Artist Update, and our next Hangout

+ hello to new subscribers!

Dear Insider,

Being around other sketchers was how I learned to draw. So this month with events in Chicago and Edmonds was a real treat. I have felt directionless of late, stuck in the doldrums of half-decisions and vague ideas. But peering at others’ sketchbooks, watching them work their magic, has given me new winds to catch.

In today’s post, I want to share project updates and some new influences upon my work.

The SneakyArt (Insider) Post is the occasional note to paying subscribers and patrons of this newsletter, where I share project updates and offer a behind-the-scenes look at my ongoing work.

Hello to all the new subscribers and patrons of this newsletter who responded to my 5-year anniversary post by choosing to support my work. Thank you.

We are now entering Year Six of this newsletter…!

🎙️ Podcast Plans

I stopped recording new episodes of the Podcast in the summer of 2023. Back then, it felt like I had run out of new ideas and was regurgitating the same questions. It was just a feeling, but I had to treat it seriously.

The break helped.

And recently while looking at the stats, I was pleased to discover that, although it has been nearly 2 years since the hiatus, new listeners are still discovering the show and working their way through the archives. Yay!

***

But stats are only stats, and cannot match the value of a real-life conversation.

In Chicago and Edmonds, I met many long-time listeners who told me what they enjoy about the show. I asked questions, explained my decisions to pause, and shared some ideas for future episodes. I listened to what they had to say. A single listener, or two, or ten, does not register in the overall stats. But a single conversation, or two, or ten, can be so rich!

If you spoke to me recently about the Podcast, thank you. For sharing what you love about it. For giving me valuable feedback about my plans for it.

***

The first two episodes of the new season have been recorded. And we are officially re-launching next month!

***

Insider, do you have suggestions for guests I should invite to the Podcast? Tell me!

🙌🏽 You make this possible.

I began my first blog when I was 16. Over time, the internet began to skew in favour of images, and I started a webcomic. Then social media ate up the internet, and blogs died (or went dormant?) and everything became about virality. So I chased virality. After a period of great disillusionment and fatigue, I found my way to art.

• Read about my path as an accidental artist.

• Or, listen to me talk about it on the ABC Science Friction podcast.

There was a war inside my head between words and images. I loved both but … why write when I could draw? Or, why draw if I could write? It seemed like there was room for only one or the other. Or, could I dare hope for their coexistence?

This newsletter began as a space to nurture coexistence. To experiment this radical idea, unsupported on the wider internet, in front of a (hopefully) growing audience. Without you here, I do not know how long it would have lasted.

Thank you, again.

Below are some of my favourite posts, not because they performed the best, but because I leaned on your support to give myself time and space. It took a lot of time to unlearn the toxic ideas of social media posting. To relearn that words should have value, and images should be made to look at for longer than half a second.

🤳🏼 “It locks us in a race that nobody wants to run, but nobody wants to lose either…” - A year after my IG account suddenly exploded, I think about how social media works (and for whom).

🖼️ “The purpose of AI generation is not to make art. It is to make content… Content is the junk food of the internet.” - Watching the Studio Ghibli filter take over the internet, I considered the nature of AI and the undeclared War on Human Creativity.

📕 “When I started a sketchbook habit, I did not even know how to draw. I was chasing a curiosity and hoping to learn.” - The lessons from my sketchbook habit are not all about becoming an artist, they help me be a better human too.

📺 “One of the perks of a large social media following is that even when you do a little thing, like leave little drawings in little libraries, a lot of people can find out about it.” - My project to leave little drawings inside little free libraries this December put me on the evening news.

🤖 “What is the point of making art if an AI can reproduce it within seconds and at zero cost? What happens to human artists when corporations and movie studios switch to Artificial Intelligence outputs?” - Confronting the threat of AI in Art, I refer to a book written in 1936 for good ideas about making art in a time of great change.

🔏 “The best kind of prison, argues philosopher Byung Chul Han, is one to which people voluntarily sign up. When we surrender privacy and freedom for endless content and same-day deliveries, we help build the walls of our panopticon.” - A philosopher helps me understand the true nature of social media, and I rely on this newsletter to help me break out of this prison.

Each of these posts was written with the trust that an audience is willing to sit with these words, and to follow these lines of thought and ink, to go down rabbitholes with me, to share their ideas and help me grow.

🗂️ Our Next Special Project

Summer is busy with commissions and events. Autumn will be about the book launch. But this Block Printing Starter Kit sits on my shelf already, and I will be ready to get into it this winter.

Meanwhile, I have been working out ideas in-studio to approach a style that works for block printing. What do you think?

An acrylic painting from a location sketch, to push myself to see shapes instead of lines.

An ink painting from a location sketch to think about values and large shapes of colour.

An ink painting from a sketch of Rohan, to think about simple, large shapes that do the job.

A study in red (on blue paper) at the water this week.

If you have any experience with linocut block printing, please share any thoughts, resources, ideas, advice, forewarnings!