Ep 11 - Looking Back with Nishant Jain
The idea behind this episode is to look back at previous conversations and follow the threads of commonality that weave between them. I do not try to portray unique ideas, but ideas that we all have in response to obstacles we all face. In this way, I hope that the moments I have chosen will inspire you, bring confidence, and show you a way forward in the fog of solitary, creative pursuit.
I like to think that we don't suffer from a lack of ideas, as much as a lack of confidence in the ideas we have. Consider that the solutions to most problems are not unique, because our problems themselves are not unique or exclusive to us. From hearing the journeys of others, we gain confidence in ourselves. In that sense this is not a "Best of" episode. But I trust that listening to this diverse selection of guests will give you the courage to chase your ideas, big or small. If you have not heard all the episodes yet, I hope the snippets will send you back to listen to them in full.
I enjoyed putting together this episode, and I think it will be very useful to you as well. Give it a listen, and tell me what you think.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the SneakyArt Podcast, I’m your host Nishant Jain. In this podcast I have conversations with artists who like to draw or paint their world from observation.
My guests create their art on location, which can mean sitting by the side of the street, taking the window-seat at a cafe, drawing commuters inside a bus or a train, or simply looking out of the windows of their home. It is a way to appreciate and record fleeting moments of beauty in our environment.
I believe this podcast is for you ... if you’re a novice trying to become an artist, if you’re already an artist looking for ways to level up, or if you’re neither of those things, if you’re looking simply for a way to become a better, more patient observer of your world. I welcome you to the SneakyArt Podcast.
In today’s episode, I look back at the conversations I have had so far. Some of my guests are professional artists, with many years of art education behind them. Others, like me, are entirely self-taught. Some use inks and monochromatic washes, while others paint with a wide spectrum of colors. Some find beauty in urban architecture and vast cityscapes, while others zoom in to focus on everyday human activity inside big cities.
It is a diverse mix of people who come to this activity. But despite this diversity, there are common threads than run through these conversations. These threads take the form of ideas and goals, circumstances and obstacles, and solutions to those obstacles. They run through my guests in different times in their artistic journeys and also through me. I hope that after listening to this episode, you will find the different ways they also run through you.
You might wonder why that matters. I think it matters because of the way we make progress as artists. There is a word which is very important and the word is “permission”. As a self-taught artist, I didn’t know I needed it. It’s possible you feel the same. But in my experience, not only do we all need permission but we subconsciously always seek it, by following the steps of those ahead of us, in simple inspiration, or practical tips and techniques. Sometimes it’s just permission to match the audacity of another artist. We seek permission from other artists whom we consider members of our tribe.
It is the great gift of the internet that we can bond with people across the world, that we can find our tribe in strangers we have not met. They give us the confidence to be ourselves, to express ourselves, and to not feel alone inside our minds. These are powerful things.
I have learned from my fellow urban sketchers. Sometimes I have learned from peering over someone’s shoulder as they paint or draw. Sometimes I have learned by speaking with them. Sometimes I have gained strength and sometimes companionship. I recorded an episode with a guest who explained it beautifully - we are walking alone in a fog, and sometimes it is good to see signposts left by those who walked the same way once. That’s what this podcast is about.
Consider this. Paul was an oil painter when he traded his easel and oils for a pocket sketchbook and fountain pen. Have you ever felt like completely changing your toolkit, but hesitated over taking that leap? Mat, in Paris, was trying to be a travel-writer when he started doodling his surroundings instead. Somewhere in West Africa, he found a new way to express himself in a more complete way than mere words. There are so many different ways to communicate the complex world we see. Have you tried changing the medium of your communication? Uma is an engineer in Silicon Valley pushing back against a culture that sees the arts as irrelevant to the life of a scientific researcher. We talk about what it means to “paint like an engineer”. What would you do if your obstacle was the zeitgeist of your environment?
I have picked some key moments from the conversations on my podcast to share with you. But by no means do they summarize the entire conversations themselves. To really understand context, and how thoughts connect with one another, I recommend you listen to the episodes in full. My hope is that this episode will serve as an appetizer, and send you back to the earlier episodes, hungry for more.
Hello and welcome to this episode of looking back. I’m fascinated by the question of how different artists discovered the practice of drawing on location. What happened that gave them the idea to sit down at a street corner, or take out a notebook in a cafe, and make a little drawing? It’s no small deal to give a part of your precious leisure time to such an activity.
Below the episode is broken into parts which helped me structure the episode in a way that each flowed into the other. This was an important goal to make the episode seamless even though it is not a single conversation.
A second goal I pursued was to chronologically cover the doubts and obstacles, inspirations and ideas, that occur in the art trajectory of an artist or urban-sketcher.
Coming to USk
Consider the case of Paul Heaston. He was an oil painter in the final semester of his MFA program, working on lifesize canvases in his studio. In Ep 2 I asked him how he came to first draw inside a little sketchbook…
Ep 2 Due to the difficult logistics of carrying a canvas across the ocean, Paul keeps a Moleskine sketchbook in Italy… and grows addicted to sketchbooks even after coming back home.
Despite being good at his kind of art, Paul approached architecture and citysketches with a level of unsophistication, a kind of ignorance, guided by his curiosity, which became the fresh style he’s known for today.
In the case of Uma Kelkar, growing up middle-class in Pune, drawing outdoors was a taste of freedom and early self-confidence.
Ep 4 Uma tells me how she first fell into the practice of urban sketching, long before it was called by that name, in her hometown of Pune in India.
We go on to speak about how growing up in India meant being pushed towards certain lines of study and away from artistic expressions. Later in the episode, we talk about how Uma came back to rediscover Urban Sketching as a practice, after becoming a parent, after becoming an engineer in Silicon Valley. It’s a great story, and you should listen to the full episode to appreciate the journey.
In Ep 3, Shari tells me she was looking for a way to bring drawing back into her life, but in a time- and resource-efficient way. This specific need led her to urban-sketching, watercolors and portable sketchbooks.
Ep 3 Shari recounts becoming an urban sketcher as a quick way to get back into art practice after a hiatus of many years.
This is one of the best reasons to get into urban-sketching. It does not demand much, it can be as simple as you want it to be. My drawings to this day are just 1 or 2 pens and a small sketch-pad. If it’s easy to begin, you’re more likely to make a habit of it.
Another guest who had a compelling reason to become an urban-sketcher was Mat in Episode 6. Mat, like me, wanted to be a writer above all else. He was looking for a way to communicate his experiences as a travel-writer when he became intereste d in sketching.
Ep 6 Mat shares his dreams of becoming a travel writer, and how he found another way to express himself through urban-sketching while traveling in West Africa and Iran.
In Episode 6 of the podcast, we talk about how it feels to be a travel-artist under lockdown. Mat recently published a book of sketches made during lockdown in Paris. Give the episode a listen, and check out his amazing book!
Need for Community
Urban sketching - through the local chapters in Chicago and Minneapolis, and the Facebook groups, and even the hashtag - offered me a sense of community when I set out to become a better artist. In Ep 7, I asked California-based artist Suhita why she sought the urban sketching community and how she got into it.
Ep 7 Suhita describes how she got into USk
Ep 7 Nishant & Suhita talk about how easy it is to become an urban-sketcher.
The lack of gatekeeping is such a great part of the urban-sketching community. And its byproduct is that artists who have been enabled to think of themselves as artists, or legitimate painters and sketchers, don’t simply have to operate within this genre. It empowers you to be an artist in every way that you wish to be. It demonstrates that sometimes the largest obstacle in our path is of our own creation.
Overcoming obstacles
In these conversations with urban sketchers I have also understood other obstacles people face in becoming artists. Learning about the obstacles of others, and how they overcame them, can be a source of strength and inspiration.
Ep 4 I asked Uma what she means when she says she “paints like an engineer”, and her answer revealed her solution to an obstacle placed before her by the tech-dominated, male-dominated environment of Silicon Valley.
Uma’s obstacles were in front of her, but in some ways they were also inside of her. We talk about how we carry a lot of guilt to do “certain good things” as Indian people and overcoming that guilt can be the hardest thing.
Leaving behind the world of scientific academia, I faced a lot of similar doubts in my own mind.
Some of my doubts, as I embarked on this creative career of mine, were not simply about what people might say. I had tasted achievement, I had climbed a ladder to some extent, and disengaging from that climb to start afresh can be a difficult choice. How do you make that kind of choice, I asked Luis Simoes in Episode 8.
Ep 8 Luis described his decision to become a traveling artist as “selfish”. There is a lot of nuance in that simple word.
Now what if your obstacle is just simple embarrassment? Don’t count it out, that’s the reason I started as a SneakyArtist! In Ep 7, Suhita and I talk about our experience as USk instructors, and segue to the common hesitations of people in sketching outdoors.
Ep 7 Suhita tells how to overcome common hesitations people have
Generally, I would highly recommend Ep 7 with Suhita and Ep 3 with Shari as excellent episodes for lots of small tips and great practical advice.
In Ep 9, I asked Marek the same question, about what the fear people seem to have regarding sketching outdoors, and how comfortable he feels picking his spot in a crowded place.
Ep 9 Marek talks about sketching in public places
Aggressive Learning
After you become an urban sketcher, and its an easy thing to become because you just need a pen and paper, the next step is easier because of the supercharged enthusiasm. You proceed on a path of aggressive learning, picking up new skills, improving old ones, exploring new media and tools, making discoveries about your work and the things that are newly possible for you to do.
But what path do you follow? And how do you know your path is the right one? Is there such a thing as the right path? I asked my guests these questions. The answers were deeply personal, suggesting that the correct route is one that we find ourselves, informed by our own inspiration and curiosities.
In Ep 3, I asked Shari for intuitive ways to understanding composition without any formal knowledge or understanding of things like the golden ratio.
Ep 3 Shari talks about learning composition from magazine layouts
Ep 4 Uma breaks down the process as an engineer
This is a wonderful dispassionate way to approach the job of making progress. Fixing one thing at a time, controlling for other changes, like an experiment. You are not at the mercy of your creative spirit, but trying to work it like a professional with their tools.
Let’s go back to the conversation with Shari. I just remembered I also picked her brain about hacking color theory.
Ep 3 Shari breaks down color theory into useful hacks
Break
Summarizing episode so far, giving information about podcast and BuyMeACoffee donation offer.
Sometimes you look at someone’s finished piece and you don’t even know how they started on it. A lot of intimidation comes from just that first touch of pen or brush to paper. This is where it really pays off watching someone draw over their shoulder. In the absence of that privilege, as COVID times show us, I did the next best thing by asking some of my guests to detail their process from start to finish.
In Ep 5, I spoke to Donald Owen Colley, a good friend with whom I’ve sketched together many times in Chicago. I have often seen Don do his magic, and he begins in the most unusual way. Not a line or a color or a shape, but sometimes you see him start with small smudges he makes with ink on his thumb or the edge of a marker pen.
Ep 5 Don gets started on a page with a smudge
A similarly fascinating artist for me is Paul Wang, with whom I spoke in Ep10. Paul’s work is a splash of lines and colors, and it is nearly impossible to deduce where it could have begun or how. What inspired what, and how did he make his journey across the page? I asked Paul to tell me, and his answer was quite illuminating.
Ep 10 Paul talks about interplay of line and color - reacting to the stimulus of the day, comparing the process to cooking.
Curiosity
Joy is an important part of building a sustainable practice. If all the good results only emerge from the long haul, it is crucial that we be able to stick to our habits. How do we stick to a habit? I asked my guests questions around that central theme, and increasingly it appears the idea is quite simple at its core - we stick to our habits if we stick to our curiosity. Curiosity is the key to joy, and joy fuels the sustainable practice which produces great results.
When I first became an urban sketcher, my great curiosity was the city of Chicago. I wanted to see every neighborhood, I wanted to walk every street, and I wanted to see every cool person do every cool thing. I made myself a project. I called it 30 Days of Chicago. Everyday, I would go to a new part of the city, give myself an hour or so, and draw from observation. Because I was so new to the city, I was always excited by the things I saw. So I drew everything that made me curious - realizing pretty soon that my curiosity lay in the many facets of human interaction within the urban landscape. How do people talk to each other? Where do they meet? What public amenities do they use? What do they do when they are bored, when they are excited, when they’re at work on a break?
In Ep 5, Don Colley shared with me his fascination for characters in the big city, and the different personalities he is able to depict with his drawings.
Ep 5 Don talks about commuters he sees on the bus.
Don goes on to describe some of his courtroom sketches, including a particularly interesting case whose drawing became the cover image of that episode. We discuss how illustrations can elevate a scene beyond a photograph in the right context. I highly recommend this episode for anyone that is interested in incorporating human activity in their sketchwork.
I asked Shari in Ep 3 about what makes her curious to pick up her brush everyday, because she too has a wonderful regular practice routine.
Ep 3 Shari talks about the way watercolors work on paper
We can find answers to our curiosity even in enclosed spaces. In Ep 7, I speak with Suhita about seizing every small opportunity to make art. Both she and I like to sketch people in action, and we draw quickly. What might sound like a time constraint actually works like freedom, because it opens her up to drawing opportunities that simply do not occur to other sketchers. Suhita explains in Ep 7 how she finds inspiration everywhere by being ready to draw anywhere.
Ep 7 Suhita talks about drawing “anywhere”
I look at Paul Wang’s work and find beautiful colors and meandering lines, and he uses them to recreate scenes of busy activity and urban chaos. In Ep 10 I asked him what he is looking for when he picks a scene, and how he knows he has found something worth drawing.
Ep 10 Paul explains finding the “heartspace”
Finding your heartspace, or even finding comfort and familiarity can become impossible when you sketch while traveling. Yet Luis, my guest in Ep 8, seems to thrive in places unfamiliar and uncomfortable. I ask him about places I have never seen, and have little visual reference for. What is it like to draw in places where you are such a foreigner in so many different ways?
Ep 8 Luis talks about sketching in completely foreign places - Mongolia, Namibia, Bolivia
There are many amazing stories in the episode with Luis. Please check out Episode 8 if you haven’t heard it yet.
Good Failure
One of the biggest reasons you hear people not wanting to draw is that they would make “bad drawings”. They are afraid of making bad drawings. They only want to make good drawings, if any.
As any person who makes good drawings will tell you, that is simply not possible. The process of making good drawings involves putting yourself outside your comfort zone every time, trying new things, pushing your boundaries, and learning to enjoy all of this.
I talk about failure with nearly all my guests. In Ep 2 Paul Heaston and I spoke about how our idiosyncrasies define our style and how a blind-spot towards our faults can sometimes be very helpful.
Ep 2 Paul Heaston about not getting discouraged by failure.
I was also delighted to hear about Shari’s attitude towards failure, which she shared with me in Episode 3.
Ep 3 Shari talks about success vs failure and enjoying failure
In Episode 5, I asked Don Colley what he would say to a non-artist to get them to try urban sketching. I asked him what it offered beyond the idea of making good art, and he told me why the end-result of drawing is not even the point of drawing at all.
Ep 5 Don C talks about getting over results to enjoy the process
There are a lot of great moments that I haven’t included in this compilation. In Ep6, Mat and I discuss the great pivot he had to make in his 2020 plans with the pandemic and lockdown. He was able to turn things around for himself and put together a book of lockdown sketches. You should buy it, it’s quite amazing. In Ep 8, Luis talks about being in the right place at the right time during the umbrella protests of Hong Kong in 2014. We go on to discuss his experiences with crowdfunding his travels, and his future plans for the World Sketching Tour. Check out his beautiful website to see his tutorials. Most urban sketchers have had their plans turned upside down by COVID19, but nearly all of them have adapted in interesting and wonderful ways. Marek does a lot of Instagram Live, nearly every day now. From having their entire teaching calendars wiped clean, Paul Heaston, Suhita, Paul Wang, and Shari have started numerous online workshops, Zoom sessions, and other great ways to share their work with the world. The best way to listen to the conversations is in full, this is how they are designed. So if any tidbit made you curious, please consider visiting the episode itself and giving it your time. I promise you will not be disappointed.
For myself, I have big plans for SneakyArt in this new part of the world I now live in. I hope to make a book of SneakyArt of Vancouver, so if you know any publishers or literary agents, please tell them about me. I hope to move forward in making fresh and exciting work, and learning and practicing new ways to tell stories about the world I see. Subscribe to my newsletter to stay abreast with my ideas and plans, and maybe you can also help me to achieve them. There is a link in the episode description.
With the SneakyArt Podcast in this new season, I have many great plans. I am going to speak with people who practice art in novel ways to tell stories about their world, stories that only they can tell, stories that can only be told in this way, stories that really need to be told. The lineup for the next few episodes is quite exciting, and I’m eager to share the new conversations with you. As I mentioned before, you can support me and support this podcast at the cost of just one cup of coffee. There is a link to that in the episode description.
I remain grateful to all of you that listen to this show. Do get in touch and tell me what you thought of this episode. Did you feel a connection with any of the artists? I hope you did, and I hope it pushes you to keep making art.
Thank you, and have a good day.