Hey folks, quick heads up: I’ll be chatting with my friend John Unger on Blog Talk Radio Thursday night, February 4 at 9PM ET / 8PM CT. We’ll be drinking bourbon and talking about art. Listen in here →
Here are my doodles done during our talk:
OLD MEDIA / OLD NEWS SHOW IN ST. LOUIS
Those of you who live in or near St. Louis: there will be an art show featuring some digital projections of my blackout poems at The Luminary Center for the Arts starting with an opening reception tomorrow, Saturday, January 30th from 6PM-9PM. The show runs until March 27th.
Unfortunately, I won’t be at the opening reception. Plane tickets ain’t cheap, and with the book coming out soon, I have to save up my travel funds. It’s too bad, because some of my favorite creative fellas live there: Dave Gray, Bill Keaggy, Dan Zettwoch, Kevin Huizenga…it’s a town with a bunch of good brains in it, and I’ve always wanted to visit.
Maybe next time. If you go, take an iPhone snap for me and send it my way.
VISUAL THINKING FOR WRITERS WORKSHOP IN AUSTIN
I’m teaching a visual thinking for writers workshop here in Austin next month. (View a few slides from my previous class.)
Description:
As visual thinkers, we concentrate a lot on pictures, but rarely on words. Join us at the next Vizthink Austin, where we’ll learn visual thinking techniques that can help us become better writers. Using simple school supplies that can be found at any corner drugstore, we’ll step away from the computer and make writing with our hands, using index cards, scissors, and even old comic books. Whether you’re trying to write an office e-mail, a grant application, or even The Great American Novel, this session will help!
LOCATION: Leadership Austin, 1609 Shoal Creek Blvd, Suite 202, Austin, TX 78701 (Map)
DATE: Wednesday, February 3rd
TIME: 6 – 8 pm
BLACKOUT POETRY WORKSHOP AT ANGELO STATE
Last week Meg and I drove out to San Angelo, Texas. My friend Laurence Musgrove had invited me out to Angelo State to give a talk to a poetry class and conduct a blackout poetry workshop. The idea was to have a kind of “warm up” presentation to get ideas for any book tour I might do. This is the first time I had done anything like this, and how it went far exceeded my expectations. The students were great: they were engaged, eager, and they asked awesome questions. (Laurence posted a great Flickr set of the workshop – the photos in this post are his.)
Below I’ve posted the complete slideshow:
Here I am hating on Microsoft Word:
Here’s how the workshop went:
- I taped newspaper broadsheets to the walls and gave everyone a marker
- We formed a line, and I started by circling one anchor word or phrase
- The next person in line was instructed to build off that anchor phrase
- We kept going until poems emerged
The challenge, as always, was to get the students circling concrete nouns and verbs — words that put images in the head.
This combo made us all chuckle:
We only had a half hour or so, so we didn’t get any finished poems, but I promised everybody I’d go home and see what I could get out of the work we started. I’ll post the results here when I get a chance.
Thanks to Laurence, Angelo State, and all the great students!
I’m hoping we can do more of these workshops after the book comes out.
VISUAL NOTE-TAKING 101 : UPCOMING VIZTHINK WEBINAR
On May 12th, I’ll be doing a Vizthink webinar with my friends Sunni Brown, Mike Rohde, and Dave Gray (as moderator) on visual note-taking. Price is $99, but you get access to the live session AND the recording AND it all goes to the good cause of keeping the Vizthink staff and community afloat financially.
Visual note-taking 101: Techniques for making your notes more visual and memorable
with Mike Rohde, Sunni Brown and Austin KleonTuesday, May 12, 2009 | 11:00am EDT (15:00 GMT) | 3 Hours
Ever since Leonardo put pen to paper, visual note-taking has been a route to improve the quality of your thinking, make information more memorable, and make your ideas easier to share with others. Learn practical techniques and “tricks of the trade” from modern visual note-taking masters Mike Rohde, Sunni Brown and Austin Kleon. In this three-hour course you will learn how to use visual note-taking to improve your listening skills and take better, more memorable notes. The focus of this class will be on how to write, sketch, and diagram ideas live, in real time, as you hear them. Many of the techniques you will learn will also help to improve your skills in drawing your ideas at the flip chart or whiteboard.
Get more information and register here. (Also: dig the new VizthinkU portion of the Vizthink website!)
Sunni does graphic facilitation for a living, so she’s used to talking about her and her work, but this will be the first time that Mike or I have dug in and tried to explain what it is that we do.
The seminar will be in three parts. Sunni will talk about the art of listening and Mike will talk about being an editor vs. a stenographer. My part is called, “But I can’t draw!” I’ll be addressing folks’ fears of the pen, and talking about how there’s a a drawing alphabet just as there is a writing alphabet, and if you just learn the alphabet, you can draw anything. I’ll be using some cartoon theory, Lynda Barry’s “Two Questions”, Ed Emberley’s “Make A World”, and ripping off Dave Gray’s stuff on how to draw.
(TIP: I’ll be collecting a lot of my materials for the talk under the tumblr tag “But I Can’t Draw!” if you want a sneak-preview.)
This should be a lot of fun. I’m thrilled to be associated with these folks, and a little overwhelmed at the prospect of teaching with them: after all, it’s been only three years since I learned that this stuff even had a name…
Please let me know in the comments if you have any specific questions you’d like to have answered or topics you’d like addressed!
UPDATE: Here’s a sneak-preview of the introduction/bio slideshow I’m making for my portion:
View more presentations from Austin Kleon.
UPDATE: A recap of the event.
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