Not the horrible parts — the fear, the death, the not knowing. But I miss things about it.

A certain tranquility. Sitting in my garden. Floating in my pool at night, looking at the stars so bright and vast.

The sense that this was a time of epic change, that rhythms and patterns were disrupted, that we could reconnect with what truly matters, that anything might be possible. We could learn to bake bread, to draw, to play the piano, take up knitting, read Victorian novels, do a hundred push-ups a day. We could spend an hour on Zoom talking to friends in New York whom we hadn’t talked to properly in years.

I heard that for the first time in a century, people in India could see Mount Everest. The air pollution had cleared. From hundreds of miles away, the mountain was just suddenly there. That amazed me.

There was a tremendous togetherness to it — literally every person on this planet was experiencing the same thing at the same time. It seemed, briefly, to ease the divisions between us, to remind us that we have so much in common, we are all human. It gave me a feeling of love for my species that’s much dimmer these days.

I watched the birds in my garden and thought: they’re completely unaffected by this. Just doing what they always do. Not afraid. Just living. I knew I was anthropomorphizing — birds live with the constant threat of being eaten — but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d escaped something that had paralyzed us. That they were in on a secret we’d long since forgotten.

And I remember feeling awed by science and technology. That they found a vaccine as quickly as they did. That millions were saved. Another example of the miraculous times we live in, even when we can’t quite believe it.

Writing about it now, six years on, I realize almost all of these things are still within reach. I could listen to the birds. I could draw with friends. I could call people in New York. I could read Tolstoy. I could feel all of it — and yet most of it I won’t.

I’m writing this while a war is raging and the news is full of warnings about artificial intelligence — how it will end work, or democracy, or the species. And I’m having the same thoughts I had during COVID. The same ones people must have had during the Spanish flu a hundred years ago, a pandemic so vast it killed tens of millions and then was simply forgotten. Not processed, not learned from. Forgotten.

When COVID began, I couldn’t stop thinking about that. How is that possible? And yet here we are again — the same catastrophes, the same inadequate responses, the same helpless shock as though none of this has ever happened before.

The reason, I think, is that we each believe — secretly, stubbornly — that our moment is different. That the lessons of the past applied to those people, in those simpler times, but not to us. We are more sophisticated, more informed, more imperiled than anyone who came before. This time the stakes are genuinely existential. This time we might not make it.

Except that every generation has thought this. Every generation has been certain that theirs was the hinge point, the moment of no return, the war to end all wars. And so far — so far — they’ve all been wrong.

We are so smart. We write everything down. We publish books, make films, hold memorials, build museums. We talk about never forgetting. And then, more or less on schedule, we forget — because remembering would require admitting that we are not exceptional. That we are just the latest version of the same animal, making the same mistakes, feeling the same dread, and somehow, improbably, carrying on.

And yet — no matter how dark things get, no matter how many times we have to be dragged back to the same hard lessons — we can still see the mountain. We can still hear the birds. We can still draw the beauty of ordinary things. We can still float in a pool at night and look up and feel, for a moment, that it’s all somehow worth it.

That’s not nothing. For a species as hopeless as ours, that might even be everything.

I love mankind. But alas.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. I just published a new video. I think you’ll like it if you like sketchbooks — and who doesn’t!

At this, I got my back up—and it’s not just because I do love jazz (well, most jazz — except for Fusion, Pop Fusion, Neo Bop, Free Jazz, Acid Jazz, guitar jazz except Django, and anything recorded after 1985).

I ranted on for a while about how we should open our minds, try new things, wonder why others like them, and that’s what artists do. Oh, and also that it’s good for your brain and helps you be a less intolerant curmudgeon.

I guess this little rant shows that I’m intolerant of intolerance, but my critique is really of myself: the things I don’t want to do, the ways I don’t want to think. And yet I do.

It’s an ongoing struggle to expand my mind and keep it open.

There are a lot of things I used to think I’d always hate but now I’m willing to tolerate—or even enjoy. For most of my life, I could never abide any spectator sports, but now I’m willing to watch hours of tennis or Formula One racing or the Tour de France. I still can’t sit through a football game (but I did just get Chuck Klosterman’s new book on football, and I’m hoping that he’ll persuade me that I should enjoy this incredibly popular sport).

And that’s the thing: there is so much stuff that is popular that I just don’t understand. Why do people watch basketball, eat Domino’s pizza, drink IPAs, or read multi-volume science fiction novels about imaginary civilizations? Why do they wear baseball caps all the time? Why do they listen to K-pop?

It’s easy to say that people are idiots or pseudo-intellectuals or from another generation. But almost none of that is really true, and I think by and large it’s just an excuse to not push myself.

My brain is designed to put things into categories. It just makes it so much easier to process the insane amount of information that I’m constantly being bombarded by. Life is easier when I can say, “This is the thing I like and agree with. This is a thing I reject.” But the sieves and filters built into my brain are not always precise. And my crude categorization can end up blocking opportunity.

It’s tempting to just opt for the comfortable and familiar every time: to curl up with Seinfeld reruns, crack a Bud Lite, and tuck into a tuna on rye, avoiding the risks and stresses of the New. There was a time when the idea of eating raw eel was gaggingly incomprehensible, but had I stuck to my guns, I would never have discovered the silky pleasures of unagi nigiri and dragon rolls.

There seem to be two primeval evolutionary mechanisms in conflict in me when I have to decide to order the usual or try the special of the day. On one hand, I was wired by my ancient ancestors to avoid eating that new plant sprouting outside the cave or getting too close to that unfamiliar creature who had just stepped out of the bushes. The wrong choice could poison me or turn me into someone else’s lunch.

After the pandemic waned and we were allowed to start traveling again, I just didn’t want to. It’s taken me a couple of years to get comfortable with the idea of leaving my safe, isolated house and rubbing shoulders with people who don’t wash their hands or wear masks. I think that’s pretty instinctual: as an animal, I became pretty absolutist in protecting myself.

But on the other hand, all my ancestors eventually wandered out of Africa and began the globe-trotting adventure that spread our species around the planet. If we were pathologically averse to anything new, we would have stayed home and starved on the savannah rather than writing essays in Arizona.

When I try something new, I’m taking on work. I have to read the instruction manual. I have to pay close attention. I have to put up with stuff that my habits and instincts label as annoying or hateful. And I have to be ready to faceplant.

And after the initial excitement begins to fade, I get fidgety and irritable. I get whiny, like a six-year-old being dragged through a department store. I could suck at this! I probably will! I want to stop and go back to something familiar. That’s normal, but it’s also a critical crossroads. If I let myself, I can just quit—or I can push through and get to reap the benefits of this new experience.

And the benefit isn’t just getting to not suck at this or that. It’s to get brave.

The more I do new things, the more comfortable I have to become with being uncomfortable. I develop toughness and resilience. Which means I can push myself into even more uncomfortable places. It’s a sort of masochism that can lead to greatness. Or at least a willingness to eat raw eel.

I tend to be a snob. I assume reflexively that if something is popular, it’s probably not for me. But if a lot of people love something, that’s actually information. Their enthusiasm is worth investigating, not a reason to look the other way.

Because I was a teenager in the late 70s, I had a natural antipathy toward Bob Dylan. All that late 60s, early 70s stuff was crap for those of us who had discovered punk and new wave. Hippies were so passé. Then, when I was in my late 30s, I met Bob Dye. I thought Bob was a cool hipster, so I was kind of shocked when he revealed that he was a huge Bob Dylan fan (and not just because their names are so similar). Bob had no patience with my dismissal of his hero, and he insisted that we sit down and listen to all of Highway 61 Revisited and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and then talk about it. Two hours later, I was convinced, and I’ve been an ardent Bob Dylan fan ever since.

Bob—well, both Bobs—opened my mind, and it stayed ajar.

Since then, I’ve had JJ school me in why I should listen to Rush and read Edith Wharton. My pal Anthony has turned me on to Robert Fripp.

Every time one of my prejudices falls, I rise.

I read a great book (Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker) that introduced me to this way of approaching new art in a gallery: “Just walk up to a piece and try to think of five things that it brings up… Not five things that the art is about… What are five things you notice… or how it makes you feel.”

Now I’m willing to ask myself: what’s the value in a Pollock? What are all these weird, incomprehensible things in the Whitney Biennial? Why do people rave about David Foster Wallace? Why would anybody eat beets? What’s so great about living in Phoenix, Arizona?

Asking people why they love what they love can help me share the love—or at least help me understand them better. The Grateful Dead. The Dave Matthews Band. Cilantro. Running marathons. The NHL.

I get it, but I still don’t like it.

I’m pretty good at trivia contests. I have yet to earn any money on Jeopardy, but all this random information in my brain has been enormously helpful to me in many other ways. I know it’s helped me come up with ideas because I have a large inventory of so many ways of doing things. I can combine them in fresh combinations to solve any greater problem. They call it ‘bricolage.’

That’s what creativity is: it’s not sitting in an empty room staring at the ceiling and hoping the muse will deliver an idea. It’s taking existing things and gluing them together to make new things out of them.

Of course, if I don’t know about a lot of existing things—because I have a very small repository of raw materials and eat all my meals at Arby’s—it’s that much harder to find fresh combinations. It’s like having a toolbox with one Phillips-head screwdriver and a ball-peen hammer. I’m working on getting an entire hardware store into my skull.

Which brings me back to jazz. I assume a lot of people are used to thinking of jazz as maybe instrumental background in a restaurant or an elevator or a Charlie Brown Christmas. Or perhaps they have recoiled at the clashing sounds of free-form jazz like Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. Or been bored by the banality of Kenny G.

Jazz is often treated as esoteric or “for intellectuals” now, but from the 1920s through the 1950s, jazz was just mainstream popular music. From the Jazz Age of the 20s up until the explosion of rock and roll—much of which evolved from jazz—that’s what you heard on the radio and what you played on 78s. Jazz. Billions of people listened to it, and they weren’t all bores and intellectuals. (If this piques your interest at all, start with the New York Times’ great series called “5 minutes to make you love Jazz.”)

Jazz is an incredible opportunity to hear artists create something in real time. Take someone like Keith Jarrett, whose four-record set The Köln Concerts is just a recording of him sitting down at a piano in front of a room full of people and making up music for several hours. The music is beautiful, new, and very moving.

Most jazz is about playing with variations on something familiar. It begins with a standard song, like “My Favorite Things” or “Surrey with the Fringe on Top.” One artist—with a huge range of experience in making sounds with their instrument, a lot of understanding of musical theory, and a sense of comfort and freedom and trust in their bandmates—will start to dismantle that familiar song and create something brand new out of the pieces. Another member of the band will build on this with new variations, and the tune will continue to get passed around as new ideas develop and the whole group supports this creative exploration. It’s wonderful to hear: something really familiar becoming something brand new, and the audience is right there at the inception.

I have a box set of Miles Davis and his quintet playing live at the Plugged Nickel, a small Chicago nightclub, in December 1965. They performed there for two nights, playing seven sets, all of which were recorded. In each set, they play the same basic list of songs, but each take is a completely different experience for them and for us.

I can’t think of another art form that’s so bold and courageous, and that inspires me on creative adventures of my own. You can hear all seven hours on Spotify. Or YouTube.

The older I get, the more important I think it is to keep stretching. My body and my mind.

As Kevin Kelly says in his wonderful book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier, “the chief prevention against getting old is to remain astonished.”

Sure, as I get older it’s tempting to be more conservative and guarded, to be suspicious of strangers and new ideas. After all, I have fewer years to recover from grievous errors.

On the other hand, I have fewer years in which to grow and have fun. New ideas and experiences are like investments that will grow over time. Each one spawns others, and eventually I get more and more wealthy from these experiences. The longer I wait to try stuff, the less I’ll be able to benefit from it.

And there is less at stake than there was when I was twenty. I’ve also shed much of the arrogance that I had when I was younger, the cocksureness that I was always right. Now I’m more open to how other people think and live. I’m less afraid of looking the fool.

I learned a few new things this week: I planted grass seed in my yard for the first time. I invited a fellow baker to come over and teach me some sourdough techniques. I read a book about surfing. I listened to a new record by an old favorite (Morrissey) and an old record by a new favorite (Surprise Chef).

That’ll do. Time to watch a rerun of ER.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. I just made a video about how I learned the true meaning of creativity. I hope you like it!

Play video

Ages ago, someone told me that we replace all of the cells in our bodies every seven years. Every single one. That idea has haunted me since. It seems to mean that I am literally no longer the same person I was seven years ago. Even though I have memories of things that go way further back, they are not the memories of the me of today.

That’s not a completely alien idea; it’s like copying files from an old computer to a new one or making a new printing of an old story. The information is the same, but the vessel is new. But somehow, when it comes to the cells that make me up, this has always felt different. Because I think of me as this me, this couple of hundred pounds of meat and skin, these scars, this reflection in the mirror. I don’t usually think of myself as a concept, a construction, or as data that can be re-recorded on a new cassette.

I woke up with this idea in my head again, and as I write this, I’m starting to realize why. The first and most obvious reason is that I am in the middle of organizing all the data files for Sketchbook Skool, 16 terabytes of data stored on a big stack of hard drives. Part of my archiving process is to make clones of each drive, so we have backups in case anything goes wrong with the originals. I put an empty drive into a slot in the dock, put the original in the other slot, push a button, lights flash, and soon every byte has been duplicated and I have two identical drives. All those hours of footage, all those conversations, and drawing demos are now in two places.

And somehow, as I do this, my body is doing the same thing. As I watch the blinking on the front of the dock, my old cells, the old me is slowly being copied and then deleted. Old cells are being cast off, exfoliated, dropping onto my pillow, blowing around my apartment with mites of dust, sluicing down the shower drain, peeing into the bowl, crapping out with my digested burrito.

Me shitting me out.

The other reason this popped into my conscious predawn today is that in less than two months, I will slough off the last cell that ever saw Patti first-hand. The last cells that ever talked to her, held her, kissed her goodbye. Soon, every part of me will be a fresh clone with no personal experience of her.

In December, Jack and I took Patti’s ashes out of the cookie jar that has contained them since March 18, 2010, and put them in their final resting place. We went to one of her favorite places, just after sunset, and we put her ashes in a place we can always come back to, a private place in a public spot, one she went to every day, where we know she would be happy to be, no matter where we are.

Her ashes are not Patti. They are just dead cells that were burned and preserved, not in amber but in a heavy-duty plastic bag, which we kept in that cookie jar, on a shelf where I could see it every day and gaze at when memories of her became intense. They stood for her but now they no longer need to do that.

For she is in us.

The process of burying Patti was not sad. It was actually slightly comic as Jack and I bumbled our way through it, making a couple of clumsy errors that were pure Patti, pure Hoofy. I don’t think either of us felt sad as we did it. Rather, we felt that she was with us still, that the pain of losing her was a faded memory, and that this was the final thing the three of us would ever do together, and that it should be light and silly just as our best times as a family always were.

Patti’s cells are now forever in that one place. Jack’s are now in Los Angeles, three thousand miles away. And mine are here, being replaced with new cells, new cells that look older, more wrinkled and grey.

Many of the hair cells were not replaced. Some of the brain cells did not replicate with all the memories in place. Other cells have less resiliency and vim than their predecessors. And yet they are all still me, they all still bear the weathering of the years, the experiences, joys, and traumas that made me and still do.

My memories of Patti have changed with these cells. Some are lost forever. And those that used to take precedence because they were at the front of the line have stepped back into the mists. I am no longer haunted by thoughts of Patti at the window, of the policemen, of the visit to the coroner’s office. I no longer think of Patti as a woman of fifty, increasingly limited by her disabilities, who didn’t want to grow old in a wheelchair.

Now, when I think of her, I rummage through my huge archive of snapshots. I see her in a Polaroid, pregnant with Jack. I see her in a soft focussed, black and white picture dressed up to go to a party, I see her laughing in a bar with friends I haven’t heard from in years, I see her smiling through her freshly cut bob, I see her holding our first dog Frank like a big baby, his long legs sticking up in the air, both of them grinning. I see her looking at me like she did on our first date, saying ‘Mommy’, the gap between her front teeth.

As I think of these memories, I feel old tears well up in my new eye cells. These new cells are never overwhelmed by the tsunami of grief that used to seize me, but it’s good to know that those old memories can still affect them, even though I am happy, happy with my new cells, my new home, my new job, my new love, my new wife, my new life. My new cells make up a new me with all the best bits of the old.

Your pal,

Danny

“I’m no good at art, so what’s the point?” I get it. Art can feel intimidating, particularly if you’ve never done it before. We go to museums and see the work of amazing artists and think, “I could never do anything like that.”

But we’re comparing ourselves to a small handful of the greatest geniuses in the history of humankind — a hundred men and women out of the tens of billions who have walked the earth. It’s just not a fair comparison. Or a necessary one.

The goal of art isn’t to compete with other artists, dead or alive. It’s to find yourself, to find a way to express who you are. Think of art like your signature, the way that you dress, walk, or speak — things that develop over time until they become natural extensions of who you are.

Nobody else can make art like you. Nobody else can tell a joke like you, swim like you, cook like you, kiss like you, or be a friend like you. Being good isn’t the point. Being you is.

“I don’t have time to make art.” When we think about art, we imagine it’s a major undertaking — classes, supplies, a studio, the whole production. But we don’t need any of that. You can make art in five minutes, in three minutes. A doodle, a sketch. A haiku. The more you do it, the more it becomes second nature, as fast and easy and fun as consuming a TikTok video — and considerably better for you. Making art is an investment in your well-being. Even a short creative break, like a little nap, can refresh you and give you a new perspective on your day.

“Art supplies are expensive.” Some are, it’s true. A single tube of cobalt blue oil paint could cost you $100. But you can make beautiful art with a ballpoint pen you picked up for free. Draw on the back of a credit card statement. Collage with old magazines. Paint on a cardboard box. Gather up leaves, press them in a book, and make something gorgeous. You don’t need to spend a lot of money. You just need to look at the world with a fresh eye and think: what can I make from what I already have?

“I’m set in my ways. I’m too old. It’s too late.” It’s never too late to go on a new adventure. The Hobbit opens with Bilbo Baggins sitting by the fire in his cozy hole with his pipe and his cup of tea, until one day Gandalf shows up and says, let’s go. Bilbo is terrified, but then he sets forth and discovers the world for the first time. That’s what art does. It doesn’t matter whether you first look through that lens as a little kid, when you’re graduating from high school, or when you join the AARP. There’s no time like the present to discover what your true passions are.

“I don’t have anybody to make art with.” There are so many communities off- and online filled with like-minded people. You may live in the middle of nowhere, but there are people waiting for you right on this computer. Sketchbook Skool is a great place to meet others embarking on this adventure.

But you can also make art by yourself and use it as an opportunity for introspection. Sit quietly with a pen and paper and draw something on the table in front of you. Dream up some new ideas. Write a little story about when you were a kid. It’s a great way to be with yourself — and comfortable with yourself. Time that’s just yours.

“I don’t have any talent.” I don’t know quite what talent is, but if it exists, it’s just one small piece of the puzzle. A lot of very famous artists didn’t start out with some innate gift. They dedicated time to working and exploring their passion, discovering and improving their skills, struggling to push past each problem they encountered. You might be frustrated at first, sure you can’t do this — but then one day you’ll have a breakthrough that makes you realize you are, in fact, an artist. I’ve seen it happen to thousands of people just like you and me.

“I’ll never make any money from it.” Yup, it’s true. You may not. I don’t make money from my art. I never have. But I’ve never particularly cared about that. There are plenty of other ways to make money in the world — why does art have to be one of them? Life is full of things worth doing even if you’re not paid to do them. Playing with your dog, hiking a beautiful mountain, eating a sundae, floating on a lake watching fluffy clouds pass overhead. Nobody needs to pay you for those things. They’re just wonderful and make life worth living. Art does too.

“It’s just too hard.” Hard doesn’t mean impossible. Every artist — beginners and professionals alike — struggles along the way. But what’s wonderful about art is there’s no one way to do it. The road twists and turns, which makes it a great opportunity to take risks, make mistakes, and discover something brand new — a breakthrough that comes out of struggle. Each time you try, you learn, you grow, you get better. The struggle is part of what makes it great. Like climbing Everest. Running a marathon. Raising a child. All worth doing, even though they’re hard.

“People will judge my work.” It’s natural to be afraid of that, especially when you’re sharing something as personal as art. But it’s all subjective. What one person loves, another might not understand — and that’s okay. Every piece you create is part of your journey. Don’t let the possibility of a stranger’s judgment stop you from having that experience.

“I’m not creative.” Are you sure? Creativity isn’t just something we do on a canvas or on stage. It’s woven into the fabric of everyday life — the innovative solution you come up with at work, the way you put an outfit together, pull together a meal, tell your kids a story at bedtime. It’s a mindset. And once you allow yourself the freedom to explore, to make mistakes and learn from them, you’ll find it starts to bubble up in unexpected ways. Every one of us has a unique perspective, a unique voice. That in itself is creativity.

“I’m not an artist.” Who says? You don’t need a license or a degree or a sprinkling of magical fairy dust. Art isn’t confined to galleries and museums. It’s in the doodles you make during a phone call, the way you arrange flowers in a vase, the way you tell a story, the way you tie your tie, the way you wear your hat. If you create, you’re an artist in your own right. And if you’ve never tried but are curious — why not start now?

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. I just made a new video for you. I’d be so happy if you’d watch it!

It got me thinking. How much have I spent on making art over the years?

Five colored pencil sets. A drawer full of ink bottles. A hundred markers. Eight or nine watercolor sets. A couple dozen brushes. I’ve tried out so many brands of pens, settled on one, bought a crate of them. A month later, changed my mind.

Art books. Art instruction books. Art history books. Books by artists. Books about artists.

iPads. Computers. Cameras. Software. Internet service to watch other people use all of the above.

I’ve spent money on things I use every day — and things I fully intend to use but never get around to.

When my friend Tom showed me his new ultralight folding camp stool, I had to have one — even though I already own three others. I dropped a hundred bucks on it for my trip to Mexico, only to discover it was banned from the museums. It just sat in my backpack the whole trip. Now it sits in a closet, alongside the markers and pastels and metallic pens and graphite sticks that I honestly, truly do plan to use one day.

Maybe.

And then there’s time. So much of it.

A few hours a week, sometimes a few hours a day, for twenty-five years — filling sketchbook pages just to put them on a shelf. Time spent polishing my skills, experimenting, redoing. Time studying what other people do and feeling jealous and awed by their abilities.

What does that add up to?

But those aren’t the only costs.

There’s the cost of feeling incompetent. Of thinking I’ll never learn to draw properly, of scrabbling for a new idea and coming up dry. The uncertainty that I’ll ever have another idea, or that my idea will be any good, or that I’ll be able to execute it. That my skills will atrophy or never develop further. That people won’t like what I make. That it won’t be worth anybody’s time.

The cost to my ego of comparing myself with other people.

The cost to my confidence of struggling with the monkey voice in my head.

And the cost of dredging up raw materials I can’t order from Amazon: childhood memories, fears of aging, conflict, darkness. The cost of digging into myself, of letting my subconscious surface things that had been safely buried.

I don’t sell my art. But it isn’t free.

That’s only half the ledger.

I get to play every day. I get to sit at my table, open a sketchbook, uncork my bottles of ink, open my boxes of colored pencils. I get to draw faces and animals, places and snacks.

I get to try things and experiment. The fun of discovery — what’s going to happen if I do this? What will it be like to try that? Where will this idea take me? I get to splash ink and draw wonky lines and fail without it being a disaster. I get to learn from all kinds of experiences and people.

Those are the everyday pleasures.

And then there are the deeper ones.

I love solving creative problems, figuring out how to do something that seems impossible, or combining things that shouldn’t go together. I love learning how to use a tool in a way that finally brings to life an idea that’s been lodged in my head. I love the delight of seeing something on the page that I can’t believe I made — and how that makes me feel inside, and how that makes me feel about myself.

I love sharing something I’ve made and having a stranger respond to it. Having someone I don’t know tell me it moved them, gave them insight, changed something in their life.

When I made my animated film, The Artist Who Couldn’t Draw, I had this incredible feeling of having brought two creatures to life. The main characters had personalities and worlds, goals and struggles — all of which had come entirely from my imagination. Every day I went back to work with them, it was fulfilling in a way I struggle to describe. I’ve had that feeling writing stories and a novel too.

I’ve created my own time machine through journaling — it takes me back to times in my life I thought were lost and gives me fresh insight into them.

And my art helped me heal. It walked beside me through the hardest times — my first wife’s accident and her death, and the pandemic. My sketchbooks have carried me through confusion and grief. Their pages have shown me the beauty in my life when I couldn’t see it myself.

How do I put a price on that?

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. Final reminder: My live workshop, Dive into Dip Pens, takes place tomorrow morning. You have a few hours left to sign up and get the full recording too. Click here for more. See you there!

And over the next 30 years, I built my network in the two square miles of Manhattan. I worked for 10 different New York ad agencies, and there were dozens more still to try. When corporate headhunters asked me if I would be willing to relocate to Chicago, Los Angeles, London, or Portland, I just looked at them like they were crazy. What, and leave New York?

To quote Alvy Singer, “I don’t want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light.”

I guess the irony is that the biggest changes I’ve made to my life took place in a small garage in West L.A. and this old house in Phoenix.

Two cities in which I barely knew a soul. Where I had no connections. No inside paths to success. No legs-up. Just me.

But these are the places I wrote most of my books. Where I started Sketchbook Skool. Where I made videos and started writing these essays. Where I became the real me.

The internet made it all possible. Now I can reach anyone anywhere. And then I can unplug and sit in my garden, wallow in my hot tub, or take a nap after lunch.

But it’s not just that I can do more here in the hinterlands. It’s that I can also do less.

I can clear space for new ideas and fresh risks. I don’t have the distractions of the bright lights in the big city. I don’t have to compare and compete with my peers. Less need to keep up and stay current with the latest, groovy, trendy things. I’m writing this in sweatpants by my pool. Oh, how my old art director in her Ferragamos would jeer.

And things frankly are different because I’m older. When I was 22, I was happy to race the rats. I could claw my way up the ladder. Now I just don’t see the need.

During the pandemic, we worried that New York was dying, but of course it never was. It survived COVID, but also yellow fever and the Spanish flu. But even though New York will always be the top of the tops, it’s not the only game in town anymore.

Geography is no longer destiny. You can start an art or writing career, become an investor or entrepreneur from anywhere with decent Wi-Fi.

That means that there aren’t just 8 million people who can make it. There are 8 billion who now have a shot.

Including you.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. Next Saturday morning, I'm teaching Dive into Dip Pens—a 3-hour online workshop exploring this most expressive tool where we will make some gorgeous, finished art together. You can join in from anywhere! It’s on Saturday, March 7th at 9 am Pacific. If you can’t make it live, watch the full recording anytime. If you're up for spending a Saturday morning making art, click here to learn more. If not, see you next Friday.

That we’re too old, too set in our ways, too far down a different road. That the creative version of us — the one who filled sketchbooks as a teenager, who always meant to learn something, to make something — was a younger person, and it’s a little embarrassing to pretend otherwise now.

My mother was in her seventies when she walked into her local NPR station and offered to help out. She had no background in broadcasting, no experience in journalism, no obvious reason anyone should take her on. Soon she had two radio shows with interviews and essays about her community. Within a couple of years, she was running the news bureau — director of the whole operation. She did that for a decade.

She also invented an art form. She calls it Leafages: pressed leaves she’s collected from around the world, combined with her calligraphy — quotes and aphorisms written in her own hand, the words winding around and among the leaves, the whole thing composing into something neither purely botanical nor purely literary but entirely her own. She sells originals and prints. Someone who hadn’t made art till her sixties is a working artist in her eighties.

Mary Delany would recognize the impulse. In 1772, recently widowed and grieving at 72, she noticed a scrap of colored paper on her table that matched the hue of a nearby geranium. She picked up a pair of scissors and started cutting. The botanical collages she made over the next decade were so precise that the leading scientists of her day consulted them as references. Nearly a thousand pieces. The British Museum has them now. See here.

Inge Ginsberg survived the Holocaust, spent the 1950s writing songs for Doris Day, and, in her late 90s, decided that her poetry about the world wasn’t reaching enough people. So she became the front woman of a heavy metal band, growling lyrics over distorted guitars at an age when most people are just trying to finish the crossword. She went viral. Dig it.

Harry Bernstein spent his career editing trade magazines while quietly wanting to write his own book. After his wife of 67 years died, he sat down at his typewriter and started. His debut memoir, published when he was 96, became a bestseller. He won a Guggenheim fellowship. Three more books followed before he died at 101.

I’ve watched something like this happen thousands of times at Sketchbook Skool — people who spent decades convinced they weren’t the creative type, who had that impulse pushed aside by a teacher, a parent, the sheer pressure of a practical life, and who showed up somewhere in their sixties or seventies and found it still there.

They discovered things about themselves — a resilience, a capacity for attention, a pleasure in just looking — that being “sensible” had kept under wraps.

They didn’t know drawing would change things, but they just showed up and started, and slowly their life began to change.

I’ve been thinking about all of this while finishing a new short film called The Museum of Lost Art. It tells the story of a man who lost touch with his own youthful creativity until later in life, he wanders into a magical museum and discovers his dream is still alive. I hope you’ll watch it.

I deferred my dream for decades, but I spent the last 25 years breathing new life back into it. I hope that my essays, videos, and courses will help you to rediscover your own potential, no matter how long it’s been in the drawer.

Your pal,

Danny

Most kids just stuffed the colors nilly-willy into the box or left them lying on the table. For me, arranging always provided a certain satisfaction.

The same with my bookshelves: arranging books by author, then again by title, by subject, by spine color, by height. Then I could lie in bed and gaze upon the orderliness before me.

I think that’s the reason I loved collecting stamps. Arranging all of the Queen Elizabeth II profiles by denomination or by color. And the same with the Francisco Franco portrait series. Variations on themes.

And why I like discovering an author and reading every book they’ve written, usually in order of publication.

Following the instructions for Ikea furniture and turning a pile of random planks into a bookshelf. Or organizing computer files so they sit in the right folders and have the right names. Building databases. Making swatches of all my new watercolors. Labeling each of my sketchbooks and the drawers of my art supply cabinet.

I like to put my activities into my calendar and record them in my journal at the end of each day. A journal I have filled for 1,327 consecutive days without fail.

I like to set my own schedules and deadlines. I like to finish a project long before I feel the cold constricting grasp of the due date around my throat. I call it “pre-crastination,” this need to get it done before it’s expected.

So what is this about? This desire for completism and order and neatness?

I normally think of myself as a person who eschews rules and regulations. Who revolts against mandates imposed by others. I pushed back against client mandates and company policy and due dates throughout my advertising career. I wanted to go my own way and yet…

Am I somewhere on the spectrum? Aren’t we all? Is it an anal compulsion baked into my psychology? Perhaps. Is it because I’m a triple Virgo, the stars aligning to make me this way?

True, I was born under certain stars, but I was also born into a certain kind of family, one that brought me a lot of chaos and very little predictability. Between my mother, my father, my first and second stepfathers, my grandparents, I lived under changing rules, changing styles, changing needs, changing demands, changing houses, changing cultures, changing countries. I went to a dozen and a half schools in four countries before I was twelve.

None of which was within my control at all. But my bookshelf was.

Creativity requires chaos. We need ideas and inspirations to be free-floating and bumping up against each other.

But there have to be constraints as well. If my environment is chaotic and so is my creative project, my brain will hit a system overload, a form of anxiety that makes me feel powerless and incapable of steering the idea to completion.

When things are ordered—when I know where my supplies are, when my schedule is set, when the crayons are arranged—my brain doesn’t have to work so hard just to exist in the world. It’s not scanning for threats or frantically hunting for the thing I need. That energy gets saved for making.

My brain needs to operate within a certain range of stimulation. If my environment is inert, my brain has nothing to play with. But if everything is on fire, I get overwhelmed and retreat.

But this is not a pathological condition. I’m capable of doing work and operating even in really difficult situations. I did it when I was a kid, and I did it in some extremely tumultuous advertising agencies run by insane people.

But it’s not optimal.

I’ve turned my childhood coping mechanism into a professional-grade tool.

The life I lead now has a lot of structure, so my imagination has a scaffold for my creative ideas. I write on certain days. I make videos on certain days. I do demonstrations and livestreams on other days.

I know what to expect from my day, structure-wise, but all is not rigid and unyielding. When I sit down at the keyboard or pick up my pen, I am travelling on a well-maintained road that I can ride in all directions.

My imagination has become superbly well-trained. It’s like my pugs when I take them for a walk. They know we’re here to do business.

I can sit down and write this essay at 8:30 on a Monday morning and get it done on schedule because I’ve engineered this structure and place of safety, productivity, and predictability. My imagination knows it’s in the right environment to safely generate ideas. It’s ready to perform.

When I open my pencil box, and I’m greeted by that perfect rainbow, it means the storm has passed and the time for making has begun.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. One of my obsessions is using a dip pen.  And I want to infect you with it. I'm putting together a new live online workshop on March 7th—three hours diving into dip pens, starting with the basics and ending up with several beautiful pieces of finished art. If you want to join me for a really fun Saturday, click here to learn more.

Painters paint.

Cooks cook.

Polo players play polo.

We are what we do.

Being an artist doesn’t mean you have to justify whether or not you’re an artist.

Just make art … and you’ll be an artist.

Okay, so what is art?

That’s a big question, and it doesn’t have a universally agreed-upon answer. So you get to decide for yourself what it is. (Which means that not everyone will agree with you, but yeah, whatever).

And if you can’t decide what Art is, maybe you don’t need to worry about what an Artist is. Just don’t think so much about it and do your thing instead.

Focus on being a painter (i.e., someone who paints). Or a watercolorist (someone who watercolors). Or a sculptor (Etc.). Or a draw-er.

(Aside: Why is there no proper word for someone who draws? —Draughtperson? Sketcher? PenPerson? Ink-stained wretch? — do we really have to use “draw-er,” a word that also means the place you keep the trash bags and the oven mitt?)

Be what you do.

Better yet, forget your job title altogether, and spend your energy on making stuff — rather than on what it will be called once you’ve made it.

I say this because too many people conflate activity and identity. They worry about the noun rather than the verb.

And the verb is much more useful.

If you get up in the morning and say, “I’m an artist,” okay, then what? Put on a beret and sign some autographs? Meh.

But if you leap out of bed and say, “I’m going to make some art today,” you’re going to get somewhere.

You’re going to fill canvases and sketchbooks with stuff — some good, some bad — and one day, someone else will say, “Wow, you’re an Artist.”

And you’ll say, “I guess so. Thanks,” and then you’ll get right back to doing.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. It’s 02/06/26 at 2:06 am. Whoa.

The process, as it was described to me by English teachers and publishing guides, sounded punishing. You mailed out unsolicited manuscripts with self-addressed stamped return envelopes and waited.

Mostly, you waited …. to be rejected. If you were lucky, you waited for years to get a reply. You paid your dues in postage and silence, and one day—maybe—you got chosen.

When I was in my 40s, I finally got a book published, which made it easier to get a second book published and to get an agent, and so forth.

I had my club membership card at last.

The publisher took 92% of the list price, and in return, I got my words on paper and available for sale somewhere in my local Barnes & Noble.

For a long time, that felt like the only legitimate path.

Sure, there was always “vanity publishing,” but it carried real stigma. It was shorthand for self-delusion, or at least that’s how it was talked about. For people whose work wasn’t good enough to be published, so they had to pay to see it in print.

The message was clear: if a publisher didn’t choose you, it didn’t really count.

Wrestling, as I often do, with impostor syndrome, I absorbed the belief that legitimacy came from being selected. That publishers were the imprimatur.

Without them, you weren’t a real author.

Over the years, I worked with half a dozen publishers. Some were staffed with kind, thoughtful people. Others were faceless, global corporations. The deals were generally the same. I did most of the work. They took the lion’s share of the revenue.

Early on, there was some promotional support. I was interviewed on NPR radio shows. Once, I was even on CNN. But over time, those opportunities faded. Increasingly, I was expected to bring my own audience, maintain a social presence, and promote relentlessly.

Production, distribution, promotion—the things publishers were supposed to handle—were quietly shifted onto my shoulders.

The editorial process offered little value. Most of the feedback I received amounted to typo fixes and minor grammatical corrections. The golden age of legendary editors like Maxwell Perkins was long gone. I wasn’t being edited so much as processed—my files moved along inside a large corporate system.

I designed and illustrated most of my books, which meant I had to deliver a finished product, all ready to print. Another expense quietly shifted from the publisher to me.

I liked making my own books, but more and more, it felt like I was paying with my time and labor simply to remain inside the system.

At the same time, I was watching something else happen. People were publishing fan fiction, ebooks, crowd-funded projects, and deeply specific niche work that traditional publishers had no interest in—not because it was inferior, but because it didn’t fit a mainstream economic model. These creators weren’t being supported or discovered. They were going to their audiences directly.

The more I watched this, the clearer it became: publishers weren’t helping specialized authors reach hungry readers unless the authors did all the work themselves.

The gate was still there. It just wasn’t doing much.

The power and promise of publishing, as I see it, is the ability to say: I can find readers for this. I maintain the appro­priate network; I possess the appro­priate influence. Of course, that promise was only ever par­tially true … but nowa­days it is simply: not. Which isn’t to say books don’t find readers—obvi­ously, they do—but I don’t believe any pub­lisher presently feels they can manage the process with confidence; with the snap of a lever. Nowadays, it’s all raffle tickets—all pachinko flow. — Robin Sloan

The moment that finally clarified things for me was when my latest publisher went bankrupt and was absorbed by Penguin Random House. I had always thought of both Penguin and Random House as the crème de la crème of publishing, so I was quite excited—like I’d gotten a back-door entry into the hallowed halls.

What I discovered instead was indifference. They did a careless job with How to Draw Without Talent. I meant nothing to them. They contributed almost nothing, despite taking an enormous share of the royalties. And my book languished.

Decades after I first sent those envelopes into the ether, it had become possible for anyone to print a book with the click of a button and make it available directly to readers.

Technologically, everything had changed.

Psychologically, I was still laboring under the old rules.

The lingering belief that doing it yourself made the work lesser. That legitimacy came from outside approval. That success meant passing through institutions with their own priorities and agendas.

Those expectations weren’t just psychological. They were physical, too. What a real book was supposed to look like: a jacket, a certain size, a certain weight, printed on paper, or released as an audiobook. All of that made sense when the goal was to move units through bookstores. But those things aren’t requirements if you’re working directly with readers, listeners, or viewers. They’re conveniences to mass production, not creative necessities.

Once you step outside that system, the form itself loosens. A book can arrive in installments, in email, in PDFs. It can live alongside videos or drawings or audio. It can be something shared quietly, or slowly, or as the reader watches you write it, livestreaming on YouTube.

The shape doesn’t have to obey the old rules anymore.

We no longer need to measure what we make by standards designed for someone else’s business model.

We have the tools to make incredible things.

We can share them widely, narrowly, or not at all. We can publish them ourselves, or keep them private, or give them away. And we can stop looking at our work through a prism of success inherited from people with very different goals.

Setting our own rules—about what we make, how it looks, and how it reaches others—puts the power and the possibilities back in our hands.

Your pal,

Danny

What you think about your death. How the world feels from this particular place. How we should treat each other. What role God has in your life. What we think is beautiful. Our weaknesses and secret dreams.

Things that you have opinions about, you have feelings about, you have dreams about — but that just lie in the basement of your mind in decaying cardboard boxes, gathering dust and silverfish.

Sure, there are those rare moments you bring some of them out.

After a couple drinks with a college roommate, talking to a stranger on an overnight plane trip, or to your spouse when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep. But in all likelihood, you’ll go to your grave with those thoughts and feelings and opinions still locked behind cobwebs and never shared with the world.

Unless you are an artist.

So many of my favorite artists make work that displays their feelings, their inner angst, their fears. How they feel about human beings, about aging, about the body, about sex, weakness, death, society. The more intense the better.

Basquiat, Crumb, Schiele, van Gogh, Lucien Freud, Neel, Hockney. Knausgård, Dylan Thomas, Patchett, Strout, Bukowski, even Stephen King.

I love these artists because they crack open their chests and skulls and spill out things we recognize in ourselves, things we didn’t know anyone else felt or thought.

Sometimes raw, sometimes enhanced with genius.

Big things and small that may or may not ever come up in polite society.

Way beyond pretty pictures, cool techniques, gripping stories or fancy footwork, they make art that’s worth spending time with because it makes us feel like we are not alone in the universe.

Making heartfelt art doesn’t mean you need to self-flagellate in public, but you do need to be authentic and unafraid.

Art is the opportunity to share yourself. Seize it.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. I just made a video about an artist who hated his art. I hope you don’t hate it.

Or learn to play a musical instrument reasonably well.

I’ve always figured I’d eventually get into excellent physical shape. Or visit my boyhood home in Pakistan.

I’ve planned to one day own a whole pack of dogs and learn to play tennis, become a computer coder, and spend the whole day, every day, just drawing.

As time passes, many of those things have become quite doable.

But I don’t do them. And maybe, I’m finally admitting I don’t really want to.

It’s easy to kick life down the road. To stuff a folder labeled “One Day.” To put a pin in passions and wait to make them real ... later.

Are there things you’ve always told yourself you want to do one day? And — given the opportunity to do them — do you actually still want to?

Do you still really want to live in Vermont or Fiji?

To write a novel?

To own a snake?

Or a tattoo of one?

Maybe it’s time to clean out your dream attic.

To Marie-Kondo® each one, check its sell-by date and see if it’s gone stale in the can.

Don’t put it off any longer. Today, figure out what you really, truly want to do with your life.

And clear some room to start doing it.

Your pal,

Danny

I’d stare sullenly out the rainy window. I’d kick the living room rug as I walked around its perimeter. I’d tease the dog. I’d annoy my mother. I’d whine.

These days, I’m so rarely bored—except at bad dinner parties or when looking at Facebook. There always seems to be stuff I want to do—things to learn, to explore, to experience. If anything, the problem is having too many options. And too little time.

But I vividly remember that “I’m so booooooored” feeling from being eight or nine and refusing to occupy myself with my shelves of books, bins of toys, and boxes of crayons.

I’m having a version of it today.

Our Internet service is out (they promise it’ll be back by 3:21 PM—so specific and so unbelievable). I can’t watch YouTube while eating my lunch or distract myself with Instagram.

I guess I’ll write something instead. Today’s the day I typically start to draft this weekly essay, so let’s get down to that instead.

I gaze at my bookshelves, thumb through some random pages. I look through the folder on my phone that is my virtual commonplace book, an endless archive of highlighted quotes from other people’s books and blog posts.

It’s the late-night feeling of looking in the fridge for inspiration for something to snack on. Nah, nothing looks good.

My hard drive has an archive of ideas I’ve never used. Stuff I thought of in the shower, on a walk, while watching Netflix. Half-baked. Abandoned. Ideas that seemed viable, but I was too lazy to write at the time.

I rarely publish one as is. I usually use them as grease for my cerebral wheels. What comes out the other end bears no resemblance to what went into the machine.

Fine. Whatever. I’ll just start typing and see what happens.

What if the internet never came back?

What if this is it—the great unplugging, the apocalypse of connectivity?

We’d all be standing around like confused penguins on an ice floe, refreshing our browsers and getting nothing. Civilization would crumble. Governments would fall. Dogs and cats, living together.

Or maybe not. Maybe we’d just... make stuff again.

Draw things. Write things. Build things with our hands. My grandfather carved duck decoys in his back shed. Did he need Wi-Fi for that? He needed a block of wood and a knife and probably some vague idea of what a duck looked like. The rest was just hands moving and wood chips falling and time passing.

I’m typing faster now. Where is this going? I have no idea. Something about ducks. Something about the internet being a giant distraction from the fact that our imaginations are right there, waiting, like dragons we’re too afraid to climb on because what if they take us somewhere weird? What if we end up drawing a witch fighting a tuna sandwich in a forest made of old word processors? What then?

Well, what then? At least we’d have a drawing of a witch fighting a tuna sandwich. At least we’d have made something that didn’t exist before.

The router blinks back to life. Little green light, so proud of itself.

I keep writing anyway. The boredom is gone. I’m just me again, hands moving, making stuff. That’s all it ever takes.

Your pal,

Danny

🥱 P.S. If you think you might be bored this weekend, join me on Saturday for my new workshop. Find out more about it here. I promise — it will not be a bore.

📺 P.P.S. I just finished a new short film called The Artist Who Hated His Art. I’ll be sharing it with all of YouTube on Tuesday, but here’s a sneak peek just for you.

Paint & Pen — Pen & Paint. Three hours exploring how ink and watercolor can work together. We’ll make four finished pieces, each one using a different sequence of line and color.

I built this thinking about the kind of people who read my work—people who want to expand how they think and create, not just learn techniques.

And I love doing this. Spending Saturday morning making art with other people is just a good way to spend time. That focused, slightly giddy creative energy you get from working alongside others—there’s real value in that.

I’ll be teaching live, drawing in real time, answering questions as we go. If you can’t make it live, you’ll have lifetime access to the recording and can work through it whenever suits you.

Saturday, January 10 at 9am Pacific Time • $49

If this speaks to you, click here for more details.

If not, no worries—back to your regularly scheduled essay on Friday.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. Black Friday bundle folks—email info@sketchbookskool.com if you want this counted toward your package.

P.P.S. If you want to know more about future workshops, click here to join the Sketchbook Skool email list.

As if it’s learning to drive or tie your shoes. One and done.

But drawing is closer to brushing your teeth. You have to keep doing it.

Most days, anyway.

Even when you’re tired, or rushed, or would rather do literally anything else. And if you stop for a while, you don’t lose your teeth—but things do get a little stinky.

Stop brushing, and you end up with bloody gums.

Stop drawing, and your lines get bloody awful.

The good news is that while teeth don’t grow back, drawing skills do.

And just like with dental care, you can upgrade your regimen. Try new brushes, refine your technique.

Some lucky people — like my blessed wife — have great teeth and don’t have to work especially hard to keep them that way. No one calls that a “talent,” though. And the lucky can‘t just stop brushing. Even da Vinci drew every day.

I’m not sure if he flossed.

Of course, the difference is that no one needs to know how to draw — but we all need teeth.

People say they’d give their back teeth to be able to draw, but I doubt they’re serious. And besides, there’s no reason for that sort of sacrifice. (Plus, it’s not really a thing. There’s no one out there giving drawing lessons in exchange for molars. Stop looking.)

So the answer is simple: draw and draw, brush and floss. And because you plan to do it for a long time to come, keep it fun, never a chore.

Your pal,

Danny

It’s tempting to think that it’s too late to learn new skills, that I could never make art meaningfully if I started at a mature age.

But I’ve come to realize that coming to art later in life might not just be a viable alternative. It might actually be a tremendous advantage.

Here’s what I’m thinking.

I want a copy now!

I’ve lived more. When I was younger, I just hadn’t done that much. I hadn’t experienced being a parent, building a career, paying bills, facing challenges, living through decades of global change.

But as I get older, all of those experiences, the lessons, the losses, they are all part of the deep well of experiences I draw on to make art today. I just have more wisdom, more perspective, more to say.

I think about an artist like Bill Traylor, who first started drawing in his eighties — he used a lifetime of experiences as a former slave and sharecropper to create powerful, poignant, and original works of art.

Or Leonard Cohen, who released some of his most original and acclaimed works in his eighties, songs that drew on decades of spiritual experiences and life lessons. He made rich, soulful music he could never have written as a young musician.

When you’ve seen more ways of living, more experiences, more cultures, and when you’ve absorbed libraries of books and films, music, and art, you can make fresh and insightful connections between those resources that you would never have noticed before.

I’ve grown over the years. I’m more emotionally mature. I have a deeper understanding of complex emotions and human experiences. I’m less arrogant and cocksure. I don’t reduce things to black-and-white terms. I’m more able to be empathetic. To see beauty in all things. I have a long-term perspective that comes from putting all these miles on my tires.

Aging has given me patience. I don’t mind if it takes me 20 years to learn to watercolor or draw portraits. I enjoy deliberately practicing and developing my skills slowly. I don’t expect instant results anymore. I embrace mistakes and welcome them as lessons learned.

I love old actors who are “overnight” phenoms—people like Judy Dench, Morgan Freeman, Betty White, or Jean Smart, who became famous after many, many decades of acting in the background. They come into their own and the spotlight because they have deeply seasoned skills and insights that you only get from living a life.

Money doesn’t matter as much to me. When I was young, I had to focus on earning a living, squirreling away my wages, supporting my family. I could never have afforded the investment of time and money I’d have needed to be a full-time artist. And through those years in the rat race, I measured my success only in terms of the numbers on my paycheck.

But now, I just don’t need that much. And making money is no longer what it’s all about. The riches I value in art are about life experiences, personal fulfillment, discoveries, and the joy of creating. And the pleasure of helping others make the same discoveries.

And, you know, I just don’t care so much about what other people think — if they think about me at all. Geezers like me are invisible to most younger people. We can do whatever we want, and no one pays attention. That’s a load off. We don’t need to conform to expectations, so we are free to be authentic and original.

Think about Louise Bourgeois, Grandma Moses, Georgia O’Keeffe, or Alice Neel — weird old ladies who changed the world.

I know a lot about a lot. I have so many years of all kinds of experience from my previous career, transferable skills like writing and editing, and designing and making presentations. I know how to speak in public. To make videos. To manage big projects. To think critically.

And I know a lot of different types of people from all over the world. If I want to get collaborators for a creative project, I have thousands of great contacts in my database. That just comes from collecting people for many years. And every artist is better when they have a network to support and encourage their work.

I love the TV series about Julia Child. Although she had the energy and enthusiasm of a newcomer to cooking, publishing, and TV, she had also been a copywriter and worked in the clandestine intelligence services all over the world. She was no newbie.

I’m better at taking risks. Because we’ve seen more and care less about what people think, mature artists are a lot better at breaking the rules and blazing new paths.

Look at Henri Rousseau, who worked as a customs clerk till his forties, when he started painting naive and breakthrough art that is still inspiring.

Or David Hockney, who changes his style and his medium every few years, well into his eighties. He’s made art with Polaroids, fax machines, iPhones, iPads, and cars strapped with a dozen video cameras. Then he’ll turn around and paint landscapes on canvas and draw portraits in the style of Ingres. Like the honey badger, he don’t care.

I’ve been reading about the distinction between “conceptual” and “experimental” creativity.

Conceptual innovators do their best through work early in their careers. They come up with bold, new ideas that strike like a lightning bolt and shake up the status quo with radical innovations. 🤯 Think Picasso coming up with cubism in his 20s. Or Basquiat, or Mozart, or Billy Eilish.

Then, there are experimental innovators whose creativity evolves over many years of trial and error. They’re usually older artists who focus on refining their ideas and techniques over time. Like Cezanne, who painted his most famous works after decades of steadily developing his ideas about how we see and how color works. Or Bach, Toni Morrison, Raymond Chandler.

You can make breakthroughs when you’re a whippersnapper. Or an old codger.

Finally, the older I get, the more art is good medicine. Being creative has so many cognitive benefits; it stimulates my brain, improves my cognitive function, problem-solving skills, and resilience.

Art making promotes neuroplasticity, which means it encourages new brain connections, keeping the old necktop computer limber and fresh and updated. I pay more attention to details. I learn and remember better. Art helps me be mindful and relaxed. It reduces stress and anxiety and releases dopamine, which makes me feel good. Drawing improves my motor skills and my eye-hand coordination.

And if I ever feel lonely, art brings me friends all over the world — which is powerful medicine too.

If you’ve been putting off starting your art life, get on it now. You can start by picking up a sketchbook and a pen and just drawing the world around you. In time, you can try new media, join communities, take lessons, and spend the rest of your life growing and enriching your life with art.

You’re never too old to learn new things. If an old goat like me can do it, I know you can, too.

Your (old) pal,

Danny

This is the last free sample of my new book. If you want more, please order yourself a copy now. None of us is getting any younger!

Order your copy this year!

(Alas, the price of the book will be going up in 2026).

Yin is a slow and intense form of yoga that involves holding each deep stretch unmoving for three minutes or longer. Our teacher, Casey, is a sage woman who has shown us our bodies (and our lives) are complex, networked systems that we can observe with awe.

It’s a moment of concentrated bliss that some students call “Church.”

One Sunday, as we sat in awkward pretzel shapes named after animals, Casey told us about how the sympathetic nervous system responds when our bodies are injured.

This is our fight-or-flight mechanism that reacts immediately by streaming in white blood cells and cranking up inflammation. It’s essential to our survival, but, like sending in a half dozen fire engines to a false smoke alarm, it can be a gross over-the-top response with a heavy price to pay.

We also have a parasympathetic nervous system that takes care of our health and healing over the long term. Deep sleep, relaxation, and lowering our blood pressure and breathing all help us to recover and grow stronger over time.

It’s a deep system that works a long garden.

Instead of responding with big guns, adrenalized shrieking, and flashing lights, the parasympathetic helps strengthen our immunity and our ability to recover over the years.

Which made me think of Christmas.

The holidays are filled with beautiful ideas.

Christmas brings us Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All. Joy. Possibility. Togetherness. Feasting. Caroling.

And then we have New Year’s Eve with the chance of a fresh start, an improved life filled with healthy resolutions.

But here’s the thing.

Christmas can also feel like a sympathetic system response.

Gifts flow in and pile up like blood cells. Energy is ramped up exponentially. We experience exhilaration but also anxiety, obligation, disappointment, tension, conflict, and, finally, exhaustion.

All of the demands and expenses of the season build and build until we collapse, spent and hungover in front of the TV on New Year’s Day.

We try to jam in so much in such a short time.

Twelve days never seem enough to cram in all the shopping, enjoy all the food and drink, visit every friend and relative, and recall every memory of Christmases past. Our to-do lists unspool, as long as gift ribbons. The commercialization of the season makes us feel pressured and anxious — I saw my first signs of Christmas in Costco in July.

My sister sent me a text yesterday with a photo of her staggering pile of wrapped presents and a message: “I am so done with Christmas.”

Our friend Amy has three trees, each immaculately decorated to Martha Stewartian standards.

My neighborhood is festooned with over-the-top lighting displays installed by professional crews with cherrypickers.

The holidays are a joyous time for celebration, but they can be a tough time for many of us. Expectations are so high we fear they will never be met.

Gift-giving can feel like an opportunity to fail, give the wrong thing, or never enough.

Family get-togethers can emphasize the differences between us rather than bringing us together.

And the holidays can also underscore our loneliness, our estrangement, how far we are from loved ones, how many are now dearly departed.

Could we create a more parasympathetic response?

Could we think about peace and joy and togetherness all year round, in small servings, rather than the groaning board of late December? Could we appreciate all we have to be grateful for — every day?

What if we just open our sketchbooks and draw what we already have that is beautiful?

The shadows of our teacup on the kitchen counter.

The view of the neighbor’s roof out the living room window.

Our cat stretched out by the heater vent.

Our faces in the mirror are older, wiser, and more beautiful every day.

And as we draw, our pulses slow, and our blood pressure drops. Our cells work to knit together the damage of life and ease the changes of aging cells. We grow calmer and more appreciative.

We delight in our cup of steaming tea, the bird song in the garden, and the gentle stirring of the leaves.

Have you watched the TV production of All Creatures Great and Small, the story of life in a small Yorkshire village in the 1930s?

The first season concluded with a Christmas party in the village pub, cheerily decorated with sprigs of holly and pine. The neighbors raise glasses and sing carols together while the snow swirls outside. Dogs slumber by the fire. Contentment reigns. A gentle peace blankets them as they honor the endless cycle of the year.

A life well-lived.

I wish you a parasympathetic Christmas and a healing New Year.

Your pal,

Danny

This theme goes back to the dawn of literature. Wuthering Heights. Great Expectations. The Great Gatsby. La Bohéme. And nearly every Bollywood movie ever made.

Sad.

In the 21st century, we’re sure we’re beyond that. This sexist trope strikes us as horrible and archaic.

But is it? Or is it still alive and well in every high school on the planet?

Time and again, I hear of people who’ve had to give up their love of art — because they couldn’t make a living at it. Forced to abandon their passion because of money. “My dad won’t let me paint in a garret; I have to go to law/medical/dental/accounting school.”

Maybe we’re not that enlightened after all.

People have been making art for tens of thousands of years. But they’ve only been earning money doing it for about five hundred.

Why did we decide that if we can’t make money at it, we mustn’t make art?

I fell for this myth myself. As a teenager, I loved to draw, write, act, and make all sorts of things. But by 16, I learned that it would be ruinous if I insisted on going to art school and pursuing some creative direction.

No one had to warn me off. Everyone knows it. So, I majored in political science instead.

But over the years, I couldn’t completely forsake my love — even if it would never be sanctioned. I stayed loyal (but on the down low). Whenever I had a spare moment, I would make something. It might be a short story written late at night. Or a doodle in the margin of my meeting notes. A little book printed on an office laser printer.

The flame still flickered, deep in the closet.

I love this — I want this book!

People would say, “You should get your stories published.” “I bet you could sell your paintings.” “Why don’t you apply to a writers’ program?”

And I would just shrug. I wasn’t good enough to make a living at it.

So I didn’t push myself. I stopped and started. I downplayed my creations so no one would try to shove me into the ring. And I kept working for The Man.

This sounds sad. A missed opportunity. A squelched dream. A failure.

But it really wasn’t.

I didn’t try to turn my creative side projects into money because I already had a job. It paid well. I didn’t hate it. And I knew that if, by some fluke, I did sell my work, that would change it. And me.

I would go from being in love, with no strings attached, to feeling anxious and self-conscious, and fraudulent. I would betray and compromise every which way to make sure I held on to my success. I would turn my love into a job.

I’ve made thousands of drawings and paintings since I let myself go back to making again. I have never sold one. I’ve never tried. Maybe I could have, but I know I wouldn’t like it. I couldn’t see the check as a verdict on what I’d made. The fact that one person agreed to pay X dollars for my drawing doesn’t mean that it was worth X. It would be a meaningless valuation by a stranger.

I just published my 14th book. I’ve made no money on some of those books and a fair amount on others. But I never expected to make enough to live on. To quit my “job.”

So why did I bother?

Because I love seeing my books on a shelf and hearing that they changed someone’s life. And because I loved writing and illustrating them. I would have made every single one of them — even if no one had paid me a dime.

Making art has made me rich in so many ways. It has filled my life with untold happiness. I see the world differently. I understand myself more clearly. I feel powerful and sensitized and excited and connected and purposeful and free. And I’ve had so much fun.

I’ve made money in my life, but it never brought me any of those things.

Have you been watching The Bear? It’s a TV show about a group of people opening a restaurant in Chicago, and one of the best explorations I’ve ever seen of the lives of creative people. Not just chefs but all of us.

The Bear is about artists who want to be the best they can be. They strive to understand what amazing cooking can bring to the world and pursue that art, pushing themselves through great effort to new heights. It’s about enormous sacrifice, pain, and passion.

It’s also about money. Not the money the chefs will take home, but the money they need to make their passion come to life. Money is just a raw ingredient in the kitchen. It’s not the purpose or the validation.

And I think every one of these artists would gladly go on cooking, whether they were paid to or not.

Watch it and let me know what you think.

If you’re struggling with this issue, my advice is to stop worrying about the money you may or may not make from your art. Stop thinking of it as evidence of whether you are, in fact, an artist.

There are so many ways to make money if you need it. That’s a separate thing. Keep it separate.

If you want to make art, do it. If you want to make art a major part of your life, then go ahead. Don’t wait for validation or degrees or permission. Get a job that pays the bills and doesn’t leave you drained at the end of the day. It could be art-adjacent. It could have nothing to do with it at all.

Then use some of your other waking hours to create, just for you.

Money and value are not the same thing. You can be a billionaire and still be a miserable egomaniac who’ll never be satisfied. Or you can live simply, draw in a handmade sketchbook with a cheap pencil every day, and feel like the richest person who ever lived.

Your pal,

Danny

My new book is out just in time for the holidays. Priced as low as Amazon will let me, so feel free to buy one for everyone on your list!

Note: This list is kinda long, and it might get truncated in your email. Just click on “View entire message” if that happens. It’ll be worth it.

Art tools:

Tempera sticks: It’s been over a year since I started using inexpensive tempera sticks to add color to my sketchbooks, and the romance has not faded. Jj laughs at how much I talk about these juicy lipsticks full of colo,r but I think they’re the perfect medium for me. They’re fast, they’re brightly colored, they’re rough, and they keep me feeling loose and spontaneous. I’ve always wanted the fluidity and boldness that I love in children’s art and outsider art, and tempera sticks have just made this a natural part of my self-expression. I’m less perfectionist, less persnickety, and I constantly surprise myself with the things that I make. The process is often hit-or-miss but that’s fine with me; it’s all about experimentation and discovery and I still feel like I’m saddling some sort of wild animal when I open up my rainbow box. Link

Big watercolor set. I got a really large set of Winsor & Newton’s Cotman watercolors (45 pans!), and they’ve made my watercoloring even more of a consistent part of my arsenal. At first, I thought that having so many pre-mixed colors was cheating in a way that I should be mixing my own blends and hues. But the fact is, sometimes I want to just grab, say, a green, and if I have six choices sitting in my palette already waiting for me, that’s even better. Link

Uglybooks. I started using these inexpensive sketchbooks with colored paper last year, and they’ve been so much fun to play with. The paper is not of the highest quality, but it works perfectly well with ink, color pencil, or other dry media. Each page provides a bright hue as the starting point, and from there, I can work in just ink or add a white pencil for highlights and maybe a grey Tombo brush marker or unleash the full spectrum of my tempera sticks. I have about eight of these books in various colors, and they are a constant delight. Link

Venezia Sketchbook. I’ve been using the Venezia line of sketchbooks from Fabriano for the last 15 years. They are beautifully bound in three different sizes, but I prefer the middle one, which is 5x7” and fits into any bag just like a hardcover book. The mixed-media paper is sized on both sides of the page and is excellent with ink or colored pencil, and can take watercolor pretty well too. Link

Lamy colored refills. I’ve been using Lamy Safari fountain pens for quite some time, but I’d never realized the range of colored ink cartridges that are available. I went on a spree and bought myself a dozen different colors, and I put them in different pens. One effect I really like is to switch the color in the middle of a drawing so it slowly goes from red to blue or brown to purple. My favorite discovery is the bright yellow ink, which is an unusual ink to find in a pen of any kind. These inks are not waterproof, but I just love mixing up the palettes when I’m drawing or writing without using any other wet media. Link

Carbon ink cartridges. You can’t put regular India ink into a fountain pen; it will just destroy the works. But there are a few choices of waterproof ink that are made with lacquer so as not to gum up their delicate mechanisms. The best I’ve found is a bottle of Carbon ink from Platinum, but I never liked the fiddliness of using a converter. Then I discovered that Carbon disposable cartridges are available. Now I use my Lamy to write and draw so much more because I dont have to decide in advance if I’m going to be using wet media. I can just draw. Link

Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pen: These are the pens that people ask me about the most. That’s because their lines are flowing and expressive, easily going from thick to thin like you rarely see in a technical marker. They come in hard and soft nibs and are absolutely waterproof. I love them, and I hope you will too. Link

Acrylic ink markers: I’ve always been reluctant to use certain media in my sketchbooks. Alcohol-based markers in my sketchbooks. First of all, they smell pretty terrible. But even worse, they also have a tendency to bleed through the page and sometimes through several pages. It can be a disaster. This yea,r I started using Arrtx markers filled with acrylic ink. They have all the vibrancy and color range of alcohol markers, but they are far more opaque, and they can be layered. They cost a lot less than professional alcohol markers, too. Best of all, they don’t bleed through the page. Link

Dip pens are just an indispensable part of my art kit. And I think that anybody who likes drawing should give them a try. It can take a little experimentation and experience to feel completely comfortable with them. But the flexibility of a good nib and the freedom to use any type of ink is something you’ve got to try.

I’ve discovered that the springy and flexible G nib from Zebra is my go-to. Because they were designed for manga cartoonists, they work well for both drawing and lettering, unlike most calligraphy nibs. G nibs are very inexpensive, a dollar or two each when you buy a boxful, and I change them often. A fresh nib is much less likely to clog, and will always draw crisp, reliable lines. Link

Drawing Inks. Winsor & Newton makes two types of wonderful ink. Their Drawing Inks are dye-based, and come in dozens of brilliant, transparent colors. If you plan to frame your art and hang it on the wall, be forewarned: when exposed to light for too long, it can fade (which is never really a problem in a sketchbook). W&N Calligraphy Inks are pigment-based, so they are more permanent, lightfast, and often more opaque. They come in fewer colors (and frankly not ones that I love for drawing or painting), but they’re great for lettering, and if you want extra pizzazz, check out their metallic gold and silver inks. All these inks are great for dip pens and brushes but none is waterproof (except for the India ink) so be careful if you combine them with wet media. Link

Free inspiration.

I have walked away from social media platforms with three exceptions: Cosmos, Reader, and YouTube.

I hate Pinterest with its endless ads for skeleton sweaters and weight loss and AI slop, and then I learned about Cosmos: an art sharing platform for and by artists. It has incredible technology that makes it easy to build a visual library of stuff I love, and it has learned my taste so well and is constantly surfacing new ideas and artists that inspire me even further. It’s free and ad-free and amazing. Link

I subscribe to dozens of newsletters —reading them has replaced traditional media and magazines. Reader from Readwise keeps subscriptions out of my email box, lets me skim and decide what to read, saves my highlights so I can find them again, summarizes, and makes me a more efficient reader. It is an indispensable tool for any writer — and reader. Link

YouTube channels that inspire me.

YouTube is an incredible resource for learning and finding inspiration, and I also love making videos to share there. Link

David Choe is a creative madman who became famous for accepting Facebook stock instead of cash for painting murals at the company’s early offices in 2005, turning a $60,000 commission into hundreds of millions of dollars when Facebook went public. He makes wonderful creative pep talks on his channel, and I come away from every one wanting to be looser, wilder, and more like Dave. Link

Chris Piascik is an illustrator whose work is slick and hilarious. His way of talking about art is so relaxed and authentic, and his illustrations are like a jar of jellybeans and bubble gum cards. He works exclusively in Adobe Fresco and has helped convert me into a fan too. Link

Rajiv Surendra is the most charistamtic and charming man on YouTube., his topics are about life well lived, whether it’s how to watercolor or iron a shirt, throw a pot or ride a bicycle. Watch just one video, and I promise he will make you love him and life. If you like my friend Prashant Miranda, you will love Rajiv Surendra. Link

Little Tiny Egg: Kristen Vardanega is a Utah artist who makes monthly videos about life in her studio. She documents her projects, her inspiration, and the ways she makes a living making art. A lot of artists vlog their lives, but few inspire and move me like Little Tiny Egg. Link

Kelly Boesch: I know how much controversy there is around AI tools, but every so often, I discover an artist who is making true art with MidJourney and Sumo. Kelly makes videos that are instantly recognizable as her own — she has managed to tame the AI beast and make it serve her style, taste, and vision so completely. Link

Your pal,

Danny

P.S.There are affiliate links on this page – this means that if you click through and order anything through them, I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. These commissions help me continue creating the free content I share, and I greatly appreciate the support!

We stretch, we guzzle some water, we attach ourselves to either end of a leash, and we hit the road. Most days, we follow a similar route, from here to 40th Street and back. It takes 45 minutes and covers just under two miles of Phoenix.

Same route, two very different experiences.

I want this book!

While we walk, I daydream or listen to music or a podcast.

Twiglet scours every inch of the sidewalk, the road, the gardens we pass.

She is transfixed by the buffet of smells, snacks, and turds that dot the street. Despite her squashed-in pug snout, she can smell a chicken bone from a block away. She homes in on cats, raccoon spoors, magnolia blossoms, burrito wrappings from construction workers.

She never fails to revisit one specific square yard of lawn, on the corner of East Highland, where every other dog who‘s ever passed stopped to leave her urgent peemail.

Twiggy is never bored or distracted on our walks. She is 100% present and engaged, always discovering something new on the miles that I float through, oblivious.

But while I watch Netflix, she naps.

How deeply can you look? How much can you see? What are your senses telling you that you miss or ignore?

Take an object in your kitchen and stare at one section of it for five minutes. Look at the bowl of a spoon. What does it reflect? What is it made of? What is its surface like? What color is it, and what else is that color?

Ride your eyes around its circumference a hundred times. Look deeper. See more.

Next, set out a second identical spoon next to the first. Spend five minutes noting the differences between them. The nicks, the wear, the reflections, the smell.

Art helps us see and show others what we discover, stuff they might have overlooked. Beauty, ideas, humanity, connections. Artists can see so much more than a camera does.

Almost as much as a pug.

Your pal,

Danny

My new book is out just in time for Hanukkah. Priced as low as Amazon will let me, so feel free to buy one for everyone on your list!

I want a copy of Make It Anyway!