Weep to water the trees
10 things worth sharing this week
If you loved Don’t Call It Art, a 5-star review on Amazon or Goodreads goes a long way!
Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:
To express and exorcise my summer misery, I made a new mixtape called “Weep to Water the Trees.” It was inspired by the vibe of two of my favorite live videos on YouTube: Deerhunter playing “Nothing Ever Happened” and King Krule playing “Out Getting Ribs”:
You can listen to the mixtape on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.
Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop is my favorite book I’ve read this year. (It’s on my list of Bromance novels!) My favorite thing I’ve read this year that mentions the book is Patricia Lockwood’s essay about going to a “Tradcath” wedding. (She also references one of my favorite James Tate poems, “Goodtime Jesus.”)
In the “Who’s having fun?” section of Don’t Call It Art, I quote Ed Emberley saying, “I am determined to have fun doing my work… if I’m enjoying myself then that feeling is passed on to the reader.” Somebody who seems like she’s having a lot of fun right now is cookbook author Julia Turshen, who recently published a romance novel. (“I feel more relaxed about this than I’ve felt about anything in my career,” she says. “This just feels really fun.”) I recommend looking around you, especially in your field, and seeing who seems to be having fun right now. (And figure out if they have something you can steal!)
Dinner music we enjoyed as a family this week: King Sunny Ade’s Odu.
“It’s not every day that you get hired to draw your favorite thing.” A new artist is drawing the comic strip Nancy! Her name is Caroline Cash and I’ve started following her on Instagram: @cash_browns. (One of my fantasies is that Nancy goes on forever and one day Jules Kleon gets to draw it.)
“There was just one problem with Don’t Call It Art—I kept stopping and wanting to do something. Work on something. Close the book. Get going!” —Neil Pasricha Good phone hygiene: “Open your most-used social-media app. Ask yourself one question about six of the accounts you follow: Does this expand me or shrink me? Not: Is it entertaining? Not: Do I agree with it? But: After I engage with this, do I feel more curious, more grounded, more kind—or do I feel smaller, more anxious, more numb? Unfollow the ones that shrink you. Bookmark the ones that genuinely expand your clarity, kindness, or courage.” (See also: the second of the 7 questions I ask myself.)
A game for sorting through a stack of neglected books on your shelf.
If you want to keep a diary but it seems like too much work, I highly recommend trying a One Line A Day diary. I gave my kids this canvas edition a few years back, but I’m buying a couple of these black canvas editions for when the old ones get filled.
Question from Jeff, a reader in Japan: Hi Austin, When you create your images for a book, may I ask if you use an iPad or are your drawings scanned into a digital format from pen and paper. Is there a reason you use one in particular?
Answer: Pretty much every illustration and piece of lettering you see in one of my books was made with a marker on a sheet of typing paper, scanned into the computer, and manipulated with Photoshop.
For example, here is the original artwork for Steal Like an Artist:
Why do I work this way? I want my books to feel as handmade as possible, and the easiest way to do that is to actually make them with my hands!
“People are not hungry for your perfection: they are hungry for your love.” Do not miss my typewriter interview with violinist Vijay Gupta!
Thanks for reading. If you’d like to support this hand-rolled publication, buy my books and become a paid subscriber:
xoxo,
Austin
P.S. My books are always hanging out in nicer places than I am…
Hello, Here are a few comments: I loved the line, Weep to water the trees. It says many things to me, and I find it inspiring. Next, when I was a little girl, I loved Nancy! So I am happy that some one has taken over creating it, and that Jules will fill in when he's a little older! I will look up a current one to see how Caroline Cash is doing with it! And finally, my favorite Austin Kleon book is Don't Call It Art. Every page delights me, and I have shared a lot with friends. I take a painting class on Tuesday afternoons, and i shared an early quote from the book about the little girl drawing God with our teacher Diane . She loved it and wants me to bring the book next week, and we are going to randomly open it and read it to the class . And also, I have a friend that has been helping me with something difficult, and I bought her a copy of the book to thank her.
The good scissors struggle is real! My kid and I were at our local indie craft store and he stood in front of the cutting tools area awed by all the different scissors and cutters. I told him you need special scissors for cutting, and that mine are hidden so that when his friends come over they don't use them. (I didn't tell him where.)