In this live‑stream, artist Jason Nicholas greets viewers, shares his upbeat Monday mood, and dives into a casual sketching session using a small ProArt sketchbook, Stabilo Sublimo fine‑tip markers, Sharpies, and a Uni‑ball pen. He demonstrates quick, loose sketches of a barn, a pavilion, and a lighthouse, explaining his choice of spiral‑bound sketchbooks, thin paper suitable for ink, and the texture of various art papers (Canson watercolor, acrylic‑type texture paper). Throughout the session he talks through his color‑selection process—choosing hues by mood, adding whimsical unexpected colors, and using fine‑tip markers for detail work. Jason frequently engages the audience, asking viewers to say hello, giving shout‑outs, and responding to chat about sound or technical issues. He also discusses minor technical hiccups (dry Sharpies, microphone sound) and briefly shows how he organizes marker caps. The stream blends informal instruction, personal anecdotes, and community interaction, emphasizing the joy of daily sketch practice and the importance of keeping a creative habit.
Chapters
Hey there, happy Monday! I hope you're having a great, great Monday today. It is Monday, right? It's Monday, first day of summer break, no school, and I'm loving it. Not that I don't love school, but it's good to have a break for sure. And yeah, you guys are having a great, great day. I think the storm's headed this way. I don't know when, but if I get disconnected, you'll know why. Anyway, hope you're having a great day. So I'm just doing some quick loose sketching here. I have a really small sketchbook. I think it's 4x6 maybe. ProArt is the brand on here. Very, very thin paper, so it's not really great for watercolors or inking. Well, I shouldn't say inking because this is ink, right? But you don't really want to get the paper wet because it'll buckle like crazy. So it's good for doing quick sketches on. So we'll do some sketching here. I may break out some I have some other markers here, we'll pair up with some color on it. One thing I do like about this is it has this nice spiral bound edge, which is great. Just makes it easy to flip it over and lay pages flat. So that's one of the things I really like, look for in sketchbooks, I like spiral bound edges. We got some funky music going on.
Funky, funky.
Like it. Grab some markers here. I'm just putting on a little bit of color, just do a quick loose up sketch, loose up, loosening up sketch here. If you're watching, be sure to say hello in the comments. I always like to see who's watching so I can give you a shout out. I always appreciate your time hanging out with me. I know time is precious for everybody, so I am just honored and blessed to have you guys spending even a a minute or two with me, it makes— brings a smile to my face for sure. So I really appreciate you guys so much for all your support and positivity and creativity. These are Stabilo— Stabilo Sublimo markers, 0.88 fine, 0.4. I'm not sure what all that means, but I had these markers sitting around for a while, just never really used them too much. So I thought it'd be fun just to break it out, break them out and play with them for a little bit. My Sharpies are having trouble tonight. I don't know why. They've kind of dried up. I have to get more Sharpies, I think. Let's see, uh, let's do some pink, I guess, here. Maybe this is some kind of barn structure somewhere. And put something in the background, maybe to pull the barn out a little bit. I have a blue, but it's kind of dark. I don't know if I want to use this dark one. Uh, maybe I'll use this. A violet color here. I'm adding some of this purple underneath where there might be some shadows, like there's some roof overhangs here, just to darken it up a little bit.
Let me see if I can get a Sharpie here that works.
So if you're watching, say hello. Hope you're having a great, great night tonight. Hope you're enjoying this fiesta kind of music. I love it. A lot of energy.
It's pretty fun.
Alright, this Sharpie seems to work a little bit better. The other ones were just dried up a little bit. Okay, I just want to pull out the edge of this building, edges a little bit, just so it pops against the background. This is a kind of a hay— pile of hay or something happening here.
Cool.
So there's this quick little barn sketch using nothing more than like Sharpies and some markers. Let's do another sketch.
Zigzag a little bit here. There we go.
All right, there we go. Just doing some tech stuff. All right, so that was cool. So we did a quick little barn sketch on here. Markers and pen. I have a Sharpie out. Let's just do another quick little sketch and see what happens. And I just want to have fun and let the pen go. Lots of times, like, it doesn't even matter if it's not really creating anything specific. It's just the idea of just putting pen to paper and just having fun. That's just a quick marker sketch, maybe some kind of a Chinese or Japanese painting. We'll go to a pavilion somewhere. And then the other one was a barn we did. So just quick loose sketches tonight. Just wanted to get a couple things down on paper. I haven't sketched anything all day today. So I always like to do one sketch, at least one sketch a day, whether it's on Facebook Live or not. I always try to do some kind of artwork, some kind of creativity, just to keep in practice. And also because it's just fun.
I love doing this kind of stuff and trying to make the time to do it. These markers are—
I like them. They're very fine-tipped markers, so if you wanted to get into detail work, you definitely could with these. See how small or how thin the lines are on here. So you can definitely get a lot of detail work if you're into that kind of stuff. I think I got these originally to do with some coloring books I have, just so I can do some fine detail work, but I haven't really done the coloring books. I have a lot of them just kind of sitting there. Hey, Jerry, good to see you. Hey, Cat, good to see you. Thanks for popping on, guys. You guys are awesome. So this is just some quick loose sketching with markers, my Sharpie, and my Uni-ball pen as well. It'll be fun to break out these markers I have sitting around. Another quick little loose one in case you're just joining us. This is, uh, me and Pakota. Pakota.
Structure.
It's a cowboy whistling song. Time right off into sunset here. Yes, my brain turns off after 8, so does my mouth sometimes. It's hard for me to speak. You guys are awesome. Let me, uh, I have a bigger sheet of paper actually.
I'm gonna—
this is an interesting texture paper. I think it's for— I think it's made for acrylics actually. Um, I had I found it, I was cleaning my table off and I found it. I think it's a crude paint paper. So I'm going to save this for another time. I'm going to go through my art paper drawer here and see if I can find the pad it came from. I know it's not regular watercolor paper. So let me just grab a sheet of watercolor paper. So this is my Canson go-to new paper I like to do my work on. And yes, it is okay if you mix and match your caps.
The wrong color—
there should be a pink cap on here, and I put green. I think somebody— if I would ever play a trick on someone, just kind of mess all the caps up, that would be interesting. All right, so the markers over here. This is what I was working on the other day. What I'm gonna do while I have the markers out, I'm just gonna add some markers on this just for fun. Keep playing around with this piece. This was a quick sketch the other night. Just some marker. Hey, Heather, good to see you, or Heather, as people may say. Heather, good to see you. Thank you for watching over on the YouTube, on the YT, as we say. You're awesome. You guys are all awesome for tuning in. So let's just break out these markers and play around with them since I have them out already. Got our lighthouse here. I'm gonna add some Lighthouse Red on here, some stripes.
You know what, I'm gonna color the body of the lighthouse, add some red on it.
I don't usually use markers too much, but like I said, they were out, so I figured I'd play around with them a little bit. Put a red roof on here as well. And I'm gonna keep it really loose, loose on here. What other colors, you know what, I'm gonna grab and go, we're gonna just have some fun. There's maybe some pinks, purples, some greens in here. I don't know if you can see them. The camera's— they're off camera a little bit, but that's okay.
All right, so let's grab some pink.
You know, I like adding colors that sometimes you wouldn't logically use. I think that adds a level of whimsy and fun to artwork. I love to do that. It's kind of surprising. You know, you're not really going to see a pink Kind of a little island here. But in my world, you're going to see one. It's always fun to just kind of— I like to go with my gut with color. It's kind of an expression I use. I feel like it's a cop-out sometimes. People say, "How do you pick colors? You're really good at colors." And I love that. And they ask, "How do I pick?" And it's— I always kind of say, "I go with my gut feeling." I feel like I need to come up with a better response than that. But that's kind of how I do it. You know, I guess I choose color by mood. If I want something happy and vibrant, I'll pick happy and vibrant colors. If I'm looking for something kind of distressed or aged or antique, I might go with darker colors. You probably see me do some grunge, I call it grunge effect, on some artwork. The colors are totally different. They're more sepias, graphite, copper colors. So that's one way I do it. You guys are awesome. If you can hear me, let me know. Give me a thumbs up. I see Kat says my sound is off. Is it just me? So I am not sure. Maybe it could be me, Kat. I'm not sure. If you guys can hear me, just give me a thumbs up or something in the chat. So yes, I can hear you. I could be having some sound issues with my microphone. It's always a possibility. You should also be able to hear some music playing as well. I'm having a hard time. Oh, Heather, okay, cool. Thank you. My mic could be off. Let me restart. I'm going to restart. The stream. I could be having some tech issues. Thank you for telling me.
