Sketch Fearless: Loose Lines & Architecture

When I'm alone, I've lit the dark with smaller sparks.

Found my strength inside the marks.

Every flaw, every bruise I've earned. Every lesson painfully learned. All the moments that left me torn made me someone worth fighting for. I'm stronger, I'm rising. And realizing I'm changing. Still fighting, still learning, still trying. No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human. I'm not here to be flawless. I'm not I'm here to pretend. I'm here to keep moving again and again. I'm here to keep choosing a life I can stand it, a life that's my own. I'm still becoming. I'm still becoming. This is simply being human.

Hey guys, how are you? Happy, um, Wednesday. May— had to cheat and look at the calendar— May 6th. Hope you're doing good tonight. I'm Jason Nicholas with The Inspired Life. It's always good being here, seeing you, and sketching along with you guys. Hope you're having an awesome Wednesday. I am, um, I am just starting up, starting off here with kind of a quick, fast, loose imaginary cityscape. I've been doing these cool, like, hill town inspired sketches, which I love. These are fun. So I thought I'd try one tonight and see where it takes us. Um, let me say hello in the chat and then we'll get rocking. Time is at 9:35. Woo, I'm on kind of late. Hey, um, JLM says, got your pencil sharpener today, needed a portable option. Good to see you, JLM. Yeah, oh, I hope you like it. I— this, this sharpener has not failed me. I've had it for a long time. Um, it really is really good with the color pencils, so I hope you like it. That's so cool. Thank you so much. Let me know, um, what you think. It's really small, it's compact, it's pretty, pretty cool. Let me put some iTunes on here. Oh, I forgot to turn down my volume. There we go. Cool. So, um, what's going on in your world? I, I've been kind of busy doing a bunch of stuff, um, good stuff. I wasn't on live last night. I might be starting to stick closer to my Monday, Wednesday, Friday live streams. I can't promise though. Um, I might be on more, I might be on less, but I do— I'm definitely going to keep coming on for sure because I love doing this. But I was so tired last night that I didn't livestream, and that's okay. You guys need a break from me, I'm sure. All right, let's throw down some lines. I'm throwing these kind of angled hatch lines here to give a little bit of depth to this imaginary scene. We're gonna throw down some colors. Um, yeah, we'll pop some of this out. I'm loving just the looseness and the wonkiness of this. Uh, again, this is a place in my brain, and I love— it's fun for me to sketch imaginary places and just get stuff things out of my head, images in my head, and put them onto paper. But lots of times, to be honest with you, I am just putting the marker, the pen down, and it's happening, it's happening. I am not picturing anything. I'm just kind of moving the pen around and, um, just creating shapes. Like, I know I wanted to start off with some roofs, so I have just your basic peaked roof or gable roof, you know, like here you see it everywhere in here. So I definitely wanted those peaked roofs on here, but everything else just happened. So sometimes just put your pen down, your marker down, your paintbrush, you know, just throw stuff on paper, on canvas, and see what happens. Don't, don't always try to pre-plan. Wing it. You're flowing. Yeah, yeah, my vacation scenery. Um, so this is definitely inspired by Toledo, Spain, right? Where is the Toledo one? All of them are kind of inspired by some of the hill towns I drove past. You know, we saw— this is Toledo. We actually visited this hill town, which is beautiful place. So yeah, I definitely was inspired by the images, the icon— uh, wait, what's the word? Iconography? Iconography? How do you say that word? Iconography? Basically the, the building shapes I saw in the distance, right? Um, I'm trying to capture those shapes in my sketches. So sketching architecture is a— is Once you have a basic library of parts or a kit of parts, you can sketch pretty much any building with a kit of parts. And by the kit of parts, I mean, um, windows, doors, uh, shapes, roof shapes, wall shapes, volumes. Um, anything you could think of that you would use to put a building together. So a kit of parts also applies to sketching. So that's kind of one of the ways I break down architecture when I'm sketching, is a kit of parts. And in my workshops, I like to talk about that, and we practice sketching windows and doors, um, and roof shapes, because roof shapes really for me are definitely character-defining elements of a building. Am I making sense or am I just rambling? I don't know, but it's fun. It doesn't matter. You know what, I'm learning to embrace imperfection. Means I am perfect. And I see Edie is in the house. How are you? Iconographic. I think that's the word I was trying to say. Thanks for typing it. I have a— sometimes my brain, actually lots, most of the time my brain is faster than my mouth, so I can't always— what I want to say, I can't keep up with what's in here. I know, is that kind of weird? Does it ever happen to you guys? And if I talk really fast, slow me down in the chat. Be like, slow down. When I get hyper excited, when I love something, I'm passionate about something, I get revved up, revved up, and I will talk fast. All right, let's throw down some color. Yeah, we're going, we're going with this color I love. I'm calling it like terracotta orange. I don't know what it's called. Maybe it's just orange. Maybe it's not even orange, but it looks orange to me. So we're gonna throw some of this Terracotta Orange down, um, pull out some of these roof shapes a little more. I hope you guys are doing great. Hey Kara, I saw Kara online. Kara was online. Bye Kara. Kara was on Instagram. Um, let's see if you guys have any other questions or comments. Boom. Got any suggestions, um, for how to draw meanings? I know that sounds crazy. I see patterns of understandings more than structures. Hmm, that does not sound crazy. It's actually intriguing. Let me, let me, um, let my subconscious brain work on that one for a bit if that's cool, and then we'll see what we come up with. I love that question, how to draw meanings. All right, let me, let my subconscious come, uh, come up with some ideas on that. Uh, one of the things that— well, actually, we'll just talk. You know me. One of the things that pops into my brain, or is popping into my brain, are mind maps. Mind maps are my— I love doing mind maps. Let me— I'll show you some examples. Um, let me just pull out— oh man, let's see. I think I might have some in here. Let's see. Yeah, so all right, mind maps are This is— I know it's not pure like sketching, but it is— it kind of is in some ways. And you can change some of this to graphics or icons, but you know, for me to make meanings, connect meanings of things, I might not be— this might not be what you're asking, but this is what I'm thinking. Um, you know, I'll sketch like a keyword like sketching or write a keyword sketching, and then any words that pop into my brain, I'll do a main word, a branch, another word that ties into it, and the words that tie into that. So this is my brain thinking in visual way with words, but lots of times I will change. Instead of words, I'll just do icons. Like for sketching, I could do a pencil. Um, Mindshift, I'll sketch a brain. Message, I mean, I'll sketch a little envelope picture or something. Um, so that's kind of where I'm starting with what your question is, but let me Let me, um, process it subconsciously and we'll come back to it. But feel free to put any clarifying context in the chat. In the chat, you guys are awesome. I love the— I love your questions and comments. It's always so fun. So right, I love the, the orange is just popping out some of those roofs I was talking about, right? Yeah, I just— I love those little pop pop pop pop pop. We'll pop this one down here. Pop. And we got a little sneaky one sneaking in. We got a sneaky roof. Tell me that's not cool, guys. Let me do this one too, and we're gonna add some texture on those roofs. Um, let's do the dome. This is loosely inspired by, uh Il Duomo in Florence, very loosely inspired, but let's just pull it out with some of this orange. Yeah, that's kind of cool. What do you guys think? Cha-ching! I love it. I need some sound effects. Should I start adding cheesy sound effects to the livestream? I'm kind of hoping you say no. That was a hypothetical question. Hypothetically speaking, how would the show impact be if I had cheesy sound effects? I am looking for red. I'm just digging into my Lockbee. Boom. Lockbee, my Lockbee, um, pouch here. I, I love this thing, guys. I'm sorry, I'm, I'm always talking Lockbee. Actually, I'm not sorry. I talk about them because I use their stuff, love their stuff. Check out my discount code on screen. It'll be in the chat as well. Lockbee is my EDC, everyday carry, for my field folio here. My Quattros, where I put pencils and markers in these things, the pouch I showed you. Seriously, uh, check them out, guys. Love, love their stuff. I just want to pop some red here. I just like little, little blocks, little blocks of red. I threw some chimneys on some of these buildings and just some pops of red. I don't want to get too cray cray. That would look cool red. And then maybe we'll pop this here red. I think that's enough. Um, I think faster than I can talk too. Participating in live chats has helped me improve my communication skills by forcing me to slow down and think before I speak. I love, love, love that, Edie. That is so cool. That's amazing. Um, I'm gonna— can I ask you guys a favor? If I would love to start keeping a list, um, almost a testimonial list, quote unquote, of things that you're getting out of these live streams. And I'd love to use your testimonials or quotes to kind of just promote, you know, this channel. And for example, you know, Edie says 'Participating has made me slow down,' or whatever. Or, 'JLM, you might say something.' I'm not putting words in your mouth, but maybe a technique or something, whatever. I'd love your feedback in the comments, and, um, and I can contact you individually, or we can DM or something about me using what you say. Um, yeah, I'm just looking for feedback on what I'm doing. So I can kind of quantify this. And another thing I want to do is I'm putting a portfolio together. I— when I'm done teaching high school in a couple years, 2, 3, I don't know, 4 years, uh, I want to have a portfolio, you know, of feedback I've gotten from these live streams because these are kind of like little mini you know, half hour, hour workshops, right? And if you guys ever do sketching along with me, I'd love you to post your artwork. All right, sorry, I, I really appreciate it, guys, if, if that's something you can do. If not, I understand, no problem. All right, let's throw on some of the blue on the background here for the sky and take a look at this now. Edie has it going. Yeah, you guys are amazing. Thank you. Um, check out this now and then watch how the buildings are going to pop when I put the sky in the background. Okay, so this is like our before shot. I don't know why I'm holding it. That's before. Let's color it up. Even if it's a mindset thing, I'm going back to what I was saying before, a mindset thing. I, I— doesn't matter, vibe you get, maybe, um how you view me as a quote-unquote instructor or guide or mentor for the time we're together here in the chat. All right, I'm sorry, I feel like I'm plugging. I don't really ask or plug myself, but I— thanks guys for understanding. All right, Julio, Julio, let's do that. Boom, boom. And then we're gonna flip it. Check this out though, right? Do you see how the buildings are popping just by throwing that blue on the background and getting it on your thumb? It's not art unless— what? Unless you wear it. So guys, it's officially artwork. We're wearing it. Love that. That'd be cool if I— that'd be a cool t-shirt. Maybe I should get t-shirts that made that say that. I'm going to bring the sky a little down further. I want to kind of pull out the verticality of this building, so I'm going to bring the sky down a little bit more. All right, cool. So let's check it out. There we go. This is awesome. Um, actually, mind mapping is familiar, but it— but I hadn't done it for this. What else you come up with will apply myself to as well as this. Okay, yeah, I'm definitely mulling over your question. It's a really good question. Fine with me. Oh, thank you, I appreciate that. Yes, Edie has it going on. Um, I think one of these acrylic marker sets have a sky blue color. Yeah, I, I do, I do have a sky blue in my, um markers over there in my creative markers, so I can pull that out some other time. Definitely, we can definitely try that. It's a good idea. Uh, I'm like, I'm liking this aqua right now. It just, for me, it's getting— the aqua has a very Mediterranean vibes, the aqua and the, the, um, terracotta colors. But yeah, I will try the— I'll pull out the blue. On another stream. That's a good idea. I just need a drink of water. All right, cool. Let's work on this for a few more minutes. It's almost 10 o'clock. I don't even think I'm gonna get to another New York City sketch. That's— I've been streaming late and I'm not— I've only been doing these, but that's okay. Um, yellow. I want yellow. Look, I want, uh, neon yellow. Do I have a highlighter handy? Uh, you know what, we'll just go with our neon yellow color pencil. Cha-ching! There we are. Why am I saying cha-ching? I, I don't even know where that came from. Um, what color? I used another color the other day I liked on these. That's all right, we'll stick with this. Yeah, I like these. I like the pop of yellow here. That might be enough of the yellow. Yeah, I think that's enough yellow. And let's see, do I want to add— I don't know, I might be done. Actually, you know what I want to try? I want to throw some gray. This is something I haven't really done. I want to throw some gray on the sides here, maybe for the shadow areas. I don't have purple. I use— I do purple, but let's throw a gray on here, and I might just sketch the hatch lines back over top of it. I'm just curious to see what this would look like. And I'll definitely put the black lines back, back on top here.

All right, cool.

This is one of the reasons I love the acrylic markers, because they dry so quick. Look, I can sketch on top already. I'm going to zoom in for you guys. And last thing I want to do is throw some texture on the roof to show some clay tile roofs on there, barrel tiles. And, uh, let's do with black Sharpie tonight. I've been using the— these brown pens. Uh, we'll stick with the Sharpie here on, on this one. I really can't believe how fast this day has gone. It's ridiculous. And what's more ridiculous is now I have more energy than I've had most of the day, and it's bedtime. So you see, I'm just giving some texture to the roof line here. Okay, let's do some in the dome. My light went off behind me. That means it's 10:00. All right guys, we have a cool little imaginary town, I think. What? Oh my gosh, this Nightbot. All right, thank you for the feedback. Nightbot is going to— it's posting way too many things. I don't know why it's posting so much, so we're going to declutter the chat. And I'm sorry if that happened to your posts. That's weird. What the heck? Weird, it shouldn't be posting that much. Uh, Jalen says, do you still use the Moleskine sketchbook or your supplies list, or do you prefer the Lectrum Yellow Book? I use both. I use both. So the only thing I've been using the Yellow Book is, is for my New York City, um, sketches. I just started using it like last month. Um, I will say that I do like the Moleskine better for sketching. I like the paper better on the Moleskine. I have some here. Here's a Moleskine. Uh, well, actually, this is a Moleskine— this is Moleskine watercolor journal. So I have watercolor journal, but I also have just the regular straight up hot press smooth paper. I don't know if this is it. So, um, this is also watercolor, but yeah, I like the Moleskine better just for— I don't know why, I just maybe I'm more used to it. I'm looking for, um, oh, the small one here. So this is my favorite Moleskine, or the— this size here. Fits in my pocket. I love just carrying it when I'm out sketching. Um, something, you know, you can see I like— these are some New York City sketches I'll do. Again, this is the watercolor paper, which I like because if I want to come back and add watercolor or an ink wash to it, it's thicker paper. Here's like a, uh, that was something I did in Central Park. So yeah, great question. So I use both, but Moleskine is— I prefer that. I don't know what happened with that Nightbot. That's cray cray. I am so sorry, guys. I'm gonna hit that Nightbot thing and, uh, fix it, figure it out so it doesn't post so often, and especially delete your Stoff, thank you for telling me. All right, yeah, feel free to repost if I missed something. Feel free to repost now before I head out. Oh, um, anything else I want to riff off of? So, um, sketching meaning, sketching meaning, um It's a really great question. I'm going to think about it more, but mind mapping meaning, um, the simplest way to associate meaning or sketch meaning, I think, is, is goes back to the word that you guys put in the chat for me that I couldn't say. I'm going to try saying it again. Iconography. Iconography. Icons, right? Icons are really just a quick, easy way to get a meaning of something out. Um, if you're trying to get the meaning or the, like, the vibe or feeling, colors are a way to get that vibe feeling. Um, you know, you'll see me use colors and, you know, bright colors sometimes, you know, express and mean different things than darker colors. So you can express meaning through color. Line types— here, this— let's wrap on this one. Let's talk line types for a hot sec here. Um, line types are a way of storytelling. And let's do this kind of quick, and I'll spend more time on it if you want in the future, just let me know. And I teach these in my workshops as well. So line types are, you know, if, if I do a line like this Uh, let's break out— I'm gonna switch. All right, we'll just use this. No, we won't. There's no point on it. Why am I being fussy with colors? I want it red, that's why. All right, if I sketch a line like this versus a line like this Those two lines probably make you think different things and feel different things. They both have different meanings. If I do a line like this versus a line like this— make it a little straight edge here— you know, these two lines have different meanings. As well, right? And then, uh, this is kind of my— one of my favorite sketching lines is to do something like this. So how does this line make you feel? It's like waves, water. Maybe it's calm, peaceful, kind of rolling waves, right? Here, these jagged, harsh, jaggedy lines could represent, um, you know, energy. Boom! Energy. Maybe a little bit of anger, a little bit of, uh, yeah, like frustration. So these are very different in meaning. This is, this is very technical and precise, it's perfect, right? So when I see that, for me, that when I see perfect straight lines, it means technical. That's the vibe. This is more loosey-goosey kind of sketching that I do, a little bit of mix of maybe some energy. And these are my dash dot Morse code lines here. And the meaning is it's incomplete. They're not fully complete lines. They're broken. There's space. Space to breathe. Space for a viewer to fill in the blank. So meaning could be icons. Meaning could be through color. Meaning could be through different line types. You know, a mix of all that stuff. Hopefully that's a kind of a— just putting it out there— hopefully that's kind of a little bit of insight. I'll definitely process that more. It's a great, great question. All right guys, oh, you know, JLM is here. Night Block did not— Night Block— Nightbot did not block anybody out. It may have gone got rid of chat stuff. I don't know why it would have done that. I have to look into it. Um, all right guys, watery floating versus jaggedy. Yeah, appreciate your examples. Yeah, hopefully that's a little bit of insight. Um, storytelling, you know, these are different lines for different types of meaning or storytelling. Guys, you are awesome. This has been so much fun coming on here live. Oh wait, I'm supposed to go to the heart— the heart cam. Hold on, heart cam. Let's go to heart cam to end. Uh, let's see, heart cam. Boom. All right guys, um, thank you so much for watching tonight. I hope you had some kind of takeaway. Feel free to leave in the chat what is something you got out of tonight's live stream. Maybe it was a vibe, maybe you picked up a pro tip, a technical tip, maybe, uh, the live stream made you feel a certain way. I'm not sure. I'd love to know what your takeaway was. Please let me know in the comments. Um, yeah, as always, I appreciate your time and spending a few minutes with me. And you are just awesome human beings. You know, let's spread that message out there of positivity through creativity. I think it's huge. I think we could each make a small impact, but in a big way. All right guys, until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and new one, guys, I'm gonna end with a different one. And embrace imperfection. More to come about that upcoming podcast. Stay tuned. All right, take care.