Sunday Sketching

Hey! Happy Sunday— October 12th? Yeah, October 12th, 2025. Uh, I'm Jason Nicholas Nichols of The Inspired Life. Hope you're having an amazing day. Uh, it's just kind of the start of my day. It's 10 o'clock AM. Um, I've actually been up since 3:30 AM. Um, but that's cool. My pup woke me up and I kind of was up for a while, but I was happy to be here. And, um, before I shift into my Sunday, like, adulting chore world where I have to do paperwork and that fun stuff, I wanted to start, uh, with some sketching today just to get my brain going, get the creativity going, shift mindset, shift gears. So sketching is an awesome way to do that. Hey, good morning, Rin! Hope you're doing awesome. I see you on Instagram. Hope you're doing well. So a couple things I want to do. One is a quick, um, sketchbook tour of some sketches I did in New York City yesterday. And then talk about my upcoming sketching workshop about sketching fall barns, which you can kind of see here on screen. There's also a link on the bottom right of the screen, and there should be a link in the comments if you're interested in signing up and sketching fall-inspired barns. That would be cool. And I went to a pen show in New York City. Yes, a pen show. Um, interesting. Never been to one before, but I picked up a cool little pen. I haven't used it yet, so this is a fountain pen, so maybe we'll give that a quick try. All right, let me know where you're watching from. Let me know how it's going. Let me know what is going on in your world. Um, let me do a quick, quick little tour here. So I was in a few places yesterday in the city. It was awesome gray rainy day, which I don't mind. I actually like gray rainy days. Um, but our— the main focus for me going was going to a New York City Urban Sketchers workshop that was in Long Island City. Um, it was actually located in an old warehouse that's now like a brewery, um, type space. So it was really cool. It's called Fifth Hammer— Fifth Hammer Brewery, Long Island City. Shout out to them for kind of hosting the event. It was really, really cool. So whenever I'm sketching at these urban city events, I'm a, I'm a kind of a quick sketcher. I go from scene to scene, quick, loose, fast style. So you'll see that in my sketches today. I'm going to zoom in a little bit. Here we go. I think that's better. Um, this was just one scene kind of looking back at some— and I don't know technical terms— um, barrels and brewery equipment happening. I love the industrial vibe of it. I'll do another stream or I'll post pictures of the space as well. Um, but really, really fast, it had kind of these cool I guess like hoses or tubes or piping coming from the ceiling into the vats. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, brewery world, I, I don't know the lingo. Um, but yeah, it was a really cool space. Another quick sketch, um, here I was just going for a lot of different shapes. We have a concrete block wall, we have a ceiling fan in the background, some brick happening. And I'm actually going to throw some ink on here today. I'm going to break out some ink. I want to kind of give it more of an industrial feeling. And then here's just another quick sketch. Boom. So 3 quick sketches. Let's just throw some ink on these. So when I'm, when I'm trying to capture a space or the feel of a space, I'm, uh I'm not going for everything. I'm not going for every single detail you see. As you've seen in my sketches in the past, right, I tend to kind of focus on one, kind of one thing. And it's just all— it's always fast, loose, and quick. Um, there are people there yesterday in the Sketchers group that are incredible, incredible. Um, they could sit there and do an entire scene for a few hours and The work is amazing. Mine's really just about capturing a moment, capturing essence, capturing, uh, a speck in the, uh, dust bowl of time. I don't even know if that's an expression. Oh, just trying to capture a glimpse. You get what I'm saying. I'm talking too much because I just, I just ate a delicious donuts that I brought back yesterday from yesterday. Shout out to Dough Donuts, love that place. My favorite one is— there's one right, uh, adjacent to Rockefeller Center. And yeah, really love their stuff. I try to get there all the time when I go. And, um, really good stuff. And a shout out to Willie who works there, he's so nice, so kind. Just good people, good, good peeps. All right, so I'm going to zoom in. I'm throwing down some Apple Snail ink. Boom! Now you can kind of see it. When I'm out urban sketching, I don't usually bring my ink or watercolors. Um, I'll have, I'll have my Sharpie, I'll have some pens. I can actually— I'll just show you some of the things I brought. Let me just grab some stuff. So I'll just have my Sharpie. I'll bring different pens with me to use. Um, I'll bring my Sharpie Creative Markers as well. You know these things, love them. Shout out Sharpie! Because I want, I want materials that are going to dry quick. Where they don't need any drying time at all, because I'm kind of— I have to be honest with you, I'm kind of impatient. I don't, I don't like sitting there waiting for my paint to dry or my ink to dry. So I didn't have my Apple Snail ink, and I, I felt like it'd be cool, a cool industrial vibe color. Hope everybody's doing well that has been in the wake of the, uh, the nor'easter. We're gonna get some rain here in Jersey where I am, but I'm fairly far in coast, so I think it's more, um, more the coast that's going to get hammered. So hope you guys all do okay. We're gonna— we're just gonna get some rain, I think, here. Um, so look at this color, right? It, it has kind of that caramelly brown vibe to it, and I love it. For me, this is already starting to take on a different, different life. I'm actually being a little too careful. I'm thinking too much. Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or thoughts. All right, cool. I got some Apple, um, Snail Ink. What else can we add to bring this up a notch? I know, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm just gonna go for it. These are not the actual colors that were there, so when I throw down color, I just kind of go with my favorite colors, color palette, go with a vibe or a gut feeling as well. So I guess I, uh, I'm an emotional colorist. I don't know if that's a real thing, but I'm an emotional colorist. I just kind of go with my gut and grab and throw down colors. Otherwise, if I sit there and think too much and try to make it realistic, it kind of paralyzes me and I don't do anything. I'm just worried about— I always sit there and I would worry about picking the right thing for the right location. And using the right amount of color. I'm just grabbing and going. It's, it's more of a vibe kind of thing. Yeah, so this fire, fire orange color is not— what's it called— Inferno Orange is not there, but it's on my, it's on my sketch now. Hope that made sense. It's early on a Sunday morning. That don't usually make sense when it's not early. It'd probably make less sense earlier in the day. I'm sure I have some students that might agree with that. And maybe some that disagree. All right, I love this in color. It's like a highlighter yellow. Oh, I just dropped my brush. All right, cool. I'm going to throw down some yellow, then we'll, uh, maybe play around with that new pen I got yesterday, give it a try. Yeah, this will be kind of a quick stream this morning. I'll probably pop on a few times throughout the day, um, just for fun. Also just trying to promote this, this online Zoom workshop I have going on. Hey, I see Shy Ragusa online. How are you? I, I have— I don't know if you remember when we met. I think we met in Chester at one of the, um, gosh, at Chester when they had the art classes. I hope you're doing well. I love when I see your art posts. Your paintings. I think I took a workshop with you once, or we, or we did a workshop in class together. Awesome to see you. It was a long time ago. And Drawn24, if you're out there on Instagram, great to see you. Hope all's well. Um, yeah, you'll, you might notice things dripping, running down the page. Colors puddling up. That's intentional. I love that vibe. I actually have my sketchbook here up at an angle so that it's allowing the water and the colors to kind of run down and puddle up a little bit. There we go. This is definitely looking more, more fun and interesting than I think before. I'm losing a little bit of the red, but I'll come back and, um, we'll punch those red kind of— these are what I think these are, like some kind of tubes or hoses from the ceiling going into the, the vats. Again, I'm sorry, I don't know the names of— technical names of these, um, this brewery equipment. All right, cool. So, um, there was a pen show New York City yesterday. It's happening today as well, Midtown Manhattan, um, the Hilton. Really, it's on the second floor. If you go there, um, it does cost $25 to get in, which I've never been to one before. I— so I paid, uh, to see what it was like. Maybe a little expensive, I, I don't know. But, um, it's cool. A lot of different vendors, a lot. If you like fountain pens, it was like fountain pen heaven. I am not a fountain pen enthusiast. I don't really know much about that world. It is There's so much to the fountain pen world. Um, I saw fountain pens ranging from, you know, maybe, I don't know, $20, and then, not even kidding, $20,000. So some— there are serious, serious, serious fountain pen aficionados collectors out there. I'm a novice. You, you see what I use? Ballpoint pens, Sharpies. Lamy Safari is probably the most sophisticated fountain pen I use, and I love the Lamy Safari. It would have been cool if they had a— actually, Lamy, if you're hearing this, it would be cool if you had a table there next year. But I did pick up this little cool pen. It's a fountain pen. It is. I'll show you the tag. This is the box that came in. It's by Monteverde. It's called the Axis pen, and I thought it was cool. I liked the compact size of it. Here's a card that came with it. So they are not sponsoring, I'm just testing this out. I haven't actually— haven't even used it yet. I just put ink in it this morning. So it's cool, it has a magnetic enclosure. Here, you can hear this. There you go. So I just like that it's really compact and it's a cool orange color. They had different colors. I'll sketch with it. I'm just using the ink that came with it. They're like mini ink cartridges. Instagram, I'm sorry if you can't see this, it might be off the screen. I'm also streaming live on YouTube so you can see the whole image maybe better if you want to go over to my YouTube channel. Which is @theinkspiredlife. @theinkspiredlife. I'm always streaming on YouTube at the same time as Instagram and Facebook. I just know Instagram, I think, is just a wide or a vertical format on when you're watching it live, so it cuts out some of the stuff on screen. All right, so I'm just messing around this pen, just kind of throwing some ink lines down. So far I'm liking it. Has an interesting feel to it. Trying to hold it further from the nib to give me more looseness to it. And I'm going to move this to the side. Let's, um, let's just like a fresh sketch with it. We let this dry. There we go. Um, so for the fall— for the upcoming Sketching Fall Barns workshop, here are some examples of some of the types of sketching we'll do on the workshop. It'll be on Zoom October 26th, 8 to 9:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. There's a link on the screen, also in the I guess the comments or notes. Check it out, love for you to join. And here's another example. I love, love, love, love this one. Love the colors. All right, cool. All right, let's do a quick fresh sketch here. Maybe we'll just do some scribbles or something. I just want to play with this pen. Um, let's see, we'll do a barn. So I don't even know if this ink bleeds or not. I haven't tried it. We'll see. Zoom out a little bit. I'm sketching on cold pressed, 140-pound cold pressed paper. There's a little bit of texture, so it's not 100% smooth. Um, I find fountain pens that I have used sometimes don't like textured paper, so the rougher it is For me, fountain pens don't work that well. I kind of like it. Um, I like the way this pen is going down. You guys, you guys hearing any ASMR sounds? All right, so first try, really first sketch with this pen. Um, I'm liking it, guys. I'm actually liking it. Has a good feel in my, my hand here. It's kind of nice, lightweight. I love that it's compact. I'm just using the ink that came with it, so I don't really know much about the ink. Um, but let's see if the ink bleeds. I'm not sure. Let's throw some water on. Um, this is cool. Yeah, I think I'll be using it more. Just going to throw some water on here, see what happens. It's dirty water, so— oh yeah, so the ink bleeds. There you go, you can kind of see that bleeding happening. That's good to know. So Yeah, it's very cool actually. All right, so we got some bleeding ink. So that's why a lot— I'll say like 98% of times, 97.36% of the times— I'm just, just kidding. Um, I will start with a Sharpie marker because I know the Sharpie will not bleed. So I can then control where I want stuff to bleed. But I'm liking this. Also, check this out. I don't know if you guys can see this at home, but as the ink is bleeding, it's all— it kind of has a, um, some purples and yellows happening. Kind of cool. Hey, thanks for the thumbs up, appreciate it. Feel free to share this out with your friends. Give me some loving out there. I just want to spread positivity through creativity. Sketching is powerful. It is a powerful tool. There are so many benefits, um, just positive mental benefits and, um, yeah, mindset benefits and confidence-building benefits. And what's cool Um, you don't have to be perfect. My sketches aren't perfect. They're wonky, they're crooked, they're loose, sketchy. And that's a big mindset shift. Sometimes we feel like we need to be perfect. We want to use a ruler, draw precise lines, and that's cool if you like doing that. I don't have time. I just got to get stuff out of here, out of my head, onto paper. Yeah, this looks cool. I actually like the way this is bleeding. Sorry, and stuff, you can't see it all. Hey, Still Not Me, hey, great to see you on YouTube. Hope all's well. Thanks for watching on the YouTube, I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm really liking it. So this is a cool little pen. Again, no one gave this to me. I bought it yesterday, um, at the pen show. Didn't know anything about it. Excuse me. Don't know a lot about fountain pens, to be honest. I'm working on— you know what, I don't know if I could enter that world. It's so complicated, but it's incredible. It's— there's beautiful pens. I don't— it's not my vibe yet. So I'm going to stick to just very simple fountain pen tools. And I find this Axis here— here's a card that came in it from Monteverde— I find it to be a simple fountain pen, and I just love— here's what I really love about it: it's so small. Pretty cool. All right, let's throw down some more shadow. Let's bleed a little more ink on here. Actually, let's put some of the, uh, wet on top of the wet here. See how it bleeds. So I'm just throwing down some hatch lines where I bled some of that ink. Hatch lines are a really great way to add some shadows and some depth, and also to keep your sketch looking loose without, you know, coloring this in like solid black or gray. These loose hatched lines help to get that depth and keep it loose. Let's do some on here. Let's bleed a little bit of this ink. And there's also something very satisfying about a magnetic enclosure. Listen. Yeah. I kind of wish I could go back to the pen show today. I saw the vendor list. I looked at this— I didn't look at the vendor list yesterday, I just walked around. And I looked at the vendor list this morning and there's a company there that, um, I would like to go back and see their stuff, but I didn't see them yesterday. But it's $25 to get in, and then I take a bus into the city, so that adds another like $30-something. So it's an expensive trip in, but I love going to NYC so much. Cool. So I'm just bleeding some of the ink on the doors, right? Uh, where else do you stream? Hello, I stream on Instagram, I stream on Facebook, and I also have— I don't live stream that much on TikTok, but I do have a channel. Yeah, I'm really trying to grow my YouTube audience. I'd like to get, get to 1,000 subscribers before the end of October. Be cool to— be cool to start monetizing YouTube a little bit, but more importantly, be cool just to reach a lot of people. All right, cool, I like that. I don't know if I'm gonna add color to this one yet, or at all actually, right? So let's, let's go back to kind of the other sketches from the other day, right? We have a lot of colors on that. Boom. I kind of like the black and white. Awesome. Hey, I said thank you for following me, Still Not Who, um, on Instagram. I appreciate that. That's so cool. Do I, do I do colors? Let me, let me know in the chat, guys. Should I add color or not? Drink some coffee. And it's 10:30, so I'm gonna wrap up in a minute or two, and then I gotta do real world— well, this is real world stuff. I gotta do other real world stuff, like paperwork stuff, and I gotta get ready for school tomorrow. Um, students are off tomorrow. Awesome for them, they deserve it. Teachers aren't. We're working tomorrow. We got to do workshops, AI-focused workshops, which will be fun. I'm teaching, I'm teaching a workshop, but dang it, to be honest, I feel like we could use a day off too. It is what it is. It'll be fun. All right, guys. All right, we're gonna put this aside, we'll let it dry. Maybe I'll come back later and add to it. I'm probably streaming a few times throughout the day today to promote my, uh, upcoming workshop. So if you're interested in sketching fall-inspired barns— and what I mean by fall-inspired barns are just cool colors. Let me break out This is my fave. Hold on, it's in this sketchbook somewhere. That's fun, but this is my fave. This is my fave right here. It's always kind of fall colors— oranges and greens, yellows, reds, and I have some pink. So we'll be doing some stuff like that in the workshop. Cool. All right, this is drying nicely. Let's take a look at when I started before, when I first tuned in or live streamed. Um, so here's how this one's drying. Love this art style, what do we call it? Hey, Still Not Me. Um, I just call it loose style sketching. It's very, very loose, loose style sketching. Not an exciting name, but just loose style. I, I'm kind of a grab-and-go sketch and grab-and-go creativity. I just kind of capture a moment quick, loose, not thinking a lot about precision, clean lines. I just want to capture a moment. So here, hopefully that helps answer— I love, I love that question, by the way. So you can see how this is drying. I'll get a little closer. I like that we added that Apple Snail ink in the Inferno Orange. Uh, Inferno Orange is really cool. It has like gold flecks in there. I don't know if it's real gold or not. Might be hard to see, but, um, there's a little bit of shimmering going on, which is interesting. And we'll let this dry, and I'll come back and I'll punch out a few more things on there. All right guys, I think that's it for now. Um, I have to go do some paperwork. Thank you for watching. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life, where I love sketching architecture design. I love design stuff. Um, yeah, and urban sketching. I love to urban sketch. So until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and ink— inkspire endlessly. See you next time.