60 - Illustration is Applied Imagination

Hello, readers! This week I am sharing some art, a new episode of the podcast, thoughts about sketching people in the city, and some exciting plans for the future. Welcome to the SneakyArt Post!

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✒ This week, in SneakyArt…

… I have drawn less than I thought I would. Other obligations and commissioned work have kept me indoors. Next week these same forces will compel me to draw outdoors. So it goes.

✒ I have been carrying around a tiny accordion sketchbook for the past two months. When I bought it, I thought I would finish it in a week. But after a few days it slid into a dark recess inside my bag, and I forgot all about it.

When it resurfaced this week, I took it to a Waves Coffee, bought an iced coffee, sat in the patio, and tapped 3 times on the empty page with my fountain pen. It was magic!

I like to draw tiny people. I’ve spoken about this practice in previous newsletters, notably in Issue #53 where I compare my tiny people to the existentialist ideas of Jean Paul Sartre.

✒ It rained all day today. I went to a cafe in the Mt Pleasant neighborhood to meet a fellow Vancouver artist. We talked about Canada, and America, and Afghanistan, and India. Once we ran out of words, we took out our sketchbooks and began to draw.

At the Gene Coffee Bar in Mt Pleasant, Vancouver.

As it happens, I forgot all about my coffee once I started to sketch. I glanced towards it again once I was done, but by then it had gone cold. So it goes.

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🎙 Ep 25 - Applying Imagination with Felix Scheinberger

In this episode, I speak with Berlin-based illustrator and artist Felix Scheinberger about his work as an illustrator, and the role of travel and urban sketching in his life. He once described illustration as "applied imagination", so I try to learn more about where this imagination comes from, and how it can be nurtured.

This episode’s cover art is an on-location painting made by Felix in Berlin.

What is the role of on-location drawing in feeding this imagination? What are some ways to strengthen your imagination over time? What is the role of observation, what is the job of interpretation, and how can the artist translate the ideas in their mind into a visual language understood universally?

This episode took me into the mind of an illustrator whose work enchants me because it seems effortless, even though it is anything but. Felix makes his art with a carefree finesse that takes many, many years to master.

Listen to our conversation on your choice of streaming service, or catch a link below.

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I want to share two thoughts from the conversation that have lingered in my mind.

🎙 At the very start, Felix excuses his poor English. I disagree that his English is poor, but he goes on to make a valid point - that speaking in a foreign language, one in which you are not 100% comfortable, makes you feel less intelligent and sound less profound than you are.

We went on to speak about how artists are translators already. They must access emotions and feelings within them that cannot be articulated, and translate them into lines and colors on paper. Then, in speaking about their art, they must put into words that what has already been put into art. There are two transformations here, and with each one we lose some meaning.

It reminds me of a scene from an indie film I saw a few years ago, called Supermen of Malegaon. It is about a group of small-town filmmakers in the state of Maharashtra in India, who dream of making a superhero film. On a shoe-string budget, they learn the rudiments of special effects design, dye their own green screen, and shoot around town in front of bemused townspeople. At one point in the film, the documentary filmmaker asks the film’s script-writer about his craft and he says (paraphrasing) -

“At his best, a writer can put 10% of what he feels into words. The rest of the pain must be borne by him alone. That is the curse of being a writer.”

I think about that a lot. I suppose it is the curse of every creative seriously vested in the business of expressing themselves.

🎙 Felix likes to feature people in his art. He says that drawing people is “the most difficult thing” but must still be done before everything else. We discuss two reasons for this -

1. Humans are always the subjects. What is a city without people? Everything in a city exists to serve people’s needs. Without the human context, does any of it mean anything?

2. An artist must face their fears. In a candid turn, Felix says that every sketch is an opportunity to face his fears. And in order to do his best job, he must conquer the fear before anything else.

"I think it's smart (that) if you're afraid of something, do it first." - Felix Scheinberger.

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📢 Newsletter Spotlight

I recently interacted with Peter Moore, who makes the Road2Elsewhere newsletter, and asked him to write a short intro to his work for my readers.

Road 2 Where, Exactly?

When I was Editor of Men’s Health magazine, and before that, articles editor for Playboy, I was pretty good at my jobs. But I was great at taking vacations—Moscow and Minneapolis, Bermuda and the Badlands, Kathmandu and Kauai, Key West and the Congo, plus all those national parks you’ve been meaning to visit (Acadia, Great Sand Dunes, Everglades, Point Reyes National Seashore, and on, and on). I live to travel because every trip changes and enriches my life, starting with an epic run through Paris-London-the South Downs-Belfast-Sligo-Oslo-Zagreb (!)-Venice-Rome just after I graduated from college.

The Road2Elsewhere will track my own gleanings and mistakes from a lifetime of purposeful travel, harvest insights from the best memoirists and travel writers, and include funny paintings and drawings and cartoons I made along the way. I'm with you Nishant, and other Sneaky Artists! Not all who wander are lost…they’re on the Road2Elsewhere.

Read his newsletter and subscribe below!

How I Became a Cartoon Character

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💡 Big Plans: Pushing Against the Comfort Zone

Everything of value lies outside the comfort zone. A great paradox of my life is that whenever I get too comfortable, I become immediately uneasy. I begin to look for what I can do, where I can learn, and in which direction I can still make progress. Comfort is cruising speed. But it is not yet time for me to take my foot off the accelerator.

This applies to SneakyArt, to the podcast, and also to this newsletter. So let’s talk big plans, because I have big plans.

🎉 Next month, I am starting a second, paid version of this newsletter!¹

Fear not, the paid version will take nothing away from the free content of the SneakyArt Post. Adding a paid service is instead a statement of intent - a challenge I am setting myself to do more with my time and ideas. It will mean a lot more work, for which I will put in many more hours. And I am excited to get into it!

Here’s a taste of what is in store -

🎙 A second podcast, about my latest art and commission work, explaining my creative process with the aid of progress pics and short videos.

🎧 Bonus commentaries for every SneakyArt Podcast episode in audio format, with accompanying images.

📖 Exclusive access to chapters from my next book, SneakyArt of Vancouver, as they are written.

✍ Private discussion threads to solicit feedback for the podcast and writing samples.

🥇A free, signed copy of the new book as soon as it is completed!

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To be honest, I considered putting this off for a few months. I was afraid I wasn’t ready. I was afraid to commit. I was afraid of appearing over-ambitious.

Then I thought about what Felix said - about facing fears and doing the most difficult thing. I thought about the stubborn decisions I took to become a writer, leaving behind a career in academia. I thought about the wonder and curiosity that led me down the streets of Chicago and turned me into an artist. And I thought about how I became a podcaster in response to the adversities of the pandemic.

Fear is a kind of cold comfort. And I have no place for fear. I have no time to waste. I have things to do.

I will share details about this next week. Until then, thank you for your time and attention.

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• [Read] Jean Paul Sartre: Existential Freedom and the Political

• [Read] Neitzche on Truth, Lies, and Power

• [Read] Could the Creator Economy work for Fiction Authors?

• [Listen] The “Rest Is History” Podcast on the First Anglo-Afghan War

• [Watch] Supermen of Malegaon on YouTube

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