61 - Work for Yourself
Hello, and welcome to The SneakyArt Post! SneakyArt is art of everyday events in my world, seen while walking around cities, drawn with a fountain pen inside a sketchbook.
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🖋 A Home in DC
I was approached by a client, who saw my work on Reddit, to make a drawing of their home. I put it in the mail this week.
Since the very first time I was commissioned to make art for someone’s home - in Eau Claire WI - I have been aware of it as a great responsibility. It is an honor to make something that will hang in someone’s home, and hold a place in their life for many years.
They will walk past it everyday. They will grow older in front of it, and live their lives around it. Over time, it will become one with the wall. It will become one of those things they don’t even notice, and their eyes will sweep over it just like other objects in their home. It will become a part of their world.
Making art for someone is an invitation into their life. The opportunity is empowering for any young artist. But it also brings with it anxiety.
Will it look like what they want? Will it be everything they imagined? Should I do something more? Or less? Is it better to not think about the client?
In last week’s podcast episode, I asked this of Felix Scheinberger, an artist and illustrator in Berlin. His answer, and my thoughts, here.
Here’s a video of the drawing process.
💬 Pareidolia
Towards the end of our conversation, I asked Felix about some of his lessons for illustration students at the Munster School of Design. He spoke about making his students paint silhouettes of objects before they draw the lines. It is a way to rid them of the images built into their minds (read further in #53). To help them see things afresh. They use it to capture gestures in the human form, and to find character and personality in inanimate buildings and structures.
How do you find personality in inanimate objects? How does a building’s silhouette say anything about character?
The word he uses is pareidolia.
Pareidolia is the human tendency to seek patterns where none exist, to ‘recognize’ things that are not there. Like seeing animal-shapes in clouds, or finding rock formations that look like faces.
Of course, there is not really a face on the rocks. There is no elephant up in the clouds. It is merely human imagination. Pointless. Right?
But it is useful.
Felix uses it to teach drawing. The artist must use pareidolia to see more than what others can see, and render them in a way that everyone else can see them too.
Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want? - Kandinsky.
Humans seek patterns in their world, even where none exist. We want to tie cause and effect, even if there is no causation. We demand to know the truth about the universe and, in the absence of answers, we fit our tiny observations to our tiny data and construct a world of rules and meaning and divine purpose. Our history is littered with innumerable patterns made out of collective delusions. We have used them to achieve great things.
We drew lines across the night-sky, connecting stars that are light-years away from us, and light-years away from each other. Those lines formed shapes resembling objects from our world, and we tied them to stories about heavenly beings in charge of our lives. We used those lines - that do not exist - to guide us when we were lost. Over land or sea, constellations helped us chart a way forward, and also to go back home.
So it is not necessary that our patterns describe something real. A professor in my control engineering class described systems modeling this way:
All models are wrong. But some models are useful.
It is something I keep in mind when thinking about science, but also about constellations, religions, philosophy, and whatever else people like to call ‘real’.
📢 Big Announcement
Next week I begin sending premium content to paying subscribers! This comes in the form of a biweekly bonus issue, and will include:
Audio posts about the latest SneakyArt
Podcast discussion threads
Bonus commentaries from podcast conversations
Draft passages from my next book-in-progress - SneakyArt of Vancouver
Monthly print giveaways, free portraits, and other goodies!
Membership costs $5/month or $50/annual. But if you sign up this week, you can grab an early discount!
Making premium content means a lot more work for me. Already in the past two weeks, my recording time has shot up 3x, and my writing time 4-5x. I’m doing it to create products of greater value, for both me and my readers. The bonus commentaries push me to mine my podcast conversations for deeper knowledge and fresh insights. Sharing them with you is a process of refining the rough ideas, honing the arguements, and polishing the words to a shine. I learn many things!
The creator economy works with the mutual benefit of creators and fans. I do the work, but you make it possible for me to do it.
Briefly, I considered if I am ready - if my audience is large enough, if my work is valuable enough, if I have what it takes. But I don’t have much patience for such thoughts. I went all-in for the creator economy when I decided to become a full-time writer, when I decided I would also be an artist, and when I decided to start podcasting.
I’m not in the habit of waiting for opportune moments. I like to do things.
If you enjoy my writing, and if you enjoy the podcast, you will like this too.
I’ll see you next week with a new episode of the Podcast, and more SneakyArt! Thank you for your time and attention.
I love this, Nishant. It has encouraged me, thanks: "Briefly, I considered if I am ready - if my audience is large enough, if my work is valuable enough, if I have what it takes. But I don’t have much patience for such thoughts. I went all-in for the creator economy when I decided to become a full-time writer, when I decided I would also be an artist, and when I decided to start podcasting."
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