Remembering 9/11 thru Sketching and Uncapping a New Ink

Hey, happy, um, September 11th, 2024. It's 9:05 PM here. Hope you're having a great day. Uh, so I'm just going to pop on for maybe 15 minutes or so, and I wanted to share a, a couple of things with you. So you can see on the screen here I have a sketch of the World Trade Center. Right here we have the Twin Towers. Um, I have goosebumps as I'm thinking about this and what I'm about to tell you. Um, if you look, I'm going to zoom in here. So this was a sketch that I did back in 1993. June 9th, 1993. I was, um, an architect intern in Hoboken, New Jersey. Young kid, architecture school, had a really great job in the summer working for an amazing, amazingly talented architect named Dean Marchetto, um, an inspiration to me. I was working for him in the summer and I had a lunch break, so took a walk and walked to Stevens Institute, also in Hoboken, and was eating my lunch standing kind of, um, at Stevens on the edge of the Hudson River. And this was the view in front of me. So I had a pen. It probably wasn't a Sharpie back then. I'm gonna guess it was probably a Pilot Precise pen I had. Um, way back. But I pulled out my sketchbook. I can remember this day. It was kind of overcast, cloudy, a little bit drizzly. Um, standing there looking at the scene and just sketched. And that memory, since that day in 1993, has been etched into my brain and into my soul and into my core being. Um, if I had just taken a photograph, I would not have remembered it the same way. I was blessed to have been able to capture a sketch of the World Trade Center before 2001 when, uh, the tragic events of 9/11 happened. So, um, I'm really feeling emotional when I'm talking about this, so if I break up, I'm sorry, but Well, I'm not sorry, it's just, it's the reality of it. It's just incredible for me. And I've saved— this is my most precious resource that I have. If I look at everything I own, any material possessions I own, this is the one right here. This sketchbook is the one I would have to keep forever, um, just because of the memories in it. The memory of standing in Hoboken sketching the scene. I'm going to zoom in so you can see some of the details. And there's kind of a funny story also about this sketch. Um, I think back in 2015 when I started posting stuff online, I posted this sketch. I was notified at some point, I believe 2015, '16, I can't remember, I was notified through my Etsy page, um, someone saw, saw this sketch being sold in New York City by an art vendor. So way back then, I forget, it's way back then, someone was actually, um, you know, copywriting, taking people's drawings or artwork off the internet and making prints and selling it on the street corner. Um, never found out who did it. They did send a picture to me and, and to prove that they actually saw this on the street corner being sold. So some ways I was flattered to get this image out there. Um, but yeah, copyright issues are crazy, right, with the art world. So 9/11, Cat was able to capture this in 1993 on the same day. Um, I did a bunch of other scenes, I think I think that was the first one. Here's another one I was able to sketch same day, um, Empire State Building. And then way back here we have the Chrysler Building, 1993. Skyline has changed since then, big time. Uh, this was a, a boat I was sketching. It was on the Hudson River. Here's just another area I saw of New York City viewed from the same location. I think I have to get this bound. This thing's falling apart, as you can see. But yeah, I just wanted to bring the sketch out, show it to you, just talk about one of the powerful impacts sketching really has on my life. I'm very passionate about this, um, and that's why I share it with you guys. I'm, I'm just— I just wanted to put this out there. It makes me feel good. It's therapy for me. It's a way of capturing moments in time. And it really does ingrain those times into my core being. So I thought that would be really cool to show you here on September 11th. So part 2 of tonight, I have some really fun news. I came home today and in the mailbox I had a package waiting for me. So this was nothing I had bought, purchased It was a total surprise. So, um, you guys may have heard me mention this company, the Birmingham Pen Company. I probably have, I don't know, 15 bottles of their ink. My most favorite color is this right here. You've, you've may have seen me use this in my sketches, Apple Snail. They were kind enough to put in the mail and send me this ink, um, with a nice little note. And a cool postcard. So I thought it'd be fun to do a quick sketch tonight. Let's uncap this ink bottle in here. Let's just do a quick sketch. I'm thinking maybe a bridge, and we'll just add some ink to it. So thank you guys for joining me. I am Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspire Life, and I love being here to share architectural and urban sketching with you and talking to you about how we can capture this world of ours one line out of one line at a time. Sometimes it seems to be a complicated and crazy world, right? So for me, just breaking things down on paper is a great way for me to process things. All right, so here's the company, the Birmingham, uh, Pen Company. They are in Pittsburgh. Pretty cool. I love the boxes that their inks come in. They have a really cool texture to them. I don't know if you could see that. So let's open this up and check out the bottle inside. So I have used this color before, I love it. Um, here's what it looks like, it's called Rusted Rivet. Rusted Rivet. You can use this in fountain pens. I usually will put this in, um, like a Lamy type fountain pen or as we'll do tonight. I'm just going to use a paintbrush and we're just going to brush it onto a sketch. So really cool, Rusty Rivet. Look at that, that label, right? It's so cool. You guys know I love industrial architecture, bridges, right? Structure, architectural structure. This is like everything right there on the label. Cool, guys. So let's do a quick sketch tonight. I'm going to zoom out a little bit and we're going to use a Sharpie. And I have a brush with me, I have some water here. And we're going to use this ink. So this will be kind of quick, and thank you guys for joining me. Let's, um, I'm calling this instead of an unboxing, we're going to call an uncapping. So welcome to this tonight's uncapping edition of the Inkspired Life. All right, cool. I also love the color of the cap, so we'll just open it before we even sketch anything. Let's just put some of this on paper. Um, I'm gonna prop this up. I like to sketch at an angle just to let the ink and water kind of run down. We think we can zoom in a little bit. Yeah, let's just throw, you know, let's do something a little different. I'm going to throw down color first and then we'll throw some lines on top of it. And even if I don't create something that's recognizable, we're just going to have fun and play for about— I'm going to wrap up at like 9:20, so I have 7 minutes. My comments are off. I gotta turn them on to see who's out there in chat land. So if you're watching, I appreciate you guys. I'll check the comments when I wrap this up, so stay on. I'll look through the comments, ask any questions, and we'll spend a couple minutes going through all that. All right, so I'm literally just taking a paintbrush, a bamboo brush, dipping it into the ink. So let's just throw it down on the paper. So Rusted Rivet, right, has this really cool rusty color to it. And I'm going to break out another color. I'm adding a little water just to dilute it, and we're randomly just going to throw this down. And I wish I had a hair dryer so it could dry quick, and I want to sketch on top of it. I'm dipping in the bottle and I'm just going to tap it down and let it kind of run down the page. I, I believe a really cool color that would go well with this would be some kind of turquoise. So let's throw on some turquoise watercolor. Helps if I open this the right way. Ta-da! There it is. Let's just throw down some turquoise. Let that dry for a sec. So I'm literally just kind of dipping in here, throwing down this turquoise. I love when turquoise and this Rusted Rivet color meet. You're going to get this really cool kind of greenish color. So let me— we'll throw that on there. We'll just throw a little bit more in here. I talk about setting intentions sometimes when I'm in art land creating. So I think my intention tonight really is just to be playful, throw down some of these colors. I'm just going to use these two colors for now and just see what happens. And if it doesn't look like it end up looking like anything specific, that's cool. I'm just having fun just mixing things up and showing you guys, um, these colors, right? I do love to take these Birmingham inks and I literally just dip in and I'll just kind of dab my brush on the paper and just let it pool in some places to get it darker. You can see it's pretty light here, so we'll get a sense of how the dark, dark looks and the light areas look. I'm just going to run this down, maybe bleed them together a little here. All right, that's looking cool. All right, we'll let that dry for a second. Let me check the comments out. I have just have to go to my app, click on window. I got it here, I found it, I found it. Where is it? Comments, reactions. Boom. All right, we're on. I can see the comments. I see Chip is in the house. Chip, how are you, my friends? Great to see you, Chip. Chip is, um, an amazing human being. Chip, you're— I appreciate you being here. Hey, Paula Loves Art. Paula, thanks for tuning in on the YouTube. Great to see you back on here. Hope all is well. Neat ink bottle and box. Yeah, right. I'm loving this. So I'm really blessed today to have received this kind of— this, this nice, um, not offer— what's the word? Gesture. It was nice to receive this today, so I really appreciate Birmingham Pen— the Birmingham Pen Company for sending this to me. Um, so they didn't ask me to come on here and do this. I'm just doing this on my own. I thought it would be as a courtesy just to support them and what they did for me. Uh, let's zoom in. Look how this is drying, guys. I am loving the colors. I hope my light's picking this up okay. I'm going to take out a little frame. We're just going to frame out some of these sections so we can see them better. So this is one of my pro tips. I love keeping these frames on hand. Got a bunch of different sizes here. You may have seen me do this in the past. We'll just grab some of these. Um, got different sizes here, but we're just going to use a little— our 2-inch and 1-inch squares— so we can just kind of focus on some areas. So I kind of like what's really— what's happening in this area right here. Check out those colors. You see the Rusted Rivet and then the turquoise. Those are the only two colors we used, but look what you're getting out of it. Pretty awesome, right? That's a cool area. Let's kind of move over a little bit more. I love the aesthetic of ink and watercolor just puddling up and drying like this. Try not to— I'll try not to, uh, it's wet, I don't want to smear it. But you can kind of see how that's looking in that area. Then we'll look— kind of zoom in here, a little bigger frame. I like to think of these framed areas as mini pieces of artwork. My awesome friend Linda S— Linda S does really cool mini, mini paintings. All right, so you get a sense of what's happening there. Paul says, love your New York skyline sketch with the towers. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's right here. We'll let this dry for a sec. Let me come back and show you the sketchbook. Sketchbook tour. This is one of them. Let's see, when did I start college? 90— this was my junior year of college. This is my junior year of college. Um, Oh, I lied. It says 4th year. So I went to school for 5 years for architecture school. This was my 4th year. This is one of my very, very first attempts ever at drawing a Statue of Liberty. It's really changed over the years, but it's okay. You got to start somewhere, get your ideas on paper. I'm not going to show you all this stuff, but a lot of this is college projects and ideas and brainstorming. My favorite type of sketches to do to this day are just really small thumbnail sketches. I love getting lost in a 2-inch by 2-inch square. I'll show you in here. Uh, let's see, is this the one that has a museum project? Yeah, it does. Let's see if I can find it. Anyway, yeah, so again, here's the New York City skyline. This is my— this is my favorite sketch of all time ever. See, I'm shaking trying to get it out there because I'm so excited. Boom! Love it, love it. I'm gonna see if I can get this bound, rebound somehow. Anybody has any tips on how to get an old sketchbook rebound and maybe put a nice cover on it, let me know. Any sources, let me know. That'd be cool. These are small thumbnail sketches. This was a museum project. I was looking at some interior stair ideas, right? Just black and white, real small, very scribbly. I had to draw, draw really fast in architecture school to share ideas with my professors. Because they had to see so many students and we had very limited time with them. And if we couldn't really communicate what we wanted to, um, we'd lose time and we wouldn't get the feedback that we needed. Here's just some more sketches. Oh, another Statue of Liberty I think I just saw. I'm reminiscing. Yeah, these are really small Statue of Liberty kind of So I guess in 1993 is when I really started liking the Statue of Liberty. Cool. There you go. So those are some of the things in this book. Cool. Uh, hey Donna Bollman, hello! Making art makes me happy and watching art being done also makes me happy. Good job, Jason Nicholas Nicholas. Hey, thank you so much, I really appreciate that. That's so awesome. I love that feedback. We'll zoom in, see how this is drying. I don't know if I'm going to get to throw any lines down here with my Sharpie, um, and that's okay because I really want this to dry. But you can see how it's— this is cold press watercolor paper, 140-pound. You can see how the ink is— sorry, the ink and watercolor is kind of— I'm drawing a blank. I know there's a technical, technical name I was gonna say I was dispersing on the page here. Um, that's not the word I'm thinking of, but you can kind of see what's happening. It's like gran— maybe it's granulating. It's like granulating here in the paper. Paul says, what a cool sketchbook. Hey, thank you, Paul. Yeah, it's— this is, uh, this is very special to me for sure. You can see it's well loved. I mean, well traveled, right? So Keep your sketchbooks, guys, or if you're sketching on loose sheets of paper, keep your stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, oh, thank you for— thanks for making me pick this up again. Um, I love this sketch. This is a, this is a project where— of a courtyard design. So you can see kind of a courtyard space with steps coming up, and there's a building with a square cutout, inspired by an architecture firm in Miami called Architektonika. I don't know if they're still around. Architektonika. So that's kind of who inspired that design. Excuse me, I forgot my water. All right, you know what, let's just go for it. I'm gonna, um, let's just do some quick sketching on here and I'm gonna wrap. I did say 9:20, so 9:30 is my cutoff because I have school tomorrow. Pardon me, I'm coughing. I need some water. Um, here we go. Let's go to— let's just go with the good old Brooklyn Bridge. So the Brooklyn Bridge has these iconic Gothic kind of arches on there, and then we'll sketch bridge road structure, walkway structure coming across. Let's see. Let's give a little perspective on this, maybe keep it really quick and fast and loose. Boom. Sharpie is not going to really sketch well in the wet areas. Good, I guess it's dry enough. So be like the bottom, the bridge is coming across like here. Um, let's see, we have the cables here, this kind of the cables coming across, kind of like here we'll have some— we have the diagonal cables like this, and then we'll have it kind of come across here. Pretty cool. So we have the Brooklyn Bridge happening. Let's add some hatch lines. Actually, you know, I'm going to mix it up a little bit. Let's, um, I'm going to break out the Rusted Rivet ink. And I'm going to create some depth here, and then I can come back after the ink dries and do hatch lines on top of it. Let's add some of that, um, the Rusted Rivet color on there. So I'm just going to kind of put it here where I imagine there being some depth to this bridge. I don't know if I'll put— I don't know if I'll add, um, lines on top of it. I'm not sure yet, actually. But let's just kind of add some shadows there. I'm imagining the bottom kind of portion of this bridge is going to be like in a shadowy area. So we'll just kind of do that, and maybe it continues down this way a little bit. I'm just— I am literally just taking my brush and dipping it in. So I like to call this paint sketching sometimes. Some paint sketching. For me, whenever I say the word sketch, it means loose, um, loose capturing an idea quickly, which is my style. If I say the word draw, for me drawing means it's something more slow, more technical, and more precise. And I don't know if that is like the Webster dictionary definition. It's how I define in my brain. Sketching— fast, quick, loose, capture ideas. Drawing is slow, methodical, technical. They each have their place, and I love— I actually love doing both. But my favorite, it would be sketching. All right, cool. So we got a little bit of shadow happening here. I kind of like that. I like— and I like how this is getting really dark. So I am— we're gonna let that dry. We're gonna let that dry. I'm gonna put the brush down, back away. Um, let me show you this napkin. Actually, I'm wiping the brush off on a napkin. Look at how that Rusted Rivet ink is drying on the napkin here. It's pretty interesting. I love how— I love how it's kind of yellowing out. So that's kind of cool to see. There you go. That is a quick sketch of the Brooklyn Bridge, um, using turquoise watercolor, Sharpie, and then, um, the Birmingham Pen Company Rusted Rivet ink here, which is really cool. So again, I just want to give a last shout out to the Birmingham Pen Company. Thank you for sending me that bottle of ink. I love your stuff, love your products, use them a lot. Been using them probably for 2 years now. Um, and I love being able to share what I do with sketching and ink here with you guys watching, and I appreciate your time so, so much tonight. So Paula, thank you for being there on YouTube. Thank you for watching. Uh, if you haven't, I would love if you give it a thumbs up or a like on YouTube. That would be so helpful to maybe, uh, put it out there so another person can watch it. I would love that. Uh, Donna, great seeing you on Facebook. Thank you for tuning in and commenting. I always appreciate, you know, people in the chat talking and saying hello. And Chip, Chip was out there. Chip, I appreciate you watching and always being there to, uh, support. We'll definitely talk soon, Chip. I would, I would really love that. A nice size bottle too. Yeah, great. How big is this? That's a Good point. Um, I wish I knew off the top of my head. I'm trying to read the bottom. 10. You know what, I'd have— I would have to go on their website. I honestly don't know how much is in here, and I don't even remember off top of my head how much a bottle of ink costs on that website, but I'm, I'm guessing anywhere from $18 to $22, $24. I could be off, but yeah, so good point. It is a great bottle. This, this would last me a long time. Um, Alexander Art, great to see you. Hope, hope you're having a great day today. Love your sketch of the towers. Thank you for sharing. Thank you so much. Thank you for watching. I really appreciate you. And guys, go check out Alexander Art on YouTube. Um, I really, really appreciate you, and it was really awesome talking to you or texting to you and Zooming earlier today. You are awesome. I'd love to connect more and talk more to you about some stuff. I appreciate you guys. You're awesome. Thank you so much for letting me come on here, show you my most precious Possession. Like I said, if there was one thing in the entire world, one possession I would have to keep with me forever, something I owned, it would be this sketchbook. The second thing— that's a great question— second thing would have to be a trusted Sharpie. This is, this is what brings me the most joy in life, these two items. Besides, my other joy in life is just— I love serving, helping people, sharing, inspiring. And that's what you guys do for me. You share, you inspire, you give me courage to keep doing this every day, coming out here. And, um, we'll talk more. I'm going to get more into the whys and how I started sketching in upcoming YouTube videos and kind of share my background story of when did I start drawing and why did I start doing this stuff. Yeah, that'd be fun to share. Guys, have a great, great rest of your day. I appreciate you all. Remember, you too can sketch architecture one line at a time. My goal is to help you to be able to do that. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life. Have an awesome rest of your day. Peace and live creatively. I'll see you guys real, real soon. Take care.