In this episode, Nishant Jain shares his transition from being a neuroscience PhD student to the Sneaky Artist who translates the essence of everyday life through quick, expressive drawings of people in public spaces. He reveals how stories, laughter, and reflections became his loudest form of storytelling.

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Running Order

• Intro
• Welcome
• Who is Nishant Jain?
• Origin Story
• Nishant's current work
• Sponsor: Concepts
• Tips
• Tools
• Where to find Nishant
• Outro

Links

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast

• Nishant's Sneaky Art newsletter
• Nishant’s Website
• Nishant on Intagram
• Make (Sneaky) Art Book
• Find Nishant on his book tour
• John Muir Laws Sketchnote Army Podcast Episode

Tools

Amazon affiliate links support the Sketchnote Army Podcast.

• Lamy Safari fountain pen
• Stillman & Birn brown sepia toned sketchbook
• Moleskin sketchbook
• iPad
• Apple Pencil

Tips

1. Carry a small sketchbook.
2. Give yourself permission to be curious.
3. Get started as quickly as possible.

Credits

• Producer: Alec Pulianas
• Shownotes and transcripts: Esther Odoro
• Theme music: Jon Schiedermayer

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Episode Transcript

Mike Rohde: Hey everyone, it's Mike, and I'm here with my friend, Nishant Jain. Nishant, it's so good to have you on the show.

Nishant Jain: Hi Mike, thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure to talk to you.

MR: Yeah, we've been talking for not quite a year, probably six months, but we've been aware of each other longer. I've been a subscriber to your Sneaky Artist Substack for a while.

NJ: Mm-hmm.

MR: And I think our meeting story was we were at—what's the name of the event that John Muir Laws puts on? The Wild Wonder event.

NJ: Yeah, Wild Wander Conference.

MR: And I think, was I doing something, or you were doing something, and I said, "Oh, look, it's Nishant Jain" And you're like, "What?" And you knew who I was. It was a funny moment, I think.

NJ: Yeah. I think it was your talk, and I was curious about sketchnoting, and so I jumped into it.

MR: Okay, got it. Got it. And for those who are not aware Wild Wonder is an amazing organization. You can go back—I'll put a link into the John Muir Laws interview from years ago. He's a super fascinating guy. If you listen to that podcast, you'll want to grab a sketchbook and a pen and go outside and sketch birds or something. Seriously, he's very, very exciting and inspiring person, and they run a workshop every year, I think around September. And they just have amazing people, and you can learn so much, and it's worth going to.

After that sponsorship by Wild Wonder Foundation which I'm happy with sponsoring because they're great. So that's how we met. And then we just started connecting and chatting, and you were a great advisor to me in my Sketchnote Lab startup. You gave me a lot of mindset around the way you handle your Substack, which helped me a lot. That really accelerated the way that worked, and I think the way I think about it, which has been encouraging. So, thank you for that.

NJ: Mm-hmm. I'm glad to hear that.

MR: I think you do a lot of things, so before I assume what you do, coz I don't know, even if I know, tell us who you are and what you do.

NJ: Sure, sure. Okay, so I'm Nishant and I gave myself this job title a few years ago of Sneaky Artist. It turns out you're allowed to make up job titles completely from scratch.

MR: Oh, yeah.

NJ: I was delighted to discover this, but I'm not just an artist, although art has become my primary medium of expression. I'm a writer, I'm also a podcaster, and as one has to be in this independent career climate, you cannot just be one thing. Everybody is multi-hyphenate. So as an artist, what I do, it's a practice that I did not think would make me an artist. I did not start this practice in order to become an artist. I just did it as a distraction technique. I just did it as a way to maybe learn to draw a little better.

I was trying to be a cartoonist and I was trying to be a writer. And before all of this, I was an engineer. So I completed a master's degree—I have a master's degree in mechanical engineering. I've worked on race cars. I've worked on human prosthetics. And then I started a PhD program in neuroscience to become a neuroscientist working with stroke patients. But through this whole journey of education, I really, really—if you asked me, I would have said what I want to be is a writer. All I wanted to be was a writer. All I wanted to do was write political satire, write humor.

And that's what I was doing every evening. I would do my studies, I would do my assignments and my projects and then for an hour or two hours, whatever time I'd get, I'd be writing stories. I wrote scripts for standup comedy. I tried open mic standup comedy. I wrote for television shows in India. I wrote a blog. I had a web comic of political humor for years. And I tried to express myself with everything that I could, you know?

And for someone like me who isn't educated in these things, who isn't in the network of these things, the internet was a big boom. Immediately I started putting my work online first as a blog and then when Facebook came along, then Facebook, and then images became a thing on Facebook, so I pivoted to comics. So, I was very naturally agile around the medium of expression. For me, very quickly it became that you have an idea and then that idea can be expressed in lots of different ways and sometimes it is dependent on you to figure out what is the best medium to express this idea. Some things are better as a joke, some things are better as a comic, and some things are better as short stories.

So quickly this became something for me to figure out and I became very excited by being able to do this as well. The freedom of the internet to let us express ourselves in any way we want and hopefully build an audience. So after a couple of years into my PhD program, I finally decided to commit to a life of creativity. I quit my PhD program. I moved in with my girlfriend, who's now my wife, and I started writing this big novel that was inside my head.

And after years of writing and writing, it was such an amazing rush to be able to do it full time, but I would get about 30 percent into it and I would hit a block. And so, I would start again from zero and then again 30 percent and a block. And I wrote five drafts this way. The last draft I wrote by hand with a fountain pen thinking maybe just writing by hand will somehow unlock something special. And I kept hitting this block.

And I was so frustrated and I was so mad at myself and I felt so many different feelings that I just in—there was this one day that I just grabbed my notebook and I grabbed my pen and I went out to a café and I decided that I was just done with words and words were just not working for me and I need to spend some time away from them. So I got a coffee and I started observing these people around me.

I was an immigrant in North America. I was in Chicago then—and I'm fascinated, but Chicago is my favorite city in the world. I was fascinated by the people around me. These, you know, just the way people live their lives in America is so different from everywhere else. So I started observing them. I gave myself this room to observe them because I needed to distract myself. And I started making quick drawings of them.

The drawings were quick because A, I am naturally impatient and B, I didn't know when they would leave. I thought they might just get up and go, so I need to draw very quickly. And finally, because I was very self-conscious of doing this very strange thing, I was trying to look at people and draw them and I didn't want anybody to see me do this funny thing, so I thought I'd be very secretive about it. I'll keep the book in the palm of my hand, and I'll draw very quickly, and nobody will see me do this "weird thing." This became the origin of Sneaky Art.

MR: Right.

NJ: I started calling it sneaky art because I was being sneaky and trying to get away with a sketch, an embarrassing sketch that wasn't very good and that you're not supposed to do. Like it just felt wrong. What a strange thing to want to do as an adult. And I realized this is a lot of fun. I finished a drawing in an hour, and it didn't look all that great, but I felt so proud of it because it just felt like a wholesome one hour had been spent, observing and translating, and it just felt good.

So I came back to do it the next day and the next day and the next day and before I knew it I was on this journey to discover new things to see new people. I would go to different parts of Chicago, different neighborhoods and just sit in new cafés, watch these people and try to come away with something new. Did I do something today that I didn't do yesterday? Am I able to draw something today that I wasn't able to draw yesterday?

And it began with this humble idea that I just want to be able to maybe draw slightly better comics. Maybe I'll learn how to draw nice backdrops and settings and, you know, like make a person look like a person. My comic so far for five years, I'd been published in newspapers and things, but still it was a stick figure comic because I just didn't know how to draw any better. So my goal with this was that maybe I learned to draw a little bit better in and make my comics richer, but it became its own thing.

As a person who loves words, as a person who finds so much inspiration in books and novels and stories and humor, suddenly I found that just the art, just the lines and the shapes were saying things that I had been having a lot of trouble saying for the past few years, especially in the political climate that India was going through at that time and is now right in the middle of a right-wing authoritarian government. Not really leaving a lot of space for dissent and humor.

A lot of people were coming under a lot of abuse on social media platforms for expressing views against the ruling party. And I felt really disheartened by this situation. I took it very hard. I wasn't thick-skinned enough. Like, I got a lot of negative opinions from a lot of people, some of whom I knew personally, and it just made me feel like there's something here that's missing. Like I'm trying to say something, but it's when I say it to them, they hear something else entirely.

And I think we are able to see this now, the different realities people live in based on their spot on the political spectrum. And it made me feel that words are perhaps not very useful because they don't get the point across. And I think inside my heart, I was looking for something to say, something to express that could be just universally true, that wasn't up for debate, that couldn't be misinterpreted.

And so, now looking back at it, I think the journey with art was a journey to find something that is universally true. When I think about my tiny people drawings now, and I talk to people about what my art is, I tell them this, it's a way to take away the differences between people and show you the universality of our human existence.

I was an immigrant in North America. I was feeling really out of place as a brown guy with a beard in that particular situation in those years. And for me to feel like this place can be home, needed me to find these correlations between people. How are they similar to me? Not how they are dissimilar to me. And differences are very surface level, but this journey with art and drawing tiny people was a journey to peel away these surface differences. Take away the recognizability that makes them uniquely the person that I'm not and come to that level at which I can relate with them as a human, human to human. And that's what the art today is.

Words made a comeback into my journey very soon because I love to write, and I started writing a newsletter when Instagram started to feel exploitative and poisonous and algorithmically driven, it started to feel like I'm being manipulated and this is not a good way to engage with people who like your work. So I started writing a newsletter.

And so, now today I can say that I'm a writer as well because every week I put out a newsletter to share what I see in my world, the drawings I make of it, what it makes me think about, the things I read, the things I feel, and those are the things I write today. I also have a podcast. I make the Sneaky Art podcast in which I speak to other people who are obsessed with drawing from observation, from walking around their world and sitting in street corners and drawing into sketchbooks. And that's what we do. We talk about this on the Sneaky Art podcast. So these are the things I do.

As of this year, I'm also a published author. We'll talk about that a little later, I'm sure. But yeah, like it's been a journey of—since I quit my PhD program, I promised myself that I would do everything that I wanted to do, and I would never narrow my path. And that's the journey I'm on. It's a journey of curiosity. It's directed by specific job titles. It's directed by what feels like fun and what I want to explore.

MR: And I'm sure just like you talked about writing the book, and you'd get stuck at this 30 percent mark, you know if you're doing things as an experimental sounds to me like you're experimenting. If you did something, and it just didn't feel right, or it just wasn't working you would just leave it behind and move to the next experiment until you get a set of experiments that continue to work, right, and sort of think things that way?

NJ: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, I think drawing comics brings that home really, because to try and draw a weekly or a bi-weekly comic means you generate ideas every moment of the day. And maybe one percent of those ideas you take to completion. So you have to get into the habit of having an idea, loving it, trying to develop it, and then it doesn't work, and you have to put it aside, and you have to do something else.

And at first when you start, of course, it feels like a loss, like I got this, I have to finish it. But then I think over time, the more you do it, you get into this cycle of knowing that no good idea is ever lost. Everything stays in the back burner of your mind. And maybe in a few years or a few months, I'll be in a space to revisit it. It'll occur to me again, and I'll see it from a different perspective, and it'll work. So I think one of the boons of drawing comics for me and writing short stories was that no idea in itself is so precious and nothing is ever lost.

MR: That's a great way to think about it. think this just happened to be last week in a project I did two and a half, three years ago, an interface design. It's someone came with a request and I mean that wasn't exactly that, but it was mostly based on what I'd done. So that thing that I did two and half years ago that went nowhere suddenly is revived and coming back to life again. So I see this in all of many other areas too.

NJ: Yeah.

MR: I always think I always wonder like sometimes the ideas are good, but maybe their timing is wrong, right? Like you have to wait for the time to be right.

NJ: Absolutely.

MR: Yeah.

NJ: So, so true. Sometimes the timing is wrong. Sometimes the world isn't ready. Sometimes you're not ready. And one or the other needs to shift a little bit. And sometimes that's just about waiting.

MR: Mm-hmm. Well, the other thing you didn't mention is you're also doing a course. So you do this tiny people drawing and you're teaching that in a course which I see on social media probably because I'm following you and like your stuff, but that looks really interesting too and why don't you talk a little bit about that, and we'll work backwards from that into the book that you're writing because I feel like they're sort of two halves of the same coin or something, or I don't know how you would—

NJ: In a sense, yeah, the book has a larger ambit, but the course is quite focused on something that I am most popular for. The reason why my Instagram account blew up one day is that people love to see me draw these tiny people. So how it began is that firstly, I draw tiny people like I told you, because I'm fascinated by people. I love to see what people do. And as a new person in a new world, I was trying to figure out how I should fit in. How do I know how to live here? How to make these public spaces my space as well? How to give myself permission to enjoy this café, this park? And the way for me was to watch what other people do and the way to allow myself to watch other people was to draw.

So, although I was super hesitant about taking on this role as an instructor, a bit of imposter syndrome kicks in, like I feel like I'm not equipped. Surely, I'm not qualified to be telling other people what to do. I think what worked is knowing that I have an experience to share, and sometimes you don't need to hear from someone who necessarily knows a lot more than you or is somehow the best at it, but just somebody who can give you permission to think a certain way. And I think of my role as a teacher to be that of a facilitator. I'm here to point the way to some interesting things and maybe people find something to do from it.

So I did a bunch of Zoom workshops and I did a lot of in-person workshops, and you know, all of them are basically two hours, two and a half hours, and people can join you if they're physically near you or people can join you if that time zone works out for them. And as my audience started to grow and the number of people who wanted to learn from me started to grow, I realized this workshop business is not really doing them enough service.

So I designed the course because a course is entirely self-paced. I get to make it to the level of depth that I want. There is over seven hours of content in this course, more than 50 different videos. I get to take people outside. I've recorded myself drawing and talking inside the café, at a street corner, on a train, things I can't do for a workshop that I do.

MR: Right.

NJ: Everybody around the world is able to buy it and then watch it at their comfort, watch it at their choice of speed, at their choice of day of week and hour, and follow along and consume it the way they want. So there's a lot of consent and mutual respect in this whole setup, which I'm really appreciating. I have the freedom, and they have all the freedom to do it, how they want.

So this course has been a real blessing for me because I've put—this is a course specifically about how to draw tiny people. I think everybody should be in the business of tiny people drawing because it is—you know, I think one of the biggest crimes of our modern technology in our lives is, it's put us into little bubbles. We look at our little devices, we listen to our music, and we stay in, you know, this sensory bubble that insulates us from our world. We don't interact with our world so much.

And everybody's like this. You go on a bus and everybody on the bus is on their phones inside their own little cocoon, not interacting with each other, not looking at each other. And I think it makes us more disconnected and it makes for a lonelier world if we are this way.

So a sketchbook habit is a way to perhaps look at other people, to find commonalities, to perhaps understand how rich and beautiful our world is. And one of the reasons I wanted to make this course is I want other people to see that around you there is so much diverse human life, so much happening at all times of the day, and if you look, you will always find something beautiful.

So now we have a little community, hundreds of participants sharing the tiny people they find in their corner of the world. Every morning I wake up and I see drawings of tiny people from Hong Kong, from London, from Australia, from somewhere in Europe, somewhere in South America, it's absolutely rich and beautiful.

And you know what we're seeing? We're seeing that no matter where you go, you find humanity is still the same. A tiny person in Brazil having coffee is the same as a tiny person in the UK having coffee. There's something beautiful about that. And there's something beautiful that someone was able to share it with us. And so, it's been a real delight to be able to make a course and have people learn from me and see what they come up with.

MR: There's something you mentioned in there at the outset, which is you had a little bit of imposter syndrome, like who am I to teach? I thought when I was asked to write a book about sketching, I'm like, why am I the right person to write about this? And the thing that brought me around was thinking, okay--and anytime I teach anything it's like I may not be the expert on Sketchnote layouts, but I have a way that I do it that works for me that I can share with you, right?

NJ: Right.

MR: That sort of brings it down to more local right? It's not like , I'm gonna teach you the right—again, that comes to like, what is the right way compared to what? Related to what, right? Again, that comes to context, like, well in this context it's this, and in that context it's that. Again, I think it's more relatable to share the things that you do well in a way that someone can then say, "Oh, Mikey, does it this way, I like what he does, but kinda I wanna do this other thing a little bit differently." And it gives you the permission to say, that right so that's really fascinating to hear that parallel.

NJ: Yeah, so true.

MR: And then, so I would imagine you've got the course, which now you're making me think about courses, which I had sort of dismissed a long time ago because a lot of what I thought was influenced a little bit by Seth Godin who created courses and he found like, know, he would get 30 percent of people that would actually finish the course. And the course creators would say, "Seth, that's amazing." And he was like, "That's terrible. Thirty percent is terrible." Right?

I think, you know, there is that, but I think, the points that you bring out is offering it to people in a way that relates to where they're at. And maybe you shot 50 hours, maybe they need 20 hours and they're good to go, right? They don't need all 50, no?

NJ: Absolutely. You know, so as I am a very distracted student. So if I'm in a class, I'm the guy looking out the window in my own train of thought. And I keep circling back to—like, I think I love to learn. I love learning all kinds of things that I don't know. So in a way, I'm a good student, but I am not a structured—you can't put me on a syllabus student. So I am part of that other 70 percent who might not finish a course that they bought, but I am always going to come away with two or three good ideas.

And there are so many books I haven't finished. I'd never read them all the way through, but I still left with two or three good ideas. So, you know, I don't know what a good number is. Thirty percent to me, going from start to finish sounds like a very good number because I do think that the other 70 percent are still a subset of the general population. These are people who nevertheless committed to give time and money to something.

MR: Right. Right.

NJ: Maybe you are not the course that made them into an artist, but maybe you did something that inspired them to take a step towards this thing. And who knows when that pays off? Who knows how it makes them more—maybe it makes them more serious. Maybe it makes them think--you know, maybe they just didn't like what Seth Gordin did, or they don't like what Nishant did with tiny people, but they like the idea of having a course.

So there's so many different ways that—like what I come away with, you know, is a general respect for the fact that not only do you think I am worth your time, you think I'm worth a certain amount of money. So I think there is a general level of respect I have for that. And then I put it at the same level as a New Year's resolution. Like New Year's resolutions fail all the time, but who knows? Like if you make them every year, maybe one year, you do fulfill them.

MR: Yeah, that's a good point too to bring out that maybe you were the midpoint between doing something and something else and you ask them, well, how did you end up where you're at? Like they would never remember you, but does it matter? It doesn't matter.

NJ: No, exactly.

MR: Yeah.

NJ: So in the beginning of my course, you one of the videos I tell people that what I'm trying to think of this is like, you know, being a guidepost. I'm not trying to—the Indian attitude towards teaching, which I grew up with is that of a guru who tells you exactly what's what and he is the most learned person.

And I think this is where my imposter syndrome would kick in from that I am not that guy, but the more I learn, the more I understand that you don't learn necessarily because someone has all the answers. You learn from them or you want to learn from a certain person. Just like you like the art of a certain person, not because it's the greatest art in the world, but you relate to it for some reason. It works for you. And the same for teaching.

So one of the first things I say in this course is that we're all on our individual creative journeys and I am not here to take charge of yours. I am not here to for you to make your journey all about me and my style and what I do. I'm just here to maybe walk with you for a little while. How long? It depends on both of us and maybe point out some interesting things to you that maybe you like just as much as I do. And then you go on in your journey and I go on in mine and we're not here forever.

MR: Yeah, yeah, that's true you know thinking about time too like if you have limited time people are going to be efficient about what they take away and what they leave right just like you said so I think that's good to remember and you know expecting 100 percent, you know there's going to be some completion as to I started now I have to I have to check all the boxes or I'll never sleep right they're going to be there that's like one percent.

NJ: Yeah, and I don't know how I feel about that. I don't think that's always a positive way to approach the learning job.

MR: No I don't think so either. Yeah, now it becomes a burden, right, instead of a joy.

NJ: Yeah.

MR: Well, that's really interesting. And how do you relate the course with the book? Because the book sounded like maybe it's a little bit broader in some degree. Talk about that and the relationship.

NJ: Yeah. Yeah. So I was lucky enough to be approached for this book. Quarto publishers contacted me and asked if I would be interested in writing a book to share my style of art and how I learn. My first instinct was to say no, because like I said, you know, I'm not a very structured student. I am not the guy who buys how-to books and learns from them. I learn in my own way.

So my first instinct was maybe I'm not the best person to write a book like this. But they convinced me. They told me, "Maybe the job is to write a book that even someone like you would read." And I thought, okay, that is a challenge, and I want that challenge now. I want to figure out what is the kind of book that even someone like me would read.

And me being somebody who's distracted, somebody who—you know when I get a book with pictures--for example, when I was growing up, we would get the reader's digest at home, I would go through it first all the way, very quickly, just flip all the pages from back to front and stop at all the cool images. And then maybe I would think about which chapter I want to read or which story I want to read inside it. I don't go from A to Z, I just hop around, especially with books that don't have a fixed narrative.

And so that's the book I decided I wanted to write. I want to write a book so that you can open to a random page one day, and even if you have one minute, you come away with something in that one minute. And if you choose to read it A to Z, you get something. If you choose to go hop and skip in your own little trajectories, then you should also be able to get something. And that's the book I try to write.

So again, I don't want to write a how-to-book. The book I want to write is why everybody should have a sketchbook. I think a sketchbook is a visual journal of your life. And I think everybody should have a journal. And everybody in some level understands that when you try to write, especially a journal, you're talking to yourself. It's a private space. And that conversation is of value even if you're not a professional writer, even if you're not a beautiful writer. Talking to yourself, writing to yourself has value.

Similarly, a sketchbook has value even if you're not good at drawing, even if you never intend to become an artist. A sketchbook is a conversation with yourself outside of words and language without letting the politics and the messiness of words get in the way of your thought process. It's a way to see your world and to see the lines and the shapes and the colors that make it up. And then to bring it into your mind and then to translate it through your hand and the tool of your choice onto the page.

And this business of input and translation and output is a very beautiful human thing to do. And sometimes if you're really in the flow of it, you can do it without any words getting in the way at all. And I think there's a level of beauty in that.

I read something about the French philosopher Derrida. He said that every statement is a lie. Everything you say is said by you according to the meaning of the words that you have in your mind. But whenever somebody hears it, they have their own meanings to those words, which are maybe subtly different from you. So anything you say to them is not what you intended to say to them. And therefore, every statement is a lie. And words are all we have, but words are not very good at doing this job of meaning things.

So I think maybe if we all had sketchbooks, we would understand where words fail and we would understand that there is a world outside of language, which is becoming difficult in an age of social media and texting. There is so much now that instantly becomes words and language. Everything we process--you know, seeing something absolutely incredible and we're at a loss for words. And we think that if we can't express it in words, it's not a real feeling. But being an artist and being a writer who is now an artist, I have come to appreciate how much of the world exists outside of language.

And so, the point of this book is that everybody should make sneaky art. That's the title of the book, Make Sneaky Art. And everybody should have a sketchbook that helps them express themselves. That can be a private thing that you don't even need to show anybody. Who cares how you draw, it's nobody else's business. And why that would be such a good thing for us as individuals, but also us as a collective species.

MR: So it sounds almost more like a philosophy of Sneaky Art than anything in a lot of ways.

NJ: It is. Very much. So, tiny people is just one chapter in this book. The rest of this book is about the basic ideas that I have for how you can build a sketchbook habit, what can help you to draw every day and have something that fulfills you.

MR: That sounds really cool and I can see now how they would overlap well. Like a little tiny bit of the tiny people in the book but the book is a lot more than the course in that sense. So you could purchase both and both would be really useful. I would guess the tiny people might get the be the spark to get you started and then thbook could then expand on well where else could I apply this sketchbook, or it could go the other way right where you start with this idea and then you specifically want to do little tiny people and then you do the course to get that depth, right?

NJ: Absolutely.

MR: So it works both directions.

NJ: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it expands just the way my art practice also expanded. It started with trying to draw people, learning to draw people and so drawing them tiny, drawing them very quickly. But how it grew it—so, you know, this is what I explained to people that it started with me thinking sneaky art meant that I am being sneaky, trying to make something, but the definition of this phrase has changed in my mind the more I started drawing.

MR: Yeah.

NJ: I moved very soon from Chicago, I moved to small town in Wisconsin called Eau Claire. And for a moment I thought, what am I going to find here? It's not Chicago, you know, it's not a big city of the world. I'm not going to find these iconic landmarks. Where is the art now? How do I draw something? How do I keep this practice going? And I realized very soon from trying to draw every day, this is the new definition of Sneaky Art in my mind, that art is everywhere. Beautiful things are everywhere in ordinary places on ordinary days, featuring ordinary people doing ordinary things of daily life. It's our job, the artist's job, the human's job is to find that art, to be able to see it.

And so, the art is sneaky in the sense that it's right there hiding in plain sight and it needs you to cultivate the mindset and be ready with the tools in order to see it and in order to translate it and to share it and express it. So this is what the meek, sneaky art of this book is. It's not that I think everybody should be sitting in corner seats in cafes with a little sketchbook trying to be secretive, but I think there is beautiful art everywhere waiting for you to see it. And that's what I want to help you see.

MR: Wow, that's a really interesting way to think. That's quite a flip too. Almost a 360 degree flip in a way. That moves you away from—I'm trying to think, Stephen King's book on writing, the way he thinks about writing is he's almost like an archeologist, where the story exists and he's brushing away the bones and the bones and the dinosaurs that he's uncovering tell him the story. And then he just writes it down. That's an interesting way to think of it. In a way, that's the way you flipped your description of Sneaky Art is art is there, it's just a matter, are you gonna notice and be curious and then document it with your sketchbook or whatever.

NJ: Mm-hmm.

MR: That's an interesting way to think of it.

NJ: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's a very nice analogy. I like that one.

MR: Well, you can have it. It's actually Stephen King's, so I guess I don't have a right to give it or take it. But I always found that fascinating. He talked a lot about it in that book. It's a great book about writing.

NJ: Yeah, it reminds me of this quote, I think it's attributed to Michelangelo, the sculptor, that "Every block of marble has a statue inside it. And the job of the sculptor is to chip away the unnecessary parts."

MR: Yes, exactly. Yeah that's a great way to think of it. Interesting. Well, these both sound great. I've already purchased the book. I haven't done the course yet it's next on my list. And I might do some research and see is there a course that I need to produce. We'll see.

NJ: Oh, yeah.

MR: But I think you know doing drawing is also fun for me so this might encourage me to do more drawing as well.

NJ: Yeah, absolutely. You know, there are interesting things that people need to learn from each other. Like I can write and I can draw, but still the idea of sketchnoting the way you do it, I stumble. Like I keep hitting blocks and I think those are just little, little obstacles in my mind that I need somebody to show me the way around. Maybe I don't need the skill that I need to learn, but I just need to understand approach and ideas.

And sometimes that's what we need. You know this is why a course helps. Like you can you don't have to edit yourself down to a very small amount of time and you don't know what somebody needs. Maybe I need only 20 percent of your course but that's the 20 percent that's been stopping me up.

MR: Yeah. Right. Well, and you make 100 percent and they decide which 20 percent makes sense for them, right?

NJ: Absolutely, yes, yeah.

MR: Yeah, that's interesting. Cool. Well, and of course you're writing at Substack and at the end of the show, we'll have you give links and we'll put links in the show notes for people. I'm really curious now, let's switch over to tools. I know the answers to some of these things, but what are the tools you like? I think it comes down to like two things, you know, if you consider a sketchbook and a pen but tell us a little bit more detail about the pens and the sketchbooks and what you've sort of found that works for you at least.

NJ: Sure. Yeah. So, you when I started learning, I slash teaching myself to draw, I took a lot of help from the iPad. So firstly, for anybody sketchnoting, for anybody learning to draw, somebody that loves to recreationally make art, I cannot recommend the iPad enough. I think it is a wonderful, wonderful piece of technology. An iPad and an Apple pencil taught me many, many, many things.

I made pretty much all my comics that way for years and years. I made a couple of graphic novels that way. It was backbreaking literally, but it was so rewarding. And it became this zero-cost environment in which I could play with colors as somebody who's nervous around colors, try it and then undo it and then try something else and undo. And you haven't "wasted a drawing" in trying out a color. So I think I learned a lot from that, but there was a certain point I reached with it. I hit a wall when I realized that everything I do, and this is me thinking as an artist and a cartoonist trying to move forward, trying to go deeper.

Everything I do is an Apple pencil on the iPad screen. So the tactile point of contact is always the same, whether I use a pencil tool, whether I use a marker tool or any other virtual tool, digital brush. So I felt like maybe I'm not using these brushes right because I don't know how they really feel. I need to understand the tactility of this device in the real world before I use the digital version of it. And if I learn the analog version, then maybe I'll approach the digital brush with more understanding and better skill. So that's when I started drawing with analog devices and painting with brushes again.

This sort of sent me into a journey which meant I pretty much never use digital tools anymore, like hardly ever. So I don't think there is any right tool per se. I think what we have is—you know, so drawing and making art is joy in the process of doing it. It's not about the result, it's about the joy. Just like children, children paint because with crayons, you know, hold, gripping them tightly and, you know, completely ruining them sometimes, but they are enjoying the act of making this thing and they are not obsessed about what it will look like at the end.

But something happens when we, as adults, we grow up, we become results oriented. I'll only do this if I'm good at it. I'll only do it if the result is so and so good. I'll only do it if it makes me X amount of money. So unless the result, the return on investment is worth it, I will not go through this process. And that's not how children think. That is not how an artist should think. Artists should be about process more than result especially amateurs and hobbyists. It's about the time you get to spend doing this rather than what it looks like at the end. It's irrelevant.

So what tools you use is about what tactile point of contact you enjoy. As a writer, as a sketcher, I love how the fountain pen feels against the page. It gives me that little bit of friction. so my line goes a certain way. If I wrote or drew with a ball pen, with a roller ball pen, it would be a completely different line because the resistance and the friction is different. Like my pen is very smooth, but the little bit of scratchiness it has makes me feel like I have control over my line and I love how it feels against it. It's a joy to draw with it.

So this is my tool of choice. It's a Lamy Safari fountain pen and I like a lot of fountain pens, but this is the one I keep as my workhorse, I keep coming back to it. I'm always using it every day pretty much for the last seven, eight years. Yeah, that's the one. Lovely.

MR: This one right here.

NJ: Yeah, that's a beautiful color. Wow.

MR: This is a special edition and came with orange ink which I'm not using the orange ink but I did once and it worked out really well.

NJ: Hmm. Yeah, that's a really nice color actually. So for me, the fountain pen does that. Like I love how it makes contact with the page. Another funny thing, I started writing with the fountain pen before I started drawing with it. And this has to do with—I'm very good at typing. I've been writing stories on my computers for years and years. So I am very fast as a typist. And maybe I'm too fast for my own thoughts. So I can type out a sentence and then reach the end and be like, I don't like it. So every sentence I write, I would edit it three times because I needed my thoughts to catch up with the pace of my typing.

Writing by hand, drawing by hand, imposes a physical limit to how fast you can go. And in my opinion, as a writer, often the first draft of everything I write is by hand because it allows my thoughts and my writing to be in sync. And the sentence that comes out on the page is usually the third draft of that sentence that I started. It's not something that I write, I type and then I erase and then I type again and then I change again. So it allows me to be more in the flow of writing and constructing thoughts upon thoughts than typing.

So writing by hand has given me a lot of joy. Drawing by hand has given me lot of tactile, pleasure, and a lot of joy in the process of drawing. And so this is what I recommend to people, that you should find, of course, the page is the other end of the equation. You also have to use the kind of paper that the fountain pen feels good against. Sometimes that means if you're drawing, it means slightly higher quality paper than the most basic, thinnest paper, but there are things you can find. Again, there is an equation you want to find.

I love smooth toned paper. I love vellum paper sometimes for drawing in. I love hot press pages, which are like very smooth. The current sketchbook I'm using is textured. So it is cold pressed textured paper. And usually people prefer that for watercolors, but I also love how it feels with the fountain pen nib.

Thing about art that I recommend most of all is that we should be excited for the journey. We should be excited to open our horizons, try whatever tools you can get access to, see how they feel, find what feeling gives you joy and make that central to your art practice, your writing practice, whatever sketchnoting practice, find the paper that feels good. If you're afraid of ruining things, you know, the right pen for you is the one you're not afraid to use.

MR: Yeah.

NJ: The right paper for you is the one you're not afraid to "ruin." The point is to do a lot. The point is not to think that some tool or some medium is so precious that you should only use it when you're ready for it. Whatever kills the hesitation is the right tool for you to use.

MR: That's a great direction. And I learned that lesson when I did workshops. At first I thought people wanted fancy pens and Moleskine notebooks or sketchbooks. And I did the first workshop that way and then realized as I started to go on the road. People were afraid to draw on these fancy notebooks with these fancy pens.

NJ: Yes.

MR: So what I did is like I went 180 degrees switch and I went to a ream of printer paper and flare pens. That was it.

NJ: Mm-hmm . Yep, that's it.

MR: I think a total of like $11 or something. And it worked great because it was so unpretentious that people were willing to draw on it and then if they didn't like it they would crumple it up, leave them behind. It was so ubiquitous they could care less about the material.

NJ: Exactly. Whatever it takes for you to think that you are the master of this universe. You cannot be subservient to your own tools. Whether it's a lie you tell yourself or what it is, whether it needs you to change your tools, but you need to feel like you are in control of this. You need to have the confidence to write something, to draw something, and to crumple it up and throw it behind you, knowing that the next day I do it will be better.

I think when we become in awe of our own work, I draw something and I think, oh, my God, I'll never be able to draw as good as that again. What it means is the next day I'm going to hesitate to start drawing because it won't live up to it.

I have a friend who draws, who doesn't draw in sketchbooks, who's an amazing artist, but only uses loose sheets of paper because his idea is that if I have a sketchbook, whenever I turn the pages, it's whatever I did before is going to intimidate me today, and I won't be able to, so it's a way of setting himself free. He's found his fix. So we should all find our fix in that way, but the goal is whatever helps you do more, whatever kills the hesitations, whatever means that you do something.

MR: So having said all that and knowing that each person's unique situation determines their tools. We know you like the Lamy Safari. Is there a go-to notebook? Like if you were pressed like you have an hour, Nishant, and you need to buy a notebook at the store and you can go to the store and it's got hundreds of notebooks or sketchbooks which one would you choose?

NJ: Right, right. Great question. So first I would choose between two sketchbooks based on the situation. One of them would be something that has helped me to bring color into my drawings as a person afraid of color is to use a toned paper sketchbook. I would buy, speaking of brands, the most convenient one in most art supply stores is Stillman & Birn.

MR: Yeah, good. Good brand.

NJ: I would recommend a Stillman & Birn brown sepia toned sketchbook of your choice of size. Somebody told me this when I said I'm afraid of using color they said, "Why don't you use brown paper because then the first color is already there and now you're just adding a second and it won't be such a leap to add a third." And it has completely transformed my art practice in that way. When it's winter I get a grey-toned sketchbook because of course I live in the Pacific Northwest and it is I live in grey couvre as it is sometimes called rain couvre as it is often called. Sometimes described as the wet apple, which it also is.

So a grey-toned sketchbook is great for the winter months and then spring and summer, a brown-toned sketchbook is lovely. So that's one recommendation. The other one I would say is I would always look for something—you know, I like Moleskine. So Moleskine is one, but there are many, many brands that do this. So I never want to say brand. I want to say size and I want to say orientation.

MR: Okay. Gotcha.

NJ: So a four by six inch sketchbook, which you can hold basically in the palm of your hand. So a sketchbook which allows you when you're standing in line somewhere, when you're waiting for your coffee somewhere, I have two minutes, can I make a drawing now? Yes, I can make a drawing now. So a sketchbook that allows you to build a sketchbook habit with five minutes or less drawings.

And that's a little sketchbook that can always fit in your pocket. You never have to think twice about carrying it. You never have to think about too many tools. One pen, one little sketchbook, and I'm set. I can now be in the business of observing my world and putting it down. I think that's very liberating. It's super empowering. So if I had no other decision to make, just a very quick thing, I will look for the quickest small little sketch pad or sketchbook I can get.

MR: That's interesting you say that too. When I did sketchnoting, I had come from a place where I was writing longhand and large line notebooks and the inversion that I did was I purchased a Moleskine sketchbook at Barnes & Noble and I didn't know what to do with it, it was too beautiful. And I thought well I need to make use of this thing. The reason I chose it wasn't that it was beautiful at that point it was well it's really small I can keep it in my pocket and I can carry a gel pen in my front pocket and I don't have to carry bags or anything, I can just take it anywhere I go.

And so, I took that to the first workshop and used it and it was great because it was so small for many years at the beginning of my exploration I started with those small notebooks and I still like them you know when I travel. Now I use a brush pen and I play with a mix of brush and gel pen to capture environments in a pocket notebook. There's a brand that I have to look for it now and I'll look for a link for it. Little tiny pocket notebooks from Baron Fig they make us really small pocket notebook. That's even smaller than the Moleskine's. I think it might be three by five or something so it's quite small.

NJ: Mm-hmm. Yeah, there are some that are three by five, then even two and a half by three and a half.

MR: Yeah, yeah little tiny one, so.

NJ: You know what, another thing I really like, and this is something I do and why I hesitate to recommend a brand to anybody is, you know, a sketchbook is also—you know, you compose your scene upon a sketchbook. it's the same thing for sketchnoting. You are composing and organizing your thoughts based on the structure of the page that you have, whether it's landscape or it's portrait orientation, big or small, square or something else.

So every time I finish one sketchbook, the next one I buy is a completely different orientation. Because the kind of page you have, is the page you compose upon, is also how you see your world. If I'm drawing on a very tall portrait sketchbook, the way that I look at my landscape is completely different from if I'm drawing in a long landscape orientation sketchbook. The way the information flows, the way my eyes flow on that page, all of those things make a difference to how I'm regarding this same space that I'm at maybe every day.

You know, drawing is about seeing. Forget what you put down on the page. First, it begins with how you see, not only what, but how you see it and how you interpret it and how you compose it. That changes completely if you change your sketchbook paper size and dimensions. So I think it's a very wonderful exercise to change these things, to not get bound to one style and see if it unlocks something in your composition.

MR: And you may even find too, like for me, like certain like that little tiny pocket notebook. If I travel somewhere, I can take that in two pens and I can do environments, I can do food, those kinds of things. And it's easy to bring. Like the friction is really low because it's in my pocket.

But if I'm doing, if I'm doing like say I'm a do a job and I decide I want to do it analog, I probably would take an A5, right? Because I've got a little more space. The purpose is to capture information or if I'm doing for client work, maybe I would choose the iPad because clients always have changes there's something I'll miss I'm gonna make a typo, right, so the purpose drives in a way the tool.

NJ: Exactly.

MR: So you may by rotating through these different books in this case you would sort of discover this is really good for this kind of thing in my context and that's really good for that. So then you have like these collections of different types of books that you find work for you and so they're ready to go at a moment's notice so that can be valuable

NJ: A hundred percent, yeah. Like I have three sketchbooks depending on mood and context that I pick up from my desk.

MR: Wow, that's great. That's great. Well, this has been helpful and I think encouraging for your people to think about sketchbooks and tools in a way that is in context to the way they work. I think that's important. That's why, you know, just because you have the same notebook and pen as Nishant, you have a different experience and you have different environments and you need to take it in the way that makes sense for you. His tools will not make your work like his, nor should you make that your focus. He's really an inspiration, like he said, a facilitator to do that. So, interesting.

NJ: Yeah.

MR: The last thing I usually ask our guests on the show is the tips section. So I frame it like this. There's someone listening, they're probably a visual thinker, I would guess, whatever that means to them. Maybe they're stuck in a rut or they just need a little inspiration from you. What would be three things you would encourage them with?

NJ: Yeah, sure, absolutely. So firstly, something we just spoke about, carry a small sketchbook, something that doesn't intimidate you, something that you're not afraid to whip out with even two minutes of free time. You can go from start to finish in the little bit of time you might have even in a busy day. What I think of is utilizing the slack periods of your day. Waiting for a bus, for example, sometimes. So carry a little sketchbook is number one.

Number two is you have to give yourself permission to be curious. You have to not disregard your curiosity as silly or pointless. When I go out with a sketchbook, one of the things it does for me, even if I don't draw anything at all that day, is I can feel it in my pocket so I know that I'm in the business of observing and looking for things that are interesting. Be in the business of activating your curiosity and seeing what you've—you know, your curiosity tells you something about yourself.

No matter how you draw, nonetheless you are learning, this is what I'm curious about, this is what grabs my attention. And so you foster something beautiful about yourself as a human being exploring your landscape. So carry a small sketchbook, number one. Number two, always be curious. Number three for me is get started as quickly as possible. You need to make your tools in such a way, you need to have your practice in such a way that you don't leave any room for hesitations. Hesitations don't do any good. All they mean is don't do this thing. There is no value to these hesitations. Start as quickly as possible. Whatever it takes for you to get pen to paper.

As a self-conscious person in public spaces, you know, I started Sneaky Art out of being self-conscious. I'm still self-conscious. I take commissions and I'm in public, crowded spots, but I'm still self-conscious. But that these second thoughts and these stray thoughts that stop me from doing things vanish the moment that I touch pen to paper. Suddenly I'm in the zone of making something and now I'm in it. Now those second thoughts don't matter. So what I've learned over time over the past few years is I need to close that gap from wanting to draw to starting to draw. As soon as I can go to the other side, I'm fine. And I need to spend less time in this limbo.

MR: Those are great great encouragements I think everyone could benefit from thinking that way for sure. Well, thank you so much for that. So what would be the best place to go to see the stuff you're doing, to find your book to find your course? Obviously, we can send people to your Substack but there's probably other places too do you want to share those with us?

NJ: Yeah, well, I think the thing I really love is having that inbox relationship with people. So the number one place I send people is always my Substack newsletter because I think it's lovely to be able to come into someone's inbox once a week and share the things that I'm doing. And it's a good way for them to learn about me. And it's a good way for me to share something about what I want to share without the pressure of seeing it all very quickly. Substack is again a very consensual relationship that builds over time. So the newsletter is very important. It's something I like to bring people to. It's my best communication space.

Of course, you're also free to visit my website where I have links to my print store, I have links to my course, I have links to all the other things that I'm doing. I try to update it as much as possible and often I fail, but there are lots of good ways to get in touch with me and see my work. Instagram is where I'm most popular, but Instagram is of course the worst way to stay in touch with anybody's work.

MR: Yeah, no kidding.

NJ: So, if you love my work and you want to see my work, maybe following me on Instagram is the way to ensure that that never happens. Yeah, I come back to newsletter. I think that's been my favorite way to share and to hear from people as well.

MR: What's the link should they go to for the newsletter? Because I think that will guide people to everything else, right?

NJ: Yeah, it's sneakyart.substack.com

MR: Okay, great. That would be a great place to start. That's where I started and I've been following Nishant for I think over a year now, a year and a half.

NJ: Yeah.

MR: So, which is why when I saw you in my session, like, "Hey, that's Nishant." I think I said, "Are you the Nishant Jain? And you said, yes. What else are you going to say?

NJ: Yeah. The only one I know, well.

MR: There may be many in India, I don't know.

NJ: Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure there must be many. Speaking of sketchbooks by the way, Mike, this week I made my own sketchbooks for the first time, I made my own journal for the first time, I'm learning how to do binding and it's been such a joy to work with my hands and to make something like that. It's been a really good expe—I might never buy a sketchbook again.

MR: Yeah , well, there you go. interesting thing that you, if you're making your own sketchbook, you can have it with a mix of white paper, different, right?

NJ: That's the goal exactly. So let me show you.

MR: You can mix it all together, okay?

NJ: This is the sketchbook I made and I've got all different kinds of paper inside it.

MR: Oh, look at that.

NJ: The goal is that every time I turn the page, I want a surprise. I want to not know what I'll see and I want to respond to it in the moment.

MR: That's cool.

NJ: So it's allowed me to mix up different kinds of paper, different colors of paper and then now my job is to meet that challenge.

MR: And I think you did a meetup on Substack where you showed how you did that with a video, so if someone wants—

NJ: Yeah, so we did this live on with the paying subscribers of my newsletter. We did this on live Zoom sessions. We did two Zoom sessions in which I had never done this binding before and I watched the YouTube video with the attendees and then we did this process. I think I pricked myself with the needle about five times and I saw there are like five different occasions in these sessions where I just scream out in pain suddenly.

MR: So you can just come for the pain and you know.

NJ: Yeah, you can just come for that, but it's so rewarding. Like the joy of achievement, but also the joy of creation, knowing that it's going to become something, you know. So I think this is the joy that I want to leave this conversation with, you know, something I think you would share. Whenever I get a new sketchbook or a new journal, you know, this is something I do, Mike, like I flip through the blank pages. Obviously, there's nothing there, but I flip through them and I imagine in a month or two or three, what's going to be there.

Sometimes I think just like that sculptor, just like Stephen King writing about writing, that what I'm doing is I am uncovering what these pages already say and that the white blankness of this page is infinity and every line I put on it suddenly gives definition to that infinity into something finite. And I try to imagine what this beautiful journey with this sketchbook is going to bring me. And I think that joy is something we can all have. It's so easily accessible to us.

MR: That's great way to end things. I can't say it any better. It's amazing. Well, thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate all the work you do, how you are so welcoming and encouraging to people and invite them in, in the way that you do. I really admire that. And I want to thank you for doing that for the world.

NJ: Yeah, thank you so much, Mike. This was such a lovely conversation.

MR: Yeah. For those of you who are watching or listening, it's another episode. Until the next one, talk to you soon.