The Inkspired Life - Sketching & Painting : Inking Out Loud
In this informal livestream, artist Jason Nicholas greets his online community and embarks on a 15‑minute live sketch of New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He shares reference photos, explains his choice of materials (Fabriano 140 lb watercolor paper, Sharpie for line work, optional water‑soluble ink for washes), and walks through his drawing process—breaking the building into simple geometric forms, using hatching to suggest curvature, and adding “peeps” for scale. Throughout the session he discusses the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright design, the modern addition by Gwathmey Siegel, and speculates on Wright’s reaction to later alterations. Jason interacts heavily with chat participants, acknowledging regular viewers, fielding questions about color, technique, and architecture, and mentions personal anecdotes such as a 14‑mile walk in NYC, a blistered foot, and upcoming plans to sell sketches in Central Park, conduct a summer workshop, and attend drone‑training for his high‑school curriculum. The stream ends with a quick showcase of other city sketches (St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Empire State spire, Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, Plaza Hotel) and a light‑hearted sign‑off.
Chapters
Hey there, hope you guys are having an awesome, uh, Wednesday. I am on pretty late tonight. I didn't do any sketching, so I wanted to pop on and, uh, do a daily sketch. Hope you're doing well. I see Becky is in the house. Becky, good to see you. Becky's been doing some awesome, awesome artwork lately, so love your stuff as always. Keep it up. Your lighthouse is really cool. I'm a huge, huge lighthouse fan. I love, love what you're doing. So I'm sketching, I'm just continuing with some New York sketches. The last one I did was St. Patrick's Cathedral right here. I kind of like it just black and white. I'm not going to add any color to this one. I might come in and add some hatching, but this one's pretty much done. And now I, I'm going to do a sketch of the Guggenheim Museum. I've never sketched it before. I was there last weekend. I took a lot of pictures of it. Really, really cool building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I'll bring an image on screen so you can see what I'm looking at. So here it is. This is the Guggenheim Museum. In New York City, right across from Central Park. Gosh, I wish I knew the year this was built. I want to say the late 1950s. I could be way off. Um, really funky building. What's cool is on the inside— I'll put— I'll pull up an image so I can find one. I took a lot of pictures here, so give me a sec. I'll show you what the inside looks like. Um, let me just go through my photos here. Um, I'll just pop this one on for now. Boom. See if I can put it— pull on screen. It's not letting me drag it on. I don't know why. That's weird. Let me try another one to see if I can drag this one on. Dang, it's not letting me drag images on. Maybe if I do this. Let's try again. Huh, we are experiencing technical difficulties. Usually I can drag and drop an image on screen. Maybe because I already had one on there. Let's try it again. Hey, Jody's in the house! Jody, great to see you. Thanks for joining. So guys, I am not— let's not let me drag images. Weird. Let me try another way. Hmm, just give me a sec. Just want to show you kind of the inside of the Guggenheim. Obviously I am on here unrehearsed, unplanned, spur of the moment, so I apologize. I don't have, have this planned here. Let's see if I can just drag and drop. Oh, my fault, I know what I'm doing. I'm dragging, dropping to the wrong window. Here we go. Nope. Dang. Hey, there we go. Thank you for your patience. Appreciate you guys so much. Um, here's an interior view of the Guggenheim Museum. So the Guggenheim is designed as a spiral on the interior, and the original idea is you would take an elevator to the top. And Frank Lloyd Wright, this was his, his design. You would take an elevator to the top and then wind down or walk down the spiral. Um, most of the people, like I did, I kind of worked from the bottom and went up the spiral. I'll show you a couple more images if you want to see them. Feel free to say hello if you're in the chat. I saw some people on and then drop off. Here's a kind of a view looking up towards the roof, which is really cool. So the big incredible like glass dome on the top. Here's a better view of the dome. So check that out, really, really, really cool building. If you haven't been there, I recommend checking it out. I'll talk more about it at another time, but I just wanted to show you some images. What's really cool also is I took some video inside, and I'll put those together probably on a YouTube video or shorts. It's just interesting to see the people walking around this place and walking around the spiral. It's almost as if the people— I have to be honest with you guys, I looked more at the architecture and the people walking around than the actual artwork. And they had an amazing exhibit there with, I think it was called Young Picasso in France, maybe Young Picasso in France. Incredible artwork, but I spent more time looking at the architecture and building and people than Picasso. Um, I, I, you know, just, you know, my heart is with architecture. So really fascinating, fascinating place. Um, so here's— I'm gonna do— I'm only on for 15 minutes max. I gotta get to bed because I have school tomorrow. But let me show you the exterior. I'm gonna do a quick sketch I'm just gonna maybe try— which view? Again, I've never, I've never sketched this building. I've walked past it many times. I walked 14 miles. Here, I'll just pull up this image. I walked 14 miles last Saturday in New York City. That is like mega miles. Here we go. I'm going to just use this image and sketch kind of this view. Uh, my feet were— I still have a huge blister on the bottom of my foot, but it was worth it because it was just a great day walking around and photographing and sketching. All right, so there's kind of the reference pic. You guys know me, my style, it's loose. I'm not going to replicate exactly what we see in the photograph. I'm actually taking a photo off the screen. Boom! I like that sound effect. I don't know if you heard that, kind of the whooshing Disappearing sound effect. I'm sorry, I haven't even sketched yet. I'm talking a lot. Here, you can enjoy this sketch I did while I, um, I gotta pull up the picture again because I closed it. You guys are awesome. Thank you for watching. Thank you for liking. YouTube, anybody on YouTube watching, if you haven't subscribed, I would love for you to subscribe like today if possible because I was trying to reach 400 subscribers at the end of May, and we're at the end of May, so it would be so cool. I'm only like 7 people away. Um, just a personal goal I was setting. All right, I got my picture up. Let's do some sketching. Thank you guys for your patience. I'll look in the chat, see who's out there. So I'm sketching on Fabriano watercolor paper, 140-pound. I love this format. It's 4 inches by 8 inches. I'm finding the size to be really ideal. It's small, easy to carry, easy to rip off, easy to mail if I sell sketches, easy to hand to people. And I just like the horizontal sketching for the city because I can do vertical, you know, skyscrapers, or like this building, I'm gonna do horizontal. Alright, let's sketch. I'm gonna stop talking for a minute. I'm just excited to be here. Mickey's in the house! Mickey, good to see you. DB, I am going to draw this. Yes! Mickey's like, wow, when is school out? I don't finish school until the end of June. June 23rd is our last day at school, so we have a long ways to go. All right guys, here we go. Let's just sketch this bad boy. I'm using my Sharpie in case I do want to do some kind of wash on it. I've never sketched this. Usually my first sketch of a building, I'm really quick, even looser than normal. I'm looking mostly at the photograph as I sketch. I'm just trying to capture the feel of the building. So basically we have these kind of spiral pieces doing this. They step in as the building goes down. They curve, steps in, it curves. I can tell this is a building I'm definitely gonna need practice sketching. It's really tricky. There's a big disc kind of shape here. Does something like this. Another disc here. It's a rooftop area. We have— what's interesting about this building, or trying to sketch it, is in perspective we have these curves, we have these kind of straight lines, these planes happening. So I'm always up for a good challenge. And we have this cool— this building, when you see in person, it's just, it's Right, it's an art museum. So I think Frank Lloyd Wright had in his brain, hey, let's design a sculpture, a giant outdoor sculpture right along Fifth Avenue here in New York City. And that's exactly what he did. It's, it's a huge piece of art, this building. There's nothing else curved around here, so it definitely stands out. The shape is unique. And we got this base kind of piece here that comes out like this. This kind of comes up and curves a little bit here. And then we have the bottom museum. We have kind of the street down here. My proportions are off a little bit, but again, first time is just trying to capture the idea. My curves need to be a little curvier down here. And then back here was an addition on the building. I don't know the year. Modern addition back here, a backdrop, I think. Design is— was it Gothmie Siegel Architects? Maybe. So there's kind of this big rectangular block of a building which is part of the museum. It's almost like a backdrop to the curved building. I think the architects that did the addition were probably saying they wanted to contrast and not compete with Frank Lloyd Wright's building, so they created this rect— rectangular backdrop to kind of just frame the curved architecture in front. And then here's that dome on top I showed you the inside of. It kind of comes up like that. Not, not too bad for a quick rough sketch. Um, let's add some curvature to it. I'm just going to do hatching lines. Notice in the middle, a little further apart. As I get towards the edge, I'm going to put these lines closer together. And that just helps create the illusion of a curved facade by having the lines closer together towards the edge. Kind of makes the building look like it's curving a little bit. Up in here we have some windows. I'm just gonna— I'm just gonna kind of indicate these by just some black areas. Yeah, my proportions are definitely off. This should be shorter here. Down here we have some glass as well happening. And there's kind of a pattern that does this on the glass. You would see some kind of shadow, so I'm just going to do hatching lines to indicate maybe a shadow. This piece angles out, boom. This is the front, I'm going to darken it. This curves, this is kind of straight, then this curves down here, so I'm going to do this to make it look curved. This should be rounded more. This actually curves here as well. And this is kind of hard to capture this curve. It's straight and it's just— yeah, it kind of curves like this. So I'm not really capturing that too well yet. We'll do the same thing with hatching lines. We'll just kind of do that. Just show some lines like that. Uh, and this is the base of the museum. The entry and stuff is down here. So on my sketch, it really just looks like it's all in kind of a shaded area. So I'm just going to hatch this where the doorways are, just glass down here as well. So just kind of talking out loud in my brain process, what I'm thinking as I'm sketching this. It's not too shabby. This building definitely is out of proportion. It should have come up higher and off the page, but no, it's all cool. We have some— we have a grid like that happening, kind of a grid this way. Um, let's just say the street is down here somewhere, sidewalk. And I'm just going to put some peeps on here to give a scale, a sense of scale. So we have some kind of little peeps people happening here, aka peeps in architecture terms. That's what I call them. You've got some peeps happening down there in the front of the museum. And that is a real quick down-and-dirty loose sketch of the Guggenheim. Let's see. Yeah, D-Ray said Sharpie. Hey D-Ray, great to see you. Yep, got the Sharpie out. Boom. You guys know I 95% of the time I will start with a Sharpie. That way, in case I want to come back and add color, do a wash on here, my Sharpie is not going to bleed and I won't create a big mess of, uh, black and grayness. I could always add water-soluble ink later and bleed the black if I want to. I'm just going to sketch this a little darker here. Let's see. Mickey says, "I really enjoy viewing your photos." Thank you. "They are well done." Thank you so much. "Don't ever get tired of them. Thanks for including them in your format." Hey Mickey, that's so cool. I'm so glad you like the photographs. I really appreciate the feedback. That's so cool. I feel like these definitely need to be curved more as I look at this. Becky says a cone to start. So Becky, you're right, we could— I could have broke this down into a cone, right? If I pull the, uh, let's put the image back on screen. So Becky says cone to start. So yeah, if you break the building down into simple shapes You could definitely— I don't think you guys can see my pointer on screen, but yeah, the big cylinder, the spiral ramp, you could have made, um, like a truncated cone shape. Totally. So when I was looking at this, honestly, when I'm creating this, I was looking from right to left and looking at this cylinder, the spiral area. So that was the first thing my brain wanted to sketch. But usually breaking down architecture into simple shapes is a great, great way to block something out. So Becky, I like that you said that. Um, everybody saying hi to DB. DB is in the house. Great, great to see you. It's been a long time. Hope you're doing well. Um, DB, when I'm out there watering my irises and taking pictures of them, I often think of you and Linda because I know you guys are avid, um, Gardeners. Unbelievable what you can draw. Oh, thanks, I appreciate that. This— I appreciate that. Um, buildings, architecture, I can do. I'm pretty confident in it. Am I amazing? No, but I, I like my sketches. They're fun. People, I can't do. Animals, I can't do, as you know. You guys probably remember the great Giraffe disaster. Sketching disaster. Um, this curves like this. See, as I'm looking at the pictures, I'm kind of picking out more changes I would make to this. This perspective is off with this piece, definitely. But I think you can tell it's the Guggenheim. Um, and that was my main thing tonight. Oh, I got 4 minutes. Uh, wonder if Frank Lloyd Wright would have thought of the addition to his design? Mickey, that's a great question. Um, great question. I'm thinking he would have liked it because Frank Lloyd Wright was a very, um, very egotistical architect. Basically, his designs were his way or the highway, um, and he was very proud of what he accomplished. So I think he would have liked the building behind it because it really does not compete with his sculptural form. So I think for that reason his building stands out. He could be proud and say, that's my building. If the other architect tried to blend their addition in, I think Frank Lloyd Wright would— may have been like, um, felt like they were competing with him. So I think he— I think he probably would have liked it. I'd like to read about the history and see how they came up with the design. I'm not sure about it. Um, Becky says Jason is amazing. Oh, Becky, you are way too kind. I am not amazing, but thank you so much. I'm just having fun doing this. I appreciate that. I think all of you guys are amazing at what you do as well. I like that we all have different styles and bring different things to the creative table, so I, I appreciate those kind words. Um, how far are you from NY? I, DB, I am, I am a 1-hour bus ride from New York City. 1 hour. So it's pretty easy for me to go to the bus station. It's about 20 minutes from here, so it's easy for me to hop on a bus and take the bus into the city. Um, I may be going there Saturday. I may be going there again Saturday. I will definitely be going there in the summer quite a few times. So I'm very honored and lucky to be living close to what I view as an amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing place. I love New York City for its energy, for obviously for its architecture and design. There's— I haven't been around many places in the world for sure, but I have to tell you, this place is really very exciting. And I want to do a workshop there this summer and meet some of you guys in the city and we'll sketch. That would be so cool. And my other— my big bucket list item right here is this. Let me show you. My big bucket list item this summer is to walk across right here, the Brooklyn Bridge. Oh yeah, walk it. Photograph it, sketch it. I— this is— I'm definitely doing it this summer, without a doubt. And if you don't know what Junior's is, Junior's is an amazing bakery slash restaurant. They're known for their cheesecakes. Oh my God, holy cow, let me tell you. Yeah, good stuff. Um, who else is in the house? I see Angel. Hey, Rangel! Abrangel, Angel, good to see you. Yes, the Guggenheim. Welcome, uh, thank you for watching, I appreciate you. I agree about Frank probably liking it, he was very ego. Yeah, Frank Lloyd Wright was so ego-driven, it's crazy. Um, there's so many books about him and stories about him. Very fascinating man for sure. Very, very fascinating. Let me just add some shading and then we'll wrap up. Yeah, the proportions are way off on this building in the background. It's much taller. This, this really should have extended off the page like that. And then we could do some perspective here, so we'll just kind of angle these grid lines down a little bit. Cool. I like it for a quick— I don't know, how long does it take to sketch? 10 minutes maybe. Um, let me show you another picture. I love, I love the font, the writing on this building. Let me— no pun intended, writing— let me show you the lettering on this building, and then we'll wrap up. I think I took a picture. Yeah, I know I took a picture. Here you are. Um, I'm gonna zoom in. I love the font of this writing. I have to do research. I don't know if Frank Lloyd Wright came up with it or some kind of Art Deco type of font, but it's really beautiful. So it's the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. You can see the letters there. Pretty cool. Um, are you— Angel, are you going to throw color on this sketch? It's nice and loose. Angel, that's a really great question. I think it's a good one to wrap up with. So let's go back Let's go back and take a look. This is St. Patrick's Cathedral. I like the way this is black and white. I might add some more shading and hatching. I'm going to leave this one black and white. I think I'm actually going to leave this Guggenheim black and white. To be honest with you, I kind of like the black and white of it. And if I was to add color, I'm not sure what I would add. In reality, it's kind of a— it's a white building. Whitish is kind of dirty. Um, you know, I'd probably do my spin on it, do my color schemes I like with, with the Apple Snail ink, the light aqua colored pencil, some black ink, some turquoise. And probably, you know, pop in some of my pink somewhere. Hey, you know what? Let's do that. We're gonna throw some pink on here. What the heck? Why not? Um, that'll be fun. Joyce says, love, love it. Will you be adding any color in the future? Yeah. Oh, that's the question I'm answering. Sorry. Yeah, so I'm gonna add some— oh, there's a couple of you guys asked about color. My bad. So So I'm thinking black and white, but you know what, I want to add some— I want to add a pop of pink on here just for fun. Let's see, I'm not sure what my brain's telling me. The part of me wants to throw some here. Just gotta go for it, guys, and have fun. You're like, oh my God, what is he doing? Sometimes I think that too. Got some up here. My brain's saying I need something here somewhere. Uh, maybe down in here. Just add a touch of whimsy to it. And my brain's saying we got some here, I need some down here now. Maybe just down here we'll add some. There we go. So I just threw some pink on just for fun. Do it! Jody's like, do it! Um, both look good black and white. Yes, yeah, I agree. This one I'm, I'm not going to throw color on this one. So I'm going to— when I go into NYC this summer, um There's some loose plans right now to meet up with a friend and meet one of his friends and sell some artwork. So I'm gonna bring these small-size sketches I'm doing with me and see if I can sell some original sketches. How cool would that be? So we'll see if that happens. We'll do that in Central Park. That'd be really cool. Jirais says, "Here we go." pink in his hand just for fun. Yeah, you know, you know me, couldn't resist. Um, Jody says love it. You guys like the pink? Let me know, is that pop of pink cool for you? Again, I'm not going to add any color, I just like the fun of the pink. Keep it simple. It's hard for me to say that. All right, guys, I don't know if you have any final questions. I'm going to wrap up. I think I'm caught up with the comments in here. Are you going to— I read that. Like it. Thank you, guys. Oh, D-Ray says no pizza. D-Ray, guess what I had for dinner? Sorry, sorry if I'm off camera, guys. I'm all over the place and I— you could tell I did not do my hair. Um, do you— right, guess what I had for dinner? Yeah, pizza. I actually did have pizza tonight. It's funny you said that. I love my pizza. At least once a week, once a week is a, is a pizza night here. I almost want to throw a pink on one of these people. Maybe this one. Hmm, maybe. Um, Angel says good luck on your sales. Hey, thank you. Hope you sell lots of them. Loads of them. Oh, thank you so much. You are so kind. I appreciate that. Yeah, it will be fun. Let me— I'll show you guys some of the sketches I have if you want to see. See some of the ones I'm going to bring with me. Bring to Guggenheim. We'll bring this one. Got them right here. Let's see, I'll bring this one, this one. There's only a few of them. Grab this one here. These are the ones I just have close by, so I'm going to bring this I'm going to do— this is the spire of the Empire State Building, just the kind of the top piece. I'll bring that one with me. I'm going to bring the Statue of Liberty with me. I'm probably going to trim it, some of the side off here. I love this sketch. This is going to be a hard one to sell. This is probably one of my favorite Lady Liberty sketches I've done. So this may or may not go. I'm not sure. I might keep that one. This is a quick sketch I did the other day outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bring that one. A couple skyline— here's a skyline view I took. I didn't sketch Central Park. Real loose, rough. Here's a kind of a detail of the Brooklyn Bridge. And I have tons more, but these are the things that are right within grabbing distance. All right guys, there you go. Hey Linda's House, good to see you. Thank you Jason Nicholas Nicholas. I did. Linda, great to see you. Um, you guys are awesome. I am sorry Linda, I know you just popped on, but I am gonna— I'm heading off. I am tired. I am actually— so we have school tomorrow, but I am doing something a little special. I am going for drone training. So, you know, the drones you fly around. So, um, my department supervisor is sending some of us for drone training so that we can start incorporating Drones in our curriculum. So I actually run the drone club at our high school. I'm not an expert by any means. I'm kind of a beginner at it. So we're going for this, going to this course. So that'll be fun tomorrow. So I'm gonna have an— what do I call it? I guess I'll be, I'll be doing some learning. I learn every day from my kids in class. I'm gonna be doing some focused learning tomorrow. So that'll be fun. Cool stuff. Hey, you guys are amazing. Linda says, wow. Yeah, Linda, if you just joined in, tonight's sketch was real quickie, um, view of the Guggenheim. I have to go back and see how long I actually spent sketching this. I'm guessing 10 minutes. It needs work, but it's the first time I've ever threw it down on paper. All right guys, thank you so much. Have an awesome rest of your Wednesday. Tomorrow's Thursday. I'll probably be on I'll probably be on Friday night or Saturday nights. Keep paying it forward with your positivity and your creativity. We can have a big difference in the world even with the smallest, simplest gesture of kindness to somebody. Yeah, thank you so much. Appreciate y'all. Peace and live creatively. I will see you guys real soon. Have a great, great night. Sounds cool. This is cool. Hey, Kaj is in the house. Love that Central Park. Oh, thanks. You know, guys, this is so much fun. I can't wait till the summer when I can stay up even later with you guys. Um, I'm just, I'm just tired. I'm feeling it tonight. Thank you. Yeah, this is just a quickie view from Central Park. Oh wait, there's one more sketch I want to show you guys. Hold on. If you have a minute. If you have a minute. So I actually brought my little Moleskine, or I say Moleskine, I think it's Italian, Moleskine. I don't know if you can read it. Watercolor book. Let's see. I'll show you a couple of sketches. These are real, these are some very fast funky sketches I did actually inside the Guggenheim. Trying to just capture and get a feel of some of the curves and shapes going on. Here's another kind of shot inside the Guggenheim. Again, quick, loose. This is just me standing in place doing quick sketches. Uh, where's the one I want to show you? Here's one. Here's actually a cool sketch I did in Central Park looking at the Plaza, the famous Plaza Hotel. If you've watched Home Alone 2, right? Is that one where he's in New York City, or is it 1? I don't remember. Whatever one Home Alone takes place in New York City, the Plaza Hotel is featured prominently in that movie. So here's kind of a snippet of the Plaza Hotel from looking in Central Park. And then this is the, um, this is a quick, real quick sketch part of Rockefeller Dollar Center. So yeah, so I traveled with this and this paper with me in the city. It was awesome. Very small, very convenient. All right, I'm out of here. Button! D-Ray likes the button. All right guys, I'm gonna hit that finish button. Thanks, D-Ray. Till good— until next time, good night. Button, button, don't leave the darn thing on. Can you imagine if I've left the camera on? Imagine if it turned into like Toy Story and then my pens and colored pencils all started coming to life. The paper, everything started like, you know, you know Toy Story, right? Toys all came to life. What if that happened and I left this on? How cool would that be? How weird would that be? Um, Dira, you're funny. Yes, the button. I will find it. Yeah, I got him. He's like, yeah, I got a minute. We don't have a button. I do right here. Thank you guys so much. Take care. I appreciate y'all.
