SKETCHING NYC Architecture : Loose Lines & No Apologies

Hey, hello, it's Friday, uh, June 6th, 2026, 10 o'clock PM on the dot. I couldn't have tried it if I planned. Um, good to be here. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life, where I love sketching, especially art architecture. It is kind of my jam. Um, yeah, just love throwing lines and colors down on paper. It's just, it's so fun. It helps me think better. It helps me capture a place, a moment, a feeling. Um, I just love sketching. So join me for a few. It's gonna be kind of quick tonight, and we'll do, uh, some sketching, and I'm going to prep some backgrounds here for upcoming sketches. So stay tuned, I'll show you how I go about making my, uh, these cool, fun, kind of abstract, loose backgrounds that I love sketching on top of. Alrighty then, we put some music on here so I can hear it. Um, I love sketching with music, I totally thrive on it. So I hope you're having a great Friday. It's, uh, It was a beast. It was so hot today here, and that's okay because you know what, summertime is around the corner and it should be hot, right? Um, very cool. All right, so we're going to start off with the Lockbie. I have my Lockbie Field Journal— nope, this is the Lockbie Folio. I love this, carry it with me pretty much all the time, and I have some sketches in here. We'll just do kind of a quick sketch tonight. I'm not sure what— maybe we'll just throw something down quick and fast furious. This was a fun sketch I did the other day of an iris, just a little mixed media piece. Um, this was done with acrylic markers and color pencil and a red, uh, right here, Red Pilot Precise pen. Sometimes we think we need fancy schmancy tools to create, um, sketching, to make beautiful sketches. Not true. Use what you have around you. I use ballpoint pens all the time, um, colored pencils. I mean, just grab and go. Don't worry about the tool or the tools because sometimes that worry stops the act of even just creating and making something, right? We, uh, we fear that if we don't have the right tool, we're not going to have a successful result. I totally, totally disagree with that philosophy. Um, I believe if you create from the heart with what you have nearby, how can you go wrong? All right, let's do it. Let me zoom in a little bit. Uh, I think I'm just gonna throw down some colors and lines and, and not even really— I don't even know. And that's part of the fun also, just coming on, winging it, and just creating something. All right, let's do it. Hey, Edie's in the house! Edie, good to see you. I, I hope you're having an awesome Friday. I am just, just started. I am just throwing down colors and lines on here. I am not creating anything specific right now, just having fun throwing down some color. It's a great, great question. And we'll just spend a couple minutes on this. We'll see where, where it goes. And then, um, we're going to jump to the NYC Sketchbook and I'm going to throw down some acrylic loose, loosey-goosey backgrounds. So stay tuned for some up coming wonkiness. I don't know what to use there. All right, so here's the vibe I'm getting. I am getting a shipping container vibe here. Um, maybe I'll show some weathering, aging shipping containers, and it's probably because that's what we're doing in school for one of our architecture class projects. They have to take, um, 3 shipping containers— this is hypothetical— and create a, some kind of a building with a minimum of 3 shipping containers through sketching, model building online. They can use a few different apps. They can even use Minecraft if they want to create this very conceptual kind of project. So I just think I have shipping containers on my brain right now. And I'm going to add some white gel pen on top of this, and it'll really pop out, uh, kind of the, the metal siding you see on shipping containers. Uh, what do I want that one to be in the background? I have one kind of horizontal I want it to pop. Hmm, what could I pop it with? You know what, instead of making it pop— well, let's see, I'm gonna throw this color here in the background. Cool. Sunny, toasty NYC. Oh my gosh, yeah. What did the temps get to in NYC today? I can only imagine. I don't know what the high here in Jersey was. I do know when I got into my car after school, the car did say, uh, it was 91. And I never know if that's the inside car temperature or the outside air temperature. And my classroom was a little warm today, it was like 78, 79 degrees, and that's a bit steamy, a bit steamy inside. All right, let's zoom in, let's throw some of this gel pen on here and you can I'm gonna try to get what's in my brain out on paper, which is always the fun challenge with sketching. Or, you know, even when I'm designing, you know, architecture, you know, I can picture things in my brain pretty dang good. The trick is getting that, getting that out of my head and onto paper. That's the fun challenge. So I'm just drawing kind of the ribbing of the corrugated, uh, the corrugated metal siding on the shipping containers. I could— you can give it a little bit of ribbing maybe here. So here's what I'm— here's what I'm thinking. I can exaggerate a little bit. I probably would have weathered this more, some more turquoise, maybe a little orange. But, and then I'm going to just give it a little edge here just to— so it has that kind of ribbed feeling to it. Boom. All right, you can see that. Boom. Yes, Edie, exactly. I'm picturing a skyway between the buildings, 100%. So you are in my brain. Which can be a scary place, just saying. Um, yeah, so we have the skyway back here, so good call on that one. All right, I've been waiting to do this. Hello, Nzimbu on Instagram, hope you're doing well. I've been waiting to break out— I am loving this pen, or markers, I guess they are acrylic marker. Here's what I love about it, the dot. And I know, I know, I get excited over crazy things, but I have to say, this is a find for me. I have never seen a marker with this kind of dot. And what's cool is I can use it to kind of, you know, maybe these are rivets holding the steel panel to the frame. They should be more in perspective, but that's okay. But yeah, um, it's just cool. It's a cool kind of texture you can add on here. Shows up really well on the dark areas. And let's pull out that— let's— yes, we have a psychic connection. Um, love that. Let me— let's pull out the Skybridge in the background a little bit. And I am going— the white gel pen's not going to really show that well on here, I don't think. No, I'm going to pull the edge out with a Sharpie. I kind of want the edge of this this container back here to pop out. Uh, all right, there we go. So we're just going to do that. Boom. Do some hatching underneath. I think I'm losing the, the juice in this marker, so let's switch. We'll pull out this edge as well. Here we go. Yes, I made— this is a shipping container building. And let's put a window in the sky bridge here. Here we go. I think that's pulling out a little bit more. It's looking kind of cool. I don't know if I'll do NYC this weekend. I think it's supposed to be rainy. I definitely can't do it tomorrow. If maybe Sunday. Kind of just playing it by ear, but probably not. I really have, um, work I need to catch up on here, and school's almost out for the summer, so that'll be awesome. I'll have— be able to definitely head into NYC more this summer, so that is cool. I'm looking forward to that. Check out some new coffee places, maybe that would be cool. Obviously continue sketching, do some vlogging. So much fun. All right, I need to color the— add a color down here. I'm going to keep it simple. Let me find a— I just want to do like a gray wash. What did I use? I used something the other day for a nice gray. Before I do that, I just pulled out the sepia marker. Let's use a sepia on here. Let's see, sepia. And I'm going to take our Aqua Brush. We're just going to bleed that sepia a little bit just to tarnish these containers a little bit. So that's sepia watercolor marker. I have an Aqua Brush, and I'm literally just adding water. I really just want to grunge these up. So I love doing industrial, grungy kind of architecture sketches. You know, picture rusty metal buildings, warehouses, old, old warehouses. It's just, it's a vibe and aesthetic I really love, and I haven't done a lot of that type of sketching lately, but we're going to get back to it. Uh, these watercolor markers are pretty fun to use. So you can see adding that, it's kind of grunging it up a little bit, a little bit of weathering, a little bit of staining kind of happening. We'll do the same thing over here, throw down some marker, and then we'll just take our Aqua Brush. Aqua Brushes are awesome. Here's a pro tip, um, if you're traveling out and about with your sketch stuff, you're like doing ink washes or even watercoloring Aqua brushes are amazing, right? You just fill it with water, grab and go and carry. So I try to take one of these with me in my bag. So yeah, using— I recommend using Aqua brushes, such a great tool. But you can see this kind of grunging up the ship and containers a little bit. And what's going to really make this pop, I'll show you. I'm just going to add a little more grunge here. Maybe do some under here, make some shadows kind of happening. That works cool. Edie says the paper doesn't, uh, doesn't cockle with all that water on it. Yeah, so this paper— that's a really good question. This is very, very thin paper. You can see it. What is the weight on this paper? Dang. Um, let's see, is it on here? I wish I knew the weight. I can't remember. Maybe it's like 65 GSM. It's really thin, so the paper buckles. It does buckle. You can see the back side here getting a little wrinkly here. Um, so you can't add tons and tons of water on this paper, but you can still do a light wash. So it's really perfect for that. So great, great question. If you want to get really into really heavy washes, obviously go with a thicker paper. I usually like to use 140-pound watercolor paper, cold press I usually use, which has a texture. Although I am liking uh, hot press paper more and more these days. So hot press is a smooth kind of finish, like this is very smooth. So great, great question. All right, let's add— I definitely want to pop some turquoise on here, or sorry, light aqua, my number one favorite color right here, color pencils, light aqua. I know it's upside down. Boom. Um, and I love using the Prismacolor Premier water— no, these aren't watercolor— Premier colored pencils. They're not watercolor pencils. If you guys ever want to know what I'm sketching with, go, go to my website, The Inkspired Life. I-N-K spiredlife.com. I have a tools section. You can see kind of what I'm up to using these days for sketching, um, and there's a link on there as well. So the link is— we'll bring you and show you the tools I use to Amazon or Lockbee here. Boom! Hey, Courtney is on! Courtney, how are you? So awesome to see you. Amazing. AKA Courtney, AKA Amazing. So good to see you, man. You, you have left an impact on me after I met you. I don't know, there was something about your vibe, your positivity, I really, really loved. So thanks for making a positive impact on me, Amazing. Maybe it was because amazing was your favorite word. Um, so yeah, so I'm picturing like a shipping container building happening. Of course we gotta pop on some neon yellow. I love, I love the look of the yellow next to the purple. It's just such a cool color combo. All right, so way back when I was looking for gray to throw down on the road, but you know what, let's, let's do keep demoing. I'll show you guys, like, I'll do a wash down here and we'll show you the back side of the page. We'll see how much actually bleeds through or doesn't. Um, let's see, I'm gonna lose the bottom edge of the container, but I'm gonna bring it out. I got an idea, so stick with me as I kind of just play around here. All right, so imagine we got like a kind of grungy kind of pathway happening here. Hello Louise, good to see you over on Instagram. Hope you're well. Thanks for tuning in. Wait, do we tune in on social media or do we join in? Or sign in or log in. What do we do, guys? Let me know. What do we do on social media? Log in, sign in, join in? It doesn't matter as long as you're here chilling out. I love, love, love that. All right, so we kind of like a dirt path. Here's something I want to mention about using these watercolor markers. Um, if you notice here, it left kind of a stain, and once the paper sucked in the marker, I couldn't bleed it with the water, so it's kind of just stained it. It's a look. Normally what I do, and I didn't do tonight, is I will take the watercolor marker. Let's grab a scrap here. We can just do it on here. Normally I would throw the watercolor marker down on scrap piece of paper. I don't know if it's going to work. Lift it off and then paint with it. Sorry, I have a cap in my mouth. Um, yes, that was a bonus tonight. I was talking with a pen cap in my mouth. Um, but when you do that, when you lift the marker off another surface and paint with it, you don't get that kind of staining effect. But if you like it, I mean, that's cool too. Uh, let's see, grab some water. Edie says, wonder how practical these shipping container buildings are. I wonder if it's like being inside a trailer home. Yeah, good question. So shipping container homes Um, have come a long, long way. You can Google it and you'll find thousands and thousands of designs. Some of them are really, really awesome inside, especially when you stack, you know, a couple next to each other and open them up and get kind of an open floor plan. There are some really, really, really cool shipping container buildings So it's a really— it's a valid question. Google, uh, check out Starbucks shipping containers. So Starbucks has used shipping containers for some of their, their buildings, um, and some people hate them, some people love them. It depends. I, I, I do happen to like shipping container buildings, um, when they have a certain function and aesthetic to them. So good question. And it's kind of cool to see them being used, you know, for buildings and not being dumped into the ocean, because there are so many shipping containers just hanging around that could use a good home. He says, I don't have any social media, I'm too wary of having my ID Stolen. Awesome. So Edie, you don't have your own like YouTube or Instagram and all that? No, I get it. That makes sense. I totally got it. Well, I'm so happy that you join us here on our live streams. It's always great having you in the house. So this is looking kind of cool. I'm going to add, I think, a little bit more to it. I might just end up doing this sketch, but there's something happening I want to show you close up down there. So if you look at the bottom, if you look at the bottom here, it kind of looks like— and I think it's the paper, the paper is being lifted off a little bit, and it almost looks like specks of like dirt happening, which is kind of cool. That's— so that's unplanned, it's just a paper really starting to tear a little bit because I am using a lot of water. If you flip over ED here, you can see the wrinkles are happening. Not the ones here on my face or forehead, the wrinkles on the paper. Major wrinkle-age. So yes, this paper is not designed for a lot of water, but you can do light washes. Pretty cool, right? Um, what else do I want to add to this? Hmm, I'm loving— I'll show you, I'll show you what else I'm loving. We might just do this sketch tonight, guys. I mean, I might. I'm so tired. When I'm tired, bear with me, I can't talk. My brain is so much faster than my mouth. I kind of sound like I'm slurring my speech. And I, I don't drink, um, so it is just tired brain at work here. Look at that. So I really love the colors happening up in here—orange, turquoise, a little bit of that brown, sepia, and yellow happening. So let me zoom in. That's such a cool color palette. Let me zoom out. We can see this whole thing framed. Boom shakalaka! There you go. This is fun. Oh my gosh, this is a fun little sketch, guys. I didn't— uh, yeah, so when I started the show, I was, you know, as often I really don't know where I'm gonna go with my sketching, especially when I just start off with quick loose sketches. So it's fun to see what happens. Sometimes it's just color, sometimes it's lines, sometimes it's buildings, uh, skylines. But this This is kind of a cool little shipping container scenario here. I also love layering these color pencils on top. I feel like I need a little bit of orange in here. Let's actually break out— I have orange in here. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, I know, I get excited over color. I am— I'm the dude who likes to watch paint dry. Yeah, imagine date night. But here we go, right? This is a cool color. This is Neon Orange. Let's throw some Neon Orange on here. A shipping container art gallery would be a unique and artsy way to sell art. Oh, I love that, Edie. That's ingenious. I wish, I wish I could buy a shipping container and turn it into a, like, an art gallery. I'm loving that. Great idea. What I'm also loving— I don't know if it's picking up on camera, guys, but This neon orange over the red, this killer— this killer— this color is killer. This color is killer. Oh my God, I am cracking myself up. I can't, I can't talk tonight. This color is killer. I'm gonna get close and see if you can see what I'm seeing here in the real world. It is— oh my God, this is spectacular. Who needs to go to the movies? You can make your own color at home. Can you guys— can you see the orange on top of the red here? That's pretty sick. Yeah, I love that. OMG, that is my find of the night right there. Neon, neon orange over that red marker. Ay, Chihuahua, that is amazing. All right, so yes, you're getting a little glimpse of what it's like when I'm like in school teaching. I sometimes get— I love what I'm doing so much, I sometimes get so hype about it. And the kids, some kids dig it, some are like, you have too much energy, you have too much energy. It's fun. Yeah, look at the neon pink down here. Neon, neon pink next to aqua is always a winning color combo. So neon pink. And for me, colors are really subjective, very personal. I might love something that you may hate, and that's okay. That's why I said at the beginning, we create— create from your heart, create from your feelings, create from your emotions, because then it's personal to you. And don't worry, there will always be haters out there. Don't let them stop you. Don't let them, uh, force you to change direction. Be true to you, and you will, um— I feel like if you're true to yourself and put good out there, you will get good back. Be a good person. I hope you're enjoying the sketch tonight, going down a little different path, and there's nothing wrong with that. What time is it? Oh, it's 10:34. It's okay, no school tomorrow. I had— I just have work to do. Tomorrow's a working day. Hey, Gigi's in the house! Holy cow, Gigi is up late tonight. How are you? So good to see you. Um, yeah guys, this has been a fun, fun sketch here. I kind of don't want to stop. Should I stop? Let me know in the comments, guys. Put stop if you've had too much of me. Just put stop in the comments. I'm not saying that I will, but let's hear what you think. GG, I hope you're having a great, great day. Hope you stayed nice and cool in the Big Apple there. I know this weather has been cray cray. I do want to throw some red pen on here. Be you, be humble, be kind, and true love will follow you. Oh, that is going on the quote board. That's going on the wall. Oh, up watching the game. Well, that's cool. How's the game going? I meant to put this one up there. How's the game going? I, I have to be honest, I am, I am not into the hype for the game. I think it's really cool and exciting for the city, 100%, but I'm not— I am not following it. I'm one of the— one of those people out there, I guess, one of those lame people. But I think it's really so exciting for New York City, and I hope you're enjoying it. Anyway, I thought— I like what you said there. That's 100%. I agree 100% with that. Boom. I'm so happy I finally restocked on some markers. So I have purple back in the house. I have— gosh, what other colors? I think I needed yellow. I got more yellow. So I'm super excited. So my fave fan faves are back in the house, and they'll be making appearances on upcoming shows. Cool. Difficult to see, see you live nowadays. Hi Gigi. Yeah, it's probably— if it's because of me, I get it. Yeah, my schedule's been cuckoo cuckoo, so I apologize. But guys, I am— my goals, um, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, live streaming. Usually I'm probably— I'm gonna try to stick to like 9 o'clock PM. Now the summer's coming, I'm gonna have much more time, and I've been working on some, you know, an architectural project as well, so that's been taking up my nights. So I appreciate you guys sticking with me through my irregular time schedule. It means the world to me that you guys tune in, watch, comment. And just spread real positive vibes and love out there in the chat. So thank you so much, I, I appreciate y'all. Look at that red, that's awesome. Wow, I honestly thought I would spend 10 minutes with a quick sketch and this has turned into about 40 minutes on this one this one piece, but I actually really am loving it. I miss my grungy industrial vibe sketching. Art by Terry. So, so, Art by Terry on Instagram pop on and off. Instagram's been a little active. We had sketches and some, and then Nzimbo was on, and then Courtney was on, and Louise and an art buy was on there, so cool. We gotta get— we gotta get the Instagram people to stay longer or pop over to YouTube. If you have suggestions, let me know. How do we get my Instagram peeps to join the YouTube? I think they'd have more fun interacting and maybe stick around longer. Oh man, I love throwing this red on here. Holy cow, I'm in heaven tonight, guys. Midtown is always nuts, or at least noisy. Oh yeah, Midtown's going crazy. I saw some footage. Holy cow. Yeah, all the action, a lot— tons and tons of people. It's incredible, right? Hey, Nightbot's on, guys! Nightbot made an appearance, so Nightbot is in the house. Hello, Nightbot! Edie's a— Edie, I know you're a big fan of Nightbot. I wonder if it pops on after 40 minutes, because that seems to be like when it popped on. All right guys, maybe this one is done. Am I starting to overwork it? Maybe-ish. I think we'll wrap in about a minute or two. We'll zoom out, get the full picture. All right, so you guys, this is a cool example. This is how my creative brain works. One day we could be sketching irises. This is a Kick A sketch. I really like it. Um, and then the next day we could be doing shipping containers. We're all over the place. Next day we might go to Starbucks. I love the Starbucks sketch in here. It's kind of— it was a fun one to do. I gotta start doing more like Starbucks in-person place sketching. So we got Starbucks as well. Um, yeah, don't be afraid to broaden your horizons. Try different things, sketch different subjects. Uh, if you're a musician, try different types of music. If you're a baker, try venturing away from your favorite chocolate chip recipe to something different, right? Step out, step up, step into a different kind of love. You can quote me on that. I forgot what I said, but it sounded good at the time. Um, I'm just organizing. I have stuff falling behind me here. All right, all right. Uh, you block Nightbot so it doesn't affect you. Wow, that is so smart. I honestly didn't know. I think you mentioned last time, but I didn't— I didn't know Nightbot could be blocked. This needs some green, by the way. We need a little bit of green. Now we're— now the shipping containers are like glowing with toxic waste or something. It's like neon now. Um, well, that is Nightbot's lost. See what you did, Nightbot? You're evil. You have people blocking you. What's up with that? I'm just kind of adding a little bit of green to, to our kind of pathway here. Can never go wrong with chartreuse, one of my fave colors. All right, I'm going to clean up, wrap up, and we'll chat on, chat on the way out. So I'm going to put some pencils back into my— I love this case. Yep, of course it's Lockbee. Guys, please, if you love this— I love this gear so much. EDC gear, everyday carry, whether it's Lockbee Quattro, this thing, which is this, or the folio I'm working on. Check them out, you won't be disappointed. Use my discount code INKspired, I-N-K-spired. Save a little bit of money. Um, I've— I started using the front pockets on these even more just to slip more pens in there. So my goal is when I travel urban sketch, I want to have minimal stuff with me. I'm finding these dang pocket— I'm sorry, these Quattros hold a lot of stuff I need. So between this and this, I could be happy Just taking these two things out, urban sketching. As long as I have paper, I'm always paranoid I don't have enough paper. Um, take these, or even a— I also like to usually carry some kind of Moleskine, either this one, um, this is one new one I'm using, or I love, you know, I love the, uh, accordions as well. They're small, fit in my pocket. And then Moleskine has a really another small sketchbook that I love so, so much. That I usually carry in one of my pockets. It actually fits in on the strap of my, my, like, what do you call that thing, my sling I wear sometimes. I can fit the Moleskine in the pocket, phone pocket. Here it is. This is the other size I love right here. So if I could only carry two things with me Wow, it's tough. I would carry definitely this, and if I had to choose the Folio or the Moleskine, I think I would take the Moleskine because I could fit it in my pocket. So I would take these right here, and then top 3 right here. So I'll just give you a little peek of the kind of stuff I like to sketch with. Cool. Alrighty guys, so tonight I did not unfortunately do any new backgrounds in our NYC Sketchbook, the calendar one. So I wanted to lay out two more backgrounds here, so maybe I'll hit those, um, maybe livestream them early tomorrow, or I'll just do them so they're ready to go. I I love the way the United Nations building turned out. I've gotten some pretty good feedback on it. So, and here it is framed. So this could be a really cool frame print. Hey, does the UN have a gift shop? Does anybody know? Does the UN have a gift shop? I'm curious because it would be kind of cool to see if I could sell these at a gift shop or something. Yeah, cool stuff. All right guys, let's go to the— we'll end with the heart-to-heart cam. I love the heart-to-heart cam, and I'm just warning you, I did not do my hair. I just like saying that all the time. Um, this is about being real, being you, being who you are, showing up, creating something, and just being an awesome— not just me, but in general, just being a positive. Just be positive. All right, switch to the cam. Let's just put the stuff here. We'll wrap. Oh, let's see. Yeah, let's see kind of what kind of view we're gonna get. Boom, heart-to-heart cam. I got, I got, I got Chris Cornell in my ears singing right now. All right, let's switch. Oh, we're live! There we are, cool. We'll shift a little bit. Can you hear me? Hopefully you can all hear me. All right, cool. Um, so one of the things I love about this camera is just so you can see the cool artwork behind me. Lots of sketches. I love the Once Upon a Time. That is a blown-up poster version of a very small sketch I did back in 2001. 2001. Um, no need to do hair. Thank you so much, I appreciate that. Uh, here we go. So a couple things. Numero uno, numero uno, uh, I really want to thank you guys for sticking with me, my wonky schedule. I've been asked— I've been streaming for I don't know how many years, 5, 6, maybe 6, 7. Sorry, I'm a teacher, I hear it all day long. Um, I guess I need to work on consistency with live streaming, so I'm trying for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and weekends, Saturday or Sunday, depends how it's going. Tomorrow will not be live streaming. Tomorrow night we have a, a wedding thing to go to. Um, so anyway, thank you for sticking with me. And what I really, really, really love about you is the positive vibes that you bring to the community. It's a small community we have, and that's cool because for me it's about the quality of a person and not the quantity. I'm not here to win YouTube medals or plaques and all that stuff. If it ever happens in the future, cool. What I hope to do through this small community online is to spread positive vibes. So Positivity through creativity. Be an encourager for you to not be afraid to express your creative voice in whatever manner it is. If it's painting, sketching, drawing, singing, cooking, athletics, um, it doesn't matter. We all have a unique way to express who we are. And let's do it in a positive, positive way. All right, so with that, until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and embrace imperfection. New podcast episode coming out this weekend, Sunday, probably Sunday evening, so look out for that. Uh, if you're not following me on my new podcast Simply Being Human, check it out on YouTube. Not YouTube. Yeah, it's on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple. And I'm hoping to get some interviews up and maybe post them late summer or fall. So that's the scoop. I'll see you when we sketch again. Enjoy your weekend. Enjoy the basketball games. Enjoy whatever is going on in your unique world. I am looking for the finish button. There it is. Peace out.