Thursday Night Sketching

Hello, it is Thursday, March 5th, 2026, about 8:30— no, I'm off— 8:43 PM. Uh, I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life, where I love sketching especially architecture. Um, I love sketching anything. It's just a great way for me to capture a moment in time, a way to de-stress from the day, a way to think. Um, sketching can transform emotions and feelings. It's such a powerful tool. And, um, yeah, that plus creativity is what fires me up. So I hope you're having a great day. Join me for a few minutes tonight. I will do, um, I'm gonna do a sketch. I kind of know what I want to sketch tonight. Usually I don't, but I have an image, um, a little out of my league, but we'll give it a shot. So we'll do some sketching tonight. Uh, what else? First thing I want to do is let's kind of wrap up. I want to talk about the sketch I did the other night. I think Tuesday— Tuesday. I took a break last night, um, so I did this Brooklyn Bridge sketch here, which I think came out kind of cool. I just— I like that it's black and white. We use Sharpie creative markers on here. We used a Gelly Roll, um, white gel pen as well. What else do we use? Oh man, we use something else, I can't remember. But came out kind of cool. But I wanted to just put some frames around it. I finally got around to buying different frames. You guys have— if you've been watching me, you know I usually kind of pull out some frames and I like to isolate different areas of, uh my, my sketches. So I thought I would kind of put some frames on this, see what it looks like. I haven't done it yet, so I just got— are these the same size? Nope, they're a little different. So let's just check it out and see what it looks like, and then we'll do a sketch. Let me know where you're watching from. Feel free to say hello. Wasn't there a song? Was it a Beatles song? I say goodbye, you say hello. Hello, hello. All right, I will not, I will not sing for you, I promise. You don't want to hear that. All right, cool. So we have that. I guess we can look at the white side too. So here's kind of a matte. Let me zoom in a little bit. Here's my zoomy thing. Click here. There we go. My zoom is going cray cray. All right, so if we just kind of frame this here, I think it'd be more dramatic with a white frame. There we go. Yeah, it's definitely more dramatic, so I kind of like it. Let's go with a smaller one, maybe to capture Just narrow in a little bit more on the perspective view. Actually think I like this smaller one better. I like how it cuts off the sides. It leaves more for the imagination as to what's happening off the sketch. That looks kind of cool. And then let's go micro here. Let's look at a detail. So we just kind of do a detail here, maybe pull it up there. We can look more close down at the arch. Maybe this is kind of— I like it down here better. So don't be afraid to take your paintings, drawings, sketches, whatever, and crop, crop pieces out of it. It can really change the dynamic. Of your— of the way your sketch looks. Sometimes I just like to pull out little squares of color, especially using this little kind of mat thing I just made up, cut it out. It's really cool just to focus on smaller areas. So there you go. So it's just a quick show and tell. And I was curious. I just want to get it out of my brain and see what it would look like. Um, I think I'll be doing more black and white sketches. I kind of like it. It's just very different. Let me move these aside and we'll get to our sketch for the day. Put those over here. All right, I think we'll sketch in, um this bad boy here. So I am sketching right here, 1264 Fabriano, made in Italy, 140-pound cold press paper. Has a nice texture to it, um, it's great if I want to add watercolor or inks, so gives me that option as well. And I have my Sharpie here, of course, creative markers, color pencils, and watercolors. I don't know what I'll add tonight. But here's my, here's my go-to image. See if I can show this to you. Can I make it bigger? Yeah. I feel like sketching a butterfly. I am so ready for spring. So this is a picture I took a couple years ago, so I'm just going to kind of look at that as a guide. I, I've, I've done better. I've sketched butterflies a couple of times, so not too, not too often. But it'd be fun just to step away from the world of architecture and just kind of challenge my creative brain in a different direction. All right, let's do it. Let's see what happens. I'm going to set a creative intention. So sometimes I'll do this before I sketch. Gives me just a really loose guideline. So I think my intention tonight is to capture a different subject but in my style. So that's all I'm going for, trying to get a butterfly down here in my style, and that's it. All right, so it gives us kind of a target to go for without being too specific. If I get too specific, I'm going to lock in and want to be real precise, real technical, and that blocks my creative brain and it's going to shut me down. I don't want to be shut down. I want to just keep the flow going. All right, let's do it. And we'll put it, uh, put a flower in here as well. One thing I noticed I was doing, I was holding the pen too tight and too close to the barrel— I mean, to the, um, the point at the end. And when I hold the pen like this, it's too rigid and I'm too, uh, too stiff, and my lines are— it's almost like I want to do a precise technical drawing. So I just intentionally caught myself doing that and I brought my hand back and it gives me more flexibility and I can be more loose. And that's kind of what I want to go for and not hunker down and be technical. Like, this is too— it's kind of too precise for what I want to do, but we'll— I'll loosen up intentionally and I'll show you how I can do that. All right, cool. Is that glare too much? Let's see. We've got a lot of light going here. Why is my light so bright? That's weird. All right, here's how I'm going to loosen this butterfly up. It's too I'm just gonna go back over the same lines and get a little scribbly with it. That's the magic word, scribbly. There we go. It's feeling a little more my style now. I loosened up on it a little bit, which is awesome. Yeah, man, if I— if I get— so I have two, um, well, maybe more than two creative types of brains. One is when I'm in the architecture world doing architectural design, blueprints, plans, that is my precise lock-in, precise technical part of my brain, which I love. That is one part that's so fun to use and explore. The other side is I want to be opposite, really kind of loose, uh, free-flowing, not worry about precision. So, and this is, uh, this started off being more technical, which is okay, but it was too— some of these lines were too clean, so I had to— I literally just went back over to loosen them up, and that's the vibe I wanted to go for. So yeah, there's different styles, right, depending on what you're trying to do. Cool. Hey Andrew, good to see you. Hope you had a good day today, man. Always good seeing you. So hopefully you're getting the vibe of a butterfly here. We got a flower happening. Um, let's throw some color down. What time is it? I'm only gonna be on for maybe 5 more minutes or so. I have school tomorrow. So yeah, let's throw some color down. Maybe let's just play with watercolor. I have no color in mind. I— let's just throw some stuff down. And I'm gonna dig into, uh, my favorite, favorite, favorite watercolor palette. Hey Jen, good to see you. Hope all's well. Hope you're doing well, my friend. Always great to see you. So boom, open it. I love this thing. It fits in my pocket. It's well loved, well used. Look at those colors. This is like an art piece right here. I can't bring myself to clean out the trays, um, so I'm not going to. I'm a very messy watercolorist. I mix, match, dab everywhere, this, that. It, it's— I just— it's how I roll, and I kind of like it. Uh, a few years ago, maybe like 4 years ago or so, I joined a Facebook— it was like a free Facebook community and they focus on watercolors. And so I, you know, I was doing some watercolor stuff and then I used a white— it was either a marker or a gel pen on my watercolor. And I'm not— this is not anything against people that watercolor, but I didn't know the rule. Apparently in this group, the only white you are allowed to have on your painting was from the paper. I— you couldn't add like white, uh, marker or gel pens on top of anything. So I got some really, um, negative comments and kind of just— I just left the group. I felt like it wasn't me, but sometimes you don't know unless you try, right? So that was one of the rules, uh, you could not add your own white. It had to be for through the paper. I'm going to raise this up at an angle so water trails down. I love the way it looks. I'm just looking for something to put underneath here. You'd think I'd have a bunch of stuff. I do. We'll just go with this. Perfect. Andrew says, hope your day has been well. Yeah, my day was well. I was, uh, it wasn't a day off for fun. It was a medical day off, but everything's good. But yeah, thank you for asking. Hope everything was awesome for you. Oh, I don't even know what's on here, but we're using it. I don't— there's somehow we got red on there, so I am not looking at the butterfly picture. I don't even know I think it was yellow, but I'm not trying to match it. I'm just gonna throw down colors that kind of make me feel happy today. And I think the butterfly was yellow, so I do want to use yellow. I think next week we're going to have some days in the 60s or even 70 maybe. We all need that. It's been a long, long winter, so I'm looking forward to some spring weather. I think it's gonna be 60, uh, in NYC this weekend, so definitely, I think I'm definitely gonna head there on Saturday, maybe do some sketching. All right, cool. All right, so I'm just throwing down some yellow on the butterfly. What, he's doing a— but yeah, I'm doing a butterfly. This— I'm not doing a building. Can you believe it? I've lost my mind. Let's do some yellow. Let's grab some— I don't know, some orange. I think butterflies are so fascinating. I could sit there and just watch. Yeah, I know that's true, but I can sit there and just watch them. There's just something beautiful and tranquil and peaceful about watching butterflies. And apparently they have amazing built-in GPS systems. I really should study more about butterflies and learn about, you know, learn about them. Hope you're well. I have missed you on SeaFots. Yeah, Jen, you know, it's— I've missed the live streams. It's been, uh, Today I actually came home from the— from my, uh, doctor— oh, doctors— and I just slept the whole day, so I kind of missed that. But yeah, I missed the live streams. I'll be back on, and a couple times the times just hasn't worked out, but I miss being on there and I miss all you guys. But thank you, I'll be back in the moderator side of things before you know it. All right, cool. We got some orange, we got some yellows. I love how the colors is dripping down the page. That's why I work at an angle. Look how it's just trailing down. Pretty fun. All right, let's go. I, I keep going for this turquoise, so we're just going to throw some turquoise on here. Why not, right? We can do whatever we want with color. This is my painting, my sketch. I can do whatever I want with the colors. Nature has an amazing way of just having its own color combinations, right? I love this color. I call it taxi cab yellow. I don't know, some of you guys might know the actual name of it, but I call it taxi cab yellow. It just reminds me of, well, a taxi cab. Um, it's kind of like school bus yellow, but I I call it taxi cab yellow. Um, these colors are— I love the way that they're blending. I'll do a close-up in a minute. I really want this flower to be a different color, so I'm going to get a little cray-cray here, guys, and I'm going to dig into some of this Reflex Rose acrylic ink. We're gonna throw that down on the flower. So thank you guys for watching live. Feel free to say hello and, uh, let me know where you're watching from. Jen, I do always appreciate you being in the chat as my mod. Thank you for fending off all the millions of, of what do you call them, trolls in the chat. One day I do hope it's a problem. Well, like, there's more people in the chat. Not a problem, you know what I mean. All right, let me drink some water. So some reflex rows on here. Nope. I think you're healing. Hey, thank you. Positive vibes. Thank you so much. Um, so I can— I don't mind sharing. I was— I went for a— I was due for a nuclear stress test for my heart, so that's where I was today, getting some testing done. And I think everything went well, so I'm not too concerned, but I was just due for it. I had a— I think it went fine. It was just, just tiring. But yeah, I do appreciate that. You know, sometimes it's good to be proactive and just kind of get things— some— get things done before they happen, you know what I mean? Take a look at things. Oh yeah, look at that reflex rose! Bam! Hello reflex rose, that's awesome! Yeah, wow! I love that. That is so cool. I don't want to get too crazy with that Reflex Rose. I don't want it overpowering, but I kind of like— I love the, the Reflex Rose color adjacent to the aqua— I'm sorry, turquoise— and the yellow. So you can think it's a good kind of opposite here, right? That's fun. I'll throw a couple dabs on here. So this makes an interesting kind of almost purplish color here, which is fun. I love, I love putting Reflex Rose over orange or yellow. So anytime I put like a neon pink or reflex rose over orange and yellow, it's such an amazing fun color. It's going to lift some up here. We'll just dab it here and I'll show you guys a close-up. Anybody else ready for spring? Let me know in the comments. Just put spring. Yeah, it's looking cool. Beautiful. Hey, thanks, I appreciate that. I'm glad you like it. Let me zoom in so you guys can see these colors a little closer. Let me get closer. How close? Let's see. There we go. Um, this looks really, really cool actually in person. I don't think it's coming through on camera that well. This color here and here is the pink and the yellow is really amazing. Um, This is extremely vibrant and very electric. The reason I put some of that pink up here is just to balance it a little bit so it wasn't all down here, right? So I just wanted to scatter it just in a couple of different pockets up here. Yeah, this is looking good. This is so fun. I do. I want an orange, like the middle of this flower. Do I want orange? No, I think I'm thinking yellow. But let's break out the lemon yellow. Lemon yellow, not limoncello. I think that's it. I think we talked about that once. I think someone told me in the chat that was like a drink, limoncello. I don't, I'm not really— I don't drink alcohol, so I don't really know any of those drinks. I can go for a nice lemonade. That sounds good. All right, so yeah, let's throw some of this lemon yellow here. Lemon yellow for me just adds a pop of freshness to the sketch, a little bit of brightness, like when you're cooking and you use lemon zest. The same idea. So I'm just loading it up on the brush and I want to pop some on here. Oh yeah, it's not looking as lemony as I want. It's looking more like the school bus— school bus yellow, sorry, taxi cab yellow. Let's try that again. What happened? I think— let's see, I'm gonna really throw it on here thick. I'm gonna blot this a little bit. There we go. Okay, so don't be afraid to blot out your paint. You can do that. You can pull some of it off. Wasn't really the yellow I was going for, but let's see if this works. Uh, that's better, that's better. I was being a little too fussy here. Letting it kind of roll down. I'm just— I was trying to control it. There we go. I just want to roll down and the colors to bleed a little together. Pretty cool. This would be fun when it dries. I'll come back, we'll— I'll add some detail with Sharpie on here. Definitely some color pencil is going to be going on top of this. Maybe creative marker. I feel like I need some purple somewhere. Let's see. Have you ever sketched the Brooklyn Museum yet? No, I have never been to the Brooklyn Museum. That sounds like an awesome idea, actually. Yeah, Jen, I love that idea. I have never, never been there. I should add it to my list. Do you have that list? Either you I think either you or Gigi's keeping a list of all these New York City things. Um, yeah, add that to the list. I will be— I, I will be sketching, um, Chelsea Market Saturday, so I'll be sketching in Chelsea Market. So that'll be kind of fun, do a little High Line walk, go to Chelsea, might hit my favorite Shake Shack over there under, under the High Line. Weather's supposed to be good, so it'll be a great day to just get some fresh air. This is looking cool. What do you guys think? Do you like it? It's fun for me to, uh, do something a little different tonight. I kind of want it to dry because I want to keep going. Um, there's an amazing botanical garden in New Jersey. It's called the New Jersey State Botanical Garden. What an interesting name, right? Um, Ringwood, New Jersey. It's a very, very cool garden. Different times of year, different flowers are blooming. I like— I used to go there once every season. I haven't been there in a while, so— but every season there's always something different to see. And one of the things I do love doing there is going when the butterflies are out in full force and just kind of checking them out and taking some pictures of them. There's some really cool architecture there as well. So if anybody lives near Ringwood, check it out. I recommend it. I see— I also see school buses there, or maybe either school buses or camp buses in the summer. Um, from New York State. A lot from New York State because I think it's right— I think it borders NY State. I gotta put a green stem here. Jen loves it. Hey Jen, I'm so glad you love it. Sketching exterior, Katz Deli. Oh. That would be iconic, wouldn't it? I'd love to start to do a storefront series of sketches. That would be amazing. That's another— you have so many amazing ideas. Where do you come up with all them? Jen is in genius mode. Genius mode. Let's throw some green on here. Just to give a hint of a stem here of the flower. Yeah, that would be iconic, right? Yeah, this is looking cool. You know what I want to do? I'm going to splatter a little bit of pink. I like the splatter effect of the yellow. Let's— I want to throw a little, a little bit of pink. I don't want to get too cray. I do feel like I could use some purple on here. So maybe, maybe I'll mix some purple up in a minute. I'm just gonna throw— I'm gonna put a little bit of this pink acrylic paint in here, a smidge, and then we add water. I'm just going to fling it or flick it on the page. My water is getting kind of dirty, so I can't get the cap on. What the heck? There we go. All right, I'm putting some water on the brush and let's just— let's do a little bit of flicking here. Ready? All right, I think that's enough. I don't want— I don't want to overdo it. All right, let's mix up some purple. So I'm going to take some— I like to take blue and red. We'll make some purple. Grab some blue. This is what I mean, now I got some of the red in the blue here, and that's okay. Some people are really fussy. Please don't ban me from the watercolor world. Please, please. Um, here we go. I got some purple going in there. Might be hard to see with that light. I'm just tapping this down here. And again, I don't want to do too much of the purple either. Maybe a little up here, maybe the tip of the, the wing here. And I'll bring a little down here onto the flower as well. And honestly, I don't think I need more than that, so that's gonna be enough purple. And I'm actually going to pull some off of the— I don't know, my butterfly parts. This is the— I guess the head. Do butterflies have necks? The neck of the butterfly? I'm not sure. Do I have any butterfly experts out there? All right, this is so cool. A New York subway station. Now you're talking. That'd be awesome. The ideas are rolling and rolling. Keep them coming in the chat. I love it. Always love you guys participating and commenting, saying hello, asking questions. It just makes it so much more fun for me and hopefully more fun for you. I want you guys to leave these shows feeling positive, happier, more peaceful maybe, or maybe sleepier. But just leaving in a good state. Maybe a creative, maybe you learned something, and maybe just had fun talking to people in the chat. This looks cool. Yeah, this looks good. I didn't just applaud for myself. I am not ego. I don't have an ego. I'm clapping because it's cool. So I clap. You can ask any of my students, I clap a lot. I clap a lot during the day. Um, clapping for me triggers like an energy boom, an energy release. Um, if I'm feeling really sluggish or I just need to wake up my brain or something quick, I'll kind of clap and it just gives me like a jolt. To keep moving again. Um, in this case I did clap because it's cool. But yeah, so clapping is a good tool for me just to kind of boom, get the energy. See what happened automatically? It's like a— what do they call that? Oh my gosh, does anybody know? Anybody study Tony Robbins? Is it— and oh, I was not— NPR. NPR is the, uh, National Public Radio and not NPR NPL or something? Neuro— NLP. Neuro-linguistic programming. NLP, is that right? Where you can set these triggers based on these physical actions. It sets like a trigger or an action, like snapping could do that. Or for me, it's clapping. I've trained myself to clap and wake up. It's a pretty cool technique. All right, this is awesome. So what I need to do is come back with this bad boy And then some color pencils, and it's a wrap. And I'd like to wrap this live right here in front of you guys because you're so cool. So cool. Um, color pencils. Jeez, maybe it's too wet. Let's see, we'll do that while we're doing this. Well, we're doing this. Let's talk— let's change to a mindset quick. Motivation mindset stuff. Let me show you something I did at the— I started working on at the doctor's office. Well, I continued working on— I started a while ago. So do you know how we all make to-do lists, right? Lists of tasks and chores and things we've got to get done with checkboxes and we're crossing them out, right? And they're awesome, they serve a purpose, um, to guide us, focus us. I started creating something different. This is what I call it. I'm going to share— sharing this with you guys for the first time. I've never talked to anybody about this. Um, instead of a instead of a checklist of things I need to do, I'm— I created a how-do-I list. How do I? So it says right here, this is not a to-do list nor a journal seeking permission. It is a place for figuring things out, a place for moving forward and getting unstuck. So I call it the how-do-I journal, I guess. How do I journal? Right here, how do I journal? This is the very first page I did. Um, this is really cool. So I have a list of things that I want to do. So instead of asking my person— myself permission, can I do this? Can I— like, some of these are tech things, like, uh, can you use Capacities with ChatGPT? Those are two different software things. Um, my question is, how do I use Capacities with ChatGPT? Or, how do I create a creativity app? Not can I. When we ask can I to ourselves, we're asking permission. It's either a yes, typically a yes, no, or sometimes a maybe answer when you say can I do such and such. But if you change it and phrase it to how do I, it puts, for me, it puts my brain to work into problem-solving mode. On how I can accomplish something. So it gives me more motivation to get things done. So kind of a fun thing I just started, um, doing, and it seems to work because it's motivated me to actually do a few things and at least try them. And if I, if I fear it hits a snag, there's always someone else I can ask or look it up on YouTube. There's always a way to get it done, right? But some things you'll find out aren't worth doing. But you don't know until you do it. So it's called the How Do I Journal, or helps. Yeah, How Do I. All right, cool. All right guys, this is drying up. We're going to wrap up in a couple minutes. I don't think I'll be able to add all the details tonight. I really want it to dry first. Let me give you some close-ups of it. This light is kind of no bueno. Let me change. That's better. Um, I love what happened here. I call this bridging. Bridging is where I connect two different colors together, and it kind of ran down. So I like, I like that. Transition there. I'm really loving the pink. That's amazing. And then let's look at the butterfly. Oh, I'm being silly. I should use my frames. Silly me. Uh, let's check this out in the frame. This one might be a little small, but you can kind of get the idea if that had a frame on it. I don't know about the white background on this. It might have to have a different color background. I'm thinking sepia or gray maybe, right? And where are the bigger ones I just bought? Here we go, got this one, right? This is kind of a cool little frame, cool frame here. I think it's too big. I actually like a smaller frame. I would rather, I think, crop some of this out. To me, it's more interesting, something like that. Cool. All right, guys, I hope you like this. I will, um, probably post a, um, I'll do a TikTok of this video, uh, TikTok of this tonight, and I'll post on Instagram, Facebook as is. And then I'll probably post some finished pictures when I— I'll probably wrap it up tomorrow. I may even bring it to school and work on it during my lunch break tomorrow. Pretty cool. All right, some from buildings to butterflies. We have some really great suggestions in the chat. Sketching the Brooklyn Museum, love that idea. Next year of Katz's Deli would be cool. A New York subway station. Jen was on fire with the different ideas. Thank you so much, Jen, I appreciate it. And thank you guys so, so much. It was great being on for a few minutes here tonight. Until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly. We'll see you soon.