Nishant Jain, The Sneaky Artist and urban sketcher
Becoming an accidental artist, the value of a 30-day challenge, and his stint as an artist in residence on a train
That Nishant Jain is an artist is purely by accident, he says. He was on track to be an engineer and was halfway through earning a PhD in neuroscience when the pull of a creative life was too strong to ignore. At the time, Nishant was living a double life, working with stroke patients by day at Northwestern University and creating stick figure comics and dipping his toes into standup comedy by night. He realized what he really wanted to do was create comics and write fiction. His parents must be very cool because he says they fully supported his decision. You can hear Nishant talk about his transition to art here.
He realized that to create real comics, he needed to draw better, and that’s what led to his becoming The Sneaky Artist. He would go out into the world with his sketchbook and fountain pen and draw scenes of people on the street, in cafes, and at parks. He did so quickly and without being detected, so he earned the self-applied sneaky label. As part of his journey, he was committed to learning to be an artist in public (albeit unobtrusively) and was posting his drawings on Reddit. He thought of himself as a writer and comic creator until he sold his first drawing. Cha-ching. (more about that later.)
Today, Nishant continues his pursuit of learning in public. He interviews artists on his SneakyArt podcast, publishes The SneakyArtPost, and shares what he’s learned along the way. He’s bold about describing his goals, his experience as an immigrant in the US (he grew up in Kolkata, India), and what makes him nervous (which is many, many things, but he thrives on stepping out of his comfort zone).
This past December, Nishant was the artist in residence for Vancouver’s Public Transit System. That gig required him to shed his inconspicuous sketching persona and be highly visible, riding on trains and sketching people, and appearing on news programs describing the experience.
While I interviewed Nishant, he was perched on a rock and sketching the tiny library across the street on an early April afternoon. He wrote about it here. It was a rare day in Vancouver when the sun was out. I can honestly say it was my sketchiest interview ever.
What I love about his drawings and his writing is that he experiences great joy in what he does and celebrates the seemingly mundane aspects of life.
What does a good day as the Sneaky Artist look like for you?
If it's sunny like it is today, I tend to procrastinate on other things and go out to draw because I can't just let this kind of day slip by. A good day for me involves going out to draw, getting some sun, and looking at the really beautiful scenery that we have in this part of the world.
I usually wake up pretty early and go for a run or go to the gym. I like to get a lot of work done early in the day, so by noon I will have finished drawing for a commission or sending emails.
When you decided you wanted to learn to draw better, did you take lessons or was it all about self-discovery and going out into the world to draw?
I'm not a very good student. My mind drifts in a classroom setting or any kind of structured education setting. That being said, being self-educated is difficult to claim. I've picked up many ideas from watching people draw on YouTube and sitting with somebody watching them draw—seeing them solve a problem in a certain way, asking them what they did, and then trying to do it myself. I’m self-motivated and self-directed in my education.
When did you arrive at your tiny people style? How has it evolved?
I took a lot of lessons from cartoonists whose work I saw in the newspapers in India growing up, and also from Calvin and Hobbes. Bill Watterson has such an effortless way of making his art. With one stroke of his pen, there’s an expression.
When I was making art for the first time outdoors in Chicago, I wanted to draw quickly. I didn’t want to be seen, and I was using a pen, so I only got to make the line once. I also wanted to draw in this effortless cartoonish way that is not very realistic.
I'm a mechanical engineer by training and I'm naturally attuned to this idea of how much can you say and how much can you get done with how little? I went on this trip, so to speak, of finding the least number of lines with which I could say the most number of things. Kurt Vonnegut did that in one excerpt of a story by his fictional character Kilgore Trout. I thought, wow, just 10 sentences can do it.
I thought I would draw people and I remember exactly where I was. I was in Chicago, uptown, at a Barnes and Noble cafe, looking at a traffic light. I decided to draw all the people who stopped at that light. Let's see how fast I can be. The drawings were smaller because it would be easier to finish them. That was early 2017.
Over the years, I have lessened the number of lines and made them more complex. I called it Tiny People much later. I took inspiration from other urban sketchers. Jason Polan was this amazing artist who made this fantastic book called Every Person in New York. He was my big hero because he was not a very good artist, technically speaking, but so expressive. He was drawing people in public spaces without them finding out. Tragically, he died and I never got to meet him. I also saw other urban sketchers who were filling a page up with little people drawings in a very different style from mine.
You're drawing dynamic subjects with people constantly in motion. How do you deal with the fact that your subjects are not usually still?
I grew up in a very crowded part of the world, in the city of Kolkata where there is no street that is not full of people. I'm always attracted to chaotic places, crowds, and human activities.
I initially wanted to be able to draw better comics with real-world settings and people that were not stick figures. I wanted the people I drew to be recognizable and doing things, not just standing at attention. My goal was to capture people in motion so that my comics have people who are in motion. It comes down to those few lines that show movement.
Part of it has to do with being an immigrant. I'm attracted toward human activity as a means of assimilating and feeling at home in a world that is very, very different from my world, the world in which I was born and I grew up in. I was already trying to understand people, and that meant that I needed to capture them in the way that they were living. I want to draw people who are in their worlds, walking with their phones, cycling, doing grocery shopping, or having coffee with friends.
Have you had an experience drawing when somebody noticed what you're doing that was particularly meaningful?
I was at this beautiful place in old Delhi, a shrine of Sufi saint, that's about 900 or 1000 years old. It's called Nizamuddin Dargah. People come from all over India to this holy space to find a cure for a physical or mental ailment, find an answer, or find peace, and that's what was happening around me.
I was sitting with a friend who is a Delhi local. I was drawing, and when I looked up from my page, there were six people peering over my shoulder watching me draw. This was just barely a year into this activity of drawing in public, so I was still very nervous about it. I asked one of them, what are you looking at? He said, “I'm looking at your kala.” “Kala” is a Hindi word for art. Music can be kala. Painting can be kala.
When I heard that word applied to what I was doing, it moved me because he said it so sincerely. It made me feel like there is some value to this thing that I thought was fun to do. I decided to be kinder to myself and accept compliments from somebody else about my work.
Thinking about all the interviews that you've done for your podcast, are there some nuggets that continue to emerge?
The best conversations are not the ones where I’ve heard something totally new. The best ones are those that confirmed something I had already been thinking about.
When speaking to artists who are either traditionally educated in fine art or who have pursued a path similar to mine in terms of self-education, I discovered we have dealt with similar obstacles and questions and hesitations and doubts.
There’s this solidarity, a commonality of experience, and that’s been the richest discovery for me—that most of us who have chosen to be creative in our lives face the same kind of problems and we all think that we are entirely alone in them. My favorite conversations have confirmed for me that I'm not alone in my fears and that I should trust my ideas.
You wrote, “Everything of value lies right outside your comfort zone.” Explain.
For my whole life, I wanted to write great novels, short stories, a television show, or a movie. But I've also been very, very, very afraid of that sense of being naked in front of people, of people knowing me, and having this very intimate idea of, “this is what Nishant thinks.” Since I was young, I've understood that the things that are so difficult for me to do are the ones that somehow in this life I really, really want to do.
I used to be terrified of speaking in public, but these opportunities thrust me on a stage. I started speaking to larger crowds during public speaking opportunities in university and understood that if I could get a laugh out of them, I could easily do it.
I tried doing standup comedy when I came to Chicago as a neuroscience student. At the time, I was doing experiments with stroke patients at Northwestern University in downtown Chicago. And at the end of my long days, I would go to stand-up comedy clubs and watch these people do their acts. I was terrified to do it, but I knew that I really wanted to do it. I did it maybe a dozen times.
I went once to the open mic at the Second City comedy club and a few times in some downtown clubs, and I did three to five minutes. I don't know how I did. I got some laughs, maybe they were polite laughs. I understood how good it felt afterward, and that I have to remember this feeling the next time I have that fear and hesitation.
Is there a graphic novel or a novel in your future?
Oh, yes. I've written five drafts of a novel, and at one point was committed to making it into a graphic novel. Then I realized I was completely crazy to make it by myself.
Being the originator of the story, the writer of the dialog, and the artist, and then fighting in these three roles inside your own mind is an absolutely terrible masochistic thing to do!
I have come to understand that I can tell things in different ways. For example, some ideas are better short stories than novels, some are better as panel comics than short stories.
Over time I have also learned the essential folly of trying to do everything by myself. Maybe I will collaborate with someone to tell a story. Maybe they can write, and I can draw. Maybe I can draw, and they could write?
Right now, I'm creatively fulfilled in the things that I'm doing, but I know there are things I want to say that demand a novel.
You interviewed Matthew Cruickshank, the Google artist who sketched his way through Route 66. What would your dream sketching journey be?
I sketch on all my journeys. Any trip that is a week or longer, I make sure I finish one sketchbook to commemorate that journey. Earlier this year, in February, I was in India, at my first cousin's wedding in Jaipur. I drew all the ceremonies of her wedding. I documented something really special because my entire family was there. I have a very big family with many first cousins and uncles and aunts.
I don’t have a bucket list with the pyramids or the Eiffel Tower on it. My art is about the special things of everyday life, and I place a lot of value on finding the little things. For example, this free library that I'm drawing right now makes me just as happy as anything else.
If The New Yorker magazine offered you a cover, would you do it?
Oh, yes. I really want to make a cover of Tiny People of New York for them.
What is the best advice and the worst advice that you received about being an artist?
I spoke about branding with a friend of mine who is a venture capitalist in India. He said, "Don't try to be the best. Be the only." I think it applies significantly to my pursuit of art and writing and I have kept it to heart. It helps me to understand my purpose, and to not put myself in needless competition with fellow creatives.
For the other, there’s this terrible idea that artists, or aspiring artists, and even people who have not picked up the pen, cling to—that to do a thing you have to be good at it. And that otherwise, it's not worth doing. That is such a harmful and stupid idea. It makes our world smaller, and deprives us of the joy of learning new things and building new skills.
Who is your dream guest for your podcast?
Quentin Blake, who is the illustrator of all the Roald Dahl books. I want to draw as effortlessly as he does, and would love to meet him, pick his brain, and hear about all his experiences.
You've done some 30-day challenges, such as drawing in a different place in Vancouver every day for a month. Why do you think a 30-day challenge can work so well?
I did a 30-day challenge last April as a way to commit to drawing because I had mostly been writing and doing my podcast and was not drawing as much. I was not being very adventurous and was drawing what was comfortable and drawing people in the same cafe where I always go.
I thought a 30-day challenge would help me make space for art every day. That’s why I advise everybody to do it. I had a very nice conversation with Marc Taro Holmes on my podcast. He runs the #30x30DirectWatercolor challenge every June. [He encourages participants to post new watercolors everyday in June on Facebook.] It helps you get into the cycle of production—finishing one thing and moving on to the next one—and let go of any individual piece of work. It also helps you understand what motivates you, and pushes you in unknown directions.
What would be different if you hadn't started selling your work or getting attention for it? Would you have continued doing what you do?
I was really surprised the first time somebody wanted to buy my drawing. I posted on Reddit a drawing of the downtown Chicago skyline from Lincoln Park near the Lincoln Park Zoo. Somebody asked to buy it. I went to that same spot to meet the guy and sell him the drawing.
When I asked him why he wanted to buy it, he told me it was a new perspective on something he sees every day. He had stopped looking at it, but I had made him look at it again. That was the first time I thought that my art—without a funny caption, without a comic character and a dialog in the story, just the art—could have value in someone's life.
If I had never sold art, maybe my art would still be good from my continuing practice of urban sketching. I think I would be trying to be a comic book artist and using art as a vehicle in my stories and writing more stories. I would have probably gone insane by now trying to write a graphic novel, so it's a good thing this happened!
Lightning round questions
Who are the artists and creative people that you admire?
Miles Davis, Salman Rushdie, and the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli, who writes about quantum gravity in a way that a poet would write. He is truly in love with the theory of relativity. I'm also inspired by standup comedians who can talk about difficult things and make you laugh. Stephen Colbert has been a hero of mine.
Do you like to cook?
I love to cook. I had to learn to do it when I lived in the Netherlands because it was not easy to find food to my taste. While most people eat to live, Indians live to eat! So I started cooking very quickly once I was deprived of what I craved most.
My favorite thing to make is Rajma Chawal, a very simple dish of kidney beans with rice. My mother would make it for lunch every other day because it is one of the few things my brother and I both love.
Food is a really big part of my world. I come from a city that has a lot of delicious street food, and it's also maybe the Indian capital of sweets, with beautiful milk-based desserts and sweets. Everybody in my family loves street food and snacks.
What's your favorite snack when you go to a cafe to draw?
I prefer savory snacks, such as scones and croissants, and I really like jalapeno Cheddar scones [he would probably enjoy Flour Fool’s savory scones I wrote about here].
What's your most memorable meal?
I had it in February when I was with my family for my first cousin’s wedding. After the wedding, all of my cousins, uncles, and aunts went on this road trip to a national park in the state of Rajasthan that had a tiger reserve. We were very lucky to see a tiger come right up to our vehicle!
Afterward, we had a delicious breakfast. It's memorable because I have a very large, very close-knit, extended family and we have not spent time with each other in many years. That whole environment of eating together with all my cousins and all my uncles and aunts was just so beautiful.
You are hosting a dinner party and you get to invite six people living or dead, who's coming?
Miles Davis, Salman Rushdie, and Carlo Rovelli, although he might not enjoy it because I have so many questions for him. We would need a comic like Tina Fey to lighten the mood and bring us back to earth.
It would be special if my paternal grandfather could be there. He died when I was 5 years old. Although we are separated by generations and evolving mindsets, I feel that we would have resonated on many ideas. He was a musician and he came to the U.S. to travel and perform with a really famous guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of transcendental meditation. [There’s a fascinating story to be told, I hope by Nishant in a graphic novel of sorts, about his grandfather and the Maharishi, who went on to become the spiritual advisor to the Beatles and to inspire the Doors. Nishant’s grandfather returned from a Maharishi world tour a declared atheist who denounced the Maharishi for destroying people’s lives with his cult. His grandfather’s skepticism about religion was passed down to Nishant, who also wonders about if his grandfather hadn’t left the Maharishi, maybe he would have hung out with the Beatles too.]
Favorite piece of art that you own.
I have two beautiful paintings by my mother, who is creative in hundreds of ways.
Most captivating museum visit.
Recently, I was in New York and I went to the MoMA, and I loved the experience of walking through that museum, its architecture, and that there was something for everybody. I also really liked an Andy Warhol exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago, which gave me a glimpse into how he thought about culture and what makes value in art.
What are you reading now?
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing.
Palate & Palette menu
Here’s what I would serve if Nishant and his wife visited for lunch or dinner, which they are invited to do. We would have a picnic at Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester, MA, and the food would all be sketching friendly—easy to eat with one hand—so Nishant could capture the scenery and draw Tiny People of Gloucester.
Zucchini ricotta cheesecake
Avocado asparagus tartine
Strawberries
Apple hand pies and chocolate chip cookies from Source Bakery
Where to find Nishant Jain, The Sneaky Artist
The Seen and Unseen podcast (a 5+-hour interview with Nishant!)
All images in this story are from Nishant Jain unless noted otherwise.
Thoroughly enjoyed this interview! With his discussing his early fears and his evolution as an artist, his 'Kala' takes on special significance for me. He has delightfully remained open to life experiences, and to his fellow humans, for he used the word 'joy' when he is engaged in drawing them. How lovely is that?
Fascinating interview Amy. Nishant is very brave to make his art so publicly! You can see his background in mechanical engineering with how he captures detail and complexity in his buildings.