice. Let's throw some oil pastel on here. I don't usually like oil pastel. It's not my thing. But I just want to be playful, experiment, try different things. So we're going to do it. I feel like I need some yellow. So let's grab either this one or this one. Let's see. I need a scrap piece here. And I'm experimenting. I don't even know if it's going to lay down pastels. Not even really showing on top of that acrylic paint. One thing I do like about pastel is it does leave a texture. And this is kind of cool because it's picking up the texture of the paper and highlighting some of those ridges. Let me get closer. You can see how the pastel is picking up the ridges of the paint and giving some texture, which is kind of cool. I like that. So maybe this is some kind of a sunset sky. Throw a little bit of this yellow. I'm just gently kind of scribbling the pastel over, over that dried paint to pick up the text. Hey, how are you, M. Good to see you. Hope you're having a great day. Hope you're having a great day today. It's always nice to have a day off, right? For sure. I love it. Thank you. I'm glad you love this. That's so cool. That's awesome. Dirk says in the west of the country, cities like Cologne and Dusseldorf are also interesting. I gotta. I'm definitely gonna Google Germany and check all these different, interesting cities out. Yeah, I would like. I said I would love to get there and just experience the architecture and of course, do some urban sketching. Heck yeah. That'd be so fun. Be so cool. Be cool to meet you too. If I'm ever out that way. Dirk, it'd be fun to say hello. I'm sure you have some interesting. Do you have any interesting architecture in your town? Hey, Jen's in house. Jen, how are you? Good to see you. Jen popped in. I love that. I am. I am on such a random time today. I just. I'm actually avoiding working on my taxes. That's why I'm really online now. I should be going through all my paperwork. Sometimes I need to change my state. I'm kind of procrastinating, but I'm also changing my brain from one gear to another, so getting the creative juice out here so the energy's flowing and I can go hit those tax things, hit those numbers, get them done down on paper. But yeah, so I'm on a little bit early today, and maybe I will be on again later tonight. All right, so we got dumb some yellow on there. This is looking kind of cool. I feel like we need a little bit of purple or some kind of darker color. And we'll go for this purplish color here maybe again, I am using oil pastels that I rarely ever use, and I just want to be playful. Do I want to do this? Yeah, we do. We'll throw some purple on here. Love, love, love, love, love it. Oh, I'm so glad. Emma over on Instagram. Thank you so much. I'm glad you're liking this. I'm glad you love, love, love it. Maybe it's. Maybe it's the colors that you like, the bright, fun colors. So I'm just throwing down some purple. I just want to ground it a little bit. So I'm making a little bit darker on the base just to give it a little. Got all this white. I want to just darken it, kind of balance it. We have white diagonally. We'll have some darker colors. So I think that's why my gut was saying throw some purple on here. I'm just gonna zoom really way in so you can see that texture kind of happening. As I put this on here, I'm holding the pastel, really light, really Lightly. I wanted to pick up the texture and the ridges of the colors underneath the color palette. Hey, Matthew. Good to see you. Matthew's online as well. The color palette is visually appealing. Thank you. Thank you, Matthew. Hope you're having a good day today. Dirk Scene says, I have seen you are also selling your wonderful works. Do you know whether it's possible to send it to Germany, too? Oh, Dirk, if you're interested in sketch, I would love to. Yeah, I don't see why not. I don't know how much postage is to Germany, but we can take a look into it. If you're interested, you can send me a message in the comments. You can message me on my Instagram channel if you want as well. Or you can send me an email or if you go to that link where my store is, you can also just put your interested there and I think it'll ask for your email and, like, we could just email or back and forth. Yeah. Thank you, Dirk, for your interest. I appreciate that. Very cool. All right, guys, so I think that's enough purple. I don't want to get too purpley, I have to say. I think I'll zoom out. I don't think I'm going to do too much more to this one. I think we're gonna leave it kind of like that. But I think my favorite part. I'm liking this part. Well, it's easier if I put a frame around it. Come on, kiddo. I'm really liking this part down in. I gotta change this. This song to Putting Me to Sleep. I mean, I love. I love Coldplay, but this one's a little too slow. I need something a little faster. All right, cool. All right. Yeah. Check out the colors here, right? We got some reds and oranges and rusty colors and greens and blues and purples, white. This is a really, very, very strong color palette for me. And that fluorescent red on the right, I love that color. I could see just doing entire sketch paintings with this color palette lends itself really nicely to the industrial grunge vibe I like to do. I gotta start sketching some, like, industrial buildings. I haven't done them in a while, but that's really kind of cool. Awesome. My shirt. The color of my shirt looks good too, with this. This. This color is actually a good color for this painting. What would you call, like, a maroon? This is like a maroon color, maybe. All right, guys, let me know if you have any final questions or comments as I wrap up. I just wanted to pop on for a little bit. I'm glad I popped on at a different time because I got to connect with Dirk. That was so fun. Emily and Matthew were watching as well. That was fun. And love that Gigi and Jen popped on. So cool. Yeah I mean if I'm on later tonight I will pull out that sketch of I did at Grand Central Terminal on Saturday. It's somewhere around here. This my studio is a mess and also pre sneak preview we will demo and we'll test out Yeah I bought this little mini fountain pen at a very cool star store called Muji Mu J I Muji see right there Muji in nyc. Love that store. So cool and we will play around with this compact fountain pen really small. Look at that. So stay tuned we'll break that out really soon. Thank you guys so so much. It was great seeing you all. Appreciate you. Until we meet again sketch boldly live creatively and inspire endlessly. See you soon. Thank you Dirk great seeing you and Jen everybody else in the chat. See you guys soon. It.