Double Dan Art Inspiration
About a month ago a Youtube video was just the nudge I needed to start drawing again. "How I began my illustrated journal" by Sketchbook Skool (Danny Gregory). I recommend subscribing to Sketchbook Skool if you are an artist in need of encouragement or if you want to start or get back into drawing. For simplicity, I say "drawing" to include any type of art creation. In his video Danny shares how he was inspired to start illustrated journals over 25 years ago. Finding Dan Price's Moonlight Chronicles zine in a local music store played a key role in his journey. I'm slightly envious that he found the zine and wish I had also stumbled on it back in the day. Not only is Dan Price's art inspiring, but his journey toward a simple life in the country also resonates with me. It was charming to learn the Dans met up in real life and became friends in spite of their different lifestyles. Danny Gregory is a great communicator. He writes his Youtube scripts well and reads them with a pleasant voice and at a pace that makes it easy to soak in what he's trying to say.
Here are a couple other Sketchbook Skool videos that struck a chord with me personally:
Drawing is something that mostly dropped out of my life decades ago. The shortest version of my story is probably familiar to many: I drew when I was a kid, but I don't draw much anymore.
My skill as a self-taught artist never reached a level that could pay my bills as an adult. Very few artists or crafters by percentage succeed in that manner. It's simply false that everyone who puts in the effort will succeed. Rather, the truth is that very few artists will ever "make it" in that sense. For every famous artist, actor or musician we can point to as an example of success, there are hundreds or thousands who are unsung and never make a penny from their efforts.
Not everything we do in life needs to be the source of financial income. That's where hobbies fit into the picture. It's OK to do things we enjoy, even if they don't earn us money or have a meaningful purpose. However, speaking from my own experience, after many years of "no reward activities" it can be a struggle to continue with them. If you are a purpose-driven person, a hobby might need to be adapted to include a spiritual or relational aspect. Certain activities like watching TV or playing video games can feel unredeemable unless done with friends, for example. Otherwise you just have to throw up your hands and be ok with doing something just for the enjoyment of it. Of course it can also be useful to do things to get your mind off the stresses of life. But there is always a danger of pursuing escapism too much, so we must keep it in check.
Such thoughts don't escape me when I consider how I spend my time. I tend to feel at least slightly guilty when I do things that achieve no eternal purpose, have no relational aspect, and provide no financial reward. It doesn't mean I avoid taking on hobbies or activities altogether, but that nagging feeling is often there in the background.
Sometimes I hate being part of Western society which tends to villify anything that isn't considered productive or keeping busy. Such an attitude of pursuing constant goals and gain can rob all joy out of life. At the same time, this nagging feeling can also be our conscience (or the Spirit?) helping us not to entirely waste our lives. After all, one of my favorite movie quotes is:
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
Gandalf
That was a tanget, let's shift gears back to the drawing topic.
After of what felt like a random sequence of dead-end jobs, I became a web designer and developer for fifteen years. I also did some graphic design and photography. At the time this career felt right because it employed aspects of my creativity and nerdiness. It almost felt like getting paid to be an artist.
Eventually this line of work lost its fulfillment, and it ended in very serious burnout. I had to step away from it altogether. "Doing art" as a career often robs artists of their creativity and passion. While some can thrive in a marketing-centric career, it was soul crushing for me. All my creativity was simply being used to promote consumerism, and it felt very hollow. In many cases I didn't even believe in the products I helped to sell. Artwork felt more like work than art during that time. Once every year or two I feel inspired to create, often in connection with church events where myself and other artists collaborate on projects to grow community, communicate truth, or simply as an act of worship. Generally speaking, I barely feel like an artist anymore, and I stopped drawing regularly many years ago.
Surprisingly, even in the age of social media (I deleted all my accounts 🤢) and technology I still write in a journal with pens and ink. There are over 50 books filled with my handwriting from since I was a teenager. Out of all of those thousands of pages, very few have drawings on them. My journals aren't interesting to look at, and even my writing is a mostly drab description of a broken life. Many times I wanted to make my journals look more interesting, but I couldn't conjure art on a whim, and it simply "takes too long."
Time is the primary limiting factor that keeps my journals from being more interesting. Writing a couple pages by hand already takes hours. Sometimes I have many thoughts I wish to capture, but to do so could take half a day! I've stayed up all night countless times just to write 7 or 10 pages, and even then I eventually have to cut it off from exhaustion. The next day I nearly always forget what I was passionate about, so I don't conclude my thoughts. That is the primary reason I started blogging years ago. It is much faster to type than to write by hand. However, I don't want to stop writing in a journal since I've been doing it so many years already. Because writing takes so long, adding more time to illustrate my journals felt unthinkable until now.
As far as efficiency to fill page real estate goes, it's about the same or even faster to draw than to write. With my ability to fearlessly sketch quick gesture drawings, I can fill a page with a drawing in a few minutes. That same amount of thoughtful writing can take much longer. If I want to capture both written thoughts and draw, I'm not sure if it saves time to draw in the long run - but it is very satisfying to look at later on.
The aha moment that inspired me to draw again is the basic idea that "I don't care." I don't care if the drawings are good or bad. I don't care if they are complete. They might look like junk. When I was very young I would want to throw away drawings that didn't live up to my expectations. I no longer care about artistic mistakes. If I spend 5 or 10 minutes on a doodle or gesture drawing, it feels better than no drawing at all! Though Danny didn't say these things in his videos exactly, it's the message that I got out of it. When I saw some of the loose sketches in the videos, I thought to myself "I can do that!" In reality, I can't draw nearly as well as Dan Price or Danny Gregory, but again... I don't care.
I stripped myself of unbridled perfectionism decades ago. I can turn it on and off at will, so it no longer has to resemble OCD in every situation. I can now find satisfaction in loose, sloppy drawings - and the same goes for other areas of life. Sometimes the situation doesn't require perfection, especially when there is a very short deadline to get something done. As the final "lying" video above communicates, "incorrect" or fast artwork often looks more interesting. Childrens book illustrations that are imaginative and loose are among my favorites. While realism is an impressive skill to achieve, it doesn't really interest me anymore. AI also changed my attitude on this. It's kind of depressing that a computer can make something far more creative and better than anything I will ever make - and better than most artists can achieve in a lifetime. Again though, I don't care anymore what AI or another more talented artist can do. Give me a drawing that a friend or relative made and it will mean something to me. And memories that I record in a drawing today will mean something to me tomorrow. It's not about quality, but the person and care that an image is connected with.
For the moment, I actually like that I can't draw stuff correctly. Otherwise it would take too long, and it could become burdensome to continue daily. I never went to art school. I don't know how human anatomy is supposed to look, and everything I draw is full of errors. My shading looks flat instead of dimensional. I don't even care. I'm going to doodle and find joy in it again. Will it last a lifetime like it has for Danny Gregory? I don't know. It has lasted a month so far, and that has been enjoyable. I want to make my signature style of badly rendered art again. It can make me and a few friends smile on occasion, and that seems like good enough reason to do it. It's also very satisfying to flip through my first completed illustrated journal, and I feel motivated to continue.
Probably no one reads this, but hopefully it can be an encouragement to another struggling artist, just as I was inspired by the Dans in the video. Try to stop worrying about if you are "worse" than some artist online, or if AI seems to have replaced humans. Join me in being mediocre and not caring anymore. Alternatively, if improving your artistic skills is more interesting to you, go do that (just don't ask me for advice because I'm not that good). Either way, make stuff and be happy that you made something.
Since April 4th, I have drawn 80 doodles in my journals. That's an average of more than 2 per day, which is easily one of the most prolific periods in my life as an artist. I try to average one drawing per page of my journal. Sometimes I skip some pages if I need to write something uninterrupted. Other times a page might have a few doodles on it. I don't want this newfound artistic freedom - or the one sketch per page quota - to become a burdensome rule that I am bound to follow. If I stop drawing for a while, I can start again later.
Another benefit to this art journaling is that I write more often as well - almost every day. Not everything I write is meaningful and spiritual, but there is value in frequency.
I'd like to add these new drawings to my Esotropiart galleries, but my site needs a major revamp. I'll probably ask AI to recode it for me because I don't enjoy writing code anymore. For now perhaps I'll just add the sketches on my blog.