Nishant Jain: “The Why is the Point”

 

11/14/25 Nishant Jain speaking at Couth Buzzard Books,
Greenwood neighborhood

Well-known for his “tiny people” sketches, the Sneaky Artist was in town to promote his new book, Make (Sneaky) Art. The standing-room-only crowd at Couth Buzzard Books was riveted as Nishant Jain told us about how he went from a would-be writer to a viral-Instagram sketcher (with more than 300,000 followers).

An excellent public speaker, the Vancouver, B.C., artist and author said he wasn’t interested in writing a book about “how to draw,” because how skillfully a person draws isn’t the point. “The why is the point, not how,” he said, going on to explain how drawing regularly can change our lives. He challenged all of us with this: The next time we feel like pulling out our phones, what if we pulled out a sketchbook instead? “Your sketchbook will tell you who you are,” Nishant said. “Your sketchbook makes you human.” (Given that much of the audience was sketching him as he spoke, I think he was preaching to the choir. 😉)

Since I got there too late to grab a seat, I ended up having a better view of Nishant’s audience by standing in a corner. 

Material note: I was trying to make Nishant stand out from the others by coloring his shirt (which wasn't really yellow) -- and I had a typical acrylic marker fail! A huge blob of paint blurped out, so I had to spread it around quickly and very messily. Ugh.

Later, I moved even further back to get more of the bookstore in the background and some other audience members who didn’t get a seat.

I’m happy for Nishant that Seattle gave him a good turnout. I heard later that the store sold out of his books at the event!

Downsizing, Phase 3, Completed!

 

11/13/25 Kevin, Evo and Kevin 2 after loading their truck with my junk (photo reference), plus my Top Pot Bismarck.

What a load off!

Compared to the big job last year (which required four visits from my dump truck guys), my attic haul-out was small potatoes. Still, it was immensely satisfying to welcome We Take Junk back into my house and watch 40 years of accumulation (partially) fill a truck.

Although the volume of stuff was smaller this year, there was one big difference: Instead of hauling from the basement straight through the garage and into the truck, Kevin and his crew had to carry all those bags and boxes down two flights of stairs. Again and again. Oof! They deserved Top Pot doughnuts and a big tip.

After the relief and satisfaction of seeing their truck pull out of my driveway for (I hope!) the last time, I went upstairs to take documentation photos of the half-empty attic spaces. And by “spaces,” I mean I could actually see much of the floor, uncovered by boxes for the first time since 1992. Of course, I could also see the many stacked boxes that still remain – for Phase 4.

One corner of the now-spacious attic, where I had not seen
that uncovered floor since 1992.

Although the prior work had been hard physically, most of it was relatively easy to toss (with a few exceptions). Scanning the labels on those boxes, I already felt the burden of the next phase, which will be the most difficult – all the stuff weighted with memories, nostalgia and emotional baggage.

The good news is that I’m going to take my time with Phase 4. I hope to remain in this house for eight to ten more years, at least. I won’t leave it all till the end, but I’ll take it one box at a time.

Meanwhile, the pumpkin cheesecake Bismarck was only the immediate reward. (For the record, I’m not a big pumpkin-spice-everything fan, but the filling in this Bismarck was more like a true pumpkin pie in cheesecake form! So good!) I’ll do a more thorough Phase 3 celebration soon.

Amtrak to Centralia

 

We completed three Haiku Exquisite Corpses on the train ride to Centralia. The haiku read as follows (from left): "The universe flows on/Farms and rivers, trees and houses swim past./What gift awaits me?"
"We rock and roll southward/Shakes and bumps the train ride goes/Rolling through time and space."
"Autumn trees pass by/Universe of many faces/Our destination is clear; our future is not."

About 90 miles south of Seattle, Centralia is a charming town with historic buildings and quirky shops. Years ago, a small group of sketchers made an excursion out of it by taking the Amtrak down. I felt like doing that again, and this time I invited Roy and Mary Jean to join me. Neither had ever been to Centralia, let alone taken the train there; that made the excursion seem fresh again.

Our day began at King Street Station in Seattle, where we all arrived early enough to sketch inside the station before our train. Ever since we turned the clocks back, and the days suddenly got drastically shorter, I’ve been thinking about sketching nocturnes – one of very few benefits of the Big Dark. (The workshop I took last month using white pencil on black paper also helped put me in the mood.) I wasn’t quite ready for black during the day, so I chose a dark maroon-colored Uglybook to get into the nocturne mood. It turned out to be just right for sketching a capital at the top of a column and some globe lights inside the elegant station (below, left). 

Left: King Street Station details; right: light fixtures at McMenamins Olympic Club

I also sketched a few people in the waiting area (below, right).

(All day, I hopped back and forth between the maroon book and my daily-carry green one, which means the pages are out of sequence in relation to my story. I’ll try to tell my story in chronological order, but you’ll have to look back and forth to see the corresponding sketches. This is a drawback of using multiple sketchbooks that I’ve learned to live with, though it’s inconvenient at times like this.)

Hand of a light rail rider on my way downtown and King Street Station passengers.

With a nearly two-hour train ride to Centralia, we had plenty of time to sketch on board. Sitting in the lounge area where we could face each other over a table, we played our favorite art game: Exquisite Corpse! Roy has been interested in writing/drawing haiku comics lately, which gave me an idea for adding a twist to our game: After drawing each portion of a corpse, we wrote one line of haiku that did or did not have to relate to whatever we drew. If you recall the rules of exquisite corpse, each participant continues drawing a figure without seeing what the previous artist has started. Similarly, we couldn’t see the line(s) of the haiku that came before, so we had to trust the stream of consciousness that would surely result, both visually and poetically.

The reveals were amazing (top of post)! We were stunned by how beautifully the words, ideas and images flowed, despite being made without seeing what came before. Making our corpses was probably the part of the day I enjoyed most with my creative friends!

The first thing we did once we reached Centralia was head for lunch at McMenamins Olympic Club restaurant (part of the hotel of the same name). I knew from previous visits that the restaurant is full of fun décor to sketch. I liked the way the page of lamp fixtures looked next to the page I had sketched at King Street Station.

After lunch, we walked around sketching in town, which is quite small. I focused on the cool, old sign at the Fox Theatre first, then found a lamp post to sketch in my nocturne book (both below).

Fox Theatre, Centralia

Centralia street lamp

To finish off our afternoon in Centralia, we went looking for dessert. When I asked the server at Dawn’s Delectable Desserts if they offered affogato, he didn’t know what it was. I saw that they offered both ice cream and espresso, so I described it. After receiving manager approval and learning how to ring up my unconventional request, all three of us were happily served affogatos (and the whole staff learned how to make them). My job there was done!

A sleepy train passenger and Dawn's Delectable Desserts (out of sequence in this spread because I thought I would have more to sketch at the cafe to fill the left page, but we didn't have much time before it closed).

After closing down Dawn’s at 3, we waited for our train at the historic Centralia Station (built in 1912), where I found another lamp and an architectural detail to sketch in my nocturne book (below).    

Centralia Station details

An entirely fun day with good friends!

The excursion was a birthday celebration for me, and Roy and MJ both surprised me with sketches they had made! Thanks for making my birthday special!

Last of the Color

 

11/11/25 Green Lake neighborhood

Amazingly, our days of clear, sunny days continued – so rare in November! After a walk around Green Lake with a friend, I stopped in the neighborhood to catch this yellow tree towering over nearby houses. The rain is back again, so we probably are seeing the last of the color now. Despite its late start, what a lovely fall we’ve had!

Pencilvember, Week 2: Truncated

Reference photo by Frank Koyama

After Pencilvember Week 1’s good times with soft Prismacolors, I changed to Faber-Castell Polychromos for Week 2. Although I had been planning weekly updates to align with my plan to use a different pencil brand each week, I’ve ended Week 2 early. Here’s why:

When I made all those colored pencil pet portraits the past couple of years, Polychromos had been my go-to, but that’s because I was going for a detailed, realistic look. The hard but highly pigmented Polychromos is ideal for that. What Polychromos is not good for, however, is speed. It’s best used in a traditional way, which is multiple, lightly applied layers – a time-consuming process. The slam-it-down method I use for speed works best with soft colored pencils.

I knew all that going in, but I wanted to challenge myself anyway, and most of these took more than my 20-minute goal – closer to 25 or 30 minutes. I’m not unhappy with the results, but they confirmed that Polychromos is not the best pencil choice when speed is of the essence. It just takes too long to build up dark values. I decided to end Polychromos week early, and I’ll choose a much softer pencil going forward.

On the upside, I’m pleased with other experiments Pencilvember is enabling me to try. Last week I mentioned in an image cutline that when my reference photos were taken in flat lighting, I used a yellow pencil to remind myself where the light would be, if it were more easily visible. This trick also works with subjects in good lighting, but when I don’t want to take the time to create contrast that would indicate the light.

12/11/23 My original sketch of Tucker on
the cover of a Field Notes notebook. The background was painted with ArtGraf water-soluble graphite.

Tucker turned out to be a fitting example of this. When I first sketched him two years ago (above, right), I painted in a dark background behind the lighted side of his face. This time, instead of trying to hastily scribble in a similar contrasting background with colored pencils, I used yellow as a shorthand to indicate the window light.

Tucker is also an excellent example of a point I brought up several months ago in my post offering tips on pet portraiture. If you have a model in good lighting or a good reference photo, the eyes of animals (as well as humans) will show a shadow of the upper eyelid. The strong, frontal light on Tucker’s face was ideal for indicating these shadows. Catching these shadows is not important if realism is not the goal, but they’re hard to resist when they are so clearly visible, which is rarely the case. (This was one of my favorite pet reference photos to work with – an unusual, challenging, three-quarter pose with beautiful natural lighting. If only all commission reference photos could be like Tucker’s!)

Silhouette

 

11/9/25

A low haze covered the horizon. I was afraid Her Majesty would be hiding behind it, but I crossed the I-5 overpass at Northeast 80^th, just in case. Her silhouette was my reward.

Autumn Walking

10/25/25 This was one of those walks when I told myself
that if the rain stopped, I'd sketch whatever I saw
at that moment.

10/6/25

Some days are wet and blustery, and it’s hard to get out the door. Others are a surprisingly sunny reprieve between days of deluge. Fall is like that in these parts.

11/7/25

A few days ago I was delighted by how much color still remains. After all the rain and wind we’ve been having, much of that color is on the ground instead of in the trees, but some leaves are still hanging on. Since I don’t usually bring a white sketchbook with me on fitness walks, I’m content to simply enjoy the color instead of sketching it.

11/8/25

Photographed on 11/7/25