I am very happy to (finally!) announce that Workman Publishing will be publishing my new book Steal Like An Artist in March 2012!

(This will be just in time for my recently-accepted SXSW panel with Kirby Ferguson, “Everything Is A Remix, So Steal Like An Artist.”)

Big thanks to my shark of an agent, Ted Weinstein; my rad editor, Bruce Tracy; and all the folks at Workman, who have been impressing the hell out of me—it’s a great house, and I’m so excited by the level of attention and care the book has received so far.

Thanks so much to everyone for your support. More very soon—in the meantime, there’s a new book page with pictures of the work-in-progress, and I’m posting deleted scenes and research on my Tumblr.

Now back to work!

A few weeks ago I gave a talk on Newspaper Blackout and Steal Like An Artist at The Economist’s Human Potential summit in New York City. They had an awesome tech staff, so we even managed to weave some of my live drawings from the conference into the talk. Enjoy!

Watch the video →

Buy the book →

(more…)

Don’t wait until you know who you are and what you’re about to start making things.

Last December, there was a video of Rainn Wilson (the actor who plays Dwight on the office) going around of him talking about “creative block” and how to get over it. His advice:

If you don’t know who you are or what you’re about or what you believe in it’s really pretty impossible to be creative.

If I waited to know “who I was” or “what I was about” before I started “being creative”, well, I’d still be sitting around trying to figure myself out instead of making things.

In my experience, it’s in the act of making things that we figure out who we are. And often, the best work comes when we have absolutely no idea what we’re doing.

So yeah, if you’re having trouble, go take a walk, or find some new materials, but don’t linger over what it all means. Start playing.

Sometimes I get asked why I make art. I think I’ll start quoting this poem: “I’m trying to get Goldilocks to go home.” I’m not sure what it means, but it feels right.

Did you know in the original Story Of The Three Bears it wasn’t a little girl, but a nasty old woman who enters the Bear residence?

An old hairy woman (who is described at various points in the story as impudent, bad, foul-mouthed, ugly, dirty and a vagrant deserving of a stint in the House of Correction) discovers the bears’ dwelling. After assuring herself no one is about, she enters the house. The old woman eats the Wee Bear’s porridge, then settles into his chair and breaks it. Prowling about, she finds the bear’s beds and falls asleep in Wee Bear’s bed. The climax of the tale is reached when the bears return. Wee Bear finds the old woman in his bed and cries, “Somebody has been lying in my bed,—and here she is!” The old woman starts up, jumps from the window, and is never seen again.

Yeah, that’s what it’s like to create sometimes. There’s a foul-mouthed, dirty old woman up in my brain, and she has to eat all my soup, break my chair, and dirty my bed until I can catch her and throw her out the window.