Thursday Night Sketching

Foreign. Hey, I'm Jason with the inspired Life. It's Thursday, February 19, 2026. Take two, take two. It. It's just one of those tech days across the board. From 3D printing at school, to monitors not working at school, to having to update everything on my computer. Yeah, so I was on Live before and I'm back again. Hopefully the sound is working this time. Hope you're doing great. Starting with a different view. I just wanted to kind of. I like to show this view once in a while so you can kind of see what's happening behind me. With my. My board back there, you can see the once upon a time. That's a blown up poster of a sketch I did back in 2001. Probably one of the very first sketches that really got me into doing, like just adding color to sketches. So it's an ink wash sketch. I love that. And then you can kind of see also on the board, a lot of different NYC sketches I have going. It's always fun to do that. And what's really cool. Yeah, what's really cool about that is the. All the little sketches you see there are posted on a magnetic whiteboard. So they're easy to take off and on. I could take them off, use it as a whiteboard. And it's also really cool. It's on like barn door hardware. So that whiteboard panel actually will slide. So I could slide it this way and there's a closet behind it. So sometimes I think it's just really cool to get an inside glimpse of, you know, where creatives work and what are their spaces like, what are their vibes. So that's kind of just a little inside peek of what's going on behind me. And I also want to start off with let's talk about the fear of starting and blank paper syndrome. I find one of the biggest kind of questions I get is how do I start? I don't know where to start, what to draw, what to sketch, what to create. And that's a very, very fair question. So I like to call it crushing blank paper syndrome. And I think one of the things that stops people from in myself sometimes from even starting, you know, a sketch or something is one is the comparison trap, the fear of creating something and having it look bad next to someone else's. So we need to get rid of that. Just don't even compare what you're doing to other people. Compare what you're doing to yourself. Okay, this is just. This is quick, quick. Just three maybe pointers here. And we'll get on to some sketching. So the comparison trap, I feel, holds people back. The second thing is, what else about not knowing where to start is picking a subject, right? Like, what do I sketch? I have no idea. Do I sketch a person, A building, a dog? You know what if you don't know where to start and don't know a subject? I think the easiest or not the easiest, but the best way to start something is just to grab pen, pencil, or crayon. Something. Just start throwing lines. A line on piece of paper or a dot or a squiggly mark. Yeah, I might be lagging a little bit. Let me know if I'm lagging. Guys, I feel like my Internet is wonky today. I'm gonna keep moving ahead. So just put something down on paper and put music on and just keep adding a line or a dot or a squiggly and just keep building and building and adding to that sheet of paper. Go in with no expectations for a final result. Result. It's just a great way to get started in throwing stuff on paper and just to get past the fear of having to make something perfect, because you're not trying to create something perfect. You're just throwing shapes, lines, dots, something on paper. Okay, so that's kind of another way to maybe just to get started. Yeah. Blank paper syndrome. Comparing yourself to other people. That often stops us from even wanting to start. And the other thing is sometimes I think we're worried about having the perfect pen or the perfect pencil or the perfect watercolor brush or watercolor paint or paper. Grab and go. Creativity for me has been a game changer. Just grabbing and going with whatever I have around me at the time forces me just to think on my feet, throw stuff down on paper, and just create instead of worrying about finding that perfect pen or pencil. And that's fun, and there's a place for that. And it's awesome to look at the world of. Of stationery and pens and art supplies. I love that world. I can get lost in it. But when it comes to just starting somewhere, grab and go with what you have. Okay, so there's just three quick tips to maybe just getting started. Hopefully that helps a little bit. All right, cool. Hopefully. This view is awesome. We're gonna switch to desktop view in a second. I do want to just show you one quick thing. I'm gonna share my screen, and if I'm lagging, maybe this will stop lagging. I'm not going to share my screen. We're going to. I'm going to close some windows here. All right. Hopefully the lagging is better and I apologize if it's not. I don't know what's up with the Internet. It's cray cray. All right, let's go to desktop view. Boom. Here we are. Desktop view. So you can see my. On my desk here, I have my lock before you. I just pulled out some stuff in it from my drawer over there. This is a cool sketch of the Gapstow Bridge in Central Park. I love this. This is a fun little piece. Really cool. Hey, Sheila. Good to see you. Seems fine here. Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you so much for the update. Hope you're doing well. So the Gapstow Bridge, Central Park. This is mixed media. This is. It's ink, it's watercolor. It's Sharpie. Creative marker. Fun sketch. I love bridges. So I'll show you another bridge sketch. This is a one from. This is inspired by the Pont Alexandra bridge on the Seine river in Paris, France. It's 353ft long, constructed in eight between 1896 and 1900. Architect was Louis Jean Rasal. My French is not good. Pardon my French. So this is pretty cool. This is just a simple, very different, simple black and white. And then we have color. So don't feel like you always need to add color. That's another thing that holds people back is worrying about colors. We don't always need to add colors. I don't often add colors. I do more now than I used to, but I used to never add color. And then this is just a kind of a quick Brooklyn Bridge sketch I had done maybe on the live stream a while ago. I don't even have a date on it. So I pulled these out. I'm not sure. I think I'm going to sketch a bridge tonight. So, you know, three different bridges here. Let's open up my lockby folio here and let's just sketch a bridge. I'm not sure if there'll be any of these or I'll make one up. Or maybe we'll do a Gapsto bridge or this French bridge. We'll see. All right, cool. All right. So I'm just sketching in my lock B Folio. It's plain paper, very thin paper. It buckles up. So you can't add a lot of water or. Yeah, like watercolor or ink washing to it. You can do some. Here's a fun abstract piece. Hi, Chips in the house. Good to see you, Chip. Hope you're doing well. So let's just. We'll Sketch a bridge tonight, guys. I'm just in the mood for it. I have been sketching straight for the past I don't know how many days, just sketching something, whether it's quick, fun, abstract, bridges architecture, doesn't matter. I just want to throw stuff down. I think I've been live streaming a lot of those days, so this is just fun for me to pop on and keeps me consistent. And I just trying to make room. There you go. All right. And my favorite, office supply. If I had to pick one office supply. Besides, like, a pen or paper, binder clips can solve a lot of world problems. I just love binder clips. So it's. I'm gonna use one now just to kind of hold this down a little bit. So I always carry them when I'm out sketching. So I'm gonna. Everything's a little crooked here. I still love that Pont Neuf bridge sketch, which I still have back here. This. This. I'm not gonna do one of these tonight, but I'm gonna do another one of these really soon. And we're just. We'll just keep it. I won't add the sepia and kind of the aging and distressing. I was playing around. I wanted. I never tried to do, like, a distressed look. I think it came out pretty cool. So this is a fun trifold piece. Not trifold. Accordion. Accordion piece. My brain's tired. It's been a long day. Long school day today. Sketch. I think we're gonna. I think I'm just gonna use this as a reference and kind of jam on that. All right, I need a Sharpie that works, actually, you know, we'll just sketch them blue tonight. We use a blue Sharpie. Why not? And I hope you're having a great, great day wherever you are. I hope something positive happened today or maybe you were able to share and spread some positive vibes out there. Pay things forward a little bit. Right? If we could all just pay it forward a little bit. It goes a long way, and it could be a simple thing as a hello or a smile or a kind thought. So I'm just riffing off of that bridge sketch I showed you. I'm not trying to duplicate it. Just using as a starting point. And we'll just kind of add our own. I'm not even looking at it anymore. So we're just going to add our own kind of take on it. Hopefully you guys can see this. Okay. Sorry if it's a little crooked. Put like a big arch here. Boom. One of my dream Places to go to is Venice. I just want to go to Venice so bad and bring a sketchbook. Sketch the bridges along the canal. That's a dream. That is a dream of mine that I will make happen one day. Unfortunately, I think Venice is so overrun with tourism that I believe they're starting to limit maybe the number of tourists at one time that are allowed to go visit just to help protect. Protect the beautiful city. There we go. Cool. It's. It's. Cool. Yeah. So we just got a fun little bridge sketch happening here. And I'm using a blue Sharpie. Don't always need to use a black Sharpie. Right. So grab the blue one. Let's throw some other colors on here. I think I'm gonna. I'm just gonna go with whatever I have in my portfolio here. So that way I'm not thinking too much and searching for different colors and stuff. We're just going to grab. Let's just use the multicolor pen I have happening here. We'll see how that works. It. It's. It. So one of the cool things of sketching with a multi color pen like this and so many different styles is it kind of helps to remove the paradox of choice. Sometimes we're faced with too many different choices we can make and it paralyzes us. It stops us from choosing anything. And there's a box, there's a book called the Paradox of Choice and I can't remember the author. It's a really good book. But think about being in a supermarket and you're looking at cereal. There are so many different cereals to choose from that it overwhelms us, overwhelms our brains, and it could shut us down from picking anything. Right. So a cool thing about sketching with a pen like this is that it's really easy. Just grab a color because everything's right here at your fingertips. Right. So if I want to use red, green, blue, black, there's even a little lead holder as well. So I can do pencil if I want. This is a really good example of grab and go creativity. It's a perfect tool for that. So I'm not searching through my colors. Over here I have markers and pens and all kinds of stuff, inks I could use. I'm just really using this one tool to keep the process, the creativity flowing and moving forward. So, yeah, so think about that. Maybe, you know, another thing that does prevent us from starting any kind of artwork is we're worried or there's too many tools, materials to pick from. And you don't want to pick the wrong thing. Make. Maybe if you have your. Make your area kind of distraction free and maybe just have a pen or maybe two or three pens or pencils or a tool like this here that we grab and go and just use it and you're not searching and hunting and thinking about using the wrong thing. I hope that helps. Matthew, hello. Good to see you. Hope all's well. It. Hey, Juanita. Great to see you. Hope all's well. Awesome to see you. Yeah. So again, this is just a really loosey goosey kind of bridge. I'm riffing off a sketch I did. I'm guessing I did this last year. I don't remember, to be honest. I'm just riffing off this. The Pont Alexandre. I am not good at French. The Pont Alexandre III bridge in Paris. See, now is what I'm doing. I said I wasn't going to do. I'm searching. I want to use yellow, like a yellow highlighter. And I have. Actually, I'm just gonna grab this. So this is actually a pretty cool pencil. This is a multicolor color pencil. So unlike this. Right. These are. This is multicolored pen. This has. This has pencil lead in here. I'm colored pencil lead in here. You can. Might be able to see it. I think there's eight colors, so I'm gonna flip it. I haven't had too much luck with this in the past. I always snap the leads. But let's give it a try. I'm gonna switch it to the yellow. And voila. Right, we got yellow. That just came out pretty cool. You see what I mean? I literally just snapped the lead. I. I don't know why I snapped the lead on this. I'm. Let me zoom in closer. I love the concept of this. I just. Let me try making the point shorter. Maybe. I guess I just push too hard on it. It's. That's actually helping. I made this. I made the lead shorter. I didn't bring it out quite as far. Yeah, usually I snap these things left and right. I felt like I needed a pop of freshness, a little bit of brightness on here. And for me, when I add yellow, it's that pop of freshness. I always think of yellow lemons adding that kind of lemon when you're cooking. I love using lemon. Like lemon zest. Right. That pop of freshness, that brightness to our food, our meals. For me, yellow does the same thing on my sketching. It adds that pop of brightness and freshness to the work. It just makes me happy. All right, Maybe that was a secret. I just discovered that my secret to using this multicolor color pencil holder is make sure the leads don't come out too far past the tip. Feel free to let me know if you guys have any questions or comments in the chat. It's 9 11. I am. I'm wrapping up probably in the next 10 minutes because I'm pretty tired today. But I wanted to keep my creative habit going and just. I was gonna do my sketching anyway, so I figured I'd pop online and just do it in front of you guys. Right. You see that yellow? I think the yellow just kind of boom. It just. It kind of elevated it. What brand of pencil is that that you are using? Yeah, this is. It's a great question. It's actually. It's a Pentel. It's hard to see. It's a Pentel. I don't think I can get it in the light. Sorry. Maybe you can see it there. It's a Pentel. I love Pentel stuff. I don't know the model number. Maybe this is it. Maybe it's called the multi8ph802. So pentel multi8ph802. It says for checking use. I don't know what the heck that means. Does anybody know what that means? I'm not like writing checks with says for checking use. I'm baffled. I don't know. I really don't know what that means. What am I checking? It'd be interesting to find out. It feels kind of, and this is a knock on Pentel. I'm just giving you kind of my feedback of what I think of this. It feels kind of feels kind of cheap to me. The plastic feels very cheap. I don't remember how much I paid for it, but. Yeah. Is there a built in? I think there might be a built in sharpener here. But I do love, I love the concept of a multi color color pencil. It's really cool. It is satisfying to kind of click it around. So you have to. If I want to change colors, I got to make sure the point goes in, the lead goes in. Right. So. And then you can rotate the clip to different colors. So let's just say I want to break out the red. I got red. And if I do that, there's no red coming out. Do I have red in there? I do. I just didn't push it hard enough and the red came out. Right. But yeah, no, I do like it and I'll. I'll use it for sure. It goes back to the Idea of convenience, grab and go. Creativity. I have what I need here. Obviously, you'll need. You want to bring extra lead with you. Let's see what the blue is like. Oh, that's red again. Wait, how did red come out? Maybe I didn't retract it all the way. Wait, red is still coming out. All right. This is like a game. Why is the red still coming? I have the clip lined up with the red. Maybe I didn't bring it in all the way. All right, now let's switch to blue. Blue. Ta da. That's it. So when you change colors, you have to make sure the lead here, you fully retract it back into the barrel before you switch to the next color. It. I'm just changing some music over here before I wrap up, so I kind of like where the sketch is headed. This was a fun, simple, kind of loosey goosey sketch. I likey likey. I don't think there's anything else I'm going to add to this. I think it kind of accomplished what I wanted it to keep it simple, loosey, goosey. And we really, we. This is what we use to create it. So we use a Sharpie. Let me grab this. I love this. This is a really cool pen. This is says Karimoku Karimuko. I think it's by Jet Pens. Jet Pens. Love this. I have another one as well. Different color. And then we use this. So these were our tools for tonight. Let me just put. Today's the 19th. This is the pont alexandre. Alex. Andre. The third, I think. Third. It's. It's. It. It's. All right. Last thing I wanted to add on this. Let's just show some of this. Just give an idea that there's some kind of stone work happening. What do I use for that? Let's see. I don't want to draw too much attention to it, so I think we'll stick with blue. But I'll just do really light lines here. Cool. Yeah, just a couple lines there just to show some kind of texture on that part of the bridge. So maybe some kind of, like, stonework happening over here. I think this one's a wrap. Yeah. Let me know if you have any final questions or comments in chat land. How many pages do we have left in sketchbook in this pad? We got a bunch. We got a bunch. All right. Pretty cool. There's kind of a quick Brooklyn Bridge thingy here, but we'll save that for another day. Awesome. Thank you guys so, so much for watching. I always appreciate your feedback. Your comments, your questions. Yeah. Hopefully you got a little bit out of something tonight. A little bit of positivity, maybe a little pro tip. Or maybe you were just chilling and you got to wind down a little bit, and that's awesome, too. Until we meet again, Sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly.