Tuesday Sketching

Hello, it is Tuesday, March, March 24th, 2026. Hope you're having an awesome day. I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inspired Life, where I love sketching architecture. It is just— it's something fun for me to do. It changes my state of being. It could hype me up, it could calm me down, it can make me feel good. Um, it's a way for me to remember places I've been, capture moments in time, way to brainstorm, think. Uh, yeah, sketching is just a really amazing, amazing creative tool that I'd pretty much use every day. So join me for a few. It's going to be a pretty quick stream tonight, and I'm going to continue in this sketchbook I've been working on. So I am working on what I hope will be a calendar that I will be selling later this year, some NYC buildings. Structures. We have the Manhattan Bridge, we have Domino Sugar Refinery, St. Patrick's, the Lincoln— the Lincoln Center, I guess it's now the Lincoln Center, um, Copper Building, the Oculus, Brooklyn Bridge, yeah, Empire State Building, One World Trade. I just love doing this stuff. So tonight I think I'm gonna I'm really limited with time tonight because I'm, I'm really tired, but, uh, I'm gonna do, I think, Grand Central in this book. I haven't tried Grand Central in on this format, so let's have fun, play for a few, and just see where the ink takes us. Feel free to say hello in the comments. I will check in and respond back. Awesome, great to see everybody. I see Monica Scott on Instagram, great to see you Monica, hope all's well. Hey, I see Edie on YouTube, good to see you. Hope you guys are doing great today. So this has been a fun journey, this sketchbook, and, uh, just bear with me a sec, I'm putting some music on here. It's been a long— it's been a very busy day, not a bad day, just busy. And, um, I just couldn't let the night go by, the day go by without sketching something. Sorry if I'm talking a lot here, but all right, let's do some sketching. Monica, good to see you. Thank you for saying hello. Hope you're doing well. All right, let's do it. Grand Central coming up. Quick loose take, I think I'm gonna do. What page do I want to do it on? Let's do it on We'll do it on this page, I guess. Why the heck not? It's all just about playing, seeing what happens. All right, so, so yeah, it's just been a crazy, crazy week. I'm prepping to, uh, go away amongst organizing and bill paying and adulting and teaching and medicaling and all that normal life stuff, right? So no complaints, it is what it is, and I'm just blessed to have opportunity to come on here and do some sketching. Why not, right? I love Grand Central. GCT, Grand Central Terminal, is It's just an amazing, amazing hubbub of activity. The architecture is incredible. The space is just so grand and so, so massive inside. It's really a cool place to hang out and people watch, do some sketching, got some good food. And the food, uh, I guess you call it the food court downstairs. Yeah, I could literally just hang out in this place for hours, and I have, I have actually done it. Um, love it. There's an Apple Store and all kinds of shops, and could never get bored in GCT, let me tell you. Hey Gigi, great to see you. Gigi's in the house, hope you're doing well. Yes, we got a little GCT going here. Again, this is We're doing uber quick tonight. Hope you guys had a great day today. Let me know, did you do anything fun, exciting, any highlights today? I just, um, I've had done so many, so many different things today. All right, let's break out some other colors here. I also want to give a shout out. I've— people have been using my Lockbee discount code on the screen in the chat. And, um, shout out to anybody who's been using my discount code and buying stuff through Lockbee. It's really awesome. Um, I get a real— I get a small little, um, I guess commission you call it. It's nothing big, but— and your price, the price doesn't change for people that use my code. It's just really, it's fun to see, see that, and I appreciate it. Um, you know, it's, it's, it's some money that can help me buy more markers, you know. So thank you guys for whoever's, whoever's out there. I don't know who uses the code, so I can't see that info, but shout out to anybody who, who is doing it. I, I really appreciate that kind of support, so thank you. It's awesome. It's just a nice surprise when I go on my email and I'm like, oh, Someone used my code, and if you don't, that's cool too. I'm not saying it to make anybody feel bad. I just, just, I'm just expressing gratitude because again, I don't have access to who uses it, so just want to give a shout out to anybody in case they're watching the stream. So who— hey, how was your follow-up? Hey, thank you for asking. Wow, I appreciate that. Yeah, so I had a follow-up visit today with my, my cardiologist. Um, it went, it went well. It went well. Nothing was found during my— no blockages or anything. But, um, there's some things we have to just monitor and keep our eyes on, but nothing, um, is it worth losing sleep over? I don't like that expression. Um, yeah, just stuff I gotta keep up with, keep my eyes on. So thank you for asking, I appreciate that. Yeah, it went well. You guys are awesome, and I, I do appreciate check-ins like that, so thank you. It means a lot, and I hope you're all doing well also. I hope you're doing better than my, uh, that gel pen that's not working. Oh my gosh, or this one. What's up with my gel pens? Ruin on my hand. Sometimes the gel pens don't like the texture of the acrylic paint. I have to go with— yeah, you can see, look, it's giving me a little bit of grief, but We'll get it working. Yeah, I wish this— I wish the white pen, uh, gel pens were working. Yeah, it's okay. There's always a backup plan, guys. Don't let it stop you. Grab and go creativity, right? That's kind of my motto. We're just gonna grab and go with what I have here. I got white. Let's see if this white colored pencil works. And if you hear any pup sounds, my pups are running around back there. Well, not back there, but out, out there. All right, let's see. I wanted to sketch with a— I feel I'm feeling red here. It's a little red action. I'll tell you, the sunshine felt so amazing today. I don't know what the temps got to, maybe 40, upper 40s, but the sun was so powerful and intense, it just felt so nice getting out there for a walk with my pup. It's always a good thing. So that was kind of nice today. I kind of like that the, the orange— I'm sorry, the yellow creative marker just mixed with some of the red ink, and I got this really nice kind of orangey color happening. So that was— that's a fun surprise. You know what I'm going to do? I want to do my trick where I Here, a trick where I kind of put blocks of dark colors in, and I'm going to come back with— hopefully the white gel pens work— and we'll, uh, kind of add some hatch lines in here to give it a little bit of interest to it. I'll do the same thing on this side.

Maybe just a little bit here.

I don't want to cover up all this beautiful red and yellow, so I'm just going to do a little section here. Oops, oopsie, we had a marker drop, marker droppage. But that's not going to ruin our sketching time. Go with the flow, right? It's all about going with the flow. I'm not going to sit here and cry over spilt markers. It's another one of those expressions. What was it? Crying over spilled— oh my gosh, it's like spilled coffee. No, spilled— what am I trying to say? No, I know it's spilled milk. I'm just being silly. Pretty cool, right? Speaking of GCT, someone invited CFOD and the entire chat to a wedding there. Wow, that's so funny. September 5th. That's cool, that's cool. Wow, awesome. So here's what I was talking about, where I just love throwing these scratchy lines on the dark background. It keeps that kind of creative sketchy vibe I like, adds a little bit of depth. I love hatch lines like this, they're just fun, fun to add on here. I'll zoom in so you can see a little bit better. So these are the scratchy, the scratchy lines. You know what I might do? Hmm, I kind of— I want to pull these windows out. Do I want to do that up here? I like the red. You know what I'm gonna do here? Trying something a little different. Going to make this purple line a little thicker, make that one a little thicker, and we'll do something similar here. My curvy lines aren't so curvy. I'm losing my curves. But if you ask the winter, uh, belly, I am not losing my curve. Yeah, this has been— this has been a winter filled with snacking, unfortunately. So trying to get back up to my 10— my 10K steps a day average. So that's what we're working on now.

There we go.

It looks cool. Yeah, I like the way this is looking. This is kind of fun. Gotta load it up with some people though. What color should I do the peeps? We'll just get some peeps here. I'm gonna use this blue marker, gonna wet it a little bit. It might be a little dried out. Feel free to let me know if you guys have any questions or comments. I know it's 10:07, uh, I'm gonna wrap at 10:15. 10:15 tonight, cuz I got some school tomorrow. I'm being a little unconventional here, just trying to get these— might be just so dry in here, that's why these mark— these pens aren't working. I don't have any clean water to dip them in. Let me try— let me dip them in this dirty water. Literally just dip this in dirty water. I'll see what happens. I'm trying to see if I can reactivate these a little bit. Not so much. Let's try, uh, the 1.0 size. This is 0.8. This is the 1.0, so that's the kind of the pen tip size. So we'll go with the 1.0, see if that one works. There we go, that kind of worked. Hey, that kind of worked! Yay, yay, score! It's working, guys, it's working! Hey Edie, have a great night, take care, be well, thanks for popping on, I appreciate it.

Cool.

So I just want to sketch some people down there. It gives a little vibe, a little bit of life to it, right? So any people out there, any of my peeps that know GCT, is it— are you getting GCT vibes from this? Let me know. I kind of want to— I want to make the ceiling look more curvy, so Here's what we're going to do. Couple things. I think I'm going to try this. Uh, let me try this first. Just going to rotate this a little bit. Sometimes it's easier to rotate your page instead of your whole entire body. I am not like a contortionist. I definitely cannot fit inside a small cardboard box. Um, so I can't really wrap my arm around like I need to. So to get the curve, I'm going to turn the whole page and we'll do something like this. And I'm just drawing these kind of arcs. I just want to create the illusion of a little bit more curvature in the ceiling, and it might help if I darken this line back here also. But so if I flip it around, you can kind of— right, so I just kind of got those curves happening to give that arc kind of, uh, kind of vibe to it. I want to pull this out. I think I'm going to use that purple. I'm trying to limit my palette on this one with, with colors I'm adding. I think that purple is really effective. So let's see, which curve do I want to do? Kind of like this one here.

Didn't really work out the way I wanted to, but we'll go over it.

I could, I could always make it work. Yeah, there we go. That's fine, and I'll, I'll go back over it with a little bit of white and I'll pull it out more. Yeah, this is looking cool. I likey likey. Who invented this thing called work? I want to sleep in, sketch all day. I mean, as much as I love teaching There we go. It's looking kind of cool, right? Hey Elena the Explorer, great to see you! How are you? Welcome, thank you for joining my chat. Uh, GCT, Grand Central Terminal. So I am sketching Grand Central Terminal. Elena, I want to send, um positive and healing prayers to you and your family. I, I saw the news, so peace, peace with you and your family. I'm very, very sorry for your loss. Very sorry. But thank you for, for tuning in. I'm sorry I've been missing the streams as well. It's just my timing has been a little off. But I will tune in whenever I can because you are an amazing human and I love, I love your take on New York City. So thank you for all you do. Cool, right? Yeah, so I hope we're getting Grand Central vibes on this. This will be a great one to add to the calendar, I, I hope. So let's, let's go through. Let me show you the other sketches we have so far. For my, um, the calendar I want to sell at the end of the year. So we have— how many are we up to? We're up to— well, we'll count. We have Grand Central Terminal, 1. We have One World Trade Center, so that's 2. Uh, Empire State Building, that's 3. You know, there's something I've been wanting to do every time I see this. There's something I want to do on this one. So we're just gonna do it. We're gonna add to it. I've been wanting to pull this tower out more. Yeah, I, I just felt like it had to be more, a little more dramatic. All right, now I feel better. Um, hey JLM, great to see you. Thank you for joining. Oh, so I lost count. See, Grand Central Terminal, 1. One World Trade Center, 2. Empire State Building, 3. Domino Sugar Refinery, 4. Uh, Manhattan Bridge, 5. St. Patrick's, 6. Lincoln Center. Still one of my top faves. Lincoln Center. 7, right? That was— this is 7. 8 is the Copper Building. I miss the Copper. I can't wait to get back in the city and just see the Copper Building. I could— I just love this building so much. Um, it's so fun to take a ferry ride on the, uh, on the, uh, East River, right? And to see the Copper Building. I lost count, guys. 9? Are we in 9 with the Oculus? 9 of the Oculus. Oh man. All right, I think I'm at 9, so I have to do at least 3 more to make a 12-month calendar. So let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions. What New York City building or structure would you like to see in a 2027 calendar? I'm looking for ideas. You know, I might work in some Statue of Liberty torches, a torch somewhere. So, you know, we might— I might work in one of these somehow. This is probably one of my iconic sketches, right, are these torches. So it might be cool to add a torch in the calendar. I almost have to, actually, maybe even the COVID Maybe we'll do the torch as the COVID That could be kind of cool. So that could be another image. Yeah, I think GCT is almost, almost done. I think adding the purple at the top of the arch, I think, really helped to kind of pull that curved ceiling shape out. I'm not too cray-cray with the steps here. Maybe I'm getting a little too fussy, fussy pants, but, uh, you know, I'm gonna throw some yellow on here. Why not? Remember, my sketches are not about perfection. I'm trying to be quick, loose, fast, and I just love, you know, I love saying my sketches are about imperfection. Imperfection, right? How do you spell imperfection? I am perfection, right? So, you know, if you guys approach your sketching, your artwork, your creativity, whatever, whatever that means to you Um, don't feel like you have to be perfect at it. We can always try to get better at what we do, and, you know, grow as humans, grow our strengths, our skills. But sometimes I think we feel like we need to be perfect, and that can shut us down. I know a lot of artists, creatives, are afraid to even touch a blank sheet of paper because they feel like it has to be something perfect when they're done. So my mindset is imperfection is perfection, is beauty. I love loose wonky lines, and it gives me a lot of freedom when I'm creating, you know. Um, cooking— I know we have some people like to cook in the chat. Same thing. Baking is— they say baking is a science, right? You need a certain amount of butter and tablespoons and cups and ounces. But you know what? Who says you can't play around in the kitchen, mix things up a little bit, be creative, be fun, experiment, throw different ingredients together? You never know what's going to happen unless you have that playful attitude, the playful creative mindset. All right, so I added some yellow here. I'm going to come back when it dries in a second. We're going to throw some white lines on there to pull out those steps, and I want to pull out this kind of rail area a little bit. Yeah, it's turned out to be kind of cool. I'll zoom in and show you guys details, and we're going to wrap up. It's not dry yet. Do you do the Brooklyn Bridge? Oh, Elena, great suggestion. I love the Brooklyn Bridge. I have one in here. It's not my best, so the one in here I will not use for the calendar. Um, I have this one here, but I've, I've done so many different Brooklyn Bridge sketches, and this is not— for me, this is not calendar worthy. I know saying— I was talking about perfection, but I know the style I would go for. But yes, so I will definitely have the Brooklyn Bridge in there. That is one of my iconic things I love sketching. Great suggestion. Oh, the Pepsi-Cola sign. Yeah, you know who, um, I think Jen— I think Jen suggested the Pepsi-Cola sign. I love, I love the Pepsi-Cola sign. We were talking about the other day online here, I showed a picture of it. Yeah, you know what, I'm, I'm taking these considerations, guys. I think we'll do a Pepsi-Cola sketch. Pepsi-Cola sign, Brooklyn Bridge. Yeah, keep these ideas coming. What are, what are some of your favorite NYC landmarks? And it doesn't even have to be like a famous building. It could even be like a storefront somewhere. You know, I, I was even considering maybe sketching Atlas, the Atlas statue, because I love that statue so much. Um, something I have to practice with, but it'd be kind of cool. All right, all right guys, from the home stretch, I'm going to zoom in, show you some details close up, I think. I think I'm pretty much done with this one. I feel like it could make a good page in the calendar. Just want to shade in some of these windows here just to give a little more interest. By the way, if you guys are watching, please hit the, the magic thumbs up button. Let's grow this channel, you know. I want to spread positivity through creativity, and you guys have helped me get to 1K, so thank you so much. Let's keep this growing. This is a lot of fun. You know, I just want to pay it forward with, you know, with what I love doing. And hopefully, um, it just spreads positive vibes through the internet because we definitely all could use some positive vibes in the world. So next week I'll be away at spring break in Italy and Spain. That's going to be an amazing trip. I will take a lot of pictures. I don't know how much sketching I'm gonna do. It's a whirlwind trip. There's a group of 14 people. We're on a kind of a guided tour, so we're covering a lot of places in 10 days. Well, really 8 days. Um, so I don't know how much time I'm gonna have to actually sit and sketch, but I'm gonna try my best. So stay tuned. I'm gonna show you guys what I'm taking. Later in the week, I'll show you my, my EDC, everyday carry, for a quick minimalist sketching experience. How'd that sound? I think you should use it, it's worthy. Um, the Brooklyn Bridge? Yeah, um, I don't know, there's something about— maybe I'm being too fussy only because I know what I could bring to the table with the Brooklyn Bridge. I, I appreciate that. I mean, if you guys like it, it's good feedback for me to know because maybe I am starting to get a little too fussy with some of my, um, sketches. I don't know if I have any I got some Brooklyn sketches here. I don't know if I have the bridge in this one. I'm looking— I— you've seen me do the iconic kind of perspective view. Uh, I have one here I can show you. I'll show you one. I have a digital sketch I did. Uh, maybe sometime I'll talk to you guys about this tablet and we'll do a kind of a stream on it. But let's see, I'm gonna pull out my sketches here quick. Sketches, boom. So here, I mean, here's kind of the view, and here's one of my favorite sketches. Uh, this has layers. Let me turn the layers off. I was trying to do colors, right? So here, you know, so this is kind of the view I really, really like. Um, so this is kind of what I would imagine would be in the calendar, so we'll see. GLMS. GLMS. JLM says wash hands. I have to wash my hands. Oh, do I have stuff on them? Yeah, I— guys, I like to say it's not art unless you wear it, so I am definitely wearing some tonight. This is now officially artwork. Let me know if you have any final questions and comments before we wrap up. And I do want to show you guys a close-up of some of the details. I think it's always a— oh, and a frame. I always like to throw a frame around it. Uh, actually, here, here's like a black and white. I just pulled that out of the drawer. It's a black and white one I did. All right, let's just throw— all right, I like to just throw a frame around it to help pull out some of the colors. I think these could also be really cool, um, individual prints to sell. So I want to go to Central Park this summer. My friend sells artwork there. He said I could set up next to him, and I want to sell— try to sell some like original sketches or prints. I think that'd be fun. So here you can kind of see this, right? You can kind of see that with the frame around it. I like it. I agree, you like— you like the bold brush strokes. All right, thank— I love your feedback, guys. Thank you. It's, uh, it's really great to get your opinions because you're not me, you're not in my head, right? So you guys have different viewpoints, and I love, love that. So thank you for sharing, it's so helpful. That looks so cool. And then we could just do like our mini kind of sections here, you know. Do we crop it out? No. Could people tell that's Grand Central Terminal? Maybe, maybe not, right? If we crop it here, maybe not. I think we really need the arch, the kind of barrel vault ceiling, but I actually personally like this better with the big mat on it. All right, let's zoom in and then I'll show you guys the details. More like clapping for calendar. Oh, you're clapping for the calendar Sketches, thank you so much. This is the fun part where you can just see the textures and the scratchy lines and stuff, right? Gigi, Gigi, did I see you log in on Instagram as well? Thank you so much. I appreciate that. All right, you can see just the scratches. This is what I'm talking about, that's throwing that purple down into scratchy hatch lines on there to give a little bit of depth. It keeps that loose sketchy look. Um, I like the texture of the acrylic paint here. This is kind of just like a cool random blue spot, but you can see the texture happening up here. There you go. You can see like the peeps, little people there. Have no experience with Procreate for adjusting color and line for production of duplicate pieces, but you might for sets. Oh, interesting. Yeah, so Procreate is an app, um, iPad app. I haven't used Procreate. My iPad, I have like the second generation iPad, so old. Um, it's a great idea. Procreate is a great sketching app for the iPad. Um, even here is kind of cool, just little random dots but a lot of texture happening. Oh, so much for being discreet. Oops, sorry, sorry about that. How much about— how about inspired stickers with your art? Oh yeah, um, I've seen artists, they have these, um, sketch clubs where you— it's like a mail club, you know, you send prints out in the mail monthly. It's like a $9, like $9.99 monthly subscription. You get like, um, postcard-size prints and maybe some other goodies like stickers. Um, it'd be really cool to start some kind of like inspired mail club or sketch club or something. Um, it's a big time commitment and I would really need someone to help me with that if I was to pursue that avenue, so I know anybody that wants to help with that, let me know. Magnets would be cool too. Yeah, there's so many possibilities, right? I was just saying earlier today that I need a personal— like, I need a personal assistant. There's so many things I want to do, so many ideas in my brain. I can't stop thinking of ideas, um, but I need someone to help me execute them, get them done, and you know, get the real world work done too— emails and all that fun stuff. So maybe, maybe one day I can have like an assistant, even a virtual assistant or someone to help with that, and we could really grow this kind of thing into a business, which would be a really cool transition from teaching high school full-time into doing this full-time, which is kind of a dream of mine. So I love teaching architecture and CAD at the high school level. I want to teach— I want to move on to teach design, um, at the college level. And maybe when I do that step, you know, I'd like to see this turn into some kind of a, a business too, where I can just make money and doing something that I love doing. Does that make sense? Cool. With print on demand, you can print anything. Yeah, Elena, that's— that is true. Print on demand, like, there's so many different services, like Vistaprint. Um, I have stuff on for sale on Fine Art America, so that's like a print on demand. I have like cups, uh, here. I don't want to spill it, but here's like a cup.

You—

I did this character here. Can you see him? I don't want to spill my cold coffee, but So you can get like this character, his name is Retro. It says Sketch Happens. But yeah, you can go to Fine Art American to get like cups made. But to be honest with you, if you buy— someone buys a cup for me, I get like, I don't know, um, not being greedy, trying to be greedy, but— or sour— but I get like maybe 30 cents or something. So it's not a big moneymaker. Can you link your store? Yeah, I can link my store. Are you— so if you go in my, um, if you go in the show notes or the comments or the about information, I think, I think you can see my sketch gallery on there. I need to add a lot more things, but that's where I have my original stuff for sale. So if you look— thank you guys for helping me with this. You guys are awesome. If you look in the notes, there should be a link, um, just to my kind of a gallery page that needs— again, I needed some help with that, um, but it needs to be updated. Hey, you guys are awesome. I hope you had fun, um, you got to escape for a little bit. I'm look— I'm going back to the bold brush strokes. I'm not seeing— you know what, maybe, you know, maybe there's a nice simplicity about this sketch. I think I would crop it. If you look really closely, I actually started sketching a lighthouse in the background, and then I went over it, some of it. Because that's when I'm like, oh, maybe this could be a New York City sketchbook. And this, this is the SteelStacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which we'll talk about sometime. I have a full 10-minute video, check it out. SteelStacks, me walking around sketching, talking a little bit about it. Incredible facility in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. All right, simplicity, that is what I like. You like the simplicity of it? Yes, you like the simp— all right, you know what, you guys may have talked me into it. Let's just crop it out. If I crop it, it's— it looks better definitely cropped. Where's my smaller frame? I literally just had it here. Yeah, you know you're tired when you just had something out. By the way, for you guys have been following the, uh, green— the missing green jacket story, Update: I still can't find my green jacket. I don't know where the heck it is. And, and now I think I just recently threw out my— I wear like a night guard in my mouth when I sleep at night so I don't grind my teeth. I think that ended up in the garbage by mistake. What the heck? Is going on. There's something about the— that bridge sketch looks good as is. Gigi, Elena, you guys have totally convinced me. We'll keep it. My favorite thing about this sketch is the texture. I am dropping stuff. I just dropped my hat. Um, I need more room. Is the texture right here. I love, I love the texture. I like the— looks like Wolverine was here from, from X-Men and slashed it. Um, I just, I love the textures happening here. All right, you guys convinced me. We'll, we'll keep that in there. Awesome, thank you guys so, so much. I, um, we're gonna wrap up. I want to say from the bottom of my heart how much I really appreciate every single one of you guys spending time with me, whether it's on background noise or you're sketching something. I hope— I'd love to see you guys sketch along with me and share your posts. We can talk about that more, but just, I am really honored just to have some of your time and be in your ear for a little bit. Because time is precious, um, as we all know. Elena, I am so thrilled that you joined us tonight. That is so cool. You made my heart sing. Um, I love your energy, I love your vibes. And I'm going to say that about everybody in this chat, everybody that watches in here. And I— you guys are all just so positive and upbeat, uplifting. And I feel like when you put positive energy out, when you put positive vibes out, um, when you share your craft, what you love doing, you share your heart, that connects the right people to you. So keep putting positive vibes out there in the world, and, um, they come back somehow. Some way. Sometimes you have to be patient. Guys, you're awesome. Thank you so much. I will be on again tomorrow night, um, probably around 9, 9:30, somewhere in there, 10. I know it's loose, but anyway, appreciate y'all so, so much. Peace, positivity, prayers. Until we meet again, sketch boldly. Live creatively and inspire endlessly.