Monday Sketching

Hey, happy Monday! Jason Nicholas Nicholas here from The Inspired Life. It is May— not May, take 2— March 23rd. Hope you're having a great day. It's like 9:40 PM, 9:45 PM. I have lost all I lose track of time when I am doing this. Is there something that you do in your life where you just lose total sense of time? Yeah, that's this world for me right here. Anytime I could design something, create something, use my imagination, I just— I get sucked into the time vortex of life. You know what, I kind of like it, to be honest with you. Um, I hope you're doing really, really well. Um, tonight I just started throwing down lines. I don't know what I made and what this is. It maybe is like some kind of castle type thing. Um, I was just having fun throwing down some scratchy lines with my Sharpie, and I grabbed a red Pilot pen as well. And you know, it's just— I think the joy for me is just mark making. And that's, that's just throwing lines down, scratches, dots, scribbles, you name it. I just love doing this stuff. It's so, um, it just takes me, like I said, into the time vortex of life. And that should be a sci-fi book. Just saying. All right, let me look in the chat. I will say hello to you guys. Um, I always say it's going to be a quick live stream, but it should be because it's late. I'm supposed to be in bed. I promised myself I was gonna be in bed by like 9:15, and that didn't happen. All right. Hey, JLM, how are you? Good to see you. Great to see you. You are here on time. Um, you can never be late when I don't say what time I'm coming online. So thank you for showing up. I hope you're having a great day today. Thank you so much. Um, I'm glad you like this. This is just a cool— like I said, just, uh, throwing down some lines and that's it, keeping it simple. You know, I think I'm just gonna stick with this book tonight. We're gonna Let me take a little step away from my abstract work for tonight because I want to do some quick sketching. Um, I did earlier today, I just kind of laid out a couple of more blank pages in this journal sketchbook. So, you know, I have a couple more. So right now I have 1, 2, uh, 3 I think 4. Yeah, so I have 4 abstract pages ready to go. I'll probably do— I'll probably hit one more this week, maybe one or two more. Um, I don't think I'll be live on— I definitely won't be live Friday night, maybe not Thursday as well. So, uh, let's see what we can add to these. Yeah, I like where these are headed. So, um, very cool. So stay tuned. I'm just going to be getting into a— like, the flow state. Exactly. I was just getting to the flow state with this. I'm going to put some music on, so on my AirPod. Unfortunately, you guys won't be able to hear it, but I need a little bit of music just to keep creating. And then I'm gonna head off to Sleepyville. Sleepyville. All right, I hope you all had a good day today. And you made some time to do something that you enjoy doing, even if it was for a minute or two. Um, it's not always easy to do, but just carve out a few minutes for yourself each, each day. And this is kind of my time that I share with you guys. Um, yeah. Carving out my time. I'm going to put some music on. Let me think here. I want, uh, I'm kind of tired. I want something maybe a little light and breezy. That isn't— that Metallica is not light and breezy. I'm gonna go with my standard. All right, cool. All right, so maybe this is a castle here. Do I want to add any other colors? Maybe not right now, so we'll stick with this one. I'm going to zoom in a little closer. This might be the only thing we work on tonight. There you go. Adjacent to it is a— oh man, I think last night Jen in a chat threw out the idea of sketching a, like, a Japanese shrine. So this is what we ended up doing on our sketch. That's cool. I don't know why I started working on that one, but hey, why not? Maybe I'm just thinking old architecture, old history. Is that an— oh man, what's the expression? Old history. It's like the same thing. There's a word for that when you say like like old history, or— yeah, my brain's tired. Um, even just thinking ahead to my trip, upcoming trip, and all the amazing old, old architecture I'll be seeing. I don't know why my brain went to this, but sometimes what I do is I just literally— I'll just come onto a page here and Take my pen, usually a Sharpie. Here's what I'm doing. Like, I don't know what I want to sketch. Like, I have nothing. Like, I had nothing in my brain tonight when I popped on, so I just started doing stuff like this. Right. So again, I had no idea. I just start throwing down lines and shapes and marks and Yeah, and it's kind of, um, how do I explain this? I'll try to get you guys in my brain a little bit here. It's a scary place, but here's— no, I'm just kidding. Here, here's kind of when I'm doing things like this, how do I say this? I kind of— my brain zooms in on what I'm sketching, and I start in my brain imagining— most of the time it's architecture, to be honest with you. My brain just starts imagining these places, um, as lines get laid down, or arches, or triangles. Um, I'm seeing something in my brain, and I almost kind of— it's almost like squinting. My brain is almost squinting narrowing in and focusing. Like, you might— I don't know if my head's in the way of the camera, but I'm really kind of intense with these lines. If you look, you can see kind of where the lines stop, where they start. They're kind of heavy at one end. Boom. I need to do my nails. Um, you can see how the lines start and stop because I'm kind of really concentrating and It's still a loose style, but my mind is zeroed in on what I'm doing. It's very hard for me to explain, um, what's going through my brain as I'm creating these kind of imaginary scenes. And this— and I'm not pre-planning, right? I'm just kind of just throwing these strokes down here. Sketching architecture is a vocabulary, it's a language. Architecture is what? It's lines, right? It's shapes, arches, circles, triangles, squares. Um, if you can throw down these different shapes, these languages of architecture, putting the pieces, the combination together, you can create all kinds of endless things, right? Hopefully that makes sense. Hey, Gigi's in the house! Gigi, great to see you. Edie's in the house, great to see you as well. Hope you guys are doing awesome tonight. I'm just doing something a little different, um, kind of started off with this, just keeping it really simple tonight and just kind of creating these random little kind of sketches. Um, hope you're doing well. I'll check in and get some water here. Gigi just finished watching The Da Vinci Code. I feel like there's a mystery to unfold somewhere, somehow. I think, I think, my friend, you just defined L-I-F-E— life. I think you just, you defined life, right? There's always a mystery somewhere. To unfold. Love that. I, I have not seen that movie in a long, long time. I should definitely watch it again. Awesome. JLM says perhaps you are already channeling your trip. Oh yeah, I was just kind of talking about that. Yeah, I think my brain may be getting old school and European architecture, and I don't think I'll be seeing any castles on my trip. Um, I would like to do a future trip to Ireland and Scotland with some castles. GG, great to see you. Um, Edie, hope you're doing well today. Gosh, it's 10 o'clock, my light just went off. You were watching Cannonball starring David Carradine? Oh, I, I don't know that. Movie. I'll have to check it out. Um, sounds cool. I like the name. It's about legal cross-country race. It's a great film. Wait, is it the Cannonball Run? Are you talking about the Cannonball Run with Burt Reynolds? That movie I definitely know. The Cannonball Run is classic. There are— I think they made how many? 3? My favorite one is the one— I don't know which number, but it had, um, it had Sean Connery in it. Sean Connery— nope, not Sean Connery, change my— Roger Moore driving the 007 car. And wasn't Jackie Chan in those? All kinds of celebrities were in those movies. Cool. All right. Yeah, so, uh, let's go back to this. I'm gonna throw a little bit of color on this one and we'll just stay on not too much longer. I'm pretty tired, but I wanted to pop on, say hello, do my daily sketching, and it's always fun to share some time with you. Was that cheesy pointing at the camera? Sorry. Okay, yeah. Oh, I like Tom Petty, but not now. I don't know why I'm not in a Tom Petty mood right now. I really don't know what kind of music mood I'm in. I feel kind of wonky. Hmm, I think I'm going Danny Elfman. We're gonna listen to some You know what I want to listen to? The Batman soundtrack. Danny Elfman. I'll put some of that on. All right, cool. All right, let's throw down some color, guys, on this. Let's break out some markers. And actually, you know what, I'm gonna skip creative markers tonight. Let's break out pens. We're gonna just dip into some of my regular old pens here I haven't used in a while. Hope you all had a happy, happy Monday today. This day has flown by. I can't believe we're getting towards the end of March. April will be here before you know it. Uh, it felt like a winter day here. It's been raw and raining and it's just so bitter out. Yesterday was like 60. This weather is insanity. But I'm eyeing up some 60-degree temperatures next week in, uh, Rome, Barcelona. So hopefully it stays in the 60s, maybe a little warmer. That'd be amazing. Let's try this gray, gray color. Does anybody have any good stories from today? Anything fun, exciting happen? Let me know in the chat. Anything fun? What was the highlight of your day today? I would love to know. What was the highlight of your day? Feel free to share. All right, let's break out some white here. And again, we're just kind of scaling down from the NYC stuff for a little bit tonight. Sometimes it's good to mix up, mix up some sketching from one day to the next. Throw down some different lines, different colors, different medium. Just gets the brain thinking in different ways. And I'm, I'm going to bring some sketching stuff with me, but it has to be very minimal. I can't pack a lot, and I'm not going to have a lot of time to stop and stand and sketch. So I got to think rapid-fire sketch mode. What could I take? The minimal amount of stuff, which basically would be a pen or some backup pens and a sketchbook, I guess. Um, yeah, so what am I going to be taking with me? So stay tuned. Later in the week we'll do a little, little what is Jason taking on his trip for sketching show. That's a lot of words for a show. I definitely, I gotta get some more of these things because I love this art crayon. Actually, I'm gonna see if I can get different colors. This was given to me as a sample at some, I think, a workshop I went to. I just love these crayons. I'm assuming they come in different colors. Just time to pull out some things I don't use every day. Um, what do I have here? Everything I have here I use every day. Wah wah wah. Here, what do we got? I got this cool multicolor pencil thing, but the leads always break on me. It's like a 6-in-1 color pencil thingamabob. I love the concept, but I always tend to break these leads pretty easily. Ooh, this could be a— maybe a waterfall or something here. You know what just popped into my brain? Do I have any, um, Lord of the Rings fans out there? This is not even near what I'm— it's in my brain, but I'm thinking of— oh my gosh, where do the elves— where do the elves live? I'm picturing that in my brain. The elves live in this— it's not called Elven. Starts with a G, I think. Wherever the elves live in Lord of the Rings. Um, I love where they live. It is so beautiful. You gotta watch those movies. The sets are incredible. But that just popped into my brain. I think maybe there are waterfalls or where they live. What the heck? That's gonna drive me crazy. Where do the elves live in Dang it. Grendel? Grendel? I don't know. No, I'm trying not to cheat and look. Grendel? Grendel? Grendel? Grenendel? All right, I give up. Let me go to the— I am so tired. I just said let's go to the cheese. Let's go to the chat. Oh man, thanks guys for, for bearing with me. Um, where are we looking? If we get— let's see, what— which pens are— am I using these pens? These pens are, uh, these are Zebra Sarasa. Here, I'll show you. These are called Zebra Sarasa pens. I love these pens. Zebra Sarasa. Morning coffee was the highlight of your day. Hey, what kind of coffee do you like? A little latte, a little macchiato, a little just straight up black coffee? I love a good cup of coffee. See, you didn't do much today. Yeah, it was kind of cold out. I agree. Yes, weather's kind of crappy. We need, we need some decent— we need some sunshine, people. Show us. I want some yellow on this sketch here. Speaking of sunshine. So this is, um, this is pretty cool. It's like a 6-in-1. Let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. I'm sorry, there's like 8 different colors in here, and I haven't broken the lead yet, so maybe— oh, I was gonna say maybe I should play the lottery, but I just broke it. Marabu comes in sets. Pearl might sell individual bespoke. Pearl, Pearl Art Store. I have, I have not been to a Pearl Art Store since college in Miami. I remember going to Pearl and I still have some stuff I bought that way back in college from Pearl. I think there's a— isn't there a Pearl, maybe a couple in New York City somewhere? I haven't been. Um, River— oh yeah, Rivendell. Thank you, Gigi. Rivendell, right? How could I forget that? I gotta watch those movies again. I just— they are incredible, epic movies. Um, I don't think I saw the— I know The Hobbit was two parts. I don't know if I saw the second part. I don't remember. I did read the book a long time ago. Oh, speaking of which, hey guys, I'm not making this up. Look, I have it right here, The Hobbit. I pulled it out again because I was gonna read it. Um, I think that was back in the summer. I didn't— haven't read it. I read it when I was in middle school, actually. What the heck? I can't change the lead. I want to change the color. There we go. Why am I talking like Captain Kirk? All right, this— I love the concept of this pencil, but it annoys the heck out of me, so we're putting it away. Not on the top of my I would purchase lists, but you know what, I guess I'm just being fussy pants. We got some multicolor pens here. Thank you guys for sticking with me. I know this isn't the most exciting, exciting sketch I've ever done, but you know what, it's a good example of life. We don't always have to create things that are exciting. You can just create small fun things, just create little moments. These little— these sketches are just about moments. Just being playful. It's kind of what all my sketching is about. And I'm gonna wrap up in about 3 to 5 minutes. Kind of a fun little something. What are you? I don't know what this is. It's something. Hey, Lori Jean, great to see you. Great to see you. The second part is the best. I will have to watch the second part. Smaug, right? Isn't the dragon named Smaug? And Gollum. Gollum creeps me out. He, he's a creeper. I don't know why Gollum reminds me of Dobby. If you got any Harry Potter fans I don't know, maybe they were like related somehow. Um, Nescafé freeze-dried black, no sugar. Well, that's specific. I love that. I— is that like one of those, uh, oh, freeze-dried? Is that the kind that's in the jar and you like spoon it and mix it? Or is that like the machine that George Clooney promotes? Um, good to see you. I read The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and this— oh yeah, I'm not gonna say it right— Silmarillion. That's not the first one. You do a Mordor— yeah, there's a tower, there's a building. My NYC people know this. Oh man, correct me if I'm wrong. Brooklyn— is it in Brooklyn? There's a building that looks like, um, it looks like the tower. It looks like Mordor, the tower from Lord of the Rings. I want to say it's in Brooklyn, not Long Island City, right? There's that tower that has the, uh, spikes on it. Here, I'll just draw like spikes on top of this here. I'm not going to draw it well. I, it's not really— I need to look at a picture, but you guys know what building I'm talking about in NYC. This, this is not what it looks like. Don't ever be afraid to sketch with this, a straight up ballpoint pen. Good old Bic pens are perfect for sketching. Sometimes we think we need fancy schmancy equipment in order to make fancy schmancy art. Well, I don't think that's true. Not for what— not for what I do, at least. I can use a— just a straight up ballpoint pen, still create fun, cool In the moment sketches. The Desolation of Smaug. Isn't that a great name? Smaug. If I ever get another pup I'll name my pup Smaug. Maybe I'll just change Olivia's name to Smaug. No, I won't change her name. She's the best. She's the best pup. I call her the BPE, the best pup ever. She's my BPE. This is fun. The Brooklyn Tower has, um, spikes on it. Yeah, I think it's the Brooklyn Tower. You guys are awesome. Let me— it's in my brain. I'm gonna Google something. I'll bring up a picture. Aha, yes, you are 100% right. It is the Brooklyn, Brooklyn Tower. Yep. That would be a fun sketch to do. Uh, Shift Command 5. I'm just taking a screenshot. See if I can put this on. All right, this is the Brooklyn Tower. So that's a building that's in my brain, so it doesn't have— my spikes are really exaggerated here, but you get the idea. So you know what, this will be, uh, maybe I'll do a show, a show where I sketch this building. It's pretty cool. Speaking of pups, what made you pick Olivia for her name? Oh, um, actually that is the name that she had when we adopted her. Yeah, so we adopted her from a shelter and, um, she's from Louisiana. She came from Louisiana. Um, but that was the name she had. It was Olivia, so, uh, we kept it. Yeah, good question. We just kept her name. I wish it was an exciting story, but that's— it's a true story. Yeah, you know, it just was meant to be, and it just feels so nice being able to you know, save a pup and to kind of rescue her. Um, and I can't express the— just the joy and payback. I don't know if payback's the right word. Um, what's the word I'm thinking of, guys? Uh, joy. We'll keep it at joy. Just the joy of having Her— she has transformed our household, our lives, in, in so many positive ways. So yeah, I've always wanted to have my own pup as an adult. When I was a kid, we had some growing up, but I wasn't the same. That was a very different experience. So I always wanted to have my own as an adult, and it's just a fun kind of symbiotic, um, relationship, right? All right, I'm, I am literally just grabbing stuff in here and talking. Um, I have green in my brain. I want to throw green on here, so I'll just take this. So then this is your classic Bic multicolor pen, and I like multicolor pens. Why? Well, because they're multicolor. Um, not trying to be sassy, uh, it's just convenient, right? You carry one pen, you get a lot of colors out of it. So I would definitely be taking a multi pen on my trip. My favorite multi pen is, uh, here. I love this. This is a, this is a great pen. Kara— I can't say that— Karimoku. Um, I love this pen. It's got a wood barrel, 1, 2, 3, 4 colors. It also has lead, so this— if you push the clip down, it's a lead holder that pops out. So this is a really cool pen, so this will be coming with me. And you know what else is cool about these pens? Any of these pens are like fidget toys, right? They're very clicky. So I am sometimes a fidgeter or a Squish Cube guy. If you guys don't know what Squish Cubes are, I don't have any right here, but good stress relief. They're like squishy cubes, and one of my students got me hooked on those last year. Great for, uh, getting some stress out. All right, I don't know what we made tonight, but we have some fun kind of sketches happening here. Let me throw some stone on here. I'll go back to the chat, we'll answer any other last questions before I wrap up. I just want to throw some stone on this kind of imaginary building I don't know, building-ish sketch. This is kind of my shorthand of drawing stone. Let me give you guys a quick stone lesson and I'll wrap this up. Here's how I like to draw stone. Say we're going to add stone on a wall. Um, I don't like to draw stone. This is how I don't do it. Maybe it's just kind of irregular stone shapes. It's actually hard for me to draw it this way. So I don't like to do stone like that. Uh, takes too long, and I'm thinking too hard about what shapes are going to go where, how it's going to fit. So my go-to method— and this is— I learned this from an architect I first worked for at a college. Um, this is how I like to sketch stone. So think of it almost as like a single line drawing. So I like to show stone like this, not like that. So that's what I was doing up here, kind of these loosey-goosey scribbly lines. This is one of my favorite songs on this track— album. Well, not really spikes, but yeah, there's, there's square beams that stick above the top. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they have the illusion of being like spiky. Good call. Speaking of pups— oh, I read that. Oh nice, no wonder. Lord of the Rings for sure. Oh, you saw the picture? Cool. Any suggestions for drawing maps? Um, hmm, wow, I haven't really drawn maps for years. Um, I guess it depends if it's a real place or an imaginary place. Uh, I guess one of the things for maps is having some kind of a legend or key of your symbols, you know. It depends what you're drawing a map of. You know, you can do simple icons like, uh, you know, triangles to wrap something, or squares or circles. You can get fancy schmancy. You can start doing like our— this is like my Inspired Life. If you guys look at my Inspired Life logo, it has kind of like the location marker shape. Right, you can do, um, if you're drawing a map, you can actually draw physical places. So if I'm doing NYC, I can draw like maybe a city grid, keep it really loose, but then do fun illustrative style buildings, very simplistic. So, um, I need to process, I think, that question a little bit more. But yeah, feel free to let me know what kind of maps, and I'll, I'll give it a good think. Appreciate the questions. BICs live in all writing journals. Yes. Pen fidgets. Yes. Oh, you like continuous rocks? Thanks. Yeah, it's like a shorthand for sketching. Uh, JLM, you mean like— oh, contour maps. He's helping out. Yeah, I mean like contour maps where you have the kind of like I mean, I was like a little kid, we would do like, uh, we'd have X's. Like if I was making like a fence or something, I would show like X's for a fence. I'm trying to remember. I'd have to go— I'll dig back in my, my folders. I might have some of the early maps I did, and we were doing like military maps when I was a little kid, so these are like little military symbols. Cool. Let me know if you guys have any final questions. Pearl Paint on Canal Street is long closed. Oh. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, I might be thinking of a different Pearl Art Store that was in Miami. You have Sarasa pens in vintage colors? That's fun. You guys are awesome. Hey, oh yeah, my friend Winston was on Instagram. I wish I had notifications when people like popped on. You're a young version of Bob Burrage with your style. Um, hey, thanks, JLM. The only So I think I met Bob Burge at a workshop a few— couple years ago, a few years ago. And I remember he, um, is he the one that's known for doing like carrot people? Carrot people, if it's a person I'm thinking of. I'm pretty sure— I think I did meet him in an art workshop, you know, kind of like the carrot-shaped people. That's, that's a really bad example, but I recognize the name. You guys are awesome. Love the chat going on in the chat. All right, all right, so we got this fun little— I'll put a date. I gotta start putting— I gotta start dating my, um, sketches. Not like dating, like, like taking them out to dinner and a movie. But dating, like writing March— I forgot the date already. 23rd, 2026. There we go. And then we are— where's the other one we did tonight? We did this cool little castle thingy. I really like this. This is fun. This was done— would you believe me if I told you I forgot the day already? I didn't, uh, March 23, 2026. Ta-da! Throw some stone on our castle here. It's a little bit of texture. All right, I'm gonna give you guys homework. If you do one sketching thing this week, I would love for you to do one sketching thing, and you literally need 1 minute to do it. Maybe take 2. I would love for you to try just sketching some stone like this. Put the timer on for a minute and just tell me how therapeutic it feels to— and don't try not to pick your pen up, just do a continuous line. It can look as clean or sloppy and crazy as you want. You can make them squarish if you want to. You do round, it doesn't matter. Mix it up. Do that for 1 minute and tell me, let me know, did it chill you out? Was it kind of therapeutic? All right, so yeah, welcome to The Inspired Life, where I am starting to assign homework for those watching the live stream. And, um, where could you post your homework for me? Um, can you guys post it on the YouTube? Can you post stuff on my YouTube community? I know I can post stuff. I think you guys can post stuff on there. I'm curious. If you can, do you want to take a picture of a sketch, your homework, put it on there? Be fun to see. If you can't post it there, we'll come up with a place where you guys can post stuff. You up for that? Raise your hand in the chat if you're up for doing some homework. Oh, you can't see that. I'm raising my hand. Raise your hand. Raise it. Is that in the song? Raise your hand. Raise your hand. Raise the roof. Raise something. I don't know why. Is that a Taylor Swift song, like Raising Your Hand? I'm, I'm not a Swiftie, so I, I don't know. It sounds like a song. All right, that should be a meme. Dating mice catches. You know what, you know what, there's an issue with, um dating your sketches. Just warning, it could be a health issue. Um, yeah, just watch out for paper cuts. You might get some paper cuts. That's so funny. Um, love it, love it, love your imaginary sketches. Hope we see more of them. Really? You guys like the imaginary sketches? That's so fun. I'm glad you like it. What's cool about doing these is it's kind of a different similar yet different thought process to buildings we know, like the ESB or this one, One World Trade. This, I kind of know like a direction I'm headed in, but these I really have no direction. But thank you, I appreciate that. GG, hope you sketch your trip daily. I would love to. If I have time. Don't want to get in trouble, so I'll do it. Yes, that's the spirit! I'm a nice teacher, you would never get in trouble. I'm here for positive encouragement only. Um, if you guys are— I don't know, let me know if you can post on that YouTube community thingy. I'd love to see what you guys are doing. Let's make this more fun. Let's make it more interactive. Um, yeah, that'd be so cool. Appreciate you. And there's no grading. I won't grade anybody. It'll be a positive, fun community meant just for positive, fun and community. That's a good tagline. All right guys, I have a busy day tomorrow. I'm actually not— I'm off. I'm not going to school tomorrow. I have doctor's follow-up visit, so I have an appointment off, day off tomorrow, doctor's appointment off. Um, but yeah, I appreciate you guys so, so much. You're all amazing. Thank you for spending out— spending some time with me, bearing with my tired brain and silly brain. All right, let me know your— let me see your rock sketches. Let me know if you date your sketch as well, and if you went to see a good movie or maybe went to the coffee shop. All right, guys. Until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly.