The Inkspired Life - Architectural Sketching
In this live‑streamed sketching session, artist Jason Nicholas creates a quick, loose drawing inspired by a photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge and its surrounding industrial building. He greets regular viewers (Linda, Chip, Karen, etc.), explains the composition, and walks through his material choices—using Art Graph paper, sanguine water‑soluble graphite, water, a Sharpie roller pen, and ink. Throughout the session he demonstrates wet‑on‑wet techniques, creates brick‑like textures by tapping wet graphite, adds depth with hatching, and experiments with color to “anchor” floating elements. He also discusses technical hiccups with his streaming software and cross‑platform chat visibility. The session is informal and interactive, with Jason encouraging viewers to experiment, move their paper for comfort, and use creativity for positive vibes. He ends by thanking the audience, reminding them to like, subscribe, and stay creative.
Chapters
Hey, Linda and Linda, good to see you. Hope everybody's doing well tonight. Happy, um, what is today? No, the music's playing again. That's all right. Hey, happy Sunday, November 5th. It is 7:58 PM. Let me know if you can hear me okay. My music might be a little loud. I hope you guys are doing well. It's great to be live, sketch live, and probably a week or so. It's been kind of crazy. But yeah, you guys are doing great. Let me, uh, I'm going to switch the playlist.
We're going to—
there we go. All right, hope you guys are doing great. I'm going to do a sketch here inspired, or inspired by, um, the Brooklyn Bridge. Let me see if I can show you the picture. I don't know if I can drag it on screen. Um, this is all good here. Thank you so much for letting me know. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if I can show you guys the image I'm looking at. Um, I can't, I can't drag it onto the screen, so I'll, I'll post it later, but it's a picture I took of the of the Brooklyn Bridge. And I just want to do some real fast, loose kind of sketch here. So this is, this is not the bridge I'm sketching. This is actually a building that's in the foreground. Um, it looks like some kind of old industrial building that is now just kind of a couple walls standing, and it looks like there's some kind of garden inside. This is kind of in the foreground here, and back here I have the Brooklyn Bridge happening. This music's interesting. It's Kind of has like some intrigue to it. I like it. Um, so weird, but so am I, and that's what makes things fun, right?
It's cool.
Kind of the bridge happening somewhere back in here. Anyway, hope you guys are well. Let me know what you've been up to this weekend. Starting to feel like fall here finally with the temperatures, although today was in the 60s, I think, or maybe upper 50s. Uh, really nice outside today. Here we have the iconic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge happening. I am noticing that, uh, my chat is not scrolling on screen, so the software has had some updates So I might have to go back and reconfigure some of it. And it didn't rain. No, it did not rain. Absolutely not. Hey, Chip's in the house! Hey Jason, been a while. Glad to be here once again, brother. Chip, it's awesome to see you. Hope all's well. I'll give you a— I'll give you a shout one of these days. We'll catch up. Hope all is going well with you, man. It's great to see all you guys here watching me sketch. Um, I feel like playing tonight with a little bit of this stuff here. I'm going to break out the Art Graph. I just feel like getting kind of dirty with my hands here. So I'm going to break out some of this Art Graph and I want to use this Sanguine or Sanguine color and throw some down. This is a brick building. I think it'd be fun. Just play around with some color. Why not? Yeah, this is the color right here. It's called Sanguine. Sanguini. Sounds like linguine. Sanguini. Hope I have some water here. I do. Excellent. Lately I've been doing a lot of black and white sketches and I've really been loving them. So I'll show you, here's a couple I have out. Um, I'm really liking these New York City scenes in black and white. I'm going to keep them black and white. Here's the Brooklyn Bridge. There's just something about— I don't know what it is. I just really like to like them without color on them. So we'll do this. We'll do the same thing with this one here. Well, actually, I lied. I am using color. Um, we'll change it up. We'll throw some color on it. This is just a fun sketch. I haven't sketched in a while, live at least.
Let's do that.
Let's break out some of this. Just have some fun. Hey, Karen's in the house! Karen, great to see you. So this is the Taylor's chalk art graph— here, I'll hold it here. It's water-soluble graphite, Taylor shape. I guess it's the shape of Taylor's chalk. I love this stuff, it is so cool. So I'm going to use it a couple different ways. One, I'm going to just throw some right on here. We're gonna add some water. I don't have a paper towel, do I? Uh, I got some here, some napkins here you can use. All right, cool. Just watch how fun this is, just throwing down some water on top of that, right? Look at that color, it's so rich.
So fun, really cool.
And then one of the cool things I like to do with this, just wet the edge of this a little bit with some water, and I can press it down and I can make almost like lines or rows of bricks just by tapping it like this. Again, so tonight I'm just playing around, guys, right? So you get these cool lines there. I can come back over if I want and soften them a little bit. There's actually an opening there. There wouldn't be any, but that's okay.
Pretty cool.
I'll just throw some down here as well. You have some, some of the cables here from the Brooklyn Bridge kind of in the background. This is the underside of the bridge here. I'm gonna make it darker. Chip must be on YouTube. Um, Linda, I'm not sure, or am I? Because I'm not seeing one. Linda H, you are on YouTube. Karen, it looks like Karen and Chip, and I saw Linda S pop in on Facebook. I'm not sure why it's not sharing cross-platform today. Lately it has been, um, but today it's not cooperating. So like I said, there was an update to the software I use. Um, I might have to go back and change some settings. I'm sorry you guys are not seeing each other cross-platform. Darn technology. This is the bottom of the bridge. We have some structure kind of running across here.
Pretty cool.
And I think I'm going to pop out the outline of the bridge a little bit, and I'm going to grab, uh, I want to use— I'm just going to grab a thicker Sharpie here, I think, and pull it out. I don't want to make it too, too dark, but I do kind of want maybe the arches to pop a little bit. Just so you can— because for me, I think that one of the iconic things of the Brooklyn Bridge are the arches here, these kind of Gothic, you know, Gothic arches. Cool. I think that's just enough to let it read in the background. Um, what I'm going to do, I kind of want to anchor it. This kind of looks like it's floating too much. So what am I gonna do? Let's see, there's kind of a road that wraps around. Maybe I'll bleed some— I don't know what I'm gonna do with that. Actually, actually, let's play around some of this. I have more of this chalk here. I'm sorry, this graphite.
Oh.
Let's grab, let's grab this color. I'm going to throw a little bit down here and I'm going to dilute it with some water, kind of paint it around a little bit. Just want to anchor that bridge kind of in the background. It was kind of floating. So if I throw this in the foreground, kind of this walkway area, I think it's just helping to anchor what's happening here. I think I'm going to leave the bridge just kind of black and white. I'm not going to add any color there. That's enough. I don't want to overdo it. Um, I am going to come in and add some more ink on top of the— this industrial facade right here. If you guys have any questions or comments— Linda, I mean Karen, thank you as always. I I appreciate that so much. Appreciate that. No, I did not just spill the tea on my shirt, I swear. Um, gonna add some shading or give some depth to this arch. Notice how I'm just kind of turning the sketchbook rather than trying to get my hand to kind of contort like this. Be really awkward. So it's easier just to turn the paper. So don't be afraid to move that paper around. Make it easy on yourself. So just by doing that, right, I create a little bit of depth with this arch, which I think is kind of nice. And there's another one back here I'll do the same thing with. It's a little bit too wet right now. I'm gonna have to wait for it to dry. Sharpies don't like to write on wet surfaces. And I would just pull this out a little bit here. Cool. Awesome. Looking awesome, Linda H says. Looking awesome. Yeah, it's looking cool. I'm digging it. Like I said, when this— when this dries, I'm going to add some more ink on top of it, uh, make— pull a little more detail, darken some of these openings here. Some light fixtures I wanted to sketch on as well. And then back here on the Brooklyn Bridge, I do want to add— I forgot the, um, the iconic American flag that's on top of here. Flag on top of the bridge here.
Cool.
There we go. So we get the flag up there. I like this one. I don't know if I'll do anything else with it right now. I'm gonna wait for it to— they said wait for it to dry. Yeah. There's a shadow. I want to add some shadow on here just to kind of anchor this piece to the road. I feel like this needs some grounding. Too many things kind of just floating. So I'm going to add, um, just sketch on— sketching some shadows. That's too wet. Dang, Nevit. Hmm, what else do I have? Just looking at my pens over here. I have a Sharpie roller— Sharpie roller pen. Let's see if I can use that. There we go. So the Sharpie roller pen works on wet areas. Good to know.
Just learned something Something new.
And you can see as I'm adding some more lines on top of this just to give it a little more interest, there's a slight overhang here. I'm going to add some hatch lines. I'm actually digging this. So guys, this is a Sharpie. Roller pen. I believe it's gel ink, could be wrong. Um, I haven't really used it too much. I'm actually digging it, especially that it works on top of the wet area, which is cool. Sometimes I'm impatient, I just want to get these sketches done and not wait. There you go, just adding that line, add some detail. Oh, what else we got going on? This is interesting cuz there's a brick walkway that goes inside there. There's a lintel at the bottom of the windows. Alright, let's zoom out. Cool, I like it. Make this under the bridge a little bit darker here. Alright, cool. And there we have it, a quick scene inspired by, um, the Brooklyn Bridge. Liking it. The only thing I'm not digging is this area here. There is some landscape in the front, there's some shrubs going on that I could sketch in, but I kind of just kind of anchor— I feel like this needs to get anchored a little bit. I've said that word a lot tonight, but for me, I feel like this is floating. It's like needs to be kind of secured down a little bit. So I'm gonna sketch in some of these pine trees or something happening. You guys know I like to sketch growies. So growies, sometimes little, uh, plants growing up or weeds kind of growing up. Add a little bit of texture to these, just kind of doing some scribbly lines in here. Alright, I'm feeling a little bit better now about how— Alright, I kind of like that a little bit better. At least there's something now kind of in the foreground. There. Awesome. All right guys, I think that's gonna be a wrap for tonight. So thank you for watching, um, on this beautiful Sunday evening, and I hope you have an amazing Monday. Keep putting positive things out there, positive vibes. No, I like to say keep paying it forward. Um, Use your creativity for positivity, right? Yeah, we definitely need that out there right now. So thank you guys for watching. I appreciate your time, and I am out of here. Thank you so much. Always feel free to post comments or questions in the chat, whether you're on YouTube or Facebook. And, um, thank you for liking and subscribing on Facebook and YouTube. You guys are awesome. Chip, take care. We will definitely chat soon. Great seeing you, Chip. Linda H and Linda S, great seeing you guys. And Karen, it was awesome seeing you in the chat also. I do appreciate you guys so much. Um, take care, have a great, great rest of your week. See you soon. There's a good chance I'll be on later this week. We have a short week out at school this week, which is awesome. So I'll try to make some time to pop on and some live sketching. Take care, guys. Peace and live creatively. I'll see you soon.
