In this solo livestream, Jason Nicholas of The Inspired Life greets viewers and launches a "Surprise Sunday Sketch" session. He showcases a quick, loose sketch of New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, explaining its neo‑Gothic characteristics—pointed spires, pointed arches, gables, and circular (oriel) windows—while demonstrating his sketching process on a brown‑toned scrap pad using a retractable gel pen rather than a Sharpie. Jason then flips through several recent urban sketches from Midtown Manhattan, including the Bank of America Tower, 6½ Avenue pedestrian arcade, and other color‑enhanced studies. Throughout, he offers practical tips (pen choice, handling the sketchbook for left‑handers) and maintains an upbeat, encouraging tone. The video concludes with announcements for an upcoming online workshop (August) that will walk participants through his Cathedral sketching method, and a live in‑person sketch meetup at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in September. He invites viewers to join the waitlist via a link on screen or in the comments, and ends with a positivity‑focused sign‑off encouraging viewers to "sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly."
Chapters
Hey, happy Sunday, um, July 27th, 2025. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life, where I love sketching architecture, love urban sketching, and I just love, um, putting positivity out there in the world. So surprise Sunday sketch session here, um, Why am I— why am I popping on? Well, I want to sketch. Um, yesterday I was in New York City, I stopped at a few different locations, and on screen, one of my most favorite, favorite sketching locations right here. Um, I love St. Patrick's Cathedral. Um, I think it finished construction in 1879. A really amazing example of neo-gothic architecture. And I love sketching this, um, whenever I'm out in the city, I stop by here, take pictures and sketch when I can. So I sketched it yesterday morning. You can see here's a picture of kind of my sketchbook and me in front of the church here. Well, I'm not in the picture, but that's where I was standing. And here is the actual sketch right here that I did yesterday. Um, I had an idea when I was there yesterday. I would love to do an online sketching workshop where I'll walk you through how I approach sketching St. Patrick's Cathedral. Um, that workshop will be in August online. I don't have a date yet, but if you check out the screen, there's a link, um, oh, you can go to. It's also in the comments. Sign up for the waitlist so you can get an email from me saying, hey, this is when the workshop is for sketching St. Patrick's online. And I want to do a live in-person sketch session here, St. Patrick's Cathedral, in September. So stay tuned. I think it'd be so fun to meet up with some of you guys for, for a few hours and do some sketching of St. Patrick's and other, um, places in that area around Rockefeller Center. All right. Hey Jason Nicholas, I see you on Instagram. Great to see you. Hope all's well. Um, I love your post. You're doing, you're doing amazing, amazing artwork. So keep up the awesome job out there. Really cool stuff. So yeah, so I'm going to zoom in a little bit, actually lift this up. Uh, this is This is my sketch from yesterday. It's loose, it's scribbly, and I love it. This, this is my style, uh, just trying to capture the essence of it. So not perfect, not precise, not detailed, but hopefully by looking at it you can just get a sense of it being some kind of church or some kind of cathedral. And for me, I think what does that are the spires, right? We have these pointed, pointy areas, the spires here, and the Gothic, the arches. So those elements kind of make up the neo-gothic— a few of the elements make up neo-gothic architecture. So yeah, so let's do a sketch of St. Patrick's today. It's going to be quick, loose, fun. I'm not going to be on too long, and I just have kind of a scrap pad here, nothing special about the paper. And I figure we'll do a sketch here on this paper today. By the way, this, this is one of the rare occasions where I did not start with a Sharpie. I— more on this coming up in future, uh, streams— I am going, uh, pen for a lot of things, a lot of like retractable gel pens. Um, yeah, ballpoint pens. So this is what I used to sketch St. Patrick's Cathedral yesterday. I just love the color, love the brown color. So this was not a Sharpie. Um, Sharpie started sketch. I'll do a quick show and tell some other sketches, then we'll do our thingy. Um, so some other sketches from yesterday. This is the Bank of America Tower in, um, I guess Midtown Manhattan. It's real, it's right near Bryant Park. Those are not the actual colors, those are the colors I added to it. I just wanted to add some fun, um, and play with color. So that was— I did the black, I did the black line sketch in Central Park, Central Park Bryant Park yesterday morning, and then they added the color actually home this morning. St. Patrick's we kind of looked at. Um, yeah, my architecture people out there, I, I am drawing a blank on this iconic building, the name of it. I do know it's right next to the Lever House building, which is, um, which is a really cool iconic kind of steel structure building in New York City. So I apologize, I don't know the name of this and I should. Um, 6½ Avenue is where we did a meetup with the NYC Urban Sketchers. And here's just kind of a scene, uh, part of 6½ Avenue, which is a— it's a, it's a pedestrian walk-through area, pedestrian thoroughfare. Located between 6th Avenue and 7th Avenue, so it's 6½ Avenue. Pretty cool, it almost brings back the feeling of an old kind of arcade that you might find. So here's just a perspective view of part of it. This was another view from a different section of 6½ Avenue. Pretty cool. I really like this one. Added some colors towards the end. Hey Brian, if you're on, great to see you on Instagram there. And here is another shot along 6th and a half Avenue here. So there's just some sketches I did yesterday. Let's do, uh, let's do a quick St. Patrick's sketch. Uh, let's see, I'm going to pull up a ref picture. Let's see, let me close this. Let's grab— we'll do this one and zoom up a little bit. Let's see, let's size it here. Boom. Let's move this here a little bit. Cool. All right. I am actually— I'm going to do something. So left-handers, left-handers out there, here's something I do sometimes. This spiral binding is in the way of me sketching, so I'm going to show you how to flip. So now it's not in the way of my hand. So don't be afraid to spin your sketchbook around. Hopefully, uh, Instagram, you guys can see this. I don't know if it's cutting any of it off. I hope not. So again, this— I am not trying to do detailed sketch. Quick, loose, fast, fun. Just feeling a little bit energy right now. Can zoom in a little bit more. Boom. Cool. Hello, Kiko, if you're online. How are you? It's so great to see you. Long time no see, man. Hope you're doing well. So hopefully you can just get a sense that, you know, this is some kind of a cathedral happening here just based on some of the, the features. And that's kind of what I wanted to point out is, you know, when you're sketching architecture um, like neo-gothic architecture, you want to— especially the cathedrals— you want to point out the spires, right? We have spires here. Um, arches, right? We have a bunch of arches. Let me get a different color so you can see what I'm talking about. Let's just grab— we'll try this yellow highlighter. Actually, no, let's go, um, turquoise. All right. Just so you can kind of see what I'm talking about. So we have some arches kind of here, right? So neo-gothic equals these arches, which are kind of pointed. So let's do one up here, right? You kind of have that point happening up there. And then the spires are kind of the towers, right, the pointed areas. And there are a bunch of them. We have the main ones here, we have some other kind of jigjags going on here as well. We have these gables or these peaked areas, right, with a peaked roof here or a gable roof. And another feature are these, these round windows. I believe they're called oriel, or —I-E-L— Oriel windows. Notre Dame, I think if you know Notre Dame, you'll— it's iconic, that circular window. So those are just some, some of the features of— that I, for me, stand out on St. Patrick's Cathedral and any kind of neo-gothic piece of architecture. All right, so again, it's just a real quick down-and-dirty sketch. Just wanted to get on here quick and just do something fun. And, um, just let you know that, yeah, I do— I will be doing an online sketching workshop where we will be sketching St. Patrick's, and I'll kind of walk you through my process, my thoughts, um, Sketches— I hope the sketch process will be slower than I did here today online. Uh, just— but anyway, so there's a waitlist if you want to sign up for it. You can see the website link on the screen here and over here. Boom. Also, it should be in the comments. Feel free to sign up for the waitlist so you can be notified when the workshop's happening. And also So that one's online in August, end of August, and I hope to do a live in-person sketch session in September on location, uh, of St. Patrick's and the surrounding area. Cool. All right guys, thank you so much for watching on this surprise sketch session Sunday, or I forget what I called it Surprise Sketch Sunday, something, something like that. I appreciate your time. You're awesome. Remember, keep putting positivity out in the world through your creativity. Sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inspired Life. Until we sketch again.
