Sunday Sketching : July 13, 2025

Hey, happy Sunday, July 13th, 2025. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life, where I love sketching architecture and urban sketching. Um, just thanks for joining me on Sunday sketching. I'm just popping on here at a very random time, which I seem to be pretty good at, um, and I just felt like sketching St. Patrick's Cathedral, so you'll see a little image on the screen. Um, I have my sketchbook here, so I'm sketching it just so you— if you want to follow along, I am sketching with Fabriano 1264 watercolor paper, cold press. Got my trusted Sharpie, some color pencils, some watercolor, and a graphite stick. So this is what I have out. We'll see what we use or don't use. Um, yeah, so if you're having an awesome Sunday, I will be checking the chat. Feel free to look in. I'm also gonna be playing some music, so you'll be hearing more music than me talking, so might be a welcome change. Um, you guys are awesome. All right, let me do this. Let's put some music on. Hey Laura, good to see you. Hope all is well. Awesome, glad you're taking a break. I knew you were having a creative weekend. That's awesome. Thanks for joining. trying to get through the rest of the artist lessons from the Make Create Express weekend. That is awesome. I'm sure you're learning a lot. Um, what a great environment, right, to be able to do something creative and push your limits, maybe learn something new. So awesome. Hey, DB says, wow, looks great. DB, hope you're doing well. It's great to see you. All right, so this is a St. Patrick-inspired— just, it's kind of sketch. I'm throwing down some colors on it. I'm going to add some different layers. I'm just going with colors I feel like going with. No, St. Patrick's is not yellow nor red, um, but that's why I just love adding color and adding color to— adding color with, um, whatever I'm feeling. I'm trying to mute myself on, uh, I'm streaming on Instagram and YouTube and I have Facebook and I hear myself on Instagram, so I'll figure out how to mute myself on Insta, on the Insta as the kids say. Um, let's see. What the heck? Bizarro. Usually I can see— usually I can see the mute button, but I can't see Yeah, I'm here. Let's see, mute site. All right, I just muted myself on Instagram. I was hearing echo, it was driving me crazy. I mean, just hearing myself talk once is enough, but like 2, 3 times, like an endless— I was like stuck in the— is it The Matrix? No, what's that movie with, uh, the dream within a dream within a dream? Oh yeah, Inception. I was like hearing myself in Inception mode and it wasn't stopping. Um, but I think we're good now. Let me know if you can hear me. If you don't know if you can hear me on the socials right now, I lowered the music. I had the music on kind of loud. I haven't streamed with music in a while. Um, let me know if you're watching live, does music really make or break the video? Would you rather hear or not hear it? I'm just curious, just curious to know what you guys think. I want to make this enjoyable for you. I'm getting crazy here with colors. I was originally going to keep just this black and white, you know, just a Sharpie, and then And then, you know what, I kind of just felt like being really playful. So it's always fun to break out colors, be experimental, be playful. I'm not expecting any results other than, uh, I need to come on and actually just have a little fun, change my mindset. I've been really tired today and I needed a little creative energy, and this is This is fueling me up. I should have done this hours ago today, but I gave into the nap monster and decided to take a nap. I've just been drained. It was a really busy week last week. Appointments, unexpected appointments. And not complaining, just saying it was busy, so it all just kind of hit me today. Ever happen to you? Sometimes you're so busy and then you find a moment, a break, and it all just kind of boom, it just piles on you, right? Kind of just knocks you out. So I got knocked out today for 2 to 3 hour nap, maybe. Of course, I didn't do the things that I really need to be doing today, like paperwork and bills and all that fun stuff. The real world stuff. We'll get there. Next weekend I'm gonna be going into NYC and doing some sketching, so that'll be fun. Um, I love this pop of— I don't know what color this is, guys. I'm not good with color names. I just kind of go with what I like, what I see. It's a yellow-orange. I call it taxi cab yellow. It reminds me of taxi cab yellow or school bus yellow. Um, I like Taxi Cab Yellow because when I hear taxi cabs, I just think more adventure. But I just layered on a lot of that paint on the brush and less water, and I just like the intensity, the pop of it. So it's a really cool way to— instead of adding layers and layers on top of layers, you can really intensify your watercolor by just going really thick Less water, thick paint, and then you'll get it. You can kind of see it happening there. I should zoom in a little bit. Where's she? Oh, that might be better. All right, all right, you guys can hear me now. I like hearing it, but you need to find a balance. Yeah, you're right, but then I'm not one of your most prolific watchers. Bora, any second you watch me is valuable, and I always appreciate your time. So, and your input is really, really appreciated. Indian yellow, maybe. Yeah, maybe it's Indian yellow. Here, I'll hold it up closer. So this is what I'm talking about here. I call this lemon yellow. This is like the, um, taxi cab yellow. We got turquoise, we got— we have a blue, we have a brown, orange. I know that's Sap Green because I'm pretty fussy with green. I don't really like many greens, but I do like Sap Green. Yeah, so I am not one of those, um, those creatives, one of those sketchers, one of those watercolor guys. I am not technically minded, no formal study This is just all grab-and-go gut creating. Grab-and-go gut creating. Um, I just kind of pick what I like, and for me, that's the joy of it. Um, and I admire everybody out there that can memorize colors, and that's amazing. My brain capacity— yeah, I am lucky to remember remember what I ate this morning, which was, uh, I'm gonna have this one. Yogurt. I had some yogurt, some Coco— it's called Coco June yogurt. Am I saying that right? Coco June. It's like a coconut yogurt, non-dairy. I love it. It is so good. But, uh, so you can see how that yellow really pops. Boom! I'm loving it. So cool. Donna says Under the Sea. Sounds weird when I say Donna. DB, DV, Under the Sea Green is a favorite of mine. Awesome. By the way, DB, thank you for signing up for the Rust and Render sketching workshop that's on July 26th. Uh, I might end up changing the date. I will keep you posted and and, uh, I'm not having many people sign up for it. I think I picked a bad day. I've had some messages where people are away, and actually 3 messages people are just not available. So I might switch today, but I'll talk to you, DB, um, through Messenger, and I can either— if I change the day, I can give you, um, your money back, or, or we can still go do one-on-one if you still want to come online. That's cool. We'll figure it out. Um, but yeah, anyway, the workshop is still available. I'd love to get people to sign up. There's a link on the screen. We're going to be sketching, but we're going to be taking structures like this one here. Let me just pop it on screen. Uh, SteelStacks. Boom. I love the SteelStacks facility. It's crazy. A lot of shapes, a lot of colors. Old industrial. And my idea with the workshop is to take this structure as inspiration, and we're just going to break it up into two shapes and colors. And really, the idea is just to have a playful couple of hours together where we see something that's very, very busy, a busy structure, and we could simplify and break it down. So that's what the Rust and Render Sketching Industrial Workshop is— it's virtual via Zoom. Did I say May 26th? That's my anniversary. Uh, July 26th. Wait, I'm so confused. Yeah, July 26th, 2025, from 8 o'clock PM to 10 o'clock PM Eastern Standard Time. Um, yeah, there's a link there and also in the comments. All right, I'm loading this up with lemon. I call this lemon yellow. We're gonna get a little pop of freshness on here. Notice I'm just hitting this in certain places. I am not trying to fill in complete areas. It's looking like it's— oh, it's looking like it's backlit now. Yeah, I love that. I love that with the, um, what you're seeing with the lighting there. We can close this image. I'll make this a little bigger actually too. That's so cool that you're seeing that. Love it. Uh, that's fine, just whenever you can make it happen. Keep the feed full of time. DB, you're awesome. We'll, we'll make it happen, don't you worry. You are amazing. All of you guys that watch me and comment and say hello and show your work are inspiring. I love seeing what you guys are making. All right, I got enough watercolor on there. Let's break out We're gonna break out, um, got some colored pencils here, but I think we're going to take some Creative Markers. All right, what I'm about to show you, if you're watching, I'm going to show you my new secret sauce for adding color onto sketches. All right. So here's the secret sauce. I am going to— let's see, I am going to shut that music off. I don't want you guys to miss this. I'm just going to play music that I can hear. I can't play this out loud. There we go. All right, here we go. My secret sauce for adding color is within this really cool Lockbee, um, Love this color, Lockbee, if you're watching. It's called Honey. Oh yeah, love it. There's a link in my comments to Lockbee stuff. You can save 10% if you use my discount code. And it's a Lockbee plug, I know. I just plug them because I love, love, love, love them. But inside I have the secret sauce right here. Sharpie creative markers are the bomb. I love these things. For adding pops of color that dries quickly. Holy cow, let's just pull out— yeah, we got to pull it out. This is my favorite, absolute favorite color is turquoise. That is— hold on a sec, um, don't use that one. I'm looking for one I've already used. Go for it, just break into it. All right, we'll break into it. All right, so watch how this color just kind of— it'll just pop off the page. Um, I love it so much. So this is the Creative Marker. Boom! See how I'm just adding that pop? So this is really, this is really the secret sauce. If I'm out urban sketching, which you guys know I'm a huge fan of, and I'll be doing next weekend in NYC. I bring these Creative Markers because I love adding watercolor, but you have to wait for it to dry. These things, you don't have to wait to dry. You just throw them on and they dry pretty much instantly. So I just— I'm just going to throw in some touches here and there. If you've been watching from the beginning, you can see this is kind of about layers, right? We started with a Sharpie layer, some watercolor, and now we're doing some creative markers. Um, it's fun just to build this, this up. Hey, Sketches and Some, if you're over there on Instagram, great to see you, Mel. Hope all's well. Mel is, uh, Mel inspires me, guys. He's an amazing, amazing Um, Sketcher, check him out. Sketches and Some is his Instagram name. Thanks for popping on, Mel. I appreciate you so much, man. Right, so you could just see I'm just kind of pulling out different pieces of the cathedral with this. I just want to do a demo for you guys with the creative markers. Um, they come in so many, so many different colors. I stocked up on them. They were on sale. I think I got like 50% off. Months ago, so I bought tons of them. Uh, what else? What's another good color? I actually like to use the yellow on this, red, all the colors on these. Orange, you know, we don't have on here. Let's pop some orange on. So if you guys join the Rust and Render industrial sketching architecture sketching workshop, I'll be using these different medias on there definitely a Sharpie. I'll break out the Creative Markers. I'll break out colored pencils as well. We'll do that here on this sketch too. And it's just— it's fun to mix and play with different media. And sometimes I go overboard, which is okay, and it's fun. Yeah, that's, that's why I'm doing this, guys. I'm not feeling orangey too much right now. I'm actually feeling red, so let me grab my, uh, for red I like to use Pilot Precise Pens. I'm gonna go to red color. Hey Janice, good to see you, Janice. Hope you're doing well. Janice says my happy place is Rockefeller Center. Yeah, right? I love The Rock. Oh my God. Um, I could hang in that area for hours and hours. St. Patrick's— I love the Atlas statue. There's just something about that sculpture, that statue, that fascinates me. And I, I've tried sketching it many times. Not great, but it's fun to try to capture it. So, Janice, yeah, I love Rockefeller Center. Great location. Uh, Jennifer Thistle, hey Jennifer, how are you? Great to see you over there. Hope you're doing well. So what I like to do with the red is sometimes I'll— in my sketches, I like to do a continuous line, almost like a ribbon around the sketch. It's not always red, it's different colors, but I'm using red today. I feel like I just visually like the look of having this kind of outline around part— it doesn't have to go around the whole sketch, but part of it at least. And I'm going to bleed some of this red and show you guys how the color, when it bleeds— so my definite go-to for red is the Pilot Precise Pen. Here, I'm just bleeding some of that red so you can kind of see it. Can you guys see this okay, or should I zoom in closer? Let me know. Cool, right? Um, it's looking good. I don't think I'm going to do too much more in the way of color, but I do want to pop some things out. So we'll, we'll either come back with Sharpie, um, sometimes I think there's a Sharpie gel pen. This is a roller Sharpie roller pen just to pop out some details. Let's actually— I'll show you the roller pen. Uh, I am just rediscovering the love of ballpoint pens. I just ordered a bunch. I, I'm going back old school and I think I'm going ballpoint pens for a lot of upcoming sketches, so stay tuned for that. Genesis, closer please. You got it. Let me zoom closer, guys. Oh, there we go. I should have done this a while ago. Is that better? Now you can kind of see what I'm talking about. You see that red I just added? There. Uh, for me, Prometheus Design statue is great too. Yes, Janice, I agree with you. DB says pink. Oh yeah, DB, we gotta add our signature neon pink. Absolutely. I am never without my neon pink. Um, you could even see in the industrial sketches here, boom, pink. I got some pink there as well. It's 100% Pink. I want to pull out some, just some details. And when I say details, guys, this is not a highly detailed sketch at all. Uh, what I'm saying details is I want to just pull out maybe some of the window shapes, maybe some of the doorways, maybe do some hatch lines to add some shadows, create some depth. Actually, we'll do that right down here. So you can see I'm doing hatch lines. For even— for me, it's a great way of creating depth. I love this song. I'm actually going to turn off this image too. There we go. I'll use photographs as a starting point just to lay out something, and then I rarely look at them as I'm sketching. I have a photograph. If I want things to be exact, I'll look at my photo. It's a reference. It's, it's a starting point. I want this here to be me, not a photograph. So that's a difference for me between photography and, and sketching. Hopefully that makes sense. I'm loving this. This is looking actually really cool. Hello Prometheus statue. Yeah, the Prometheus statue. Yes, I knew what you meant, Janice. Alright, I'm gonna zoom out just a little bit so you can get the whole thing. This one might be done. At least for now, the man says as he's still sketching. Yeah, I like it. All right guys, let me know if you have any final questions, comments, or thoughts before I wrap up this, um, sketch of St. Patrick's Cathedral. What's really cool is every time I sketch it, it's always— it always comes out different, which is so fun. I'm not done. You know why? I forgot the pink. Let's throw some pink on here. I do like leaving a lot of that white space on there, so we'll leave, leave that. Let's see, we'll pop some there. Boom boom. And we'll do another little pink right down here. I usually like to do it in, um, 3 different areas. There's something magical about the number 3 in sketching and architecture. Don't, don't, don't— we got the pink on there, it's official! Let me zoom in. We'll pan around, you guys can see all this stuff close up as we wind down. All right, so let me zoom in and now you can see everything really close up. See how the colors are kind of mixing, matching, blending, melding, being wonky, being fun. I just want to keep describing this. This is fun. Um, how they're playing with each other, dancing with each other. Um, all right, you get the point. All right, you get the point. I'm being silly. All right, let's zoom. Actually, we'll do it the old school way. We're gonna use my hands. Lift it up. Boom. And let me just change— hopefully the lighting's okay, you guys can see it closer up. Oh my gosh, this almost looks— do you guys see what I'm seeing? This is so funny. Uh, let me get— let me just point this out here. Look at this kind of round window. I almost see like a pigeon or a bird sitting there, just, just the way it came out. It looks to me, it looks like a bird. It's kind of funny. Let's get closer. Let's get closer to that bird. Sorry if it's a little shaky, guys. I'm— I am holding this with my hands. You can really get a sense now of just every— all the different media just kind of playing, playing together. Nicely in the sandbox of creativity. I just made that up. I kind of like the sound of that. Um, Laura says old school is always good. Thanks, Laura. Right, boom. And we'll just kind of go down a little bit and you can see the whole image. Ta-da! I almost want to do something with the white background, but not now. And this is in the city, so yeah, there are buildings surrounding this. If I bring that image up again— was that the image I used? I have a couple of St. Patrick's. I'm not sure if that's the one I used or not originally, but, but yeah, there's— there are buildings surrounding this. Um, I use Creative License and I, I just wanted to show St. Patrick's. I didn't I don't really want to show all the context around it in this sketch. And that's one of the cool things about urban sketching. You don't have to show every single thing that's around your subject. Um, sketch what you want to sketch. Even with the building here, maybe, maybe I only wanted to do a part of it, the window or the lower part or a doorway. It doesn't matter. Don't feel like when you're looking at buildings you have to sketch everything. Sketch what resonates, what connects with you. What do you find interesting when you're looking at a piece of architecture? Is it a door? Is it a window? Is it the roof? Uh, a stairway? Is it the overall shape of the building? Is it a color, a texture? So whatever connects with you is what you should be aiming to capture. Don't feel overwhelmed that you need to capture an entire building. Cool. All right guys, this has been so much fun on this Sunday. I'm so glad you were able to watch me. I know it was random. Sketching changed my state of being from that tired, tired, tired person I was an hour ago. I'm energized now. Gotta go. Yeah, it's about dinner time. Get that turkey out of the oven. I think it's out already. Um, yeah, get some dinner going. I appreciate you guys so, so much. Remember, uh, I do have an upcoming online sketching workshop July 26th. You can see the link on the screen. I don't know if I could— I'm not trying to point to it there. It's also in the comments. I also have a really cool sketch survival guide if you guys have not checked out this sketch survival guide. Um, I love this. I printed out copies. Let me zoom out. Let me show you guys this real quick. I'm not one to kind of plug what I— stuff I create, but I, I— this is fun. This is fun. Let me zoom out. All right, cool. So this is called the Sketch Success Survival Guide. Uh, it's printed out on computer paper. It's a PDF file you can download, and basically what it is, it's kind of a mindset Creative Mindset Guide with Sketch Prompts. It's not really a how-to sketch, it's more of how to approach sketching, how to think about sketching, how to think about creativity, um, and kind of, and things kind of like that. So creative mindset, think. I love this. Well, here's, here's one page. This is how to use this guide. I'm not going to read it all, but you can kind of see some of the things on there. So I created a map with 6 different areas based on the word sketch. So this is my sketch framework. Um, each one of these locations has different activities to inspire you in different ways. So for example, uh, the Comparison Free Coast. Sometimes we compare ourselves too much to other people and it stifles stagnates our creativity, right? So we want to be comparison-free. Um, and then I have each one of those locations has a little one-page with prompts on it, talks about mindset, things you can try, and as a journal prompt. So this is a really fun guide. You can download it. I have a link also in the comments to Sketch Survival Guide. And I hope you, uh, take a look at it. It's— it is $9.97, but I think it is worth it. Um, it's going to help you to sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly. Have an amazing rest of your day and have an amazing week. I'll pop on during the week at night, and hopefully we can connect again. Online on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook. And if you haven't already, make sure you like, subscribe, all those cool social media things, because let's get the word out there. My mission— one of my missions is to spread creativity, or use creativity to spread positivity. Thank you, guys.