Thursday Night Sketch and Chill

Hey, how are you guys doing? All right. Hey, um, happy, uh, Thursday, October 23rd, 2025. Hope you're doing great today. I am kind of a different camera angle. It might be lagging a little bit. Let me know if it's lagging. I just want to start off with this kind of scene, just kind of looking at kind of my setup here and what's behind me in my wall. It's, uh, it's my birthday today, and I'm not saying that to get birthday wishes. I'm just saying that because I think birthdays are a great day for kind of reflecting on things and, um, Yeah, I just look at birthdays as not a year ending but a new year beginning. So I thought it would be cool just to start off with a different kind of view. You can see what's going on behind me. I— that's kind of my gallery wall where I have a lot of my current sketches, um, back there. Yeah, it looks like they're all New York City-based sketches, which is so cool. I want to give a shout out to you guys, a shout out to everybody that tunes in, whether it's live or— I'm looking at the wrong camera, I think— whether it's live or not, um, whether you're leaving comments, you know, here's what I'm trying to say. Thank you. Thank you for giving me the cur— the courage, the motivation, the desire to want to keep coming online and live streaming. Um, this isn't about me saying I'm a great artist because I'm not. A great artist. I am just someone who likes to draw, sketch, get things out of my head onto paper. And, um, it would be really hard for me to do without the encouragement I get from you guys. Um, and it means a lot. So, uh, shout out to everybody. I do appreciate you, whether— like I said, I'm rambling, and I ramble when I get excited, and You guys that know me know me, you know that's what I do, and I get hyper, so bear with me. Um, last year was a very interesting year in many, many ways. Um, so I'm gonna give a little reflection, I'll do some sketching, so chill with me. I see Rin. Hey Rin, awesome to see you. Thank you again, I appreciate, I appreciate it so much. Appreciate you, Emily. Awesome to see you, you're awesome. Great that you're popping on here. So cool. Um, thank you guys. So yeah, last year was interesting, and I'm not gonna get into any details, but let's just say I went from some health challenges— I'm doing great now— to, um, just a lot of things. And I want to say everything that happens to us happens for reasons. We might not get those reasons, but Um, there are things to learn from, to build on, things to grow from, grow with, right? Um, so that's kind of how I like to look at the past year of my— since my birthday is what lessons did I learn, how did I grow, what changes did I make to grow in different ways and be a better person and to help and serve people in different ways. So that's all I'm going to get into, the deep, deep stuff. I can go on forever, but You guys don't want to see me, you want to see the sketchbook. So let's change the view. All right, let me know if I'm lagging. If I am, I'm so sorry, my internet is wonky, of course. All right, here is what I want to sketch. I'm going to sketch a lighthouse. I love lighthouses. Um, I always tell people if I was going to be a building, I would be a lighthouse because of what they represent, you know. Um, They provide guidance and direction in storms. They are a beacon of hope and light. They're beautiful utilitarian structures, so that means they kind of— they serve a function but in a beautiful way. And I kind of feel like I would be a lighthouse if I was a building. Here's, here's a sketch. This is a really interesting sketch. Um, I did a real quick sketch online one day and I left the sketch off to the side over here. And I let it sit there, and I would wipe my paintbrush off on it. I put a coffee cup on it, and I like— it was really a scrap piece of paper, but I like how it came out. It just kind of shows a story of how I create, what I do when I'm creating, right? It's got stains on it, it's got brush marks on it, it's got pen lines on it. Um, keep your scrap artwork. Keep your scrap stuff around. You never know what's going to happen to it. Here's another example. Here is, uh, this was a Brooklyn— it is a Brooklyn Bridge sketch, but all the orange and yellows and splotches you see here, not intentional. It was just me taking my paintbrush and wiping it off on here as I was painting and sketching. And this is what it's looking like. So I really actually love these. But let's do a lighthouse. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. You can ask me anything. Almost anything. Um, ask me anything about art, creativity, encouragement, confidence, anything. Uh, I'm here to help serve the best I can and just give you guys a few minutes of break from your day. Hopefully I don't put you to sleep too much with my ASMR voice. I would love to do an ASMR video. All right, I don't know where my other sketchbook is with the light. Oh, it's right here. What? Changing gears. I was looking for that and there it is. All right, we're gonna use this book. Yeah, there was a lag, sorry about that. We're, we're on lagging now. Yeah, I knew that. All right, cool, let's do a lighthouse. Let's find a blank sheet of paper. All right, cool. I'm going to start with a Sharpie, then we'll throw some color on. And if you're watching at home, grab a piece of paper if you want and a pen or pencil, doesn't matter, and you can sketch along with me. I'm going to kind of slow down my sketching process and I'll try to do a little more of like an instructional sketch session 9:30, we'll wrap up about 15 minutes or 20. All right, so when I sketch lighthouses, I like to— I like to start at the top. Not all the time. I like to start at the— well, I'll show you. I like to start here. I'm going to exaggerate. I like to start here, and then we're going to draw a cone— or, um, not a cone, a cylinder— but I'm going to taper it. So tapering it means I'm going to, instead of drawing the lines straight down on the sides, I'm going to bring them out at an angle. So you can kind of see this is going out at an angle, that's going at an angle. And then I like to draw the actual part, like the glass part where the light is. So we'll draw kind of like this. And, um, lots of times it's not curved glass because that would be really expensive to make. So it's segmented pieces of glass that kind of look maybe something like this. So we have that piece, and then we'll draw kind of the roof. I'm going to make a It can be different shapes. It can be a curved or a bell shape on top, or a pointy, um, pointy top. Maybe we'll do like a bell curve. I don't really do bell curves on lighthouses. This is kind of a first for me here. So maybe you got some kind of bell curvy roof on the top, a little thing on the top there. I'm imagining there's a walkway around here and there's going to be a railing maybe there. I don't know if I'm digging the bell curve, but we're gonna go for it. Why? I like to say sketch boldly, and when sketching boldly means just go for it. Throw down ink, throw down color. Don't be upset, don't be worried about what happens. Um, sometimes we worry too much when we're sketching about what it's going to look like and how we're doing it. So sketching boldly, it really just means just, just go for it. So do I like it? No. Will it work? Yeah, we can make it work somehow. When I add colors and things, it'll Even those lines there just gave it more character, right? So don't give up. If you don't like something you're sketching, keep working at it, keep adding to it, or step away, come back to it. It'll take shape. You might not like it in the end, but you'll learn something from it. Kind of like I said about my birthday, right? I look back upon the last year and what did I learn in that year that I could take forward? Cool. And maybe we got a window in the tower here. Um, I like light. This is from my imagination, this lighthouse. I'm going to draw like a stripy thing here. We'll add color. Pro tip: to help this lighthouse tower look rounded, I'm drawing contour or curved lines, right? These aren't straight, they have curves. That curves, that curves. Good thing I don't teach language arts. Those curves help give that round look. Wow. Yeah, I will stick to architecture and design teaching. Um, all right, so we kind of have a shape there. And then to do the bottom, let's imagine this is like near some kind of rocky outcropping. And I don't mean Rocky like the boxer, although the boxer is a cool— he's a cool guy. All right, I think we were talking about Rocky the other day, and it was with one of my students. I don't remember who. Oh, I think someone wanted, wanted me to play the Rocky theme song, so we played it. We were just talking about how that's like a comeback story. All right, right, so I'm just drawing some rocks at the bottom. Cool pro tip: when you're drawing architecture, a really fun way to kind of make your building meet the ground is by rocks or grass. Or sometimes I'll do like rocks and maybe some grass kind of coming up here. It's a great way to anchor things, to kind of hide the base of the building a little bit. All right, cool. And then lots of times I'll also show like a little— you will show it here. Maybe we have a cottage, or maybe a little gatekeeper's cottage, or light— sorry, lightkeeper's cottage back here. I like to show metal roofs, so this is how I like to show a metal roof. Boom. Hey, I see Jason on Instagram. Good to see you if you're still there. Hope you're having a great, great day today. By the way, Jason, I love your name. So maybe we have a— some windows here. All right, cool. I'm gonna throw down some color on this. Um, I like white. I like using white on this, this kraft paper. This kraft paper is almost like sketching on a, like, a brown paper bag. Yeah, I got some white right there. Boom. You know, we'll break out a red pen because I'm sure I'll use that somewhere, or we'll use red here. All right, cool. We'll keep it simple. I love the way the red looks on this paper. I'm not usually a fan of— well, I'm not usually a fan of using red watercolor paint. I just— it's just not my style for some reason. But I really, um, I am digging this red Creative Marker on the brown paper. Looks cool. We will add— maybe we'll have a red roof here. All right, here's something you haven't really seen me sketch a lot, is brick. So just let me zoom in, I'll show you how I like to sketch brick. Where's my zoomy thing? Did I not open it? I don't think I opened my app to zoom in and out. Here we go. Alright, cool. Alright guys, so what do you like it? Let me know what you think of this lighthouse so far. So it's kind of loose, wonky. I like the colors on it. I want to do something with the bottom here with the rocks. Let's make them fun. I am going to go grab— I'm going to grab some colored pencils in here, right here. Yep, it's gonna have some fun with some colors down there. I'm like, I gotta break out the pink for some reason. We'll break out neon pink, chartreuse, neon yellow will make an appearance somewhere. We'll leave it at that for now. Cool. Um, this is another example of sketching boldly. Like, I know there aren't pink— well, I shouldn't say there aren't any pink rocks in the world, but, um, I don't think they're very common, especially neon pink. And you know what? That's okay. I'm being bold. I like the color. It's fun. This is bright. This color makes me feel good and happy, and that's why I'm doing this. I want to feel good and happy and throw in the colors that do that to me, right? It's about being fun, playful. Think of this as your, your creative playground or your creative sandbox. You can just build, create what you want. And if other people don't like it, that's okay. You don't have— they don't have to like what you're doing. The person that has to like what you're doing is you. And if you don't like what you're doing, that's okay too. It's really about— for me, it's about the journey. I like— I'm enjoying the process of creating. It's not always about the end result, it's about the process of getting there. Right? Got to enjoy the journey getting— while you're creating. I love this color. I love these two colors together. They look so cool, especially on this brown paper. Sprig has some more colored pencils. Let's see, I have to sharpen some of these. Oh yeah, you definitely have to sharpen some. You know, I have this cool multicolor pencil. Let's try it. I've only used it a couple times. It's called Create, Create a Color. I can't read the company. Mega Quattro. Create a Color Mega Quattro. I'm guessing Mega Quattro means there's 4 different colors. We'll just throw them down and see what happens. So I'm literally just taking his pencil and kind of spinning it around here. I'll do just a demo over here what I'm doing. You know, let's do it in the sky, it doesn't matter. So I'm just taking this pencil and rotating it around. It has all these different colors on it. That's kind of cool. Hey, Deary, good to see you. Yeah, got to enjoy the, the journey. That's right. Hope you're doing well. It's awesome, awesome to see you. So maybe we'll just color the sky. We'll use this pencil and make it different fun colors. There you go. It's kind of a cool looking sky. Hi, Tom's Loose Art, great to see you. Or not. People, I love— it's funny, the Instagram feed is— people pop on and off really quickly. It's all good, it's all good. All right, boom! Yeah, let me zoom out. This is fun. Look at— then you can see the whole thingy. Where's my Sharpie? Where did my Sharpie go? All right, here it is. Let's just add some hatch lines, create some shadows. Shadow with Sharpie, hatch lines. D-Ray, I always love when you put the comments in there. Thank you so much. I— it's great to see you online tonight. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. I'm gonna use a Sharpie black creative— wait, black Sharpie creative marker. To outline this a little bit here. So I just want to pull out that shape, the tower shape. We do like a flag. Let's see, I'm going to do a little flag or something here. There we go. That is today's lighthouse. Kind of cool. I like it. I like the colors. I like the scribbly sky. I think that's my favorite part. Um, this thing's a little sharpening, but this is just fun to play with, this multicolor color pencil. Pretty cool. I want to— now that I have these, I want to pop this out a little bit here. Sharpie really brings out this subject. Yeah, thank you, I agree. Just picking out a different tune here and then, uh, we're going to wrap up. Because I got some school tomorrow. I like the colors on this one. This is a fun little sketch on, on this lighthouse. Where's the cap? There it is. Boom. All right, let me know if you guys have any final questions or comments or thoughts as we wrap up the lighthouse from tonight. Worked on this a little bit. I still think my favorite lighthouse in here is this one. I really love this sketch. Cool, everybody, thank you so much for watching. I appreciate y'all so, so much. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas of The Inkspired Life. Um, remember, until we meet again, sketch boldly, Live creatively and inspire endlessly. Inspire endlessly. Yeah, inspire endlessly. All right guys, we'll see you soon. Take care.