Sketching Fearless - Loose Lines and No Apologies

Hey, happy Sunday, um, July 19th, 2026. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inkspired Life, where I love, love, love— did I say love? I love, um, sketching, especially sketching architecture. It's my jam. We'll, um, we're gonna talk a little bit more about this sketch in a little bit, but yeah, thanks for joining me on this Sunday night. Let's, let's do some sketching, um, If you have any paper or markers, pens, pencils nearby, feel free to pick, pick them up, gather them, gather them up, and, um, yeah, spend a few minutes together, sketch. Let's just do some sketching. And I think, I think tonight we're going to do some NYC St. Patrick's Cathedral sketching. I think that'd be kind of fun. Let me just bring it on home here to my Instagram peeps because I gotta hit go live. Boom. All right, so I hope you're having a great day. Um, weather was spectacular here finally after crazy, crazy, crazy summer weather. Um, everything from wicked thunderstorms to rain to, uh, smoky skies from the sad and unfortunate forest fires that are happening in Canada. Yeah. But we had a beautiful day here today, so a lot of walking, a lot of fresh air, and, um, it felt great. It felt good to get outside for a little bit. All right, cool. All right, so let me— let's, um, make sure everything's up and running here. It looks like it is. I want to change one thing. I'm listening to music as we speak, and I'm going to just change the setting on my AirPods because I can't hear the music when I talk. Maybe that's a sign that I shouldn't talk. Um, so let me know, how are you doing? What is— has your day been like? Your weekend? I heard there was some kind of big soccer game today somewhere in the world that I apparently missed. Um, but congrats to Spain. Um, yeah, I have to be honest, I didn't follow the World Cup. I— it's just something I didn't get into. I don't know why. I played soccer many years, and my son played soccer. And yeah, I just— I didn't follow the World Cup games. I know, I know, probably in the minority, but that's okay. Um, I hope it was exciting if you followed it and you enjoyed the matches, for sure. All right, cool. So I'm sorry, I'm trying to multitask. I'm not really good at multitasking, are you? Thanks for the thumbs up. If you're watching live, give me a thumbs up. We'll be on for about a half hour or so. Definitely we're going to do some sketching, 100%. I just need to change the setting on my AirPods because I need music. I love music when I'm creating, and when I can't hear it, it, um, I mean, I could sketch without it, but it's not the same. I need that music. Music motivates, inspires. Um, it could relax me. Depending on what I'm listening to can affect how I'm sketching. So music is a really powerful player, a great tool, uh, in your sketching and your artwork and your creativity, for sure. How the heck do I change this setting? It's like noise cancellation is on. This is crazy. You think I would have done it before I came online, but no, I didn't. All right, I'm gonna start sketching. Thanks for sticking with me. It's my fault I can't hear the music, but I can't take time out to fix it right now. All right, here's what we got. Um, this is my new favorite go-to sketching paper, UglyBooks. I'm loving this stuff. They're not paying me to say this. I do have an affiliate link with them, so if you were to use my link, my code, which is in the notes here in the comments, first-time buyers can get a discount. And anybody else using my link, um, it's the same price for you, but I get just a real small commission. So I am promoting them because I do love them and use them. And here's some, here are some cool sketches Um, if you're joining me for my sketching workshop on August 1st in Brooklyn at Stationery Fest 2026, everybody in my workshop, you will be getting an Uglybook sketchbook to sketch on. So I have different colors I'll be bringing with me. Um, shout out to Uglybooks for actually providing them for my workshop. So I can have up to 15 people, and I think right now I have 8 seats sold, so there is space left. Check it out, there's a link, uh, in the notes here, in the comments, in the description, or just go to my website theinkspiredlife.com and you can see how to sign up there. I'd love to have you join me. But anyway, we're gonna be sketching these ugly books. Uh, you could see, well, here's a sketch of the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm loving sketching on different colored paper You know, we always think of needing to use white paper. I decided this summer I was gonna stretch out of— stretch out of my comfort zone? Or is it step out? Step out of my comfort zone and just use colored paper. So I have some red here. Here's an NYC-inspired sketch. Little island happening. Just a random fishy thing there. Here's a sketch when I was waiting in line one day. Lighthouse, boom, Brooklyn Bridge. Uh, here's my— I love doing the Statue of Liberty torches, which we'll be doing in the workshop on August 1st. We'll be doing a Liberty Torch sketch, at least that's my plans, it could change. Um, we'll be doing the Brooklyn Bridge. Empire State Building, and I'm thinking maybe Grand Central Terminal. Not 100% sure. Uh, here's a fun kind of little figure sketch as well. So I'm loving these, these ugly books. A lot of different colors. Um, I actually just— I upgraded and got some bigger sizes last week. I haven't used them yet, so we're breaking into the big sizes. Cool. All right. I know I didn't sketch yet and people are probably like, what the heck, when are you gonna sketch, mister? I know, I know, bear with me. Um, uh, so here, this is kind of our inspo for what I want to sketch tonight. This is a sketch of Grand Central Terminal. Um, I've been working on it for a few live streams. You may have seen me, see me working on this, and I took it one step further and I kind of turned it into an architecture lesson, which has been really fun. I added some annotations— annotations are notes— on here calling out different features, materials. I have some fun facts on here as well. So for the workshop I'm going to be doing in August, I want to create a series of like postcards, like 4 postcards New York City inspired postcards. And I'm thinking of maybe going with a format, something like this, maybe a building or structure, and then just adding some notes to it to make it a little more personal. So here's some close-up of a close-up, you can see it. So that was really fun. Cool, thank you for the thumbs up. Really cool, awesome, right? All right, so let's, um, let's sketch tonight. I'm gonna, I'm gonna sketch, I think, a St. Patrick's Cathedral inspired image. And let's do, let's just do a fun one, maybe a small one in this, uh, Uglybooks, and then maybe we'll jump onto a bigger size sheet of paper. So let me zoom in and we'll get organized here. Yeah, how many of you are actually organized? Any of my creatives out there in the audience, let me know in the chat. Are you organized, especially when it comes to your, your desktop and your art stuff? Let me know, are you organized, yes or no? Let's zoom in. I think that'll be better, we can see it closer. And am I lagging? All right, let me see here. Um, I really am trying to figure out— I really want to change my AirPod settings here. All right, it's not, not gonna happen. I don't know why. All right, let's just sketch. All right, so here, St. Patrick's Cathedral. Boom. D-Ray's in the house! D-Ray, great to see you! D-Ray says no, not organized. I get it, I get it. Me neither. As you guys know, my creative brain's all over the place. All right, St. Patrick's quick, just loose. I do have a photo here I'm looking at, um, just as a kind of inspo image. I'll put it on screen, you can see it. There it is. Uh, so this is a photo I took last year. Was it during Christmas? I think it was during the Christmas season, 2025. But we're going to use this just as an inspo. I'm not— my goal is to never copy or make photorealistic sketches. That's not what I do. It's just to capture an impression and an idea. So We're just kind of loosey-goosey here. Haven't sketched St. Patrick's in a while. D-Ray, I hope you're doing well. It's always great to see you in the chat. I always appreciate your time. You're awesome for sure. And I know, guys, I have not really been on a lot past week or two. I've, I've been pretty busy doing some work this summer, which is a good thing, and I've been just trying to catch up on some rest as well. I'm been kind of tired, I don't know why. So I've been just resting up a little bit here and there, but it's good to be on here tonight. So my newest sketching is, um, I'm loving white gel pens so, so much. I do have to remember that they do take a little bit to dry, so I can't— I tend to smudge them, especially being left-handed. I am hoping to get into NYC soon. I, I really, um, haven't been in as much this summer as I wanted to be, so I just got to get kind of back out there, get in that groove. Yes, not copy but get inspired. Yes, as you can see, I am literally— it's— I am just being inspired by the image on your screen. I just like to sketch fast and loose. And you notice that I actually didn't even fit the entire building on here, and that's fine with me. I don't, I don't mind that. I actually like when my sketches kind of are unfinished in parts of it. Um, so I don't, I don't find that to be an issue. I know some people would kind of freak out and be like, oh my God, I can't fit the whole thing. It's wrong, it doesn't look anything like, you know, the building. Um, a lot of that is, is it's kind of how you just approach it in a mindset, right? I mean, if I am— if I was going for something photorealistic, yeah, this would not be good. But for me, it's about sketching a feeling, a vibe, an impression. Uh, what's standing out to me? What, you know, what am I connecting with? Um, so that's kind of what— that's what leads me down the paths I go down. Does that make sense? Am I making sense? I don't know. Who am I? Who is that masked man? All right, cool. So it's kind of a fast St. Patrick's, uh, inspired sketch. Let me know in the chat, can you tell, can you recognize this? What if I didn't tell you— well, I guess my main goal is, if— could you recognize that this is a church building if I didn't tell you? What about this sketch says church to you? I'm really curious. You might— that's my goal, right? Just to kind of transfer the idea of what this architecture is. Um, what type of building it is, what style it is. So if I can get that point across, it's— that's really, really helpful. I am, I am still here. I— all right, note to Apple, your user experience for getting to the AirPod controls is no bueno. But cool, right? All right, so that's a quick loosey-goosey St. Patrick's Cathedral inspired sketch. Let's, um, should we go to a bigger size sheet of paper? Let me know in the chat. Do you want me to sketch? We can just do another one, maybe more a bigger kind of version of this, or we can just keep playing around in our little sketchbook here and adding things. Which I don't mind either. Like, we can throw some color in here, you know. Like, you have some blue on this one, it came out kind of cool. And I got some, uh, turquoise on here, which looks really good as well. So actually, you know what, let's— I don't know, let me know. I think, I think part of me wants to add some turquoise on this. D-Ray. Oh, um, yes, good luck, D-Ray, with your, um, with your stuff, your health stuff. Positive vibes your way. Positive, positive vibes. I have— I know about the cardiovascular world because I am a patient myself, so hang in there. And, uh, just positive thoughts to you. For sure. All right, so some color I see. Yes, maybe a bigger size on there. That sounds cool. Awesome. I'm gonna try this— these AirPod things one more time. Oh, now it opened. What the— ah, yes, I fixed it. All right, cool, right? So I think I'm gonna do— let's just, let's throw some in the background here. Let's do some— just throw some like maybe turquoise kind of back here a little bit. One of the things I like about this Ugly Books paper is it's thick. So it won't bleed through, which is really nice. So if I show you and flip this over, it is not bleeding through on the other side, which is really, um, really awesome for throwing down this— these markers on top. I just kind of like doing this just to pull out some of the shapes maybe of the cathedral a little bit there. I know you are. Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm there, so I get it. Yeah, so definitely hang in there. So I am in the process of putting together a, uh, an in-person workshop in New York City this fall, sketching, getting together, sketching. Um, it would be kind of fun, so it'd be instructional, educational, fun. And I would love to do it— well, I'm planning on doing the St. Patrick's Cathedral, Rockefeller Center area, with Grand Central Terminal as a backup location if the weather doesn't cooperate. So stay tuned for more information about that. I'd love to sketch with you in person. It would be so much fun, hang out. Sketchy. Yeah, the other marker was kind of losing its marker-ness, so yeah, I wonder— this one is newer, so it's got more marker juice in it. Boom, boom, chocolate. But I'd love to, uh, sketch with you in person. Feel free to go, go to my website. I know I'm plugging it a lot tonight. Go to theinspiredlife.com and There's a place on there where you can just sign up if you want to stay in the loop or be notified for any workshops coming up. I do have an online workshop coming up as well for sketching, uh, wonky fishing shacks. So that'll be happening in the next couple weeks. All right, cool, right? So I like the turquoise, how it's popping, popping out the colors. Awesome. And let's just write on here what this is, and we'll jump over, I think, to a bigger sheet of paper. And I'm not going to be on too much longer tonight. So this is St. Patrick's, NYC, of course, and we'll put 2026. Boom. All right, cool. So that was just a fun, quick St. Patrick's inspired sketch. So we have a few NYC things in here. We have, uh, the Domino Sugar Factory. Love this place. I love, love this building so much. I might have to go there next time. Uh, Empire State Building. Says he says, yep, I'm in— yep, I'm in that state of mind. All right, Empire State of Mind. A couple, uh, these are landscape sketches. That is my, uh, call that the Animal Cracker sketch. Boom. And Liberty Torch. All right, I already showed this before, sorry about that. Alrighty, big paper, we're gonna throw something down quick. I haven't worked on my NYC calendar sketchbook in weeks. I have to really come back and revisit this. Um, I just need to block out some more pages, so we'll get back onto this very soon. All right, what color— what color paper do we want to use? We got some choices in here. Let's use this green. Actually, we're gonna break out this green color paper. Haven't used it yet. This is also Ugly Books paper as well, and these aren't— this is a 9 by 12 sheet of paper, so I'm going to zoom out a little bit so you can see more of it. There we go. Cha-ching! And let's do another St. Patrick's inspired sketch, but I want to do an interior, I think. So I could, I could sketch, um, St. Patrick's like forever. I just love this building, it's so beautiful. Architecture is incredible. All right, let's do a quick loosey-goosey interior type of sketch here. We'll do, we'll do like a perspective. Uh, let's see, what do we want to do? All right, let's do it. So again, this will be kind of just my loose interpretation here of— just want to capture a vibe. You see what I mean about the white gel pen smearing a little bit? But we're friends here. We're friends. It's all good. So, um, I like this green color. It's interesting. Hopefully it's coming out okay on screen and you can see it. If it's too light, let me know. Might be the glare. Let me do that. Is that better? Um, that might be better. I just turned off one of the lights, tried to take some glare off. So we'll go with that for now. I can literally sit in this inside here for hours. I think I said that earlier, but I did actually sit in here once for a while, and I just had my sketchbook and was listening to the, um, the music that was playing. It was so, so tranquil in there, so soothing. If you're in the city and you just need a break from the busyness, pop into St. Patrick's Cathedral. Um, yeah, it might be, it might be a lot of tourists in there sometimes, but at least it's respectfully quiet in there. It's just a good place to take a respite from either the heat and/or the noise, the energy. Because New York City can definitely be, um, kind of like culture shock, right? There's just so much happening and visually, um, overstimulating. And I get that. I've been there, and it still happens to me. So I like to sometimes just kind of sometimes duck into these quietest locations This is one of them. Library, NYPL, Central Park. And you can find some nice quiet pockets in Central Park. So amongst the hustle and bustle, there are pockets of solitude in the city. So hopefully you're getting kind of the perspective vibe in here. Hello, I see #80F Fatma on YouTube. Good to see you on YouTube. Thanks for joining, I appreciate it. Looking, seeing this green paper. Okay, hey, thank you, I appreciate it. Glad you can see the sketch. Okay, and this is— I love the real loosey looseness of this. These lines are really— I'm talking about St. Patrick's being a calm place, but my sketch is totally opposite. I am still feeling energetic, which is so interesting for me to see. There we go. I want to add some kind of caps to these columns. Let's give a little more We actually might pull out— let's see, I think I might pull out this. I may, uh, play around and break out— I don't know, purple is calling my name. I may have to break out some purple on this. So hopefully you get the idea. You can— this is some kind of interior view. Whether or not it's— you can tell it's St. Patrick's, that doesn't matter to me. I just want to get the vibe again that this is we're inside a, a, a cathedral. We're inside a church. If I, if I can convey that, I've done my job. Let's take out this— I want to, just want to pop out some of these column edges here. There you go. Yeah, I'm have to say, I'm actually kind of loving this. I'm gonna pull these— got these Gothic windows back here. I think, I Throwing down this kind of heavier white marker helped to pull out some of those shapes more. And I was— my brain was saying throw down some color, but I'm really just liking the, the white ink on the green paper. I think it's pretty powerful. And I'm going to zoom in. I want to show you kind of what I find really exciting. Here we go. Um, I just love the scribbly kind of lines here. And yeah, it's a great way to describe it. It's just kind of scribbly, really loose, kind of frenetic. It might be a good word. It's kind of a frenetic sketch, you know. It's— I could have done this. Let me grab a sheet of paper here. I got some scraps here. Yeah, I mean, I could have— I could have drawn my columns like this, right? And there, there's nothing wrong with this. Notice I'm kind of taking my time, just drawing a little bit slower here. You know, say we could have drawn a column like that, which is fine. See, I can't control myself, I have to do scribbling on there. Um, if I hold it next to this column this, this one here, the white one, really, this connects with me more on a deeper level because I can feel it. I can feel this, this sketch. For me, I'm not, I'm not feeling it. It's— I don't know, I can't, I just can't explain it. It's a connection from It's a connection between my, you know, the marker, pen, my hand, my brain, and my heart. And this isn't connecting with the heart part, unlike this. So it's really interesting, and that's different for different people. Different lines, different styles connect in different ways, and that's what makes this thing called sketching so much fun is when you bring your own style, your own taste to it, your own lines, your own effort. You're gonna feel it in a different way. I hope that makes sense. And there we go. I recommend this inside. For me, it's the line that invites me in, located mid-center. Line invite you in, located mid-center. It does make sense. Thank you, 80. I'm just calling you 80 on you. Thanks for watching YouTube. Uh, If you like what you're seeing, just feel free to give me a thumbs up, a like, share this out there. I would love that and appreciate it so much. I'm glad it makes sense what I'm saying. And again, it's very— it's just all personal. But you know what, have fun. The most important thing is just have fun with whatever you're creating. Don't be afraid to throw lines down. Um, don't try to be perfect, it's not going to happen. Um, For me, perfection just shuts me down. That's why I like to say, um, you know, embrace imperfection. Um, imperfection, because it gives us the freedom to be us and to create like we're creating. Pretty cool. All right, let me know in the chat, uh, do you guys— should— do you think I should throw color on here or not? And I'm not— I may or may not, depending on responses, but, um, maybe because I don't know why purples call my name, but I have purple. I was thinking about throwing purple, and then the other color was yellow in just a few places, kind of like the Grand Central Terminal sketch. I really love this sketch. It came out kind of cool. Um, the sketch is a teaching piece, something I can use in my classes, right, to show my students, hey, let's sketch buildings we know, sketch them in your own style, and write down some fun facts about them, right? So I have Grand Central Terminal. 1913 is when it opened to the public. Um, it has Botticino marble and Caen wall— stone walls. It's, uh, Beauhuis art style, has a barrel ceiling. It's 125 feet high from here to the bottom of that barrel ceiling roof— well, the top of the roof ceiling, sorry. Um, yeah, so really cool. All right, I'm gonna start putting some stuff away and see if there's any final questions or thoughts about adding color. I'm just curious to know what your brains are thinking. And while we're doing that, I just— I— these Lockbee Quattros are amazing. If you are looking for a grab-and-go way to carry pens, pencils, and in this case I have creative markers in here check out Lockbead, the Lockbead Quattros. They're amazing. Uh, I am an affiliate, so if you use my code INKspired, I-N-K, INKspired, I think you can get a 10% discount. Some rules apply, but yeah, um, check it out if you're looking for some good grab-and-go gear. I love this stuff. So And I'm just going to stick some stuff in here. So I have, I have a few of these. I have one I keep colored pencils in, I have one with the markers. These are if I go urban sketching in my backpack, I'll usually throw these in there along with my, um, it's over here, oops, with my Lochbie folio, which is amazing as well. Got pens in it, paper. I can fit the Uglybook sketchbooks in here, which I'm loving. So this is what you're looking at. This is my grab-and-go creativity sketch gear right here. Trying to keep it simple. And sometimes I won't even bring the colored pencils, I'll just bring this. Pretty cool. And it fits in my backpack easily. No color. I see a no color in there. Let's read about the no color. D-Ray, thank you so much. I love, love when you're in the chat. You're so positive, you're so helpful, and I just love engaging with you guys in, in the chat. It makes this so much more fun for me. All right, no color. Just a thought. All right, thank you for your thought about that. I appreciate it. All right, with that, yeah, I think we're gonna leave it black and white— not black and white, green and white. I'll zoom out so you can see the whole thing, and then I'll wrap up. Here's the whole thing. Let's throw— I have a black mat here. Let's throw that around. Let's always see what these will look like matted. Oh, this looks actually really cool matted. Not Maddie. Hey Maddie, if you're out there, hello Maddie, how are you? Um, we're gonna mat this. Check this out matted. That looks really cool. It reflects the purity of the church. Ooh, D-Ray, um, you just made the chat. I'm gonna put that on the chat. There we go. It reflects the purity of the church, the colors, the lack, or the lack of colors. Thank you so much. Congratulations, you made the chat screen. I mean, the stream screen. Matted looks great. Yeah, matted looks really sharp. Just for the heck of it, I like to do a smaller mat too. Let's see what the small mat looks like on it. All right, so that's the big one. Small one we can just crop out. Oh man, I need to organize here. All right, we can just crop out like small areas of it. Let me zoom in. Just trying to find a good— would be a good place to crop this. I, I kind of like it cropped I could do the middle. I think that's boring. I'm going to shift it off to the side. I think this could look kind of interesting if I cropped it like that, right? So imagine that area. That's pretty bueno. But I would, in the end, I would just go with— just for fun, let's throw this on. Hold on, let's do my micro, my micro openings here. Sometimes fun to really zoom in and look at small tiny areas in the frame. Nah, it's not so much on that one. This is really more for like abstract stuff. It works well, but I think the bigger mat looks cool on this. All right. All right, with that, thank you so much for watching. D-Ray, please take care. Positive vibes your way, um, hang in there. And a shout out to Adi who was on there watching live on YouTube. Thank you for your comments as well, I appreciate it. Until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and embrace imperfection.