In this promotional YouTube video, Jason Nicholas of The Inkspired Life announces a virtual sketching workshop scheduled for July 26, 2025, from 8–10 PM EST. The two‑hour session will focus on sketching industrial architecture, specifically drawing inspiration from the historic Steel Stacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania—a former steel production site that supplied material for landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building. Jason explains his love for the weathered textures, rust colors, and complex forms of the steel stacks, and demonstrates how he simplifies these intricate structures into basic shapes while adding his signature whimsical neon pink accents. He outlines his preferred sketching toolkit, which includes Sharpies for line work, a curated palette of neon and pastel color pencils, various specialty pens (e.g., Pilot Preppy, Sharpie Creative Markers, V‑ball), Apple Snail ink, and watercolor paints. Participants need only paper and a pen, but optional colors are suggested. The workshop will include guided exercises, a live sketch‑along, and conclude with a community “sketch‑and‑tell” session on Zoom where attendees share their work and receive feedback. Sign‑up information is provided via a link and QR code displayed on screen and in the video description.
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Hey, hope you're having a great day. Jason Nicholas Nicholas here from The Inkspired Life, where I love sketching architecture and urban sketching. It's just a fun way for me to capture and process the world around me, one line at a time. Uh, I am super excited. I have a new sketching workshop, a virtual workshop happening on July 26th, where we're going to be sketching industrial architecture inspired sketches. Here are some examples on my desktop. These were all inspired by the steel stacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. So if you look here on my screen, you can see some photographs from the steel stacks. Why, why am I doing industrial architecture? I love old weathered structures. I love the colors, I love the rustiness, the texture, um, the overall vibes of these types of structures. And if you look on screen, I'll zoom in, um, here, here's a few pictures. I have taken many, many pictures at the Steel Stacks in Bethlehem, and it's just a really cool old, old facility, um, And we'll talk more about the history of it during the workshop, but it was in production, I think, until 2003. It produced steel for, I think, the Golden Gate Bridge, Empire State Building, many, many other iconic locations as well. But if you look at the pictures, I love the shapes of the kind of the stacks happening here. You know, you can see these vertical pieces I love— there's conveyor belts and all kinds of belt things happening. There are pipes everywhere. There is a lot happening here. And check out the colors, just of the kind of the rustiness, and there's yellows and oranges and greens and aquas happening here, all just natural weathering. So I think it's a real fun exercise to try to capture something that looks incredibly complicated and to break it down into kind of fun shapes. So that's kind of the focus of what the sketching workshop's going to be. And here are, again, are some examples of— you can see I just took some of the complicated shapes that we just saw and just broken down into— we have some basic cylinders here, pipes happening as well. Is there pink there? No, but I like to add fun, whimsical colors. Pink is kind of a signature color, this neon pink. Has become a signature for me, so you'll see that on a lot of my sketches. Here's another example. Again, you can kind of see some stacks happening here, a metal shed building in the background as well. And here's another one. So I thought it'd be really cool just to take you guys through kind of my thought process, my sketch framework, and take some images inspired by the steel stacks, and we'll create some really fun sketches as I walk you through kind of my mindset and some sketching tips. For the workshop, you know, you can add color, you don't need to add color, but here's some of the tools I'm going to be using in the workshop. They're optional, you don't need to have all these. So here, obviously, if you know me, you know my sketching, I always have a Sharpie. So yeah, so the black line work you see on here is all done with Sharpie. So definitely we'll have a Sharpie in the workshop. I'll be using that. Uh, no particular order here. Light aqua color pencils. Um, I'm all— I would also have a neon yellow color pencil as well. And then here's the neon pink. And this is chartreuse. This is a really cool color palette, and you'll see that in the sketches I've done. So I like to use those. Sometimes I'll use a Pilot Preppy pen— I'm sorry, I don't know if it's Pilot— Platinum Preppy pen, the yellow ink color. I like— and if you see these kind of splatters, that was done with this ink pen. Sharpie Creative Markers. So I did not use Sharpie Creative Markers on these, but I'm going to break them out. I've been using them a lot. They're kind of— they've become a go-to, um, tool for me in my sketching. So you'll see some Sharpie Creative Markers, um, red Pilot Precise Pen, or this is a V-ball pen, which I love actually. Here's a Varsity Purple pen. Again, you don't need to use any of these. All you really need to have is some paper and a pen or pencil, and you could follow along in the workshop. But if you do want to add color, break out whatever you want. These are some things I'll, I'll probably be using. Um, this is, this is Apple Snail ink, which they don't make this color, but I like it because it has a— you kind of see in here like a caramel color happening. And then, uh, some watercolor paints. Um, in this palette, I, I think the colors I primarily would use on my industrial sketching would be like an aqua color or turquoise color, orange. This is a sap green and lemon yellow. So those are the watercolor colors I would most likely use when I'm doing an industrial-inspired sketch palette. So yeah, so I just kind of wanted to pop on. If you guys are interested in signing up for the workshop, again, it's virtual, July 26th from 8 o'clock to 10 o'clock PM Eastern Standard Time. I'm out here in beautiful New Jersey. Um, it's going to be fun. It'll be a 2-hour workshop. I'll give you some exercises to do. We'll walk through doing a sketch together. And I love— probably my most favorite part is the end of the workshop where we do a like a sketch and tell session where we just kind of show what we did and give each other feedback and some virtual high fives on Zoom. Uh, it's always fun to see the community and what you guys make. So if you have any questions, let me know. Um, there's a link here on the screen on the bottom right side of the screen. You should see a www.address, and then also there is a QR code on screen as well. And in the, um, video description from today, there should be a link as well. I think I covered all my bases. Did I? So thanks again, guys. Just want to pop on, promote this cool workshop. Uh, I would love for you to sign up and join me, and I think it'll be a lot of fun. And let me know if you have any questions. You could always message me here in the chats. All right, this has been Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life. Remember, you too can capture the world around you one line at a time. See you soon.
