AUSTIN KLEON is a writer who draws.

Diary of a 5-year-old

August 14, 2018

We have talked the 5-year-old into keeping a casual diary of sorts, and, while it’s so fun to see his days summarized in his little hyphenated paragraphs, it’s also really surprising, too. For instance, we’d thought that he had a terrible time on the day mentioned above! He moped around and complained about the heat and all the walking. It’s a reminder that if you have a kid who keeps things close to the chest, giving them tools to express themselves (in O’s case it’s Garageband on the iPad to write songs, or a pen and a nice notebook for a diary) gives you this whole different glimpse into who they are and what they’re feeling and thinking.

The summer muse

August 13, 2018

A diary collage made out of a guidebook from The Whitney

School and the seasons

August 12, 2018

Last night my wife and I re-watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The movie deals with time: how a prisoner does his time, how time brings back old wounds, and how we can use time to rewrite our stories. One device director Alfonso Caurón uses to show the passage of time is shots of the Whomping Willow in each season. (Stitched together in the image above.)

For me, the Harry Potter movies (I’ve only actually read book 7) have always been the story of going to school. The story starts when the summer is ending, and the story ends when summer begins again. Growing up, I was always like Harry: my life tied to the school year, I dreaded the summer and couldn’t wait for fall to come. The death of summer = the hope of new adventures. (Books, girls, etc.)

Before I went to bed last night, I came across this perfect passage in Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy:

I have lived for the last eight years in seasonless places, where things do not die, but revolve in a constant tropic sun. I had forgotten how the fall sharpens pencils, gray and colored ones. I had forgotten that when you pay attention to the seasons, you are returned to school and all its feelings, the freedom of three o’clock and the nameless dread of Sunday night, when the sky looms over you like the deadline of some paper you haven’t even started. I want to drink cocoa out of a thermos; I want to go to a high school football game.

School is about to start here in Texas, but summer will continue to blaze for at least another two months. I wonder what time feels like to people who grew up here. I’ve lived in this seasonless place for over a decade — for 11 years I’ve lived in a constant state of seasonal disorientation. (And deprivation.) I want to feel that feeling again, of how “fall sharpens pencils.”

Saturday in the garage

August 11, 2018

Drawing, making collages, and watching Stop Making Sense.

On my morning walk

August 10, 2018

Sometimes when I make these I wonder if people know (or care) how autobiographical they are…

Brush your teeth

August 9, 2018

The 3-year-old made this drawing a day or two after returning from a dentist appointment.

As Patti Smith reminds us: “Take care of your teeth.”

My generation had a rough go dentally. Our dentists were the army dentists who came back from World War II and believed that the dental office was a battleground. You have a better chance at dental health. And I say this because you want at night to be pacing the floor because your muse is burning inside of you, because you want to do your work, because you want to finish that canvas, because you want to help your fellow man — you don’t want to be pacing because you need a damn root canal.

Coffee with an old friend

August 8, 2018

Back in February I sat down with Mike Rohde and recorded a conversation for his Sketchnote Army podcast about how I work. It was recorded on an iPhone in a noisy coffee shop downtown, but it has a casual, candid feel to it that I enjoyed.

I was right in the middle of writing the talk that would become my new book, and while I don’t talk about the book at all, I talk a lot about the process of getting to it: going back to daily blogging, putting out the newsletter, having a repeatable daily practice for generating work, reading Thoreau’s journals, watching Ralph Steadman draw, etc.

Listen here.

Ralph Steadman in the studio

August 7, 2018

I really love this 2013 video of Ralph Steadman in his studio making drawings, talking, and playing the ukulele. It’s basically what I want my life to look like when I’m his age:

There’s so much to learn. On the difference between him and his work:

People have said, “Oh, I thought you’d be a nasty piece of work because you’re so dark and trenchant,” and I say, “No I’m not! I’ve got rid of it — it’s all on paper!”

On mistakes:

There’s no such thing as a mistake. A mistake is only an opportunity to do something else.

On style:

I never went out of my way to invent a style. I haven’t got a style — I just draw and it’s that way.

In 2014, he Skype-d in to a room at SXSW to promote for his documentary, For No Good Reason. He was walking around the studio, and I saw this big book on podium next to his desk. It looked like a big Gutenberg bible or a dictionary or something. I started obsessing over what this book could be. So when it was Q&A time, I shot up my hand and asked him about it. He lit up and said, “Oh! That’s my idea book! Every time I have an idea, I go over here and write it down.” He started flipping through pages and showing us old bits and debris he’d pasted into it. (What I wouldn’t give to see it in person!)

Here’s another video of him drawing, because I can’t get enough:

Favorite reads of 2018 (so far)

August 6, 2018

I usually wait until the end of the year to make this kind of list, but it’s been a pretty good one so far, so here are 10 books I really enjoyed in the first half of 2018, listed in the order I read them:

Tape For The Turn of the Year
A.R. Ammons

In 1963, Ammons got a roll of adding machine tape from the hardware store and decided to write poems on it every day until the tape was used up. I started the book on December 6 of last year, and followed along with each entry until January 10th.

Largesse of the Sea Maiden
Denis Johnson

Beautiful stories.

A perfect swan song.

Reinventing Bach
Paul Elie

Takes a look at Bach’s work through the recordings of his works throughout the years. I especially liked reading about Glenn Gould and Pablo Casals.

A Natural History of the Senses
Diane Ackerman

I originally thought my new book would have more about the senses in it, so I picked this up for research. Very dense, lush book.

Prince and The Purple Rain Sessions
Duane Tudahl

A day-by-day play-by-play of Prince in the recording studio at the height of his powers. I did a lot of skimming and skipping around, but really enjoyed it.

You & A Bike & A Road
Eleanor Davis

A comic diary of Davis’s bike across the south. I love her work so much. This might end up my book of the year.

Meet Me In The Bathroom
Lizzie Goodman

An oral history of NYC music from 2001-2011. How much you enjoy it will probably depend on your familiarity with the music — I was eighteen and a freshman in college when I saw The Strokes in Newport, KY, in 2001, so it made me pretty danged nostalgic.