This week John and Danny talk about the roles influences play in our creative development and how to find and benefit from people and sources that can inspire you.
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 the roles influences play in our creative development and how to find and benefit from people and sources that can inspire you.
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.
I'm Danny Gregory and I'm an artist and a writer and a teacher and a guy who has a podcast with his friend, John Muir laws, John say hello.
John Muir Laws:Hey, I'm John Muir Laws. I am a scientist with a sketchbook and Danny's pal.
Danny Gregory:Here we go. Every week we pick a theme and we try to stick to it. We'll see how we do today. But our theme today is influencers. Who's influenced us to be, become the artists, the creative people, who we are. And also, you know, what can you do to be inspired? How do you use influences and What is, what is the path? What is the path and how can others help you to achieve it? So let's jump into that and see where it takes us.
John Muir Laws:This will be fun.
Danny Gregory:Maybe it won't be great. We'll find out. I think it's already get it's already great, but let's see how it go. So where are you? You're in a different different plates, quite nice looking room.
John Muir Laws:Oh, that's right. I am at a secure undisclosed location. Th keeping away from the Alma Cron variant, and the have a chance to explore some really beautiful Oak Woodlands and get out with some nature and really enjoying that. So the I'm down in, on a on a nature preserve that is in the vicinity of Monterey bay.
Danny Gregory:I see. So not terribly far from
John Muir Laws:your house, but well, not, not terribly far, but it's, it's great to get a, a big dose of green and see. What wild flowers are popping out on the hillsides. The went for a hike yesterday with my wife and little daughters and found my first Johnny jump up of the year. So that's a lovely little yellow violet.
Danny Gregory:Oh, I see. I wasn't sure if it was a type of toad or something, but okay. Okay. Good. It's
John Muir Laws:a good name though. My, my daughters really liked the name Johnny jump up, so
Danny Gregory:great. Well good. So it sounds like spring is vaguely coming. Is that awesome? Well,
John Muir Laws:yeah, we do spring early, here in California, once it rains things start to green up and all the wild flowers come out. So we're kind of, we're not on the schedule that most of the, the, the, the country of the world is, or, or places with with places with only four seasons. We have. Our we're now kind of getting into our green time. So this is mushroom season out here. This is first wildflower season. It's it's a really exciting time of the year that sort of the mountains are coming alive because we got a really good soaking rain storm just a little while ago. It looks like we're still in for a drought, but we are able to get one really big rich rainstorm.
Danny Gregory:That's great. Well, here it's it's been pretty cool and actually our pear trees are in the process of losing their leaves and starting to blossom simultaneously. So it's like autumn is very legal here. So most of the, most of the trees that are going to lose their leaves have started to do. Or have completed doing it in our pear tree does this weird thing where it does both at the same time. So it's like dying and being born simultaneously. So yeah. Wow. Of
John Muir Laws:have an aura Boris cycle of life. There's, there's some kind of metaphor happening right in there and I'm not exactly sure where it is, but that's cool.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. So it's, it's also like horrible for people with allergies. Like my wife, I actually never had allergies before in my life. I've had them since I came here. So you're always sort of, you know, coughing and we have a new thing, which we term folded, which is over it's like COVID but it's pho. So it's
John Muir Laws:pho. Yes. Okay. Like that the every time I kind of that's, that's not, that's not so folded.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. Pass it on to your wife and maybe it can become part of the, of the literature, but it's, it's. Common with us because we are hypochondriacs on top of everything else. So you you know, you develop something and when, you know, when you start, you nose gets a bit runny or you're, you know, you feel a little bronchial, it's definitely a sign of impending. So, but actually my brother-in-law who's part of our pod because the reason that they were just the two of us and then my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, he tested positive, like three days ago. We haven't seen him in a week, but he's recovering from it. Okay. But man, it just seems like it is, it's like an epidemic it's everywhere.
John Muir Laws:Oh gosh. Yeah. Yeah. And what's, what's so insidious about this new variant Is, or perhaps from the viral perspective, what is so perfectly brilliant about it? You know, this is, is, is to be able to be so if you're not as damaging to the host, so a lot of people are not getting symptoms that are as severe, then that host is able to carry it around to more places. Right. And you know, so if you're more infectious but less detectable, that is there's, there's, that's, that's, that's exactly the, that's the sweet spot that you want to be. Right. And, but then, you know, there's some individuals particularly 60 and older, And people haven't been vaccinated and people with underlying conditions who are getting really hit by this thing. So that emergency rooms are still just overflowing, even though on some people they have just sort of a suite of milder symptoms, they say, oh, this Alma crowd isn't that serious because I you know, my, my, my cousin got it and did pretty well, but that's not everybody.
Danny Gregory:And also who wants to fall until they get sick. Like, if you can avoid getting sick, try to avoid it.
John Muir Laws:That's that's right. So if you can I figured that this thing is so infectious. At some point, we're going to get it, but what you just, what you don't want to do is to get it right now, because right now our, our emergency rooms are overflowing. And those, you know, the monoclonal antibodies, the, the. The medicines that were developed. If when you kind of an early onset of it, you can take this medicine and it makes your experience much better of the four types that we have. Three of them, the three most sort of widespread of those are not are not really effective against And so we're, it, it is, it's a bad time to get this. So if I figure that at some point, I'm going to get it. And, but I want to wait as long as possible because right now is it's a terrible time to get I'm a crime.
Danny Gregory:Well, if you have a choice, don't get it now.
John Muir Laws:That's right. That's right. So, and, and going out and exploring in nature and or, you know, any place that you can kind of find some kind of quiet place with your journal. Those are. Wonderfully socially distanced activities to do keep ourselves safe and keep ourselves connected to the world. It's I'm so glad that I have journaling during this pandemic. It's been keeping me saying,
Danny Gregory:okay, so that's a good point. We don't really make it that often, which is the lifesaving powers of illustrated in nature journaling.
John Muir Laws:Yeah. But I think it's
Danny Gregory:easy to come out and tell people about that.
John Muir Laws:Yeah. My experience is that when I kind of go out there with my journal, I feel just sort of so much more grounded. I feel connected and this whole crazy pandemic experience tends to make me feel. Disassociated from everybody. And or the world around me, I feel like I, I can't get to near the world, but I can, I can immerse myself in it, in the pages of my journal. And I think that's been a big part of me not going absolutely nuts over the last few years.
Danny Gregory:Absolutely. And zoom kind of on the other end of this,
John Muir Laws:I I did not ever think that I would be embracing this media. I thought that what I w what my mission was to kind of get people out into nature. And so why would I kind of create, do something that is going to kind of get people on their computers more, but it has been. It's such a powerful way of reaching people and reaching people all around the globe. Well, you've had that experience with, with sketchbook school. It's a, it's an international worldwide phenomenon. And being able to, to, to connect with people all over the globe. I now have what I actually consider friends.
Danny Gregory:Well, you and I have met you and I have never met in person. That's right. We've only ever met. We've only ever talked to each other on zoom and the like, so yeah, I think you know, this pandemic has contributed to people's willingness to overcome their. Technophobia because they have strong incentives to do it. So I think in the past, you know, I mean, I remember when, even when smartphones came out and people were like, well, what do I need that for? I don't need to carry that around. But then suddenly you realize like, okay, if you want to talk to your kids, you better get on Facebook. You know, if you want to, if you want to connect with people, so they become the other reasons. And then, and then it becomes second nature and it becomes an addiction fairly quickly to using technology. But, you know, I mean, I've always loved technology I have since I was a kid. So it's always been something and it used to be a very niche thing. You know, you were part of, kind of a nerdy, tiny subgroup kind of like
John Muir Laws:the, yeah. The kid with the computer. Yeah, that was, that was stigmatized. That was kind of like the dad, who's a ham radio
Danny Gregory:operator. Exactly and that, and my first book was about ham radio, actually, strangely enough. But, but yeah, I mean, I think you know, now we've come to realize that technology is, is a tool. It's not a thing in and of itself necessarily for some people, it is some people it's, it's a pleasure. It's like having you know, great stereo equipment or something, but for a lot of people it's cheap other things. But, you know, I feel like technology has made drawing into it's helped so much with help making, drawing into the font phenomenon that it's become because we have, we don't need to just be inspired by books that are published by supremely, accomp, accomplished people. And we, you know, we can see people like us. At w whatever that means, and we can share, and we can connect and we can talk about it and we can use drawing as a social connection. You know, a thing that we have in common, we don't have to be making art in isolation anymore. Now, no matter who you are, no matter what level of art making you make, you can have an audience. I mean, maybe an audience of three people from a related to you, but in the past that wasn't the case in the past. You would just make art and, you know, nobody, maybe if somebody was in the mood, they would look at what you've done. But you know, you had to think I needed to become a professional successful person who's endorsed and has passed the test of being in a gallery of, you know, winning an award in a watercolor show getting published by a publishing house. Now you just need to take a picture with your phone and post it on Instagram. You know, nobody's going to say you can't. So, so that's an incentive to do it, and it's a way of connection. And and that actually brings me around to what we were going to talk about today, which was influences, you know, and who is influenced us. And you know, we can talk about people who we know, people we don't know. I feel like the internet is such an opportunity for being influenced and F and for influencing others. So was this something you wanted to say before? I adroitly turned the cruise ship around?
John Muir Laws:Well, I was just started thinking about the, the way that we are able to, to, to share our art. They used to be kind of, there, there were gatekeepers who would say, like, you know, that's not in the gallery that is in the gallery and then you walk into the gallery and it's really ambiguous why some of that is there and why others aren't. And so then creating art was something that other people were doing without that, that, that gatekeeper. And kind of giving us all permission to share our artwork. We're seeing a lot more work and it's sort of, and in that is there's, there's a, there's a really wonderful inspiration that that comes from that. You can, I can look at journal pages from just about anybody and they are, that person is going to be thinking about the world and seeing the world through a slightly different lens than I do. And I can look at that and like, oh, that's that, that little move that you're making there that is different than the way that I think and the way that I see. And so I love just sort of one major source of inspiration for me is just going through all these journal and sketchbook pages that are now available to us. And thinking about what, what has to be going on in somebody's head to have, have thought this way to have, have seen this way and realizing that I can try that too. And if I do, I will end up looking at the world through a slightly different lens.
Danny Gregory:That's interesting. Picking up somebody else's eyeballs.
John Muir Laws:Yeah. You try on somebody else's eyes and there is, there's something there's something new to be learned there. And with that's a really beautiful thing about this kind of the sharing of, of art that has, has happened. You've seen that with sketchbook school on the nature journal club, Facebook page, we also have all these people sharing their artwork, sharing their journal pages, sharing their observations, and it makes. I can look at any one of those pages and kind of go like I can for this afternoon, I can go take your idea and try it on. And it doesn't make me a clone of that person, but it just gives me a slightly different perspective. And I think that the more of that, that I intentionally do the more, it kind of shakes up my own Etch-a-Sketch and that's so that, that is just right off the bat is, is an incredible source of inspiration in, in, in artwork.
Danny Gregory:Yeah, I mean, I think, I think for years I would, you know, there were half a dozen secondhand bookstores that I would go to in New York the strand being the biggest one of them, but there were several and I, and I knew that there were certain categories of, in the books, shelves that you go to where you might find. The good stuff you might find stuff to do with it. It wasn't, it wasn't stuff that was about drawing instruction probably. And it wasn't stuff that was in the fine arts section, but there were few categories that might have it and they would vary like sometimes it would be in comic books and cartooning. Sometimes it would be in illustration. Sometimes it would be in nature. Sometimes it would be in travel, but there are places that you knew that if you went to that's possibly where you might find something and I would go every week, you know, to these places and I would look, and then occasionally you would find something or you might find a few pages in something that was kind of what it was and that stuff, you know, might've been done by somebody who lived 50 years before you, you couldn't, you know, and you wouldn't necessarily be able to write to them. You wouldn't be able to see more of their stuff. You know, you might see a book about. Sketchbooks, maybe they're really very few. But you might see a book about it, and then there might be two or three examples of that person's stuff in it, but you wouldn't be able to ask them questions. You wouldn't be able to see what else do they do learn and be able to know anything about them as a person, you know? And, and so for me, like I discovered this whole concept probably one day in the Virgin. No, it wasn't virtual. It was tower records. So tower records had a store on Broadway in Manhattan, and they had a little cat, a little department that had zenes in it. So it had like two shelves that had these handmade magazines. You know, small runs, there might be 50 copies of an issue. And that was another place that I would find interesting, like drawing stuff in handmade stuff. And I just like the aesthetics of zenes. I liked the fact that it was like handwritten stuff. And that's when I discovered this magazine called Moonlight Chronicles by a guy named D price. I didn't know his name was Dan, which was nice. And so, so I found one copy of this magazine there. It was xeroxed, it was basically xeroxed length wise. So he took a eight and a half by 11 sheet and Xerox at length wise and folded in half, had about a hundred pages and it was just this guy's journal all. And it was, he lives in Eastern Oregon in a little tiny town. He lives in a on a meadow that is. That he pays a hundred dollars a year to rent and honored. He has little buildings that he's built entirely by hand. So his bedroom is what is called a Kiva, which is basically built into the side of a hill out of rocks. And then he lined the inside of it with wood. And then it has a little ceiling with a window in it. It is. Eight feet, 10 feet, maybe round. And it's like a Hobbit house has you have to get down on your hands and knees to crawl through this little wooden door and then you're in the house and it's not a house. It's one room with wall-to-wall carpeting and some electricity that is running from the road. And then it has various other buildings that he's built, including an outhouse, a sweat lodge, a little there's a river that runs right alongside the meadow. And there he has east can get water from there and put it in a cistern so he can take a shower and he can has a little tiny hot plate, so he can do some cooking. And then he has a studio that is basically another room that has the Xerox machine that he rents. And so so, so his life is really interesting and he lives on very little at the time he was living on like 20 grand a year or something mainly. Maybe and, and his life is about journaling. That was his job. He's subsequently just kind of stopped doing it, but for 10 or 15 years, that's what he did. And so I got this copy of this magazine and I was like, okay, here I am working in advertising, working for big corporations in, you know, the belly of the beast in Manhattan. And I found like, here's this person who I, in some ways have nothing in common with, but who speaks like right to me. And I didn't know anybody else. We'd never met anybody who was like this. And I immediately, I wrote to him and I was like, I don't really know what's going on. You know, and we became really good friends. He would come to visit me in Manhattan. I would go out and my son would come with me and we would go to Eastern Oregon and we would live in the Kiva and we would go fishing. And we just couldn't have been more different lives than the two of us had. But through him, he was one of these people who also spent a lot of time researching this stuff. And he would like collect new Yorker cartoons that he liked and he would collect, you know, he would find pink, you know, so this is pre-internet, this is 19 98, 99. Not pre-internet, but pre world wide web. Yep. One of the people who we found early in those times was a guy named Richard Bell who was doing a similar thing in Yorkshire. And he was self publishing, little books about nature journaling, and he was kept the very first blog really that I'd ever encountered. Where it was called wild west Yorkshire. And he was basically blogging about what was going on and literally in his garden, in his backyard. And he would write about the birds and the things that were growing there. And he would do drawings and he had beautiful writing that he would do. And I was like, okay, so now I've found another person. You know, there's almost as far away from me as Eastern Oregon, me in New York, him and Yorkshire. And then I found another person who is Indian, but who lived in Canada and he was another connection. And then, so I slowly managed to find these points of people. Who were doing this. And again, this is 2002, 2003, and it was just interesting, like kind of detective work of finding who are these people. And anytime you would meet a person, they would have like three or four people who they were into. And then you could sort of absorb those influences and spread out. So it's very, I mean, now it's like gluttony, now there's so much light and, you know, social media campaigns and all this other crap that goes along with it. But in those days, nobody was trying to get anything out of doing it. Nobody wanted to sell you anything. They didn't want to get you on email lists. They didn't want you to do workshops or take classes. They just had to make this stuff and put it out there. It was very pure. And that went on for, you know, probably five or six years. And then eventually. Web 2.0 began and Facebook and all that other stuff kind of took over and suddenly it just lost that beautiful kind of innocence that it had. But I, I have met, I discovered so many things that influenced me because of this little delicate network of things that I found.
John Muir Laws:Oh, that that's a beautiful way of sort of describing kind of the th the evolution of these, these, these influences in a really organic way. The, I, we kind of lose the track of, of how you kind of came about different sources of inspiration when everything is just on a page with all these little icons that you can click to enlarge and, oh, that's neat. I like how you're describing one person sort of sharing the influence of another person and that, so that, you know, I learned about this person through this person, there's a history there, there's a relationship there. And also about these sort of how you're talking about these influences. Aren't just, you know, a person in a book, but somebody who you can, who you can go fishing with.
Danny Gregory:Right. And also, I think for all of us, we love this stuff. Whenever we would find little pieces of it, we would love it. But you didn't know anybody else who is interested in it. I mean, I didn't have any, none of my friends cared about that stuff. You know, nobody in my family was really interested in it. And then suddenly you would find one other little kind of candle in the dark and you would say, okay, there's one other person out there who gets what's so cool about this and he'd send it to them and they'll go, oh my God, this is so amazing. And. Excitement, you know, and also validation that you're not just a complete nerdy freak, like something that nobody else likes having other people who get it. And now you w what we've come to realize is that's what there are millions of people who actually like it and get it now we're all connected. So in some ways it's better now. There's different degrees of it. Because of course, when I was first starting to learn about this stuff, it was a real obsession of mine. And all these other people were obsessives too. Now you can be much more of a tourist about it. And, you know, people say like, oh, you've, I've discovered this thing. And you go, yeah, I discovered that like 10 years ago, but yeah, that's cool. So yeah, it's, it's it's, but when I, I feel it's like, once you tuned into the station and you say, okay, this speaks to. Whatever it is. My case has this new case. It's slightly different, but, you know, because I think about you, like, I've known about your work for a really long time, you know, I never actually met you and talked to you until this last year or so, but I knew that you will, one of these people, but your niche was slightly different than mine because you were, you know, more in the science world. Whereas my thing was more about sort of mundane. So, you know, you say, okay, well we have a Venn diagram, but we'll, can we actually cross over more by interacting with each other and go like, you know what, actually, we have more in common with each other because I think that's a lot of what it is. It's like, it's not just about the thing you're obsessed with. It's about a human connection with somebody else and saying, you get it too. Like we're in this club together. That's really.
John Muir Laws:And so with I've, I'm embarrassed to say I've already forgotten the name of the, the, the fellow with the Hobbit hole and, and to the fishing hall,
Danny Gregory:Dan price, Moonlight Chronicles.
John Muir Laws:When you're out with Dan price did you go journal?
Danny Gregory:Absolutely. So he would, he would come to New York. He came to New York a few times, and I remember he actually, the first time he came, my first wife invited him for my birthday and it was a surprise. She sent him a plane ticket and she said, you know, come to New York. Cause he and I had been corresponding for awhile. And so he shows up and I was like, oh my God, she had thrown a party for me. It was like, it was like as if the most beautiful girl in the world had suddenly showed up to the party. I was like, everybody else disappeared. I was just like, I have to talk to this. So I ended up like taking time off from work and he, and I would just walk around the city and just draw everything and I would more and more, I got to see like, okay, this is how you live this life. This is how you do this thing. And I think for him, you know, it was like, he'd never eat or he'd been evangelist for drawing, but he'd never really had a person who was like, as, as obsessed with it as he was. And so we would, you know, sit around and draw a garbage can sit around and draw like, you know, a building, whatever it was just doing it. I would go to Oregon and you know, this little tiny town and being in nature and doing all that. But then we would also go on trips. We went to, we went to death valley and we spent like 10 days going all the ghost towns around death valley. We went to we went to Colorado, you know, so we would go because what we realized was. He, and I could meet up anywhere, anywhere. Interesting. Yes. You know, and that, I was like, okay, this is the magic of that. I don't even need Dan price to have this magic, which is anywhere you go. There it is. It's interesting. You just have to realize that, turn on that, put on that lens and go, okay. I can draw anything and drawing will lead me to have these experiences because of drawing. I will go to a place I would never normally go to. I would never have gone through this valley otherwise. Yeah. Suddenly it's like, okay, what was
John Muir Laws:wrong? I'll just go, go physically to the place. But you're there in death valley. The process of drawing is going to draw you into that experience in ways that would have been completely inaccessible to you. If you didn't have that pattern here.
Danny Gregory:Exactly. Drawing became my friend instead, like drawing was my companion. Once I saw the depth of experience that I could have because of it, you know? So in some ways it was, you know, it connecting with people, but it's most important purpose was to realize that it is, it's like when people talk about with virtual reality or augmented reality, so augmented reality, you know, you hold up your phone and you look with a camera and suddenly information appears, right. You know what I'm talking about? So it's like,
John Muir Laws:I I've a mildly clever phone, but it's not that smart.
Danny Gregory:You have like an old crank telephone, right? Yeah. That's all right. So
John Muir Laws:overheats, incense smoke signals
Danny Gregory:would powered, but now no, I think augmented reality is like you know, if you have, if you have a map and you're looking at, you know, you can hold up your phone and emitted a building and it will give you information about that building. Well, so, so you can just. Scroll around, or you can, if you're in a foreign country, in the, your phone can translate the signage on the building. Anyway, that that's not really the point. The point is that drawing becomes a lens that you're looking through at everything. And so you look at anything and you'd say, what is that thing? Let me examine it. Thing that you understand that thing that you appreciate that thing, because I wouldn't have otherwise. And I think about when I used to travel for work, I remember going to Japan to shoot some commercials from American express. And I was in Japan for a couple of weeks. I'd never been there before and we weren't in Tokyo. We were like deep in Japan and I hated it. I was like, I'm lost. I don't know anything. I don't understand anything. You know, literally nobody would speak English. I mean, I remember going to like the hotel dining room and trying to get a glass of water and trying to pantomime water and try to excellent. Anyway, so, and I wasn't drawing at the time, a couple years later, I started to draw and then I realized, oh my God, like I was in Japan, that would have been the most amazing joining experience. But all I would do is like, you know, go back to my room and read a book. Cause I was just like, ah, this is all too weird and too strange. Now I'm like, oh my God, there's so much, everything is fascinating and everything. And I embrace adventure and I'm really excited by it. And that was purely because of drawing. There's no other changes in my life besides that.
John Muir Laws:Yeah. And so it's wherever you go. I sort of have this idea of, it's not, it's not where you look it's, it's how you look. There are levels of, of mystery. And that can be either in just the wonderful quirkiness of, of human beings or the beautiful inventiveness of human beings and the way we kind of relate to each other, relate to the land or a natural phenomenon, you start digging into it and it is the places you can go with. It are it's, it's it's bottomless, but you have to know how to get yourself to, to be able to lean in to that experience. Because I think that our, our, our natural inclination is just to kind of look around and kind of, yes, I know what that is. Kind of label things, and then you're out the door and that's an efficient way to move through the. But if you can find a way to slow yourself down and encounter a mystery that you otherwise wouldn't have done and be able to, the journal for me is a, is a tool that invites me into kind of a deep exploration of whatever it is. So right now I'm looking out and there is there's a coastline Oak tree that is out the window in front of me. And as I'm sitting here I'm noticing that there are a number of leaves that have been falling off of this coast, live Oak tree and over to my right. There's another coastline Oak tree, and I'm not seeing any, let's see, there's, there's another right now real time. There's another leaf that just fell off of this coast live Oak tree. So these are not deciduous trees that are like dropping their leaves all the time at this time of year. No, no, no, no, no. These ones keep their leaves, their whole test. So what's going on, but this tree, I mean, there's a little mystery, right? That there's there's, there's another one and none out to the one on my right. So there's
Danny Gregory:there's and you thought this podcast, wasn't going to be exciting folks. Yeah.
John Muir Laws:Oh boy. But it's, it's not that, like, why would you get so excited about that? Th the reason I get excited about that is because there's something going on here that I don't understand. And through the act of paying attention, that sort of brings out this little mystery, the act of paying attention is how I can go about answering these, these sorts of questions. The world around me becomes this. Kind of, oh, actually on the tree that I said, no leaves were falling off of one leaf just fell off of it. So this may be a sampling bias that I haven't been here for very long. So actually just let me unpack that, just to kind of geek out on the science side of things on this. So there's the, the, the, the law of small numbers is that when you're looking at something that they're really small sample size it's really easy to see patterns that aren't there. And so when my kind of general strategy for geeking out on anything is I'm walking around and I'm looking for some patterns, and I'm saying, is there a pattern here? Is there a pattern here? Is there a pattern here? Like, where's the pattern, where's the pattern. And. Then I will, when I'm intentionally looking for it, these patterns, our human brains are wonderful sort of pattern recognition devices. And these patterns will start to emerge from the environment around me. And then, because I've been intentionally like wanting to see this pattern, like saying like, there's this phenomenon here, this one tree it's dropping all its leaves. Then it becomes really easy for me to ignore when the other trees are dropping their leaves. And every time this tree drops leaves, I, I like see this thing as just dropping them all the time. But what I'm doing there is just what we call confirmation bias, where I've got this idea. I've got this pet pattern now, and I will cherry pick observations that, that match that don't worry. This gets back to journaling just a second. So I cherry pick all the observations that sort of fit this pattern and I ignore them. On the other one, actually the one that I said there, no leaves falling on it. Now just two leaves fell off of it. So that's now making me think that this pattern may just be law of small numbers, that I was just sitting here for a little while. And just by chance more fell off this tree at a time that none were falling off that one we're going to, we're going to have to find out. But what is neat to then to try to do is to try to separate out for me as, as this, as the scientist, separate out what are, what are, is just sort of this random variability and what are the real patterns, and you can apply that to anything in our lives. But that's kind of a fundamental part of my kind of nature, geeking out. I'm going out and looking for patterns. Then I try to figure out, you know, is this pattern really. Is there really something to this and the best way to do that is for me to then intentionally really watch the other tree and say, are you really not dropping your leaves? Okay. There's another one. Right. And so you, you, I look for evidence against my pet idea and then, you know, there's, I can, I can, that helps the, the stronger patterns emerge to the surface. And I have this way of kind of back checking them to make sure I'm not doing this confirmation bias thing that people love to do. So that is sort of science-y geeking out, but it's sort of baked into that, is this idea that wherever you are, there is something weird and fascinating going on that you can unpack if you pay more attention to it. And the same is true with looking at trash.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. I mean, I think, I think your journal, your sketchbook becomes kind of an opportunity for you to do that. An opportunity for you to go and become a reporter or become a, become a historian or become, you know, a scientist become a psychologist to become a a social social scientists. I remember when, when Dan and I went to when we were visiting death valley, we would driving around and then we came upon a plane that was crashed, like a small single engine plane that was crashed and sitting by the road. And it clearly had been there for awhile. We were like, this is amazing. Like I'd never seen him crash plane before we went over, we were looking at it and clearly it had been there for awhile. And it was outside of this sort of Mo like a mobile home, like a sort of double-wide kind of thing. And it turned out that this mobile home was a brothel. So we were like, okay, so there's a crash plane outside of a brothel. So we sat down and we were drawing the plane because it was just an interesting thing to draw. So drawing the plane and then we had to find out what the story was. So we decided to go up to the brothel. So we go up there, we ring the bell, a woman, you know, scantily clad woman comes to the door and there we are, these two, two dorks carrying sketchbooks. And then she was all sort of like, you know, come hither. And we were like, well, no, actually we're not really interested in that, but we just wondered about the plane, like what the deal is. And it turned out that like the guy who owned the brothel had. Had this idea to promote it, where he would have the women who worked for him skydive as like a promotional thing. And none of them were really interested in doing it, but he, for a while, tried to encourage them to do it in like one or two did, but it was, that was his whole big idea. And then eventually the plane crashed and they just left it there. So we were like, so they tell us this whole story and more and more of, more and more of these sex workers basically came out to like, hear the story and to participate in, to give their bits. And they're all saying around with us and And we were like, oh, we just were interested because we were drawing it. And they were like, really, you were drawing it. And we said, yeah. And we showed them our, in our sketchbooks and they were like, this is amazing. We've can we buy these drawings from you? And I said, no, no, these are in our sketchbooks this no, but I said, you're welcome to like, make a copy. And they said, oh, we have a copier. So great. So they took our sketchbooks, made copies of them and they said, we're going to get things framed and hang them in here. And I was like, okay, great, thank you. Cool. And then we took our sketchbooks and we left and I was like, this is like a really strange, unlikely adventure wouldn't have happened without a drawing, but yeah, we got to go into a Nevada brothel and emerge with our virtues intact. But you know, so if you go to a brothel in Nevada and you happen to see a plane drawing on the wall, it's possible that.
John Muir Laws:Ah, this is that's right. And so, w what's what's also really fun about this story is that the, the, you know, very often when I am if I'm walking down a trail and I see something that catches my eye, I'll sit down and I'll make a sketch of it. The next people that are walking down the trail, they will stop. Let's say I'm drawing a little landscape. They will stop look down and notice that I'm drawing something. And then they look up at the landscape that I'm doing and they go like, oh, that's beautiful. And then they pull out their cameras, snap a picture of it, and head back down the trail. Of course, you know, I could have stopped any of a hundred places of that trail because there's a hundred little mysteries. But when you see somebody's drawing the airplane, you see the drawing of the airplane. You know, th th the artist I, we select out what is interesting to us. If you'd shown them up here's I took a photograph of your airplane. No one would care. But when you are, when you are, have your, your drawing of it, you've made all these decisions of, like, this is important. I'm going to show this to sort of give this a sort of sense to it. You have kind of curated that experience, and then you can look down at somebody's drawing and you can see the beauty that they saw in it. And then you look up at the landscape and you go like, wow, that's really beautiful over there. So I think that perhaps, you know, when you, when you hold up, your you're, you're drawing that kind of excitement about it. A big part of that is that you're inviting that other person just to kind of have a little glimpse of just how wonderful the world is around.
Danny Gregory:I, but I think that that's that is one of the main purposes of art right there. Right. So, I mean, I I've had the same experience sitting on a sidewalk in some strange city drawing, some random thing, drawing a deli or drawing a garbage can or drawing an old jalopy of some kind somebody comes by and they say, what are you drawing? And I'll say, I'm drawing, you know, that pile of trash over there. And they'll say, why are you drawing that? I'll say, well, look at it. They'll they can't bring themselves a lot of time to actually look at what I'm drawing and they'll stand there and I'll, and they'll say, oh yeah. And then they'll start to see it. They'll start to put on their, their artist's eyes as well. But I think a lot of times when we make them. It's purpose is to show is to break the bubble between us and other people. And to say like, let's be in each other's heads a little bit, and to realize how much we actually have in common or how much we have to teach each other. And that we can say, you know, this is what I'm seeing. That's beautiful. And you don't even need to see the original thing, but you can just say, oh, I'd never thought to think that a garbage can, could be a beautiful thing. And now that I've seen that it's enriched my life. It's made me open to the possibilities of doing that wherever I go and seeing like an artist thinking like an artist and also seeing like you saw, you know, forget about being an artist, but just saying, oh, I can be in your head. I can see what you see. And, you know, that's like an intimate, beautiful thing that we don't really have many opportunities to do. And I imagine for a scientist, that's also the case, which is basically saying I've observed this phenomenon that maybe nobody's has observed before. You know, and if you observe it, maybe you will build on my observation with your own observation that we'll take this even deeper, even further, you know, or to new and different places. So it is a dialogue. The art is purposeful of being a dialogue. And so often what we think art is supposed to be about. We think we're supposed to be accomplishing, you know, doing something that looks like an accurate rendering can actually even get in the way of that. You know, that if you're trying to be photographic in your depiction of the thing that you're drawing, you might actually be suffocating, your subjective point of view, which is actually the most valuable thing that you could be giving. So it's sort of like you look at a Picasso drawing and you don't say, well, it doesn't really look like the person. That's completely missing the point. Right. And knocking me, like no, want to see a snapshot that Picasso took. You want to see how he saw the world so you can enjoy that too. So our subjectivity is in fact, the most important part of it, not our objectivity subjectivity is the thing that makes it wonky or makes it, you know, odd or makes you emphasize one part over another and not be perfect because perfection is the hardest thing to learn much from. So yeah. So originally we were going to talk about all the things that had influenced us. I, I mean, I'm not sure quite where we go with that or if we go with it or if we. Found a different director to be going well, did you have something to add to this whole conversation?
John Muir Laws:Well, but what I, what I like about it, I expected our conversation today to be like, you know, this artist, this artist, this artist, you know, these are people who I, you know,
Danny Gregory:yeah. I have listed down before I talked to you and it's like, oh, I want to talk about these people. And then I was like, well, nah, that's just like a, but, but, but the
John Muir Laws:story of what the turning point was, was the story of Dan price and how being, and also the, the, it makes me think about the power of being in the presence and sort of sharing the experience with another person who has, who is sparked like that. Right. And when you get out with them and you, you both are. You're both just geeking out on things and you can get into their kind of geekdom world and they can get into your inspire. Each other ideas are rubbing off on each other. It is, and, and, and also you can look at their journal page from a place, not just a place that you visited, but you were there at exactly the same time. And look what look where they went with it. I think that that is such a, an even more exciting invitation to think differently because I was in this exact place at this exact same time. And you, you went, you, you, you were all over the garbage can and. And, and, and, and now I'm thinking to myself like, like, oh, like, I, I, I, I missed the garbage cans. I should've done the garbage camp, but it's not that the garbage can was the most important thing to see there. It was that it was how you see the garbage cans. So if I can get to get into, like, how do you see the garbage cans? I can apply that to the pile of trash.
Danny Gregory:Right? I mean, I think, I think it's important. It doesn't, it doesn't mean that your influences have to be actual people who you go drawing with. Although there are lots of opportunities for doing that. It can also be that you look at the work of somebody and you see. Oh, you're allowed to write on your drawing. Oh, you're allowed to write with a brush. Oh, you're allowed to like put a big splash of red in the middle of it. Oh, you can do this, those kinds of things. Those are that's other ways that influences work where you suddenly say, oh, I'd never occurred to me. And it isn't necessarily to say, okay, I'm going to put big red splashes. Although you might start by doing that. But then you might say, well, actually I feel more like, you know, drawing green lines in the background. So I'm going to do that. But I didn't really realize that that was even a thing that you could do. And I mean, this is one of the things we have with sketchbook school, particularly with spark, which is the program that you teach in is you have a whole bunch of people sitting down together to work on the same project. And then you get to see what they've done in response, exact same thing. We're sitting together right now. You know together and we're all doing the same thing and you say, oh, like it would never have occurred to me to do that. Or, oh, it's interesting that she's noticed that thing. And I didn't really care about that so much. I wonder why that was, it was interesting. Oh, let me ask about that. Let me see that, me try that. All those kinds of things that we learned from seeing how other people do, because it's so easy to get caught in our own heads. Right? We get caught in our hands. We see things a certain way. We do things a certain way. We use certain tools. We reflectively go to certain places, but then somebody forces you to do a different thing. And, you know, I mean, I felt that way when I've taken your class is I've suddenly thought, you know, like I've never looked at birds that way. I've never thought about how they're put together. I've never. Done that. And then it makes me think not only about birds and drawing birds, but it made me think to me, it make me think about birds that I just see around when I'm not drawing, but also I'll think about other animals. And then I'll think about how trees are put together. And then I'll think about how cars are put together. And I think it's, this goes on and on. So you learn this thing and then you use your creativity to apply it in other things. But if you exist in your own little echo system and you don't have new things coming in, you stagnate and, and it becomes old. And you, and the thing that, I mean, I think both of us have experienced this over and over again is there's no end to what you can learn about drawing, right? It's endless, endless, endless, endless, and you learn from seeing what other people do. So whatever you've settled into. Keep going. And if you haven't gotten anywhere, you like, it just means you need to try some other, put some other spices into your stew and see what comes out of it because you know, somebody else might be doing something that had never occurred to you that you could curl out to do. And wow. It just lights things up inside of you.
John Muir Laws:And that, that also makes me think about sort of the degree to which, to which are this, this journaling and this art can be a social endeavor that, you know, there's, I think there's, there's, there's the myth about, I think both scientists and artists that the artist is there a kind of a known by themselves in their studio and they're like doing their
Danny Gregory:thing and then they've made, I have
John Muir Laws:made art. Right. And also
Danny Gregory:that's the Eureka moment for the scientist. Right? And th
John Muir Laws:th th the scientist, the there's sort of the, the, the myth of the mad scientist is like so crazy hair, white coat alone in their lab, tinkering away. And so art, when it is really advancing us, and as a process is often in a social context, you think about like the impressionists, there was a team of people who are like meeting in the same cafes, and they were looking at each other's art and they were looking at like, wow, you can do that. Oh, that's crazy. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Like this gives me an idea and then run pack. So they're, they're, they're playing off of you. Similarly science is this social endeavor where people are doing their thing, they are sharing what they're doing with other people. And then they are, are giving each other feedback about what works and what doesn't work. And this person is working on this over here. This person's working on this over here, and this person gets this little piece and you're putting this little piece together with some piece they're meeting to get there. They're taking all their best ideas. They're putting it in the paper with their techniques. And they're sharing that with the other people. The other people are getting that information and kind of picking through it. And either saying like, you might want to kind of review this idea, cause that doesn't make sense to me or they say, oh, this is crazy brilliant. And I'm going to use that as the next stepping stone for what I'm doing. So science is this sort of social endeavor. So is, is, is can be art. And if you. If I, if you have an opportunity to create for yourself a, you know, it can be a sketching buddy, just somebody who, who you, who you enjoy being with, you love the way that their brain works, what they do inspires you, what you do, inspires them. And with like Dan and Danny kind of going out in the desert there, you guys are going to, as a result of that experience, you're going to come away with something greater than you would have had each of you on your own. And,
Danny Gregory:and then we can go ahead
John Muir Laws:and we can create that for ourselves as well. If you intentionally can look for in your world, in your life, is there, this journaling is great, but what about, you know, can you essentially make your own, you know, knitting circle of, of, of, of Sketchers, of journals, of people that, that somebody, that you are going to invite into your current bubble and is going to help make this process even richer for you?
Danny Gregory:Yeah, I think that, I think that that's absolutely true. I think you know, I think about the urban sketching movement, urban Sketchers you know, there are organizations in certainly every major city in any secondary cities as well, go and sit with a bunch of people on a pavement and draw together. You know, at scheduled school we have the school yard, which is our social network and that's an again, an opportunity for people to share their work and get feedback. But I think, you know, we, a lot of times when you're starting out, you're afraid to show your stuff. You're afraid that you'll be embarrassed. And the fact is that it's never too soon to show it. You know, it's never too soon to share what you're doing and you can always do it in the guise of like, look, I'm just starting out. Like, here's what I've got. What do you think? And can I see what you're doing? But I was thinking I, I made a video a couple weeks ago about Paris and Vango and how van Gogh. When he came to Paris, his work was radically transformed. Exactly the experience you were talking about by becoming part of the expressionist. And you can see the before and after the, what I call the sort of brown paintings that he was doing when he was still in Holland, that were, he was trying to be a particular kind of artist. He was trying to be as sort of, you know, middle-class like I'd paint scenes of peasants working and shades of, you know, ochre and CPM. And then he gets to Paris and he starts to see all these other guys who are going crazy with color, who are, you know, doing things like pointillism and expressionism and, and, and impressionism, and are seeing the world completely differently. Making paintings completely. And almost immediately he changes. He becomes who he now think of as van Gogh. It lit the fuse. And no matter how long he had spent working in, you know, his grotto in, in Holland, he would just have been another mediocrity, but suddenly by being excited by other people and having, you know, and trying to impress them, trying to be part of their circle, all those kinds of things, pushed and pushed and pushed him to do new and different things. And then eventually transcend them and go off and do stuff that would influence other people for, you know, the next couple of centuries. But you know, that's the opportunity that we have. And I think we can do, you know, if we can't find people. I found, I was fortunate to find one person, then more people, you can also engage with their art. You can just engage with art and you can say, you know what, I'm going to take a Vango drawing and I'm going to copy it. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to look at this technique and I'm going to allow myself to. See the way they do, I'm going to look at a coffee table book of, you know, of a painter where I like, and I'm really going to study it and really try and take apart, have this person do it. And what were they actually doing? And so those kinds of ways, there are ways of doing it. You know, if you're too afraid to go and meet with other people, there's still other things you can do to influence yourself and to, to do it. I mean, I was thinking sort of depressing when I see like teenagers who, you know, either they draw, they copy photos of, of movie stars or they draw manga, you know, and they'd go and they'd find all the manga things and they find manga how tos, you know? And they go, step-by-step like, how do I draw this particular character? It's like, yes, Whereas you in this, what, where are you, how are you injecting and how you adding to the conversation? That's really what you want to do when it's kind of a global conversation that's happening because we're sharing what we see. That's really the core of this whole thing. All right. Well, it seems like our opportunity to share long lists of recommendations as has passed us by, and maybe we'll do that in some other forum of like, you know, his 50 artists, you should check out, but that would have been Dell anyway. But I think we are, we are past the hour mark, so let's wrap it up unless there's some final pearls of wisdom you'd like to share.
John Muir Laws:I guess I've got one more thought about the buddy system do it. And, and that is the other thing that it does for me is that it It, if you ever get stuck, having somebody that kind of helps you kind of be accountable and be there for you is a great asset. You know, the statistically, if you are trying to smoke, quit smoking on your own, you are going to fail. However, if you have art, if you and your partner are trying to quit smoking together and you're supporting each other in that that your, your chances of being successful. Are much, much better if you're trying to start an exercise program and you do it on your own versus with somebody that is that you feel a real connection with and is, and is a buddy or changing our eating habits or whatever it is, if there's something that we're trying to do or trying not to do the, the social, the social part of that is huge in our success or failure. And that we, I think it's useful to kind of just consider that in terms of our artwork, if I'm finding myself not motivated and on my own, I want to think about like, am I doing all my stuff kind of in isolation from one of the primary ways that human beings have in our repertoire of being successful with an endeavor. And that is to. To make it social.
Danny Gregory:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there, there are many ways of finding other people. I think you have to be willing to, you know, let go of being embarrassed. You have to, you have to relinquish your ego to some extent. You have to be generous with the person you're working with and supportive of each other. But I see it in sketch books a whole lot. We have couples who are joining together. We have mothers and daughters who are joining together and there, and they are encouraging each other. Like let's meet on Thursday at two o'clock and let's do this thing that makes it a lot easier to keep the habit going and also to have somebody else to show it to all those kinds of things. It, it, it just makes it more fun and making it fun is just. A really underrated part of this whole thing. That is the main point. You're not trying to become a genius. You're not trying to make stuff. That's going to go into a museum. You're trying to make the time we have left on this planet as rich and joyful as it can be. Right. So that's right. So, and, and honestly, when you were five, you knew that this was the way to it. When you were five, you knew that picking up a crayon was fun. Still is buy yourself a box of 64 and you know, a newsprint pad or whatever it is, you can spend, you know, two bucks and you can start having fun in a way you have never had before. Well, yes. That since you were small. So yeah, it is that, you know, and also, you know, inspire yourself. But try and respond to the things that inspire you. Don't just go like, that's great. I love that. But try and say, what can I do with that thing that will make me make my thing, you know, it's, don't be, don't be deceived, passive audience engaged and turn your inspiration into, you know, something that lights your fuse. That's, that's really the key to it is to be provoked and inspired.
John Muir Laws:Yeah. The mindset of being a maker rather than just a
Danny Gregory:consumer that's yeah. That's, that's the core of it. That's what we all need to do with our lives, I think is, is to make, not just take so, and, and also realize that when you're doing it, you know, your processes is going, gonna inspire somebody else. You're helping to pass it forward. Even if you know, you're not the greatest genius and the Muslim, just the fact that you're doing it, that in of itself, I have had so many people say when they see me drawing. I wish I was. I wish I could do that. And I just say if, of course you can sit down. That's true. Right. And so we've, we've managed to cram pack another hour with with blathering. Thanks for joining us today. And we will see you again probably next week. Hopefully we'll be here. And we'll continue the conversation.
John Muir Laws:Danny was so much fun going off script
Danny Gregory:with you. I know God, why can't we stick to a plan, stupid creative people. All right. See you next time
John Muir Laws:until next time. Bye.