Imaginary Books

There's a whole library of silly in your head just waiting to be drawn. Plus an art recommendation and self-portrait selects.

Hello my GUT Friends!

Hope this finds you well and healthy wherever you are - and if you aren’t right now, then know you’re not alone. It’s a doozy of a time right now, but we’re all in it together. Whew! <3

Before we get into the drawing this week, I have to tell you about something I saw a few days ago that took my breath away.

Big Time Art Recommendation

I went with my friend Allison to see a video installation at SFMoMA. I am not a huge video art person, but Allison told me it was the best thing she’d seen in years, and that despite having already seen it 4 times, and she’d happily join me for a 5th visit.

The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson, 2012

So back we went. And friends, holy cow. Holy. Cow. I can’t remember the last time a piece of art moved me like this. It’s a room filled with videos of individual musicians that combine into one big piece through the music that’s playing and… I don’t want to say more more than that. You have to see it for yourself. I will say tho that it is moving, hopeful, reassuring, and a celebration of art’s ability to grow hearts and create connection. By the end of the one hour video I was weeping. Allison put her arm around me and basically said, “Told you so.”

You can watch a video of it here that enables you to move around the room by clicking and dragging, but it’s really nothing like being in the room, surrounded by the musicians and hearing them each independently and collectively. So if you are in the Bay Area between now and April, I hope you make the time to see The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson. Maybe I’ll see you there, and maybe I will put my art around you and say “Told you so”, too.

Alright, let’s get to drawing.

Judging Books by their Cover

Over the past few days I’ve been putting up bookshelves and putting away art books. As a result I spent a ton of time looking at book covers, remembering when I bought the books, where and why. It got me thinking about how many times I’ve bought book because of its cover.

I admit it, I judge books by covers. I'm a pictures person. I think of books - especially art books - as art objects unto themselves, inside and out. And as I was going through my boxes of real books, I was reminded of the fake books Bryan Burkhart¹ and I made for DrawTogether’s set. Remember these?

Art books for the DT studio in the making

We take books very seriously

DT kid Cora made one of my faves.

Coming up with ideas for books for the DrawTogether studio that would make kids smile and be a little Easter egg for grown-ups was The Best.

Lord knows I wasn’t the first person to have this idea. One or my all time favorite artists Saul Steinberg made books out of wood back in the 70s and 80s.

Steinberg made this book for a friend, 1977.

Library, 1986-87. Mixed media on wood assemblage, 68 ½ x 31 x 23 in.

More recently, my pal Nat Russell creates fake books with funny, kind-of-profound messages a while ago. (He also makes the most brilliant fake fliers.)

Artist and children’s book author J Otto Seibold made wooden books using stencils and extra paint he had lying around.

And artist Anna Hoyle paints fake books that are very, very relatable.

So fun, right?

We’ve gone deep into the “back to basics” lately (and we’ve got one on perspective coming up soon) so I thought this week we should just do something fun and imaginative, and practice some of the text/image we learned back in the “How to make a NY Times story” lesson a while back.

This week’s assignment… (drum roll)