On January 24, Upstart & Crow hosted an evening drawing workshop with Nishant Jain, also known as The Sneaky Artist. Nishant opened the evening with some funny stories about growing up in Indian—and if you were good at math then, of course, your parents wanted you to be an engineer. He was a mechanical engineer, enjoyed that, worked on race cars. Then studied neuroscience and worked with stroke patients. He moved to Chicago and began carrying a sketchbook as a way to journal and observe the foreignness of his new surroundings. He tried stand-up comedy and noted that the wonderful thing about America is that people encourage you to follow your dreams, even when you are not good at the thing you are pursuing. *chuckle* Nishant left his PhD program to pursue being a writer. Oh yes, a great conversation was had with his parents. He tried novel writing and it was too hard. Sketching was a way to get away from words. And that escape, or desperate attempt to find something to unlock the words, became a practice of “sneaky art,” quick sketches in line at a cafe or while observing people waiting for a traffic light.
Nishant shared several quick-drawing exercises and encouraged us to carry sketchbooks, to disrupt the algorthims by not reaching for our phones, to make 30 second sketches, 60 second sketches, maybe do 5-minutes a day. He emphasized that the point of the exercise is to get the dopamine hit by completing the sketch in the set time.
Upstart & Crow had 3 tables set up for participants and Nishant ran a quick tutorial at each table: showing different techniques, like having a foreground, midground, and background; framing a scene; choosing what to ignore vs. what to see; drawing what you see vs. thinking “I am drawing a cat” and it must have all the features I know are part of the word “cat”; how colour or contrast works to direct your eye.
Here’s my quick sketch of the room.
Make (Sneaky) Art is not a how-to-draw book but rather a why-to-draw book. I had a fabulous time hearing Nishant tell his story (full of wit) and practicing his shared techniques. On top of that I got my book signed and found a hidden piece of his art in the shop. What a fantastic event.
Grab a copy of the book from Upstart & Crow, or your neighbourhood bookseller.