Artist Jason Nicholas sketches a Central Park to Midtown view using a single-line, free-form approach that prioritizes energy over precision. He shows his portable tools: a Lockbee field journal, Quattro pocket case, Sharpie markers, and colored pencils. He also shares sketches from the American Folk Art Museum's folk-art game-board exhibit.
Hey, happy, um, Sunday, July— not July, oh my gosh, January 12th. Hope you're having a great day. I'm on for a few minutes, gonna do some sketch Something Sunday. So it's a Sketch Something Sunday session. Um, yeah, I think I'm gonna do a New York inspired scene. I was in New York City yesterday. Love, love going there. It's just so amazing. It— I just can't talk enough about it. I just love the vibes. Um, of course I love the architecture. It's, it's incredible. So yeah, I took some pictures and I am looking through them. Just gonna put one on as a reference. Um, maybe we'll do this. Actually, I'll bring it on screen so you can see the reference I'm looking at. Uh, let's see, maybe this one. So Um, it was really cool to see Central Park with a dusting of snow on it. It just really has a whole different dimension. Um, I can only imagine what it's like when it has a lot of snow on the ground there. But yeah, this is, uh, one of the pictures I took yesterday. So I'm just gonna do a real quick sketch based loosely on this. Hope you're having a great day today. Let me know how your day's going. Where are you watching from? All right, I'm gonna turn that off. All right, cool. Let's just put pen to paper and see what happens. Just closing some windows there, have some music going on. All right, let me just click this. All right, perfect. And we're gonna turn this sideways. I am sketching in my Lockbie field journal. This came with me yesterday, and I'll actually— I'll just do a quick tour of some of the sketches I did yesterday. I love— I talk about this all the time, guys, and you could tell it's a well-loved, well-worn-out— I love this, this sketchbook. It was so convenient for me to carry this around in the American Folk Art Museum. I put that sticker on there today. So yeah, I was there yesterday sketching with the new— the N-Hawaii-C Urban Sketchers, and it was a fun outing. So here are some of the sketches I did, and my idea was— is never to capture exactly what I'm seeing, um, as a photograph. It's me, just an interpretation using colorism feeling, the colors I have with me, and whatever interests me. There we go. So really cool museum, very small, um, cool exhibit, cool exhibits. One really awesome exhibit was a, um, a game board exhibit. So they have folk art game boards hanging up on walls. It was pretty amazing. I'll post pictures of, of my trip there sometime soon. Um, quick sketches. This was just a wall with some art hanging on it, a couple people I have there. I use my Sharpie creative markers and colored pencils. So I had— this is what I brought with me yesterday. I'll show you. I had this, and then I brought— I had a Lockbee, um, Quattro. They call it the Quattro because it has 4 pockets. Originally, I guess, designed to have like 4 pens in here, or fountain pens, but I use it to put colored pencils in there, some red pens, some black pens. And I brought another one, and these went in these— this cool backpack I have. So these These are the Creative Markers. Anyway, so that's kind of what I brought yesterday. Um, let's do a sketch. Oh, a couple more things here I'll show you. Um, I actually like this one. It's loose, it's scribbly, black and white, uh, just some yellow and red. And I like how the colors kind of pop out. This was, uh, the room where they had the game boards hanging up on display. This is a collage I did based on different patterns I saw, different game boards hanging up, uh, on the walls. I just kind of collaged some things together into one image. I actually really like the way that came out. And this is another one of that wall area I sketched before, but I added a little more to it, and then I sketched a pattern on the bottom right. Um, this pattern came from a game board that was hanging up. I believe it was a checker slash chess board, um, kind of like an American flag type theme or patriotic theme. So there you go, those are some quick sketches I did yesterday. And let's do our sketch for today. See if I should zoom in a little bit. Awesome. All right, this is going to be pretty quick cuz I have dinner in the oven. One thing I've been doing a lot more with my sketching is I'm looking— I tend— I'm looking less at the paper and more what I'm sketching, just to start with, to get initial lines. You almost, uh, you might have noticed I'm kind of doing almost like a single line type of sketch here. This allows me just to be a little more free with what I'm sketching. I'm not worried exactly about scale or proportion. I'm just trying to capture really loosely capture what I'm looking at. So, um, this is a view from Central Park looking, um, gosh, this was looking— I'm trying to think now— south. This is looking south. Looking towards, um, down towards Midtown, I guess. I'm thinking too much. Just be kind of faster here. And kind of this building's coming up here. Cool. Some kind of We got a road here, kind of does this. There's a cool little playground area, actually not so little playground area here. These are walls in the playground. Really cool rock formations here as well. My screen is acting weird. Okay, there we go. So this is just a rock formation here that I'm scribbling in kind of quick. That looks fine for now. Let's just show some lines on the buildings here. So that's a real quick kind of skyline view here. Real— this is real rough and loose. I really like it, actually. I love the movement. Um, a lot of energy, right? A lot of kind of squigglies happening. And for me, that's just, uh, when I draw squiggly lines, scribbly lines, kind of like that, it's a way of showing energy and movement. Um, yeah, let me look in the comments, see if anybody's out there so I could say hello to you. And let's see, and then I'm gonna wrap up before the oven goes off. Let's see. Hey, D-Ray! D-Ray's in the house! D-Ray, great to see you! I love rocks. My house has rocks inside and out. That is so cool. I like that. That's because you rock, that's why. Um, yeah, it was really cool to see these rock formations, you know, um, in the city, in the park area. Really very, very sculptural. The rocks against the kind of the straight lines of the buildings. It's a real interesting contrast. Love that comment. All right, I think that's it for now. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. Tomorrow's Monday. I hope you have a great start to your week. And remember, keep using your creativity for positivity. I'm Jason Nicholas with The Inspired Life. You too can sketch architecture one line at a time. And you know what? They don't have to be straight lines. All right guys, you're awesome. Take care. Peace out, Cub Scout. See you soon.
