Saturday Night Sketching : Loose Lines & No Apologies

Hey, um, it's Saturday, June 27th, 2026. Hope you are doing awesome. Yeah, I am just clicking a button here. Um, yeah, it's good to be sketching, good to be sketching live. I have not livestreamed a lot this past week or even couple of weeks between school wrapping up for the summer and, um, summer work. I'm working on, uh, some architecture stuff over the summer, which is awesome. I've just been so cray-cray busy. I, I am on live now and not even prepared. Usually I have kind of my desk is a little more organized. I am literally eating I have some burrito left there that I'm working on. Um, I wanted to pop on because here's a— this is a good example of just simply being human. Um, sometimes we feel like we need to be prepared 100%, we need to be, uh, something has to be completed 100%, um, before we put it out there. So if I waited today to be 100% ready for live streaming, I would not have popped online at all. Um, it's just been a crazy day, a lot of stuff going on, good stuff, but just busy, busy, busy. And if I made the time right now to prepare and be 100% ready, yeah, there would be no live stream because first of all, I'm never 100% ready. And sometimes I think we use— or perfection becomes a hindrance and a block from us accomplishing things that we want to accomplish. I know I'm going a little bit off and we're not sketching yet, but I think it's kind of a good message just to put out there. So let's just talk for a minute, then we'll get into some sketching. Um, by the way, if you don't know who I am, my name is Jason Nicholas Nicholas. I'm with the Ink Inspired Life. That's, that's kind of something I started maybe 6 years ago, 7 years ago, and I just love sketching, sketching architecture, urban sketching, sharing creativity, positivity, motivation. So a lot of different things kind of happen at the Inspired Life, but, um, I would say the main focus is sketching. So thanks for joining me. Stick around for half hour to an hour or so. I have creative brain. I'm going to be jumping all over the place, as you probably can tell. Um, so back to that perfection thing. Don't feel like you need to be perfect before you do something or put something out there. It stopped me so many times in my life from accomplishing things, and you're never going to learn what to improve and what to, to to, um, take up a level unless you put it out there and you get feedback. So as a creative, as an artist, as an architect, as a school teacher, as a human, um, I need to learn, and we all, I think, need to learn how to accept feedback from people. Some of it is delivered in horrible, hideous, negative ways, and some of it's delivered in positive ways. And it's all how we process what people are saying to us. So with that, I know we'll get back into some of that stuff maybe as we go on. So if you're in the chat, please feel free to say hello. It'd be great to connect with you, ask questions about anything positive, you know, creativity, sketching, mindset. I'm all ears or eyes because I can't really hear you. All right, here's what I want to do tonight. I have zero game plan, so as usual, um, I have my Lockbee Field Folio here, which I love this. I carry it everywhere. You're gonna be talking about Lockbee all the time. Huge, huge fan of the products, use them all the time. And there's an affiliate discount link if you want to go for it, um, it's there on the lower left of the screen, also in the notes. Please check out lockbee.com and use my discount code TheInspiredLife. But That being said, I, I think we're gonna break out, um, let's sketch in some ugly books tonight. I'm gonna do some little— we'll do some mini tiny sketches tonight. I'm loving these ugly books. I love the fun colors they come in. I'll show you some of the sketches I've done in them, and we'll just, uh, I think I'm gonna do maybe a Brooklyn Bridge sketch tonight. So we'll do a Brooklyn Bridge sketch. I haven't done one in here. So different colors, and they're a lot of fun to use with creative markers. I love using white gel pens, which you can see I have loaded in here. So we'll grab some of those. And, um, these are 4x5. This sticker doesn't come on them. I put the sticker on. It was in the package that came with, so I stuck it on here. But, um, I know I sound like a commercial tonight, but I just like putting stuff out there. I love using and sharing with you guys. I'm using UglyBooks. I'm loving these so, so much. I, um, I'm now an affiliate, or, you know, with UglyBooks. So if you go online, go to uglybooks.co, boom, use my discount, which I think is the INKspiredLife. Um, you can get a discount. Rules apply. All right, enough with the commercial. Let's get— let's do some sketching. Thank you for the thumbs up. If you're watching, please, I'd love for you to give me a thumbs up. If you're on YouTube, subscribe. If you're on Facebook, Instagram, follow me. It would be so amazing if you did that. I'd appreciate it. All right, here's some of the sketches I've done in here so far. We'll do it in here tonight. This is kind of my NYC sketches. I have like Little Island on here, which I love that sketch, so fun. Um, oh, it's not all NYC. I lied. This is me waiting in line to get autographs from, um, Bronson Pinchot and Mark Lynn Baker, AKA Balky and Larry from Perfect Strangers. But this is fun. This is so small. I took it with me while I was waiting in line. I'm sitting there just sketching. It's one of the other things I love about this size book. And here's a lighthouse we did, I think, live streaming one night. So we'll do that, and I'll just show you some other sketches I've done. So this is yellow kind of paper. Um, this one I'm kind of reserving to do nature-y stuff. So I got some flowers here. Uh, shout out in the live stream, I forget who suggested the name, one of my awesome, awesome viewers called this Solo. And then we went on like a star— we were talking Star Wars, and we ended up calling this Fleet. So it's a lot of fun. Um, and then this was just a land, kind of a nice, just simple white landscape. This is inspired by where I walk. I like to walk here at this location, uh, 4 or 5, 6 times a week. This is one of my favorite views there, and I call it the Thinking Tree because it has this cool tree with a bench here. All right. Mr. Nick, the kids would say, Mr. Nick, you're blabbering. I don't know if they'd say blabber, but they'd use a word like that. You talk too much, Mr. Nick. Um, I talk a lot when I'm excited and hyper and love something. So that's how you know what I— what I'm doing is what I'm loving, if I'm very, very hyper about it. All right, let's do a BB Brooklyn Bridge sketch here. I'm going to zoom in more. We'll say Brooklyn Bridge inspired sketch. I'm out of practice, so pro tip: sketch something every day. Stay in practice even for a few minutes every day. I am OP out of practice with the Brooklyn Bridge. I haven't sketched in a while, so Brooklyn Bridge is iconic. You can One of the giveaways are these gothic kind of pointed arches it has on it. And we'll turn it into— I like to do a perspective kind of view, so like we're— I'm out of room a little bit, but we'll go off onto this page. One of the fun things I like sketching— I like to sketch, um, on more than one page sometimes and branch branch over, and no pun intended when I show you this, but this landscape sketch I branched onto 2 pages, right? It's really, really cool just to use that space. So we're gonna do that with the, the BB Brooklyn Bridge sketch. Edie's in the house. Edie, good to see you. I hope you're having a great, great day. Um, thanks for popping on my live stream earlier when I was out walking. I always appreciate you popping in and giving me good advice about not petting wild bunnies. That was awesome. If you guys— if you didn't see my livestream, check it out on my YouTube channel. I was out walking and talking. I just like to riff on things, whatever comes into my brain. But, uh, I was counting bunnies. I think we saw 3 today. Our record is 10, 10 bunny sightings in one walk. 10. The other night we saw 7. Today was 3, 3 bunnies and 1 deer. Thank God no bears, because I don't know what I would do if I saw a bear. I'm very hyper, guys. I'm sorry I'm so talkative. All right, got some scribbles kind of going in the sky area here. So let me know, what are some of the things you guys are up to? What's something creative you're doing? Or I don't know, what, what hobbies do you have? What do you enjoy doing in your your downtime. Cool. So it's kind of a BB, um, inspired sketch. If you're looking for historical accuracy, you, you will not find it. So I, I sketch based on feeling, impression. I'm never sketching— I just say never— rarely I'm sketching for historical accuracy or Perfection, back to perfection, which we started the chat with tonight. Um, I'm just sketching for— sketching, I just made up a word— I'm sketching for a vibe. Um, and when I think New York City, I think energy, vibrancy, and that's why I have these kind of frenetic, frantic lines happening. Cool. Let me know, let me know in the chat, should I add some blue on here or just keep it red and white? Part of me saying add blue. Usually I grab and go with my gut, that's how I like to create and sketch, but I wanted you to guys have a little say tonight. So blue or no blue today, what do you think? I'm just— like I said, my desk is, it's trashed over here. I've, I've got stuff scattered here. I'll kind of show you. I got this over here, I got this over here, I got another— my Lockbee bag, my other Lockbee full, my, uh, Quattro is here. Everything's just kind of piled up because I've just been kind of on-the-go, grab-and-go creating, and sometimes it gets a little chaotic. So I'll spend some time, I think, organizing a little bit tomorrow. It's a good sign. It means I'm busy. I'm busy making stuff and doing stuff. I'm just out of room. I would love this summer to be able to spend time and have another section in the house where I could possibly set up a studio, small studio work area. Or maybe just refocus this one a little bit. I did last summer. Maybe I just need to recalibrate in here a little bit. All right, boom. Thanks for bearing with me, guys. I'm gonna— like I said, I'm just kind of on the fly here. Let me finish my burrito that's left. Pardon me for a sec. That was my dinner. It's been a chaotic day. All right, blue or no blue? While we're waiting, we're just gonna put the Brooklyn Bridge. Um, speaking of Brooklyn, I will be sketching at Stationery Fest, doing a workshop on August 1st in Brooklyn. Stationery Fest 2026. I'm so excited to be going and teaching this workshop. I am a little bit nervous. Not, you know, I've— I'm a teacher, so I'm not nervous about teaching, but it's like a nervous, like an excitement, an excited nervous. I, I think it'd be so fun just sketching. And, um, there are still seats available. I think we sold 8 out of 15. I'd love for If you know anybody or yourself who's interested, check out the link that's in the notes here, or go to stationeryfest.com, and you can look under the workshops. And on Saturday, August 1st at 11:30 AM, so it'd be really cool to do, uh, to sketch there. All right, I'm— I think I'm gonna put blue on here. I I'm gonna go for it. Oh my gosh, is that— is that GGNYC? Holy mackerel, how the heck are you? I, uh, I've been— I— man, I've been loving your, uh, stuff. Wow, that's— that is worth a conversation for sure. I'm so, so happy to see you. Uh, wow. All right, cool. I'm gonna add blue. I want to pop out— I'm just gonna go for it, guys. I want to pop out what's going on behind the arches here. Remember what I was saying before about perfection? If I wanted this to be perfect, I would not have sketched anything. I wouldn't have even started. I'd be too afraid. Plus listening to Metallica helps to, uh, get me in the mood just to go for it. Let's just kind of do this. We could always add the white back on top. So just throwing that blue in the background is popping the kind of the shape of the bridge a little bit, popping it out. And I'll come back over this blue with some of that gel pen again. You can see what happens. And my blue is running out of marker juice. Yeah, I was just thinking— I was thinking in my brain, marker juice is probably, uh, something you wouldn't— I would not drink. There we go. So you could tell the blue marker is kind of running out of marker goodness because you can really see through it more than usual. These are transparent, but it's barely covering underneath. We're gonna, we're gonna milk this thing till it's all Gone. Boom. GG, I would love to use, uh, I'd love to use some of your, your pics to sketch from if that's cool with you. I would— I think would give you credit for the photo, but some really amazing pictures. Wow. Breathtaking. Cool, right? Looks like a stormy kind of sky. We've been having some stormy-ish weather here, a lot of rain the past couple of— well, yesterday and today, so the past couple days we've had some rain, which we need. Nature needs a drink, so it's, it's good as far as that goes. Nature needs a drink. All those cute little bunnies I'm seeing need to drink. Why are bunnies so cute? There we go. It's kind of cool, right? Hey, Jen! Jen's in the house. How the heck are you? Good to see you. Got our 3, 3 of our regs on YouTube, so thank you all for tuning in. I, uh, always appreciate you guys popping in. Cool. Yeah, I kind of like this little red, white, and blue, maybe, uh I was gonna say St. Patrick's Day is coming up. Yeah, tired brain. Fourth of July is coming up, so a little bit of red, white, and blue. GG is in my brain. GG, you are in my brain. That's so funny. Um, cool. I want to do a little texture on the bridge, some brickwork. This is a fun little sketch. Let me know in the chat, should I add people? Yes or no? Should we add some people on the bridge? I'm gonna get a drink of water. I, uh, not drank enough today. 4th of July is coming up. Yep, holidays on the way. Short week for a lot of people. A lot of people are off Friday. I'm on my own schedule this summer, which is so cool. I don't have to answer to anybody's clock except for my own. Yeah, I have a client, I have, you know, customers I gotta do some drawings for. That's awesome, but I can get up at 6 AM if I want, 7. Um, it's just nice to have that freedom. Last summer I, I worked for the school system, um, doing some tech work and with computers and moving stuff around, setting up classrooms. It was great, it was fun. I enjoyed working with the people there, but I was not— I was under their schedule, right? And that's one of the things I've missed most about going from full-time architecture to teaching, is that schedule that was mine. But I learned over the years I was not really good at mastering my time when I had my own business. So now that I'm kind of back in it a little bit for the summer here time. I'm really understanding time management much better than way back. I saw some, uh, block work on here. There we go. I think it just adds a little bit of texture. Let's kind of do this as well, just to give a little bit more depth to it. Um, fortunately it'll be super hot this week. Really, I have not looked at the temps. So I probably should not venture into the city this week. What is— what would you say is the best day of the week for me to go into the city with the least amount of busyness, craziness, maybe tourist-ness? Is there a weekday that would be better than others? Because I know— I mean, I don't mind crowds, but I'm just wondering what would be like a chill time to go. Yeah, this is cool. So you see how I added that white gel, the scribbles, on top of the blue? I just love that kind of texture. And this, uh, guys, I am loving this paper. Let's see if it bled through. It is pretty thick paper and nothing— it doesn't bleed through. Right, you don't see any of that blue on the other side. Let's check this one. Blue, nothing bled through. Cool, right? GG says yes to people. All right, let's throw some people on this bridge sketch. Thank you for your response, I always appreciate the interaction in the chat, it's so fun. All right, let's sketch some peeps on here, and then I might end up adding color to the peeps so they— the peeps— so they pop out. So if you have a color in mind for the people, start thinking about something. I'll outline them with white. They might stay away, I'm not sure. But we might color them in just so they pop a little more. Some kind of peeps happening here. Boom. They're a little hard to see. Maybe we got someone off here, a little— maybe I'll do a little bigger kind of person. These are a little closer to us, so in the foreground there. Hey, oh my gosh, the Sparkly Wonderland has appeared in the chat! Missy, what's up? Always good to see you and your sparkles. How are you? Long time no see. This is so fun. Come on over, peeps. This is great. Let's have a— I do miss, I do miss the NYC show and popping on there. It's just the times just haven't been really good for me, especially now with getting— this stays lighter later, and I'm out, you know, taking the pup out and all that. But I do miss you guys. I miss everybody in the chat there. I miss Sifa as well, but it's great to see you popping in. I'd love to see everybody popping. That'd be so cool. All right, what do you guys think? Should I leave the people just a white outline? Does that look cool, or should I fill them in with a color? I'll tell you the color that popped into my brain, but I kind of want your feedback. I thought we'd make this like more of an engaging— you guys are always helpful with engaging me, with engaging me, not like getting married, but like engaging in the chat, give me some feedback and stuff. So I'm putting a lot of stuff out to you guys. Um, what color? I'm looking for my markers. I was going to do turquoise. Boom. Or would that just take away from the entire sketch by coloring the people my fave color? Well, let me know. And then, uh, maybe we'll hit one other quick sketch tonight if you guys are up for it. Just let me know that as well. I'm really making you work hard in that chat tonight. Yes, I'm just kidding. Um, while we're waiting, let's do— let's do a fun— you know what I want to do? We're going to get a little cheesy here. I want to do a fun swirly sun. I'm bringing the cheese factor out here, maybe because I just ate a burrito. You guys ever have Amy's burritos? That's the brand, Amy. Aim not. Yeah, Amy's Burritos. I just had one for dinner here and it's pretty good. There we go, a little cheese factor. It's okay to be cheesy in your sketches, you know. It's our world, our universe, our feelings. Put it out there, guys. What the heck is it gonna hurt? Nothing, especially if it's just something fun and positive. And we definitely, we need to spread that fun and positivity out there. This was a cool little sketch too, this lighthouse sketch. Ward's gonna be late. You guys are getting a circle of death. All right, okay, I know why the circle of death is on, guys. My bad, I forgot to— I forgot to log out of my, um— when I have ChatGPT on in the background, it slows everything down. So thanks for bearing with me, I appreciate it. We should be much better. I have the ChatGPT shut down. It's just my fault, I had too many things open. Let me know if that's better. I hope it's better, guys. All right, you know what, we're doing it. I'm going to throw down some Color of the People a little bit. Stream should definitely be better. Wait, is Nightbot on? All right, I am, I am going to turn off Nightbot right now. We're going to get rid of Nightbot. Who's in favor of getting rid of Nightbot? Say me in the chat. We're going to get rid of Nightbot. It's, it's stinking. I'm going to turn it off. So let me know. Let's see, we're gonna shut this Nightbot down. I'm gonna— we're gonna shut it down, so bear with me. We're gonna do this. Boom. All right, Nightbot is shut down officially, so feel free to applaud, cheer in the chat. I just turned it off. It's been annoying. So thank you guys for reminding me that stinking chatbot is gone. We need no— we don't need any stinking chatbots. We got amazing people in here. All right, we're turquoise-ing. I'm probably going to end up going back on top of the turquoise here a little bit, right? It's helping to pop the people out, perhaps positively. I just wanted to alliterate there. We're positively popping out the people with the kind of turquoise There we go. Oh, that looks kind of cool. People might be a little too tall, but that's okay. I won't tell. Bye-bye, Nightbot. Be gone. All right, yeah, I don't know that Nightbot. I just kind of set it up in the defaults one day and I really didn't study it. I didn't really do any tutorials. I just went click, click, click. So any of the annoying things were just me not taking the time to really understand it. All right, cool. I like this. I'm liking these people. When this dries, I'm going to add some lines on top of that person, and then we'll see where it goes. This is fun. Alright guys, I think this sketch is looking good. If anybody let me know in the chat, should I do one other quick sketch? Just you can put yes or no if you want to stick around for another sketch, and I'm open for ideas. Um, here's how this looks. Again, this was done in the Ugly Books. Shout out to Ugly Books, really, really love their stuff. And, uh, visit my webpage, go to inspiredlife.com/tools. You'll see Ugly Books. There's a discount code on there. Feel free to check them out. Um, we haven't done anything in the NYC Sketchbook in eons. It's been way too long. I'm out of practice. And I do have a blank page here, so we could block something out in here tonight if you guys wanted to. And if you want to sketch in the NYC book, I am so open for ideas. Let me know, because I'm not sure what I want to sketch, what NYC thing I should sketch here. Ta-da! Yeah, this looks cool. I'm loving this. One other shot, I'll hold it up here. Oh, each person has— I want to— oh, I'm going to throw this on screen, um, Gigi, because I really like this comment. So Gigi just had this comment here. Each person has a story, I feel. I, I love that you're saying that because it's letting me know as, as the sketcher here that you're engaged as a viewer. You're engaged in what you're looking at and you're taking it to a different level. You're not just kind of looking at it and being like, okay, whatever. You're working your imagination to kind of fill in the blanks or the stories that you see happening in here. So I think that's really— it's really satisfying for me as a, um, you know, as, as the— a sketcher to, to have that feedback and the input. And I appreciate that. So it would be really fun if we all just created a story right now on the spot What is happening on this bridge? What is— what are these people talking about? What are their stories? That would be so fun to just do a quick collab right now and kind of come up with a story for this sketch. How fun would that be? So thanks for that comment. I appreciate that comment. Uh, Instagram, I saw Kara. And hey Kara, if you're still on, how are you? Always good to see you. Hope you're doing well. Hope your, your summer is off to an awesome start. And I had another person, By Tour Tab, I can't see, read the name on Instagram. Thanks guys, I'm glad you like the sketch. All right, let's do an NYC sketch. We'll block something out in here. Beautiful way to connect with one another. Yeah. All right, two options. Do you guys, do you guys remember Choose Your Own Adventure stories? Let's go to the heart-to-heart cam. I'm not going to wrap up, but let's talk a little more personally here. Pardon my hair, I did not do it tonight. Oh, there we are. Yeah, I see. I do see it lagging. Hmm, I'm not sure why it's lagging so much. Do you guys remember— do you remember, uh, choose your own adventure stories? So you're reading a book and you can go down path A or path B, right? So tonight we can go down path A, we can work on a story for the characters, or path B, we can do another sketch here. Let me know. All right, all right, so this is really cool. I'm sorry if I'm lagging, guys. I don't know what's up with this internet. It's stinking. All right, let's block something else out here. Uh, NYC. I don't know what— I'm out of ideas what to sketch in it for NYC in this book. What's something I haven't sketched yet that I want to sketch in, in here? Um, man, oh man, oh man. So this is our NYC calendar sketchbook. So this will be fun to get out as a calendar for 2027. Loving these sketches. Here's the Brooklyn— let's actually compare these. Here's two Brooklyn Bridge sketches. Boom. You can kind of see two different versions, right? New York has 8 million stories. Yeah, Edie, you're right. New York is just endless, endless stories for sure. I love that. Isn't it fun to people watch and kind of make up stories for people as you're people watching? I do that a lot, for sure. All right, I need, um, you know what, I've already done St. Patrick's, but let's do a St. Patrick's Cathedral sketch here. Let's do another one in the sketchbook. I'm going to pull up a ref image. Uh, let's see. I'm just looking behind me. Do I have one up there? You know what? No, I'm all over the place, guys. You know what I didn't do in here? There's something obviously missing from this. I didn't do any Liberty Torch sketches in this book. Let's do a Liberty Torch sketch. How could I forget? That's like my, uh, one of my iconic sketches. So we're gonna do a Liberty Torch sketch tonight. All right, here we go. Got a couple examples. We'll just pull one of these out. So let's do a Liberty Torch sketch on this page. I'm wired up. The kid's wired up, guys. The heart cam. Isn't the heart cam fun? Um, all right, let's do it. We're gonna block it out. You guys see that okay? Let me know if I should zoom in. All right, so we got— we're going to sketch a Liberty Torch in our NYC calendar sketchbook. So I'm just going to kind of block it out. I probably should have sketched the torch lower, but that's okay. Again, let's go back to what we were talking about, uh, imperfection. Imperfection for me is perfection. I can't worry about doing everything perfectly because then nothing would ever get done. Sometimes for me, I just got to throw stuff down on paper, have fun with it. That's just— that's kind of how my philosophy is. I have spent years being too worried about picking wrong colors and having things look stupid and people making fun of me. And you know what? We can't do that, guys. You gotta just put it out there. Put your heart, put your soul out there. Um, yeah, you're gonna always have haters, and that's okay, but you gotta put it— just put it out there. Because the fun for me is the creating part. It's the— it's what you're seeing now. It's throwing lines on paper. So we're going to switch. We're going to grab a red creative marker because I want to sketch the top of that torch here. Some of the flames. Just throw some lines on paper, you know, have fun with it. There we go. So we got a kind of a torch happening there. Jen says you love— she loves people watching. 100%. People watching is awesome. I do it all the time. Um, I really started doing it big time when I used to work in the mall back in high school and college. And you know, on my breaks in the mall, I would kind of just walk around and hang out and grab a bite and just watch people. Um, so I think my love of people watching, not in a creepy way but in a fun way, is just— was back when I was working in the mall, just imagining, you know, what's going on in people's lives. What are they thinking? What are they talking about? Um, it's always interesting. All right, so let's throw down some color in here. Boom! I love how the turquoise is popping off. Let me zoom in, guys. Is that better? There we go. Block the haters. Yeah, you know, here's what I'm going to say about, um, the haters. There will always be haters. Here's the thing. Yeah, block them. Uh, sometimes there— some people are just stupid online and say dumb things, and that's definitely block them, especially if they're inappropriate. Um, sometimes you'll get comments that are rude but kind of are, uh, could be helpful in some ways. I'm gonna grab some purple. Um, but they could have been said nicer. Maybe it's a tech issue I'm having, or a suggestion for the live stream. So, you know, I'll read comments and process them in different ways, but haters definitely block. It's not worth the time. Check this purple out, this is going to be amazing. Here, watch this, and then I'm going to show you what I'm going to do on top of that purple. Actually, you know what, we're gonna— I'm gonna block this in And it's okay, I can go over that. I love that. I love purple on here, it looks so cool. I'm going to do something fun with that when it dries. We'll do the same thing here, I'll show you. Um, every artist has their own expression. I admire all the different styles. Oh, let's put that on. You guys are making the, uh, screen tonight.