What Danny has done for me….

Hi everyone,

I wanted to tell you about Danny Gregory – an artist who has written some books Everyday Matters and The Creative License. Danny’s books have had a huge spin-off.

The Group
There’s a yahoo group called ‘everydaymatters’ with currently 3213 members. It’s a very busy group! It’s a very ‘bloggy’ group. It’s the reason I first got a blog.  I joined it in my effort to keep a sketchbook, and I’ve learnt heaps.  In this group are some very very knowledgeable people – people who are willing to share their knowledge like Roz Stendahl and Kate Johnston. There’s an everydaymatters superblog – you want art blogs – go there.

The Podcasts

This leads me back to Danny, who has PODCASTS on his blog. Danny has a book coming out in October that is a compilation of the sketchbook pages of a number of artists. The podcasts are of conversations of each of these artists discussing with Danny how they keep their sketchbooks. I’ll be buying the book when it comes out.

The new friends.

I’ve even met three other members face-to-face. First I met Scribblesadagio who is from Canberra. You can read about our day out here. Soon afterwards, I caught up with Kirsty from the UK. My story and drawings of our day is here. Kirsty’s story and photographs are here. Last week I caught up with Cynthia from Oregon, and we also had a great afternoon, and again I learnt a lot.

And back to the books.

So back to Danny. I was lucky enough to be lent his book The Creative License.I think that it’s probably the best learn-to-draw book I’ve seen.  It’s nothing like any other one. I could already draw when I first saw it. I went to art school for that, but last year when I finished art school, I didn’t want to forget how to draw. That’s when I joined Everydaymatters.   Danny’s book is like a sketchbook, and he teaches you to draw by doing – not by boring exercises. He likens learning to draw, to learning to drive a car. Now that makes sense! You can’t expect to draw without going through the learning phase. I bought the book. Yes, I did – and yes, I can draw already. But everyone needs encouraging sometimes, and Danny teaches you to draw by encouraging you. Have a look at this post to see if you like where he’s coming from. I do.

Oh, and Danny…..your books aren’t available in Australia.