Tuesday Night Sketching

Hey, hello, Jason Nicholas Nicholas from The Inspired Life. Tuesday night, January 14th. I'm gonna do just a bit of quick sketching tonight, maybe 15 minutes or so, just to unwind. So hopefully you're having a great day. And you might notice a little different setup here. I'm actually sitting down at my kind of my computer workstation area. Usually I'm standing up over at the art section, but I wanted to try a different setup— set out— a different setup here and see how it goes. Normally I like to sketch standing up because I'm freer to move around and stuff, so I thought it'd be fun just to sit down and do a bit of sketching. All right, so, uh, yeah, let's do this. So, um, tonight's sketches is inspired by St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Really incredible, beautiful piece of neo-Gothic architecture. And this is going to be fast and furious. I just want to see, kind of see what happens and not really think about it and let's just go loosey-goosey and have, have fun throwing down lines. I am looking at a reference picture I took back in, uh, 2023. 2023. So it's going to be kind of an interesting distorted perspective looking up at just a small section of the building. Sometimes when we sketch architecture and buildings, we think we have to try to fit the entire building on a page. We don't need to. You can focus on maybe a small part of it, maybe even a door or a window or a detail you like somewhere. And just by putting that in your brain, it kind of sometimes takes the pressure off of sketching a building. That way you're not worried about trying to capture the entire thing, uh, on one page. I'm using a Sharpie in case I want to come back here and throw some color down on top of it, like watercolor or ink. Some ink washes, and that way I don't have to worry about the color bleeding. Again, this is just really loosely inspired by the building. I am not trying to detail it and copy it as it exactly is. We have a cool, um, doorway in here, so let's sketch that. It's got a pointed kind of arch here. You have a pediment. A pediment is this kind of— this gable, this pointy area over the arch. We have a pediment here. A window up in there. When sketching Gothic type of architecture, there, um, I like to say a lot of jaggedy lines or a lot of pointy kind of lines happening along with these kind of arches as well. That just gives it the idea that we have a Gothic style happening here. Got some steps coming up in here somewhere. Feel free to say hello and ask any questions in the chat. I'll be checking the chat in a minute or so. I'm just, um, just kind of focusing on the sketching, but I definitely will check in. So love for you to say hello. Cool. We have some buildings kind of in the background here. Um, yes, kind of just sketch them in. Just maybe an outline here. All right, cool. Let's, um, let's throw some— what do I want to throw down on here? I didn't bring over my watercolor. I could get it. Um, yeah, let's throw down some quick watercolor. It's right behind me here. All right. Alright, let me throw some watercolor down and I'm gonna check— check in in the comments and say hello. Paper towel. Uh-oh. Alright. No paper towel, so you know what we're gonna do? I am— I'm just gonna clean— I'm gonna just clean the brush off right on the sheet of paper. Why the heck not? We'll see how it goes. Sketching is really therapeutic for me, um. My brain always has like a lot of things happening in it at the same time, like a lot of ideas and, um, yeah, thoughts. So it's kind of creative, we call it creative brain. So when I sit down to sketch and paint like this, it really just puts me in a different place. Kind of a Zen or focus mode. And that's just, that's one of the reasons I just love doing this, just to that, just for that change of state of mind. You know, if I find myself having kind of a either an overwhelming day or even sometimes a blah day, or do you ever have one of those days where you're just like, ugh, oh my gosh, sitting down and doing this for, you know, 10 minutes, changing that state of mind really puts me in a different place. It's, it's such a great, um, tool for doing that. And this is my thing. Some people like to, you know, cook, whatever, sports. So it doesn't matter. Everybody has a creative, some kind of outlet. Don't be afraid to go to that, that kind of creative outlet to help get your mind and your whole, uh, your whole state into a different place. There we go. You might have noticed I put this sketchbook under here just to tilt the paper up at an angle because I love, um, sketching— I'm sorry, I love adding ink and watercolor and letting it drip down the page. Just want to intensify some of this turquoise here. I don't have— there's a lemon yellow color I like I don't— this is another yellow. It's not the lemon one, but we're just gonna— we're gonna go for it. The lemon yellow I like to use is a little brighter. It adds— I like to say it adds a zesty kind of, um, flavor. That didn't make sense. It adds some zest to the drawing. Oh my gosh. All right, cool. All right, let's pop another color here. Um, actually, we're going to mix some of these together a little bit, kind of blend this here, pull it down. Think I want to bring this yellow down a little bit here. Cool. All right, I'm going to let it dry. Let me check in, see if anybody's out there, has questions, comments, or said hello. We'll let it dry up. I just have to switch screens. Let's do that. Boom. All right, guys, I'm in the comments. Hey, how are you guys doing? Hope you're doing well. Love seeing you guys. D-Ray, D-Ray, how are you? Great to see you. Yeah, this is— this stuff is therapeutic. I love— I just love this. It just takes me somewhere different. It's almost an escapism. Escapism. Yeah. Hey, Sue, great to see you briefly. Hope you're doing well. It's always great to see you. Love your colors. Hey, thank you so much, Sue. You are awesome. And I I appreciate you. I hope all is well, and I'll be putting a message out to all of you guys, all the Inklings, um, for a Zoom get-together. I've been trying to schedule some stuff. I'm going to be going into New York City a few Saturdays this month, so I'm just trying to figure out when would be a great, great time for us all to get together and do a little creative Zoom session. Appreciate you so much. Awesome. I'm going to intensify some orange. I really want some of it just to pop out here. There we go. Boom. There we go. I'm going to leave a lot of white space. I definitely want to add I'm thinking purple. I want to make this opening look like a recess, so I'm darkening it up, darkening up. I think purple would be great. Um, I don't think I have a purple— I don't think I have a purple pen here. Nope. And I'm gonna be lazy. I'm just— I like to grab and go, so I'm just gonna grab with what I have. I'm gonna try to make some purple up with, um, some blue and red in here. We'll throw it down on the sketch here. It's 9:32. I'm gonna wrap up 5 more minutes. I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick to it. All right, so I'm just gonna kind of mix up some purple, throw in some red in here. This is a well-loved watercolor palette. This is a— if you want to know what it is, it's a Winsor Newton Kotman watercolor palette. Um, if you want more information, you could definitely go to my website. There's a link in the description. Um, go to my website and you can see it there and actually get it off Amazon. I have a link. If you use that link, I make it like 3 cents. Out of it. The price isn't any different if you click my link or not. Cool. All right, so I mix some purple up. Let's throw it on here. There we go. Yeah, now we're talking. Right. So I just wanted to throw this here. Maybe sometimes we think shadows have to be like gray. I like mixing up colors for shadows, whether it's a purple shadow, or lots of times I'll use blue and brown, and sometimes it'll be more bluish or more brownish depending. That's a great shadow color I like to use. So let's kind of add some pop in some of this in other places. Hey, Sue Kane. Sue says, I'm looking forward to the Zoom. That is awesome, Sue. I've been thinking of you. I've been watching a show, it's called Grand Designs. It's about home building. There's a UK version too, but I've been watching the Australia one recently. So they're talking about all these different places in Australia and showing these really funky homes designs. It's a really cool show. There you go. I popped a little more blue in here and I'm going to zoom in so you could see it. Enjoy lunch at the beach. Have a great day. Let's talk about the possibility of a Zoom session. Yeah, so every once in a while, um, I get together with some Inklings, people have been following me for a long time. We just get together on a Zoom for a couple of hours and it's not a formal workshop. We just kind of chill and hang out. Some people do their own things, I'll do my own thing. And sometimes people, you know, follow what I'm doing. It's just a really great way to stay in touch. So we'll be doing one of those soon. I'm actually using red. I don't usually like to use red watercolor. I don't know why. I just, I don't like, I just don't like red watercolor paint. I'll just typically, when I want to do red, I'll grab Pilot Precise Red pen. This is the color red I go to. Let's throw some of that on and I think we're going to wrap it up. Let's put this here. Let me know how the sound quality is. I'm just working off the iMac microphone. It's not my other microphone I normally use. And it's interesting for me to be sitting down and doing this. I usually— I'm standing up. I feel more constricted sitting here because I'm kind of like I can't kind of bounce around so much sitting in a chair. I'm a pacer, so when I teach, I rarely sit down. I'm always pacing and moving around the room. So for me to sit down in this one spot for a long time is not always Unless I'm at the movies, I can do it at the movies pretty well. It's not always easy for me to do. Cool. I'm just, I'm just touching down red here and there. Cool. All right, let me zoom out. I think we're going to leave it at here for now. There will— I'll definitely be coming back to this after it dries at some point. Um, my next step would be to come back with probably a Sharpie and pull out some details. I definitely want to pull out some of the outline of the building and some shapes on the building to give a little more depth. Um, I probably will throw some colored pencil on as well, and I don't know if I'll break out the Create— the Creative Markers on this one. We'll see. But I definitely want to pull out some of what's happening here in a little more detail. Um, let me zoom in so you can see how this is drying. I love the colors on some of this. There we go. Check the colors out happening here and here. Really cool. Um, yeah, you're right, right. I'll appreciate the sitting after a long day. You got that straight. My feet appreciate it for sure. Mm-hmm. Cool. I think this is drying really nicely. All right, so this is just kind of step one. I'll come back and add some other things to it later on. Not today because it's late. I gotta get ready for night-night time. Um, thank you guys so much for watching. I always appreciate the comments the feedback, the thumbs ups, the likes over on YouTube. Sharing the stream out is really helpful as well. I value this time very much so, and I value your time too. So, thank you for sharing a few minutes with me today. Keep using your creativity for positivity. And remember, you too can sketch architecture one line at a time. Appreciate y'all so much. Take care, have a great rest of your night. Peace and live creatively. See you guys soon.