In this live streamed art demo, Jason Nicholas greets his community of viewers and revisits acrylic paint after a long hiatus, using it alongside ink and colored pencils to create a vibrant, mixed‑media urban sketch of a fishing village. He explains his material choices— a well‑worn palette, a 3/4‑inch flat brush, diluted acrylics for transparency, and specific Prismacolor pencils— and demonstrates how he layers thin acrylic washes over ink lines, then adds color pencil accents. Throughout the session he interacts with chat participants, responds to their comments, and shares spontaneous decisions about color (e.g., fluorescent pink, brilliant yellow‑green, light aqua). He experiments with framing, repeatedly cropping the composition into a 6 × 6‑inch square to explore vertical and horizontal layouts, and decides on a final crop that balances color pops and negative space. Jason highlights the tactile qualities of aged acrylic paint, the ability to draw over dried acrylic with Sharpie, and the textural effect of water‑thinned layers. He concludes by offering the finished piece for sale, showing the original black‑and‑white sketch that inspired the work, and promoting an upcoming two‑hour online sketching workshop titled “Wonky Fishing Shack” on July 20, with registration details provided. The tone remains conversational, instructional, and enthusiastic, with frequent acknowledgments of viewers and a focus on playful experimentation.
Chapters
Hey everybody, happy Tuesday. Hope you're doing well. Um, you might see me breaking out something different that I have not used in a long time. Hey, I see Dawn's in the house. Dawn, great to see you. Hope all's well. Really, really great to see you. The shimmer and reflection is nice. Oh, so cool. Glad you like that. Karen's in the house. Great to see you, Karen. Hope you guys are well, doing well. Um, I did this sketch earlier today on Facebook Live and YouTube, so if you want to check the replay out, you can see how I sketched the original kind of fishing village. And then tonight, you know what, I felt like breaking out acrylics. I have not used acrylics in a long time, and I thought it'd be fun just to throw down some blocks of color and be playful and see what happens. So I have some acrylic here. I got my, uh, my well-used palette. I used to use acrylic paints all the time. You can see this palette has a lot of love happening to it. So yeah, let's just throw down some color on this for a few minutes and have some fun. And it's all about being playful and trying different things and just experimenting, right? Being creative. So thanks for joining me, guys. Hope you're having a great, great night. Feel free to leave questions, comments in the chat. It's always great to know who's watching out there in streaming land. So yeah, I'm not, um, no particular rhyme or reason to the colors I'm throwing down. I'm just kind of messing around, going with it. I do sometimes thin out the acrylic, so I'm actually dipping this in water. I'm going to thin out this a little bit more, this purple I'm using. And I want to be a little transparent just so you can see some of that ink work underneath it. I'm going to try to keep it kind of loose and fun. Keeping loose and fun. Hey, D-Rays in the house, great to see you. That's a cool village. Hey, thanks, Karen. Yeah, it's, it's fun. I'm feeling, um, very tropical with these colors for sure. So I'm using a 3/4-inch flat brush. 3/4 inches, um, has always been a standard for me, especially with whenever I do acrylics. I love the 3/4-inch flat brush. I used to use it in my watercolors all the time. I still break it out once in a while. So I love the 3/4-inch brush. I do have other sizes kind of in this jar here. Uh, let's see, I'm going to pull out a smaller one. I'll try this one here, I guess. This one's kind of— yeah, it's a little crunchy, but I may be able to use it. Let's try it. This is a fun color. This is Brilliant Yellow Green. Love it, love it. The thing with these acrylic paints is a little bit goes a long way, especially if you're adding water to dilute them. Like the reflection from the big building. Oh, thanks, that's so cool. I'm glad you like it. Hey, Tim B. Tim, how the heck are you? It's been so long. Great to see you. Hope all's well, my friend. Impressions of spring rain in a fishing village. Yeah, so you picked up on the idea. That's so cool that you got that. So I like the way this is coming out. It's, um, yeah, it It's been fun breaking out the acrylics. What I like about the acrylics is when they dry, I can go over them with a Sharpie or a pen. I'll zoom in, you can kind of see some close-ups here. Hey Linda, great to see you! Hope all's well. I'm liking the pops of color. I had to bring pink in here somehow, so the pink I used was actually, um, fluorescent pink. Fluorescent pink. Let's see, let's break out some, maybe some colored pencils. We'll throw in here. Definitely going for the mixed media vibes with ink, acrylic paint, colored pencils. What else can we throw at this? Um, let's see, so I have some neon yellow here. Magenta, maybe? No, I don't want you— I don't want magenta. I wish I knew where my Process Red color pencil was. Anyway, is it here? Is this it back here hiding? No, this is— that is not it. There's this color I like, it's called Process Red. Um, I really like it. It's a Prismacolor color pencil. Unfortunately, it is nowhere around. All right. Let's see, what else do we have? We got some Light Aqua. We'll grab some of that. We'll throw some Light Aqua here on parts of this sky, and you'll see it'll just add a different kind of tone to the sky here in certain areas. Kind of bring it together a little bit. Throw some in the water as well. I'm just going to done blocks of it here and there. This is Violet, so let's throw some Violet on here. I do want to leave white space, so I'm going to— I think I'll leave a lot of that white. Oops, it's okay. I got some paint here because it's not art unless you wear it. I am definitely wearing it, this acrylic paint. But we're going to bring out the frame, we'll, we'll kind of crop it and we'll take a look at some different views. So I'm not worried about that. So I'm not worried about that. All right, let's grab some frames and see what it looks like if we frame it out a little bit. One of these days I'll cut different size openings here and some different mats. I mean, this is just a cool little scene. Even if I just kind of crop it out here— let me zoom out— maybe just crop this out, this section. I like that. Could shift it over a little bit as well. No, I, I like it. I like it here. Maybe here, right? You got the bright pink, kind of the yellow kind of bouncing there, like this pop of red down at the bottom. I think, I think, yeah, I think somewhere in there would be a good way to crop this one out. What size opening do we have here? Uh, this is a 6-inch by 6— 6 by 6 square. Let's go in tighter and let's do some smaller— some smaller sections. Maybe let's start vertical. There we go. Now it's all on camera, so I think we can see it. Ta-da! No, nope. I'm just flipping through some music over here. I kind of like the horizontal of this one, even just a cluster. Maybe something like this would be kind of cool. Maybe get the lobster kind of sign in the frame, right? Something like that could look interesting. That's not bad for vertical. Maybe something like that. It's kind of interesting for a vertical format. Um, I like the 6x6 with ramp. And the boat at end as part of the view. So Dawn, I think maybe you're saying something like this, maybe. Yeah, I'm kind of digging this format. Let me see if I can bring it closer. There we go. Yeah, so that's the 6x6 square. I kind of like that also. Yeah, I like the way this came out. This is actually— I think this is done. I don't, I don't want to add any more to it. It's, it's getting to that point where there's too much. And yeah, I actually just said there's a point where there's too much. I know sometimes I throw a lot of, a lot at these, um, sketches, and that's because I have so much fun just throwing down ink and, and paint. Sometimes I can't stop. But I think this is awesome. This— I'm gonna put this one out there, guys, for sale. I think this is really cool, and I think I'm gonna— I think I'm gonna crop it so that it would fit in a 6x6 square. So if anybody out there is interested, let me know. Send me a message before I cut this. Um, otherwise I'm going to cut it. But yeah, I'm going to put this one out there. I think this came out really cool. Let me show you the original sketch that inspired me from this— for this. Uh, where the heck is it? There's a sketch I did in Maine. I don't know what— last time I was there, 4 years ago. I think this, I think this was, this was the original black and white sketch that I used to inspire this one today I did. So actually, I like the black and white also, but I just love the pops of color. I think it makes it a lot of fun. It makes it really playful. I'll zoom in so you can see some of the texture I didn't throw down the paint, the acrylic. I didn't throw down thick, so it's not gonna— you won't see a lot of the texture. But one of the cool things about acrylic, I'll show you on my palette here, you know, you can see the buildup of the acrylic over the years. Look at the textures. So acrylic paint is really cool to get these, these layers and layers of textures, and you get these bumps and things happening. So that's, that's, you know, it's a couple years worth of paint on that one. But here we're not going to see those, the thick bumps, but you can kind of see, just see the texture of the paper through the paint. I watered down the acrylic in places because I wanted my Sharpie to show through underneath. So yeah, I think that came out kind of cool, guys. Excuse me. Alrighty then. Uh, my desk area is a mess. You can see some of the stuff that's out here. I got stuff everywhere, but that's okay. That means I was having fun. I even got more acrylic paint. I forgot how messy I am when it comes to acrylic paints. I get them everywhere. Hopefully not on my shirt. I'm good, I'm safe there. All right guys, I think that's, um, that might be a wrap. So, um, just gonna throw it out there. I know I keep talking about it, but on Not February, July 20th, which is not this Saturday, the following Saturday. I have my Wonky Fishing Shack online sketching workshop. Um, I'd love for you guys to join in if you haven't. Um, there's a link, or you can follow the link post on the bottom left of the screen down there somewhere. I don't think I'm pointing at it. Yeah, somewhere there. Um, theinspiredlife.com/fishingshacks2024. Um, it's a 2-hour workshop from 8 o'clock PM to 10 o'clock PM Eastern Time. Uh, Zoom. If you guys— most of you guys have done stuff with me before, so it's a similar format. And right now it's a very small intimate group, which could be very cool, but I'd love to have more people join as well. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate all for watching. Thank you for your comments. Thank you for liking, subscribing, YouTubing, Facebooking. Let's just keep making up weird verbs. Uh, uh, enjoy— enjoying is a real verb, it's not made up. Enjoying. Take care, guys. I appreciate y'all. Have an amazing, amazing Wednesday, and, um, I'll be on again this week. Keep using your creativity for positivity and peace, and live creatively. See you guys soon. Take care. I'm holding this and trying to find the finish button. Why don't we— let's get a close-up of that. Boom. Put— throw this on it. Boom. And then we'll find the finish button. Let's just end with a nice image here. There we go. All right, now I can hit that finish button. Take care, guys. Peace out.
