The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud
In this live YouTube session, artist Jason Nicholas greets his audience and shares a quick sketch of the Pont d'Avignon bridge followed by a rapid, loose sketch of the Empire State Building. He explains his choice to work with a Sharpie on watercolor paper, emphasizing a minimalist, pen‑only approach for the bridge and a more energetic, music‑driven style for the skyscraper. Throughout the stream, Jason interacts with viewers—Cameron, Linda, D‑Ray, Chip, Heather, and others—thanking them for past collaborations, discussing feedback on his bridge series, and fielding questions about his process. He demonstrates sketching techniques such as warm‑up gestures, perspective capture without precise measurement, hatching for curved surfaces, and iterative line refinement. Jason shares historical tidbits about the Empire State Building’s spire and the American Radiator Building, and reflects on the “frantic energy” of New York City that he aims to convey through line work. He outlines two takeaways: the successful capture of city energy and the need to improve proportion of the spire. He also mentions future plans, including more bridge sketches (e.g., Mackinac Bridge), live sessions, and personal goals like walking the Mackinac Bridge and visiting observation decks. The stream concludes with gratitude, well‑wishes, and a reminder to keep creating creatively.
Chapters
Hey, D-Ray, hope you're doing well. Happy Thursday. Hope you're keeping warm and safe. Good to see you. Hey, Jennifer, good to see you. Hope all's well. Thanks for tuning in. Hey guys, it's 9:45 PM Thursday, uh, January 12th. I'm gonna take one of my AirPods out because I feel like I'm screaming into the microphone. Hope you guys are doing well. I'm popping on really quickly. Um, I did do my daily bridge sketch. Hey, Cameron's in the house, good to see you. Um, I did my daily bridge sketch a little bit earlier, but I want to do just another quick sketch before I head off. To sleepy land. This sketch is of the— let's see if I can say it right in French— Pont d'Avignon. Pont— I'm not good with my French. Pont d'Avignon, Avignon, France. Built in 1185. Keeping it simple, I just use a Sharpie right here on this watercolor paper. I'm not going to— I don't think I'm going to do any washes or add any color to it. I kind of like the simplicity of just the pen on paper. So that was a cool sketch. And now I'm thinking we do just a quick maybe sketch of maybe the Empire State Building. I have actually a picture here I took, I'm looking at, and we'll do a quick sketch. But hope you guys are doing well. Cameron, thank you for coming in the other day and being our guest speaker in school. I am really impressed in how— where you're headed. So keep up the amazing work. Really, I know I said it 1,000 times, but I'm extremely, extremely grateful for you taking time out. And you— and it was awesome. I talked to the kids the day after, which was Wednesday, or I forget what day it was, but anyway, they— I had some really good feedback. So thank you. Good stuff, guys. Hey, Linda's in the house! Good to see you, Linda. Hope all's well. Linda, I saw your, uh, sketch with the house not too long ago, maybe an hour or so ago. Really— I'm not a sketch, a painting. Really cool painting you did. Love it. You guys are awesome. So I'm going to do something a little different, um, as far as music goes. I want to listen to music, but I can't play it. The music I want to listen to, I can't play it because it's copyrighted. I need some really peppy, peppy music. I have actually Green Day playing in my AirPods, so I'm just going to be sketching this from Green Day. So you're not going to hear music, um, but you'll see me moving like a maniac because I just want some energy. I'm just feeling Green Day-ish. I wish I could play it, but I can't. Anyway, stay tuned and watch, guys. I'm going to do some sketching and we'll check in on your comments. And I really appreciate you all so, so much. So let me start my tunes up. So let me just show you the reference image I'm working off of. Here's a photograph I took in November when I was in New York City. I have so many windows open. I got to find the right one to click here. Where the heck is it? This is where I wish I had someone that could just find the button and click it for me. I just uploaded an image. I'll show you the image up here. It is, uh, this one. Not that's— well, that's a big one. Here we go. So here's a picture I took. I can make it bigger somehow. I have to go to this window. Uh, this is a picture I took from Bryant Bryant Park in New York City. I love Bryant Park. It's probably one of my top 3 favorite locations in NYC. In this photo, you can see the Empire State Building and also the American Radiator Building. Ah, it's an incredible, incredible, both incredible Art Deco skyscrapers. So I'm going to do a real quick sketch, not trying to get detailed, but I just want to let loose here. And we'll see what happens. Really just want to maybe capture the outlines of some things. And I'm limiting myself to 10 o'clock tonight because I gotta get to bed soon. But yeah, thanks for watching, guys, and feel free to ask questions. And sorry about the music. I could put music on for you guys. Actually, uh, no, I can't because I can't listen to it at the same time. Linda says fun. Here we go. Where's the music? Boom. And I won't sing either, I promise. You don't want to hear me singing. Let's make sure you guys can see this. I'm actually going to turn the photo off so you can see my sketchbook. And when I sketch from photographs, they're quick references for me. I'm not trying to get detailed. And lots of times I'll just sketch something in outline and then I'll even just get rid of the photo. Let's go, let's do it, guys. So you'll kind of notice me before I sketch, I'm always kind of gesturing and moving my hand around. I'm just kind of loosening up, my brain's getting warmed up, my hand's getting warmed up. Kind of working out where I want to start this sketch. It's kind of like a pre-tango to the tango. I don't know dancing terminology. It's like a warm-up. It's like if you're playing baseball, you're in the warm-up. Enough with the analogies. Let's sketch. I'm trying to be too intellectual. It's not working. Cool. Another thing you'll notice as I'm sketching— I'll zoom in quick. I'm trying to give you guys some pointers as I'm going through this, or just what's going through my brain. I'm not sketching perfectly straight lines. I gotta lower this. I'm not sketching perfectly straight lines. I'm sketching fairly lightly with the Sharpie because I want the texture of the paper to show through. I like that these lines don't look solid. I like that they're broken up. It adds to the style I like to have, the loose sketchy style. And let's— and you'll, you'll see, you'll notice that as I go through this. And I am speed sketching here intentionally. So let's see what I can capture in a short amount of time here. So I am sketching— there's perspective on this photograph, so you'll see some angles happening here and there, just trying to pick up on that perspective a little bit. I'm not measuring the angle, I'm just capturing the feel of it, the illusion that there's some depth happening here. I said 10, I'll probably, I'll probably go to 10, 15. I'm not trying to capture the entire Empire State Building, just the top that we saw in that photograph. So the Empire State Building is an amazing Art Deco style skyscraper built in the early 1930s. And I love this little fact that this spire had the intention of being a docking station for for blimps. I just love the romantic notion. I don't know about the practicalities of it. It may have been a marketing ploy for people to— for them to market the building. But I just love the romantic idea of this gas-filled giant hot air balloon docking on this needle spire or attaching to it, mooring to it. I always found it really fascinating. So I have kind of the steps here. That's all I think I'm going to sketch of. This actually comes back, we got some perspective, a little depth here. That's, that's all we're going to see of the Empire State Building in this sketch. Kind of the height of it. I'm going to zoom out so you can see more of it. I could have started higher on the paper, but I'm not trying to capture the entire building, so I'm cool with just a piece of it. Um, I might get brave and try to do the radiator building over here, but let's just focus on the Empire State Building. Got some curves happening, got some strips of windows. So I'm just kind of looking at where some windows are happening. I'm not counting the windows. I'm just indicating that there are windows happening here. Just, just putting down rectangles to show the windows. We have some kind of statues happening up in here with the windows coming down. I could take my Lamy also and bleed these window openings, but I'm gonna just stick with my Sharpie for now. Hopefully you guys can tell that this is the Empire State Building happening. I love the wonkiness, the looseness of the lines. Another sketching tip for my style is I will go back over lines many times. You'll see me going back over lines I've already sketched. I like that. I like the aesthetic, the looseness of it. Unlike the bridge I did earlier today, this is, this is a more of a cleaner type of sketch style for me. Not a lot of— let me put these next to each other so you can kind of see them. The bridge is much cleaner. I was a little more careful with it, but it still has a loose feel. Empire State Building. I have fast music playing in the background here, and I am just sketching to the vibe. When I think New York City, I think energy, movement, motion, excitement, chaos. Although there are pockets of tranquility in the city, you can find the general vibe is kind of what I just said. I'm trying to capture that energy with these kind of frantic lines I'm sketching here. So we have windows on an angle here. They're kind of in a perspective view. So I'm just sketching them kind of going down at an angle just to keep that illusion going. Alright, Green Day's over. I can calm down. All right, I got my energy level out. Now we'll put on, uh, I'll put on some music so we all can listen to it. Here we go. So if you guys have any questions or comments— all right, so Cameron, I see you. Linda putting Green Day— oh, you're putting Green Day down also, Linda, that's awesome. So I was just listening to Holiday by Green Day. Love that song. So yeah, darn copyright stuff. Chip's in the house. Hey Chip, good to see you. Hope all's well. D-Ray, I love D-Ray's commenting and paraphrasing what I say. Thank you, D-Ray. Love it. Liv says love both the bridge and the building. Oh thanks, I appreciate I appreciate that. Yeah, so someone had asked me maybe a week or two ago if I'm just gonna only sketch bridges from now on. I'm like, no way. I am not just sketching bridges. I'm practicing bridges, and today was bridge number 43. No, architecture is in my soul, guys. I will never stop sketching buildings and architecture. There's just no way. I have fantasies of traveling with just a sketchbook and a pen and just sketching architecture of the world. All right, so we kind of have the top of the Empire State Building. I like it, it's loose. Gonna leave it like that. My test will be when I bring this sketch to school tomorrow and ask my classes if they can guess what building I sketched. Then I'll know if it translates through or not. Oop, my light went off, said it's 10 o'clock. Alright, that's cool. I was gonna add some shading lines on here. For shading, I'm literally just, just dragging some line— vertical lines down a little bit just to shade it. Even on this area, just add a little bit of shading. I don't think I'm going to bleed any ink on this one, just like the bridge I did earlier tonight. I didn't bleed any ink. And I kind of liked it. I liked it that way. I mean, I feel like I would want to bleed some ink here and make it look like reflections, but I'm going to keep it this way for now. All right, do I do the radiator building? This— gosh, radiator building is— I've only sketched it once. It is cray cray. I don't know if I'm up for doing it right now. I'll show you guys the radiator building on screen again. I might just stop the Empire State Building for tonight. Let's see, where's that button again? Where's— Cameron says on the bridge sketching, make sure not to go— make sure not to go a bridge too far. Cameron, my brain's turned off. I'm not sure what hear what you mean. Let me know what you mean if you can. Here's the American Radiator Building. Look at this building, guys. I'm getting excited talking about this stuff. I love the color of this building. It's, it's black with gold accents. Really, really, um, unique building. And it was— it looks like a radiator that's an old-school radiator, those cast iron radiators. I have to read more about the history of the building. I don't know if the company that built the building was a radiator company or they called it that just because of the looks. So that I don't know the history of, but I am intrigued to learn more about it. And that's one of the really cool things about sketching architecture is I'll see buildings I think are awesome, I'll want to sketch them and then learn about the history of them. Yeah, but I think I'm going to pass on sketching the radiator building right now. Just play around with the Empire State Building for another minute or two. But I have left room on here so I can add it if I want to. I'm gonna curve this and give this a little curve to the spire here. So when I try to show things that are curved, here's what I like to do. Just do it on a sheet of paper. Let's just sketch— let me do a little quick lighthouse and I'll show you. This will be real quick. This is just part of the lighthouse, say. Maybe that's the top, top of the lighthouse. So if I want this to look curved, you know, it looks kind of straight, a couple things I'll do. I'll do lines like this, like shading lines. So notice how I did that. The shade almost kind of curves a little bit here. If I sketch this like this, if I had shaded like this, you're not getting the curve effect, right? So that's one way to get kind of a curved look to a surface. I also will add just curved lines to it. I'm going to exaggerate so you can see what I'm doing here. But I'm— I am slightly curving these lines as I'm sketching them. So it has kind of a curved look to it. So that's kind of how I like to get loose sketchy curved looking, um, structures. So these curved lines are really just lines that are kind of just going like this. So those are just some hatching tips to get ideas to get curved-looking surfaces. Oh, I love this one. All right, cool. Here, my proportions exactly 100% on this, no. It's quick, it's loose, I'm not going for scale. I just see some little antennas popping up here which I'll just throw on just for a deep little fun details popping up here. Your windows up here, I didn't sketch, they're too small. I just want to pop pop this out a little bit here, pull this out a little bit more, just kind of pull this out a little more so you get that kind of indented piece popping out a little bit. And I think I'm done. I think we're done with the Empire State Building sketch for tonight. Not bad. So that's just a quick Quick top view of the Empire State Building. This tower spired. I always like to do two takeaways with my sketching. You guys have probably heard me say this many times, but first takeaway is what's something I really like about what I did. So if I look at this, the first takeaway, something I really like about this is I really do love I love the real looseness and craziness of the frantic energy of New York City. I was trying to capture with the lines here. I feel like I got the energy in the sketch. Um, if I went back and— the second takeaway is I like to look at something and not beat myself up about it and say this is horrible. What could I improve next time if I was to do this again? And it would be the proportions of this. Spire. This part of the spire here between my fingers really should have been probably up in here, so a little bit taller. Can we fix it? We can— I can try to mess around and fix it. You know, I probably would bring it up, bring it up in here somewhere. So I kind of fixed it. So another advantage of quick loose sketches is you can add things pretty easily. So I stretched it a little bit more. All right, cool. Let me see if there's any last questions or comments before I head out. I have school tomorrow. Long weekend coming up, which is awesome. Um, let me look at the comments. D-Ray says, amazing to follow along through the reflections, details of depth. Looks good, Jason Nicholas Nicholas. Hey, thanks, D-Ray, I appreciate that. Again, I hope you're staying nice and warm in our great state of Alaska. Linda Nicholas, we are enjoying the bridge series. Reminds me of the Brill Building with with the black and gold. Ooh, Brill Building. I'm gonna Google that one up. Write it down, Brill. Thank you for the feedback, Linda. I didn't know if any people were getting bored of the bridge sketches or what. No, I had no idea. So I'm enjoying them and I hope you guys are enjoying them. Linda, I'm glad you're enjoying the bridge sketches. I will do justice to the Mackinac Bridge. I will do justice to that bridge. I did a really, really bad— I'll show you guys a really bad first take at it. I do not like this one. This was a very quick first take at it. I was trying to be industrious with the sketch. So this was a first crack at part of the Mackinac Bridge. I'm going to revisit it. I have to be honest with you. When I did this, I was really tired. I was just trying to get my bridge sketch done. So you can see I'm actually trying to fix it up or add to it. But I know that's one of your favorite bridges, Linda. I'll revisit that one. But I learned, I learned from sketching it. I learned it was a starting point. Cameron, I was referring to the film A Bridge Too Far. Oh. Yeah, yeah, Bridge Too Far. I got you now. Yes, I've heard of that movie. Thank you, Cameron. A good reference, by the way. Hey, Heather's in the house! Heather, good to see you. Hope all's well. Frantic energy gives me the freedom to go for the— hey, thanks, D-Ray. D-Ray says thank you, rest up. All you're sharing with us, D-Ray, thank you. I appreciate all your positivity in the comments you leave And you're awesome, keep being awesome. Linda O'Good, someday I am gonna do a walk over the Mack. Let me know, let me know when you're gonna walk the Mack. Let me know, let's set something up. How cool, I would love to walk across the Mack with you guys. We don't have to go like walk across the high cable part, do we? Do they have like a pedestrian area on the actual bridge level? I hope. That would be cool. I'd love to walk that bridge someday. There you go, guys. I'm gonna wrap for tonight. So, quick Empire State Building sketch. Let me just put the date on here so I don't forget when I sketched it. I'm actually gonna— where should I write it? I'll just put it over here. Actually, I'll do it at the bottom, because I'm going to crop it. Let's do Hart, Jason, 2023. And I'm not going to put the name of the building yet. I want my students to guess it first, so I'll write the name tomorrow. Hey, Linda says they do the Mack Walk every Labor Day. From 6 AM to noon. Oh, that's cool. Um, that's awesome. I'm— I know you sent a link to me. I started to look at it, and I'm recalling, I think you have to sign up for that, right? I think you have to sign up. Um, it's like a donation type of event, if I remember. That sounds cool. I'd love to do it one of these days. I would love to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. That is on my Bucket list. A bucket I hope to— I was gonna say kick, but that didn't sound right. A bucket list item I wish to fulfill this, um, I'm thinking this summer. I know it's gonna be busy. I really should do it this winter when there's less people there, but I don't have the guts to do it. Just getting there right now in the city on my own. But I will get there. I will work up the courage. And that's what's great about sketching. If I can't get to the place, I can sketch the place. Thanks guys, appreciate you all so much. Have an amazing, awesome rest of your evening. Enjoy your Friday. I will be— I would like to sketch live tomorrow night, Friday, so I should be on it probably after 9 o'clock sometime. And yeah, um, keep paying it forward with creativity. I love what you're sharing. You guys are amazing and I appreciate you all. Thanks for entertaining my rambling this evening with this unplanned event. Linda says, "Oh, that link was a chance to go to the top of the bridge." Oh, gotcha. Yeah, no, I wouldn't go to the top of the bridge. I agree. I could walk across it but not go to the top. I have Although I have a height thing, but I have been to the top of the Empire State Building and the top of the, oh, the Rock. Where is that? Rockefeller Center. I was on top of there too. So I can do that kind of stuff. But yeah, bridge, I don't think so. Guys, take care. Have a great, great night. Peace and live creatively. I'll see you soon. Looking for the finish button. Thanks again everybody, take care. D-Ray says still sick, trying not to get my— trying to get your— oh D-Ray, feel better! D-Ray, we hope you feel better, we hope you feel better. Still trying to get to your arts. D-Ray, you will, you will get better and be able to get back to your art one day. I'm sure of it. I'm sure of it. Even if you have a little notepad and a pen or pencil and scribble something, that would be so cool. Feel better. Linda went to the top of the Rock. Oh, so cool, you've been there. Yeah, isn't it? The views up there are incredible. Um, there are more and more observation decks opening in New York City. There's The Edge down in Hudson Yards. That's on my list to go to that observation deck. Oh man, there's another one. Where's the other? There's another one somewhere. If my urbanist friend was out there watching, he'd let me know. D-Ray says, finish button to your left, other left. Thanks, D-Ray. Take care, guys. I could talk all night. I'm hyped up and this is, This is my zone. I love this stuff. Good night, though. I have to get to bed. Otherwise I'll be cranky for the kids, and that won't be fun. Good night, guys.
