Thursday Sketching

Hey, it's, um, Thursday, April 23rd, 2026. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life, where I love sketching, especially architecture. So join me for a few minutes tonight as I, um, do a quick sketch inspired from my recent trip to an amazingly beautiful city, Florence in Italy. Hope you're doing well today. Let's, um, let's do some sketching. So I'm going to sketch tonight in my Lockbee field journal. I think this will be— I love sketching in this thing. I carry it pretty much everywhere I go, and, um, it's definitely my grab-and-go EDC, everyday carry for, um, sketching. So I figured we'd sketch in this for tonight. I don't, I don't think we're gonna go and do any NYC sketching in my NYC sketchbook, so let's just focus on this. I'm kind of, it's kind of late here, but I want to do some sketching because I didn't do any yet today. And man, I've gotten myself into this habit where if I don't sketch, I really miss it. It's so— it's a good habit for me. It Sketching just transforms a lot of things for me— my state of being, my creativity, my mindset. It, it just does a lot for me. So, and I'm tired, as you can tell, but you guys are awesome. Feel free to say hello in the chat. I'll be checking in. And let me show you what we're going to sketch tonight. So tonight Um, I was in Florence, uh, maybe it was like 2 and a half weeks ago. I lost track of time. And one of the cool, coolest structures I saw there was— Florence is a beautiful, rich, historical city, and I want to go back so bad. But here is, uh, here's what I want to sketch tonight. This is the Ponte Vecchio. I think it was constructed around 1335, 1335, but it's such a cool bridge. It's over the Arno River, and, um, there, you know, there are shops along here. I— there might be residences here, apartments along here as well, so Just really, really beautiful. Let me zoom out so you can see more of the kind of the area around it. God, man, I just— I don't even know what to say. I'm speechless about the entire trip. Um, yeah, I don't know what to say. Florence was spectacular. So let's do some sketching. Uh, I'm gonna do it in my loose, quick, fast, wonky style. I'm not a Xerox machine. I'm not here to clone exactly what we see. I'm here to capture the vibe and energy I feel when I go visit places and when I look at architecture. So join me for a few minutes, guys. Hope you're having a great day. Put that there. And I have some tea, of course, and have a sip and say hello. I see Jen and Edie are in the house. Good to see you guys. Hope you're doing well. "You do a lot of traveling, Jason, job-related?" Um, so no. So, you know, I actually don't do a lot of traveling. Um, I wish I did more. Uh, this was a trip I went on during spring break. So I'm a high school teacher, and spring break, I— there's a tour company called EF Tours. EF stands for Education First. They're not school-sanctioned or school-sponsored trips. They're independent from anything school-related. But anyway, I went on the EF Tour trip. I was a tour leader for 13 other people, 7 students, 7— I'm sorry, yeah, 7 students and 6 other adults. So I was blessed to have this chance to travel. For 10 days in Italy and Spain. So, um, I don't really travel much. I do go to New York City. I try to go there once a month, especially in the warm weather, maybe once or twice a month, um, because I live within, you know, an hour and 15-minute bus ride from the city. But other than that, I really don't travel too much. Um, we try to get to Maine sometimes in the summer. But yeah, I love that comment though. I wish I— my dream place to go to next is Venice. I want to go to Venice and just sketch my heart out. All right, let's do some sketching here, guys. Oh, let me actually— you know what, we're gonna, uh, do this horizontal. Landscape mode. I love your questions and comments always, so you guys hit me up. I'm more than happy to, yeah, just chat with y'all. Y'all, I'm gonna literally just put this here as a reference. I feel like my Sharpie dried out a little bit. Yeah, this one is dried out. Next, Sharpie number 2. There we go. Bingo, bingo, we got it! Actually, I'm gonna— I'm gonna try to sketch this as like a continuous line sketch almost, where I'm gonna try not to lift the pen up or the marker, and we'll see how it goes. I have not— I have not sketched this church yet. Church? Oh my gosh, bridge. Told you I'm tired. I have not sketched this bridge yet. So this is a first. Florence is incredible. It's, um, the Duomo is there. The Duomo is a famous dome designed by Brunelleschi. All I'm going to say is wow. I'll talk, I'll talk more about it some other time and show you pictures. Mind blown. Yeah, mind blown for sure. Where are some of the places you guys have all been to? Let me know. I'd love to know in the chat where are some cities you've been to, and or where are some places you'd like to go to? Let me know. It's always fun to hear what, um, you know, where other people have been or where they dream to go. So Florence is on my list Definitely. I, I want to go back to, um, I want to go back to, um, Rome. And actually Barcelona next. I wanted to go back to Barcelona. Definitely, uh, Madrid. I, for some reason, I connected more with Spain on my trip. I just Something about the vibe there I just connected to a little bit, a little bit more than, um, Italy, even though, even though I'm part— I'm half Italian by heritage. So there are all kinds of shops along this, a lot of jewelry, jewelry shops along this, um, bridge. He says, I'd love to go to Venice. I'd love to live there, at least for a while. Um, Venice intrigues me so much, obviously for the architecture. Um, yeah, the only thing about Venice, um, it's just— I hear it's extremely, extremely crowded with tourists. I mean, places we went had a lot of tourists as well. But I think Venice might be limiting the amount of tourists they have per year, so I'd look into that more. But yeah, it's a dream of mine just to— I don't know, it's like a romantic notion, just traveling with sketchbook in hand and capturing the beautiful architecture and um, vibes of Venice. We'll see one day. Just you, me, and Jason makes three. Yeah, no, it's just— Jen says she'll be back. That's the original 400-plus-year-old wooden dome. Yeah, exactly. Excuse me. I know, Edie, it's just the 3 of us on here. It's all good. It's really— so I, I don't know what, you know, with the YouTube algorithms and all that junk, I— it's really strange. I have over 1,000 subscribers and I get very few people watching, um, and that's okay because the people that are watching, like you, are just quality, amazing viewers. But I'm just kind of baffled by— I don't know how all that algorithm, algorithm junk works, but it hasn't stopped me. It's not going to stop me as long as I've actually livestreamed where I've had no one watching, so it's all good. For me, it's about the quality of viewer. I feel like I'm gonna— I will attract the right kind of viewer, you know. There's just some haters out there. That's what we don't want. That's kind of just how I have to look at it. All right, so I see some new people joining. Feel free to say hello in the chat. Um, if you're just joining, I am sketching the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy. This bridge is amazing. It has shops along it. It has, I think, I think apartments along the top maybe, or, or yeah, there are apartment units on here as well. Um, really cool place. Was super crowded when, when we went, but yeah, we walked across it and we walked across it It was, uh, we discovered the other side of the Arno River and found a cool— one of the kids wanted to go to a gelato shop that they saw on TikTok, so we found it and it was, uh, it was fun. So we had some gelato, some TikTok gelato. This is cool. I like the perspective. This is, um, these are the kind of sketches I really love and resonate with, are these almost thumbs— it's bigger than a thumbnail, but just these black, white, very, very loose sketch. This is the kind of sketch that brings me— I'm trying to see if I have it here— brings me back to this one. Let me grab it. I know, I know I've showed this before, but I always go back to this, my favorite ever sketch in my whatever, 30 years of sketching. Um, maybe not that long. We've— let me do the math in my brain. Let's see. 13, 20. Yeah, I think over 30 years ago I did this sketch. That's kind of scary if I'm doing the math right. There's my math checker out there, right? And my brain's tired. Was 2026 minus 93? Yeah, here. So it harkens back to my This is— if I could only take one sketch with me, say I— what's that, that game? If you're on a stranded island and you can only have one sketch with you, what would it be? It would be this. This is my favorite sketch I've ever done, back in 1993, but has that kind of really loose scribbly look. And you can see, we'll just kind of hold this here to here, right? You can see my style has kind of been the same all those years. So I need to get this rebound or something, this sketchbook. All right, pretty cool, right? So yeah, so, um, hope you're digging this. You know what, I am going to throw— I've been having fun throwing highlighter, yellow highlighter on sketches recently, so I'm just going to throw some yellow. There is, there is some yellow on these buildings, but we'll just kind of have fun and just throw some of our own on, just pop out some color. And maybe we have the building back here, so maybe some yellow. There we go. That's kind of cool. Just pop a little bit out there. Hey, Bon Identity, I see you on Instagram. Hello, hope you're doing well. Oops, you're gone. I said hello too late. I can't keep up with— hey, DRT Jong, I see you on Instagram. Hope you're doing well. Thank you for watching on Insta, and thank you guys watching on YouTube. I appreciate y'all. All right, cool. I just want to throw a little bit of yellow on there. And we'll— I'm gonna have hatch a little bit more, pull out some more shadows, and then we're gonna wrap up. This is just a real quick live stream. I came on late, kind of late tonight. Uh, yeah. I was debating whether or not to show up live here, but you know what, I had to sketch. I wanted to sketch, so I figured why not just pop on, see if anybody's watching. You hear motorcycles or something racing up and— what the heck is that? It's kind of annoying, to be honest with you. All right, so we got a little bit of perspective kind of going down this way. Just kind of sketch some water on here. Hey, Sketches and Some, I see you on Instagram. Hope you're doing well. Hope you're doing well, my friend. I hope I see you on Saturday. I don't know if you're going to be there or not, but I am. I will be there. One of my most favorite places to sketch, and I know I know you're pretty, uh, adept at sketching at GCT. Be a pleasure and privilege to say hello to you. So yeah, so this is Ponte Vecchio going over the River Arno, Florence. Um, kind of a quick loosey-goosey sketch, and I'm not going to add any more color. I'm just going to leave some yellow highlighter on there. I kind of like it. Pretty cool. Let me just grab some tea here. I will— let me know if you guys have any questions or comments. What the heck is that engine revving I hear up like in the distance? It's driving me up a wall. Who would be revving engines at 10:00 at night? Am I turning— am I turning into that cranky old man? I guess what just drives me crazy is people don't respect other people. The respect levels have gone down across the boards. It is ridiculous. Anyway, this is the show about positivity and creativity, not me Jason Nicholas venting about someone revving their engine, and it's not even that close. It's like I hear it like way in the distance. All right, cool. What do you guys think? Do you like this sketch? I think we captured the idea of the, um, the bridge. Let me just write on here what it is so I don't forget. Ponte Vecchio. How do I spell that? Two C's, V-E-C-C-H. How do we spell Vecchio? Hello, Vecchio. How do I spell you? Yeah, V-E-C-C-H. I knew it! Ding ding ding! 10 points for me. Ponte Vecchio Florence. Boom. Uh, we'll put 2026 so I remember. Pretty cool, guys. All right, I think I'm going to wrap with that. Um, just kind of a quick short stream tonight. I hope you guys have an amazing Friday. I appreciate you watching and commenting. Thank you so, so much. Uh, be sure to hit that like button on the way out. If you haven't subscribed, I would love that so, so much. Let's grow this creative channel. Mm-hmm. Why the heck not? Um, until we meet again, sketch boldly. Live creatively and inspire endlessly.