Sketching — Loose Lines & No Apologies : 06-15-2026

Hello, it's Monday, June 15th, 2026. Hope you're having an awesome day. Jay, that's me. An awesome day. This is Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life, where I love sketching, especially architecture. Um, sketching is just a way of life for me. It's a vibe. It's a way I capture a moment in time. I de-stress. Um, it helps me to brainstorm, unlock my creativity. So join me for a few minutes as we do some sketching tonight. I don't know what I'm gonna sketch, so, uh, we're just gonna wing it tonight. And I like doing that sometimes. It puts me on the spot, puts my creativity on the spot, and you never know where it's gonna go. It makes it fun. So if you're watching, feel free to say hello in the comments, ask questions. I will be checking in on the stream. Cool. All right, got some music going here. Um, so we'll start a quick show and tell, quick show and tell. I was, uh, I went to a signing this past Sunday. Um, and it's a signing where, uh, two of the stars from the show Perfect Strangers— TV show, sitcom, late '80s, early '90s, one of my favorite shows ever— it was so cool. I got to meet, um, Bronson Pinchot and Mark Lynn Baker, AKA Balky and Cousin Larry, and it was so fun. And, uh, I did sketches, gave them sketches check out the YouTube video I posted, the TikTok and Instagram Reels, it's on Facebook. You can kind of see I put a little montage together of my experience. So that was a lot, a lot of fun. Cool way to connect with them. I get, you know, I gave them sketches, little sketches of the Chicago Chronicle quote-unquote building where, you know, where they worked on the show. So pretty cool. Um, but while I was there, I took my Lockbie, my Lockbie Folio, and you know, I always have this thing with me to do sketching and stuff, so this was great to take. But inside, I, I kept this, uh, these are new sketchbooks I got. I got a few different colors here. I have to say, I am loving, loving these sketchbooks so far, and I've only done 2 sketches, and I love it already. So this was a sketch I did just standing in line. It was really kind of fun, uh, just to sketch the people and kind of— we were out in a, uh, in a strip mall, so this is kind of like the sidewalk under the overhang area waiting in line. But it was just fun to kind of sketch this. I love the red paper and the white ink, so it was fun just to throw this kind of down. So that was cool. Um, love the size of these. And, um, if you want to know more about the sketching tools I use, check out the link on the bottom left, uh, inspired— the inkspiredlife.com/tools. You can learn about Uglybooks, Lockbie, and other sketching gear and pens and things I like. Um, definitely check it out. All right, cool. So let's do a sketch, and I think we'll just sketch in here. And I think I know what I want to sketch. Let me pull up a picture. Now I'm thinking about it, you know what, we're gonna, we're gonna switch it up. Don't do it in red. Let's, let's break this out. Let's try this color because I want to sketch some sunflowers. So here's a picture of some sunflowers here. That, um, kind of on their way out, but they've been hanging around here for a few weeks and they're on their way out. This might be just cool as an inspo picture, so we'll use that. Let's just do some quick loosey-goosey sunflower sketches. I don't know if we'll get to any NYC sketching tonight. We'll see. All right, uh, so which one did I say we're gonna do? We're gonna use this one. I love the color in here, it's just so interesting. Let's move that. I have, uh, maybe we'll do watercoloring. I don't know if I'll do it tonight, but I have my watercoloring pad right there underneath. Oh, I'm trying to figure out why my music is— it must be the setting for my AirPods when I'm talking. The music is getting quieter. Cool. All right, let's do some sketching. This is real fun color, like a yellow, yellowy color. And I'll zoom in closer. Here we go. All right, cool. Hey, Edie's in the house! Good to see you. I hope you're, uh, having an amazing day. Today. Hopefully the weather in NYC was nice. It was beautiful here in, uh, New Jersey. Beautiful. Just nice, cool, very, very low humidity. I love, love, love the weather today. I'm excited. School's wrapping up this week, so that's awesome. That'd be amazing to be on a different schedule for the next, I guess, 10 weeks or whatever, however long summer is. Summer break, um, it's a break from school but not a break from life and the working world. That's okay. I have a couple projects I'm really interested and excited to be working on over the summer, so be a good change of pace. This is cool. So I'm really digging, digging this paper. I like the white ink on it. All right, let's do, um, let's draw some stems here. So that'd be fun to mix it up a little bit. We do some flowers. I'd like to do more nature sketching. I have to start adding more and more and practicing, and I want to add it to my rep— what's the word— repertoire, something like that. Repertoire. How do you say that word? Repertoire. Repertoire. I, I don't speak French. Um, yeah, but I just want to kind of increase my architectural— I'm sorry, increase my sketching vocabulary, so Definitely want to start doing more flowers, just more nature stuff, trees, maybe, maybe brave animals. I don't know. If you have— if you witnessed the livestream where I sketched a giraffe, you'll know what I mean. That was a few years ago. Shout out to my original Inklings out there, the OGs who were a witness to the, the giraffe sketch. But you know what, like I say, I like to embrace imperfection. Try it, throw lines on paper. What's it gonna hurt? You might love it, you may not love it, you may— you'll learn something no matter what you do. Um, embrace the process. That's kind of my philosophy. Embrace the imperfection. Embrace and just enjoy the process. This is kind of cool. I like this. All right, let's throw down some green. I want to actually break out some Chartreuse. It's called my name. There we go. Let's punch some of that chartreuse on there. I like the way the green pops off that yellow background, really cool. Uh, it was in the 70s, moderate humidity, and sunny. That's cool. That's cool. Literally speaking, it's cool, relatively speaking, to the weather we've been having. So that's great. Oh, let's see, what else do I want to throw in here? We're just gonna have fun, guys. We might just do this sketch tonight and play around in this book. I just want to— I want to try different colors on this paper. I've never used it before, so let's just break out different colors, throw some stuff down, have fun with it. Let's see, what do I want to sketch? Uh, I don't know why I'm afraid. Why am I being afraid to throw down some color? What the heck? I mean, I like the simple simplicity of the white. But, and I know these are sunflowers I sketched, but you know what, let's— I want to throw down pink. Let's play around with the color. Again, this is just about having fun experimenting. I want to see what this paper, these colors look like on the paper. Mm, yeah, I'm loving this pink. It might be might look a little wonky on screen because of the lighting, but I do— I'm loving it in real reality here. Pretty cool. How could I forget to use the dot? There we go, that's fun. Yeah, I like— I'm liking the way these colored pencils are going down. This is a fun color for sure. Let's see what else we got. All right, let's see. I know what color I want to use. Let's see if it's in here. It is. And this is going to sound kind of weird, but I want to try some Sunburst Yellow on this paper. It's almost kind of similar in color. Yeah, not-ish. Warning, warning, I am going to use a pencil sharpener, so you might want to cover your ears. Mm, there we go. So this is Sunburst Yellow. Sunburst Yellow. I'm throwing that on top of this— I don't know what color paper you call this underneath. It's like a yellowish color. Yeah, it actually In reality, I can see in person here, I can see a color difference. Might not be picking up on cam. Let's keep playing. I gotta try Light Aqua, of course. Maybe we'll do like a sky or something here. Let's see. Oh wow, this is awesome. I'm really leaning heavy into the, into the pencil right now, and I love the way it's covering this paper. That's actually kind of cool. Yes, the sound of a dentist's office. That is what the pencil sharpener sounds like, which reminds me, I am way overdue for an appointment. Way overdue. Thank you for that reminder. I have a phone call to make tomorrow. I need to go see the dentist just for my regular checkup. Yeah, this is so sweet. I love that. Look at that color. That's awesome. I want to throw down some more white on here. Um, let's try this, let's try this. Liquid Ink Acrylic. It's almost like a— it's almost like a paint marker. Let's throw down some white in here. Oh yeah, it's a paint marker, really coming out thick, which is cool because I can then tech— this paper is fairly thick. I just want to see if it's bleeding through. It's not bleeding through. Yeah, this is kind of cool. I like— really like the way it's going down here. The outline is a little thicker with this brush pen. That's kind of cool. I like how the white popped out the edges. Hey, DB is in the house! DB, good to see you. DB says, love the yellow paper, makes things stand out. You like it better than the red? Yeah, let's bring out the red. Let's kind of compare them, guys. I'm loving this paper. I am, uh, yeah. So to be fair, I, I actually am, uh, what's the word, I'm now an affiliate with UglyBooks because I like this so much that, uh, if you go to my, my webpage inspiredlife/tools If you buy anything using my code or the link there from UglyBooks, you'll get a discount, 10% discount. So feel free to check out my link. I, I'm— I have nothing bad to say about these books. My only thing is I wish they would lay a little flat, flatter. But, uh, so DB, here's a sketch I did when I was waiting in line at the, uh, to get my autographs the other day. But you can see the red. So I love the white on the red, 100%. We'll play around with this, this week as well. We'll throw different colors in here. Um, but then yeah, I love the yellow, the white, and some colors are definitely popping out on it. Okay, let's see if that marker went through— the paint marker. There's a little bit, a little bit of buckling going on on the back. You can kind of see some dimples here. So, so yeah, so it does go through a little bit. There's a little bit of buckling. Um, maybe we'll try a wash at some point in time on this as well, but it's fun to play around and just try these different things. I want to try neon orange on here. I want to break out some red on here. We're just going to keep throwing some colors down, just play around. So this is Neon Orange. So I guess the different color papers, you know, will serve different purposes. That looks kind of cool. I wish— I really wish these neon colors would show on camera so much better for you guys. Oh, so cool. Mm, that looks so amazing. All right, let's break out, uh, I want to try the red pen on here. That looks cool. Let me— where's my fave red pen? My fave red pen, where are you hiding? Don't, don't— you're hiding from me. You scoundrel, you scoundrel. What the— oh, here we go. All right, that's— I love— that's my favorite red pen right there. Now we're talking. I like this red color better. There's a subtle difference. Looking kind of cool. So thank you, I appreciate you guys watching, your time. Thanks for sticking with me. I'll be on for a few more minutes. Um, hope you're enjoying this as I'm kind of just testing out and playing around with this new paper, and it's just fun to throw these colors on here and see what, what they look like. But that is my favorite red pen. Boom, it's looking kind of cool, right? DB says Um, I like the white on the red too, so let's break that out. Yeah, I love, I love that look. How about a barn or lighthouse? Oh, so DB, uh, let me know what paper do you want to see that on. I'll do a quick sketch tonight of a barn or a lighthouse. Do you want to see on the yellow or on the red? A lighthouse would look amazing with the right red and white. Um, let me know, I'm game to try one of those. What do you think, guys? You like this? Is it looking cool? Feel free to say hello, ask questions in the chat. Always appreciate your time. Ah, nice drink of water. I'm just going to go for it. Let's throw some highlighter, see if this shows up in here. Yeah, it does. It's very subtle, but I notice it in person here. Edie says, um, I wish there were more people here on YouTube though. I, you know, I have to— let's talk social media for a sec. I am puzzled. I, I don't know what the heck is It's so strange. Um, so for me, it's about— it is not really about the numbers of people, it's about the quality. You guys are amazing. But yeah, it would be cool to have more people in the chat engaging, um, with each other. And I don't know what's going on. I don't think something's up with the algorithms. I don't think it's just showing my videos to people. Maybe my— maybe YouTube thinks my art's horrible. I don't know. Um, but yeah, I wish there— I wish the chats had more people. So I totally agree, Edie. It's, it's something that's really been puzzling me, especially since I have— do I have 1,000 videos out there? I have a lot of videos out there, and there's just something about my content that I don't think YouTube is, is promoting. And you know, it is frustrating as a creator, content creator. Um, especially someone that I'm really just trying to get positivity through creativity, get a message out there. I know I'm riffing a little bit, guys. Let's riff on the Riff Cam. We're going to the Riff Cam, guys. I didn't do my hair, warning. We'll go to the Riff Cam, maybe. Let's go to Riff Cam. Hey, Riff Cam, there we are. All right, you guys can see my studio a little bit. All right, I just want to riff on camera for a second, a little more personal. Um, all right, let's talk. I— this is me about, you know, Simply Being Human. Check out my podcast. Um, it's really interesting to me as a content creator that I don't have more people engaged in viewing. So it's not a personal thing, it's just a question mark, like, why? How can I change it up? I would love more interaction, more people watching. Maybe it's the times, maybe I'm, you know, I'm inconsistent a lot. I know I don't show up at the same time. Um, so I appreciate that comment Edie had, and I agree with you. But I look at it this way: if I can serve one person out there and make some kind of positive impact on somebody, um, I'm doing my job. I'm doing my job. So I appreciate you, you guys that watch, that comment. You're awesome, and I, I thank you so much. But feel free to spread with the word out there. It would be amazing to get more people, you know, engaged. And it's good feedback for me as well, and it just builds community, and I want to build a creative community. All right, that is— we'll call that— what do we call that? The riff cam. We're just riffing. I almost go back to the desktop because you guys want to see this. Boom. All right, cool. Yeah, I could definitely be timing, you know. It definitely could be timing. It could be World Cup. It could be world politics. It could be much, much more important life issues. Than a man behind a camera with a pen. Um, so it's just something interesting. I'm glad you brought that up. Cool. But yeah, I'm liking this. Hey, Denise is in the house! Great to see you, Denise. Hope, hope all is well. Karen's in the house. Karen, good to see you. Awesome. Uh, Edie's on YouTube saying it's, it's YouTube. Another creator I used to follow complained that he'd get only a few thousand views on YouTube but over a million views on Facebook. Wowzers. I, yeah, I have never reached those heights. Oh, that's so cool. All right guys, so DB, I don't know if you answered. Let me look in the chat. Do you want to see a lighthouse on with, or a barn on which paper? Was it the yellow or the red? Let me go back, see if you answered, and we'll wrap up with a quick sketch. Here, you can see these side by side. Riff away. Thank you. Um, thank you for dropping in, Denise. I appreciate your time. You're amazing. Uh, Karen— all the artists watching, Karen's an amazing artist. Denise, DB, You guys are all amazing artists, and thanks Facebook. The Facebook side is hopping over there. Thanks Facebookers. Um, DB, I'm not seeing it, so let's go for a lighthouse. We're gonna do a lighthouse in the red. All right, we're gonna use— this is my jam these days, I have to say. I'm a huge fan of white gel pens, white acrylic markers, uh, on any paper, but I'm 100% loving on this red. And as I'm listening to Bittersweet Symphony— love this song. All right, let's do a lighthouse, guys. Thank you, DB, for the idea. Alright, here's how I sketch a lighthouse, guys. If you want to follow along at home or watch the replay, I'll try to break it down. I like to start with the top of the lighthouse. And usually the part that has the light in it. And then I'll do the roof, and then I'll do the tower of the lighthouse. Boom. And then I always like to do a little side building. Maybe it's the keeper's cottage. So I'll do that. If you notice my buildings, whenever I sketch architecture or buildings, I typically will start with the top and work down. And for me, it's the roof line, or the roof, or the top of the building meets the sky that kind of defines the shape. For me. So I like to start from the top, work my way down. Um, let's see, this is, this is just fast and scribbly. We gotta do our kind of— this is how I make it look curved. We're gonna do some contour lines, these curved lines. Make it white. Boom. And then we'll do maybe a stone base here. So now I'm layering on some details. I do want to get a finer point white gel pen. That's on my list. So maybe we have some kind of stone the base of our building. It's got a window. Maybe we got a window here. Nose is itchy. Here's one here. Of course, we got our light in here, and then we'll do our hatch lines to make it look more curved. So you Right, so we got kind of a quick, quick lighthouse happening. Uh, thank you Denise for the shout out, for telling people I was on. I appreciate that so, so much. Thank you. Edie, thank you so much. You're watching Phantasm 3 when you— when I came on. Thank you so much for, for watching me. That's so cool. I always appreciate everybody's time. All right, cool. So quick, quick lighthouse going on there. Um, let's try another color. Yeah, let's, let's see. Let's try some yellow. Actually, let's try a bunch of colors on here on the red. I haven't done this yet. Let's try turquoise. Aqua. Favorite, favorite, favorite color right here. Light aqua. Still my favorite color to date as far as, uh, colored pencils go, or Creative Markers and watercolor. So let's try some of this on here. Let's throw down some chartreuse and some neon yellow. Let's just play around. I haven't really thrown different colors down on the red yet, so tonight's mission is playing with different color paper and different mediums, color mediums on the paper. And where are we going to do this? Let's just throw some— IDK, it doesn't matter. I'm thinking too much. So when I think too much, that's a sign that I need to stop thinking and start sketching. So we'll throw some light aqua here, maybe as the sky, so we can see how this looks on the red. I'll do it thick in some places. I like how the red's showing through a little bit. So got some light aqua happening. That's a very cool color combo. Um, yeah, let's do it. Let's throw more on here. All right, homestretch school, man. Homestretch, last week. I'm just saying that out loud because I know it's after 10 and I'm still sketching, but I am having fun. And this will be the last thing we work on tonight here. All right, cool. And let me throw it on heavy in some places so you guys can see a close-up of it. All right, so here we go. Look at that color. That aqua on the red is awesome. Edie says, I can't wait to watch the rest of the film later. Thank you, Edie, you are so kind. I, I appreciate that. Sounds cool. I, I don't, I don't know those movies. Phantasm 3. I'm assuming there was a 1 and a 2. All right, let's throw down some Chartreuse. Oh my gosh. All right, all right, this is crushing it. OMG, the Chartreuse on this red is insane. Oh man, wow. And my dog is running in the hallway, so they're playing, I guess. All right, cool. Wowzers, guys. Holy mackerel. Let's throw it in thick here in some places. Check that out. Wow. This is, this is like, this is new territory for me. This is such new territory. This is exciting. Oh man, yes, I'm the guy who likes to watch paint dry. I'm the guy who gets excited at different colors. Holy chihuahua. Let's try the yellow. Yellow is not as exciting. All right, not as excited about the yellow. Um, wow, that is so cool. I love this. I love the aesthetic. There, look closer. I love this, the aesthetic here, the texture of the color pencil. Wow, that is super cool. Let's try, uh, let's see. I'm loving colored pencils on this stuff. Um, let's start on some of the neon orange. I'm just grabbing my favorite. This has, this has my favorite colored pencil colors in here, so I'm just grabbing from here. I don't think orange is going to do much, but let's see. Oh no, I, I am mistaken. What? This is a shock. I didn't think this was going to really show anything. Wow, that, that neon orange on the red, this is— oh man. Wow, holy cow! All right, let's try Process Red, see how that looks. Oh, it's rolling away from me. Ah, this is incredible! This is so fun. All right. Process Red is a really interesting color. It's almost like a maroon. I love the name Process Red. I have to read about it. I don't know why it's called Process Red. Can we see it? Let's do the, the Keeper's Cottage here. Karen says, love Ugly Books, they're a nice company to work with too. Yeah, um, I 100% love them, so I am, I am an affiliate with them, and, um, if you buy using my link, you get a 10% discount. So if anybody's interested, I, I know I sound like an advertisement, but seriously, check them out. Save 10%. Go to my webpage, theinkspiredlife.com/tools. You'll see all the stuff I love using on there. Check it out. There's a link on there for UglyBooks, and you'll get 10% off if you use my— you gotta click my link though. Um, Yeah, also it's posted on screen, my webpage, and in the chat comments or notes. Karen, yeah, they're so cool. I have to say, I am so impressed with these colors on here. Even the orange came out really, really cool. DB, I am so happy that you mentioned sketching a lighthouse or barn, so thank you. You took me down a road I didn't know I was going to go down. And that's what's really fun about the inspired life, guys. Usually we don't know where we're going to end up, and that's what I call the creative flow. I'm going to color some of these rocks in here a little bit. Let me try the paint pen. That's right, yeah, paint pen. Paint pen really covers it nice and thick. So let's just kind of dab in some of these stones, give a little bit of texture happening at the base. This has turned out to be a cool little sketch. Edie says, my pleasure. Yeah, thank you again, Edie. I appreciate your time. All of you, I appreciate all of you so much. Got my little sailboats down here. So I, I learned, uh, these aren't the best, but that's okay. It's all about imperfection, so they're fine. But I got my style of sailboat sketching from Peter Max. If you guys know the artist Peter Max, I love the way he sketches sailboats. So that's when I started to get kind of— this is very crude, but that's where I would— that's where I kind of got my sailboat. I can't talk, you know what I'm saying? Next. Um, I'm tired. Um, turning it really nice. Thank you so much. Orange looks almost fluorescent against the red paper. Yeah, again, I gotta hold it away from the glare of the light. Can you guys see that? All right, cool. All right, maybe we'll sketch a couple little people on here to give a sense of scale, and then we'll wrap up with this. Couple people here, which is unusual for me. I don't usually put people on my lighthouse sketches, but let's, let's do, uh, maybe they're standing on the rocks here, and I'll do a close-up when I'm done. I got a few people kind of hanging out up there. You know what color I want to put on here? Uh, black. I want to use some black on here. Curious how the black— well, I'm I'm sure it'll look good on against the red, but let's throw some on there. All right, we got some people kind of hanging out, so we got some peeps there. All right, and let's break out my friend Mr. Sharpie, of course. We, we didn't really think we were gonna have a Sharpie-free drawing tonight, did we? Did I say drawing? I mean sketch. For me, sketches are fast, quick, loose. When I say the word drawing, I think more clean, more precise. So, um, in my world, this is a sketch. Let's do a, let's do a black base at the lighthouse. Oh. Why is that not working? Alright, there we go. I kind of like the black base, kind of anchors it down a little bit. Make some of these stones kind of blackish. Cool, here we go. All right, I don't want to overdo it. All right guys, we're gonna wrap. Um, I did an octopus with pink Posca that turned out nice a couple of weeks ago that I posted. Take Poscas really nicely. Oh, awesome, Karen. I, I think I missed the post. I will definitely go back and check. That sounds really, really cool. Really cool. And you just reminded me, I did not use any neon pink on here. How could I miss the neon pink? How could I miss the neon pink? Yeah, Poscas are interesting, um, paint pens. I, I like them. I, I like Sharpie Creative Markers more. It's just a personal preference. Here we are. I think I need to buy a new fluorescent— I'm sorry, a new neon pink. See how the pink looks on here. Pink looks cool. It's gonna be hard to see on screen. Sorry about that. All right guys, well, I think we're going to wrap for tonight cuz I'm tired. I have school tomorrow. Um, yeah, so here's what we did tonight was really about just color, playing around different colors and different papers. So we broke out the yellow paper, which I really like. I like how these flowers came out, they're kind of cool. Um, yeah, this was a fun quick sketch. Actually, I need to throw some texture on here. Guy says, as he said he was going to wrap up, but it's too clean for me, so I want to throw some of my kind of, some of my hatch lines on here. I just like the aesthetic of the hatch. Boom, here we go. It's feeling a little more me when I do that, kind of mess it up a little bit. All right, so just a little bit of roughing up, a little bit scribbling it up here. Feeling more at home with the scribbles. There we go. I just— it needs a little more energy for me. That's why I'm kind of doing this. Plus the music is giving me some extra energy. All right, cool. There we go. That's kind of a little bit more me. So there we go. So we have the yellow paper, that was fun to play with. And then we have this. Boom. Yeah, you can't really see the, uh, pink. I agree. I can see in person. On camera it's not really showing up. You are amazing. I appreciate your time so, so much. Let's go to the heart-to-heart cam to wrap up. The heart cam, as I like to call it. So let me just shift that. Boom. All right, switch camera, wrap up. Oh, there we are. Sorry, it's a little shaky. My laptop is shaking. All right, um, so tonight's takeaway for me is colors. There we go. Am I on camera? There you are. Um, it's really— it's actually, you know, my takeaway is playfulness. Be playful. Don't be afraid. Grab pens, markers, paints, papers, whatever you're into. If you're baking, you know, you're making cookies, go crazy. Grab ingredients you never would have used before, mix them up, see what you come out with. I think sometimes we pre-plan, we want something to come out, uh, like our brain says it should, and we're frustrated when it doesn't happen. Don't set yourself up for that failure. Be open-minded, be playful, embrace what happens. You'll learn something that you like, you'll learn something you don't like, um, And that's kind of what life's about. That's how we grow, by learning, right? By trying and learning is how we grow as humans. Until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and embrace imperfection.