In this YouTube video, urban sketcher Jason Nicholas gives a narrated tour of recent sketches he created during visits to New York City. He introduces his portable field journal (Lockbie) and the Sharpie Creative Markers he uses, then walks through a series of on‑location drawings of iconic NYC architecture—including the Copper Building, Saint Nicholas Church (designed by Santiago Calatrava), One World Trade Center, the Oculus, a performing arts center, the 9/11 Memorial pools, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Jason explains his artistic choices, such as using "ghosted" outlines, limited color palettes driven by mood, and the practice of capturing quick vignettes rather than detailed studies. He shares personal reflections on how sketching helps him simplify complex structures, process emotions (especially at the 9/11 site), and preserve memories of the day. The video also highlights community interaction: passersby commenting on his work, and a heartfelt moment where he gifts a Brooklyn Bridge sketch to a church security worker. Jason concludes by encouraging viewers to sketch for fun, use sketchbooks as visual journals, and invites them to join his free sketching newsletter.
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Hello everybody, happy November 10th. Hope you're having a great day today. I'm— I want to do a quick sketchbook tour and show you, um, just a few of the sketches I did on my last couple of visits to New York City. I love going to New York City. I love the architecture and the vibes there. Um, and I love sketching, so you put the two together, I am a happy, happy camper. All right, so let's put some music on. We'll do a little tour through here. I hope you don't mind this, but we'll put some holiday tunes, a little background holiday type of music on. Holidays are here. Um, the Christmas tree was delivered to Rockefeller Center yesterday. How cool is that? Alright, so, um, I've been taking, as always, my Lockbie field journal with me everywhere I go. Um, definitely comes to New York City with me, and I've been using it to do sketches in lately. This first sketch is of the Copper Building on the East River near the 34th Street ferry pier. I love the copper building. It's probably, I don't know, in my top 3 favorite NYC buildings right now. And it's this kind of building— this is an interesting drawing because it's a perspective looking up at the building here. The building has 2 pieces and there's a sky bridge that connects it. Because of the perspective and the angle, you can't really see the— been the building finishing off Um, so this was done with Sharpie, and I have been loving these Sharpie Creative Markers. So you're going to see a lot of that on the next few pages. This is, this is a quick outline of Saint Nick, the Saint Nicholas Church in the World Trade Center location. Really beautiful church. I think it opened a couple of years ago, designed by a world-renowned architect, Santiago Calatrava. You'll hear that— you will hear that name again pretty soon. And this was just an outline, just trying to capture the exterior of the church. Again, same materials: Sharpie marker, Sharpie Creative markers. The building is symmetrical And I purposely kind of ghosted this side. I like to leave my sketches looking unfinished rather than doing completely detailed sketches. One, it's just faster to do in the field. So the sketches you're looking at, these were created, um, urban sketching, so on location. Um, sometimes I will add some color afterwards, but yeah, so this kind of ghosts out, just captured kind of the dome and a little bit of the silhouette there. I really like kind of the ghosty ghostness of this. The building's made out of this incredible, I think, Grecian marble that is kind of really thin, and you can see the light trans— uh, light comes through it when you're in on the inside, and at night the building kind of glows. So I kind of like that ethereal quality, and I was trying to capture that with this sketch. Ah, this was just a real, real, real quick sketch of the interior of part of that cathedral. I— the sketch does not do it justice. I was just messing around with some arch shapes there. Sometimes for me, sketching is just picking a piece of something I like, a piece of a building or a structure, and just getting something down. And that processes in my brain. It allows me to take complicated buildings, complicated structures rooms and simplify things down into lines. And that's kind of how I process a lot of things in life, just trying to simplify them. This is the World Trade Center, um, One World Trade, AKA the Freedom Tower. So it's just kind of a piece of the top of it here. So I wanted to throw down some red, white, and blue here to symbolize, you know, the United States, our flag colors. It's a very— it was the first time I'd been to the 9/11 Memorial location. Um, yeah, it's kind of— I'm kind of speechless. I don't even know what to say about it. It's Yeah, you have to go there to experience it. It's an incredible location, a great memorial tribute to the event, to the people that lost their lives. Yeah, sketching was kind of emotional, to be honest with you, but I like how I just kind of focused on just the top of the tower here and framed it with the red and blue. Interesting fact, the tower is 1,776 feet tall to the of the spire. So 1776, we all know why that's a very significant number in American history. This building, this is a real quick sketch of the Oculus Building. The Oculus Building is also designed by Santiago Calatrava. It's a, it's a train hub, it's a shopping mall. This is a very small piece of the outside of the building. You go inside, it's, it's huge. If you watch my other YouTube videos, you can actually see— did a short on the interior when I was there. So the building is supposed to represent a dove with its wings, or a bird with its wings, I guess, kind of spread out and it's flying. Symbol of hope, symbol of peace. Love. Um, what I like about this is just like it was really fun sketching kind of these, these points here. This was a quick sketch I did inside the Oculus building looking down towards the opposite end. There's a huge flag hanging, steps here, there's a couple levels going on. These are almost look like ribs on the interior of the building, these kind of shapes. So this was sketched in place, people watching. I heard a couple people saying, oh, that's pretty cool, as they walked by. Sketching in public is always fun. You always hear reactions. Sometimes people will come up to you, ask questions, engage with you, um, and which is really cool. And I just love to hear the comments of people going by, so that was fun. And a lot of these sketches are really quick, so my visit yesterday wasn't to sketch anything in detail but to capture vignettes or pieces of, of buildings and locations I found interesting. So don't feel like you always have to sketch something in detail. Use your sketchbooks as a journal and just capture things that, that interest you. Um, this is a performing arts center located, um, in World Trade Center location. Really, really fun, funky building, almost like a box here, uh, kind of floating above a dark pedestal area. So I just— I like the geometry of this. Sometimes I will keep my sketches as black and white without color, and a lot of that's just kind of in the, in the moment, how I'm feeling. I could always come back and add color if I want to. Um, this is, I believe this is the 9/11 Museum, a small part of it. I'm looking across one of the pools. There's a North Pool and a South Pool. Pool that represent the footprint locations of where the Twin Towers used to stand. So they've been turned into these big deep pools with waterfalls. This is the waterfall. This is a really small section of it, um, waterfall. And in the distance, in this view I had, there is the actual 9/11 Museum back here. Uh, this is another view of the Oculus building here. You can kind of see the bird-like shape with the wings coming out. And then this is that Performing Arts Center in the foreground, and I just used that, and it's all yellow. I just wanted to kind of block it and use it as a frame to kind of frame the Oculus building happening there. All right, let's see. And this sketch is up on the plaza by Saint Nicholas Church. This is Saint Nicholas Church here, and looking here, looking down towards the— towards, um, One World Trade. Boom, right there. So a lot of, a lot of times I'll get a question or a comment that the colors I use are not the colors that exist, um, which is cool. I love that comment. Um, yeah, I use color based on how I'm feeling, or honestly sometimes based on what I have with me. So I'm not trying to create realistic sketches, I'm really documenting a moment in time, a feeling in time. Um, yeah, I guess that's a good way to sum it up. So feelings and times, moments and times. And I'll just kind of use my gut and pick colors I just want to play around with. Um, lots of times the, the formula is fun. I just want to have fun creating. The act of creating something— um, actually, let me take that back. If I'm having fun while I'm creating something, I'm going to ingrain that in my brain, in my memory, and in my soul for, for probably ever, forever, if not a really, really long time. If I was laboring on a sketch and frustrated and not having fun, for me it's a waste of time. I need to have fun in the process because that fun takes it to a different level. That just ingrains it in my soul. So I'll remember just standing here on this plaza sketching this scene. Um, I can remember right now behind me there was a— some kind of takeout container of food spilled all over the plaza. These birds, these pigeons, uh, kind of eating it up. So that— I also remember a guy who must have just come out of church with an instrument walking by me as well. The day was a beautiful sunny day. It was actually hazy from forest fires in the morning, but that kind of cleared up. So just by drawing a sketch, I can remember that moment. Cool. So those are some of the sketches here in my field journal. And then I also did— I only did actually one— it's actually two in here. This was a quick on-location sketch of the Brooklyn Bridge, kept it black and white. And then here's another really quick one. I didn't have a lot of time to sketch the day I went here to see the Brooklyn Bridge. I was on a tour that day learning about the Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is a fantastic tour. Um, so I got a couple of quick sketches in. Love this Moleskine journal. This is a watercolor journal, so it has thick pages in it. Um, I love it because it fits in my pocket so easily. Grab this and this and I am good to go. All right, so I hope you enjoyed that quick little sketchbook tour of some of my latest New York City sketches. Um, there will be more. I want to leave you with one thing that was really cool that day. It was actually yesterday that I went to this location. Um, there was a lady that works in the church I guess she was security. Very, very nice lady. I talked to her for a little bit. I left and then I was outside sketching and I happened to have brought with me a sketch I did of the Brooklyn Bridge on a, um, one of these kind of folding accordion journals. I ended up going back in the church and giving that sketch of the Brooklyn Bridge, um, to her. We had a really nice conversation about just people, humanity, and people being nice to each other and things like that, and it kind of touched my heart. So I wanted to do something nice, and I gave her that sketch. That sketch I loved, and I was actually trying to sell it, but you know what, I realized I'm not doing this, you know. I would— sure, I'd love to sell them, but if I don't, it's just fun. It was more powerful, powerful, more rewarding to be able to give a piece of something I created to somebody as an expression of gratitude or connection. So yeah, that is one of the main reasons I love sketching, especially urban sketching and sketching, you know, around people, communication and community. All right guys, thank you so much. Hope you have an amazing rest of your day. Remember to keep using your creativity for positivity, and you too can sketch architecture one line at a time. If you're interested, I have free sketching newsletter you can sign up for. There's a link here on the bottom of my screen. And that's it. Thank you guys so much. Have an amazing rest of your day. Until we sketch again, take care. Peace and live creatively.
