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From Bad Stand-Up to Beautiful Art: The Nishant Jain Story · Draw Me Anything with Jason Chatfield

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Hello, everyone.
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SPEAKER_01: Hi, welcome to Draw Me Anything.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: We have 53 people already in the in the room.
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SPEAKER_01: Oh, geez.
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SPEAKER_01: Wow.
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SPEAKER_01: This is terrifying.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: My name is Jason Chatfield.
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This is New York cartoons and Draw Me Anything is the weekly
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segment where
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SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what it sounds like.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: I draw you anything requests in the chat.
0:23
SPEAKER_01: This particular week,
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SPEAKER_01: I'm really excited because I have a very special guest,
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someone I've wanted to have on the show for a while and someone
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who I've been on
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SPEAKER_01: his show.
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I've been on his podcast and we talked for so long that we
0:36
ended up having to split
0:37
SPEAKER_01: it into two separate podcasts.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: uh, episodes.
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SPEAKER_01: Um,
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SPEAKER_01: you are probably familiar because I've spoken about his work before,
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SPEAKER_01: but if you aren't,
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SPEAKER_01: Nishant Jain and his fantastic sub stack,
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SPEAKER_01: The Sneaky Art Post is,
0:51
SPEAKER_01: uh,
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SPEAKER_01: is,
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SPEAKER_01: is,
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SPEAKER_01: uh,
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SPEAKER_01: is the guest.
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SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to, um, I wanted to mention, welcome Nishant.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Hi, hi Jason.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone.
1:02
Now,
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uh,
1:03
I wanted to quickly mention,
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uh,
1:05
up top that I got a package in the mail.
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That is one of the,
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my favorite things that I ever got,
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which was this,
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I got this in the post.
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SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is a great, this is a book.
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This is a collection called the sneaky art of Eau Claire,
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uh,
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Eau Claire in,
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in Wisconsin.
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SPEAKER_01: Um,
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SPEAKER_01: and this is a book that I think perfectly encapsulates your entire world,
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SPEAKER_01: your ethos,
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SPEAKER_01: but your practice is what I'm going to say.
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SPEAKER_01: to give a sense of what you even mean with sneaky art.
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SPEAKER_01: I like,
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you've kind of distilled it down to sneaky art is the practice
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of drawing beauty
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SPEAKER_01: from the world around you without drawing attention.
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SPEAKER_01: And that's,
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SPEAKER_01: I think that's something that I know that you,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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you studied and have this amazing degree and you're a
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neuroscientist and you
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SPEAKER_01: totally switched gears and you have this amazing journey as an artist,
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SPEAKER_01: but your specific take on the world
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SPEAKER_01: has been, uh, has been a very, very particular and deliberate one.
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SPEAKER_01: And, uh, we are going to talk about it today.
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And I just wanted to,
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um,
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sort of show that like this book,
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um,
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and it is available.
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SPEAKER_01: I know you have another book coming out soon,
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SPEAKER_01: but,
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SPEAKER_01: uh,
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SPEAKER_01: it's,
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SPEAKER_01: it's,
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SPEAKER_01: it's,
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SPEAKER_01: it's not,
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SPEAKER_01: it's not like it's a dense read.
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SPEAKER_01: It's not like it's, it's like tons of texts that you have to read about.
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SPEAKER_01: It's literally lots of pictures.
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SPEAKER_01: There are some haiku as well.
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SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of... Yes.
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SPEAKER_01: There's...
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SPEAKER_00: Actually,
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playing with words versus images was a very conscious decision
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for this person.
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SPEAKER_00: I wanted to see if I could sell something that didn't have any words.
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SPEAKER_01: So that is interesting, actually.
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SPEAKER_01: You had this kind of iconic now,
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SPEAKER_01: I think,
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SPEAKER_01: style where you draw tiny people,
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SPEAKER_01: you draw,
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SPEAKER_01: you draw these people and you
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SPEAKER_01: have this very deliberate thought process behind it on your sub stack.
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SPEAKER_01: You always talk about it and the thoughts and ideas behind your approach,
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SPEAKER_01: the philosophy behind it.
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SPEAKER_01: Um, and you often record it, which is great.
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I love watching the videos of you drawing because you could
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just kind of see it
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SPEAKER_01: form in real time.
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SPEAKER_01: Um, but can you speak to it a little bit?
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SPEAKER_01: Like how did you arrive at that?
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SPEAKER_01: And,
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and just to your philosophy around like sneaky art or is my
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version of what I call
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SPEAKER_01: Eve's drawing,
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SPEAKER_01: but it's very different than yours.
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SPEAKER_01: Yours is a totally different thing.
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SPEAKER_00: I like the phrase Eve's drawing as well.
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SPEAKER_00: I should have thought of that sometime.
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SPEAKER_00: So like a lot of people from my part of the world,
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SPEAKER_00: I grew up in India,
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SPEAKER_00: a lot of people from my part of the world,
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SPEAKER_00: my generation,
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SPEAKER_00: you study the things you're supposed to study.
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SPEAKER_00: And if you have the curse of being good at science and math,
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SPEAKER_00: then your future is pretty much decided for you.
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SPEAKER_00: So I studied engineering for far too long.
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And all the while that I was studying and I was doing these
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things as an engineer,
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SPEAKER_00: as a mechanical engineering student,
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SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be a writer.
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SPEAKER_00: The only thing I wanted to do was I wanted to be a political humorist.
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SPEAKER_00: I wanted to write the Indian version of The Daily Show.
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And I wanted to make political comics because my favorite
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cartoonists growing up
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SPEAKER_00: were political cartoonists.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's the kind of thing I imagined myself doing.
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SPEAKER_00: I never really,
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SPEAKER_00: the word artist was denied,
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SPEAKER_00: like it wasn't even in my sense of things allowed for me.
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And I would never have believed anybody who's told me even much
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later that there is
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SPEAKER_00: a chance to become an artist.
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SPEAKER_00: So Tiny People and Sneaky Art both happened sort of accidentally.
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I was halfway through my PhD program to become a neuroscientist
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when I quit,
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SPEAKER_00: and I decided to become a writer instead.
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SPEAKER_00: You know the story, but this was inspired by a stand-up comedian.
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This was a decision I took because of a particularly shitty
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stand-up comedian I saw
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SPEAKER_00: in Chicago one night.
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He was awful and he didn't get any laughs,
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but I would see him every night of the week.
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SPEAKER_00: Every time I went to an open mic night, I would see him there.
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SPEAKER_01: So you've seen my act.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay, look, you can stop talking.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, his name was Jason.
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SPEAKER_00: Jason Dexbox.
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so I would see him every night and he was well you know it's
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harsh to say but he
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would suck he wasn't good at it but he was persistent and I saw
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him and I thought
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what am I doing if I'm not being persistent in his way like
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this is a person giving
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SPEAKER_00: it everything
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SPEAKER_00: And to be clear,
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I was in a university atmosphere and I was surrounded by people
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also giving it
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SPEAKER_00: everything.
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SPEAKER_00: People giving the science 150% of their life.
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SPEAKER_00: And I was kind of not doing that.
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SPEAKER_00: I was maybe giving it 90% and I would come back in the evenings.
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SPEAKER_00: I would go to open mic nights and try my hand at stand-up comedy.
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SPEAKER_00: I would write and I would draw all the time that I could.
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SPEAKER_00: And I realized this is what I want to do.
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SPEAKER_00: So I quit my PhD to become a writer.
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SPEAKER_00: And I hit a writer's block.
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SPEAKER_00: So, so smart.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Straight away.
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SPEAKER_00: I kept hitting that block again and again.
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SPEAKER_00: I started my novel.
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SPEAKER_00: I got 20,000 words in.
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SPEAKER_00: I hit the block.
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SPEAKER_00: I started from scratch again, and I hit the block four times this way.
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SPEAKER_00: From scratch again, again, again, again, again.
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SPEAKER_00: And finally, out of frustration, I just went out with a book.
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SPEAKER_00: And this final draft that I was writing,
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SPEAKER_00: I decided maybe if I write by hand,
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SPEAKER_00: somehow it will work if I don't type.
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SPEAKER_00: So I was writing with a pen.
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SPEAKER_00: So I grabbed this pen,
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I took the notebook and I went to a cafe and just to get my
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mind off things,
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SPEAKER_00: I started looking at these people around me.
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So sneaky art happened because I needed to get away from words
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because words were
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SPEAKER_00: not working for me anymore for some reason.
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SPEAKER_00: And I was very annoyed by that.
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SPEAKER_00: Secondly, as an immigrant in the US, I was very curious in Chicago.
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SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love Chicago.
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SPEAKER_00: It's my favorite city in the world.
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SPEAKER_00: And I was curious about these people I was surrounded by,
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SPEAKER_00: like Americans,
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SPEAKER_00: completely dramatic main characters.
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main character living their lives in a way that i could never
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permit myself i you
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know for all the criticism i took a lot of inspiration from
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this like people
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unabashedly doing what they wanted to do living their lives
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expressing themselves i
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needed to see that like i tell people there's nowhere else in
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the world that i
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could have taken the jump to become a creative person than
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america like only
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SPEAKER_00: america could make this happen for me
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's true.
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SPEAKER_00: I wanted to observe these people and I wanted to draw them,
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SPEAKER_00: but I was ashamed of my bad drawings.
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SPEAKER_00: So I started making sneaky art.
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SPEAKER_00: Just draw quickly and get out.
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SPEAKER_00: Drawing quickly, drawing with a pen meant you can't draw everything.
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SPEAKER_00: You have to cut down on these details.
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SPEAKER_00: Capturing impressions out of curiosity.
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SPEAKER_00: These people who are walking by the street,
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SPEAKER_00: on the bus,
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SPEAKER_00: who are in the cafe,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm curious about what they're doing,
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SPEAKER_00: how they're expressing and living their lives.
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SPEAKER_00: This curiosity with that filter imposed by time and ink
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SPEAKER_00: is what became tiny people.
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SPEAKER_00: So I tell people,
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SPEAKER_00: they're tiny people because they're small,
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SPEAKER_00: yes,
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SPEAKER_00: but that's not what makes them tiny.
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SPEAKER_00: What makes them tiny is that they are observations of a few seconds.
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SPEAKER_00: And as a result, they are very heavily filtered.
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SPEAKER_00: There's just no time or scope for me to draw everything about them.
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SPEAKER_00: So they are tiny in the details.
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SPEAKER_00: They are tiny in the amount of information I'm giving you about them.
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SPEAKER_00: And this is how we perceive most of the people of our world.
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SPEAKER_00: Like when we're in the bus,
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SPEAKER_00: when we're outside in the streets,
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SPEAKER_00: the people who pass by,
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SPEAKER_00: we notice heels,
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SPEAKER_00: we notice clothes,
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SPEAKER_00: maybe we notice somebody's hairstyle or something they said,
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SPEAKER_00: but we don't remember everything.
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And drawing tiny people is a way to sort of acknowledge these
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fleeting people who
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SPEAKER_00: make up our world and who make it a fun,
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SPEAKER_00: interesting,
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SPEAKER_00: diverse,
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SPEAKER_00: rich place to live.
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SPEAKER_00: So that's what drawing tiny people is about.
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SPEAKER_00: It made me happier as an immigrant in a foreign country.
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SPEAKER_00: It turned me into an artist.
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SPEAKER_00: It made me more observant and more present in my environment.
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SPEAKER_00: And I want everybody to draw tiny people.
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I think it's so nice if we look at each other a little more
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instead of our phones.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
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SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
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SPEAKER_01: I know we've spoken about that before.
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SPEAKER_01: But did you ever, out of curiosity, ever finish those first two novels?
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SPEAKER_01: Did you ever get them out?
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SPEAKER_00: It's going to happen someday.
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SPEAKER_00: From drawing comics, you know what I'm talking about.
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There are hundreds of ideas you have that sound great and then
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you make them and
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they don't work out or you make them and they don't quite
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finish the way you want
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SPEAKER_00: it.
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SPEAKER_00: And there are abandoned ideas, like hundreds and hundreds of them.
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SPEAKER_00: Nothing is ever lost, right?
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SPEAKER_00: Things cycle back, things come back to you.
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SPEAKER_00: I feel like everything stays with you if you keep it somewhere.
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SPEAKER_00: I write everything.
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SPEAKER_00: I have notebooks and notebooks and notebooks.
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SPEAKER_00: It's going to happen someday.
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Someday I'm going to be in the frame of mind to write again and
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I'll be better
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SPEAKER_00: equipped and I'll be more ready to do it and it'll happen again.
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yeah i think that's good i i actually i only really adopted
10:09
that sort of i call it
10:10
the graveyard i've got this big it's a it's basically a giant
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basket of dead ideas
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that i tried and didn't come out the way i wanted them to or i
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couldn't quite get
10:18
you know and uh i remember what changed my mind was reading
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walter isaacson's um
10:24
biography of da vinci which let's first of all i'm not
10:28
comparing myself to leonardo
10:29
da vinci okay what i noticed what i noticed was by the way i
10:34
love that we both have
10:34
SPEAKER_01: our own merch
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yeah please buy his tumblers and uh i i am these aren't
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available yet but the new
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york cartoons mugs are uh with the with the chrysler building i
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made this for a
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local cafe actually this is for their 20th anniversary they
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hired me to come and
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SPEAKER_00: draw tiny people in the cafe and they made merch that's amazing
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SPEAKER_01: I love that.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: That's another opportunity that just came out of that.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: That's great.
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The thing from the book that I noticed was so da Vinci would
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start a thing and then
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SPEAKER_01: he was completely so self-aware and so aware of his capabilities,
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SPEAKER_01: his capacity at that age,
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SPEAKER_01: at that time in his career.
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So he knew that he wanted this thing to look a particular way,
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but he's like,
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I'm 28 right now.
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I know when I'm like 36-ish,
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I'm probably going to be able to get this thing to look exact.
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SPEAKER_01: So I'm just going to put this away.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm going to travel with it to all these places.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's going to stay with me.
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SPEAKER_01: It's going to stay in my studio.
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SPEAKER_01: It's going to travel with me.
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SPEAKER_01: Eventually...
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He would pick it up again with this new knowledge and practice
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and skill that he
11:36
SPEAKER_01: had at that level.
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SPEAKER_01: And then he'd put it away again.
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Like he'd have another thing to go,
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oh,
11:40
I know I don't want to do with that.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm going to put it away and bring it back when I'm older.
11:44
There were paintings that took him like so long that he would
11:46
just like put in
11:48
SPEAKER_01: stasis and just kind of bring out and go,
11:50
SPEAKER_01: aha,
11:50
SPEAKER_01: I know how to do this now.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: Or a problem he was trying to solve or something and just put it away.
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SPEAKER_01: And it was a great thing to think because you're like, you know what?
11:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe it's not dead.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe another idea comes up years from now that unlocks this thing.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, that's how I do it.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: Like you're looking for parts.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Like sometimes it's the idea is not ready.
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SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's you.
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SPEAKER_00: And I'm amazed in that story by the wisdom he had to think.
12:16
about himself a few years later because i feel maybe it's a
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generational thing
12:20
maybe now we're these people who want it now and want it done
12:23
now and we can't
12:24
imagine ourselves in a future space doing something like yeah i
12:28
think it takes a
12:29
lot of wisdom or some kind of zeitgeist around you that allows
12:33
you to think that
12:34
maybe 10 years later i can do it and that's okay too because i
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feel very i want it
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SPEAKER_00: now and i want it already done yesterday kind of mindset
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SPEAKER_01: Totally.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I totally agree.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: It's so interesting.
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SPEAKER_01: I think that is the.
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SPEAKER_00: The other thing I find really interesting,
12:49
SPEAKER_00: by the way,
12:49
SPEAKER_00: like even from our podcast conversation,
12:51
SPEAKER_00: even from now,
12:52
now I'm remembering it from this is that you read a lot about
12:56
other artists and you
12:57
SPEAKER_00: read a lot of nonfiction.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: You do read a lot of biographies and a lot of processes,
13:01
SPEAKER_00: like people talking about the creative process.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: And I almost exclusively never read those things.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: I go out of my way to never read those things.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: I remember us having that dissonance.
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SPEAKER_00: Different learning journeys happen this way.
13:18
I think it's so interesting that you are informed in that way
13:21
about Da Vinci.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: And that pushes you in a certain direction,
13:25
SPEAKER_00: gives you a little bit of strength and hope and things.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: And I feel in my case, if I knew that, it would be bad for me.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I just gave you some knowledge that's bad for you.
13:36
I mean,
13:37
I do it with musicians as well,
13:38
comedians,
13:39
jazz performers,
13:40
actors.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: It's not necessarily a visual artist, but it's a lot of visual artists.
13:45
And most of the books in my bookshelf are visual artists like
13:49
Peter DeSev and
13:51
SPEAKER_01: Richard Thompson and people like that.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: If I love a writer, I do my best to not find out anything about them.
14:00
I'm so dedicated to being consciously a little ignorant about
14:06
certain things.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a bit of wanting to do it my way.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm happier reinventing the wheel.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: It's to my detriment.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think it's to your detriment.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: I think if you learn it on your own steam by doing the mistake,
14:23
SPEAKER_01: you'll learn it quicker and better,
14:24
SPEAKER_01: right?
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't know quicker, but at least I find this is the way I learn.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm so rigidly contrarian that I just have to do it anyway.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: You can give me good advice and I'll just ignore it.
14:35
So it's better if you don't know good advice and I just stumble
14:39
upon it in my own thing.
14:42
It's how I've discovered I need to cultivate some level of
14:45
naivety in order to do
14:47
SPEAKER_00: the difficult things.
14:48
If you know too much,
14:50
in my opinion,
14:51
if you know a lot before you set out on something,
14:54
you know all the ways you could fail and that for someone like
14:58
me can be overwhelming.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Never start.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: So I need to not know things and I need to just go with enthusiasm.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: That's a hell of a lesson.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I guess.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: Especially for people who are already nervous to start something.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: The more they know that might be a hindrance to them starting,
15:16
SPEAKER_01: the less likely they are to start.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: Two quick things I wanted to mention to everyone watching.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: So today,
15:24
SPEAKER_01: Nishant is actually going to show,
15:25
SPEAKER_01: because I don't know,
15:26
SPEAKER_01: speaking of failure,
15:27
SPEAKER_01: I tried to do your tiny people and I can't do it.
15:30
i need help i need you to show me how to do it yeah and your
15:33
approach to them i
15:35
actually put the call out on this week's newsletter to uh my
15:38
readers to send in
15:40
some reference images that we can use that we can work from um
15:44
which is really fun
15:45
thank you to everyone who sent them in and uh i also just
15:49
wanted to say that like
15:50
SPEAKER_01: the last time we spoke it was a couple years ago now i think and uh
15:55
SPEAKER_01: Since then, I've watched your life.
15:58
Just speaking of Substack,
15:59
I've watched your son grow up through sketches.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: I've watched Ryan.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: Like, it's so funny just watch it.
16:04
Like,
16:05
from the day he was born,
16:06
I've seen him as a cartoon,
16:09
as a tiny person,
16:11
literally.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: And then growing and,
16:13
SPEAKER_01: like,
16:13
SPEAKER_01: these little sketchbook drawings that you have with,
16:16
SPEAKER_01: like,
16:16
SPEAKER_01: writing and time and dates.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: Someday, I assume you're going to show him these.
16:20
i want that to be a book actually i really want yeah this is
16:24
what i want to make
16:25
now i want i'm trying to figure it out how do i make a like so
16:29
trying to be witty i
16:30
wanted to call it times new rohan but i don't think i don't
16:33
think that's the best
16:34
book title maybe my self-published version of it will be called
16:37
that because it's a
16:38
bit about him but it's also about how my life has completely
16:41
changed because of him
16:43
SPEAKER_00: yeah and
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, drawing him every day is such a joy and well, nearly every day.
16:48
And it's the real sneaky art because now he sees me do it and
16:51
he will not have it.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: He wants to hold the pen.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: He wants to see the book.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: So I have to really be sneaky around him to get in a sketch now.
16:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're like an elite spy level sneaky artist at this point.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, behind the kitchen counter, behind the couch.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: It's really, it's very elite spy, yeah.
17:08
Yeah,
17:09
Michael Estrin in the chat says that Times New Rohan is a great
17:12
title.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: So did Margot Tahir.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: They're all for it.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: I actually think you should call it Times New Rohan, but anyway.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I should start with it.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: A longer subtitle.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the things I want to do.
17:21
I'm a published author this year,
17:22
so I should talk about my book and things.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: But I'm so excited by the possibility of independent publishing.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: So Sneaky Out of Eau Claire was self-published and I want to make more
17:32
SPEAKER_00: self-published things now.
17:34
And I feel like Times New Rohan will be like a Kickstarter or a
17:38
self-published
17:38
SPEAKER_00: thing that I want to.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm just very eager to try it.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: Like I know some things about Kickstarter books,
17:43
SPEAKER_00: but I know just less enough to be like,
17:45
SPEAKER_00: let's just do it and see what happens.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's worth doing.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
17:49
I think you have enough people who love your work who would
17:51
back that,
17:52
I think.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: So I want to get started with the drawing.
17:56
We did have a couple of requests coming in,
17:57
but I'm going to start with the drawing.
18:00
SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to flip my camera.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: It's on my drawing board.
18:04
And what I would love is for you to kind of walk me through
18:08
your process of when
18:10
SPEAKER_01: you're drawing these,
18:11
SPEAKER_01: you're drawing these tiny people,
18:13
SPEAKER_01: you're sitting,
18:15
SPEAKER_01: say we're in a coffee shop,
18:16
SPEAKER_01: you have your sketchbook,
18:18
SPEAKER_01: you have your fountain pen,
18:19
SPEAKER_01: and...
18:22
sort of walk me through how how you from start to finish really
18:25
how you approach
18:26
this and how you do it because as i said i tried and i really
18:30
struggled okay so
18:32
recently i did this uh challenge it's a one week hundred people
18:36
challenge and maybe
18:37
that's a this is a good page to sort of talk about just the
18:40
idea of doing this sort
18:41
of thing so so what happens is so on day three i went to the
18:45
local library
18:47
SPEAKER_00: And,
18:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:48
SPEAKER_00: the idea of tiny people is that ordinary places,
18:51
SPEAKER_00: ordinary times,
18:52
SPEAKER_00: ordinary people,
18:53
SPEAKER_00: nothing special happening.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm not at some kind of special event.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: And these are not celebrities.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to capture something special.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: And this is an idea that came to me when I was in Wisconsin.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: I was in this little town in Wisconsin.
19:06
And I know that suddenly I'm not in Chicago and there aren't
19:09
iconic buildings and
19:10
SPEAKER_00: things around me.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: So I need to find art in the ordinary places.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And so tiny people is about acknowledging the world around us.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: It's not about capturing something uniquely special or incredible.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: So these are just people in the library.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is special in itself.
19:26
SPEAKER_00: The people who go to a library,
19:28
SPEAKER_00: some of them to check out books for their children,
19:31
SPEAKER_00: some people looking for books for themselves,
19:33
SPEAKER_00: people using Internet services.
19:35
A library is a space where you can come in and you can use the
19:38
services and nobody
19:39
asks you who you are and why you're here and you don't have to
19:42
show any proof to
19:42
SPEAKER_00: them to belong here.
19:44
And that is what makes it a really special place to me beyond
19:47
just the books
19:48
SPEAKER_00: themselves,
19:48
SPEAKER_00: like free knowledge,
19:50
SPEAKER_00: which is unthinkable today,
19:51
SPEAKER_00: but also employment services,
19:54
SPEAKER_00: internet services,
19:55
SPEAKER_00: a washroom,
19:56
SPEAKER_00: warmth,
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Wi-Fi.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: So...
19:59
This is what I'm trying to capture also by then I draw the
20:02
people who come to a library.
20:04
So what I'm going to do just to demo this idea to you is I'm
20:07
going to redraw one of these guys.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: Let's say I draw this person here tapping their foot.
20:14
I'm going to have to put him away a little,
20:16
but he's who I'm trying to draw.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: And so here's something I like to do when I'm drawing tiny people.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: Firstly, from writing a lot, here is a good idea for you.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Writing and drawing are exactly the same thing.
20:35
Writing and drawing both need us to use lines and shapes and
20:39
put them together in
20:40
SPEAKER_00: interesting ways in order to make something.
20:44
Both writing and drawing are about putting together lines and
20:47
shapes to give meaning to things.
20:56
The scale you're working at right now is so interesting to me
21:00
because it's,
21:01
SPEAKER_01: it's not only is it limiting your,
21:04
SPEAKER_01: in a good way,
21:05
SPEAKER_01: is it limiting the amount of possible decisions that you can make?
21:10
SPEAKER_01: You can't overwork the piece because there's not enough space to,
21:13
SPEAKER_01: you can't,
21:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
21:14
SPEAKER_01: you're not adding tons of cross hatching or anything like that,
21:17
SPEAKER_01: but also your line width determines
21:21
SPEAKER_01: the negative space as well.
21:23
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: That's a great point.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: Which is so interesting.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: So let me now break down something like this.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: Like when I say writing equal to drawing.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: Faces are often just this letter.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: So use the flat end of the letter D. Okay.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: And make long lines.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: Don't make the, yeah, exactly.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: Make continuous shapes.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: Take them clockwise.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Take them anticlockwise.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Right.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: Don't make, you know, no half measures.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Make the full shape in one go.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: Don't lift your pen off the paper.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: Don't lift your pen.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: And if you play around with this shape enough,
22:02
SPEAKER_00: suddenly you have faces looking in different directions.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: The flat end being the profile.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: I never really picked that with you.
22:14
SPEAKER_01: I never actually got that.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: Eyes are just dots for me for the most part.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: But where I really like to start,
22:21
SPEAKER_00: and this might be surprising,
22:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to draw this guy to prove that point.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: I love to start from the ears.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: The ear is the letter C. Yeah.
22:33
So the ear is the letter C.
22:35
And the reason I like to start with the ear is this.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: From the ear,
22:38
I can go up and I can do the scalp and I can go down and this
22:42
way and I can do the
22:43
SPEAKER_00: jaw and I can go down the other way and I can do the shoulder.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: So immediately from the ear,
22:48
SPEAKER_00: when I'm trying to capture somebody in like 15 seconds,
22:50
SPEAKER_00: they're at the traffic light.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: Just from the ear itself,
22:53
SPEAKER_00: I have position,
22:54
SPEAKER_00: I have posture,
22:55
SPEAKER_00: I have direction that they're facing,
22:57
SPEAKER_00: I have
22:59
SPEAKER_00: a launch pad to get into details that I want to draw.
23:02
I draw the ear and in this person's case,
23:05
I go up and I draw their scalp or at least the hair.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: I come down for the jaw.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: I stay with my line and I come down for the body.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: And now I have with the leg,
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Now I have posture.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: I have them doing something.
23:24
And even if they move their head about,
23:26
I can still capture what their scalp roughly looks like.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: If they're wearing glasses, I don't need them to be in the same position.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: So this is the other really important thing in my art,
23:35
SPEAKER_00: which I'm doing for you right now,
23:37
SPEAKER_00: is that I go outside in.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: Now, when you say that, what do you mean?
23:45
SPEAKER_00: What I mean is I do the outer outline of a person as far as I can,
23:51
SPEAKER_00: which determines their pose,
23:55
SPEAKER_00: their gait,
23:57
SPEAKER_00: their activity.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: So it's silhouetting.
24:02
Before I get into the details which are independent of pose or
24:06
gait or activity.
24:08
So if I'm observing somebody at a traffic light,
24:10
they can start walking in five seconds.
24:12
If I do this first,
24:14
then they can start walking and I already have what I needed in
24:17
that moment.
24:18
And I can still look at them and I can still look at their face
24:21
and I can still
24:22
SPEAKER_00: look at their jacket and decide what the sleeves look like,
24:26
SPEAKER_00: what their face looks like.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: And I can fill in those details afterwards.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: So I can go in afterwards.
24:33
In order to capture them moving,
24:35
let's draw this lady here with her child.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: So in order to capture them moving, I just need to go outside.
24:44
And the child happens in a continuous line also because I want
24:50
to be able to
24:53
SPEAKER_00: capture what's happening here.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: I can't believe how easily you do this.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: This is ridiculous.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: Like a magic trick.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to keep dropping these ideas on you.
25:05
SPEAKER_00: So next idea.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: The job of the artist is to build,
25:10
SPEAKER_00: because writing is exactly like drawing,
25:15
SPEAKER_00: the job of the artist is to build this.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: A vocabulary or a library of good lines.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: Your library, your vocabulary.
25:27
Just like when you write,
25:28
you have words that you like and combinations of words that you
25:32
like.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: Similarly,
25:33
SPEAKER_00: when you draw,
25:34
you have to have lines that are your lines that are the way
25:37
that you like them.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: And the job of drawing is to build up that vocabulary.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: The way you build it up in my experience is in order to have this kind of
25:46
effortless thing that only you would do is you need to trust
25:49
yourself to make these
25:50
SPEAKER_00: continuous lines.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: The more you do them, the more your lines are represented.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: So when I make a long continuous line, it has my blood pressure in it.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: It has my heartbeat in it.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: It has my nervousness in it.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: It is a very unique thing that only I could do in that way.
26:07
But if I hedge and I hem and I haul like this,
26:10
you know,
26:11
a hundred people could do it like this.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: And it might not look like me anymore.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: And it might look like anybody else's drawing.
26:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: But only I can do this in this way.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: Only I can do this in this way.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
26:25
SPEAKER_01: this is actually,
26:26
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:27
SPEAKER_01: also the scale,
26:28
SPEAKER_01: speaking of,
26:28
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:29
SPEAKER_01: your heartbeat,
26:30
SPEAKER_01: your blood pressure,
26:31
SPEAKER_01: your entire life,
26:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:32
SPEAKER_01: your life is really in these lines.
26:35
When I really think about it,
26:37
my favorite artists,
26:39
that's the common thread.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: I can see in their line them.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: Like,
26:45
SPEAKER_01: it's almost like as unique as DNA at that point,
26:48
SPEAKER_01: because at the small scale as well,
26:52
SPEAKER_01: because it's such fine motor skills,
26:55
SPEAKER_01: You're also really,
26:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
26:58
SPEAKER_01: there's no way to really hide any of that,
27:01
like those micro movements or even though you're not picking
27:05
the pen off the page,
27:09
SPEAKER_01: necessarily,
27:11
SPEAKER_01: it's you.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: It's the fluidity of the line.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: It's all of it.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: It's all you in there.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: You can't hide.
27:18
you can't hide exactly you can't hide with ink because ink is
27:21
not forgiving there
27:22
is no there is no you know faint line everything is zero or a
27:26
hundred so when i
27:28
started practicing with ink what it did for me was that it gave
27:31
as a former
27:32
perfectionist what it did for me was it told me that i just
27:35
have to deal with it
27:36
it's there now i can't run away the only thing i can do is turn
27:40
the page and draw
27:41
SPEAKER_00: more i can't correct i can't undo so
27:45
SPEAKER_00: This is a very important thing to learn because,
27:48
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:48
SPEAKER_00: again,
27:49
SPEAKER_00: your lines,
27:49
SPEAKER_00: you need to get to your lines and to get to your lines,
27:52
SPEAKER_00: you have to make these mistakes.
27:54
You have to go through a bunch of mistakes and you have to go
27:58
through a bunch of ideas.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: This is my favorite musician.
28:03
SPEAKER_00: Do you like Miles Davis?
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
28:06
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: So this is a quote from Miles Davis, which is,
28:10
very important to me and which is the source of how i have sort
28:15
of understood what
28:17
i am doing once is a mistake twice is an idea three times is
28:21
style i have that i
28:23
had that above my desk i'm not even kidding i had that line
28:26
that quote above my
28:28
desk in my old studio for three years right for miles and it's
28:32
because i kept
28:35
of like my waste paper bin was overflowing with scrunched up
28:39
paper and mistakes and
28:40
stuff and i and i found i finally found after drawing in
28:44
someone else's style for
28:45
16 years doing a legacy strip where i had to draw in someone
28:47
else's style i finally
28:49
found my stuff like my unique style that i look like or sound
28:54
like and uh yeah it
28:57
was miles i watched a documentary about him go kind of blue
28:59
which was ostensibly
29:01
SPEAKER_01: the making of that album but it was really a biopic about his whole life
29:04
SPEAKER_00: Oh, interesting.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen that quote.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: That quote is in there.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: I highly, highly recommend it.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: But that quote really sunk in.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's really cool.
29:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to check that out.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Reminds me of my favorite jazz documentary.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a movie.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: Born to be Blue.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: Ah, Chet Baker.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: Man.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: Chet Baker.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: It's so tragic.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: Ethan Hawke playing Chet Baker.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Ethan Hawke, yeah.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: When he gets his jaw beaten in with the butt of that gun.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: It's tragic.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: And his dad being so mean to him.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: He plays it so well.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: That whole film, I highly recommend it.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: It's incredible.
29:39
SPEAKER_00: Highly underrated.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: So...
29:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to also give you another one.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: So we did the letter D. We did the letter C. C for ear, D for face.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Let's use the letter H. So I don't want to use the letter H as it is.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: I want to use it as like this,
29:56
SPEAKER_00: like the stencil of the letter H.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: And let's do only the bottom half of that.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: So now cut off the top part.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: That bottom half is legs.
30:12
SPEAKER_02: And there we go.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: All my legs are just variations of this.
30:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Standing, walking, running.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Just play with the shape.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: Move the shape about.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: And again, trust yourself to make continuous lines.
30:30
So if I have a person like this over here and I want to show
30:33
them walking.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: Right.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Oops.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I should not be at the bottom.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm drawing at the bottom of my window, so I think maybe it's not.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: That's OK.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: We can see it.
30:46
The the interesting thing about,
30:49
you know,
30:51
again,
30:51
having having tools like this,
30:53
having
30:56
SPEAKER_01: I guess,
30:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to call them rules,
30:59
SPEAKER_01: um,
31:00
SPEAKER_01: processes like this is,
31:02
SPEAKER_01: is like knowing,
31:03
SPEAKER_01: knowing that you have these,
31:04
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:04
SPEAKER_01: say like the bottom of the H thing,
31:06
SPEAKER_01: it also stops from that crippling.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: Like you said, you're a form of perfection.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: It's like that crippling idea of like it,
31:11
SPEAKER_01: having to look a particular way that you have in your head.
31:15
and it and it takes the onus off you to have to try and add
31:19
like all this extra
31:20
detail and everything to to make it perfect which is exhausting
31:24
and mentally just
31:25
takes up so much so energy this is where let's say writing is
31:30
not like drawing you
31:31
know as a person trying to write and everybody intuitively
31:34
understands this the
31:35
SPEAKER_00: last thing you want to do is you want to sound like someone else
31:39
SPEAKER_00: You want to reach your own words.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: You want to talk like yourself with your own style.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: But somehow when we learn to draw,
31:46
we take it upon ourselves that we have to draw like someone
31:49
else we know and
31:51
SPEAKER_00: someone we admire.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: That's the only thing worth doing.
31:55
otherwise there's no point and this is so backwards yeah
31:59
another way that writing
32:00
and drawing are different it's incredibly difficult to write
32:03
with your own words to
32:04
get all those words out you know the words that belong to other
32:07
people right it is
32:10
really simple to draw with your own lines we just don't do it
32:14
we just keep pushing
32:15
them away from us i think it's so simple to start you know not
32:19
have a style because
32:20
SPEAKER_00: style also needs consistency
32:23
SPEAKER_00: So to be consistent,
32:24
you have to be very diligent and you have to really have that
32:27
library in your head
32:28
SPEAKER_00: very firmly.
32:29
SPEAKER_00: And it has to be a big library already.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: But to be able to draw with your own line,
32:35
SPEAKER_00: you know,
32:35
SPEAKER_00: the building blocks of what will become your style.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: It is so easy to do that.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: But we just spend years never, ever doing it, never allowing us to do it.
32:46
that's so interesting isn't it well everyone has the
32:49
inclination it seems well i
32:51
say everyone i mean most of us have that i mean it's crazy that
32:54
that is that is the
32:55
inclination isn't it yeah yeah it's it's sort of i think you
32:59
know i think a lot
33:00
about this especially now that we were talking about you know
33:02
what what ai and
33:04
things do to the business of being an artist yeah i spend a lot
33:08
of time reading and
33:09
SPEAKER_00: thinking about
33:11
SPEAKER_00: what is the point of doing this?
33:13
SPEAKER_00: Why should I care about art?
33:15
And,
33:16
you know,
33:16
there's something to be said for how we have sort of divorced
33:19
ourselves from art.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Like art is the prerogative of people who are artistic geniuses.
33:28
And creation of art is the business of people who have quote
33:32
unquote talent and genius.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: And everybody else is just supposed to quietly consume what they do.
33:38
And I think that has done a lot of damage to how we think about
33:43
what is this thing.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And art is just human expression.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: And everybody should be doing it.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: But because we get stuck up on it needs to look like that.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: It needs to look so good or it's not worth it.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
33:57
We keep denying ourselves this beautiful thing that is
34:00
accessible to all of us.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: So more tiny people.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you some tiny people.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: I did this one week challenge starting on the bus on the train.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: So my studio and I started drawing people waiting at the train,
34:16
waiting for the train and then people texting on the bus on the
34:19
train and things
34:20
SPEAKER_00: like that.
34:21
And I wanted to capture this guy's pose and this was important
34:25
to me,
34:26
his legs this way.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: I really find a lot of joy in juxtapositions like these,
34:31
SPEAKER_00: like how people,
34:32
SPEAKER_00: you know,
34:33
SPEAKER_00: people who,
34:34
SPEAKER_00: so this kind of thing,
34:35
this kind of scene is a function of these two people who don't
34:39
know each other,
34:40
SPEAKER_00: who are just here randomly.
34:41
But also a function of me sitting where I'm sitting,
34:44
observing from there.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: The point of view that I have.
34:48
So what makes this and this one interesting is I am here and I
34:53
am and they are here.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: And we are both here.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: All of us here are together.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: And that's what makes it a special moment worth recording.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: So my job as a sneaky artist is to be tapped into my curiosity,
35:05
SPEAKER_00: to find things that give me joy like this,
35:07
SPEAKER_00: this composition.
35:09
this kind of situation makes me feel good so it's my job to be
35:13
aware of what feels
35:14
good and be ready to note it down from my perspective yeah
35:19
you're kind of in a zone
35:20
aren't you when you when you're in that observational sort of
35:23
zone you are in a
35:26
heightened sense of i know there is a probably a sanskrit term
35:30
for it but it's it's
35:31
kind of like a mindful a heightened mindfulness i guess a
35:34
heightened level of
35:34
SPEAKER_00: conscious like mindfulness
35:37
SPEAKER_00: I really do think so.
35:38
I think there is a lot of attention we pay when we are drawing
35:42
and drawing from observation.
35:45
When you're in the business of observing and activating your
35:48
mind like that,
35:49
SPEAKER_00: I think you get into this zone of recording everything.
35:53
You are noting and observing and feeling things that you're not
35:57
even putting down on the page.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: I open any of these pages and I can tell you how it felt that day.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you what my mood was.
36:04
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you if there was music in the background.
36:06
SPEAKER_00: Everything is recorded.
36:09
Drawing from observation is a way to activate your mind and
36:12
everything falls in and
36:13
SPEAKER_00: everything becomes memory.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: So it's my favorite way to pay attention.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: That's another reason why I like to draw my son.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, you're really paying attention to him.
36:24
If you're drawing him,
36:25
I mean,
36:25
you are observing him at a whole other level.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Just the little movements he does,
36:29
SPEAKER_00: just the way he holds his head sometimes,
36:32
SPEAKER_00: the way he crouches when he's trying to reach for something,
36:35
SPEAKER_00: all of that becomes,
36:37
SPEAKER_00: and the business of putting it down as simple lines,
36:40
SPEAKER_00: you know,
36:41
like translating to see something and then to put it in our
36:45
individual language,
36:47
SPEAKER_00: our lines and shapes.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're interpreting.
36:51
yeah that's where you have a whole other level of observation
36:55
come into the whole
36:56
right well i mean in that sense you're an editor aren't you
36:59
you're you're it's what
37:00
you don't include which is just as important as what you do 100
37:04
yeah so what gives
37:05
value to my work is not how good quote unquote good my drawing
37:10
is what gives value
37:12
SPEAKER_00: to your work is not just about the quality of your drawing
37:15
SPEAKER_00: But it's also about who you are as a person.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: What is your personality?
37:19
SPEAKER_00: What did you notice?
37:20
SPEAKER_00: What do you want to draw?
37:21
SPEAKER_00: What do you want to skip?
37:24
I would not skip the way their hair is,
37:26
but I don't know if you've noticed.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't have any feet.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: No, I always notice that, which is good.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: It's so liberating.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: I don't like drawing shoes, so I just stopped drawing shoes one day.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm not very good at drawing them.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: But I still pay a lot of attention to the way,
37:41
SPEAKER_00: you know,
37:42
SPEAKER_00: the kind of pants people wear,
37:43
SPEAKER_00: the kind of footwear,
37:45
SPEAKER_00: not footwear,
37:45
SPEAKER_00: but the kind of clothes they wear.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: And that still becomes a part of my drawing.
37:50
But,
37:50
you know,
37:51
what I skip over is such a big part of how my drawing looks.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, there's no taste in drawing everything.
38:00
Like,
38:01
if you like everything,
38:02
if you do everything,
38:03
what taste do you have?
38:05
SPEAKER_00: Like, taste is what you also don't like.
38:08
SPEAKER_01: Right, exactly.
38:09
Yeah,
38:09
that's such a,
38:10
and you stick to,
38:12
it's a strong attitude is what it is.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: The attitude of what you actually don't, what you don't include.
38:17
SPEAKER_01: I actually hated drawing shoes.
38:19
SPEAKER_01: I always hated drawing shoes.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's the obvious things.
38:22
SPEAKER_01: I always hated drawing bicycles and horses and hands.
38:25
but then uh i would always put myself under so much pressure to
38:28
draw like perfect
38:29
shoes because i would see like jack davis in mad magazine or
38:32
like mort drucker or
38:33
you know these amazing artists just doing shoes from every
38:36
possible angle and i
38:37
SPEAKER_01: would try and i would try and i could never get it right
38:41
SPEAKER_01: And then one day, I saw I can't remember who it was.
38:45
I was at some gallery and I just saw them the fact that they
38:48
kind of just went,
38:49
SPEAKER_01: you know what,
38:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm not drawing shoes.
38:51
SPEAKER_01: And they just,
38:52
they just kind of a shoe like everything else was like amazing
38:56
and perfect and the
38:58
SPEAKER_01: fidelity of it was just so like accurate and honest and everything.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: But then the shoe would just be like this, it'd be like whatever.
39:04
And I was like,
39:05
Oh,
39:05
there's something liberating and I'm going,
39:07
I don't care.
39:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm not drawing shoes.
39:10
yeah it's so good to just go you know it doesn't matter no
39:13
one's looking anyway
39:14
exactly like the thing i love most about looking at other
39:18
people's art is yeah when
39:20
they sort of give me permission to do these things that i want
39:23
to do but i never
39:24
had the guts to do myself like i look at it and i'm like oh i
39:27
can do this too i'm
39:29
SPEAKER_01: allowed to do this thing too allowed now there's a there's a loaded word
39:33
yeah that you know yeah we think that we shouldn't need
39:37
permission but you know
39:38
that's why we have other people in our world we need permission
39:41
from each other to
39:43
live our lives like that comic in Chicago gave me the
39:46
permission in a way to do
39:47
what I wanted to do and I think every time we make art every
39:53
time we write about it
39:55
every week that I write about it I think maybe I give
39:58
permission to one more person
39:59
SPEAKER_00: at least that you're also allowed to do this thing go out and do it
40:04
that's interesting i thought yeah um i wanted to mention so
40:09
what we're drawing
40:09
right now um uh victor chung chua he sent through this image of
40:18
himself uh surfing
40:20
SPEAKER_01: he was in um um i think um
40:26
SPEAKER_01: I think it was in a... No, it was Oahu.
40:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was in Oahu.
40:31
SPEAKER_01: It's him with his surfboard.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to show you.
40:34
SPEAKER_01: This is the original photo.
40:36
SPEAKER_01: So this is the photo that was sent.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: Zoom in on the feedback.
40:41
SPEAKER_01: I've got a one pack.
40:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is Victor.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: And so you can kind of see how Nishant has taken,
40:49
SPEAKER_01: like,
40:49
SPEAKER_01: the shapes,
40:50
SPEAKER_01: the pose,
40:53
SPEAKER_01: the silhouette,
40:53
SPEAKER_01: the background,
40:54
SPEAKER_01: like,
40:55
SPEAKER_01: what you've decided to...
40:58
this clued is just like it's it and you know i mean you it's
41:02
him like you can see
41:03
the pose you can see and even the the surfboard the pattern on
41:06
the surfboard the
41:07
waves like it's it's the perfect tiny tiny picture um so one
41:13
thing i want to say is
41:13
SPEAKER_00: that you know i'm not trying when i do this i don't try to draw portraits
41:17
SPEAKER_00: So I don't necessarily want it to look like Victor as the person he is.
41:23
But what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to capture the
41:25
impression that this image makes to me.
41:31
SPEAKER_00: So again, this is a thing of tiny people.
41:34
It's not about the individual,
41:35
but it's about what they represent in your life.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: So even if you can't recognize any of these guys,
41:41
SPEAKER_00: they're all placeholders for people in your world too.
41:44
So there's a kind of universality that I'm aiming for when I
41:48
take away information.
41:50
I'm trying to take away differences and I'm trying to stay with
41:56
what is a commonality.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: Right.
41:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: By the way, Jolene and Victor say aloha.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: They're in the chat right now.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I saw that in the chat just now.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: Aloha, Darian.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: I love Hawaii.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: I've been there eight times.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: It's my favorite place.
42:13
SPEAKER_01: I went there on my honeymoon, went there.
42:15
SPEAKER_01: I go there.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I always stop there on the way to Australia.
42:18
So that's my,
42:18
I always break up my trips between America and Australia home
42:22
to Hawaii.
42:25
SPEAKER_00: Is that a better direction to go over the Pacific than the other?
42:29
SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
42:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: But I've tried both.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: Definitely better to go west.
42:37
SPEAKER_01: There was a video that was sent through,
42:39
SPEAKER_01: and I don't know if we...
42:42
SPEAKER_01: It was a video from Catherine Kaufman.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: It's some people sort of plein air... How do you say it?
42:50
SPEAKER_01: It's a French term.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: Plein air painting.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: Plein air painting.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: And it's... I'm sort of showing here.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: This is the video...
42:59
SPEAKER_01: of people.
42:59
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever done this?
43:01
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever gone out with an easel?
43:04
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't have a setup like this.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: It's antithetical to the notion of sneaky art.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: It's very conspicuous.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: So two reasons.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: Firstly, I just don't have the patience.
43:17
Like I'm not capable of standing in one spot for two hours
43:21
drawing and getting it exactly right.
43:23
You know,
43:23
plein air painting comes with a lot of rules that I can't abide
43:26
by.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: Like you don't mix media at all.
43:28
SPEAKER_00: It's just paints.
43:30
And it's just the whether it's gouache,
43:32
it's gouache,
43:32
watercolor,
43:33
watercolor or oil.
43:34
SPEAKER_00: So I don't work like that.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: So it's not my comfort zone.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: And
43:39
right i'm very impatient like if i was there i would be done in
43:42
like 30 minutes and
43:44
go on to another topic so i'm not the guy for this but i admire
43:48
the anti-planare
43:49
guy um well i am plein air like i'm right there i'm in public
43:54
but plein air
43:55
SPEAKER_00: painting
43:56
SPEAKER_00: the whole activity comes with a lot of very strict rules.
44:01
SPEAKER_00: Like you couldn't do watercolor with a fountain pen also.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: It would be pure watercolor.
44:08
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, those are things that I like.
44:11
SPEAKER_00: I'm not good for that.
44:13
SPEAKER_01: It is interesting, like, the rules we make for them.
44:18
SPEAKER_01: I also kind of unofficially,
44:20
SPEAKER_01: but just kind of maybe just subconsciously,
44:23
SPEAKER_01: I've been doing live drawing at events and out in the world for...
44:30
SPEAKER_01: 2004,
44:30
SPEAKER_01: whatever that is,
44:31
SPEAKER_01: like 21 years,
44:34
SPEAKER_01: I would always kind of build in a bit of a rule for myself,
44:38
SPEAKER_01: which,
44:38
SPEAKER_01: which actually helped building in rules like that actually helped.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: Because it meant that I didn't,
44:43
SPEAKER_01: a lot of decisions were pre made for me,
44:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
44:46
SPEAKER_01: it meant that I wouldn't be crippled by perfectionism,
44:50
I wouldn't be like worried about everything having to be
44:52
absolutely perfect.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: And when I mentioned earlier Eve's drawing,
44:57
SPEAKER_01: what that is,
44:58
SPEAKER_01: and the reason that's a little different than what you do is,
45:02
SPEAKER_01: well,
45:02
SPEAKER_01: initially,
45:03
SPEAKER_01: so the New Yorker sent all the cartoonists out into New York,
45:06
SPEAKER_01: and they placed this in these different places.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: So like Roschast in Grand Central Station, Lena Fink on the L train.
45:14
uh they put me at the comedy cellar obviously uh and uh and
45:18
just sitting there and
45:19
overhearing people's conversations but also watching them
45:22
seeing how they sit and
45:23
move and interact what they wear how they move even if they're
45:27
just talking on the
45:27
phone or they're texting or they're eating or drinking you know
45:32
all these things
45:32
that we just kind of uh that sort of captured this this this
45:37
moment in time and uh
45:41
SPEAKER_01: I would take these snippets of completely out of context,
45:46
SPEAKER_01: completely just apropos of nothing,
45:48
SPEAKER_01: just snippets of conversation,
45:52
SPEAKER_01: passing conversation,
45:56
SPEAKER_01: just a couple of people talking and hearing.
46:00
You know when someone walks past and you just get one piece of
46:03
the conversation,
46:04
SPEAKER_01: you're like,
46:04
SPEAKER_00: what are they talking about?
46:06
SPEAKER_00: Usually it's the spiciest.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh, 100%.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: And so it was a lot of that.
46:11
So I submitted for that one and I'll repost it in the archive
46:15
next week because
46:15
SPEAKER_01: it's a pretty old post now.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: It's from 2021, I think.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: It was really interesting.
46:21
I did so many of them and I pitched all of them and they picked
46:24
like 16 or 15,
46:25
SPEAKER_01: something like that.
46:26
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
46:28
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's a really interesting thing.
46:30
SPEAKER_01: And I went to the comedy salon and I sat there night after night for...
46:34
SPEAKER_01: weeks i mean i i sat there and filled sketchbook after sketchbook of just
46:38
completely random stuff yeah it was really you know i think i
46:42
think artists
46:43
cartoonists create 90 of all the value that the new yorker has
46:48
yeah like at this
46:50
point because i'm fortunate enough to not be obligated to them
46:54
in any way i'm quite
46:55
happy to say how horribly underpaid you guys are for the work
46:58
you do for them
47:00
SPEAKER_00: Like,
47:00
SPEAKER_00: I think,
47:01
SPEAKER_00: like,
47:02
pretty much the reason an average person picks up a New Yorker
47:05
is that cover.
47:06
SPEAKER_00: And maybe some of the cartoons inside it,
47:08
I doubt even 10% of New Yorker subscribers read an article all
47:13
the way to the end.
47:14
SPEAKER_01: Right.
47:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, you're probably right about that.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea, but yeah, I had that impression.
47:20
Definitely all the social media value that New Yorker has is
47:23
because of these
47:24
SPEAKER_00: images that you guys generate.
47:26
SPEAKER_00: These incredible comics, like Leanna Fink is so amazing.
47:30
SPEAKER_00: All the New Yorker cartoonists are so incredible.
47:34
SPEAKER_00: The cover artists are so, so incredible.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: And I think that creates all the IP value that the New Yorker has today.
47:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:42
SPEAKER_01: No,
47:42
SPEAKER_01: I think,
47:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
47:42
SPEAKER_01: I think you're right,
47:43
but I'm basing that anecdotally on what people tell me when I
47:46
meet them and mention
47:47
SPEAKER_01: that I do cartoons for the New Yorker.
47:49
And then they're like,
47:49
oh my God,
47:50
that's the only reason I read the New Yorker.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, maybe there's a bias here.
47:53
SPEAKER_00: That's the only reason anybody reads the New Yorker.
47:56
SPEAKER_00: Those articles, you know, okay, whatever.
47:59
SPEAKER_00: They're just too many words.
48:01
SPEAKER_00: They're too much, too much, too much.
48:03
SPEAKER_00: They don't know when to stop.
48:05
SPEAKER_00: It's very self-indulgent, a lot of the writing.
48:08
You need to have some sense of an audience and finish this damn
48:11
thing already.
48:13
that's funny i mean i will admit i found my favorite authors
48:18
through reading new
48:19
yorker article but they were often i'd get halfway through the
48:22
article and go all
48:22
right i'm just gonna buy the book yeah just read them somewhere
48:26
else where yeah
48:27
SPEAKER_00: yeah yeah
48:29
SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
48:30
SPEAKER_00: I am a huge fan of all the cartoonists of The New Yorker,
48:34
SPEAKER_00: and I am incredibly jealous of the talents of Christoph Niemann.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: And if there was a way for me to absorb his talents and drain his soul,
48:45
SPEAKER_00: whatever,
48:45
SPEAKER_00: if I had to do pure evil to do it,
48:47
SPEAKER_00: I might just consider it.
48:49
SPEAKER_00: He is that good.
48:51
SPEAKER_01: I think he's incredible.
48:52
I only just got to meet him this year at the New Yorker Covers
48:55
exhibition that
48:57
Francoise was at with a lot of the cover artists like Barry
49:05
Blitt and Peter Deceve
49:06
SPEAKER_01: and Anita Kunz.
49:08
and they were all talking about oh and you know christophe
49:11
obviously and and um
49:13
adrian tomine um and it was so interesting just listening to
49:17
them talking about
49:18
that that whole process of how they all of them said the same
49:21
thing effectively
49:22
which was lean into what makes you unique your style your thing
49:25
stop trying to copy
49:26
other people stop trying to do what you think is getting
49:28
traction and and getting
49:30
SPEAKER_01: published just find the thing that's unique to you and double
49:32
down on that yeah um it's so important and it's getting harder
49:37
and harder though
49:37
SPEAKER_00: you know like i feel like the way things are going now everything is so
49:41
externalized uh i'm sure even like i don't know i don't know
49:46
how these these things
49:47
go for a lot of institutions but so many people take me more
49:51
seriously now that i
49:52
have a larger instagram following and it's just it's a little
49:56
it almost feels a
49:56
SPEAKER_00: little dirty because instagram followings don't mean shit
50:00
about shit yeah that's true they're just really really silly
50:04
stupid things and they
50:07
give you social proof they give you social value in a lot of
50:10
people's eyes and
50:11
that's unfortunate and what it means is for any artist today
50:15
you have to double
50:17
down on pleasing other people and pleasing them with stuff that
50:22
goes viral like
50:23
SPEAKER_00: great art or whatever good work is not necessarily viral work
50:28
SPEAKER_00: But virality sets a sort of really terrible bargain to put on your work.
50:34
SPEAKER_00: It's really quite awful, this whole situation.
50:38
SPEAKER_01: Um,
50:38
SPEAKER_01: we had a request,
50:39
we had two separate requests and I'm going to kind of combine
50:41
them because,
50:42
SPEAKER_01: uh,
50:42
SPEAKER_01: Claire Powell,
50:43
SPEAKER_01: um,
50:44
SPEAKER_01: previous guest,
50:45
SPEAKER_01: Claire Powell from the pen pals,
50:49
SPEAKER_01: uh,
50:49
SPEAKER_01: sub stack.
50:49
SPEAKER_01: She said, Nishant, do you ever draw tiny animals, tiny horse, tiny cows?
50:53
SPEAKER_01: She says, I love drawing tiny things.
50:55
SPEAKER_01: And usually they end up more interesting than when I redraw them big.
50:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
51:00
SPEAKER_00: Here's a dog.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: This is, this is how I draw dogs.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: That's so great.
51:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm terrible at drawing animals,
51:09
SPEAKER_00: and I'm trying to learn,
51:11
SPEAKER_00: but it's a whole other vocabulary,
51:13
SPEAKER_00: I think,
51:13
SPEAKER_00: and I'm trying to figure it out.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: So at the moment, I am at this level of proficiency with it.
51:20
SPEAKER_00: Right.
51:21
SPEAKER_00: And then I cover up my horrible linework mistake by going solid,
51:26
SPEAKER_00: and then I think I rescue it in some extent.
51:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: Here's another pro tip.
51:32
SPEAKER_00: If you draw with ink, cover up your mistakes.
51:35
SPEAKER_00: It is possible to do that.
51:37
SPEAKER_00: I do that all the time.
51:38
There are little mistakes everywhere,
51:41
but the reason you don't see them is this thing.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, only you think of them as mistakes, but yes.
51:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
51:48
In terms of accuracy,
51:50
they're mistakes,
51:50
but in terms of style,
51:51
they're not mistakes.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: I would be remiss if I didn't plug my book of dog cartoons right now.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: Just for this, my publisher not killing me.
52:02
You're not a real dog owner until is the book you can get it at
52:04
real dog owner.com.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
52:07
SPEAKER_01: I had to learn to draw dogs pretty,
52:09
pretty conclude like I drew every kind of dog in every kind of
52:13
position in that
52:14
SPEAKER_01: book.
52:14
It was it was the master I had to do a masterclass in like
52:17
studying George Booth
52:18
SPEAKER_01: and Patrick McDonnell and,
52:21
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:21
SPEAKER_01: Brian Bassett and all these
52:23
Great cartoonists who really capture the life of a dog and the
52:26
movement of animals.
52:28
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
52:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's fascinating.
52:30
Because that's what tells me,
52:32
again,
52:33
why you are so good at this kind of thing.
52:35
Because if somehow I had made the mistake of accepting a
52:38
commission like that,
52:39
SPEAKER_00: I would never,
52:40
SPEAKER_00: ever learn that way.
52:43
to my detriment to my detriment it's not a good thing but this
52:48
is what like it's
52:50
it's what separates like it's it's just i enjoy being myself in
52:54
this regard yeah
52:55
SPEAKER_00: but oh man it is taxing
52:58
SPEAKER_01: It is,
52:58
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
52:58
because you look at it and the key lesson is really just don't
53:02
compare yourself to
53:03
SPEAKER_01: them as a trick.
53:04
It's like don't think,
53:05
oh,
53:05
I can't draw like them,
53:06
so I'll just never draw.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: It's like you take from it what you will,
53:10
SPEAKER_01: you learn from them,
53:11
SPEAKER_01: and then apply it to your own style,
53:12
SPEAKER_01: apply it to your own process instead of a process,
53:16
SPEAKER_01: which instead of like trying to perfectly replicate it.
53:18
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
53:20
i am aware that we're coming up on the one hour mark and i did
53:23
promise you that we
53:24
would only i don't know how long i promised at this point um
53:30
but i wanted to um uh
53:33
while we're while we're drawing uh there was one request we got
53:38
we got we got a
53:39
request earlier in the show from hugh walker who has been uh
53:43
watching the whole
53:44
time and thank you for uh for your comments here yes loves
53:47
loves dogs too um
53:51
Yeah,
53:51
Mike Rhodes was saying,
53:52
I love that I can immediately spot Nishant's style.
53:55
SPEAKER_01: It's true.
53:56
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Mike.
53:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this has been my goal all along.
53:59
Like,
54:00
one day I'm going to have something that people can immediately
54:03
see is mine.
54:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
54:06
SPEAKER_01: So...
54:09
SPEAKER_01: Per the promise of DMA,
54:12
SPEAKER_01: which is like an AMA,
54:14
SPEAKER_01: ask me anything,
54:15
SPEAKER_01: but drawing,
54:16
SPEAKER_01: so draw me anything.
54:17
SPEAKER_01: We had a request from Hugh Walker,
54:19
SPEAKER_01: iguana playing golf,
54:21
SPEAKER_01: but I'm going to try and do it using the lessons you've just taught me.
54:24
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
54:25
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to copy you and see how that goes.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: Oh, this is going to be good.
54:30
SPEAKER_00: Because there is no way I can draw an iguana.
54:33
SPEAKER_00: There's just no way.
54:36
SPEAKER_01: Well,
54:36
SPEAKER_01: Iguana,
54:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
54:37
SPEAKER_01: Iguana already,
54:39
SPEAKER_01: Iguana playing golf,
54:40
SPEAKER_01: we're going to have to anthropomorphize him.
54:41
So we're already being,
54:42
you know,
54:44
uh,
54:44
uh,
54:44
and I'm going to have to do it tiny.
54:46
SPEAKER_01: So I'm really going to bring the, the, the, the camera in here.
54:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
54:49
SPEAKER_01: So when Iguana playing golf as a tiny.
54:53
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
55:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying not to take my hand off this page here, which is terrifying.
55:18
SPEAKER_00: Are you also not resting your palm on the page?
55:21
SPEAKER_01: I am resting my palm on the page, but I'm holding the pen further back.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: I always hold the pen further back.
55:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
55:30
You know those lines we were talking about with the heartbeat
55:32
and the blood
55:33
SPEAKER_01: pressure and all that?
55:34
SPEAKER_01: It accentuates all those little idiosyncrasies.
55:37
SPEAKER_01: I see.
55:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
55:59
SPEAKER_00: What number club is that?
56:00
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's a legitimate club.
56:04
SPEAKER_00: It's a nine iron.
56:07
SPEAKER_00: Nine iron for lacrosse?
56:15
SPEAKER_00: So you're saying this is an iguana that is bad at playing golf?
56:17
SPEAKER_00: Is that correct?
56:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, because why would he be good at playing golf?
56:21
SPEAKER_01: He is an iguana.
56:25
SPEAKER_01: An iguana playing golf.
56:27
SPEAKER_01: Again,
56:28
SPEAKER_01: see,
56:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm so tempted to just,
56:30
SPEAKER_01: like,
56:30
SPEAKER_01: keep adding to it,
56:31
SPEAKER_01: which is the worst,
56:33
SPEAKER_01: the worst obsession is to just keep adding.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: I think, was it, he said, who am I thinking of?
56:39
SPEAKER_01: Nick Meglin.
56:41
SPEAKER_01: He said, under work,
56:42
overwork can strangle a piece of art and yeah you have to stop
56:48
one step before you
56:49
think you need to that's good advice that's really good advice
56:54
i've felt that with
56:54
watercolors like if i just keep to the last touch that i think
57:00
and that just ruins
57:01
SPEAKER_00: it completely right so just pull back one step before it
57:07
SPEAKER_01: Hugh has said, love it.
57:09
SPEAKER_00: So mission accomplished.
57:13
SPEAKER_00: This is my first time ever drawing an iguana.
57:15
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't even sure about what an iguana looks like.
57:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, yours is better than mine.
57:20
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you that much.
57:23
But I know that it's now four o'clock,
57:26
so I realize I've taken way more time than promised.
57:31
SPEAKER_01: So this has honestly been so much fun.
57:36
SPEAKER_01: I know that you and I can talk as evidenced by our podcast.
57:40
um hours and hours and hours um but what i would prefer to do
57:46
is get you to come
57:47
back another time so that we can do this again um but in the
57:51
meantime what i would
57:52
love you to do is to tell everyone where they can find you and
57:55
uh i know you have
57:56
some things coming up you have some courses and you have a book
57:58
coming out tell
57:59
SPEAKER_00: everyone where they can find your stuff yeah so well
58:02
SPEAKER_00: Firstly,
58:03
SPEAKER_00: I write the Sneaky Art Post,
58:04
which is a newsletter in which I share the secret drawings from
58:08
my sketchbooks.
58:09
And I try to share one good idea from this journey of trying to
58:13
be an artist and writer.
58:16
SPEAKER_00: I have a course in which I teach people how to draw tiny people.
58:20
A lot of people like to learn from me and I've been doing
58:22
workshops for like three years online.
58:24
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it's super rewarding, but it's also very exhausting.
58:29
SPEAKER_00: Like I am...
58:31
SPEAKER_00: I've been told I'm a good teacher, but I don't have the energy for it.
58:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's the politest way to say this.
58:38
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I shouldn't be doing that so much.
58:41
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
58:42
SPEAKER_00: You're a pretty good teacher to me today.
58:43
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you the tip.
58:44
SPEAKER_00: Doing that so much.
58:45
I made a course because then it's there and it lets me put
58:49
things in with more time
58:50
SPEAKER_00: and everybody can see it when they want in different time zones.
58:53
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to think that it's a two-hour session,
58:55
SPEAKER_00: so cram everything in so you can take your time with it.
58:58
And hundreds of people are on it and hundreds of people are on
59:01
this WhatsApp group we made.
59:02
SPEAKER_00: And now every day we are sharing tiny people we drew,
59:05
SPEAKER_00: like someone's in Australia,
59:07
SPEAKER_00: someone's in Indonesia,
59:08
SPEAKER_00: someone's in the UK.
59:09
And,
59:09
you know,
59:10
people are sharing the tiny people that they've drawn,
59:12
that they've found.
59:13
And then we talk about them and we talk about what they're
59:15
doing and things.
59:16
SPEAKER_00: It's really fun.
59:17
SPEAKER_00: So it's a course just about drawing tiny people.
59:19
SPEAKER_00: If you care about that, then sign up to my newsletter, blah, blah, blah.
59:22
SPEAKER_00: You'll find stuff about it.
59:24
SPEAKER_00: This year, I'm also a published author.
59:26
My book is coming out later this year in September called Make
59:30
Sneaky Art.
59:31
I actually had to really push them for this title because they
59:34
thought sneaky is
59:36
SPEAKER_00: sort of negative and won't work so hard.
59:39
SPEAKER_00: And I said, that's my whole brand.
59:40
SPEAKER_00: So there's no, I'm not compromising on that portion at all.
59:44
SPEAKER_00: Very proud that I pushed back like that.
59:47
SPEAKER_00: And I got it and I managed to win it.
59:50
So it's called make sneaky art because I think everybody should
59:52
make sneaky art.
59:53
SPEAKER_00: I think everybody should have a sketchbook.
59:54
I think it has nothing to do with being able to draw or wanting
59:57
to be able to draw
59:58
SPEAKER_00: or wanting to be an artist.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_00: A sketchbook is like a diary.
1:00:02
Everybody should write in a diary because it's a conversation
1:00:05
with yourself.
1:00:05
And a sketchbook is a visual diary to have a different kind of
1:00:09
conversation with yourself.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's a conversation that is independent of the boundaries and awful
1:00:14
SPEAKER_00: restrictions of words and language.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_00: It's a conversation in very fundamental lines and shapes.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_00: And it's there in our minds.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_00: And I think a sketchbook allows us to access those things.
1:00:25
So this is a book about why everyone should have a sketchbook
1:00:28
and how they can make
1:00:29
SPEAKER_00: a sketchbook habit.
1:00:31
why everybody should look at everybody else and why we need to
1:00:34
have more sneaky
1:00:34
SPEAKER_00: artists in the world.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_00: Very excited to share it soon.
1:00:38
SPEAKER_00: It's something I talk about in my newsletter from time to time,
1:00:40
SPEAKER_00: but September is when it comes out.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
1:00:43
SPEAKER_01: That's exciting.
1:00:44
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll definitely be plugging that in the meantime.
1:00:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm definitely going to have you back.
1:00:48
If you'll come back,
1:00:49
I'd love to have you and talk more about that,
1:00:51
actually.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_01: More about that and more.
1:00:53
about making art by hand,
1:00:54
humans making art by hand and observing the world.
1:00:58
SPEAKER_01: And maybe we can not get Doomer-y, but we can maybe touch on AI.
1:01:03
SPEAKER_01: But for now, let's leave it.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you what.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you something I deeply believe.
1:01:08
SPEAKER_00: This is said by a stand-up comic friend of mine.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_00: He's a very close friend of mine, and he's a political humorist.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of resonance with both of us.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_00: He said, and I 100% agree with him,
1:01:20
SPEAKER_00: The worst time to be an artist is the best time to be an artist.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: That is, wow.
1:01:27
SPEAKER_01: That is so true and painful.
1:01:29
SPEAKER_00: This is the time.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad to be here and I'm glad to be making things by hand in 2025.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_01: That is the perfect thing to end on, Nishant.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for joining me today.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, everyone, for tuning in.
1:01:43
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your requests and for sending in your pictures.
1:01:48
And please go and subscribe to Nishant if you haven't already
1:01:51
subscribed to the Sneaky Art Post.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_01: It's fantastic.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_01: And I will see you all next week, next Tuesday and Friday.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_01: We're doing two next week, Austin Kleon and Antony's.
1:02:01
SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
1:02:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm really curious to see what you do with Austin Cleon.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm such a fan.
1:02:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've always been a big fan of his.
1:02:07
SPEAKER_01: So that's, that's both of you.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_01: You both, there's a lot of overlap with both of you, by the way.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_01: So I've, yeah, I think it'll be really interesting.
1:02:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm going to tune in for sure.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_00: I want to see what he talks about.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_00: It'll be fun.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_00: All right.
1:02:19
SPEAKER_01: Thanks everyone.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_01: Have a great day.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_01: See ya.