art for all
Creative inspiration and advice to help you stop procrastinating and start making stuff. Any kind of stuff. Hosted by best-selling author Danny Gregory. Brought to you by Sketchbook Skool.
art for all
42: Passion
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From Season 3 of "art for all," the Sketchbook Skool podcast. Join artists/authors, Danny Gregory and John Muir Laws in rich discussions about the creative process.
This week John and Danny talk about their lifelong passions and how keeping a sketchbooks has helped deepen them. We also talk about reading in dreams, strategies for dyslexia, vigilance, and remembering the empanada.
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Intro
DannyWelcome to art for all the curious sketchbook. I'm Danny Gregory, and I am an, an artist and an author and the founder of sketchbook skool. I'm joined here by my friend, John Muir Laws.
John Muir LawsHi there I'm John Muir laws. I'm a curious naturalist with a sketchbook in my hand. And and a penchant for sketching birds.
DannyWell, so our conceit, when we make these podcasts is that we will start with a topic and then we'll see where it goes. We don't have a lot of structure. And today's topic is going to be passion. We're going to talk about the passions that we each have in our lives and how ultimately we've overcome the hard work that is required to, to become better at the things that we really care about, and also how we are using drawing in our lives. And we're going to give you recommendations for how you can make drawing into habit, make art into an important and rewarding part of your life. And we're going to have some interesting side conversations. I'm sure along the way, so let's get into it. Let's get started
John Muir Lawslooking forward to it.
DannySo I'd like, I suggest the topic of passion
Passion for nature
Dannyto you and you thought that that was an interesting topic. And so let's talk about passion. Like, what would you say is your passion?
John Muir LawsI am, I'm a hard coordinator nerd. I love, I love running around in the woods, turning over rocks, listening to birds, finding out how feathers smell. I am, I am, I'm endlessly fascinated by the beauty and wonder of the natural world. And so that, that can be, if I'm, if I'm traveling somewhere, I'm particularly interested in all the, the, the, the, the species that are special to this place, if I'm at home, I'm, I'm doing the same thing and just sort of digging deeper, but with more familiar critters, I absolutely am. Head-over-heels in love with the natural world.
DannyAnd where did that start?
John Muir LawsThat started really young from a very early age, I was, you know, into creeks and, you know, finding lizards and those sorts of things, both of my parents were amateur naturalists. So my dad was an amateur birdwatcher and my mother was an amateur botanist. Actually, they both had a passion for flowers and. And so we'd go on these family trips where we'd either be walking around with field guides or we would go out with dear friends of theirs. They had, this were very good friends with a wonderful botanist at the California academy of sciences. And so we'd go out with Gladys Smith and go bought thing with Gladys. And so these nature adventures were just part of the fabric of growing up from a very early age. My parents were also for vacations. They would just kind of go to a natural place, opened the door and let us out and, and, and let us run wild. Whether that was up in the Sierra Nevada the Trinity Alps on the coast of California, we go to someplace where there was kind of nature, either writ large or small, and then they would just give us permission to go run around and play. And I was. That, that was my, my element when I was at a Nino. It's still is, it's still absolutely it's. When I am traveling with, with family I have to you know, they, they all understand that, you know, daddy may not hear you when you're calling, when he's looking at a bird. It, it, it just sort of consumes it you know, a huge part of my, my attention span. There've been some, some classic awkward moments when, you know, in the middle of, you know, deep, important conversations where I notice there's a woodpecker out the window and want to change the subject and the I just can't get enough. Well
Dannybefore, before I answer that, I was going to say
Working with nature
Dannydid you have jobs that had nothing to do with nature?
John Muir LawsMostly. No. I'm from a very, my first real job was being a nature counselor at my boy scout camp. And then I did that for my summers and then became a a student interpretive aide at Tilden regional park doing naturalist programs at a at a, at a regional park in Berkeley when I was going to college. And there are parts of that where you have to sort of sit behind the cash register and do these sorts of things that people would come into the gift shop and. Ah, I didn't really like that, but then I would get to, you know, go out and look at the squirrels and figure out, like, I want to do a program on squirrels. How am I going to do that? How can I make that really interesting and, and, and get to teach and do nature things. And it's then since that time, it's, everything has been some sort of nature related, a nature related job.
Gerald Durrell
DannyIt's interesting. Did you ever read Gerald Durrell's books?
John Muir LawsNo. I, I haven't.
DannyWell, Joe Gerald Durrell, you know, he's, he was in naturalist and he was a zoo. He ran zoos. But he, when he was young, in fact, they just made a TV series about this called the Darryl's of Corfu, which is when he grew up in Corfu and he was completely. Animal and insect and everything to do with nature, man, from when he was really little and he was reading I think it's fever. I think it was, was this naturalist who he was really obsessed with. And and he, they moved, this is I think around world war II and they moved this to Corfu this little island in Greece and, you know, he's collecting animals in bottles and insects and, you know, bringing home birds and all this stuff. And he was you know, and this is from like six, seven years old, completely obsessive with it. And he wrote a whole series of books that were just about you know, growing up with his family, there were two or three about that growing up with this family of eccentrics, but also how he was always bringing home, like, you know, All kinds of animals. And then ultimately he goes, and he works in zoos, and then he goes on these collecting trips and he goes to different parts of the world and deals
Danny's passion for books
Dannywith that. So, which is kind of connected to what my passion was always was books. I always love reading books and I read every single book that Gerald Durrell wrote. Because that's, I would find any author that I liked. I would become a completist where I had to read everything that they'd written and you know, I was just obsessive about the books from when I was really, really, really young. And I had a bookshelf at the foot of my bed and I would lie in bed just there. I had a, I had a poster of all the breeds of dogs of the world next to the bookshelf. And I would lie in bed every night and I would study the bookshelf and this poster of dogs. So I knew every single breed of dog, I could identify any breed of dog. And I also would study this bookshelf and all the spines and I would rearrange the books and I would rearrange them in different ways. I would range them obviously by. You know the last name of the author, but then I would also rearrange them by the title of the book, or then I would rearrange them by categories, or I would rearrange them by the color of the spines and I would go the spectrum or I would rearrange them by the publisher. And then I would have like at that time, penguin had several different colors of additions of books. So they would have the orange ones that were the fiction, and then they would have the green ones that were history. And then there were the blue ones that were science. And then there were the black ones that were history and then there were Puffin books. And so I would arrange them all. So they would all be like neat arranged by the same color. And then I would say to my mother, come in, take a book. Move it to, to another place. And I'll leave the room. When I come back in, I'll be able to tell you what the book was, where it was and where you moved it to. And I covered. Yeah. So, and then I had a library cause I was so obsessed about libraries. I would, I put like the little, oh, I made the envelopes and the cards that went into the back of the book. So people and I would let kids come to my house and borrow books because, and I put little things on the spine, you know, little tank. And then kids would borrow books and they would never bring them back. And I had, no, I was missing that part of the library, which is like the library and police part of it. So eventually I had to stop doing that, but, but I
D.O.G.
Dannyjust, I love libraries and I also, and I love dogs. I might, so I wanted to become a veterinarian and my dog is barking.
John Muir LawsThere's also period. I want it to be a vet.
DannyWell, I want to be a vet so badly that, so my initials, Danny Gregory DG, I didn't have a middle name. So I adopted the middle name Obadiah so that my initials would be dog so that when I became a vet, my initials would be dog C. So yeah, so that's. Exactly Dr. Dog. And then I but then I discovered I ruse really. I just, I didn't, I couldn't think scientifically, so I couldn't, I couldn't, I was terrible at science and science class. I couldn't study chemistry. I couldn't study physics. And when I found out that to become a veterinarian, you basically had to be a scientist. That was the part that was missing in my plan. And I worked for a veterinarian when I was 11. I worked at a dog pound with the veterinarian and the dog pound was associated with the slaughterhouse that was next door. And so I would go with him. He was at the vet for the slaughter house as well. So I would go with him to that. And and then I would also clean out. Cages of dogs that have been brought to the dog. It was, it was kind of like the most horrible end of being a veterinarian, but that was my passion at that point was I definitely was going to become a vet and I wrote a book about dog care and I took photographs about how to look after a dog. And that was a big thing was writing this dog book when I was 10, 11, 12. Yeah.
John Muir LawsAnd, but isn't it interesting how, when you are just gripped by a project like that, you go to bed thinking about it, you wake up with five more ideas and you know, you're ready for the next iteration of, of dogs.
Sanity through books
DannyYeah. I mean, I I've had so many obsessions in my life, so many projects that I was just really crazy and passionate about. And a lot of them have revolved around books. I mean, I've always loved books. I wanted to write them. I wanted to, I've always collected them. You know, and I've of course read ridiculous amounts of books. When I was eight or nine, there was kind of a crisis because I had read all the books in the children's library, our local children's library. I'd read them. They told my mother, we have a problem because he's taken out all the books. But then we moved so often. And at one point when I was 10, 11, 12, when we were living in Israel, that's when I worked at the vet for the vet I went to school where everybody spoke Hebrew and I didn't speak Hebrew. And so they said to me, just sit in the back and you can do whatever you want and just stay out of trouble. So I would bring books to school and I would sit in the back and just read while sort of half listening to what was going on in the class. And I learned Hebrew by osmosis just because I was just surrounded all the time. But I also read so many books at that time. That was really like my obsession. And yeah, so books really kind of kept me seen in a way and kept me from feeling really lonely when I was always, you know, the weird new kid in places.
John Muir LawsSo
Challenges with dyslexia
John Muir Lawsthat's, my, my experience was so different from that. My so I am dyslexic. And so the mechanics of reading is extremely challenging. So when I it would say I'd be in high school and have to read something out loud. The kids in my class thought it was really funny because it would S what I would do is in my brain, I would look at a word and then I would rearrange the letters in that word around to make an entirely new word. And then that wouldn't make sense in context of the sentence. And I would be sort of subconsciously aware of that. So, without being aware that I was doing it, I would then rearrange the sentences. So that these words that I was thinking I was seeing would make sense. And so it would seem like there would be kind of a thread that my, my stuff would be following. And sometimes that's kind of fall off that little cliff, but, but it sort of seemed like I had a different version of the text and. It would be, no, it was just this, this creative act. And it wasn't something that I was intentionally doing. My experience was that I was reading the book.
DannySo you wouldn't be making up what you thought the book was saying, trying to just piece together. These,
John Muir LawsI can read this word. I think I've got this word. I think I've got this word. So the sentence must be this. And then then there's new words that I'm creating. And so it wasn't sometimes I would use words that are really there and sometimes I would be just sort of reading along and then I dropped back into the text, but then there'd be times where my brain would just start this sort of mix and match process. And I, it would seem as if I had a different text.
DannyIt's interesting because I often have dreams about reading. And when I read in a dream, it's kind of like that. Cause like when you read in a dream, you can read, you can read each word, but they don't add up to making sentences. They're just,
John Muir Lawsyeah. Like somebody once told me that was a way of telling if you're in a dream or not start reading something. And, oh, that's interesting that a and my experience has also been that yeah. When I read stuff in my, in dreams, it doesn't work out.
DannyIs it a similar thing? Like what's your experience of that?
John Muir LawsNo, like if you're reading something in a dream, we kind of aware that this doesn't make any sense.
DannyOkay. But you thought it did make sense or you were just trying to struggling to make it
John Muir Lawsmake sense? Yes. I would be struggling to make it make sense. And I thought that I was doing what it was saying. I thought that I was really reading. It was, it was this, this, this, this, this Homer John Muir laws hybrid, we come out of my mouth and,
Strategies for managing dyslexia
Dannyyeah. Yeah. So, so, so has it eased over your life? Like, are you less dyslexic now than when you were a kid or have you figured out strategies for dealing with it?
John Muir LawsI think for me, the big thing has been strategies of how you deal with it. When I am the more pressure I am under, the more these things start to bubble up. And so my
Dannystruggling with it,
John Muir Lawsbecause there, there, there are times that I look at the page and I, I can read along perfectly fine. And if I am. You know, snuggled up next to my daughter and reading her a story. I think it's, well, anytime that I do kind of get off the rails I'm going to be able to get myself back on, on my own pretty easily. But if it's a technical text and especially if there is urgency and pressure to, to read it or performance reading, as you might have to do in the test there are times when I can handle that. There are other times where it feels almost like this fog comes in between me and the, the text that I'm looking at. And it is hard for me to read. It is hard for me to understand. And. Then all these, then, then, then it sort of starts to kind of spiral on its on its own energy, because then that sort of brings you back to how you felt when you were a kid in elementary school and and sort of the, the shame and the humiliation of, of those experiences
Dannysounds
John Muir Lawsfrustrating. Incredibly frustrating. And, and I look at everybody else in my family, they were readers, they were readers and readers and readers very much like you're describing that they couldn't wait just to tuck into a book. And you know, I look at their, all these wonderful. Books that I w I know my brain would love to explore. And it's frustrating that they're, they they're, they're sitting there kind of on a shelf. And they're looking at me kind of taunting me that, you know, this is, this is, this is something that that you're, you're not going to, this is a door you're not going to get to unlock. And there are things like, you know, books on tape. There are those sorts of things, but the, you know, the experience of physically holding a book and being in a comfortable chair is, is really different than the physical experience of sitting there with headphones on listening to somebody tell a story. I really liked the aesthetic of the book. I liked the feeling of the book in my hand. I like, and what I do kind of read things. My brain will remember that, you know, there's, there's a relationship between whatever idea is being discussed and where it is on the page. I'll remember that. Yeah. That, that idea was on the top right-hand page. And so if I'm kind of going back and looking for that, I can have a look there and like, oh yeah, there it is. I like that about books, but just the mechanics of cracking that egg is I have read much less than you would think.
Books and nature
DannyThat's, that's what I was going to ask you about it, which is intriguing to me is that your passion for nature would seem like books would be essential to them. Like you would need to read books in order to know about. About a lot of those things. How have you navigated that?
John Muir LawsWell, I love books with pictures in them. Okay. Lots of nature books have pictures in them. So if you get a book about nature stuff, it's filled with pictures and diagrams. If you get a book about history, it's text, right. And everyone's, while I'm at, I love maps. I geek out on maps. I geek out on a good map, but so you can read a map. Oh, I can look at a Topo map and show you what the position of my hand, what the slope will be by looking at the spacing of the topographic lines. I can, I look at it at a, at a topographical map and it's like this, even the, not, not the ones with those, those shadows that they put on it, but just with all the little lines, like spaghetti over it. And it's like this three dimensional world popping out at me. And I know like, you know, if you know, you're going to be tired, hiking up this, and then, you know, it's. I yeah, the, the, the map reading is beautiful. Similarly doing geometry. My brain just wraps right around doing geometry, but my, I struggle with algebra because just as I reversed my DS in my BS and I mixed letters around in a word, oh yeah. You can imagine mixing numbers and symbols around, inside a formula with the same Gusto. That's not going to end up very well for you, but the ideas behind it are so much fun. What about,
Dannywhat about other things that are important? Like chemistry, physics Natural history, those kinds of things. Have you, have you, do you just avoid all those things if you found a way to learn about them? Yeah.
John Muir LawsYeah, chemistry is a big gap in my education. I, when I went to I went to the university of California at Berkeley Cal and was in a program there that let you, let you sit down with the course catalog for the university and pick out all the classes that you thought would be really fun to take. And I had a general theme of, of I'm interested in classes in, in education and natural history and. In those days, they didn't have a date. They said, in order to take this class, chemistry is a prerequisite, but they didn't have computer systems that enforced that. And so I just ignored all those prerequisites and I never took the chemistry. I think what, when I have kind of kind of geeked out with friends who are into it and they'd sort of show me things, I think it's beautiful. I think it's interesting. I think it's absolutely fascinating. And I would love. Go back and do a chemistry course, but I'd have to find the right one because at many, many, many institutions, chemistry is not taught out of a love of the physical world. It is taught as a course to weed out pre-med majors. It's a class that's intentionally taught in a way that is difficult. And and, and, and anal and sort of joyless
Dannychemistry. I remember so many of my friends just like killing themselves over it and wanting to become doctors. And
John Muir Lawsexactly. So it's in many institutions, it is, it is designed as a class four. It is intentionally designed as a class that will discourage a bunch of people from going into medicine.
Connecting art with other passions and challenges
DannySo how has drawing. Figured into all this. I mean, it would seem like there's a natural connection there. I mean, you mentioned the importance of visuals in books on nature, but when it came to your own use of art and embracing of art in terms of learning about nature, like, can you talk about how that has evolved and the outward role has played for you?
John Muir LawsAbsolutely. So in one of those, those early trips with Gladys Smith, the botanist and my, my, my, my, my family, my mom saw that I was sort of the shadow of, of one of her friends who had a sketchbook and Neela Watley was walking around these Meadows and fields, and she was sketching everything that she did. And I was watching everything that she sketched. So the next time we went out for a family adventure, my mom got for me Well, she, she called me around to the back of her old Plymouth Valiant and opened up the trunk and sitting inside was exactly the same kind of sketchbook with a spiral binding that Neela Watley used in the same pencils and all those tools. And I knew exactly what to do with those and she just let me loose. And so I was interested in nature. I just started drawing all the nature things I could find. I would, I would, I would draw the flowers, I'd draw the birds. I would draw the bugs. I would draw little landscapes. And that became just sort of another exp extension of the interest that I had in nature. So the more than that, I would go out in nature and geek out. The more I would be drawing and the more I'd be drawing, the more I'd probably be out in nature. So those two were interwoven. From a really early age, I was doing a form of nature journaling.
DannySo for you look, I mean, I think it's interesting to think back on like for a lot of people, when they want to learn to make, to draw, they want to learn to paint. It seems like a S like an enclosed thing. Like they w they want to just learn this skill for you learning this skill was tied to learning about what you cared about, the passion that you cared about it wasn't just about, oh, I want to draw. Well it was, that was that was a step towards this other thing that you needed to accomplish. Right,
John Muir Lawsexactly. Right. So for me, actually, it never has really been about making a picture. It has been about that. The pictures are a tool towards dropping into a deeper connection with an actual. To see into nature more deeply because when I have, when I go out and I don't have a sketchbook, I will observe. And I, I am palpably aware of the degree to which I am not paying as close attention. And and my memory for what I see is so much worse when I'm just doing it on my own. Without that sketchbook in my hands, the moment I have a sketchbook in my hands, I'm looking again and again and again and again, and I'm constantly going like, oh, I never noticed this before. Oh, look at that. That's really interesting. And it's the, the, the, the sketchbook prompts me to see between all the things that I already know. Rather than just look at those things and kind of reconfirm like, yes, there's black on the throat of that bird. I, and I, and I knew that before. Yep. That field mark is still there just sort of looking at the field marks, but if you're going to be making a sketch of it between all those field marks are all these other things that you never have really quite precisely articulated to yourself. And then when you have to, to commit to those marks on paper, it allows you to do that. And that's,
Advantage to drawing over writing
John Muir Lawsthat's one reason that I think that that's an advantage that the drawing pictures has over writing is that the drawing forces you to kind of get into those interstitial spaces, the, the places between the observations and if you're just making a bullet point list of the observations. Bye diff by default, the things that you're not mentioning are not mentioned, but if you're making a sketch, then all that stuff, the S the articulated observation, and what is between that, and the next articulated observation has that forces you to actually look in that place between the observations. So
Dannyfor you, drawing is a means to answering questions or a means to learning more, which makes it a really different practice than
Drawing as a means to answering questions
Dannyquote-unquote art. I mean, it's, it's like, it's like learning to use binoculars or a microscope. It's it is it is your companion. That's helping to point things out to you. But it's not about, you know, how to get good granulation techniques with a watercolor or, you know, it's, it's, it's not about those things at all. It's it's and I, and I think that that's not, I think that that to me is what it should always be. Really. I think that that's what drawing is for me in a kind of a slightly different way. But that same thing that it drawing is a means to understanding, to connecting, to seeing, to being present all those sorts of things. It's not just about hanging something on the wall or putting it in a gallery or any of those things. That's, that's a weirdly, completely different practice that has nothing to do with. Yes.
John Muir LawsYep. And, and, and it's also interesting. I, but the things that I'm the most interested in looking at are people's sketchbooks rather than finishing. Paintings, because in that sketchbook is all the thinking process and this sort of immediate experience of, you know, this person was on this street corner and they were looking down the street. And then this is, this is what kind of, this is what was going on there. I, I love looking at that as opposed to when that kind of gets, you know, level levels of glaze and gloss over it. I sometimes lose the immediacy of that experience. And I can be impressed sort of technically at wow. That is that's, that's an incredible rendering. And I can appreciate that on, on, on a different, on different terms. But I find for me, I'm not saying that I dislike those, those, those really intensely rendered things. I have great respect for it and it's beautiful. But I find the stuff that I'm the most interested in is show me the sketches that went into making this picture. Yeah.
DannyYeah. I mean, I think, I think it's like there, the evidence of your observation, and then you think about like Lewis and Clark and their illustrated journals or Charles Darwin and his illustrated journals. So you think about you know, so many surgeons that I've met who draw, you know, they draw. Their procedures, they draw, you know, their plans. They draw what they're observing to me. Those, those things have always fascinated me. I mean, I think that's always what I wanted was to have sketchbooks that were like that, that were annotated, that had little call outs that had maps that had diagrams, you know, I've always thought that that was really fascinating and I, and, and beautiful as well. I just love the look of that. And maybe, maybe what I'm liking about the look, which I hadn't really thought of before is this process of learning and discovery. That's somehow what is in embedded in this journal page is the, is the experience of that moment, of that time of being here, right? The idea that this drawing is actually being done in the, in the Bush, that these notes are, you know, that I can be there in your, yes, I can stand in your shoes. Bye bye by looking at this word, document, this process document in a way,
John Muir Lawsand just sort of think of the, the difference between looking at somebody's notebook with their description of what the bird was was, was doing. And then if they were to then write that up as here's the behavior of the bird, that would just be so much more of a, kind of, of a dry, sort of a description of the experience rather than sort of being in there. Like here's, here's how this discovery unfolded. And we have the opportunity to kind of, to do that for us. If we, if we think of the journal as this It's this, it's this extension of your mind of your thinking process of your excitement of your engagement with whatever is before you and whatever is, is, is resonating for you. If you can go down on that page, you can get a bunch of those observations together there, they create their own little energy, by the way, they kind of interact with each other on the page. That that for me is so just it's joyful and, and, and fascinating.
DannyAnd I don't think it's limited to nature journaling. I mean, I feel like I, what I've been doing for a couple of decades is applying that basic process to just regular life, you know, to, this is what the bus looks like. This is what my tuna sandwich looked like. With additional notes about, you know, the elements that went into it and the situation in which I was experiencing it. And, you know, here's what it tasted like. And here's the waiter that served it to me. And, you know, here's the receipt from, you know, from what I paid for it. And here's my, you know, here's my everyday life treated as if I was, you know, a naturalist studying me. You know, I think that that's like, that's totally doable. I mean, nature's is outside of you. And so therefore you're looking at it and discovering things about it because it is unusual, but I think you can turn it around and aim that at yourself. You know, I do self portraits and I annotate them, you know, drawing my face and saying like, why am I, why do I look this way today? You know, why am I this way? Why am I using these tools to capture who I am? I think, I think that this whole process of. Visual sort of investigation. I
Travel journaling and being intentional in the moment
Dannymean, another obvious application is travel journaling. You know, that you can be as scientific and absolve as important to observe, not just, this is what the Eiffel tower looks like, but you know, this is what my croissant looks like, and this is what the new Stan looks like. And this is all these other things it's about being alive, you know, and being fully aware.
John Muir LawsYes. It's the journal. Is this invitation for you to experience your life more vividly, to be intentional about noticing. Exactly where you are right at this moment, because the thing is, if we're not, if we're not doing that deliberately, our brain doesn't do that. We will skip past, do we say, like, I think that your brain will kind of assess, you know, for your survival, you need to notice this and this and this. And once you've got those things, let's, let's check out and you can be traveling somewhere and, you know, here's this totally foreign experience. Your brain is sucking in a tiny little amount of that. And, but if you're journaling in that moment, there's so much more that is going to that. You're going to notice on the spot and be able to remember later on, and I've in the past, I was doing this for nature and sort of in the last. Year or so my process is now starting to also include more of, you know, what are the shenanigans that are going on with my family? What are my daughters up to or I'm, I'm traveling someplace and, and, you know, here is, here is the woman that I met on the street here is the I have, I, I see a lot of people I've, I've seen that, like, you know, you're drawing your food. And I was recently in Ecuador and I drew food. I think I just drew a food in my journal, the and the food that I chose to draw. I can now remember it more vividly. I can tell you what it it, it, it, it, it tasted like, I remember that experience. The stuff that I ate that morning, that I didn't journal about is gone. My brain has
Dannygone to sketchbook, Ziploc. Yeah.
John Muir LawsThis sketchbook is Ziploc. It's this it's going to keep keep that stuff fresh. Not mixed around with everything else.
DannyYeah. It's funny. I was thinking before, when you said that there are things that our brain needs to focus on to keep us safe, right? So, you know, you have this experience where you see animals all the time that are. You know, it would be a state state of heightened alert because there could be a threat or they're looking for food, but then they're also spending a lot of time just like sitting on the phone line, looking out into nothingness, you know, you see a cat just like staring at the window or dozing, like in some ways that's sort of like the natural state of a lot of beings on this planet. Right. Which is, which is if it isn't a threat or it isn't an essential, then I can tune out. And I think it's true of a lot of people. A lot of the time that we can spend, it's like, okay, I've done my job. You know, I've got my dinner and now I'll dislike. Look at Instagram or I'll watch TV, or I'll take an app. You know, it's really easy to you know, to return to that state because it is a natural state. It is natural to basically just not live. Fully all the time.
John Muir LawsYeah. Vigilance takes work. It takes effort. It takes intentionality, it takes calories and yeah. So your brain is going to economize and that goes like, you know, we can you know, you know, the, you know, you're at, here's a novel thing that has entered my environment. You know, you know, we're at, you know, initially maybe, you know, Def con three or four, and until we kind of assess like, no, this is not going to eat me. This is not a threat. And then you kind of, your brain goes well, can I eat it? No, I can't. Okay. I basically got this figured out and you see this actually I think happened with all the time with, with, with birdwatchers. So if you go out on a bird watching trip watch what people do. They will see a new bird. Everybody will orient to. And there'll be looking at it and like, oh my gosh, then everybody's talking about the bird. And then the minute somebody says, oh yeah, that's a, that's a, an indigo bunting. Everybody goes like, oh, an indigo bunting. That's cool. And then what wa watch, what happens once it's identified once you know what it is, you've got a little label for it. Everybody's brain goes like, okay, that level of vigilance is now no longer necessary. We know what it is. It's an indigo bunting. And they go, all right, now what's this over there. And they'll, they're there. They bounce on to the next thing. The, the journal is a way to keep you on it, to get you to, to, to, to stick with, with one set of observations longer. And what you find is that. Beyond where you normally stop looking, there are layers and layers and layers of subtlety and beauty and wonder. And every time you you'd say do a self portrait, if you notice something a little bit different, you know, that's, that may have been there for a long time, but this is the first time that you've actually noticed that. And there's always something to learn from that same with looking at the indigo bunting again and again, and again and again. Yes. You've seen that bird before, but have you seen this bird on this day and what can, what about that whole phenomenon? Even if it's an individual you've observed before observing your cat, you know, what is going on here? That, that is new to me.
DannyYeah, I think too often we're like people working on a jigsaw puzzle, you know, so you're looking around, you're putting the jigsaw puzzle together and then you think the jigsaw puzzle is done and there's nothing less interesting than a completed jigsaw puzzle. Right. So you just sort of move on. I think similarly, when we travel, we're in a constant state of vigilance, you know, right. Everything is new, everything is different. It's not that we're threatened, but we're in that mode right. Of, of heightened observation. And then we come home and we're just, we turn all those things off, you know, and we don't look at our own environments. We don't look at our, at ourselves and our lives with that same level of, of interest, you know, and we can take it for granted and we can just. Not even notice stuff, you know, it's like people not noticing their spouses, you know, not saying, oh, is that a new dress? That kind of thing, where we just, we just relax it. And in part is, as you say, it takes a lot of energy to keep that going. And we are predisposed to, to be, you know, to be conservative about it, to not be on all the time. I think certainly when it comes to being creative, maybe this is why people have a suspicion of creative people being creative and using your imagination all the time takes a lot of energy. In some ways it's an unnatural thing to do. You know, I mean you, because creative people are always coming up with problems. Everything is a problem to be solved, but in the state of nature, we only really want to solve problems that are actual problems that we have to deal with. We don't concoct problems, right? It's
John Muir Lawsnot, that's not efficient. You're, you're fighting against sort of the, the efficiency of your speeding. No for your survival. It is okay if you stop looking now, but there is, there are infinite layers of complexity and beauty that are outside of the point where we usually stop paying attention. And then the, the journal is the invitation is the key to Pierce through that veil right into, into the undiscovered country, into the, this, it I'm constantly amazed. When I, when I look at familiar objects, how there are just levels of mystery. Levels of complexity in these things that I, I thought I knew. And so I kind of would go around with sort of an illusion, an illusion of knowing of that sort of what my environment is like. But if I really kind of drill down on any one thing very quickly, I get to the point where I don't have, I don't have answers anymore. And I don't know, I really don't know how this works
Dannybecause, because
Labels
Dannywe have labels, right, human, you mentioned once we can label the bird and we can put it into a box and we can move on and labels apply to certain generalities, but there's so many specifics about every individual case. So there aren't words for a lot of things there aren't classifications for a lot of things. And we have this tendency to want to classify. Oh, I know what that is. I can move on or, you know, or you see some person you're like, what does that person, oh, it's it's the, the plumber from next door. Okay. Then I don't need to think about it anymore. Like we want to apply labels and categorizations to everything, and it's not helpful when it comes to drawing because you know, it's, I mean, I, I always am sort of, I don't know, not terribly happy when people say, I don't know how to draw X. I don't know how to draw hands. I don't know how to draw eyes. I dunno how to draw buildings. I don't know how to draw cars. And I think, well that's because you are trying to draw the label. Ah, right. You think, you think, yes, we know there's a trick to doing drawing this particular thing, but if you remove the label, drawing a car is the same as drawing an eyes. The same as drawing, you know manga character, whatever it is, it's not there. Aren't labels just get in the way, most of the time of our ability to observe and our ability to create, because we want to move beyond that. We want to create and find and see things that are new and different. That don't have labels that the take away that you know, that, that tendency
John Muir Lawsto explore. I think that may be one reason why I like sort of this idea of nature journaling, and sort of essentially the process for nature journaling as you go out and you find some sort of a phenomena in nature that and that can be something that you're drawn to either through wonder and curiosity or through beauty and. Then you try to document and describe that in your journal and you you intentionally ask yourself questions about it and you think about like, what does this relate to that I've thought before sort of a process of just try to get the most out of interacting with this phenomenon. But if you're wondering, how do you draw it? Well, it happens to be sitting right in front of you. And so it's not like, how do I draw waterfalls sitting here in my apartment? I need to draw a waterfall and I try to draw a waterfall. It doesn't look like a waterfall. I try to draw an elephant right now. It's not going to look like an elephant because. There no elephant in front of me because you're
Dannydrawing, you're drawing a picture
John Muir Lawsin your head. You're, you're drawing your symbol of right. Your, your, your, what your brain is sort of, kind of sub you're drawing the label, right. As opposed to drawing the elephant. But when there's an elephant out there, the, that the secret there is to that's what artists use, all these sort of strategies, like look at the negative shapes, because if you're trying to get yourself to, to look at, to look at this object in a way that is going to allow you to approach what is really there, rather than that label in your head of how you think an elephant should be shaped, how an elephant should look.
DannyYeah. I mean, I was trying, I was thinking about how, in some ways, you know, your passion for nature and my passion for books are in a way connected, because they're both about a hunger for learning. Right for new experiences to try and, and to, you know, I mean, nature is infant. A lot has been discovered about nature, but there's still an infinite amount to learn. Yes, you, and when you go and look at birds, you could read every book. There is about birds and you could probably learn a huge amount there, but you could also learn a huge amount just by observing the bird,
John Muir Lawsyou know, and do it on. And all the stuff that is in books came from somebody else, just like you sitting on a stump and staring at the birds, and then they put it down in a book. And what we have been able to notice and describe is just the thinnest little slice off the top of the stack of what is, as you're saying, what is possible to be known is, is infinite. The birds
Observations
John Muir Lawsare, they're just infinitely complex, and we've learned a little bitty bit about them. And, but the. Yeah. Th that, all that stuff that is in those books came from, came from somebody all at the start sitting and making those observations. All those maps maps came from somebody looking at the shape of the landscape. And then you abstract that onto the map
Dannyand in some ways knowing too much, I mean, if you read a lot of books about birds, when you looked at an actual bird, you might be looking for confirmation of the things that you've learned, you might be less actually. I mean, if you were able to be fully present and observe the bird as if you'd never seen it before, and as if, you know, knew nothing about it, your observation might be much richer and you might actually see things that you wouldn't find in a book possibly.
John Muir LawsYeah. And that's one reason why I changed my approach to drawing. My approach to sketching birds. If you've, if anybody is listening to this has got a copy of my book, drawing birds on how to draw birds. I've got this. Yeah. I've got a technique, a method in there that I described for here's my approach to drawing birds. And it works. You can get a really solid drawing of the bird that way, but what it the danger of it is that you can kind of get into, then the routine of drawing that bird, that bird that you can draw well, and that's going to be different than the bird that is sitting out there on the branch. And what I found is that a bunch of my birds started looking rather similar. They would have, you know, the right beak shape. You know, primary extension length, the, you know, all these right little details, but it wasn't that bird that was out there. So the, the way I kind of changed that up instead of starting with, you know, this posture line and then building up the body and then putting a head on it and then wrapping contours around it. Now I start with a negative shape along the back of the bird. What is for that bird that is sitting there? What is its negative shape at this one little moment? And if you watch the bird for a little while that shape is going to be changing. So each one of those postures is going to be a different negative shape along the line of its across its bat the back of its head and its back. And then I put in a little spacer for its head and then look at another one. Negative shape under its throat and the start of its chest. And what I'm finding is that with this approach, that is where the, your first lines are going to be. So intimately tied to the nuance of that little bird's posture that I'm now getting birds that look much, much more like that bird at this
Dannymonth. So not just the, not just the species, but that individual,
John Muir Lawsright? That, that individual, how it's holding its body at that moment, how fluffed up or sleek down it is. And that's, that's some of the beauty about those strategies that, that artists use, like the idea of a negative shape is that you're, you're looking at the air next to the bird. I need to draw this bird. So I'm gonna look at the shape of the air next to this bird and get that in. And then that's going to be. That then defines the form of the burden, the posture of the spirit and everything flows out from that. And then I can superimpose on top of that. Here's what I know about how the beak attaches to the head and the eye. You know, it's going to have these sort of feathers around it. So I'm going to put those in there, but I, I then can put that in, in conversation with those negative shapes. And it's, it's a much more intimate way of starting a sketch of a bird,
Dannybut I think it's also a way of drawing. Most things like in other words, those things are observation or those are things that you could use to draw a person and you could use to draw a shoe. Using negative shape taking measurements, re looking at angles, looking at the relationships of loneliness of things, all those things apply to everything. Those are the building blocks of drawing and, and of seeing and of paying attention. So there aren't tricks necessarily. And what you described, isn't a trick. It is a way of seeing in a way of doing the naturalist, as opposed to, you know, I mean, I just despair when you see those things of like, you know, how to draw Superman or draw, you know a car it's just those
John Muir Lawsw where they have this sort of a formula, you'd start with a box. Then you put this wheel on here, and this wheel on here, and you're going to end up with. A drawing of a truck, you're going to end up with this drawing of a truck,
Dannyright? Exactly. It's, it's, it's, it's a series of building blocks as if you were building an Ikea cabinet or, you know you know, thing out of Lego. That's not what drawing is for. It's not designed. I mean, you can, you can end up with copying of series of steps and end up with the same Ikea cabinet or the same, you know, space, shuttle, Lego, or the same, you know, drawing of a, of a schnauzer. But that, isn't what we're talking about. That's not art making, that's not being present in the moment and that's not going to give you the benefits of art, the benefits of drawing, because, because just like building an Ikea cabinet, isn't going to give you the benefits of being a carpet. You know, you're not going to have skills and self-expression, and you know all the other things that will come from actually being a craftsman from just following a set of steps, similarly drawing, you're not going to get all those benefits. We are always talking about on this show about how drawing changes your life changes, your brain changes your, you know, your, your perception of the world around you and what beauty is.
John Muir LawsYes, that's beautifully said. And, and, and you, you also got me thinking about there that the, the thing that, that is missing
What's your "why"
John Muir Lawsin those, you know, how to draw 50, you know, trucks, boats, and airplanes books, is that they, they show you, I'm going to draw this line, this line, this line, and then you get this drawing. But what you're missing in there is why are you making that. Why are you making that line? If you could kind of unpack that, where to sort of say, like, I'm going to start with some of these sort of basic shapes and I'm kind of abstracting it this way, but just to sort of say like, you know, draw this circle, then draw this circle, then erase this one and bisect this one, and look, it's an owl. That misses the point of why you were choosing to draw those lines in that way. So if you though are teaching somebody, here's how you look at a native negative shape and, or measure an angle. And now I can apply that in this step-by-step and here I'm going to do that. And this is an example of this sort of larger category of I'm going to look at a negative shape and that's going to kind of guide this line. I think that maybe that's why people say like, you know, I don't know how to draw an, an out. And because if you're number one, there's no owl right in front of me right now. And secondly, if I'm thinking that there's a specific sweet sequence of things that I'm supposed to do to draw that out I'm going to run into trouble. If somebody
Dannygave me the instruction set, then I could put this thing together. But that's not, what's missing. What's missing is this core understanding. And I think it goes back to your passion for learning about nature. That's where your drawing stems from. It stems from your passion, your desire to know this thing. And for me, like my passion for books also comes from a desire to know, to understand, to be curious, to try ideas, to, to put myself into. Different people's experiences to travel the world in my mind, and to travel the history of the universe. In my mind, those are all the things that books have
John Muir Lawsin other people's minds, too, you know?
DannyRight. Exactly. It gets you, it gets you, the, it gets you to experience somebody else's view of the world, which drawing can do too, you know, but I think that for me, the connection with the queen books and drawing is in one way that I see books have led me to writing writing is also about perception, observation, creation, all those things. There are certainly steps to writing. There are things that you can take classes in on how to write. You can certainly learn the rules of grammar and sentence construction and all those kinds of things, but in the end, Writing like drawing is a matter of doing that. You have to go out and write a lot and you have to observe a lot. You have to read a lot, you have to do things that make all these steps into a completely natural way of being. And that when you sit down to write, you don't think about any of those things. Just like when you sit down to draw, you don't think about any of those steps anymore. You just simply start doing, it becomes completely natural to you, and it becomes an extension of who you are. So then when you draw that way, where you write that way, you are writing in the unique way, unique to you that is built on everything that you've ever experienced, that your, your expression is completely authentic to the life that you've led. And that's what makes. Art
It takes passion
Dannythat's what makes it compelling. And, but it takes it takes passion for the whole process to put in the work, the work that's required to get to that state of fluidity and flow this you know, it takes, it's taken me decades, decades of willingness to experience humiliation and, you know, humiliating mistakes, wasting time, and people in making these errors along the way, you know, and going through all those steps and still wanting to do it, nonetheless, because learning something, if you hate doing it, if you're not. Deeply motivated by where it's going to take you it's really painful experience. And we've all had that experience of class. We had taken school that we just had no idea why we were learning it. And it was just a grueling ordeal. But if you were motivated by some thing that you really wanted to do that all those things are just steps along the way. They're just, you know things you have to do to get to that goal. You've got to keep. Practicing. I think about like, you see kids walking around with a basketball, like, you know, are kids who are like natural basketball players and they carry basketball with them all the time. They're always dribbling. They're always, you know, sitting in a chair and they're driven and they always, they're always doing it. It's always on, it's always part of who they are. You know, I've seen kids like that who are musicians, just having a guitar in their lap while they're having a conversation, always doing it. You know, I think that that's the state that you want to get into where you love this thing so much that you th the work isn't work, it's just playing. And
John Muir Lawsso if I could piggyback on that. Yeah. The.
Learning the empanada
John Muir LawsIf you're, let's say you're, you're S you're starting this drawing process. And, you know, you're, you're talking about you've, you've been doing this for decades, and you're now kind of got this, this gotten to this point where this is, it's sort of become a part of you and you're getting this, this, because you've built up the skill level. There's this real deep pleasure that you get from engaging with your for engaging with your sketchbook, but at the start, when you are, if you're just first picking this up, you say I'm not there at that point. Let's say I'm new to, to, to, to drawing. So then what is going to motivate me? This is kind of just jumping back to what you're, what you w what you led with about the idea of learning. What I encourage people to do is to make that their goal make your goal not to create a pretty picture, but your goal is to somehow pay more attention to this moment, to this building, to this bird, to this landscape. And can I notice something about it that I otherwise wouldn't have noticed? And can I do that in a way that's going to allow me to remember this more vividly in a way that I otherwise would and would have forgotten. And so if taking these, these, these notes in your journal, if that if that allows you to remember the. Then whatever marks you put on that piece of paper are successful. And that is good because then this moment with the empanada is so much more yours and that's, that's really beautiful. That is, that is success. And so you're going to notice the empanada. You're going to remember the empanada. And so then, you know what, you can do the same thing with that stump over there, and you can do the same thing with the Cardinal and as you do this, these things that you just sort of drop a little bit more. Attention into all of a sudden, you like the empanada better. All of a sudden that stump in your backyard becomes one, not just us stump, but these stumped, this sort of wonderful, gnarly old crusty stump with that shelf, fungus sticking out the side of the, of it. And it's actually not just any stump, it's that stump and it's special. That Cardinal becomes a bird that you have a deeper, more meaningful connection with because you paid that extra little bit of attention. And then because you start doing all these things, you now have drawn the empanada and the Cardinal and the stump and the, because you are repeating this process of you're looking at something and making marks on a piece of paper, the Cardinals are going to start looking more like Cardinals and the stumps, more like stumps and the empanada is more like empanadas. And then you're getting positive reinforcement. From the process, not just of having noticed the empanada more and remembering it more, but you then kind of look down and go like, that looks like an empanada, right? And so you're also getting positive reinforcement then from the process of drawing itself. And so let's say you don't have an initial passion for, for drawing that's okay. This will help you develop a greater passion for the empanada, for the stump, for the Cardinal, for the elements, the daily presentations that make up the fabric of your life. And in addition to that, it's going to give you this gift of being able to render in visually represent all these things that you see. And so. The gift of paying this kind of attention is that you also get this bonus of then being able
Summing up
John Muir Lawsto learn how to draw which
Dannywell, and thus concludes this episode of remember the empanada, you know, it's funny. Cause I was thinking about like when teenagers learn to drive teenagers really want to learn to drive. They don't want to learn to drive because they to operate a motor vehicle. They weren't learn to drive because they want to hang out with their friends or go on a date or get away from their parents or all those kinds of things. There's a motive behind why you want to learn to drive. So you don't think of it as learning to drive. You think of it is as freedom as being yourself, all those kinds of things and dry and drawing can be the same way. Right? The drawing like you're learning to draw because you want this end thing. A juice, your empanada, or we want a better understanding of nature, or you want to be present in the present, or you want to just feel better about yourself. That's the reason to do it. And so if your drawing turns out not to be like a photo who cares, you know, it's just like, just like, if you learn to draw, if you draw when you were 15 and you were 16, when you were driving you, weren't an incredibly good driver. So what you didn't care about that you didn't care if you rear-ended somebody in a parking lot, you didn't care. If you got a speeding ticket, you know that you wouldn't kick yourself saying, oh, I'm such a lousy driver. You, those were just, you know, a price you had to pay along the way to learning, to get your freedom. And that's why you're drawing. You're drawing to get some other thing and think about that. What is your passion? What is the passion. That's going to allow you to put in the work to jump over the obstacles, to survive the pains and humiliations of the process in order to get to that place that you want to get to.
John Muir LawsAnd you don't need some Malcolm Gladwell in 10,000 hours of, of, of, of work to kind of get to the point where you're getting real positive reinforcement from the marks that you put down on. Oh yeah.
DannyYou could do a blind contour drawing right now and get that feeling. And it could be the first one you ever did. And if you doubt that, watch a five-year-old with a box of crayons, you know, they're just loving the process and that's why they're doing it and they're not critiquing it. All right. Well, we are way beyond our time limit, but I think it's been a fun conversation. You know, we are passionate about this as you can tell. So let's wrap it up until next time. This has been a lot of fun.
John Muir LawsDanny. Thank you so much for spending some time sharing with me, your passion about books and how that ties into just thinking about how we engage with anything with our journals. I really have enjoyed this conversation.
DannyI've enjoyed it too until next time. Bye-bye