I’m heading to Greenville, South Carolina to give a couple of talks at the UCDA conference on Thursday and Friday.
So far, the only suggestions I’ve received for what else to do in Greenville involves boiled peanuts. The one museum is closed for renovations and the other is all about Andrew Wyeth (I can take or leave him). I may have to settle for the Shoeless Joe Jackson Baseball Library. And some peanuts.
Unless you have any better ideas.
In the order I wrote them down:
Plasticine®.
School paste, thick as Crisco®.
Fruit Stripe gum.
Lavender hand soap in my grandmother’s bathroom at the back of our house in Pakistan.
Ketchup packets squeezing onto meat pies in the ANU cafeteria where my mum was a grad student.
The dust, when I opened the case of my grandmother’s gramophone.
My dog Pogo’s puppies’ milk breath.
Cold cement in the bomb shelter and constructions sites where we played.
The vinyl back seat of the station wagon.
Burning charcoal in the servants’ tandoors.
Zoo elephants.
Fish sticks.
I mean, how hard is it? Close eyes, breathe rhythmically for eight hours, open eyes, get up. I’ve been doing it since the womb.
But no more, at least not for the last decade. I think it started when I turned forty, this business of waking up at 2 am to pee and wander around and eat some cereal and then go back to bed and stare at the ceiling and think about all things that could be wrong with my body and my bank account and then read some more from a book I only read in the middle of the night and then punch the stupid pillow and flip it over and flip the one under it over and then straighten the sheets and then kick them off again and then ask Jenny in a low voice if she’s awake to which she mutters back something inaudible and flips the other direction so I read some more, and then realize it’s eight o’clock and I am late and feel like someone shagcarpeted my mouth and poured maple sauce into my eye sockets, and my Kindle is wedged under my cheek and has debossed a rectangular frame into my face which will last there till midmorning and there’s not really time for a shower but living without one is inconceivable and the dogs are looking at me like I have committed crimes against caninity by making them wait this long for a walk and I know the day ahead is bound to feel like my head is wrapped in a blanket dunked in plaster, but so it goes. At least, thank God, Nighttime is over.
This lovely experience can be mine for the reliving twice a week. No guarantees, though. Sometimes I can sleep perfectly for six days at a time. At others, I hopscotch through a weeklong minefield of insomnia. My doctor said to try skipping caffeine after breakfast — which doesn’t make any discernible difference. My grandfather, the doctor, lived to be 98 by prescribing himself a valium and a shot of brandy before bed every night. I think my mum does something similar. I am very drug averse (see my essay on my time as a junky) so most nights, I just tough it out, and let the hours tick by in the darkness.
In my twenties, I could easily sleep till mid afternoon but that changed when Jack was born. Even if he didn’t stir all night, I would still startle awake thinking he was choking or screaming or all too quiet. and then do the whole staring-at-the-ceiling-thinking-about-cancer-and-the-IRS thing. These days, Jack is asleep on the other side of the country, but my sleep pattern is permanently damaged. I fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow, then bounce back at the slightest disturbance.
My neighborhood is an asshole magnet. Assholes visit the bars on West 3rd Street and on MacDougal and Bleecker and then they are drawn to the pavement under my building, to sing songs from the ’90s and fight over where they parked the car. Asshole couples make a point of breaking up on my corner. There must be a Yelp review that recommends it as the place to vomit and cry and scream and catalog slights and infidelities, slap and claw faces, pull hair, key cars, and then have make-up sex. Thumbs up!
Current events inspire the assholes too. Any kind of sporting event (football, rugby, ping pong, darts) needs to be celebrated loudly, late into the night, and, of course, on my corner. Last night, after the defeat of the AHCA, an asshole kept screaming, “Obama is still President!” over and over. That’s what woke us up at 2:30. “Obama is still President!” Normally that would be a dream come true. Last night it was a fucking nightmare.
Fortunately, it’s Saturday and I am going to take an afternoon nap on the couch. I need to rest up because tonight I’m going out with friends to some other neighborhood and get really, really drunk, scream a lot in the street, throw up, pass out in the gutter and finally catch up on my sleep.
PS Please don’t leave me any helpful suggestions for how to sleep better. They just make me anxious and inflame my hypochondria. Thanks.
First on the list: Tea.
Then, water.
Fourth place, beer.
But right in between, on the list of liquids I consume most, has to be… ink. It’s a messy relationship so let me complain a bit about it to you, in confidence.
When I was very little, ink was forbidden. We were only allowed to write and draw in pencils until third grade or so. By high school, ink was mandatory. Teachers would summarily reject smudgy homework done in lead.
I started typing when I was about eleven. And I taught myself the worst job in writing: changing typewriter ribbons. Festoons of inky cloth would cascade all over the room, marking every surface, turning my hands into ebony mitts.
I got my first fountain pen not long after — another source of misery and mess. God, how I dreaded that moment when my pen would run dry. After scribbling the nib frantically back and forth over the page, praying for a reprieve, I’d sigh and begin the chore of refilling: unscrewing the pen, dipping the barrel into an ink well, pumping the little bladder, black drops flying all over the desk.
Decades later, the carnage continues. I have been carrying around a lovely aluminum fountain pen from Muji. It uses cartridges which you’d think would make it less of a hassle. I carry it loaded, with a spare cartridge waiting in the back of the barrel. This week, I discovered that the pen has developed a tendency to unscrew in my pocket (I guess the motion of walking slowly untwists it). I reach my hand into my pocket and find two short tubular shapes where there should be one long one. The nib remains protected inside the cap but the back-end is open and the cartridge is disengaged, open-ended and oozing ink into my pocket. And onto my groping fingers.
Whatever the ink is, it’s not waterproof on the page, but it is on my fingers. Ordinary soap won’t do. I have to pull out the special bar of gritty Lava® soap I keep under the sink and flay my fingertips until the black marks are a faded grey. My nails will remain rimmed in black for days, as if I was an off-duty coal miner or a grease monkey fresh from changing a transmission.
I‘m used to being inky. I often chew the ends of ballpoints and invariably one will start to leak onto my face so I walk around unknowingly sporting black lips or a blue chin. Most of my jeans have indelible spots around the pockets from sitting on pens or having them uncap in the darkness.
The biggest culprit, of course, is my dip pen.The nib catapults ink when I press too hard. The shaft of the pen is always messy. And each time I prod the pen into the well, the cork bulb above the nib sucks up ink too, right where my fingers rest as I write. And, because I am an inattentive slob, I invariably bump into parts of the page covered with still-wet ink, then smear it and daub my cuffs.
Recently a manufacturer sent me some sketchbooks to test out (I won’t mention the brand by name). I liked the size, the binding and the weight of the paper and have filled up a twenty pages this week.
Then I discovered that, no matter how long I leave the ink to dry, it loses its water resistance. The ol’ reliable India ink that I have consumed by the barrelful over the years, is now completely untrustworthy, muddying my watercolors and smearing across the page. The manufacturer tells me it’s a function of the sizing on the paper. Whatever. It’s messed up a lot of pages now and, for once, it’s not my fault.
Grrr.
I guess I should stick to writing on my nice clean computer. Except my printer needs a new cartridge. Here we go.
Call me a nerd if you must but I loved doing homework. In this video, I do my assignment for Week Two in Seeing, a Sketchbook Skool klass on drawing self-portraits, taught by my partner, Koosje Koene.
It’s not too late to join Seeing! Click here to learn more.
I’m pretty jazzed to be launching a brand, spanking new kourse at Sketchbook Skool in a few weeks.
It’s been a year since I taught a regular klass, one that’s just focussed on stuff I find interesting (and hope others do too). I’ve been thinking a lot about how creativity works (and doesn’t) over the past year and was looking for a way to communicate those thoughts through a special kind of video technique. I also wanted to explore a technical aspect of drawing, how to capture tone and light with black ink lines on white paper.
Beyond getting to teach, I love working on new klasses with new teachers. And we’ve managed to land several of the leviathans of illustrated journaling and urban sketching, luminaries who our students have been requesting for years.
One of my watercoloring mentors, Felix Scheinberger, is back to talk about watercoloring and composition. I pour over his books regularly and always come away with a new idea or two each time.
My partner, Koosje shot a klass with Nina Johansson who was a contributor to my book, An Illustrated Journey. Her watercolors of cityscapes are really breathtaking and it’s a treat to finally get to see how she makes them. Koosje also shot a klass with illustrator Lynn Chapman in England, another rock star of Urban Sketching. She’s incredibly peppy and generous with her ideas and techniques. Watching her paint was another revelation.
And, finally, we also have a brand-new teacher from Miami, a street artist who I shot recently in Los Angeles as he painted a 30-foot mural. Brian Butler is one of the most productive sketchbook artists I’ve ever met and, by dedicating his life to drawing, he has had incredible experiences all over the world. I’ve long wanted to explore street art at SBS and this was my first chance. We spent two days shooting Brian as he painted a wall on a busy intersection of Downtown LA — and it was amazing. This sort of epic production with an artists who I admire is one of the chief reasons I love working at Sketchbook Skool.
Anyway, check out the video to get a taste of what this kourse will be like. I can’t wait for it to start!
As we relaunch “Seeing” at Sketchbook Skool, I did some fresh thinking about the nature of seeing and how cameras do it differently.
Folks have asked me what I use to make these videos so I put together a supply list.
Originally this was a Facebook Live thingamabob but you may not have the time or inclination to watch it there. Maybe this pristine non-commercial stage will change your mind. Or not.
Oh, and if you have a problem reading my handwriting, a) join the crowd and b) look at this then.
I live with a person (who shall remain nameless) who doesn’t want to hear it. Doesn’t want to discuss politics, to fulminate over the latest outrage, to join in prognostications or stew in venom. So, each morning, when I read the paper, I have to find other things to tell her about. I read the headlines in silence, then turn to back pages and read aloud from the book review or the food section.
Today, I plumbed the depths.
I told her about the new Damien Hirst show, his first in quite a while, which is all quite mysterious, apparently containing “jeweled buried treasure covered with coral as if just pulled out of the ocean.” I do love his twisted mind.
And then, huge news! Scientists have identified a new continent. Whaa? Yes! “an underwater continent two-thirds the size of Australia — and they are calling it Zealandia.” New Zealand is the bit that protrudes above the water but the rest fit the definition of a continent. So cool!
And I shared an article detailing all of the unusual animals that have escaped into the streets of my city in recent years: a goat, a zebra, a kangaroo, several cows, and, gulp, a cobra. Most were sent to animal refuge centers, thank God. They omitted mention of any deep sea creatures, but we have been following one with interest since last summer: several whales that have been seen breaching in the East and Hudson Rivers, right off the shore of our island.
Each of these stories seem more directly relevant to our lives than a lot of the stuff I skim over. And they keep our mornings calm and sunny. Try it.
In case you are avoiding Facebook, here’s one of the Facebook Live videos I made recently. It’s terribly exciting: I do a drawing of my favorite teacup. This is something I have been doing for a while, filling an entire sketchbook with drawings of the same cup using the same pen and usually at the same time: about 7 am.
You may be tempted to fast forward to the good bits. Don’t. Savor the moment with me. Spoiler alert: there aren’t any especially good bits anyway.
Well, there is the one —but if you go too fast, you’ll miss it.
And the sketchbook I use in this video is unique. It was made for me by my friend and mentor, Roz Stendahl. She’s the bomb.
Danny Gregory 
