Wednesday Night Sketching

Hey, it is, um, Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026. Hope you're having an awesome day. I'm Jason, uh, who am I? Yeah, I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inkspired Life, where I love sketching. I love sketching architecture. Um, sketching for me is a way of capturing a moment in time, changing my state of being, a way of, uh, communicating, connecting, caring, um, brainstorming. I mean, sketching for me is the ultimate life hack tool. Yeah, I just said that, life hack tool. Um, so stick with me for, I don't know, maybe half hour or so. We're gonna do some sketching tonight. I'm gonna start off with, um, we're gonna start off in Spain tonight with a quick Spain-inspired sketch, and then I think we're gonna end up heading to New York City. This is my NYC sketchbook, current sketchbook that I've been working on. And if you've been watching the past, I don't know, month or so, you guys can see, you know what we're working on here. We're working on prints, possible calendar. Now I'm not going to say possible, I'm going to put it out there, I'm going to sell a calendar this year with these images in it. So thanks for sticking along with me, and again, I'm Jason Nicholas Nicholas with The Inspired Life. Let's put some music on and we'll get rocking. And I see Edie is in the house. How are you? So good to see you. I am equipped with my cup of tea. I have my lemon ginger tea with probiotics. I'm feeling a little run down this week, I don't know why, so I'm just drinking this tea to help with some probiotics. I don't know if that sentence made sense. Um, you guys are awesome. Thanks for sticking with me. I need to put some music on. I have nothing playing right now, so maybe we'll play a little tune out loud for you guys to hear, and then I will go into no music mode. But we'll see what you guys want. No, I don't want that tune. How about this one? We'll start with this.

Fallin', realizin', I'm changin'. Still fightin', still learnin', still tryin'. No script, no plan, no perfect version. This is simply bein' human. This is simply bein' 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. I'm still becoming. I'm stumbling, I'm rising, falling, 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.

All right, cool. So I'm sketching— it's called the— I think it's called the Primate Cathedral of Toledo. So this is a cathedral in Toledo, Spain. Uh, Toledo, Spain is a very, very cool— reminds me of like a medieval, kind of medieval walled city, uh, up on a hill. Um, really fascinating place. A lot of ups and downs if you're, if you're into walking hills and stuff. A lot of steps. Really, really cool. So this is just a sketch inspired by the interior of the cathedral. Um, so that's kind of a, just kind of a starting point, loosening up a little bit tonight. And I'll work on it for a couple more minutes. I like the loose scribbly look of it. It's pretty— it's a pretty cool building. Here's actually the picture I'm looking at. So that, that's a picture I had taken when I was away. There we go. I'm just trying to capture a mood, a vibe here with it. Let's see, I'm going to put some, uh, I'm gonna put some music on. I'm gonna listen to a Spotify playlist. If you guys want to follow along, this is a playlist I'm listening to tonight right here. My, uh, kind of my go-to Inspired Life -1 playlist. When in doubt, I always just go back to this playlist. Let me know how your day is. Let me know what you're up to. I hope you're having a good day wherever you are. Let's— you know what, I feel like playing with different pen colors, so we're gonna— I'm just gonna use straight up pens here tonight. We have some Zebra Sarasa Clip pens. I love these. They come in a bunch of different colors here. I'm just going to grab and go. We're just going to kind of use some ballpoint pens here and, uh, let some colors down, and whatever happens, happens. I'm gonna zoom in too. There we go. All right, so, um, again, this is inspired by, uh, the Primate Cathedral in Toledo, Spain, and I'm just breaking out some just pens here tonight on this kind of fast, loose style sketch. Um, I need— I want some red on here. Let's pop on some red. Let me check in the chat and say hello to you guys. Edie says, when in doubt, sketch it out. Oh, I kind of like that. That's catchy. When in doubt, sketch it out. I love that. Ding ding ding ding ding! 3 points for creativity. That was awesome. Hey, Tim's in the house! Tim, good to see you. Hope you're doing well, man. Always good to see you online. Hope you're doing great. Awesome. I love that you're painting. That's so cool. I love the positivity and the politeness in the chat, guys. We need more— we just need more politeness in the world. We need more manners in the world. We need more positivity out there. And that's just a general observation, um, especially being a school teacher. I know I can see the— my God, I'm gonna sound old, but I can see the younger generations. And, uh, yeah, I can see the younger generations. We definitely need manners and are far and few in between. Thank yous and excuse mes and pleases are very far and few in between right now. I have some kids that are incredibly, amazingly polite and kind and courteous, respectful, and some that are just— I would say a lot of them are not that way. It's really Kind of sad, but I don't want to talk about that. We're here to spread fun, positivity, creativity. For positivity is something I always like to say, and that's why we're all here in this chat. Positive vibes and just allowing us to be us for who we are, and you know, just share a moment or two together on a creative in a creative format. These are not the actual colors of inside. The inside of this cathedral is extremely dark. Let's see if I, uh, maybe I'll do— I'll show you guys a couple pictures. Well, but most of it's probably mostly dark. But here's like a picture. It's a beautiful— maybe I'm lying, it's not as dark as I thought it was. I'm lying, guys, it's brighter than I thought, like, than I remembered. Oh, I should just sketch this one. I like this perspective. Check out the, um, check that out. It's beautiful, right? Really beautiful. And I'm just riffing off here with my own, my own colors. That's what makes me happy. You guys, do you guys want to— do you want a cranky host here? I guess I'm a host. I don't know what I am. Do you want a cranky guy here on the other side of the screen? Nope. You want Mr. Sassy Pants in town? No. I had my sass on towards the end of my school day today. I can get pretty sassy, believe it or not. I definitely got sass in me. Sometimes it's just fun to be sassy, to be honest with you. All right, this is looking cool. I'm liking it. Maybe we'll go visit New York City in a minute or so. 9:32. I don't think I'm gonna stay on till 10. I'm, I'm so tired tonight. Um, I'm just looking for something, something that strikes my fancy here. I don't know. Nothing striking my fancy. We'll just keep using what we have out. Um, so don't be afraid to use like pens, you know, your standard Bic, Bic pen. Um, it's great for sketching with. Sometimes what One of the things that can stop us from creating or from sketching is we're worried we don't have the right tools. That's why I'm— that's why I'm always talking about grab-and-go creativity. Grab whatever you have nearby and just use it. Don't think too much about not having the right tool because that is like analysis paralysis, right? It could stop us in our track from ever getting started. So grab and go, and as time goes on, you'll pick up other, you know, tools, supplies, whatever that you like. And for example, yesterday I couldn't find this. If you guys remember, I was kind of— I had a moment on stream last night, livestream. I couldn't find this color. I found it, of course, tonight. But it didn't stop me. I kept going forward. I did complain about it and cry about it for a minute or two, but it didn't stop me from creating because I had other stuff here I can grab. And if you don't have any, if you just have one pen, one pencil, one marker, that's all you need. You don't have to add color. I love doing just black and white sketches. I think that's still my jam, actually. Yeah, I'm liking this. I need some purple. Purple has become one of my faves lately. I don't, I don't know why. Right now I'm switching to some Creative Markers. By the way, happy Earth Day today, guys. It is Earth Day. Today would be a good day to sketch Atlas and the, you know, because he's holding the Earth on his shoulders, the weight of the world. And sometimes we all feel like we are holding the weight of the world on our shoulders, right? And that's okay, guys. It's just simply part of being human. Yeah, look at— see how the pop, the pop of that purple, pal? It's perfect. Hey Ethan, great to see you on, uh, Instagram. Hope you're doing well, man. Yeah, Ethan, I'm sketching the Primate Cathedral. Do you remember that cathedral in Toledo? That was a really cool place. I would say most of the places we went to were pretty sick, right? But obviously, Ethan, it wasn't these colors. So that's just— I'm just bringing my style, what I love doing, to my sketching. The more you sketch, the more you'll develop your own style. Um, let's go into chat. Tim says, more virtue, more positivity, more love. Yeah, we just need those positive vibes in the world. Come on, peeps, how hard is it, right? It's not hard. Um, your phone might— your phone might be making it look brighter than it was. That is definitely possible. Um, I felt like it was really dark. I think when we first walked in, it was pretty dark, and there were parts of the cathedral that lit up. You're tired, sketch a bed, Edie says. Um, you know what, I have— that's actually not a bad idea, like sketching furniture. That's something I have not done online. Maybe we'll start— maybe I'll start sketching furniture once in a while. But you're silly. I actually— I, I came home from school and I, I crashed for maybe an hour and a half, 2 hours. I am just drained this week. So I took a— I call it, I call it my brain break. Every day I take a brain break, which ends up usually being a nap. JLM, I see you over on the YouTubes. Great to see you. Hope you're having an awesome day. It's always fun seeing you pop in. All right, I like this sketch. It's fun, it's wonky. And, and I'm playing with my hat here. By the way, check out my hat. I love this company. They are not a sponsor. I just, I like Brooklyn Industries a lot. I have a bunch of their shirts. I have this. I never used to wear hats. This is the only hat I like wear. I'm not a hat person, but I like this one. Um, cool. Ethan says, yes, it was phenomenal. Super hard to pick a favorite. It was dark at the beginning. Our guide also talked about the lighting during our visit there. Ethan, you were paying attention! Yes, 10 points for you, man. You should get extra credit. All right, I want to revisit something I did last night towards the very end of the show because it was driving me crazy. I couldn't find I couldn't find— oh gosh, don't do it to me again, you guys are gonna think I'm crazy. All right, I couldn't find my turquoise marker. I desperately want to throw some turquoise, so let's revisit this quick, quick water tower we sketched last night. It is not even— it's not done, but I was ending the show. I just want to spend a minute or two on it. And then we'll see where we are. Feel free to ask questions, leave comments, right? Anything about positivity, creativity, motivation. You guys know I don't need to talk to you. You guys got this down. That's why you're here, because you're awesome. You're awesome. We haven't had to kick anybody out of the chat yet. And Jen, when Jen pops on, Jen is a mod for me, so She has the power to kick people out. As you can see, there are so many people in the stream, it's hard to keep up. No, not close. All right, we're gonna do a little replay. I want to throw some red down in here, some turquoise. I was trying to show you yesterday how I was kind— I want to do like an industrial vibe. This is not as grungy as I like it to be. Um, I'm gonna make a note. I think next week I want to focus on grungy, grungy, old, weathered, steel, rusty industrial architecture, and we're going to do some sketching from, or based on, the steel stacks in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Love that place so, so much. So stay tuned, next week we'll do some industrial style sketching, which is— I'm using the word jam a lot, I don't know why. It's one of my jams. I love old rusty metal industrial buildings and shipwrecks. And we go to a place in Maine, it's called Monhegan Island. Oh man, I love that place. But on Monhegan Island, there's a part where there's like a shipwreck on the beach, old rusty metal pieces. I could literally spend hours sitting there photographing and sketching the same thing. It's so dang cool. All right, let's just grunge-ify this a little bit. So I'm throwing down a little more red. Um, Edie says NYC's reservoirs are only 60 feet above sea level, so any building taller than 6 stories needs its own water tank. Yes, Edie, this is— I'm thanking you, I'm thanking you. I love your fun facts, you're awesome, always throwing facts in there for us. JLM kicks in with facts as well. I appreciate you guys, it's so helpful. I love learning about this stuff. Thank you so much. All right, here's what I'm doing. I want to throw some of this on here. Now. Um, watercolor is really effective. This isn't watercolor, obviously, but I love to use watercolor for my industrial sketching. Again, we'll, uh, that'll be next week. We'll shift gears a little bit. I also found this really— did I put it away? I had a really awesome orange Creative Marker out. I'm not gonna go grab it, we'll just use what I have here. Actually, I'm lying, I'm gonna grab it. I found this orange in here last night and I love it. It's actually the orange you see at the bottom. I think that would go really well with what I'm trying to do. There it is. What's fun for me is these sketches are about layers, just throwing layers on top of layers. All right, cool. I'm having fun with this one, guys. Maybe I'll wrap this one in a minute or so, but I think you get the idea what I'm trying to do with layers, right? You can see kind of building up in here a little bit. Jason Nicholas: Have your students noticed new insights since visiting Spain and Italy? Yeah, I think, um, I think they have about architecture. You know, one student did a real short presentation about Familia Sagrada and talked about it. I think a lot of the trip for the kids was really personal self-discoveries, I think, you know, kind of exploring these cities. And, oh, you know, um, some of the kids, uh, you know, were traveling for the first time without their parents. So I'm gonna say I feel like most of the trip was about a self, uh, self-discovery, even, even for them, even for me. A lot of it was self-discovery, and I was I was working, right? I was the, the group leader, so I wasn't in full-out chill mode. I was, I was not on vacation, but I learned a lot, not just about the amazing beautiful cultures and of course the architecture, my passion, but I, I learned a lot about me. I learned, um, lessons about, you know, um, just myself, you know, what, you know, am I comfortable exploring cities, um, I've never been to, you know, leading a group. So I got leadership lessons in it as well. So really good question. He says, glad I could help. Well, thank you so much, I appreciate it. All right, all right, so this is kind of, uh, I think we're gonna wrap this one. Let me just add some How many times do I say that and I never finish? I think all the time. I'm gonna throw some white on here. I'm gonna zoom in even closer so you guys can— again, this— I just want to kind of give you an idea of layering colors and stuff. This is the best water tank I've sketched? No, not even close. Has it been fun to do this? 100%. How could you not have fun just throwing down lines and colors, right? I'm actually trying to be neat as I'm working tonight and put things away as I'm using them. That's, that's not my usual technique. Um, one last thing I want to do. I need to— I just want to make this look a little more rounded. So we're going to do— I'm going to put some contour lines. So here, contour lines are lines that give shape. So basically do some curved lines on here, and then you'll see how this helps to make it look curved, right? So you see those lines, right? It kind of helps to make it look a little more curved. And then we're going to do some more— I'm going to put some hatch lines that are going to help with that curved look as well. And this is the same, same thing I do with Lighthouse sketches. Um, I might pick up a different— I don't want to rip the paper. All right, I'm going to pick up a different Let's just try Sharpie. Want, want, want. That's not working. It's because it's a little damp on here. Let's grab a CPU marker. Let's try this. There we go, right? You see how that's just kind of helping to give it a little more curve? We'll do a little bit of depth here as well. All right, I think that CP marker really helped to give that kind of those hatch lines, vertical hatch lines. We wanted to round this water tower a little bit. Right, so you can kind of see, see it. All right, we're done with the tower. And then here's the other one we did. You can actually get a little closer up here. You can just see it's really scribbly, right? So if you can scribble, you can sketch. You can sketch architecture. That's proof right there. It's 9:51. You might like doing a bakeries series. I, I'm laughing because I love baked— I love baked goods. Oh my God, I am a cinnamon roll. I love cinnamon rolls. Oh my gosh. Um, that would be fun actually. All right, I'm— I should be taking notes. I'm trying to AI these, uh, AI these, uh, live streams, so hopefully it's taking some notes for me. Bakery series would be really cool. So we got to see an industrial series coming up. Maybe we'll do a bakery series. I always like to do an online, like, a Zoom workshop. Maybe that'd be fun to do, like, a bakery series. Um, I haven't really sketched bakeries, so it'd be fun for me. Maybe I'll do a workshop on sketching bakeries. Um, that would be kind of cool. Thanks for the ideas, guys. All right, let's close this one up. I don't know if I'm going to start a new sketch. It's almost 10. So if you have any final thoughts, questions, comments, please put them in the chat. Maybe you can riff for a minute or two. Um, I, I'm gonna— I'll give you a sneak peek at what I'm going to sketch next for NYC, whether it's tomorrow or Friday night, I'm not sure. So here is my sneak peek. We had a suggestion last night from, um, from Gigi. Gigi. Gigi's like, what about something from Coney Island? So I looked up some photos. Let me see if I could find one here. I've never been to Coney Island, but I kind of like this view, so I'm thinking maybe we sketching something like based on that kind of view. So that's a sneak peek of, I think, the next NYC sketch. Um, I would love to go there and have a Nathan's Original Hot Dog and see how they are, how delicious they are. That'd be fun. If you— has anybody been to Nathan's? Uh, Edie, have you, have you been to Coney Island? Or if so, have you been to Nathan's? I'm curious. I feel like I should go visit Coney Island at least once. Um, I don't know if I'd do the rides. I'm not like a roller coaster dude, but it would be fun just to vibe, and the atmosphere could be kind of fun to, uh, experience once or twice if I like it, right? All right guys, let me know how else I can help you before we head out. And then let me just— the last NYC sketch we did in here was— oh yeah, was the, uh, Central Park Bridge. I like the way this came out, and someone on TikTok made a comment something about they liked the color on color on color, and that was interesting because that's, that's exactly what this is, right? It's layers of color on color on color. So I figured who made the comment, so on TikTok, but it— I resonate with that, so thank you for that comment. Um, I was afraid of adding color to sketches for so, so many years. Everything was just always black and white. I was afraid to add color for a few reasons. One is, um, when I thought— I thought whenever I added color to these sketches, it would have to be exactly the same color as the building. So if it was Empire State Building, I would have to match the color. If it was the Guggenheim or whatever building. Um, so I would not put color on, so I was kind of afraid. Um, and then I don't even— I'm trying to remember. I don't know where the breakthrough happened. I'm trying— you know what it was?

It's—

it was a sketch I did, um, the Once Upon a Time sketch. It's a castle, it was an ink wash, and I loved it. And some people liked it, and I'm like, okay. Then I just started adding more and more color. This is like over-the-top color, color, color, because I realized that sketching— when we sketch, we're sketching for me. I'm sketching for me, and this is my world, man. If I feel like bright, fun, funky colors, I'm gonna do them. Um, I'm not afraid of the comparison trap. I'm not comparing this to someone else's Central Park sketch. This is me in the moment, the vibe I was feeling. So it's okay to show and express yourself in your creativity, right? Cool. Uh, JLM used to go to Nathan's on Long Island as a kid. That sounds awesome. I've never been to an That's not true. I've been to like a Nathan's in the food court somewhere. It was not good. I think actually, I think it was in my mall where, um, I used to work. But I'd like to try like a real Nathan's hot dog. Guys, you are awesome, and I think the Coney Island sketch will be going on this page right here. Awesome. I just want to thank you all for another fun sketch session. I appreciate your time so much. Time is precious, and whether I'm in the background, whether you're falling asleep to me, or I'm just keeping you company as you're multitasking, it's all bueno. I respect you and your time listening to this dude spouting and talking and rambling and bumbling and fumbling. While he's trying to throw some ink, throw some colors down on blank sheets of paper. And if I can do it, guys, you can absolutely do this also. All right, until we meet again, uh, sketch boldly, live creatively, and inspire— I'm going to underline that— inspire endlessly.