Tuesday Night Sketching

Fallin', realizing I'm changing. Still fighting, still learning, still trying. No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply being human. This is simply being human. I'm not here to be flawless. I'm not here to pretend. I'm here to keep moving again and again. I'm here to keep choosing a life I can stand it, a life that's my own. I'm still becoming.

Hey, it's Tuesday, March 21st. Not March. Let's head over. Hey, it's Tuesday, April 21st. Oh my gosh, 2026. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with the Inkspired Life, and this is obviously not rehearsed, not, not pre-recorded, unscripted. It's totally unscripted. Um, it's good to be here. I love sketching. I love sketching architecture, and that is something you guys will often see me doing here, if not all the time, on on The Inkspired Life. But this is not just about sketching, it's about positivity, creativity, mindset, personal growth. It's about community and connecting. So thank you guys for spending a little bit of your time with me tonight. It's, uh, 9:27 PM in the Garden State, and it's actually starting to look like the Garden State. Things are blooming, things are blossoming. Even though we had frost on the ground the past two mornings. Not even kidding. Um, happy April. It's good to see you guys. What I'm gonna do tonight is, um, I've been starting off my shows with a real quick kind of sketch inspired by my travels to Spain and Italy. So I am sketching a building in Barcelona, and then If we have time, and we'll see how the show goes, we'll sketch in the New York City Sketchbook. That is a boring name for this project, so we need to come up with a creative name. If you've been following me, what's in this yellow book is my kind of current passion project for sketching architecture. Am I talking like William Shatner and breaking up my sentence. I don't know, I feel like I am. Uh, feel free to say hello in the chats, guys. The chats, I guess it's chats. I'm on YouTube, Facebook, and Insta right now, and I like to say Insta because it makes me sound either really cool or really dorky. And you know what, I don't care if I sound dorky because I'm just being me. And that's all I expect from you guys. Just be yourselves, put yourselves out there. Don't worry about being perfect, you know. After all, we're just simply human, and humans are humans, right? We make mistakes. We're not always the best that we can be. We try every day, and that's all we can do. So say hello in the chat. I will look in this minute or so. Um, I may play some music in the background if you guys want. Let me know. It's gonna— if I'll play it really low. If not, I'll just put some stuff on my AirPods. AirPods? Well, pod. I only have one in. I'm having an issue with my, my, my language. Oh my God. Sometimes my brain goes so fast, it goes much faster than I can talk. I've had that issue growing up my entire life where my brain, it just is in rapid-fire mode and my mouth can't keep up with what my brain is thinking. Do you guys ever have that happen? Let me know. All right, let me see who's, uh, out there in hello land. Tim, I see Tim. Great to see you. Number 1. Tim has the number 1 foam finger. Yes sirree. Which, guys, I still have not found the— that looks like an L for loser, but I'm trying to do the number 1. Those like the number 1. I gotta work on that. GG, you were just watching my Insta video. Oh, let me know, what do you think? Do you like, do you like those kind of off-the-cuff hiking mic talk and walk videos. I love doing them. And I have a secret for you guys watching. Here, here's your— here's your secret. Here, here's my secret. Um, those videos where I'm walking and talking, where I call them hike and mics, as in M-I-C, microphone. Um, I have another— I am— I always have things going on, but I am working on a podcast. A podcast. And those topics you hear me talking about are going to turn into full-blown podcast episodes. So stay tuned. That is, that is actually something I really, really really want to get going. And I have a creative brain. I have so many ideas, and unfortunately that's sometimes a roadblock because I'm thinking of way too many things, and sometimes things don't get done, right? It's like overload paralysis. Goes back to what I was saying before, where my brain is really rapid-fire mode. I can't keep up when I'm talking sometimes, and I can't keep up creating sometimes. So I need to learn where to pull back, lock in, and complete. Am I talking a lot? Yeah, it's always good to see you guys. Thank you for popping in. So this is a, this is a building in Barcelona, and I don't even know the name of this building. I have to look it up. This is, I think this is called Junta de Obras del Port. Offices of the Building Administration of the Port of Barcelona. So this is Junta de Obras del Port. Maybe Porté, maybe. No, it just says port. So that is the building I'm sketching. Now we know. All right, I'm going to put some, uh, music. I'm going to put music on in the background, guys. If it is annoying you, please, please tell me. I'm going to have it really low. I can just switch to my— so only I can hear it. It will be just a random mix of my own music, nothing that's copyrighted, just stuff I am allowed to play. So let's play it. It might be a repeat. I'm sorry, it's going to repeat that first song again. All right, again, if it's too loud, please tell me. Oh my gosh, Russ is on Instagram! Holy cow, Russell, I miss you! I miss you, my friend. How are you? I really— we really need to catch up. We really need to catch up. So good to see you. So I'm going to switch to just a darker Sharpie, pull these windows out a little more darker blue. Ah, this song also that you're hearing is right now is what I'm planning on being the theme song for the podcast. So just letting you guys in the creative loop so you can kind of see the creative process in, in work, in action. See what goes right, what goes wrong. Kind of a behind-the-scenes look at things. I fell in love with Barcelona, guys. Oh my gosh. Barely scratched the surface of it, of that city. I, I need to go back 110%. It has old architecture, it has new architecture. It's kind of an eclectic city. I love, love, loved it. Gigi, do you want to be my first guest? Do you want to be the first guest on my podcast? LMK.

Cool.

Yeah, this is a fun building to sketch. I like symmetrical buildings are hard for me to sketch, you know. So symmetrical buildings are symmetry. It balances from the center point. The left is the same as the right, so that's a symmetrical building, right? It's hard for me to sketch symmetrical buildings because they're symmetrical. Symmetry equals precision. My sketching style is loose, wonky. It's not about precision. So I am fighting the symmetry of this with my loose, wonky style. So it's a really interesting exercise for me to process and try to create those opposites. Does that make sense? Alright, this is cool. I'm liking it. Let me write this down. This is called— what was this called again? I have to look it up. Hunta. Hunta. Hunta. De Obres. Un té de Obres del Barcelona. And let's throw— I feel like throwing some yellow highlighter on here, so as a background. So let's throw some highlighter. It's a very good song. Oh, thank you. Do you like that song, Simply Being Human? That's awesome, because that is also going to be the name of the podcast. It's going— the show is going to be called Simply Being Human. Um, and the title kind of says what it's about. I'm super excited. I— it's kind of a change in direction from, you know, the sketching stuff. I want to just talk about more about life and just being real. So that's kind of the vibe I'm going for. Look at how that highlighter just pops the building out. Yes, Gigi. Yeah, 100%. I— let's, let's talk about it, please. I would love to, uh, I would love to have you on. As, as the first, first guest. So let's figure out a time we can chat about it. That'd be amazing. It'd be amazing. And I just need you to be you, and that's all it's about. Be so cool. It could even, it could even possibly turn into like a co-hosting thing at some point, but we'll see how it goes. That'd be, that'd be so fun. Yeah, check out— I love that. Look at the highlighter, guys. That just, it really just popped the building out. Hey, Lori Jean, I was just going to mention to the pop of the building. There we go, right? That yellow highlighter is totally popping it out. So pro tip: highlighters are awesome sketching tools. Boom shakalaka. I don't know why I started saying that. Morning. I'm going to turn the music up one notch here. It might get If it's too loud, let me know because I can barely hear it. I'm gonna keep working on this. Let's throw down some— looking for a pink highlighter. Where are my highlighters? Give me a sec. All right, let's just keep throwing down some highlighters on here. Why not? So I have a whole bin here of— look at the beautiful colors, man. This is fun. Let's just grab and go. This is kind of a cool thing. Oh, CCM, Timno CCM. I am, I'm trying so hard— not so hard, but I really, really would love to be an adjunct architecture design professor here, CCM. If anybody knows any— anybody at CCM that has power, let me know. I'd love to talk to them. I already submitted it, uh, and I'm on a list of like probably 80 people to be an adjunct professor here, but I gotta get to the top somehow. Um, it'd be amazing. It'd be almost— it would be like kind of night classes, so I could just still do my art my high school and then start teaching college because I think that's my next career move in teaching, is college level. I'm going to show you guys my favorite highlighter color combination is the yellow and pink. It makes a really cool orange color. Probably look better with just yellow, but that's okay. This is about fun, right? This is our sketching sandbox where anything goes. Just throw it on colors, have fun. That's all I want to do with you guys, just have some fun. You don't know unless you try. Yeah, what the heck, let's put on some green. There's really no grass, this is like in a big plaza area, but it's okay. Let's try this red highlighter. Is this red? These are— look how small these are. Oh, a chihuahua. This is, this is tiny. I guess it is red. Now we know. Oh, heck yeah! Hold on. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited about the colors. Yes, I am. Spain must have been beautiful. Spain, okay, here, here's the deal. Italy was incredible, but I was, you know, I was in Rome, in Florence. Beautiful, beautiful cities. I have to say, I like the vibe of Madrid and Barcelona. I connected more with my— with Spain than Italy on that trip. Um, not to diss Italy and Rome, beautiful, but my heart connected with Spain more. I felt a different vibe in Spain. I felt, um, more at ease, more peaceful. Spain felt more open, more like physically open, just more breathing room. It felt a little more chill to me. Um, so yeah, it was— it was— oh, is this like a raspberry? Is this like a raspberry or strawberry color? Sorry, I'm getting excited with colors here. No, it's— oh, it's like a pink. These colors combined are reminiscent of a brilliant sunset. Oh, I'm glad you like that. Let's throw some purple in there. Thanks, guys. Is this award-winning? Nope. Is it fun? Heck yeah. But I didn't— but to that, I didn't like that. But that's my new sound effect. If I don't like something, I'm just gonna go bleh. It's kind of— sounds like a sheep that ate too much. But, um, uh, tomorrow night, Wednesday, if you— oh, I, I thought this was going to be blue. It is a black marker. If you're watching me live tomorrow night, I would like to do some kind of a giveaway. I don't know if we'll do a trivia question or— I'm not sure. But maybe we'll do a sketch giveaway in the chat. I think JLM won the last giveaway. All right, listen to— this song's cool. I like the lyrics.

I'm gonna turn it up a notch. 24 people deep, no sign of hope. One guy up front arguing about a milk phone. I took my place, accepting my fate. I moved slower than a DMV wait. Someone sighed loud like a wounded beast, and a toddler dropped a muffin.

May it rest in peace. This is the queue of doom, where patience goes to die too soon.

Every step is a battle cry, every inch a test of why we put ourselves through this caffeine bloom.

Yeah, welcome to the queue of doom.

Maybe a latte's worth than the cost. If suffering builds character, then I'm sick. Character's dripping from my pores like sweat.

This is the QRP. All right, cool.

This is fun. I'm just having, uh, fun, honestly, throwing down colors here, guys.

Pretty cool, right?

All right, let me zoom in. I think this one might be done. I spent longer than I wanted to, but that's what happens when you get lost having fun. I really, I really need a cool color here to— like, cool as in, like, temperature-wise, a cool color, like a blue or something. Let me try something here. Let's see. Maybe, maybe this is what I needed. I just wanted to kind of dilute the highlighter a little bit, the color, so I'm throwing a cool color in there. So I have a blue kind of happening. All right, cool. Lori Jean, good to see you. Have a great, great day. Thanks for popping in, appreciate it. All right, if you guys have any suggestions of an NYC building or structure, let me know in the chat. And, uh, maybe we'll do a little NYC sketch tonight. I'm gonna throw some people in now just to give a little bit of scale. Love the colors. Thanks, guys. Represents Spain, so colorful and festive. Awesome sketch. Wow, thanks guys, you really like it. That's cool. I love it. Again, I'm just having fun with this. I need some, uh, I need some— well, I'll show you what I need instead of talking about. I'm just gonna do it. Where the heck is it? My desk is a mess. Oh my gosh, where is my turquoise creative marker? Can you guys believe I can't find my turquoise creative marker? What the beep? What the beep beep is going on? I got these, which are not in the case. No! This can't be happening. Oh my gosh, it's probably lost wherever my green jacket is. So the missing socks, the green jacket, and now the turquoise Creative Marker are all in the same vortex of lostness. Well, when in— when in Rome, just go with whatever I have here. All right, I could use a color pencil, but hope he's rich.

All right, cool.

I like this one, guys. Coney Island. Oh, I, I have never sketched anything from Coney Island. Maybe what about, um, what if I Google up— I could do the rides. I'm thinking Nathan's. What if I do— maybe I'll Google up a picture of Nathan's. Maybe we'll give that a try. 10 o'clock. Oh, maybe not tonight. Tim got some Sharpie creative markers. Awesome. Highbridge Water Tower. You had mentioned water towers. Yeah, yeah, I love water towers. That's a cool idea. Um, actually, here's what I'm going to do. Let's just sketch a water tower, nondescript. Um, we'll do a water tower sketch right here in our— this journal. We'll save the NYC one for tomorrow night. Um, and I think I'd like to— I'll— before tomorrow night's show, I'll find some pictures of, uh, Coney Island, and we'll pick something from Coney Island. I'm thinking Nathan's right now, but we'll see. Cool. I like— guys, I do like the sketch. It came out kind of fun. All right, let's— we'll wrap with a nondescript water tower, just anything from my imaginish— imagine Imagination. How do you say— how do you say imagination in Spanish? Imaginación. I don't know. And I grabbed the red pen, so we're gonna sketch with the red pen. All right guys, cool. Let me know if you have any questions or comments before we wrap up. We're gonna change— I got my grunge, I got my alternative grunge going, but let's put something more chill. You guys up for something chill? I am. That's not what I want. What's more chill? This? Imaginación. Imagination. Imagination. Thank you, Gigi, for the phonetic spelling. It's so helpful. I did— I took Spanish in, let's see, in starting in middle school. I took it in, uh, 7th and 8th grade. That's my water tower as I'm talking. 7th and 8th grade. This is gonna be loosey-goosey style. Um, and then I took it throughout high school. I even— I remember in high school I did— we did Spanish competitions. We traveled to other schools. That was fun. And then in University of Miami, I had a lot of Cuban friends, so they kind of kept me up to date with Spanish. Um, now I have some Spanish students in my classes, and I'm always, uh, I'm asking them like, oh, how do you say this? Because I want to— I kind of wish I was bilingual with Spanish. So I appreciate— oh, you always help me in the chat, so thank you. I really wish I had my Aqua. I'm gonna grab— I think I have another one. I think I have a backup in here. I'm only gonna be on for, um, it's 10:01. I'm only gonna be on for 5 minutes max, and then I'm gonna wrap up because I'm tired and I got school tomorrow. Um, here, that is— that's not the color, but I might just use that one. Is it possible that I am out of— no, here, here we got one. So Creative Markers, they have, they have, um, two different tip sizes. There's the bullet point tips, and then we have— here's the— this is the bullet point tip, and then we have the brush tips, which are smaller and more flexible. I love the brush tip ones. more because of their flexibility. But we're just gonna go with— again, I will definitely use this. We're just gonna go with— this is the Bullet Point Tip one. Wow, this is not— this is, this is— is this an illusion? What is going on with the color? All right, this is not the color I thought it was. I thought this was aqua. All right, that's a surprise. How did that happen? Does this not look like aqua to you guys? Maybe it's just a very light blue. Fool me once, fool me twice, fool me three times, and then I turn into Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. I'm not gonna say it 3 times. All right, now I have the Beetlejuice song in my head. I love the Beetlejuice movies, love the theme song and the music. Danny Elfman. Tim Burton, Danny Elfman combo, you cannot go wrong. Dun dun dun dun dun dun. Now I got it in my head. All right, I think I have 3 more minutes. So a lot of the water towers are made from wood, believe it or not. Actually, I'm gonna do this, and we're gonna throw down some white on top of it. Yeah, so they're made out of wood, um, because wood swells and it holds things tight. I mean, there's no seams. At least the old school ones, I believe, were made from wood. I really should do some fact checking. If memory serves me— purple, where's my purple? Good job. Thank you so much. Good job. I'm trying, I'm trying. I appreciate the help. All right, and I think the last thing I'm going to do, guys, it will throw some white on here, but the red is not drying. Boom. Boom and boom. You know what's another good Danny Elfman? I love Danny Elfman's music. I love— I should say I love his movie music. I love the theme from Men in Black. Do you guys remember the movie Men in Black? Love this music.

Do I have silver or gray?

Hmm. I do need a timer or a timekeeper to tell me it's time to end up to wrap up. I feel like I need a pop of yellow on here somewhere, bring a little bit of brightness to this. Let's try this. This is like a— looks like a muted yellow. Try it.

I guess it works.

I feel like the light is washing this out a little bit, guys. Sorry. Creative markers are for me about layers, adding layers on top of layers. That's what I— for me gives it the kind of the powerful fun effect. Because they're, um, they're translucent, so you can see through them a little bit, which I love. So Sharpie, if you're watching, I have an upcoming workshop in Brooklyn. Just saying, just saying, I'd love to give some of your creative markers out. Hit me up. Sometimes you just gotta ask, guys. You gotta ask for the things in life you want. I like this color orange. I haven't used this. This is the first. I love that orange. That is awesome sauce. Wow, that is— that is an orange. Yeah. Love it, love it. All right, let me see if there's any final questions or comments. I think we're gonna wrap. It's not quite done where I want it to be, but it's kind of like life. It's just tomorrow's a new day, right? New beginnings, new day. I can't stop. I can't stop myself. All right, Edward Scissorhands. Yeah. I love Edward Scissorhands, the theme. I love the music in that whole movie. That's a good one. It's so, um, this might sound weird, but when I hear Edward Scissorhands, I don't know, I picture ballet. I picture ballet music for some reason. I don't know if that makes sense to you. But I, I do love Edward Scissorhands, the movie and the music. Um, I can picture this snowglobe and the snow falling and yeah. All right guys, this has been This has been real. I hope you enjoyed tonight's sketching. We started off with, um, a sketch inspired from a building in Barcelona. I'm sorry, just adding layers. I need a turquoise so bad on this. It's driving me up a flipping wall. How could I have lost? This makes no sense. Gosh, I really need turquoise on it. If— when you— if I could put it on here, you're gonna see this thing transform. Dramatically with one color. Is it in here? Please, please be in here. Please. No. Dang nabbit. Ah, man. All right, I'm so spoiled of having everything like laying here on the Desk top. I need to move on. Just saying, move on. Kids in school would say, Mr. Nick, just move on. Move on, Mr. Nick. I can hear them right now. Mr. Nick, move on. Mr. Nick, don't say that. You sound old. You sound old. You shouldn't say that. That's like me trying to— me trying to keep up with the lingo. Um, all right guys, I'm sorry, I'm obsessing about this color. Let's just throw color pencil on. All right, I hope you had a great, great session watching tonight. Hope you were inspired. Hope you had fun. I really appreciate you guys, your time watching me here live. Watching things I post, commenting on things I post. Be sure to check out my Hike and Mike Talk I posted from today. You can find it on TikTok and Instagram. Um, just for me walking and riffing and talking about kind of the importance of humans talking to humans. On the phone. Yeah, this is where I need someone like to— you ever see those shows and they have a hook and they hook the person on stage and pull them off? I need someone to be my hook and pull me off. I'm being— I'm addicted right now. All right, check this out. This— if I had the Aqua Creative Marker, it would have really transform this. I didn't get quite the effect, but I like kind of a distressed— I'm gonna— I love doing industrial sketches, old weathered metal rusty buildings. That's one of the things I absolutely love sketching and capturing in sketch form and photographing. I love old rusty things. I know that's weird, especially buildings and industrial buildings. So I'm always trying to figure out how can I get like a kind of weathered industrial vibe. I would use some Apple Snail ink on here as well. Um, so that's why I'm kind of not stressing, but I'm, I'm not gonna actually break out the ink, but I wish I had the aqua I'm not obsessive, I swear. All right, this might be just kind of what I'm getting at. So I just threw some brown on there. All right, yes, my phone situation is resolved. Thank you so much, that was a pain in the butt. Guys, you are awesome. I appreciate y'all so much. I appreciate your time. It's late, thanks for sticking with me. Tomorrow night, 9 o'clock PM-ish, please come back. We'll try to do a giveaway, and I appreciate you. Until we meet again, sketch boldly. Live creatively and inspire endlessly. GG, you get the last word. 100%, we are going to do that. I also want you guys to bring some paper and something to sketch or draw or write with. Okay, let's sketch together. Good night, guys.