Austin Kleon

You are here: Blog / Archives for drawing

Living on in doodles


I recently found out that a former professor of mine, Bill Newell, died in April. Here is a caricature of him I doodled in my notebook during his senior seminar, 14 years ago. We weren’t at all close — I learned a lot about him from this lovely obituary, even read a few of his Goodreads reviews — but as the years go by, I respect more and more the education I received at the School of Interdisciplinary Studies that he helped create. For that, I thank him. (How odd it is that we usually only know the value of our educations in hindsight…)

Here’s another doodle, this one by Ric Ocasek, shared by his sons:

Our dad was a prolific doodler. His passing was sudden, unexpected, and beyond heartbreaking. Yesterday, we found this last doodle on his armchair. He couldn’t have known what it would end up meaning to us. We love him so much.

Aside from his great songs with The Cars, Ocasek, in his role as producer, did his own kind of educating. (The word “education” comes from the Latin word educare — “to lead or draw out.”) Just as the educator draws out the best of their students in the classroom, so does the producer draw out the best of musicians in the studio.

I’m thinking about this “drawing out” now, and drawing, and how, even in the roughest doodle, something very human is left behind, the image of the subject, yes, but also the hand of the drawer…

This is just to say

I love copying my kids’ drawings and writings into my diary. Copying seems like a mindless activity when you first start out, but by the time you’ve finished your copy, you usually learn something about the thing you’re copying and/or you discover something of your own.

The first grader wrote this poem last night at the pizza joint. (He and his brother have been watching the poetry episode of Classical Baby and reciting WCW’s “This is Just to Say.”)

While I copied the poem, I noticed how he writes his lowercase a’s and how he forms the letters starting from the bottom. I thought about Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems and about how the size of the paper we write on affects what we write. I thought about how quickly kids move towards parody with their own work, and how here I was, again, making a copy of a copy.

When I copied the tablecloth, I noticed that the original pattern could become a skull or some kind of death mask.

When I copied the exploding earth, I wondered what was with the teeth, until I realized they were exploded parts of the poles.

Copying is a way of paying closer attention.

Side note: I find it interesting how whenever I post something “dark” that my kids make, strangers assume that they’re “dark” kids. They’re actually quite cheerful kids… it’s called “imagination,” man!

A copy of a copy

Yesterday the 4-year-old brought his book of Coco sheet music into the studio and I copied a statue of Ernesto de la Cruz for him to color.

Today he came in and wanted to copy my copy. He had trouble starting, so I drew Ernesto’s head and torso, and he finished up his legs, arms, and guitar. I like our copy of the copy even more:

This happens a lot when I’m drawing solo: I’ll attempt a drawing of something from life, and then if I copy that drawing, simplifying the lines, I get something more reduced and interesting.

Now I’m wondering what a third step would look like. A copy of a copy of a copy…

Related: Copying is how we learn.

A year of drawing

My son Jules woke up on Christmas last year and started drawing. He was 2. (His birthday is in March.)

Inspired by Sylvia Fein’s book Heidi’s Horse, which collects her daughters drawings from toddler to teenage years, I thought it’d be interesting to see how his drawings developed over the next 12 months.

January

From the very beginning, he has had unlimited, unrestricted access to markers and paper. From the very beginning, he has often drawn for over an hour, becoming extremely angry if we interrupt him. Here is a batch of skeletons — his great subject!

February

Here are some skeletons he drew on our outdoor couch cushions with sidewalk chalk.

They were so good we couldn’t bear to clean them off, so my wife got out her sewing machine and embroidered them. (This is how Jules got on Boing Boing’d at age 3.)

March

Here he is drawing along to Super Simple Draw in a hotel room.

Here’s a robot copied from Super Simple Draw. (Later in the year he would become fond of Ed Emberley books.)

April

Here he is in April, drawing along to Kraftwerk videos while singing “Man Machine” at the top of his lungs.

May

In May, he started drawing his favorite nursery rhymes. (Here are Jack & Jill.)

His drawings got incredibly gestural and emotional around this time.

June

Here he is copying Mo Willems’ pigeon. (Here’s his brother’s blog post about it.)

Later in the month, he drew our family as skeletons at the pool. I became fascinated by how he would draw people in his life using the moves he picked up drawing other characters.

July

Here’s another drawing of us in the pool.

Here he is with his brother drawing side by side.

July was also the month he got obsessed with The Scream.

August

Here’s a drawing he made after going to the dentist.

He also started drawing the characters from a Coco coloring book, even though he still refuses to watch the movie again, and screams whenever I mention it. (When you draw things, you’re in control of them.)

He also started drawing the human body.

September

Here is a photo of our kitchen floor on a day in September, to give you an idea of what one day’s worth of drawings looked like.

My wife and I would sweep them up with a broom at the end of the day.

This is around the time I got so fed up with the boys one afternoon I made the (extremely questionable) decision to read them Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies. (He can now draw the whole book from memory.)

October

Drawings of musicians — his other great subject!

November

A drawing from life made while waiting for his brother to finish art class at Laguna Gloria.

December

Finally, here he is on December 30, a year and 5 days after picking up his marker, drawing along to YouTube videos of Orchestras playing Benjamin Britten’s “A Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra.”

I find it remarkable, at this point, how drawing for him still has nothing to do with the results. He does not care what you do with his drawings after he’s done making them. How he draws is intense and adorable at the same time: he will put down a few lines, and then stand back and shake while he admires them.

I find it endlessly fascinating watching him draw. And inspiring.

Always drawing

The six-year-old is taking art classes at Laguna Gloria. I love dropping him off because while he’s in class, the 3-year-old and I get to explore the grounds. (An older dad told me years ago how important it is to split your kids up once in a while and go on little one-on-one “dates” together.) Yesterday the 3-year-old was having some serious separation anxiety (my wife is out of town), so I put some paper down on the stone ledge around the tiny koi pond and told him to draw the plants. This is what he drew.

Edward Carey at Austin Public Library


I actually left the house last night to attend Edward Carey’s art show opening & book release for Little at the Central Library gallery. It was a special treat because after Edward read, he was interviewed by his wife, Elizabeth McCracken. (It was their first time onstage together.)

I’m inspired by how much pictures and words are fully integrated in Carey’s work. His stories often start with a drawing, and he’s drawing constantly while writing. (I wondered about how much his visual thinking makes it into his classroom work —  he mentioned that in his courses at UT he talks to his students about maps and the importance of knowing the worlds of your characters.) If you read this blog regularly, you might remember his bit on productive procrastination:

The exhibit (up until January) is very well done, and organized by book. (The second great exhibit I’ve seen in the space — the first was Lance Letscher.) Here is original artwork for The Iremonger Trilogy:

And here’s a drawing from the new one:

Carey’s work is wonderfully dark, but with a good splash of humor. (It’s fitting that earlier in the day my 3-year-old was drawing pages out of Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies.)

There’s a lot to like in the show, but my favorite thing might’ve been this bowl of his pencil stubs — Tombow Bs, I think— which resembled an ashtray with cigarette butts. (Carey is a former chain smoker.)

Recent posts

Follow me elsewhere