Search Results for: log book

IT SEEMS A SHAME TO CHOOSE

Monday, August 28, 2006

“When you have the talent to be able to write and to draw it seems a shame to choose one. I think it’s better to do both.”

– Marjane Satrapi

I love to draw portraits. In every human face, there’s a story, only you don’t have to necessarily tell the story, you just look at the face, and there it is. The only trouble with drawing portraits: it’s hard to get people to sit still for you. That’s why I tend to draw my best portraits in conference rooms–when people are trapped in badly-lit rooms in front of Powerpoint presentations. (If I rode the subway to work, it’d probably happen there.)

These two might become part of an ongoing project that I’ve dubbed “A Life Spent.” It would be rough portraits of people accompanied by an educated or imaginative guess as to where they’ve spent (or where they look like they’ve spent) the majority of their time. Maybe we could get some audience participation involved, and I could draw the portraits, and you guys could guess where they spend their lives…

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Satrapi’s quote has become my new motto. Why do you have to choose? Well, the answer could be, because how will you ever get in to grad school if you don’t? I think I might be able to make a career out of starting an MFA program in visual storytelling…

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Here are some links: trace the evolution of speech balloons, learn how to copy the New Yorker DVD set (I’ve been thinking about making my own portable hard drive with the recently reincarnated 2.5 inch notebook drive I have leftover from the Powerbook fiasco–did I tell you the Powerbook is fixed??? Because it is!!!), read an interview with Eddie Campbell, ruminate on The Pitchfork Effect (which I read religiously in college), watch the Islands playing on the streets of Paris (they’re coming back to the Grog Shop!), and listen to Charlie Baxter talk Flann O’Brien on NPR (I read the beginning of THE THIRD POLICEMAN on break…it was nutty. And did you know THE FEAST OF LOVE is being made into a movie starring Morgan Freeman?)

Also, the full excerpt of the Osama/Whitney connection from Harpers.

And: if you’ve never read Persepolis, I’ve put up an intro page on the Pizza and Prose Myspace blog. Check it out.

About

Bio • FAQ • Video • Press & Interviews • Contact me

photo of Austin Kleon by Clayton Cubitt
Photo credit: Clayton Cubitt

I’m a writer who draws. I make art with words and books with pictures.

Here’s a longer, more official-sounding version, suitable for copying and pasting:

Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of a trilogy of illustrated books about creativity in the digital age: Steal Like An Artist, Show Your Work!, and Keep Going. He’s also the author of Newspaper Blackout, a collection of poems made by redacting the newspaper with a permanent marker. His books have been translated into dozens of languages and have sold over a million copies worldwide. He’s been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS Newshour, and in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. New York Magazine called his work “brilliant,” The Atlantic called him “positively one of the most interesting people on the Internet,” and The New Yorker said his poems “resurrect the newspaper when everybody else is declaring it dead.” He speaks for organizations such as Pixar, Google, SXSW, TEDx, and The Economist. In previous lives, he worked as a librarian, a web designer, and an advertising copywriter. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and sons. Visit him online at www.austinkleon.com

The best way to stay in touch is to subscribe to my newsletter.

To get in touch, contact me.

Frequently Asked Questions

B. June 16, 1983, Circleville, Ohio

Education: B Phil. in Interdisciplinary Studies, Miami University

Pronunciation: Austin, like the city. Kleon, rhymes with neon.

Origin of name: “Austin” was a family name before Texas was a state. “Kleon” is Romanian.

What advice do you have for young artists starting out? It’s pretty much all in Steal Like An Artist.

How do I get published, famous, etc.? My book Show Your Work! is a guide to getting your work out there, and my book Keep Going is how to stick with it for the long run.

How did you come up with the idea to make your newspaper blackout poems? There’s a brief history on the blog and the full story is in the book.

What are your favorite books? Here are my favorites from the past +15 years.

What kind of notebooks do you use? Here’s a bunch of gear I use in the studio.

Video

This interview with photographer Chase Jarvis is a great introduction to my work, as is our most recent conversation.

You can watch more of my talks on my speaking page.

Selected Press & Interviews

More recent interviews on the blog.

“AFTER THE WAR” PUBLISHED IN BACKWARDS CITY REVIEW #4

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

page from the comic AFTER THE WAR

I’m ridiculously pleased that Gerry and the folks at Backwards City Review will be publishing my 5-page comic, “After The War,” in their fourth issue, which will be hitting the shelves soon. Not only is this my first paper-published comic, it’s also the first longer-format comic I ever worked on (drawn specifically with BCR in mind), and a rougher version of the technique I’m using to do Calamity. If you can tell, I was looking at a lot of Lynd Ward woodcuts, Frank Miller’s Sin City, and the illustrations for Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend:

Next to MOME, BCR is my favorite journal, one I go out and buy after each issue, so this is a real treat. Gerry and I have similar tastes (check out the blog!) and he’s even managed to get graphic work from Lynda Barry, Kenneth Koch, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I really suggest you check it out. Library Journal named it one of the best magazines of 2004, and called it “a flawless mix of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and comics—yes, comics” that “easily surpasses most of the more established literary titles at the local Barnes & Noble.”

For those of you who live in Cleveland, Suzanne carries it at Mac’s Backs in Coventry.

backwards city review

ABANDONED

Monday, August 21, 2006

This week I’m going to post a couple of abandoned pages from The Book. Here’s one of them. (Ever notice how watching “Deleted Scenes” on DVDs makes you glad they were deleted?)

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Spent a good weekend visiting family, researching the Historical New York Times database, combing through census records, and sifting through histories of Fairhaven and New Bedford Massachusetts. My old research/genealogy bug is kicking in…

What will I be listening to today? The Studio 360 on Moby-Dick. What am I reading? The paperback of MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS.

WHERE’S THE WHISKEY ON THIS ISLAND?

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

I hate mobs, I hate overpriced food, and I hate festivals. But if I have to be at one, I like to camp out with a sketchbook and steal a couple portraits.

Somebody told me that the island used to be a slum for immigrants that just came off the boat from Lake Erie, and that during prohibition the Canadians used to smuggle booze across the lake and move it here (hence the name). Then somebody told me it’s not even an island, it’s a peninsula.

One thing I know: there were some weird-looking Joes around there.

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My Powerbook is in worse shape than before. We took it apart yesterday and replaced the hard drive, but midway through, I pulled the power socket out of the logic board. (Turns out, this is a common problem.) So the hard drive is fine now, but you can’t turn the stupid thing on, because the cable that runs from the power button to the power supply is disconnected! So now I have to find a tiny soldering iron to get in there and fix it… (if anybody in the Cleveland area is reading this and has done such a thing…let me know!)

I’m begging you: if you bought a Mac recently, before your one-year warranty runs out, GET THE APPLECARE. It will be worth it! (That reminds me of this YouTube video of the Animals’ “San Francisco Nights”: “It’s an American Dream / includes Indians, too!”)

And if you’re ever dumb enough to attempt a repair like this, I really suggest getting a guide from this site.

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I have such a love/hate relationship with the Magnetic Fields. Meg and I love their music so much, but when we went to see them live, I wasn’t expecting Stephin Merritt to be such an asshole. Reading Daniel Handler’s liner notes to 69 LOVE SONGS makes me feel a little bit better about the whole thing: he’s obviously a workhorse of a songwriter.

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Other things: David Heatley is posting some of his new work at his blog. Rbally has a Specials show up. Se4n talks interactive fiction. Gerry quotes Vonnegut on oil depletion. Meg reports that going green is getting easier. (Check out Vonnegut’s “Pre-Bush Blueprint for the American Dream.”) And a Western alum has a long, personal eulogy for our alma mater.