The awesome new trailer for my awesome new book! (Thank you, Manny!)
You can see even more cool stuff about my book on
Preorder yours today from your favorite bookseller:
And please feel free to share news of my new book with
This has been a wild and unpredictable year that has taken me around the world and home again. I sat down this morning with my calendar and recalled the best moments.
It’s tempting to blame limitations for limiting us.
To wish we had more resources, more time, more help, more talent.
But there’s never enough — and you don’t need it.
Limitations free your efforts and creativity, help you avoid being overwhelmed by infinite possibilities.
If you have no rules, you have no game.
If you have no gravity, no seasons, no wind and rain, you cannot grow.
All creativity work with limits.
Pushing against them moves us to new places.
Limits build up pressure that pops us into new dimensions
Hemingway used just 26 letters.
Miles had but three valves on his horn.
Painters limit themselves with canvas size, with the colors on their palettes, with the history of the artists that precede them.
Binary code limits engineers to just 111s and 000s. That limitation produced the computer you’re reading this on.
Shakespeare didn’t use iambic pentameter just to produce plays with iambic pentameter.
He used it to force himself to use new words which expressed new ideas.
How can you limit yourself?
If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
Vincent Van Gogh
My editor, my design director and I have been working on covers for the new book all summer. We all love the final design but I thought you might look a peek at the top 25 contenders (trust me, there were many, many others!)
(CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO OPEN THE GALLERY)
And here’s the winner:
It’s tempting to fight back against criticism. But where does it get you?
Take Manet, the father of Impressionism. Outraged by a critic’s attack, he challenged him to a duel. They met in a forest, hacked ineffectually at each other with swords until they bent them, shook hands, and limped away. Neither man was badly injured and they both went back to work.
Take Whistler, a bad-tempered and thin-skinned genius whose memoir is called “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.” When John Ruskin wrote an especially vicious review of one of his paintings, Whistler took him to court, strenuously defended his modernist aesthetic — and was awarded a farthing for his troubles.
In the long run, both men beat the critics with a different weapon — the brush.
Manet is known for launching impressionism, for making it acceptable to paint everyday life, for Olympia, Le Dejeuner, and the critic, well, his name was Edmond Duranty—ever heard of him? Whistler’s legacy is bit more ironic, due not to his critics but to fans of his most famous work, “Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1.” After spending his life fighting against art based on moral lessons and maudlin emotion, he is known for a painting of his mommy. But it is a great painting and, even after the trial, he continued making many more.
Critics, internal and external, can raise any artist’s hackles. They can provoke you into violent defense of your work, into self-doubt, even into halting your creativity all together. One man’s opinion, published in a newspaper, or muttered in a gallery, or imagined in a moment of weakness, can suck up your energy and threaten your creative life. Few critic’s opinions endure and that’s something to remind yourself of. Because opinions are products of the moment, influenced by current trends, by ignorance, by poor digestion. They are not eternal, objective, blanket truth.
Any condemnation of a work of art, whether it comes from a professional, from a neighbor, from a monkey’s voice in your head, should only be responded to with more work. Prove them wrong — if you have to acknowledge them at all — but never let them get you down.
Forget lawyers and swords. Make your case with a brush, a pen, a blog post.
“Okay, but once you sign the contract, you have to write the book.”
“I know, I want to write the book. People need to know how to shut you up once for all.”
“And you think you can write a book about that?”
“Yes.”
“A whole book?”
“Sure.”
“Sez who? You’re not a shrink or a counselor or an expert of any kind. Who cares what you have to say?”
“I’ve lived with your voice in my head for decades, haven’t I? I’m pretty much as expert as you can get.”
“And you think you can shut me up?”
“Watch me. Hand me that pen.”
Book contract for "Shut Your Monkey" signed. Book out next fall. Let the fun begin!
Here’s the next interview with the contributors to my new book An Illustrated Journey: Inspiration From the Private Art Journals of Traveling Artists, Illustrators and Designers
Interview continues here….
Richard Sheppard is a longtime illustrator but only started drawing on location about three years ago. I love his work and his interesting color palette. 
Richard shares a lot more in my book. Here’s an excerpt:
“But upon arriving in Ireland, I found that sketching from photographs didn’t prepare me for anything other than sketching from photographs. I was too self-conscious to draw in public and ended up taking photographs the entire time. I kept telling myself that I could paint from the photographs when I returned home. It never happened. There is no substitute for learning to draw from life, out-of-doors. You can’t fake it.…” (continued)
Please don’t forget to check out Richard’s work.
Here’s the next interview with the contributors to my new book, An Illustrated Journey: Inspiration From the Private Art Journals of Traveling Artists, Illustrators and Designers.
Felix Scheinberger is a German illustrator and teacher who loves to hit the road and see the world (and takes his students too!). I love the comic darkness of his work, the looseness of his line, and his debt to Tomi Ungerer who had long been one of my favorite illustrators too. I also love his passion for travelling and seeing the rawness of the world.
We had some technical problems at one point so our conversation comes in two servings:
Felix shares a lot more in my book. Here’s an excerpt:
“Travelling is an integral part of my work. But I don’t travel to illustrate, I illustrate to travel, and I travel to understand the world and my role in it. Spectacular journeys aren’t what I am looking for, I want to depict things that mean a lot to me, and sometimes journeys don’t evoke the feelings I am looking for. And I don’t travel on the look-out for beauty. I look for real images, real emotions. So a journey to the Toscana just to draw terra cotta paths seems like a waste of time. These images have been made a hundred times over….” (continued)
Please don’t forget to check out Felix’s blog.
A little video report on two artists who are hitting the road and drawing the world.
Danny Gregory 