Jason NicholasCreator, The Inkspired Life · Sketchologist™ Sketch Boldly . Live Creatively.

Urban Sketching: Ingrain Memories & Capture the Moment

8 Jun 2025 · 1 min

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1:18

In this reflective segment, Jason Nicholas explains why urban sketching matters to him, emphasizing that the act of drawing embeds the day's sensory and emotional details into his memory. He describes how sketching captures weather, feelings, sounds, and the atmosphere of a place, turning the experience into something lasting in the brain, soul, and heart. He illustrates this with a vivid personal anecdote from 1993, when he sketched the New York City skyline—including the Twin Towers—from the Hudson River bank at Stevens Institute. He recalls the rainy weather, his youthful excitement as an intern architect, and how that memory remains vivid, underscoring sketching’s power to preserve moments.

Chapters

One of the things I love about sketching and urban sketching is I just love the fact that, uh, it ingrains the day in my brain. Like, the event, whatever I was sketching at that point in time, I could remember the weather, um, how I was feeling at the time, you know. The sounds that were around me. Um, sketching really is a way of ingraining the experience of a place into your brain and into your soul, into your heart. And I always talk about my sketch I did of the New York City skyline, where, um, that was many years ago, and back in 1993, I still can remember standing there on the bank of the Hudson River at Stevens Institute, looking across the Hudson River and sketching the skyline that had the beautiful Twin Towers still there. Rainy day, young guy, young intern architect, excited about my future. Yeah, so that is just one of the reasons I love doing this.