Jason Nicholas sketches an abstract New York City scene inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge, layering graphite, chalk, watercolor, and markers. He talks about being yourself and working without worrying about the outcome, mixing live art-making with teaching philosophy.
Hey, happy Saturday, November 23rd. Hope you're doing, um, great on this awesome day. Saturday afternoon, weird time for me to be on, but, um, yeah, I just want to— I want to do some sketching. I haven't worked on this piece probably 3 or 4 days, so I thought just a little bit more work on this. So this, um, is a view that's inspired by a view in New York City. Brooklyn Bridge here, we have the library, um, the Dumbo area of Brooklyn, we have a library building here. So just my kind of quick, fast, fun abstract take on it. Let me know where you're watching from and if you have any questions or comments. Let's see, I'm just gonna get some music going here and we'll start sketching. Let's see, um, I don't know, let's play this one. Cool. So what you're looking at, I used, um, graphite on here right now, so Art Graph chalk. I had an Art Graph stick here as well. And I have a watercolor stick. So let's throw down— I'm going to throw down something on top of this. I have some markers here, and I'm just playing around different mediums on this just to have fun, experiment, be playful. I'm not expecting any specific outcomes, and that's what makes this fun for me, is just messing around and just creating. And I'm kind of stick— just trying to stick with these kind of brownish earthy colors with this one. So I don't know how well these markers are going to work on top of the art graph, but we'll try it, right? You don't know unless you try. And it's only paper, it's only materials, and it's all about having fun. So it's not dark enough. Let's see, I might actually bring out a black because I want to— I want to pull out some windows on here, so Let's do that. I'm gonna go over here. I have some Sharpie creative markers. I'm gonna grab a black one. Let's just sketch on some windows here. You might hear my pup in the background. She's hanging out with me on this Saturday. Keep this fast, quick, loose. Just create the idea we have some windows happening here. Notice I'm not even drawing the complete windows, I'm just drawing— I can't talk today— drawing shapes. Sometimes my brain— actually, lots of times my brain is faster than my mouth, and I will stammer and stutter and make up my own words as I'm going along. And that's okay, that's just who I am, right? We all have our quirks, our idiosyncrasies, and that's what makes us all unique. So just be yourself. That's what I tell my students in my classes when they're doing presentations. Just bring yourself to the presentation. That's all I could ever ask for. So you can see, just sketching these quick windows on here, just a little bit more detail.
