In this informal livestream, artist Jason Nicholas walks viewers through the creation of a wet background for a future sketch. He begins by mixing magenta and cerulean acrylic ink on a 400 Series Neptune Tinted Watercolor paper (Strathmore Sampler, cold‑press, 140 lb) and clips the saturated sheet with binder clips to keep it flat while it dries. He adds fluorescent pink acrylic, a sepia watercolor marker, and later layers red oxide pigment, experimenting with color balance and texture. Throughout the session Jason engages with chat participants (D‑Ray, Tambourine, Pete, Timberley, etc.), shares his artistic intent—an industrial‑cathedral skyline with smokestacks—and invites viewers to interpret the evolving image. He discusses material choices, drying times, and the practicalities of working with wet media, then wraps up by letting the pieces dry overnight and thanking the audience. The tone is casual, instructional, and community‑focused, emphasizing experimentation and real‑time feedback.
Chapters
Hey, D-Ray and Tambourine, how are you? Good to see you guys. Hope everybody's doing well tonight. I am popping on pretty late tonight. Just finished workshop class not too long ago and I'm wired up and want to keep creating stuff. Uh, hope you're having a great, great night. I'm just messing around with some colors, making a background so I can come back and add a sketch on top of it. So this needs to dry a little bit. It's acrylic ink, it's magenta and cerulean blue on here. Hopefully you can pick it up on camera, the lighting's kind of weird. Yeah, D-Ray, the paper is totally rolling up, it's so wet and saturated. So, uh, I actually— where are my clips? I'm gonna clip it down. I have some binder clips I like to use sometimes. Let me just clip this down a little bit. This is just— this is actually a watercolor sample book, Strathmore Sampler. There's different types of watercolor paper in here. This happens to be 400 Series Neptune Tinted Watercolor, cold press, 140 pounds. It has kind of a greenish tint to the background of the paper. I'm just playing around, looking for watercolor paper that is a little bit thicker than I usually use. I usually use 140-pound, but I found this sampler thing on my shelf, so I wanted to break it out and try it out. There we go. Let me just clip that. Let's clip this over here. This is my favorite office supply right here. I love binder clips. So many uses for them. There we go. Sounds good when it tries. It sounds good. So it'll dry flat. Actually, not necessarily true. It might— it'll flatten a little bit. Trying to get this focus. I don't know if the camera's really picking up the colors on here. Lighting's kind of bad, unfortunately. Some colors are really hard to pick up on camera, but that's alright. I wanna break out some acrylic. I wanna use some fluorescent pink acrylic on here as well. Just using a 3/4-inch brush, flat brush here. Again, I'm just creating a— this is for backgrounds for— I'll come back to it at some point and do a sketch on top of it, probably with pens. Alright, that's cool. That's all I'm going to add on this, and I'll let it dry. I'll come back to it at some point, a day, a couple days, I'm not sure, and play around with it a little bit more. I'm going to do a black and white sketch. Just break this out. Just going to do maybe some kind of ink sketch. Actually, let me thin this out on here a little bit. I'm actually gonna just— I have some excess paint on here. I'm just gonna brush it off on here to clean off my brush. This should dry pretty quickly and I can just sketch on top of it. That's good. Yeah, the lighting's— hey, D-Ray, I posted that line, "Fart a tree" on our Inklings and didn't see it. Did you? No, I did not see it. I'll take a look for it. The lone Florida tree. I have to take a look for it. I didn't see it, D-Ray. I'll definitely take a look. Thanks for the heads up on it. Just playing around with the lights here, trying to make this look better. This lighting is really not showing this off too well. So I'm just using, um, sepia watercolor marker. I have some, uh, watercolor stick. This is Graphite Gray color, regular graphite. Um, what else? I brushed off some excess fluorescent pink acrylic paint. That's what you see in the background. And I'm using a water brush, and I'm looking— trying to make some kind of industrial scene here, maybe tops of some industrial buildings. Right here I have a picture of some kind of smoke, maybe some smokestacks with some smoke rising up from them. So I can focus a little bit better. Hey, if you're on, say hello. Let me know how you're doing on this Saturday night. Hey, thank you, D-Ray, I appreciate that. The color is really not showing on camera that well. This is a nice light pink background on here with some graphite on top of it. I'll let that dry for a second over there. Hey, P, how you doing? Good to see you. "Continuing on your project." Hey Pete, this is just a different sketch painting I'm working on tonight. A little abstract, but it's basically trying to recreate almost like an industrial kind of skyline happening here. Some industrial buildings, some smokestacks in the background, smoke rising up. Maybe this is a Some kind of an old cathedral type of church building, cathedral building here. So just messing around with some quick sketching before I head off to bed. Hope you're doing well. Hey, that's awesome, Pete. I'm so glad to hear that. 18 months is a long time. It's awesome that you were able to get together. I love that. Good, good stuff. Thanks for sharing. I know there are people out there that are happy that they haven't seen me in 18 months. Nah, just kidding. I love that, that's awesome. Cool. I'm gonna let this dry a little bit before I add some more to it. After it dries, I'm gonna come back and add some more. It is hard to see on camera. I think it looks very bright. I don't know, we'll look on screen. But there is a very pale pink background on here, and I'll add more of that. I don't know if I can get a better angle of it on camera here. It's kind of really hard to see with the lighting, but it is there. Trust me, trust me. I'm just thinking if there's any other colors I want to add on this. I do want to add some kind of a yellow or gold, copper or something on here. Maybe like a red, maybe a red oxide or something would look kind of cool. On there. Let's see, I think I have some somewhere. Here it is. I have some red oxide. Let's see what this looks like on there. To me, in your picture, a burnt-out forest being repopulated by birds. Burnt-out forest being repopulated by birds. Let's take a look at that. I always love your guys', uh, feedback on these and what you're seeing. To me, I see a picture of burnt-out forest being repopulated by birds. Yeah, cool, Pete. I like that. That's actually a cool interpretation. I could see that. Awesome. I love, I love doing these pieces where everybody sees different things. That is so cool. Thanks for sharing. Neat. Let's see, let me see if I want to put some of this on here or not. I'm going to wrap up in a couple minutes. I'm tired. I'm getting tired. All right, let's see. I'm just putting a little bit on this brush. Let me see what it looks like. So this is red oxide I'm putting down on top. Of the sepia that's on there. I'm trying to be careful not to overload this with too much of this red oxide color. I like it, but I feel like it could really overpower if I start putting too much on here. So I'm just kind of touching it on in layers. Mm-hmm. Cool. Yeah, I think that's enough for now of the, the red. Every weekend, just stepping in because I saw you're on. Hey Peter, thank you. Yeah, I'm actually wrapping up for the night as well. It's always awesome seeing you. One of these days we'll hopefully be able to catch up. That would be so awesome. Um, take care. Thanks for stopping in. Appreciate it. So I am going to wrap up. Just wanted to pop on for a little bit here, get a little more creativity in before bedtime. I'm gonna let this dry. This was the other piece that it's actually drying that I'll use for a background on another painting at some point in time. Um, actually, I'm going to add a little bit more on this and I'll let it dry overnight. I think I'm going to throw down some of that Red Oxide on here. Just play around and see what it looks like. And then I'll call it a night after I throw some on here. All right, that's awesome. I'm gonna let that dry. We'll let this other one dry overnight. Hey, thank you for watching, D-Ray, if you're still on. Have a great night. Thank you for watching, Timberley, if you're still on. Thank you for watching. Have a great night. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, guys, and That's a wrap. Peace and live creatively. Thanks guys, take care, have a great, great night.
