An Illustrated Life podcast 002: Cathy Johnson
Cathy (Kate) Johnson has been an inspiration to me for years with her extraordinary nature journals, her beautiful watercolors and her generous willingness to teach many of us in the EDM community via her informative posts and her many...
An Illustrated Life: the Podcast
One of the most exciting aspects of working on my upcoming book, "An Illustrated Life: drawing inspiration form the private sketchbooks of artists, illustrators and designers" has been the chance to get in touch with the many artists whose...
David Macaulay on drawing in Rome
Thanks, Mary Ellen. See it full-size here....
Beerhorst Update
My favorite family of God-loving artists were on NPR this week. You can hear the interview here or read a transcript below: Family of Artists A Grand Rapids, Mich. family create art in an unconventional lifestyle. by Kaomi Goetz...
More time-lapse drawing
I didn't make this. He did. Jack and I did, however, try to make something like it (drawing on white board and filming it in stop motion) and can report that it is an awful lot harder than it looks....
Searle buildings
I built a little gallery after scanning some pages from "Paris Sketchbook" (text by Kaye Webb) and "Paris, Paris" (text by Irwin Shaw), the two books that contain the best building drawings Ronald Searle has done. These books also...
Zina Saunders
A great illustrator I just discovered. Look at her series on Overlooked New Yorkers, too. She has also written and illustrated some great profiles of other NY illustrators and artists, like this one. I love this sort of reportage....
Kochalka
Last night, Jack, Tom, Butch and I went to the the Giant Robot gallery to see James Kochalka's show. He'd made 150 acrylic 2" by 2" paintings on 3" by 3" paper and they were hung on groups all...
Idol effort
It was very nice to come back to the Arctic tundra formally known as New York City. My family survived my absence though my dogs did need a good bath yesterday. As you may know, I am a big...
Olivier Kugler
Every so often I come upon someone who does what I want to do so unbelievably well, I feel like never even trying again. When I encountered Oliver Kugler's work, I fell into a funk that mixed the blackest...
Isca Greenfield-Sanders
I visited her show in Chelsea last week;based on old photos and broken down in to 7" grids, her work has power and timelessness and a color palette which really effected me. Her work is online herebut I recommend...
Drawing a crowd
Tom Kane just came back from several weeks of drawing in the Far East. Everywhere he went, in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and China, he drew big crowds when he drew. People would sit by him for hours,...
Dust to dust
Scott Wade draws in the dust on car's windshields. Check it out here...
Bell-isima
I urge you to look at the wonderful new journal pages Richard Bell has been putting out over the past month. He has redesigned the way he does his pages, adding calligraphy and a more organic design and it...
A Year in Japan
My favorite new book is A Year in Japan by Kate T. Williamson. It is a fantastic, illustrated journal bulging with lovely, graphic watercolors and sprightly writing. I was so excited by the book that I have acquired some...
Watch Picasso draw!
Read the rest of this entry to see a wonderful video of the master....
Prash update
Prashant Miranda has been sending me more pages from the journal he is keeping during his trip back home to Benares, India and I have created a gallery of these pages: Prash Update Gallery. I love Prash's style, his...
TCL: Supplementary Material, IV: Andrea
I first met Andrea Scher through her blog, Superhero Journal. Within days of roaming through her posts, I was hooked. Being hooked meant more than just loving her photos and learning so much from her wisdom and compassion. It...
TCL: Supplementary Material, III: Richard
As readers of this site probably know by now, Richard Bell is an extraordinary nature illustrator who, despite the many miles and water between us, is one of my very best pals and a major influence and teacher. When...
TCL: Supplementary Material, II: Walton
Walton Ford and I met when we were both sixteen and at the Rhode Island School of Design summer program. He was one of those rare creatures who was born with phenomenal talent. The drawings he did at four...
TCL: Supplementary Material, I: Roz
The first installment of a series on "Stuff that didn't make it into The Creative License"
Prash mail
My pal, Prashant Miranda, just sent me some of his journal pages. His work is lovely and I have included several of his drawings in my new book. He writes: Here are my initial pages of my travels, from...
Having faith in Brooklyn
A visit to the Beerhorsts, a family of artists living in Brooklyn.
Going to van Gogh
On Friday, Jack and I headed up to the Met to check out the The van Gogh drawing show.
North Fork Artist of the week
Congratulations to my mum, the leafagist, for being selected for this honor. If you'd like to know more about how she came to art even after she'd become a grandmother, check out this profile. --Later-- Sorry, there's a new...
Jack's deck
Of all sports, I think I like the aesthetics of skateboarding best. I like the graceful gymnastics of top level boarders. I like the come-as-you-are aesthetics of their (un-)uniforms. I like the exhuberant thrashing and driving basslines of their...
Refreshed by Jobs
I am exhausted today. I feel too many wheels spinning, too many things for me to do all of them as well as I'd like, too many things I am too deeply into to walk away from, too many...
Nostalgia of the Day - Roz revisited
It's been nearly a year since I visited Roz Stendahl in her perfect little studio. Inspired by my recent barnstorm with Tom and D.Price, I took a fresh re-visit through the journal pages Roz created during my trip ....
Happy 152nd birthday, Vinnie!
Van Gogh saw more in the dark than most people see in the light of day. He saw details, nuances, beauty in a single night sky. And he was able to describe what he saw to make it come...
Chillin' with Dylan
Last week, I was hit by a sniffling cold midday. I spent the last few hours of the workday back at home, in bed with tea and Bob Dylan's new memoir. By the next morning, I'd bounced back and...
like father, like son
A few days ago, this drawing arrived from my stepmother, Sue. It was drawn by my father when I was about three, around the time my parents were divorced. Many of these objects are things of my mum's. I...
New work from my favorite artist
As part of our ongoing year-end campaign to freshen up the Gregory compound, we tackled Jack's room last weekend. We spend most of the time on his huge library, reorganized his board games, and sifted through the occasional piles...
Under the Influence
Before Tom and I set out to draw yesterday, we spent some time looking through my library. We leafed through books by David Gentleman, Tony Foster, Muriel Foster, Hannah Hinchman and afew others. Though we are both pretty much...
Ronald Searle
Here are a couple of drawings from Ronald Searle's 1950 Paris Sketchbook. It's a fantastic book, written by his then-wife Kaye Webb, and if read carefully, gives an insight into the drawing life. I have loved Searle's drawings since...
Idol speculation
I was about fifteen and my idol was Eric Drooker. He was in the eleventh grade, the first boy in school to have an earring, to wear black Danskins and clogs and eyeliner and modeled himself on David Bowie....
Bunnies or Jesus
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. – Woodrow Wilson One of the...
Miles ahead
I've been reading about jazz recently, specifically about Miles and his seminal album, Kind of Blue. Miles was intensely committed to what he did, brave in a way I wonder if I can ever be. He seemed to live...
Idol worship
She's so good she drives me crazy....
Todd's bestiary
My friend Todd is one of those intensely creative people who can make anything out of anything. He makes perfect model ships from bits and piece and his obsession with the Poseidon Adventure drove him to build a scale...
Inspiration Journal: Tony Forster
This guy is scarily good. Tony Forster's watercolors depict his treks around the world, to the rain forests of Costa Rica, the volcanic island of Montserrat, Bolivia's mile-high lakes, the slopes of the Sierra Nevada and the scorching desert...
Inspirational Journal: GI Sketchbook
For anyone who has ever felt that they had no time to draw, were too stressed out to draw, had nothing interesting to draw, I offer a few pages from “G.I. Sketch Book”, published by Penguin Books on July...
Story of the day
Making time for music....
Hellhounds on My Trail
"Context is everything that isn't physically contained in the grooves of the record. It includes your knowledge that everyone else says he's great: that must modify the way you hear him. That he was a handsome and imposing man,...
Childrens' books
This morning, Jack's class had a publishing party. Every couple of months, we are invited to his classroom (Patti can't go as the 4th graders are on the 4th floor and the school has no elevators) to share pieces...
Happy 151st birthday!
My main man. Self taught. Art mad. Color mad. Love mad. Saw more clearly, more electrifyingly than anyone before or since but a canvas a day couldn't keep the demons away. The original amateur. Reviled, rejected, immortal. What can...
Trust or bust.
In 1975, Keith Jarrett recorded the best selling solo piano album ever, The Koln Concerts. What’s even more extraordinary is that the music is purely improvised. Jarrett had spent the day feeling jet lagged and under the weather, he...
Pen pals
I am really lucky to have a friend who has taught me an awful lot about journaling. D.Price is the author of a wonderful zine called Moonlight Chronicles (subscribe and you will be very happy) and he and I...
Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Fabrication
Don't get me wrong — I’m not a huge motorcycle enthusiast. The Hells’ Angels HQ is several blocks due east of us and I usually cross to other side if I have to walk by. Dentists and attorneys in...
Happy Birthday, T!
If you're American, you probably don't know much about Tintin, the first and finest graphic novels. We own and have reread them all. So many of the scenarios seem written for today — pesky Middle Easterners, loony dictators, terrorists,...
Guest journal - Chris Ware
I have been re-studying one of my favorite objects of 2003, Chris Ware’s The Acme Novelty Date Book. Ware publishes a magazine called the Acme Novelty Library which has been primarily devoted to a long and spectacularly drawn story...
A record of my exploration into all aspects of drawing, illustrated journaling, creativity, and the inspiring aspects of art. By the author of "Everyday Matters," "The Creative License", and "An Illustrated Life" and other books.