Dear Danny,
I read Holly's e-mail and I could not agree more. Although I sent you a comment this week, I have to add some more to it. What happened to me when I read your book, which I now carry around with me, was that I could start drawing anywhere I happened to be. I didn't have to wait for the right subject or the right environment. Having spent the last twenty years sitting in a small room doing Jungian depth therapy with people and dwelling constantly in the inner worlds of people's psyches, I feel like I have been exploded into the actual physical world and all its beauties and curiosities. When I have a break between patients, I go outside and find something to draw or I sit at my desk and draw everything on it. Recently, for want of something to draw, I emptied out my purse on the table of a restaurant and went to work on that! It isn't the drawing part that fascinates me but the seeing part. Its like an altered state of consciousness. Of course I feel self-conscious sometimes about my drawings but I know its my "seeing" that has to get better, or not....because I do it for myself alone. Its a huge breakthrough for me to have this kind of fun at sixty. I have a foldable bike which I keep in the trunk of my car along with a satchel full of drawing stuff and a small kit of watercolors. I can drive a short distance, park, unfold my bike, and peddle off to a great drawing spot. I can't believe all the curious, amusing, intriguing things I have noticed and drawn since I started doing this! Your book is like a cozy conversation with a good friend. I have special ear-marked pages which I read over and over again. My favorite phrase: "my journal is a way of looking more deeply into a certain moment." (I guess I got that one off your website.) Its the moments I treasure, not the drawings. Thank you, Danny, for such a spoecial book, and for maintining a website which I visit everyday now, always looking forward to the next drawing or pondering. On your latest entry, why would anyone want to create art as a product when he has already mastered creating art as a way of experiencing the depth of life? Thanks again!

Hi,
I have not read your book yet, but I did not know that you got started in your art career in your 30s. If that is true, it rings a familiar bell. I am 32 years old, have worked in software for 9 years with a degree in Engineering. I finally quit my job to go to school full time to be a graphic designer., I was taking foundation level art classes half time for last year. I have not sketched much but am addicted to the idea and am wondering how I should start out. There are so many darned options, I am confusing the hell out of myself. Anyway, nice site and nice sketches...I will look out for your book.
Amrita

Holly is right. It's quite simple really Danny. What you have done is given regular people the permission (I know we already had the permission, but most of us didn't realise it) and the confidence to create art, even if it isn't "great" art (but maybe some of it is, it's just that no one knows it - can it be great art if no one recognises it as such????). The Creative License is my bedside bible these days - what it contains within its pages, along with my family, is what gives my life meaning.