In this live‑recorded Inktober session, artist Jason Nicholas welcomes viewers on October 1st and explains his personal take on Inktober: a series of 10‑minute sketches focused on New York City landmarks, starting with the Brooklyn Bridge. He sets a timer, uses a Sharpie, and demonstrates a fast, loose architectural drawing style—scribbles, hatching, and shading to suggest arches, cables, and the bridge’s flag. Throughout the sketch, Jason interacts with chat participants (Becky, Deborah), shares a personal anecdote about walking the bridge in 2023, mentions a microphone issue, and encourages viewers to try their own quick sketches, experiment with new subjects (e.g., animals), and adopt a creative‑mindset that embraces mistakes. He wraps up by signing the piece, reminding the audience to “pay it forward” with creativity, and invites them to share their own Inktober work on the community page.
Chapters
Hey everybody, happy, um, Sunday. Hope you're doing well. It is October 1st. I love October, my favorite month of the year, and I'm just going to do a quick sketch. It is Inktober. So, um, if you don't know what Inktober is, there are a series of prompts out there you can find online. People will sketch something different for the next 31 days, but I'm gonna spend my Inktober sketching New York City landmarks, iconic buildings. And the bridges. And today I'm going to do a quick sketch of the Brooklyn Bridge. So basically, I'm going to limit myself to about 10 minutes at the most and just do quick sketches. Not going to do them every day in October, but at least give me a focus of the subject matter for this month. Hope that's cool. Hope you guys are doing well. Let me know where you're watching from. And yeah, let's start this sketch of the Brooklyn Bridge. And I see Becky is in the house. Becky, so good to see you. Hope all's well. Um, Becky, I saw your post recently with all the cool fall colors and kind of scrapbooking collage stuff. Really love it. Cool, cool stuff. Um, you guys are amazing. So, um, here we go. Let's do a 10-minute sketch. I have a timer I'm going to start on the left-hand side of the screen, and I'm going to sketch Starting now. Feel free to post comments, questions, and I'll be popping in. I'll be looking at the questions. So we're just going to do a Sharpie sketch, and I'm just sketching, um, a view of the Brooklyn Bridge here. And the idea with these sketches is to be really fast. I shouldn't say that, not to be really fast, but just I'm trying to limit my time to 10 minutes. We'll see what happens. We'll keep them quick and loose. You guys know the drill, you know, um, how I like to sketch. Or if you're just joining us and you don't know, I like to sketch these— sketch architecture kind of fast, quick, and loose. Uh, I'm not going for photorealism. I'm just going to capture an idea, a character, a feel, all that fun stuff. So this sketch is, is inspired by the by the Brooklyn Bridge. Kind of have the classic arches here. Definitely one of the main architectural features of the bridge are the arches— of the Brooklyn Bridge, I should say. I've had the opportunity to walk across it once, but I will be back again. It was so such a cool— what a cool experience walking across the bridge. Loved it. Incredible views of NYC. Um, it was amazing. It was something I had been dreaming of for a long time, and I finally worked the courage up to go and do it. So that was a— that was a big accomplishment for me, uh, in this— yeah, this year, 2023. But I hope you guys can hear me okay. I'm using a different microphone. The microphone I just recently bought is not working. I don't know why, so it's driving me a little bonkers. So I'm using a different one now. Hopefully it's okay. The Brooklyn Bridge has an American flag on the top, which I'll sketch right here. Let's kind of show the flag kind of on top waving around a little bit. Becky says, thank you, kind sir. Thank you, Becky, for your post. I love seeing your, um, creations. Becky, if you guys don't know Becky, she's really, really creative and does amazing sketches. I especially have horses. I really— Becky, I miss your horse sketches. I really love them. Maybe you'll, uh, maybe you'll break out some horse sketches sometime soon. As you guys know, animals are not my, my thing when it comes to sketching. I'm pretty shy and afraid of trying to sketch animals, especially live. Some of you might remember the amazing giraffe sketch that I stuck my neck out to do. It wasn't really amazing, but what was amazing was the fact that I actually tried it. And that's what I love about doing this stuff. I just like having fun and trying things. A lot of creativity is mindset, and we need to have open minds and be willing to try different things, different materials, different mediums. And also be prepared to, uh, make mistakes and fail, right? You don't know unless you try. I guess it's not failing if you try, right? All right, one of the things I love about the Brooklyn Bridge— I love We have the, the main cables kind of coming like this, and we also have these diagonal supports coming down like this, which are really cool. It is so amazing to see this in person and to walk this bridge. Cool. Hopefully you guys can tell it's a bridge happening there. Becky says, can hear you just fine. Awesome. I need to sketch more horses for sure. The giraffe was awesome. Uh, yeah, we'll leave it at that. All right guys, again, this is a quick sketch. I have 4 minutes left. I'm just gonna kind of color this in or shade this in dark down here. I think— I believe I'm also streaming to YouTube at the same time. I should be. So if anybody is out there on YouTube, let me know or post a comment just so I can see if it's working or not. Or maybe no one's out there on YouTube land watching, which is fine. I'm just adding some quick shading in here. Basically kind of scribbly lines. And these scribbly lines are what's given this— this illusion or suggestion of there's some thickness to these walls where the arches are, right? You can kind of see that. And we're going to do the same thing here. This is kind of a pillar that bumps out a little bit, so we're going to give it a little bit of shading there. We'll do some here as well. And all I'm doing is this, guys. I'll zoom in so you can see. All I'm doing is this. Basically, it's just scribbles. If you guys can scribble, you can sketch architecture. It's kind of a saying I've been working on. If you can scribble, you can sketch architecture. And I think it's true. And we're gonna just do some hatch lines like this. To create the idea of a little bit of an overhang here. Pretty cool. About 2 minutes and 50 seconds left. Hey, Deborah's in the house. Deborah, great to see you. I— if I can learn to draw a semi-straight line, you can draw animals. Just keep at it. Hey, thank you, Becky. I'll try. I've been wanting to sketch sheep. I don't know why, but I've been wanting to sketch sheep. So if I was to do an animal, I think I would start off with sketching some sheep. Or is it sheeps? What's the plural of sheep? Is it sheeps? Or is the plural of sheeps sheep? I'm not sure. If anybody knows, let me know in the comments. I'm curious. Again, we're just doing the scribbles here. Boom. So I mean, with that, let me zoom out. Hopefully you can tell this is, uh, just inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge, this quick sketch here. So this is my Inktober day 1 sketch. I'm kind of doing my own thing. I'm not really looking at the prompts that are on the internet. You guys can definitely Google Inktober, you'll see lists of sketch prompts for the entire month. Um, I tried— I used to do those, but then I have to say I wasn't very disciplined. I would always sketch what I wanted to sketch anyway, so I figured this Inktober I'm just going to focus on sketching New York City stuff. And that's okay if you don't stick with the prompts they give you, it's cool. The idea is just to be out there sketching, doing something, right? And that's what I'm doing. So I, I feel fine with it. Cool. I'm actually liking it, that little close view of the Brooklyn Bridge. So I have about 53 seconds left. On this one. So I, so I am going to limit my Inktober sketches to 10-minute sketches just to see what I can get done in 10 minutes. If— can I capture the essence of the building or structure that I'm trying— that I'm sketching? Can I capture that in 10 minutes? That's kind of my goal. And why 10 minutes? Well, October is the 10th month of the year, right? So that's why I picked 10 minutes. Aha. See, there was some logic to that. I'm not usually very logical, but that was logical. And I'm just sketching some lines here for texture. We got 3 minutes left. 3 seconds, rather. I think time is up. All right, time is up. Boom! So there you go, that's my 10-minute Inktober day 1 sketch, inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge. Hope you guys enjoyed that. I'll be back on during the week doing more sketches. Um, if you're posting or if you're doing Inktober, let me know. I'd love to see your sketches as well, and you could always post them on our Inklings page, Facebook page that I think you guys are all part of. All right, cool. Just gonna sign it. We'll call it a day. Let's see. And we'll do a— I like to sign with a heart. I'll put my name, Jason, and then we'll just do 10 for October, 23 for the year. Right there, there you can see it. Awesome. All right guys, Becky says draw a cloud and 4 lines in the head for a sheep. Thank you Becky, I will definitely try that breakdown. I appreciate that. Definitely captured the BB intent. Oh, thank you so much, I'm glad to hear that. Guys, take care, have a great, great night, enjoy your Monday. I will see you soon. Peace. Oh, before I, before I leave, just remember to keep, uh, just pay it forward. Use your creativity for positivity. Thanks guys, peace, and live creatively. I'll see you soon. I'll be back for another Inktober sketch. See you guys.
