Committing to Unwise Enthusiasm
sketcher-fest tix + an offer to be foolish too
Dear reader,
Last week, I was invited to speak with creatives in Vancouver about some foolish things I have done over the years to be a sneaky artist. I am writing a longer post about it but, until then, I offer you this image of my last slide:
👀 Sneaking in to Sketcher Fest
In keeping with the spirit of all things sneaky, I have snuck into this year’s programming at Sketcher Fest as a last minute entry.
On Day 1, I am offering my popular workshop - Building a Spiral of Attention - which also forms a core part of my book, Make (Sneaky) Art. This workshop will help you defeat the blank page, and start and finish every drawing — no matter how complicated the scene.
On Day 2, I will present The BYOB Approach to Travel Sketching, where BYOB stands for Bind Your Own Book! This is my first opportunity to share how I combine sketchbook-making and paper-craft to enhance the creative decisions of every page of my travel journals.
Day 2 also includes a demo with Art Spot, the lovely arts store in downtown Edmonds. All day, I will be sharing my recent sketchbooks, offering prints for sale, and signing copies of my book at the Sunday Sketchbook Fair.
Grab your tickets to come see me and hang out with hundreds of wonderful sketchers and artists.
📪 I do MORE foolish things
In keeping with the spirit of making unwise decisions based on enthusiasm and curiosity, I started a mail club for paying subscribers this month!
Reader, this is my year of investing time and energy into physical things - prints, zines, sketchbooks, craft, and the real people who care about my work. Every month - until this succeeds spectacularly or fails catastrophically - I will send tiny-zines about tiny things to paying subscribers in the mail.
Is this wise? Or not at all? Let’s find out.
To further enable my foolishness, grab this deal to become a paying subscriber. Find info in your welcome email to start getting The SneakyArt Post in your mailbox!
✍🏼 I do at least ONE wise thing
I wanted to say a whole thing about AI this week, and wrote a 1000 or so angry/frustrated words. But … why? I deleted it. Here are some other good words I found instead:
🤖 “What if Silicon Valley can’t brute force their products — and ideology — onto the masses again? To take it even further, what if the dot com crash and the AI crash are actually part of the same 25 years epoch of technological stagnation? I’m not going to lie, I find this line of questioning exhilarating.” - The bubble is getting a lot bubblier, folks by Ryan Broderick
🤖 “AI is, as it stands, not economically viable for anybody involved other than the construction firms, NVIDIA, and the surrounding hardware companies benefitting from the irrational exuberance of a data center buildout that doesn’t appear to be happening at the speed we believed.” - AI is Too Expensive by Ed Zitron
The SneakyArt Post is a newsletter of secretly drawn art of the world. Share it with others who might like this in their inbox. And thank you for reading!
I was excited to see you were going to be at Sketcherfest again this year. It looks like your workshop is already sold out, but I look forward to your artist talk and am considering joining one of your ArtSpot workshops in August.
I missed your last subscriber talk, but am also interested in joining your snail mail experiment! Thanks :)
I love that you’re doing these workshops, and wish I could be there! You’ve inspired me to start bookbinding again - thank you. Question: what paper are you using for your sketchbook insides? I’ve loved seeing you build sketching challenges into the books themselves - something for me to aspire to.