Hey, GUT peeps!
You’ve drawn every day for 10 minutes a day for ALMOST THREE SOLID WEEKS!
YOU. ARE. AMAZING.
I’m thrilled to see GUT member’s excitement about this week’s theme: delights.
Today, we’ll be discovering delights in something we all experience multiple times a day, often relish, and yet often take for granted: FOOD.
Cooking and drawing
If you know my work, you probably know I had the DELIGHT to collaborate with Samin Nosrat on Salt Fat Acid Heat. (ICYMI: Samin just released her wonderful new book GOOD THINGS — the photos are fab! Do not miss!)
Creating the art for Salt Fat Acid Heat was a joy, despite having zero idea how to cook when we first began. Samin and I worked together for years to create the book. As she cooked, I drew over her shoulder. Through that process I discovered how much drawing and cooking have in common.
Let me (and Julia Child) explain.
Do it with love! You’ve probably heard the expression “cook with love.” When people cook with love and care, we can taste it. (And we can taste it when they don’t!) The same goes for drawing. I believe when people make a drawing (or painting or any art really) with love and care and delight, we can FEEL it. Energy we put in = energy that comes out.
Learn by doing! And make mistakes! In drawing as in cooking. But why listen to me talk about this when you could listen to JULIA CHILD herself?
As she says after she botches the flip:
“The only way you learn how to flip things is just to flip them.”
As in drawing. The only way to learn to draw is to draw.
Also, on mistakes:
“Anytime anything like this happens, you haven’t lost anything because you can always turn this into something else.”
As in drawing. We can always turn drawing mistakes into something else.
Have the courage to make mistakes, to turn them into something else, to not take ourselves so seriously. And just to DO IT.
Fail bravely! Failing is the only way to learn.
In cooking. As in drawing. As in life.
Do it with love! Learn by doing! Make mistakes! Fail Bravely!
Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.
- Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
For inspiration, let’s look at illustrator Maira Kalman’s scrumptious food art. She’s painted many delightful foods in her time, and I can’t get enough of them. Below are a few from her fabulous book Cake.
I share these paintings not to tell you what to do or how to do it, but to give you the sense of DELIGHT that can exist in a drawing or painting when we bring that feeling to our work. When we draw with delight people can feel it. And in this case, want to eat it.
So let’s do this. Your delight can be a food item, produce, or dish that is meaningful to you, or that you find delightful in some way. Maybe it’s a bright orange cauliflower or a red radish. Or perhaps it’s a bowl of cereal you have every morning, or a family recipe you want to share. Whatever food (or beverage) brings you real DELIGHT, we’re goign to focus on it through drawing. (And writing a little if you want.)
Here’s mine.
