Quotes from Danny Gregory

Please DO waste art materials. Use paper. Empty paint jars. Deplete pens. if it's teaching you stuff, it's not being wasted.

There are no bad drawings. Drawings are experiences. The more you draw, the more experienced you'll get. In fact, you'll learn more from bad or unpredictable or weird experiences than from those that go exactly as you'd hoped and planned. So let it go. Release your ego's desire for perfection. Take risks. Stretch. Grow. Create as much as you can, whenever you can.

The true purpose of illustrated journaling [is] to celebrate your life. No matter how small or mundane or redundant, each drawing and little essay you write to commemorate an event or an object or a place makes it all the more special.

Remember: Writing is drawing.

It's ironic that people speak of artists as dreamers. I think they are the most grounded people around. Conscious and present. As an artist, you really see life, connect with its beauty, and create something that shares those observations with others. You notice things.

An artist is someone who sees and feels realty very intensely. Creativity doesn't mean just making things up out of thin air. It means seeing and feeling the world so vividly that you can put together connections and patterns that help to explain reality. It means you see the beauty in the world rather than trying to hide from it.

Life is just a long succession of small epiphanies.

This day is full of extraordinary things that you are missing. Wonderful sights, like the sun on your counterpane, the hairs on your cat's tail, the cracks in the paint on your radiator, the leaves piling up against the curve. Wonderful smells, wonderful sounds. Wonderful people. Wonderful opportunities. Today is wonderful. But perhaps you have lost your sense of wonder.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life." -Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Mistakes are lessons in disguise and accurate reflections of your true state. Maybe you need to slow down. Maybe your initial expectation was actually what was wrong. Maybe you need to draw more often.

Birds sing, wolves howl, crickets chirp. But why? Money? Fame? Record contracts? Endorsements? What's it all for? They do it because they're alive. They do it because life is about making things.

Creativity isn't a luxury. It's the essence of life.

bear in mind that interesting art doesn't come from trying to slavishly turn a photo into a drawing. Try to add as much as you can of your own to the image.

Time is short. Don't waste it beating yourself up.

These voices — the inner critic, the inner nag, the inner pest, the inner jerk and all the other monsters who try to talk you out of moving forward— are the part of you that is threatened by change and progress. We all have them. They are trying to protect you from new and scary things, but they are out of sync with you right now and not helpful. They hate what you are doing, but that doesn't make them right

Read this book when you are stuck. But don't read it instead of drawing.

look before you draw and believe what your eyes, not the rest of your head, tell you.

Contour, negative space, and measurements. You just learned the three important lessons in drawing and saved yourself four years of art school.

Keep your eyes on the things you are drawing 80 percent of the time and on your page just 20 percent.

The most beautiful things have character and experience built into them.

They record thoughts and overheard conversations, as well as maps of their personal paths, phone numbers for hotels, restaurant recommendations, airline flight numbers. Eventually

Making art will show you how much you already have. Your real treasures. A brand-new Maserati is a lot less beautiful to draw than a rusty old pickup.

creativity isn't a luxury. It's the essence of life. It's what distinguishes us from the mush. And it's why our ancestors survived while other less adaptive critters perished. They responded to change by being creative in some way, by inventing a new answer to the chaos.

Van Gogh summarized this entire book in a single sentence: "If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.