The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud
In this 2021 live‑stream, artist Jason Nicholas (the host) sketches and paints in real time while chatting with his online community. He starts by greeting regular viewers, reflects on a recent school activity, and then dives into an improvised artwork that evolves from a rusty‑turquoise industrial cityscape to a futuristic scene. Throughout the session he experiments with a variety of tools—Sharpies, Lamy pens, Copic and Sketch markers, highlighters, watercolor and marker paper, and even "dirty water" for a grunge effect—explaining how each behaves (bleeding, blending, vibrancy) and demonstrating techniques such as marker blending on marker paper versus watercolor paper. He frequently answers viewer questions about Copic markers, discusses their cost, alcohol‑based nature, and suitability for tracing paper. The host introduces the concept of an "Inky Night" (a future group sketching event on tracing paper) and repeatedly references his signature "Whistling Cowboy" motif, which he refines during the stream. Personal anecdotes about schoolwork, a high‑school performance, and his preference for a slower, more deliberate creative pace are interwoven with community shout‑outs (Patty, Dawn, D‑Ray, etc.). The stream ends with a final Whistling Cowboy piece, a thank‑you to viewers, and a reflection on the value of spontaneous, unscheduled creative sessions.
Chapters
Hey Patty, good to see you. Hope you're having an awesome Saturday night. Thanks for watching. I see some other people watching as well. Thanks for tuning in. I'm popping on kind of late. Just getting home from a real fun school activity. I want to do some sketching before— just to kind of wind down. Hope you had an awesome Saturday. Or are still having an awesome Saturday because it's not over yet. Patty, nice quiet rainy Saturday for me. Sketched a little, posted my sketches from last night's class. Ooh, awesome! That's so cool. Hope you enjoyed last night's class. Class. I'm guessing you did, otherwise you probably wouldn't have posted stuff. So thank you for posting. That's really cool. I'll head on Facebook a little bit later and I'll check everything out for sure. I always love our classes together. You guys are just a real great, amazing group of people. You know, creative, supportive, supportive, positive, and funny. Just, uh, you've all become really, really, really good friends, and I appreciate all of you so much. So thank you. I'm just playing around tonight with some rusty kind of colors. Cool, there we go. Pax Holdregate, love the friendships I've made here. Yeah, awesome, I agree. Good, good stuff for sure. So I'm really liking these colors that are going down the side. Turquoise and this iron oxide color— I'm sorry, red oxide color. I don't know, I'm seeing some kind of a— I don't know if it's a post-apocalyptic town, I don't know, city, or I'm actually picturing, I don't know, something industrial kind of feeling. We'll see where this heads. I'm using my Sharpie now because I don't want all the ink to bleed when I wash over it. So Sharpie ink won't bleed. You know, if I want some bleeding, I'll use my Lamy pen to get the bleeding to happen. I'm just throwing down. Just some lines, just kind of feeling the music, playing around a little bit. I'm actually going to switch the music, I think. Something other galaxy-ish. Maybe something's kind of Star Wars Tatooine-ish kind of happening here. If anybody follows Star Wars, it's kind of the vibe I'm kind of picturing in my brain as I'm inking this out here. As I'm inking out loud. Inking out loud. 3 people watching. Thanks. Dawn's in the house. Dawn, hope all Hope all is well with you. It's been a while. Hope everything's going great. It's always great to see you. We'll have to get you back into some of the future workshops. Be great to have you join us again. Congratulations with all of your hard schoolwork. Hope things are going well with you. I am feeling, um, I'm definitely feeling fluorescent pink with this. I know I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed with the same colors. I love these rusty colors, the turquoise. I love using pink with this as well. So that'll make an appearance. I'll throw some down now. What the heck? Might as well. Just a little bit. I won't get too crazy with it. Then I'm just working out of some dirty water here. I've been liking using dirty water lately to get this kind of grunge aesthetic, and the dirty water really helps with that. Oops, let's put the lid on because I will spill this. I've done that before. Don's trying to get caught up with life, I get it. I am with you. There we go. I just want to throw a pop of pink somewhere. I'll come back and I'll add— I'll just throw a little bit in here as well. Right, just sometimes you just gotta throw down the color. Cool, there we go. Yeah, this will be a real fun piece to come back and add some ink on top of when it dries. Dirty Water makes great snow and clouds. Ooh, awesome! Paisley Cat, I knew the pink would make an appearance. Yeah, has to. It just has to make the appearance. I think it's becoming one of my— almost like a trademark or signature on my paintings I'm doing. Cool. Let's throw down some of this ink here. So hope you guys are enjoying your Saturday. Hope you have a restful Sunday, or Sunday to catch up on things. I know I have to catch up on my schoolwork tomorrow. So today was kind of my day to let my brain take a break. Went to see a really cool show tonight at the high school. The kids were absolutely amazing singing songs. It was a lot of fun. It's not art unless what? You wear it. And I am wearing some right here. On my hand. Question: Have you ever used Copic markers? I have, very briefly. Actually, let me see if I can pull it out. I have a Copic here somewhere. So I have used them briefly. I really haven't used them enough to give an opinion about them. I know a lot of industrial designers love using Copic markers. Here's a Copic. I have a few here. Maybe I'll play around with them. Color Copic. Uh, what else? I think I have some more. Let's see, I thought I had a black one somewhere. Something's in this little bin I have. So that's— so this is the only Copic I have right here that I can see. I'm sure everyone's hiding somewhere else. So I have this color Copic. What color is it? It is Pale Lilac. Pale Lilac. I'm gonna play around with it on this scrap piece of paper here. I have some scrap paper right here. So here's— excuse me— it's black paper. Here's the Copic marker. Honestly, I don't even know if I've used this color. I've used black Copic. Like I said, these are really popular with industrial designers. Ooh, it smells like a marker. It doesn't bleed with water, so, uh, and I'm throwing this down on watercolor paper here. Copic Sketch, right? There's also— there's a Copic Ciao. Yeah, this is Copic Sketch. Copic sketch. I'm just throwing it down on watercolor paper here. I have a feeling this will work really well on, uh, like a mixed media paper, or I have marker paper here. Let me grab it. Some marker paper, I think, right here. A little— yeah, I have a little marker pad. 4x6 marker pad. I played around with it once before. So the paper on here is kind of— it's almost kind of like a glossy finish on it, I guess, for markers to kind of glide on the paper. I'm not really liking the Copic on the watercolor paper right now, to be honest with you. I can't do— once it's down, I can't do anything with it, like blending it. Let's try it on the watercolor marker paper. See what happens. So this— I don't even know when this drawing was done, but it's scrap paper, so let's play around. So I noticed the Copic has two sides. It has a chisel point, and it just has a— feels like a brush point on the other side. Yeah, it's a marker. This is a marker pad. AD Art Design marker. So let's just play around with it for a minute here. Let me zoom in so you get close on it. Yeah, I mean, this is already going down different than the watercolor paper. Uh, let's pull out another marker and see what I can do with it. This is a sketch marker, Graphix is the brand. Let's see what I can do, if I can kind of mix these colors together or not. I'm not sure. So trying to see if I can blend this. I can't really blend it once it goes down. Let's put the Copic over here, see what happens. Yeah, so it's blending. So I can blend the marker paper, you can blend markers together. So I'm kind of blending the red with this lilac. I wish I had a blue one. So I'd like to play around with Copics more and learn a little bit more about how they work. Oh, I think that goes on the side. No, maybe it goes on this side. Maybe I gotta learn how to put the cap back on. The heck? I can't get the cap back on. I'm going cray cray. That side went on. How come this side's not going on? There we go. Cap— the cap's locked on really well. This is a— I like the color of this marker. I don't know the name of the color, some kind of red. Cadmium— this is Cadmium Red Yellow, it's called. Did I say red yellow? I think I'm losing my mind. Cadmium Red Middle, not yellow. Yeah, but this marker paper is kind of slick, which is nice. Look at how vibrant that is. I mean, these colors go down really, really vibrant. So I definitely would love to play around. So good question about the Copics. Sorry I didn't give you a great answer. My answer is I do have some, but I haven't really used them too much yet. They are on the horizon to kind of play around with more. So I have some more of the colors. See, I got— what is this color? This is another sketch marker. Graphics. I think this one I played around with. I think that's the pink you see on here. Yeah, this might be used before. There you go. All right, cool. So let's just play around quick, just trying some stuff out with markers. So if you want to play around with markers, maybe try getting some marker paper. Not really— I didn't really have luck using the marker on watercolor paper unless it's a watercolor marker. There's so many markers out there on the market. Um, you like the colors? Yes. Dual nibs, they're replaceable, and oh, the markers refillable. Awesome, I did not know that. They are expensive. Yeah, Copics are expensive. They're, like I said, a lot of professionals use them. I know industrial designers are gaga and graphic designers are gaga over— is that a word, gaga? Lady Gaga. They're gaga over Copic markers. I have seen them at Michaels. The Amoreseable with a 50% coupon at Showmans. There you go. Yeah, Dawn, I think they are alcohol-based. Alcohol-based, I think you are correct. So if they're alcohol-based, that means they won't bleed, right? They won't bleed with water. I think I said that right. But yeah, so Dawn, they would look awesome on the tracing paper. I was thinking that before. Let's pull it up. Ah, one of these nights I'd like to do an Inky Inky night drawing again on tracing paper. Let me know in the comments, give me thumbs up if you would like to do an Inky Winky night sketch one night. So here's some, here's some trace papers. Let's throw down with the markers. Let's see, let's play around with this, see how it looks on here. Yeah, this would be really cool for doing like an inky inky night sketch. Well, I think I have another Copic. Is this a Copic? Oh, I do. I have two different colored Copics. Rare. Who knew? This looks like the same color. Yeah, they go down really smooth on trace paper. Ashley lifting some of the marker off. Cool. So there we go. So that's just a little bit of marker play. It's always fun trying different things out, right? Let's head back to this piece here. I'll change the music up, spend a little more time on this, and let's see. I kind of like where this one's heading. I think this needs some yellow in it. Let's pop on some yellow. Inky Inky Night, thumbs up! Yes, we'll do Inky Nights, that'll be awesome. I'll let you guys know when I'm gonna do it ahead of time, so if you want to join me, you could definitely, uh, join me. I'll make an announcement about that. Cool. But this color is more like Pinky Pinky Nights. Yeah, I love that. Pinky Pinky Nights. Sketchline is a pro line, uh, Chao is the beginner Copic set, less colors but same quality, I think. Yeah, I have to look into the Copic. Sketching Workshop mentioned using Copic pens, about 20 different colors. Ooh, over $100 for pens, cha-ching! That's a lot of money. That is a lot of money. But it's worth it. Worth it if you want to learn how to use them and enjoy them. Let's throw down some yellow on here. So I have a piece of scrap paper off to the side. I keep— I'm just wiping my highlighter off on it now, because it's lifting the ink, black ink underneath. I just keep cleaning the highlighter over here. Because I don't want it to look too muddy as I'm throwing it down. Cool. That's what reviews say, they are worth the money. Yeah. Oh yeah, I'm sure they're really awesome, amazing markers, right? Especially like I said, if the professionals are using them, then you gotta— I would imagine it'd be really good quality. I think at Michaels they actually keep them— I could be wrong, but I think they keep them locked up. I think it's enough yellow for now. I just wanted to pop some on. I may come back and add more later. Okay, that's enough yellow for now. I love that piece of music. That's a fun one to sketch too, for sure. Definitely futuristic city. Yeah, so this is kind of a futuristic city vibe. That's exactly where I was heading, kind of industrial futuristic. I'm so glad you caught that. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Is that a Lamy pen that's bleeding? Yeah, so this is the Lamy pen that's bleeding, uh, Lamy ink. Um, what I love about the Lamy ink is the first time I throw it down and bleed it, it comes out, um, kind of gray. And then sometimes when I go back over it with just water to bleed more, it'll turn almost purple, which is really It's actually really cool. And I'm just wet over here. I'm just going to kind of go over kind of the edge of this building. I want this to be kind of more of a silhouette here. This piece. Yeah, so this is turning out to be just kind of a cool futuristic city vibe. And you'll see me switching from the Lamy pen to my Sharpie. You know, where I don't want things to bleed, I'll throw down some Sharpie there. Uh, Don got a Preppy pen a few weeks ago. It has turned into your note-taking pen. Ooh, awesome. I have not tried the Preppy pen. You know, I've put the Preppy pens in my Amazon shopping cart a few times and never clicked buy or checkout. It's something I've been wanting to try out, so that's cool, Don. Uh, Dawn, do the puppies— I think they bleed, right? I believe they do. I'm loving the way— I'm loving the textures and colors on this. That's what I— that is what I did too, and the We're in suspense, don't leave us in suspense. I'm going to throw down a little, uh, I'm going to show you this area on here. I like the way it's drying. I'll show you in a second. I just want to throw down some of this iron— I keep saying iron oxide, it's red, it's red oxide color. Loving it, loving the red oxide. I just want to throw some more down kind of in here. Just trying to create an interesting kind of ground here, foreground area. Um, this one did too. Oh, shopping cart. So did too. Hit enter too soon and then went into Christmas shopping, went ahead and threw it in. Awesome. Hey, when you're Christmas shopping, why not treat yourself to something, right? You work hard, you take care of other people. You can treat yourself once in a while. Why not buy a cool pen or some markers or some colors? Um, go for it. That's awesome. Dawn's having a weird delay. Welcome to my world. I am always in delay. I was saying in my classroom the other day, I was telling the kids, I'm like, do you ever have a day Did you ever have a day where your brain is in slow motion and the world around you is going 10,000, a million times faster than your brain can process? I was having one of those days. I have a lot of those days where my brain is really slowed, is kind of delayed with all the stuff happening around. Which is cool, it's just how I operate and I'm not gonna crank up my gears to keep up with the rest of the frantic world if I don't need to. I'm gonna go at my own pace. So you said delay, it just made me think of what I was talking about in school the other day. Hey, D-Ray's in the house, what's up D-Ray? Good to see you as always. I'm trying to look more into camera when I talk so So hopefully I'm making good eye contact today. I know I kind of look down a lot, but I want to engage with you guys. Looks like someone was watching from YouTube. If you're watching from YouTube, say hello. Put it in the comments. Say, "I'm on Team YouTube." Um, doing a Secret Santa gift exchange at work. $25 limit. You can build a wish list on Amazon. Ooh. Guess what your list looks like. Hmm, Patty, let me guess. Well, $25, let's see. I'm gonna guess maybe art supplies, maybe? I'm just guessing, maybe some kind of art supplies. Just a thought. We got a slow-mo, we're going our own speed, yeah! D-Ray, that's right, we're going our own speed. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's slow. I, uh, I feel like the older I'm getting, I'm appreciating taking my time and doing things slower. When I was younger, when I was in high school, I was a kid that would walk so fast through the hallways. I would like to get from class to class, and I was just always constantly moving fast, fast, fast, fast throughout the years. And now I'm just kind of slowing down, trying to take things in a little more, enjoy things a little more. It's not— I don't always do that, and it's not easy to do all the time, but I like it when I can do it. And I put people to sleep sometimes. On your phone tonight, seems okay. Awesome, glad your phone's working. This is a great song too. This is cool. I don't know what I want to do for the background on this. I might restart this this piece here and do a different sketch. I just wanna do gray in the background. No, I think I wanna do— see, I'm— alright, so now when I'm thinking too much, that means it's time to put this one away and come back to it. So I'm kind of thinking— I like to go with my gut, so when I'm thinking too much, it's saying, "Alright, you know, put this away and I'll come back to it." But I am thinking like a lavender color, believe it or not, for the background. I'm just eyeing up my pencil here. I'm doing it, breaking out the lavender colored pencil. I'm gonna redo that song, guys. I love that song so much, I just want to play it again. Hopefully you're cool with that. It's called Towards Dawn. I don't have lavender paint, do I? I'm gonna use colored pencil. That's fine. They say lavender, maybe it's lilac. I'm sorry, lilac. I said lavender. I think I'm gonna end up doing some kind of a mixed media. Sky. I'll put on some colored pencil and I'll come back on top with another color. So I'm leaving some white spots intentionally so the color— if I use watercolor, it'll fill in the white spots. Yeah, that's a fun piece of music. All right, let's do this. Let's put on some color, see what it looks like. I have this color. I don't always like the way this goes on, but I'm going to try it anyway. Let's see. Um, let's see. Just looking at my music list here. I don't know, what do we feel like listening to? Um, hmm. I— let's play this. It's my choir music. Where's my big brush? Here it is. Cool, there we go. I like that color. It'll dry nicely. I'll come back, add some colored pencil on top of it, I think. Zoom out, you can see kind of the whole thing, the way it's looking there on screen. You don't put us to sleep. Haha, not yet. Um, Ru was going 100 miles this morning, he must have been drinking high test tea. Love it. Towards Dawn sounds good. The pauses makes it work for me. We got choir music, bring it on, but slowly, very slow. Oh, love the sky with that lilac. Hey Dawn, have a great night. Take care, it was good seeing you. Yeah, so dry, nice. I'm gonna wrap up, I think, in a minute, a couple minutes. Good night Dawn, take care. Cool. I know the music has stopped. That's okay. Just kind of in the groove there. Sometimes you gotta go with the groove. More than lack of the groove. Cool. Cool. I really— I like where this piece is headed. Has an interesting vibe to it. I really like the colors on it. So I'm going to leave this one alone for now and I'm going to come back to it in the future. "The sky, that sky looks great, a winter sky." Ooh, yeah, it'll look cool. I'm going to come back and add another layer of colored pencil on top of it. Maybe I'll probably add some more, some lilac on it as well. And I have another color I'm eyeing up for the sky that I might throw down with colored pencil as well is this Process Red color. Which I really am liking. Let me show you. I have a scrap piece here. So I'm really kind of liking this Process Red color. You can see there, it's raised. It actually looks kind of like the pink. No, it doesn't. Anyway, so I might throw down some Process Red in that sky as well. Let me just see what would happen if I threw through a little bit here. Even some areas I would just kind of pop it in. Not get too crazy with it. Just lightly kind of swirling it in here, blending it in. That's just a thought, so I might come around and add some of this in the sky. Cool. Alright, I'll put this one aside. I think it's Whistling Cowboy time. I am getting tired here. I am getting ready to go to sleep soon. So let's do the Whistling Cowboy. This is looking really cool. It was the bold dark lines that slowly intertwined that gave his painting the sense of back to the future. Ooh, D-Ray. I'm putting that up on screen. Love it. That is so cool. Look at that. That's awesome. It was the bold dark lines that slowly intertwined that gave his painting the sense of back to the future. Love that. That is so cool. Thank you. I love your words. They are quite their own art form for sure. So thank you so much. Uh, boom. There he goes again for the button. "You snuck a church steeple in." I did. You see the church steeple? So whenever I hear the music, I actually had it in before the choir music tonight, but I went back and kind of emphasized it when I had the choir music playing. So yeah, it's pretty cool. I like this scene actually. It'll look interesting when it fully dries. I like what's happening down here. Oh, I want to show you one I want to show you one area on here. I love the way it's drying. Let me see if I can put it in camera view. Sometimes I zoom in, it loses the quality on screen, but this area here is really drying really, really interestingly. Right above my finger here. Actually, let me point here so you can see it better. This area right in here is kind of drying really cool. On screen it looks a little blurred out to me. And then I like what's happening here as well. And I really actually like what's happening here and here. This sketch painting has a lot of interesting areas. There we go, it's in focus. It has a lot of interesting things happening as it's drying. So it's looking kind of interesting. Cool. Alright, let's move this aside. Then I have one show and tell I'll show you guys. This was a cool painting I did earlier today. Sketch painting. Did a little virtual sketching this afternoon, this morning rather. We virtually went to Morocco and it was fun. Painted this cool sketch. I think this came out really, really well. You see I popped some pink on there. I gotta get the pinks on there somehow. But I think this came out really nicely. So it's not perfect, but it's quick and it has a loose style about it, so it's really interesting. Piece. You can actually see a lot of the colors I'm using here are the same colors I'm using here, minus the highlighter. I don't think I threw any highlighter on this one. Did I? Did I? I have yellow on here. I actually did use the yellow highlighter a little bit on this one. So the same basic color palette. It's pretty amazing, right? What you can do with the same colors. Cool stuff. Morocco, yes! Morocco! Guys, you're awesome! Let's put the Cowboy Up music on. I will take a number between 1 and 15. 1 and 15. We're gonna set this here so it can dry overnight. Perfect. And we can add the sketchbook, which I think I just had. Bum ba dum bum. I am gonna have to get another one of these sketchbooks soon. Our Whistling Cowboy's been taking many adventures lately. Pretty cool. This was a fun one. This was our last Whistling Cowboy. Adventure. See what happens tonight. Alright, 14 it is. We're going with number 14. Thank you, Patty. Hey, you guys are awesome. Thank you for watching. I appreciate you so much. I know I pop on very randomly. Um, one day I'll have a regular schedule, but I just like inking out loud and popping up randomly because I feel like Sometimes I feel like if I had a regular schedule, I would pre-plan what I want to do, and inking out loud is about on, you know, in the moment, spur of the moment, off-the-cuff thinking and just talking with you guys and talking about what's in my head as I'm having fun painting and sketching. Thanks guys for watching. Let's find number 14. Jason Nicholas, "I like randomly." You like randomly, thank you, I'm glad you like randomly. Yeah, you know, but I think if I had a regular time I could probably get more people tuning in. I have had people in the past say, "When are you on?" and I lose them, they don't come back because I'm not, and I can't blame them, because I'm not consistent with a schedule. But thinking out loud for me is, is kind of about just being random, in-the-moment creativity. All right, you guys are awesome. Number 14 it was. 1, 2, oops, that's not the whistling music. Here it is. All right, so 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Boots of Glory. Here we go. We'll wrap up. Whoa, I did not keep up with that music. I didn't expect the piece to end so short. So soon there, but it did. Glad you made it, D-Ray. Always good to see you, D-Ray. You're awesome. Appreciate it. We got Whistling Cowboy already. I was late. You're welcome. I am actually going to do one more Whistling Cowboy and finish this sketch here because I didn't expect the piece of music to end so soon. So let's play one more and then we're going to wrap up. Thank you guys for watching. Have an awesome, awesome Sunday. Peace and live creatively. I will see you really soon. Let's do the— let's do one more. I'm just gonna do this one. Alright, there we go! Whistling Cowboy, awesome! You guys are amazing! Loving the black background. Ooh, yeah! So this is actually this Copic marker, or not Copic, Sketch Marker, some purplish color. You guys are awesome, have a great, great night. Thank you for watching. Always keep paying it forward with positivity and creativity. See you guys soon.
