Insider #27 - "30 Days of Vancouver"
my big project of twenty twenty two!
👋🏼 Hello, Insiders*!
(*and all readers getting a free sneak peek!)
This may be the most important post I publish this year.
It sets my agenda for the rest of 2022, and will bear important repercussions on all future work. The plans have been taking shape since late last year, and now - on the cusp of execution - I find myself in the sweet spot between excitement and anxiety. I must stay here, because this is the place where great things become possible.
My big plans take flight with an ambitious project starting next month - 30 Days of Vancouver.
“Every day, for 30 days, I will visit different parts of Vancouver to draw TinyPeople.”
The goals of this project are to:
🌉 explore the commonalities of urban life in this diverse city of the world,
🌸 observe the coming of spring and its impact on city life, and
☕️ appreciate the beauty of our built environments.
Below, I dive into these three goals and the details of the project.
This post is going out to all readers of The SneakyArt Post, because all of you are a part of this adventure. But the final portion is paywalled to SneakyArt Insiders, because it concerns specific exclusive giveaways and rewards for those who support my work.
🎯 Goals
This project will help me to better understand this new part of the world, connect with the people that live here, and improve both as an artist and person.
🌉 Exploring the commonalities of urban life
SneakyArt evolved in part as a way for me to be comfortable around strange people in a strange place. For the past decade I have lived in foreign lands, thousands of kilometres from the place I would call home, among people I did not always understand. Observing human activity as a SneakyArtist has helped me look past the differences and find the qualities I share with the people around me. And in doing so I have come to a more nuanced understanding of urban life itself.
Urban life is full of commonalities which bind us to other people. How we stand in queues, how we use our parks, the etiquette around ordering coffee, standing under a red light - these are some examples of the unspoken agreements that keep our lives and cities running. I discuss this in Episode 36 of the Podcast with Rita Sabler.
This project will make you better able to identify the unspoken co-operations within your environment.
🌸 Observing the coming of spring and its impact on city life
Since moving to temperate climates I have witnessed the enormous changes in public life due to the change of seasons. When Fall departs and Winter arrives, there is a great hibernation, as we cut down on outdoors time. But with Spring, there is a great reclamation of outdoor life and public spaces. How does this manifest in our use of public spaces - like parks, cafes, or the beach?
This project will help you observe the different organs that compose the city-as-organism. How are they affected by changing weather?
☕️ Appreciating the beauty of our built environments
This is a question I have raised a few times in the Podcast -
Why is a city?
Not what, but why.
I contend that a city has no natural reason to be. It only exists in service of human activity, to make possible the many things its people want to do. Outside of human usage, a cafe is not a cafe, nor is a street-light a street-light.
This project will help you appreciate the idea of cities, and the complex, inter-weaving systems that enable urban life.
📜 The Plan
The project will express itself in the following ways -
✒️ TinyPeople drawings every day for 30 days
💡 Hand-written field-notes from the location
🎥 TikToks + Reels for every sketch
🎙 Audio notes every few days.
And I’ll be honest, I am terrified by these last two.
It is necessary but draining to think about videos every time I sketch. I want to share my process, but I dislike doing all the things around recording it. Audio notes are also intimidating, even though after nearly 40 episodes with guests I am confident expressing my ideas in my own voice. I cannot avoid the deep self-doubts that plague me as I think about just me and the microphone. Do I bring any value all by myself?
I don’t have an answer to the self-doubt.
I will push through. We will find out.
🗯 What Happens after 30 Days?
Day 30 will be the end of this project but the start of the rest of my year. At that time I will have -
🖌 over 30 pages of drawings,
👯♀️ up to 3000 unique TinyPeople,
✍🏼 over 30 pages of Field-notes.
I think that is sufficient material for a book!
I have already shared some passages from my next book - SneakyArt of Vancouver - with SneakyArt Insiders. This project will turbo-charge the writing process and propel me across the finish line.
More details soon, but I plan to self-publish SneakyArt of Vancouver because I enjoyed doing it the last time. This entire process should take until the end of the year, and I look forward to sharing the journey with you.
🚀 What Insiders Get
In the paywalled section below, I detail this project’s giveaways and rewards for the wonderful people who support my work.
To get Insider access, sign up for only $5/month or $50/year.
The cost of supporting SneakyArt is roughly one cup of coffee per month, or one big meal per year. That’s it!