In this instructional monologue, Jason Nicholas of The Inkspired Life shares a creative tip for architectural and urban sketching. He recounts a classroom challenge where students attempted to recreate a small Lego Eiffel Tower within 30 minutes, drawing a parallel to the TV show "Nailed It!". Observing two approaches—students who dove in without over‑thinking and those who researched extensively—he uses this to illustrate that both precise, technical drawing and loose, expressive sketching are valid. Jason explains how a precise style can be achieved with tools like a ruler for clean lines, while a loose style embraces spontaneous, scribbly marks. He states his personal preference for the loose, interpretive approach, emphasizing that the goal is to capture feeling rather than an exact replica. He advises viewers to set a creative intention before starting a sketch—deciding whether they aim for detail or speed—and encourages them that anyone who can draw lines can sketch architecture. The video ends with a call to like, subscribe, and share.
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Hi, Jason Nicholas from the Inkspired Life, where I love sketching architecture and urban sketching. Do you ever wonder if your sketches should be precise and technical, or should they be kind of loose and wonky? Well, I'm going to give you one creative tip in this video that might help you with starting a sketch. Hi, Jason Nicholas here from the Inkspired Life. Hope you're having a great day. I just want to relay something that's going through my brain right now. So in school today, I gave my students a challenge to recreate a famous iconic building. So this idea was actually inspired from my students. So if you've seen the TV show, the cooking show called Nailed It, the contestants are shown a professionally designed cake or dessert, and then the contestants have to try to recreate that to the best of their ability within a certain amount of time. So what we did today is I had a little small Lego replica of the Eiffel Tower, and my students were given 30 minutes to try to recreate this Eiffel Tower replica. They could use Lego, they could use paper, cardboard, scissors, tape, uh, wood. I really didn't limit what they could use. And here's the cool thing that I kind of am relating to the world of art and sketching and creating. Um, although they were given a specific item to recreate, I noticed some students went right for it. They didn't care. They grabbed and went and created and weren't so concerned about the end result. And then some students I had were more kind of afraid to start the project. They were Googling pictures and doing some research. Both ways are fine. It doesn't matter how you want to attempt it, right? And I think that's what's amazing about creativity. And art and sketching buildings. If, if you want to sketch a building and make it precise, you can definitely do that. You could take a ruler, and I'm just going to draw a box for an example here. You could take a ruler, get these really beautiful clean lines, boom, and end up with something that's really clean, looks nice, neat, and precise. That's awesome. Or you can go opposite and you can just kind of go off the cuff, kind of willy-nilly, scribbly, loose style, right? Two different styles. Is one right or wrong? Absolutely not. It all depends on you and your preference and however you want to create and what your vision is. My preference is more the loose style. Because my goal is not to recreate an amazing replica of the Eiffel Tower with my sketch, but to capture an interpretation of what I'm seeing and what I'm feeling. So, you know, I'm not looking at any pictures, but, you know, Eiffel Tower, I'm thinking something like this. Got some crisscrosses happening, kind of loosey-goosey, right? Um, And that's cool. So I guess what I'm getting at is before you create something, before you sketch or draw, set a creative intention. What do your outcome— what do you want your outcome to be? Do you want to be something precise and really finely detailed, or do you want to create something that's loose, sketchy, and fast? Either one's okay. It depends on what you want to do and how you want to do it. So That's kind of my, uh, inspirational sketching tip of the day. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas from The Inkspired Life. Um, be sure to like and subscribe if you're over on YouTube watching this. If you're on Facebook, I would love if you like it also. And guys, if you can scribble, if you can draw lines, you can absolutely sketch architecture. All right, have an inspirational day. See you soon.
