The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud
In this 30‑minute live stream, artist Jason Nicholas conducts a casual Sunday sketch session where he draws a bridge from memory using Sharpies, a Lamy pen, ink wash, and watercolor on an angled drawing board. He explains his workflow—starting with Sharpie lines that resist bleeding, then adding ink, and finally applying watercolor with an aqua brush to create depth. Throughout the stream he interacts with viewers (Dorothy, Linda, Lydia, D‑Ray, Yurei, etc.), answers questions about his materials (metallic Sharpies, neon green ink, gray mixing technique), discusses the shift from analog to digital clocks, and shares his philosophy that art is any creative act. He promotes his newly reopened Etsy shop (Inspired Life) where he sells original sketches, mentions an ongoing Facebook auction for a 7"×10" ink‑wash bridge piece, and encourages followers to help him reach 1,000 Facebook fans. The tone is informal, instructional, and community‑driven, with occasional personal anecdotes about holiday plans, lunch, and weather. The stream ends with a wrap‑up, gratitude to viewers, and a reminder of the auction deadline.
Chapters
Hey Dorothy, good to see you. Hope all is well. You drew your bridge the other day. Not too dirty. I enjoyed the process. That's so cool. I'm glad you, uh, sketched a bridge. I love to hear that. Awesome. So I'm on very, very quickly here. I just wanted to get a quick sketch in before I eat some lunch. Hope you guys are having a great, great Sunday, and we are one week away, one week away from Christmas. That is awesome. I am looking forward to a break and some quiet time. I need quiet time this holiday season, so I might go into hermit mode and just disappear. I just— sometimes we just need quiet time, right? I am definitely needing it right now. That's okay. Holidays are a good time to celebrate, have fun, treasure your family, your friends. It's also a time where you want to rejuvenate. Go for it. So I'm sketching my favorite go-to bridge perspective. I'm always sketching this, trying to get different views on it, different takes on it. Love sketching. I'm just using my Sharpie right now. Quick, loose, fast. And I think we're going to bleed some ink on top of it. I'll get a base happening here. How many days off will you and your class get for Christmas? I think we get 10 10 days. Also, let me know if my music is too loud. I'm not using my AirPods. I kind of have it— I don't even know if you can hear the music. I think you can. Yeah, but we got 10 days off, which is awesome. Definitely welcomed and needed. Yes, hear you well. Thanks. I appreciate it, Jonathan. Thanks for coming back. Hey guys, if you're watching on this Sunday, thank you for tuning in. Hope all is well. Don't usually come on this time on a Sunday, but yeah, I wanted to pop on. I wanna get my daily bridge sketch done now. I might do another later. I was kind of feeling in the mood and said, go for it. So kind of just quick perspective happening here. Feeling like I want to add a— I like adding clocks. I'm going to add a clock. I don't think I've ever sketched a clock. On a bridge. How do I want to do this clock? Let's see.
See if I can figure it out.
Maybe some kind of frame coming up. I want it to have the same vibe as the steel structure of the bridge. I think the clock is somewhere in there.
Time is 12:32.
I want it to look kind of digital-ish. I'm actually going to practice. I'm going to add a scrap piece here. I'm trying to figure out how to make the number 2 look on there.
I'm kind of weird that I have this gadget, but my brain's— alright, we'll make it work. Very cool.
So we have some kind of clock happening up here. That is a dramatic piece of music. Dorothy says, got 3 new Sharpies the other day: gold, silver, and copper, all metallic. Awesome! Welcome to the Sharpie club. Love it, love it. Also, let me know if I'm yelling into the microphone. I feel like I'm yelling. Um, where the heck Is it? That's so cool. I'm looking to see if I have any metallic Sharpies. You have just inspired me. I have metallic Sharpies somewhere around. They're not— I have all my black ones out, but that is awesome. I'd love to see what you sketch with those. So cool. All right, so we have kind of a Sharpie base on here. I always— I typically start with Sharpies because if I come back and do an ink wash or watercolor on top, the Sharpie won't bleed. So oftentimes you'll see me starting with a Sharpie, especially if I don't know if I'm going to add ink or water to it. If I already know I want it to bleed, sometimes you'll see me just grab the Lamy pen to sketch right away with that, which we're going to do now. Let's see, let's just go on top of some of these lines and bleed some ink on here. Digital clock. I was expecting analog clock. Jap. Well, it's a Digilog clock. Digilog. You can put it as whatever you want it to be. So, so funny. I would, I was thinking more modern industrial-ish. Cool. All right, let's bleed some ink on here, guys. And hope you're having a great Sunday. We'll call this Sunday Sketch Session. I was actually going to bring my lunch in here and eat and sketch, but I don't— I thought that'd be rude to eat on camera while I'm sketching. I'm not going to do it. And no one wants to see any food hanging out of my mouth. I was going to call it Sunday Sketch and Sustenance. Sunday Sketch and Sustenance. Very cool. Anyway, this is just quick. How long have I been on? About 10, 11 minutes. It's great because I want this to be very quick. I'm just throwing down some ink. I'll come back and we'll add some water and bleed some. I'm just touching it down here and there. I think it's enough for now. Let's, uh, use an aqua brush to bleed today. Aqua brush right here. I kind of reworked my desk here, surface. I actually have a drawing board that's at an angle. Normally I would prop my stuff up. Typically I would just use my watercolor palette to put underneath right here. I would just usually stick this underneath to raise it up, but I don't need to do that because my whole board is at an angle. So that's cool. I always like to— I like to sketch on an angle because then the water can run down a little bit. So I'm lightly just touching, adding some water over where I have that ink. No, I can't hear the music. There we go. We are just throwing down— I'm going to pull this edge out, so I'm just catching down here. You could see— I'll zoom in— you can see I'm actually not even trying to follow my Sharpie lines exactly. Um, all this is just very fast and loose. So just to keep with that look, when I'm coming back over lines, I'm not trying to trace exactly what I have. I'm just kind of going with my feel, gut feeling. I'm listening to the music, just having fun. I had someone one time on a chat say that he's— or maybe it was a comment on a TikTok video or something. He's like, they're like, oh, what you do is not art. I'm like, what? I totally ignored it. It was someone trolling in the comments. Guys, for me, anything— for me, art is anything that involves creativity, getting something out of your brain and your heart, putting it on paper, building it, baking it, sewing it, dancing. For me, that is— that's art. Just the act of creation. So I don't know what this, this dude was saying, but don't let people stop you guys from creating. Have fun and just enjoy the process. That's really what it's about for me. It's okay. Sometimes we need to— sometimes we need to take a little break. Process feels like it's getting old. Step away a little bit and come back to it. I like the word. I like where this is headed.
Cool.
I like the color. I don't even know if I'm gonna put any— maybe just a little touch on this side here. I keep grabbing— going for this pen because I should have this color ink in this pen, but I don't. What do I have in here? I think I have a cool yellow. Let's actually see what's in here. Maybe we'll use it. Oh, this is that electric green or whatever, neon green. I'm not even sure what it's called. We can throw this on here. Let's see what happens. I know Linda really loves this color. Linda loves this. Actually, I have another green color that she really loves. Help bleed some of this. Almost looks like yellow highlighter. Bleed some of that in here. Right, cool. There we go. Um, Dorothy says, I'm old-fashioned, years behind. Ah, they don't even teach analog clock reading in school anymore. They actually replaced all the clocks. I know at least in my school, but I think in the entire district, we no longer have analog clocks in our classrooms. They're all digital. Definitely in high school, they're all digital. So it's really— it's interesting to see that change along with the fact that I have kids that can't even sign their names in script. So things are changing out there. It's very, very interesting. Never tried an angled board. Yeah. So the reason I like to sketch at an angle, you can probably see better on here, this one. I just like to let the water and ink or even watercolor just kind of run down the page a little bit. It's just a look or aesthetic I like to do. So that's why I kind of like to sketch at an angle. Or yeah. Yes, being creative makes me feel good. Oh, good, Dorothy. I'm so glad. Yeah, creativity, right? It should be fun. Have fun. You should embrace, embrace the process. Sometimes we're too worried or too— we're too worried that the end result is not going to be what we want it to be. For me, that's like 9 times out of 10, but I don't care because I'm having fun with the process. You know, I'm not doing a commission for somebody where I need an exact replica or something they're expecting. I'm on here doing this stuff for me. This is kind of a passion of mine, just sketching, and I just love putting it out there. Don't let the end result shut you down. You know, for me, I always say at my classes, it's about the journey between A and Z. It's not always about what Z is going to be like. I mean, there are things. I mean, there are the conditions for designing a project and there are certain requirements we have to make, meet. That's cool. But there is, there are so many different ways to get end results and you can enjoy that process. Hey, Restream is replying. Oh, Restream has— oh, cool. I set this up so that certain comments will pop up automatically. Like depth going down the hallway. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's like the depth. That's exactly what I'm working at. Just a real quick, loose perspective idea. I think I'm going to put this away for now. I don't want to add any more ink. What am I going to do down here? I think I just want to do a gray. I want to keep this kind of simple. Let's do some kind of gray. I'm going to mix up just a watercolor palette here. I'm going to mix up some gray, do some blue and brown, and we'll throw some gray on there. Just wanna give, define this road surface and that's it. Well, that's all we'll do. Nice painting. Oh, thank you. Yeah, so this was the bridge when I started yesterday. Actually just did a couple of finishing touches on it earlier. Yeah, it's cool. I think it's come out really awesome. This is Deception Pass in the state of Washington. So I think it came out really awesome. I'm going to put this probably on my Etsy page. I just started an Etsy page where I'm going to be selling original stuff. Of course, I'll talk more about it. But yeah, you'll be seeing originals available on my Etsy page. I have a couple up there now. I could put a link if you guys don't mind. I'll put a link to it. But I'm just over here mixing some gray paint. I don't have gray in the palette, but I, I like to mix gray. I think it's a fun color to mix. Just some blue and brown. And we'll just see what it's looking like. Might be— there we go. What is my Etsy? I'm trying to think where my Etsy store link is. I have, I had one a long time ago, which I forgot about. And yesterday I reopened the store and made changes. It's probably Etsy shop Inspired Life or something like that. Anyway, here's the gray you can see I was mixing here. I think I wanna throw a little bit more blue into it. Maybe that was too much blue. It's okay, I'll throw some more brown on there. I like to mix the paint sometimes right on the paper. That's cool. There you go. So I just created a road surface here. You notice I was trying to make it a little bit darker towards the back here.
Make sure I get some of the palette here.
Just because it looks a little— when it's darker back here, it gives it more depth. I'll let it dry. So there we have just a quick road surface on there. Uh, ba ba ba bum. Oh, Dorothy, yeah, drawing could definitely be a good relief. Um, I agree with you. Yeah, creating is a good release mechanism. Um, I say sometimes sketching is my therapy. I just love it. It brings me to a different world. Hey, Lydia's in the house! Lydia, good morning. Hope all's well.
Good morning.
We're doing well. I am— bear with me a sec. I'm gonna look for a link to my Etsy shop I just opened. I wish I— you'd think I'd know it. Oh wait, just wait. Did it pop up here? Um, let's see. Etsy. Yeah, here it is.
All right.
So can I add this to the chat? How do I add something to the chat? I don't have a box where I can type in a comment. Um, if I go to Restream chat, I can do it here.
Boom. Cool.
So I just added a link to my Etsy store if anybody's interested. Again, that's where I'll be putting originals that are available. I have two— I just only have two right now, but feel free to check it out. Sorry for the shameless plug, but you know what? The more stuff I can sell— first of all, I want to sell this because I have this artwork sitting in my drawer here, um, not being appreciated. And I think some of these are really cool, so I think it'd be nice to get them out to a loving home somewhere. The other thing is, you know, it helps just to keep me getting supplies and sketching. I'm going to take some of that gray mix I have in here and I'm just going to add it on top just to create some depth and shadows on this. So I'm adding it right over the wash I did before. I had it in here, might as well use it. You guys are awesome. Thank you for liking this. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for sharing. Trying— my goal is to get to 1,000 followers here on my Facebook page before the end of the year. I think we're at 975. I think I only need 25 more people. It would just be so cool to end the year with 1,000 followers. So thank you guys for, um, every time you like this and share it, it's so helpful. So you can see I'm just kind of adding some shadows on here, just giving a little bit of depth. I'm just literally— I'm just mix using the whatever color I have in here. I have some brown, so kind of poking around in there and just pulling some of that color out. I'm gonna have to mix it a little bit more, maybe a touch of blue in there. So blue and brown, my go-to colors for making kind of gray. If I don't have gray, I don't have any gray already in the palette, so I just kind of mix my own up as I need it. I kind of want this darker back here. All right, I think that's enough gray on there for now. I don't want to overdo it. I don't really like this here.
Yeah, no, it works.
Dorothy says, got it. I'm glad you got it. That's awesome. Hey guys, if you're watching, feel free to say hello. I'd love to acknowledge you. I always appreciate your time. So I'm gonna let this dry. Quick sketch happening. Let me show you this. I'm gonna zoom out for a sec. So we kind of looked at this one before. This was one I worked on yesterday. I think it's wrapped up. I'm not too cray cray about the sky. I would do the sky differently next time. Maybe leave more white space like clouds. But I really do love— if I crop it, I don't mind it. If I crop, I don't like looking at the whole sky. I think I would crop this somewhere in here. Just show a little bit of the blue. I love it like that. That for me is too much of that blue. I would crop it here somewhere. This came out cool. I'm actually— I added some gray shadows and things. I like the way it's a bit dry. Then I have this one here. This is actually— this is currently up for auction on my Facebook page. It's pinned to the top. So this, I think the last time I looked at $40 was the highest bid so far. Bid ends tonight, 8:00 PM Eastern Time. If anybody's interested in bidding on this original ink wash sketch, 7 inches by 10 inches. I know Linda's loving it. Linda is my green person. She loves the greens I use. Green, kind of yellow highlights. This was fun. I did this one night live. I— this is actually, I have to say, it's probably in my top 3 I would say at least top 5 favorite ink wash sketches I've done this year. Really hard for me to part with this one, but I'd rather have it go to someone that's going to enjoy it in their house. It will literally probably sit in your drawer. Yeah, this came out really cool. I will try to make prints of this available.
Well, in the future.
Cool stuff, guys. Hey, let me know if you have any final questions before I wrap up. I'm gonna— my lunch is calling me. So at 1 o'clock, I made a pizza, took it out of the oven, it's cooling down now, so I can't wait to go have some. Dorothy says, I like the darker lines forming on the gray edges of watercolor. Yeah, let's zoom in. I'm not sure if you're talking about this. Darker lines, get up even closer. I don't know if you're talking about these dark lines at the edge here. So I love hard edges in watercolor and gouache painting. This has a nice kind of hard edge as it dries. I really love that look. Look at how wonky these lines are, guys. I'm going to do something with that clock. I'm going to make it a little wonkier at some point anyway. They're very wonky, and that's just my style. Quick, loose. I'm just trying to capture the idea of a bridge. Is this structurally feasible? Kind of, in theory, I guess. Do I have every bolt shown, every cross bracing shown? No, not by any means. This is not a technical structural drawing. It is just an interpretation of a bridge. I'm debating, I'm gonna leave this all white for now, but maybe I'll add some wash of color for kind of a sky. I'm not sure yet what I wanna do. This is drying really nicely. You can see the blues and the grays and kind of browns kind of drying there. D-Ray says pizza! Hey D-Ray, you're watching over on YouTube. I love it. Yurei heard me say pizza and commented. Yurei, I hope you're keeping warm. I saw a post from you. I think you said minus— was it minus 5 degrees in Alaska last night? That's incredible. What is your temperature there today? I'm so curious. Hope you guys are liking this ink wash sketch. This has kind of become my signature bridge sketches, or is this perspective? And it all started with this right here. This little 5-minute sketch I did one day in school with a pencil. I'm gonna frame this or something. I love this sketch. Probably still my most favorite one. But I'm just kind of ripping off it and doing a bunch of different— Oh, I forgot to put Gosh, you know what I forgot to put on here?
Duh.
Um, I didn't put the cables on the cables. Go on, sketch. Sharpie. Where's my Sharpie? Here. That was silly.
I forgot to do the cable.
Ira says nice interruption, Jason Nicholas. So cool you're watching YouTube. I'm streaming live to Facebook and YouTube now at the same time. Hoping to pick up some YouTube viewers. Um, that's so cool, D-Ray. Yeah, let's do some verticals. Um, let's turn this. We'll get this one. You guys see that? So they're gonna be closer towards a bridge. The cables will get further as we comes toward the— towards the foreground, just to give the idea of the depth. So, fairly light, heavy, this thing. And we have some backing here. Sorry, it's our Heading Westward music. Pull out this bridge a little bit more. I lost the frame of it. I want the arch a little bit more too. Alright, cool. Alright, so you can see I have some really light cables sketched on here. Back here, they're kind of close together. Back in here, you can really— there's really no spacing. All right, cool. Actually, I want to add a little thickness to this cable up top. Yes, 5 degrees this AM and snow really piled over your shoulders. Cleaning and shoveling anywhere we can put it. Oh, D-Ray, hang in there. Hang in there. That's a lot of snow. It's a lot of snow. Hope you're keeping safe and warm. We've been pretty lucky so far in here in New Jersey. Just maybe a couple inches the other day. It's melting away, so nothing really major to speak of here. Cool. All right guys, I think I'm gonna wrap up. If you have any final questions, let me know. By the way, thank you for liking and sharing. Sharing. Thank you for the positivity in the comments. Love that so much. Um, I love it. I feed off of the positivity in the comments and you guys, so thank you for that. This actually came out kind of well. How long have I been working? It says 37 minutes. All right, so let's say this was a 30-minute sketch by the time I was like talking and stuff. So 30 minutes, we have a quick ink wash bridge. From my imagination. I don't think I'm going to add any other colors, no background colors for a sky. I'm going to keep it just like we see it. I think it looks fine. Dorothy says the cables add even more depth. Oh yeah, thanks. Yeah, I'm glad that helped. And they're wonky again. They're not perfectly vertical. They're very wavy and wonky, which I don't mind. It's, it's what I like to do. Thanks for an interesting time. Blessings and have a great Christmas. You too, blessings. Merry Christmas to you. I'll pop on some night during the week, I'm sure, and possibly on Christmas, maybe Christmas Eve sometime as well. Who knows, maybe on Christmas Day, I'm not sure. Hey, you guys are awesome. Again, thank you for sharing and liking this. I appreciate you all. Um, if you're interested in bidding on this, the bid ends tonight, 8 o'clock PM Eastern time. The bid is right on my Facebook page, pinned to the top, so check it out. Last time I looked, it was, I think, at $40. I'd love to see it go up higher. I, I wasn't going to put this out for bids. I was actually going to put it for sale. I have a number in my mind, but I'm not going to say what it is. Um, I think this is worth I think it's worth, I don't know, I think it's worth a lot. Not like a lot, a lot, but a lot. Anyway, guys, take care. I'm rambling. Have a great, great day. Lunchtime calls. Peace and live creatively. See you soon.
