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I used this drawing by Jules (age 3 or 4 at the time) in my latest letter, “How I get into something new.”
One reader said, “I LOVE Jules’ drawing! That overshadowed everything I just read!”
The comment made me laugh, because that really was the first impulse for what became Don’t Call It Art, all those years ago: I just felt like what the kids was doing was so much more interesting than anything I was doing.
Jean Michel Basquiat once said in an interview, “I like kids’ work more than work by real artists any day.”
(That quote is in chapter 8.)
Sometimes I really can’t stand waiting on a book to be released into the world. Lingering in The Gulp.
My next book is Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again. It was inspired by my time spent as a studio assistant to my two sons when they were really little and the lessons I learned from them about loving and caring for yourself as a creative person. The book is designed to put you back in touch with that wild and fearless 4-year-old kid that still lives inside you and wants to come out and play. The release date is June 2, but you can pre-order it now wherever you love to buy books.
It’s a weird time, to say the very least, to be putting out a book about curiosity and wonder and freedom and fun and humor and imperfection and magic. But it’s also a time when, I think, we could desperately use those things in our lives. Watching my kids draw and make music and come alive to the world unlocked something in me that I’ve been trying to get into book form for over 10 years. I really can’t wait to share it with y’all. If you liked any of my other books, you will love this one.
From today’s newsletter:
On Instagram, a reader asked me in response to my collages: “How do you balance making fun stuff with doing business? Do you allocate time to simpl[y] make ‘pointless’ things?” I scribbled the image above into my notebook in response, and then I got so worked up thinking about the topic that I scribbled this followup, which I’ve edited slightly:
Read more: Five things on my mind (and in my notebook)
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