In this inaugural episode of the "7‑Minute Sketches" series, Jason Nicholas (The Inkspired Life) demonstrates how to quickly capture the essence of a complex architectural scene—a Princeton University archway—using a reference photograph supplied by a viewer named Chip. He outlines his process: starting with the main front arch, then adding the background arch, stairs, perspective lines, stonework, keystones, and ceiling timbers, all in a loose, "wonky" style that prioritizes feeling over technical accuracy. Throughout the roughly seven‑minute sketch, Jason explains his mindset of embracing imperfection, using sketchy lines to reveal his thought process, and suggests future refinements such as hatching for depth, adding light fixtures, and leaving intentional white space for viewer imagination. The tutorial serves both as a practical guide to breaking down architectural forms and as a philosophy of rapid, expressive sketching.
Chapters
Hey there, hope you're having an awesome day. Have you ever struggled when you wanted to sketch something architectural? You look at a building or a part of a building and it's just, it seems overwhelming and complicated. You don't know where to start sketching it. So I'm gonna start a new segment called 7 Minute Sketches where I'm gonna use reference photographs that I've taken or references maybe that you've sent to me. And I'll go through a process of how I would break it down and sketch that scene or that building or that part of a building in my loose, quick style. So yeah, so welcome to the first installment. This is going to be a lot of fun. Today, our first picture that we're going to use as a reference was provided by Chip. Chip is awesome. I had recently spent some time with him down at Princeton University. Where we walked around the campus and were just exploring the cool architecture there, especially the doorways and archways. Just really, really incredible. So Chip sent this photograph in and he was asking me, or kind of, uh, sense a little frustration about, you know, where— how do I start this? Where do I start sketching something like this? It has so many different lines on it. So we're going to take this photograph Again, it's from Princeton. It's an archway in Princeton University. And I'm gonna break it down in 7 minutes-ish, and I will see what we do with it. All right, guys. So let's start the timer and look at the photograph and we'll go through it. So when I'm looking at this to sketch, the first thing I notice is the archway. We have a couple of them. We have the one in the front and one in the background. So, basically, what I'm gonna do with this is I'm gonna start with that main archway or opening that's in front and just gonna sketch kind of the shape of it. And just as a footnote, I am not going for perfection. I am not trying to duplicate the photograph. I just wanna capture the essence in my style and what I'm feeling, okay? So, we got the archway here. Boom. There we go. Just kind of a quick archway happening there. And also what I'd like to do is sketch the archway that's in the background. And I'm looking at where the archway is in reference to the front one. And it's kind of, you know, it's somewhere. It's definitely smaller. It's kind of happening back in here somewhere. Is my arch perfectly shaped? No. Is it the right proportion? No, it doesn't match the food photograph, and that's okay because I'm just going to create a loose wonky style of it. You kind of have the two arches happening. Um, the next thing I'm seeing are actually the stairway, the stairs. So we're gonna kind of do the stairs here coming down. I can pull this down more if I need this archway to be a little longer. And we have— it's a perspective, right? So we have some perspective lines kind of coming back. You can see the flat roof, and we have the edges here. We beam, one couple— we have some wood beams happening across here. And what else? I'm looking at this side of the stair. We have kind of angle coming down, we have another angle coming down here. Again, I'm not trying to capture this exactly, and that frees up my mind and my creative mindset because it frees me. It allows me to say, hey, we're not trying to replicate what we're seeing exactly. So, I got that arch one in the background. I got some stairs happening. Then we have a bunch of lines, a bunch of other arches in front of this main one, right? He's kind of— it gives a sense of depth, right? That this is recessed in. So, We're going to just kind of sketch some of those. I'm not even going to count how many of these arches are happening. And I just want to sketch enough to get the idea that there is some depth happening here. These lines don't continue all the way down. If you notice, these kind of stop at a point. This one might be a little longer, a little shorter. This one's a little longer, a little shorter, a lot shorter there. So we have that there to create the sense of depth, and we do have some stonework. I do want to just kind of give a suggestion to the edge of these, um, coins called coining, coining, or these, the stonework here around the edge. So let's just sketch some of that. Got some of the coins and then it's going back at a perspective. So, we have a corner here and then these come back in angle and the angle, again, is the perspective, the depth going back towards the archway in the back. If you notice, actually there's even another archway way in the background. Just so, really small back in here. So, these lines I sketched at the angle are kind of coming back and pointing at our focal point in the background, which I'm gonna say is back in here somewhere. So that's how I get the angles of those lines. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Kinda imagine them just coming back. Are they perfect? This one's off a little, that's okay. That's why I like wonky sketches because— I'll go over the lines and change them. Done. I just changed those lines. And I like the look. I like these sketchy drawings and all the lines because it helps— it shows how I was thinking, how I was constructing this. We could do the same thing on the other side. We've got 2— just over 2 minutes left. I'm gonna leave that kind of blank for now. It's the same idea. What I do want to capture here is a couple of other things before the time is up. In our ceiling, we have timbers. We have the horizontal pieces here. We also have other ones that are kind of, um, they're going back here. We have here as well. And again, similar to the angle of these lines I'm taking these timbers and I'm angling them back towards our focal point. Is it this right amount that's there in the sketch? I don't know, I didn't count. And again, I'm not going for technical accuracy, and I'm going just for a feeling. So we have that. One of the other things I'd like to show are we have the kind of the kiwi stones here. At the top of the arch. Um, there's a photograph. All right, so we're gonna— usually at the time, I don't see on the top of this in the photograph, but usually there's a keystone here, very top of arches. And then I see we have some other stones kind of happening in here. Again, I am not counting these stones. I don't know how many there are or not. I'm just looking to get the idea that we do have these stones at the top of the arch, and then they kind of come out like this, maybe. It's something kind of happening here. Again, I don't know what the keystone is at the top, so I'm just kind of making that up. Um, so there we have that. So about 20 seconds left. And what I— which you can do— so that's the overall form. You know, the stairs can definitely be cleaned up. And in a quick loose drawing like this, what I like to do for the stairs is just show some vertical hatch lines here just to indicate that these are kind of going up, stepping up here. Vertical lines and time is up on that. So again, this is just a quick 7-minute sketch looking at a photograph, how I would break it down in my brain. If I was to come back and continue working on this, I would definitely add some hatching lines to create some shadows and some depth on this and probably, you know, I I would maybe finish this side, or maybe I would even leave this side unfinished. I like to leave parts of my sketches kind of, uh, loose and open, a lot of white space, which is cool because I feel like when people look at this, they can fill it in with their own imagination. And I might also sketch— and there's some cool light fixtures in here, so maybe I would kind of sketch a light in here. Something like this. Got some scroll work happening like this. You got kind of a light there. And there's one way back here you can sketch as well. Again, it's further away, so it would be small. So I hope that helps. Thank you for watching this 7-minute sketch segment. Try saying that 3 times fast. And again, I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inkspired Life. And I just love to show, um, how to create loose style architectural sketches. Take care. Until next time, have an awesome, awesome day. See you soon.
