Thursday Night Sketching

Hey, um, hello. It is Thursday, April 16th, 2026. Jason here with the Inkspired Life. Hope you're having an awesome Thursday. I'm a little frazzled right now. I had homework to do for school tomorrow, so I was working on that. I lost track of time. Meant to come on like at 9 o'clock, and time just slipped by so dang fast. So my brain is in homework mode and not in sketching mode. So let's, uh, get through this together. So stick with me, we'll figure out how we're going to switch brain, uh, brain waves, I guess, from, uh, typing in words and finding data to going into creative sketching mode. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inspired Life, where I love sketching. I love sketching architecture and capturing the world around me one line at a time. And those lines are not perfect. They're wonky, they're loose, they're sketchy, and that's the way I like them. I'm all about imperfection for me being perfection. So stay tuned, we'll do some loose style sketching together. I'll walk you a little bit through my process and give you an inside peek into what happens inside my— I was gonna say my noodle. Do people call brains noodles? Is that an expression or am I making that up? I don't know. Maybe I'm just hungry, but I know I'm thirsty, so let me get a drink over here. I'm just drinking some— what is this? Blueberry citrus basil infused water. So, uh, tastes good. All right, um, so you see a few things out here on my table. Um, always, always my faithful sketching companion right here, my Lockbee field journal. Love I love this, goes pretty much everywhere with me. So I have this out, um, maybe we'll do a quick loosey-goosey sketch inspired by my travels to Italy and Spain. So maybe we'll start off that way tonight. So I'll find an image or a picture from my trip and we'll just kind of sketch that out. And I think I'm going to maybe work on a Statue of Liberty torch. I just want to start keep adding to my collection. I've been giving a bunch out. I gave a few out during my European trip. I think I give— I gave a couple out to some Canadian students. So if you guys are ever watching live, shout out to you, or the replay, shout out to you guys that I gave these to. You guys were awesome. Uh, and yeah, hit me up with any questions about design, architecture, creativity, anytime. All right, I'm yammering over here. Um, so yes, last night we sketched this church inspired by Saint Ignacy in, uh, the Piazza Navona in Rome. So let me find another picture on my phone of a different place, and we'll just kind of sketch that to get things going. I like this water, this infused water tastes so good. All right, let me pull up an image. So I was talking about kind of being stuck in paperwork, kind of school mode. Um, so a great way for me to switch gears really is literally by just opening my sketchbook, going to a blank page And then putting marker, pen to paper, and just doing anything. I don't even need to be sketching anything. I could literally just even just take a Post-it or a scrap and just literally, um, do what I call med ink-tation. The med ink-tation— let me grab a red pen. Med ink-tation is literally just grabbing a sheet of paper, listening to music for a minute or so, maybe two, and just closing your eyes. I'm just kind of letting the pen go. So I'll just do it for a few seconds here. Notice it's like a continuous line stroke. I'm not stopping, I'm just letting the pen flow. I don't usually talk during it, but giving you guys a peek inside my brain. Actually, Metallica is playing in my ear right now. I'll take some deep breaths as I'm doing this.

Alright.

All right, there you go. That's just my med-inctation. It's kind of scribbling and meditating at the same time. And is it a beautiful picture? No. Does it make sense? No. But you know what that did? It cleared out what was in here and it opened my, um, creative flow, and I'm ready to go doing some sketching. All right, let's find a cool image of something. Let's see. I've been sketching too. I like sketching Toledo. Let's see, I'm just looking at my photos. Um, let me know how you're doing. How was your day? Where are you watching from? Always feel free to leave questions and comments for me. I like to check in with you guys because who the heck wants to hear me yammering about me all the time. This is about us. It's a community, a connection. And let me know what you're up to.

All right, all right.

So I just Googled Toledo. These are Toledo, Spain, maybe some places I found. All right, let's just sketch. I want to sketch that cool church. I literally think we're just going to sketch this building. It's in Toledo, um, Spain.

Why not?

Now I actually want to talk about something before I start sketching. My photographs, if you look at them, they're always— not always, most— lots of times they're at a weird angle. Um, part of it is intentional, part of it not. A lot of it has to do with the way with I— with how I take pictures. I'll hold the camera up, boom, and then I'll kind of just actually hold it like this See if you guys can see it there. Hold it like that, and I'll literally just click the button on the front and take a picture. So click, click, and when I'm doing that, my phone is at an angle. See that? It's not straight up and down. So lots of times when pictures will come out kind of crooked, but I have learned to like it because I really like the way it kind of distorts the perspective and the angles. And for me, that makes a more of a, an interesting shape and interesting lines to sketch from. If you have watched Batman TV show with Adam West— what was that, 1966? They did something intentional with the— every time they were like in a villain's lair or hideout or whatever, headquarters, um, the camera was always tilted at an angle. So that was kind of an intentional camera thing, and that almost reminds me of what I'm doing with my sketches, is that kind of intentional angle. And I just like the vibe of it. I'm actually gonna— I'm gonna try to do what I just did with that meditation. I'm gonna keep my pen, my marker on the page and do this almost as a single line type of sketch. Hey Gigi, I hope you're, uh, I hope you're doing great. Are we taking selfies? You're silly. Yeah, I was, I was demonstrating how I like to hold the camera when I'm walking and taking pictures, especially on like the tours we went on. I— there wasn't a lot of time to stop and take— I shouldn't say that. The walking guided tours, there's not a lot of time to take pictures. You could just go back in on your free time, but so I have to walk and snap pictures, and I just take my phone and I kind of hold it like at an angle. I'm like click, click, click, click. Um, that's why my pictures come out at these kind of distorted angles, which I've learned to really like the style of. But great to see you. I hope you're having an amazing day. Let me know in the chat, how are you today, my friend? I came on way later than I wanted to tonight. I've I had homework to do. I'm not done yet, to be honest. I'm gonna wrap it up in the AM. So this is a building in Toledo, Spain. I, I don't know the exact name of it. And this will just be kind of our quick warm-up sketch, and we'll do another sketch tonight, guys. So stick with me here on the Inkspired Life. I don't know why I just said it like that. That man's goofy. Um, a couple things. One, if you go to my— what do they call it— the chat area or the post— the post area here in my— on my YouTube community, um, I put a poll on there. I have really cool news. I will be— I'll be doing a workshop at the Stationery Fest in Brooklyn this summer. It's a huge Stationery festival, pens and papers and journals and all kinds of exhibitors. It's, it's a big deal. It's like, I think, a 3-day event. I'm scheduled to do one workshop right now. If, if it sells out, I'll do more. But, uh, the reason I'm telling you this is, well, first of all, it's cool. Second of all, I put a poll on my YouTube posts. I'm— I want to come up with— I have a name for the, um workshop, but I'm looking for you guys to maybe give me some input. What do you think a good name for the workshop would be? So basically, I would just be doing what you see me do here, loose style sketching New York City-inspired scenes. So if you guys have a chance, I'd love for you to go to that poll and just pick, maybe pick your favorite suggestion out. All right, so that's kind of our quick loosey-goosey sketch, but I'm not done yet. I just feel like throwing color on here because that's what we do. You know what, actually, I want to— hold on, I want to throw some fluorescent pink on here. Let's, let's put some bright colors on if I can get this open. Holy cow, this thing's— this thing is like— there we go. Sometimes these lids dry on here really tight. We're just gonna literally just put some on there and spread it around. Why the heck not? So this is what I call grab-and-go creativity, where I'm literally just grabbing and going and picking up what's around me. Hey, Mr. Clean TT joined. Um, lovely sunset you captured. Oh, thank you. You saw that live stream? Yeah guys, I livestreamed tonight. I did a little walk and talk. It was kind of more of a stumble and fumble and bumble because I went live while I was walking. Had no idea, like usual, what I was going to say, if anything. Um, I tried to let nature do some of the talking. It was fun walking and livestreaming. Um, there was a kind of a cool sunset happening, so check out the replay. Um, also one of my favorite parts was hearing— we got to hear raccoons, raccoons kind of chattering back and forth, which was really, uh, interesting. So I don't know, maybe somewhere towards the middle of the live stream you'll hear some raccoon banter. It was fun. And whenever I hear raccoons, it reminds me of when I was in elementary school. We, growing up, we had raccoons as pets a few times. Shout out to my father, who sometimes I think watches on Facebook. We had raccoons as pets maybe 3 times. Um, I was trying to think how we got them. I think a family friend, one of our amazing family friends, I think was a policeman or something, he would rescue these baby raccoons from chimneys. And so for some reason we would get them and kind of nurse them back to health and then let them go. But I do remember in, I think, kindergarten, we got to— I get to bring Rocky. I think it was Rocky the Raccoon. I brought him in for show and tell back in the days when you could bring like pets into school. So that was really— it's always fun for me to hear raccoons. It brings me back to when I was a youngster in elementary school. Did I just say youngster? God, I feel old. Don't ever refer to yourself as a youngster. I feel like I just aged myself by like 20 years. Cool. She says, I know, I saw, so happy for you. Hey, thanks, Gigi, that's great. I appreciate you, um watching. That's fantastic, thank you so much. Is my— all right, hold on. Is my Instagram doing weird stuff? Am I streaming weird tonight? What is going on with my streaming? Hey, am I see you on Instagram? Good to see you. Can you, while you're on Instagram, let me know, can you see the post in Instagram okay, or is it lagging? Am I like going in and out? It's great to see you, M. Let me, let me know in the chat, Instagram, is it streaming okay or not? I feel like people are getting disconnected. Thank you, GG. Yeah, I'm pretty happy and excited. So I'll be talking more about when the workshop is and obviously promoting it. Um, right now it's open for 15 spots. I don't think, I don't think, um, Stationery Fest has even promoted it yet. I have to get them— I got more homework. I gotta complete a form for them. Mr. Nick, Mr. Nick slacking, guys. No, I'm kidding, I'm not slacking. I got so many things It's been one of those weeks, one of those crazy weeks, which I'm not complaining about. It's good, it's a good week, just a lot to do. I'm looking for orange. Here we go. I decided to stick with this one, just throw down some colors. I need to buy more purple creative markers though. I— my purple died on me. Emily says, I love the pink color. Hey, thank you, Emily. Emily is Instagram. Does it look okay? I feel like the picture keeps changing.

All right, cool.

All right, this has been a fun kind of loose, loosey-goosey sketch to start with, but you know, I'm still having fun with it, so I'm just gonna give— just keep playing around. When I'm tired, guys, I, my, I just can't speak. My brain goes faster than my mouth can move. Does it ever happen to you? Actually, you know what I'm gonna sketch? I think we talked about castles last night. Maybe we'll, maybe we'll just do a fun kind of imaginary castle tonight. What time is it? Oh my gosh, it's almost 10 o'clock. Hey, Chihuahua! I had no idea it was that late. I need to get my button gear here. All right, all right, let me just add some highlight, pull out some of these people, and then let's just stay with this, uh, we'll stay with our Lockbie journal. We'll just kind of sketch an imaginary castle to wrap up the night. I didn't realize it was so late. Where did— where the heck did the time go? I love the color of the yellow highlighter over the pink acrylic paint. It creates a really very cool orange color. So check that color out, I love it. All right, let's do another— let's do a quick, just imaginary sketch. We'll do it right in the back of this page. Maybe I feel like my streaming is wonky tonight. I'm seeing weird lines on my screen. What could I do? Do I need to turn something off? Let me see. No, I don't have any AI stuff open. I'm just gonna keep going. I think I'm streaming okay. My— I have weird— my screen's kind of glitching out. All right, cool. Yeah, so this was again just a fun imaginary kind of Playful sketch. Let's do an imaginary castle, and let me change the tunes up a little bit. Hey, JLM is in the house! How are you? Hope you're doing well tonight. Always fun seeing you. Thanks for tuning in to the Ink spired life. Um, I am gonna play. All right, just grabbing and going with my playing here. I am playing— this is my playlist right now— I'm playing this Stop Making Sense by the Talking Heads. Let's do it. All right, let's sketch, uh, I don't know, we'll just make an imaginary castle and see where it goes. Where's my Sharpie? Uh, you watched my walk? Hey, thank you for watching that walk. It was really very unrehearsed, very unscripted. Thank you for watching. I hopefully it was, uh, somewhat entertaining, enjoyable, peaceful. Um, I love the nature vibes. I haven't sketched a castle in a while. Let's just let the pen Let me Sharpie dance and see what happens. Yeah, I was saying earlier, one of my favorite parts of that live stream was, um, the raccoons. I loved hearing those raccoons kind of bantering back and forth. It was really fun. No bears. I didn't see any bears. I haven't— knocking on wood— I have not seen any bears walking there. I know they are there. Um, and I am not upset about that. Hopefully getting some castle vibes from this. Olivia will alert you. Yes, Olivia will alert me about bears, I'm sure. Good point. Sometimes we're walking and she can be stubborn and like not want to go in a direction or make me turn around. Uh, so 9 times out of 10, I'll listen to her instincts because maybe she's trying to tell us something. But I, I, you know, I pay attention to my surroundings. I'm always looking ahead, left, right. Forward, backwards. All right, are you guys getting castle, castle vibes from this? I don't know. Would Rapunzel— would Rapunzel live in this tower? Is she the one that had the long hair? Rapunzel? Yep, she'd approve. All right, thank you so much for that. All right, this is cool. I'm liking this castle sketch. Uh, let's throw a little bit more color on here and then we'll wrap up because it's already It's already 10 o'clock. I popped on WeWeLe. So thank you for you guys who watched the hike and mic, walk and talk. Livestream earlier. I appreciate that. All right, do I go for the— let's do it. I'm not gonna— I'm not even gonna ask, I'm just gonna do it.

¡Hola! ¡Hola!

Alright, here's a quick, um, castle sketch for you guys. Why is my phone— my phone's beeping at me. Why is my phone beeping? What the heck is with that?

All right.

Ecco, not quite, not quite. All right, cool. All right guys, that's just a real down and dirty quick castle-y kind of sketch. Um, that was fun to do. 111 views. Whoa, really? On the, on the live stream? It's amazing. Maybe I should live stream outdoor sketching, get more views. What do you think? That's awesome. That's so cool. I'm— yes, I have people lining up for my autograph as we speak. Yeah, the paparazzi are They're outside. Just saying. I would— it'd be fun, it would be cool to get more, uh, more views and viewers, but you know what, I always say this, it's not about the quantity, it's about the quality, and you guys are top-notch quality. Um, other viewers are cool. That's so cool though. I love, I love the numbers. I didn't see that. I— let me know if you guys have any final questions and/or comments. This is a rather short stream for me, but, um, I didn't know how late it was. The pen parazzi. Oh, I like that, JLM. The pen parazzi. That was— that's clever. Very, very clever. All right, so we did some kind of— yeah, I'm not gonna do the comparison trap, but these are not my finest sketches. But you know what, they were still pretty dang fun throwing down these colors. This is what made this sketch for me. I just love these colors, the orange and pink. That is color perfection. Like, it's like a What do they call it? Like a chef's kiss. How do you do the chef's kiss? Something, I don't know, something like that. Imagine I was doing like the chef's kiss. Um, I love those colors. And then, uh, this was just cray cray. You know what I think castles? I think turrets, towers, pointed roofs, the crenellations, which are these kind of teeth-looking structures.

Oh.

The crenellations are here, here. Um, so basically, you know, like castles, like any other piece of architecture, it's a vocabulary or a kit of parts. You can put this kit of parts together to make a building, and that kit of parts is roofs, windows, doors, walls, um shapes, right? Um, those are the basic components, and those components, however they're put down, put together, you can come up with a different vocabulary, different style of architecture. Awesome. All right. Hey, I like that. I gotta like a— I think that's— is that the okay symbol? I got like an okay from Gigi. Okay. Or we can make that into a bunny rabbit. Wait, think we're going to do shadow puppets? Is that like a bunny rabbit shadow puppet?

All right, I don't—

that was my bunny rabbit. All right, that was a first. That was free. For the price of admission tonight, you got a free bunny shadow puppet show. Guys, you are awesome. I appreciate y'all so, so much. I'm gonna wrap up on this beautiful Thursday night. Tomorrow's Friday, a little bit of rain expected. We have a fun day at school planned, a little spring festival in the afternoon. So short classes, spring festival, that's going to be awesome. A nice change of pace. And then Saturday, I think I'm headed to NYC, so we'll see how that goes. All right, JLM, so nice to have you live in the house. Gigi, so nice to have you live in the house. We had M over on the Insta. I I saw Mr. Clean TT on Insta. I wish Mr. Clean would have stuck around because I think I know who that is and I would have loved to have said hello. Am I missing anybody else that watched live? Nope. And for all you lurkers, thank you for lurking out there. Make sure you hit the like button, subscribe, and all that fun social media stuff. GG, the pleasure was all mine. Take care, guys. I will, uh, I will probably see you tomorrow night, maybe hopefully earlier and more awake. Until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly. See you guys soon. That was a— that was a bad ending. We got take 2. Take 2. I didn't like that ending. All right, um, guys, until we meet again, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire endlessly.