540 - Why the Creative Path Has to Be Twisty and Turny with Nishant Jain

Summary

Creative Pep Talk: Episode 540

Why the Creative Path Has to Be Twisty and Turny with Nishant Jain
Release Date: January 28, 2026
Host: Andy J. Pizza | Guest: Nishant Jain (Author of Make Sneaky Art)

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Overview

This episode dives into the unpredictable, spiraling journey of creativity, featuring a lively and reflective conversation between host Andy J. Pizza and Nishant Jain, author of Make Sneaky Art. Together, they explore how embracing curiosity, chaos, and imperfection leads to more authentic, joyful, and sustainable creative practices. Through stories, practical exercises, and philosophical insights, Nishant and Andy hash out why the “creative path” is rarely linear—and how that’s actually a gift.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Rekindling Your Creative Relationship (00:00–05:10)

• The Creative Disconnect:
  Andy opens by sharing how adults often lose touch with their creative selves amidst adult life, capitalism, and external pressures.

  "If you don't stay in relationship to [your creative self], you don't have a prayer at having a practice, or a profession around your creativity, or even just a consistent creative habit." (00:14)

• Introducing Nishant Jain:
  Nishant's book, Make Sneaky Art, is introduced as a guide to reconnecting with curiosity through playful drawing and observation.

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2. Contrarian Origins & Rethinking the ‘How-To’ (05:10–07:00)

• Nishant’s Reluctant Authorship:
  Nishant shares that he initially refused to write a how-to art book, feeling unsuited to giving prescriptive advice:

  "I am, fortunately / unfortunately, a contrarian. I don't listen to good advice. If somebody has good advice for me, I'm definitely not doing that thing." (05:54)

• He accepted the challenge by writing the kind of book he'd actually enjoy—one that prompts readers to find their own way.

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3. Presence, Perfection, and Your Unique Line (07:01–10:59)

• Drawing the Long Line:
  Nishant explains the power of embracing one’s unique “imperfect” line:

  "A long line is instantly your line. Nobody can fake your long line quite the way you drew it... it carries the signature of that emotion." (07:03)

• Rejecting Perfection:
  Both speakers unpack how the pursuit of perfection is antithetical to authentic art.

  "If you ask anybody what art they like, they don't like art from perfect people. The art they love is not perfect art." – Nishant (09:09)

• Connection Over Impressing:
  Andy adds,

  "The main thing we think we could do with art is impress someone. It's one of the least interesting feelings... Art is so much more about connecting to another person." (09:42)

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4. Social Media, External Validation, and Creative Freedom (10:17–11:42)

• On Social Media’s Influence:
  Nishant laments how external validation and comparative thinking disrupt the creative process:

  "Now before the moment of creation, the first instinct in our heads is, what is so-and-so person going to think about it?... This whole business... takes you out of your creativity." (10:17)

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5. The Nonlinear Creative Journey (11:43–24:31)

• Life Story Detours:
  Nishant details an unexpected path from Indian engineer to novelist, political satirist, stand-up comic, and finally artist.

  "Straight line journeys would be so boring... I am so glad it didn’t happen that way for me." (11:59)

• Influence of Place:
  Chicago’s creative energy inspires Nishant to pursue his passions.

  "Because of this country, because of the culture of this brilliant, amazing city, I gave myself the permission to chase my dreams." (19:28)

• Quitting the PhD and Struggling with Words:
  Nishant opens up about quitting academia to write a novel (which didn’t quite happen), political burnout, and eventually falling into observational drawing as a solace and source of joy.

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6. Art as Observation, Connection, and Acceptance (24:32–29:23)

• Finding Joy in Process:
  Drawing strangers in cafés and public spaces became a way of engaging with the world and finding commonality beyond surface differences.

  "[Drawing] is not because the drawings are good, but because I’m finding something that's making me truly at peace with my world." (26:46)

• Curiosity as the Guiding Thread:
  Andy notes:

  "I do see one straight line and that's the line of curiosity from the beginning to the end." (28:06)

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7. Curiosity vs. Strategy in Creative Practice (29:24–34:35)

• Two Modes of Creativity:
  Andy and Nishant discuss the creative tension between starting with an end in mind (strategy) versus following curiosity with no set outcome.
• Drawing as Nonverbal Curiosity:
  Nishant emphasizes how drawing can fulfill curiosity outside of words:

  "What drawing has shown me is that so much curiosity we have for the world does not exist in words." (29:24)

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8. The Curiosity Spiral Exercise (34:36–41:25)

• Practical Exercise:
  To combat intimidation by the blank page and tap into true interests, Nishant prescribes the “curiosity spiral”:
  • Start a drawing with whatever catches your eye, without overthinking.
  • Spiral outwards, giving less attention to less interesting areas.
  • Let both what you love and what you ignore shape the image—“your taste is not just the stuff you love...allow yourself to hate certain things.” (40:28)
  • This builds authentic voice and habit, sidestepping standards of perfection or completeness.

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9. Leaving Room for Magic (43:38–47:27)

• Letting Serendipity In:
  Nishant tells the story behind a drawing where a father and son entered the scene unexpectedly—reminding us why it’s vital to leave empty spaces, both in art and in life:

  "If you leave room for magic on your page, sometimes that magic appears—but you have to be in the business of leaving some room for it." (43:48)

• Wider Application:
  Andy connects this to making room for serendipity in our calendars and daily lives, noting that strategy and control usually dominate.

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10. Embracing Chaos, Relinquishing Control (47:28–54:32)

• Against the Optimization Fetish:
  Nishant criticizes culture’s obsession with productivity and efficiency:

  "The process of art for me was the process of becoming a child again... From process-oriented people, we become results-oriented people." (48:06)

• Living with Uncertainty:
  Quitting academia for art meant letting go of measurable progress:

  "Learning to embrace this situation was so important, and learning to not quantify it, to not struggle to put productivity measures into it." (66:38)

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11. The Best and Weirdest Time to Be an Artist (68:18–71:59)

• Context of the Times:
  Nishant contends there's never been a better time to be an artist, given access to materials, audiences, and autonomy.

  "This is the best time in human history to be an artist. Leonardo da Vinci would kill to be in your place." (68:22)

• Curiosity Makes You an Artist; Strategy Keeps You There:
  It’s the combination of sustained curiosity and strategic adaptation that makes a sustainable professional creative life.

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12. Style Is About Precision, Not Perfection (54:33–59:11)

• Lessons from Engineering:
  Nishant introduces the concepts of accuracy (getting it “right”) vs. precision (being consistent).

  "As an artist, we don't have to be accurate...What brings style, what brings you out is your consistency." (55:20)

  • Cites Miles Davis:

    "Once is a mistake, twice is an idea, three times is style." (57:30)

• Example:
  Nishant's signature “feetless” people drawings emerged from a “mistake” he made his own through repetition.

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13. Infinite Games and Lasting Creative Joy (72:19–73:11)

• Finite vs. Infinite Games:
  The creative life is an infinite game—there are no ultimate winners, just the ongoing pleasure of playing.

  "Life is an infinite game...the practice of art is also an infinite game...the doing it is the joy of it." (72:28)

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14. Sneaky Art: Dual Definitions (62:20–63:50)

• The Art and the Process Are Both Sneaky:

  "I was trying to be sneaky to begin...And I realized that the art is sneaky, too. It's right there, but you can't see it until you're willing to give it time and attention." (62:20)

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15. The “No Point B” Call to Adventure (81:08–81:37)

• Weekly Creative Challenge:
  Andy closes with a challenge inspired by Nishant—to begin at Point A (an action, destination, or drawing) without predefining Point B. This is an exercise in presence, curiosity, and openness to unplanned outcomes.

  "Go pick a point A. Don't have a point B...Your whole life in this era...is encouraging you to be in your strategic brain, to get the right outcome. So let's do one where you just go and see what happens." (80:19)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Authenticity and Process:

  "The more you do this, it gets us to appreciate how beautiful our everyday world is...There is incredible beauty everywhere, and it’s waiting for us to see it."
  – Nishant Jain (46:24)

• On Art’s Role:

  "Art is not about making pretty drawings...Why do we do it? Because the doing it is the joy of it." – Nishant Jain (60:46, 73:11)

• On Creative Permission:

  "This is something I love to give credit to. America and Chicago. No other place in the world could I have done it."
  – Nishant Jain (19:28)

• On Mistakes as Style:

  "Style comes from staying with the things you think of as your mistakes. Staying with those things until they give you some kind of bright idea."
  – Nishant Jain (57:30)

• On the Double-Edged Sword of Strategy:

  "When we over index on strategy, we over index on outcome. And the more we over index on results...the narrower we make our worldview and our experience."
  – Nishant Jain (47:58)

• On Infinite Games:

  "Life, your life is an infinite game. And the practice of art is also an infinite game...the doing it is the joy of it."
  – Nishant Jain (72:28)

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Key Timestamps & Segments

• 00:00–05:10: Setting the stage—why creativity needs rekindling
• 07:03–09:09: The philosophy of long lines and imperfection
• 11:43–24:31: Nishant’s winding path from engineering to art
• 29:24–34:35: Curiosity vs. strategy and the limits of words
• 34:36–41:25: The curiosity spiral drawing exercise
• 43:38–47:27: Leaving room for magic—serendipity in art and life
• 54:33–59:11: Precision vs. accuracy and the making of style
• 62:20–63:50: Dual definition of “sneaky art”
• 72:28–73:11: Infinite games—why the creative journey never ends
• 81:08–81:37: The "No Point B" creative challenge

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Resources & Recommendations

• Nishant Jain:
  • Sneaky Art Podcast (audio-only, longform art and creativity conversations)
  • Make Sneaky Art (book)
  • Substack Newsletter
• Andy J. Pizza:
  • Creative Pep Talk
  • andyjpizza.com
  • Substack

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Action Step: Call to Adventure

“No Point B”
Go somewhere, begin a drawing, or start a creative act with no predetermined Point B. Let curiosity (not results or expectations) guide what happens next. Notice what magic—large or small—sneaks in along the way.

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Episode Tone & Final Takeaways

The conversation is warm, philosophical, irreverent, and practical—full of both deep encouragement and sly humor. Both Andy and Nishant invite listeners to embrace the twisty, turny, frustratingly nonlinear path of creative work; to value curiosity over optimization, process over product, and unique perspective over perfection.
As Nishant says, “You have to find a way to keep doing it and to keep doing it and to keep doing it, because the doing it is the joy of it.”

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For more on the practice of making sneaky art, curiosity-driven living, and creative encouragement, check out the resources above and "stay pepped up, y'all!"

Transcript

[Andy J. Pizza]

You know what's hard to do? It's hard to stay in relationship to your creative self as an adult in this economy and in this world, it's so hard to remember why you love making stuff, how you find that curious part of yourself that wants to do stuff for the sake of doing it. But if you don't stay in relationship to that, you don't have a prayer at having a practice or a profession around your creativity or even just a consistent creative habit, because it's hard to remember why it's worth it when you don't have that relationship. And so this episode is about rekindling your creative brain. How are we going to do that? We're going to do it by chatting with Nishant Jain, who wrote this book, Make Sneaky Art. It is about how you go out into the world and sneak around and draw things and people and tap into your curiosity. Had a fricking blast talking with Nishant. This thing is just littered with so much inspiration. I was. I left this conversation feeling on fire. At the end, we're gonna. I'm gonna come back. Well, no, at the end of the conversation, we actually get into the cta, the call to adventure. It's called no Point B. And it is a practice, a thing you could go do today to help rekindle and get back in touch with that curiosity. I was very inspired by this. I want to do this myself. So, yeah, go nowhere and listen to this. Chat with Nishant Jain, author of the Make Sneaky Art book. And have fun. Bye all.

[Nishant Jain]

On the creative journey. It's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off. You just need a creative pep talk.

[Andy J. Pizza]

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[Nishant Jain]

That's just how I talk. So for me, it's just the idea for this book was what is the way that I would be happy to do a how to book? So what happened was that I got approached by Quarto to write this book, which is a tremendous honor. How many people get approached to write a book?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

And despite that, my first instinct was I said I don't want to do it right. I refused. I refused their amazing offer because I just didn't want. I wasn't sure if I wanted to be associated with a how to book because I am, fortunately, slash, unfortunately, I'm a contrarian. I don't listen to good advice. If somebody has good advice for me, I'm definitely not doing that thing.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

And so the result is that I take the long way and I do things by iteration and I do things, learn my own way. And I feel like I am the last person to tell you how to do things because I just. I don't like. I don't know the good advice. So they convinced me to write it by challenging me, by saying, what is the how to book that even someone like you would enjoy? And so then I took on that impossible challenge. And my thought was, I want to write it the way that even someone like me, who is a little allergic to the genre, would be okay to read it.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I think you succeeded. It has that tone of really everything in it feels like the prompt to put it back on them, right? To how are they going to do this? And the looseness of that. How do you get in touch with that? That's a lot of the stuff I wanted to talk to you about. Just as an example, if you can remember this bit, to give an example of the philosophical side of this book, can you speak about how someone is present when they draw a long line? Like how they're present in a line.

[Nishant Jain]

Oh, yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, I loved that bit.

[Nishant Jain]

So this is my top advice for people to imbibe confidence. Especially when you don't have confidence on the blank page. You should have a practice of drawing with long, continuous lines. And the idea is that a long line is. Is instantly your line. Nobody can fake your long line quite the way you drew it, because maybe your hand has a little tremor, maybe you're excited or anxious. And that hand, that line carries the signature of that emotion. Maybe you're in a cold place or you're shivering, or you're too warm or you're uncomfortable. So the line carries a bit of the metronome of just this atmosphere that you're in and this moment that. That. That day, it can never be replicated. It can never be faked, and it is always going to be yours. So this is one of the ways I tell people to do it, because I get so often from people, you know, like, people will watch me draw and they'll comment overhead or they'll tell me why they can't draw. And the thing is always, you know, you're so great at this. I couldn't even draw a straight line if I wanted. And I say, who cares about straight lines? Who said you need to draw straight lines?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Some of the least interesting lines.

[Nishant Jain]

I don't know that straight lines are super overrated. Nobody cares to see a straight line. And what you want to see is your line. And a long line is your access to your line, to your way of doing it, and then the confidence it brings. And this is one of the. The first steps towards developing your style of art.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, I completely agree. And I like what you said in the book of in that line. It feels akin to something I'm always trying to do, which is replicate, produce the invisible in a visible way. And I like this idea of when you wobble, maybe it's part of your heartbeat or maybe it's the. It's the visualization of a thought because you got distracted or, you know, there's just so much present in there. And I think that's a much better way to think about art than trying to achieve this perfect outcome.

[Nishant Jain]

That that word is so poisonous. You know, like, everybody has this impression of perfection that they're supposed to go towards. But if you ask anybody what art they like, they don't like art from perfect people. The art they love, that they, that they react to instinctively is not perfect art. But somehow that sentiment has just been indoctrinated in us. The best line, the perfect colors, just everything is that word perfect. And it's absolutely opposite to the whole notion of making art.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I completely agree. This idea of perfect, it gets us something that's on my mind a lot, where it actually, I think, gets at a big misconception. We have not as artists or even as consumers of art, like the main thing we think we could do with art is impress someone. It's one of the least interesting feelings. It's actually a disconnecting feeling. It's like, oh, I'm putting. If you're impressed by me, you're putting me above you. Rather than. Art is so much more about connecting to another person. So, yeah, I like what you said about that.

[Nishant Jain]

Everything is so externalized. And this is of course always been to some extent a problem for us as people. But social media has just sent it into hyperdrive. And now before the moment of creation, the first instinct in our heads is what is so and so person going to think about it? Is it going to be as good as this person? Is it going to impress so many people? Countless anonymous people who will Give it countless anonymous likes. This whole business has just. It takes you out of your creativity, it takes you out of your joy, and it instantly makes you subservient to, like, what do other people think? Is it worth doing if they don't approve these silly questions that just get in the way of getting into it.

[Andy J. Pizza]

So this makes me want to go to your journey a little bit, because I'm curious. I imagine drawing is kind of not like that for you. It's something about the process. But when people look at your career, you've got a published book, you have a big Instagram following, you have a big newsletter, and it's all on this drawing. They probably are going to jump to. Here's a guy that's been super talented at drawing his whole life. He knew what he wanted to do from day one and he just was like, zeroed in on that. And I know that's not your story at all, right? Um, because really, drawing didn't show up until. It wasn't the journey. It was the end of a couple journeys.

[Nishant Jain]

Right. And it was never part of the plan. It's this instinct, Instinct. You know, you hear about who somebody is at this moment and then you think, okay, starting from day one, let's make a straight line for their life leading up to this moment.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Speaking of straight line. Straight lines are bad.

[Nishant Jain]

Straight. That straight line journey would be so boring. I always wanted to be an artist. Everybody encouraged me to draw. I always made art and I was always good at it. So here I am. Who cares? Like, that is the most boring story of all.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Completely agree.

[Nishant Jain]

I am so glad, almost so glad that it didn't happen that way for me. So, like, I grew up in India and I grew up in a generation where mostly you do not think about what you really, really want to do when it comes to your work. You're supposed to be more pragmatic about it. So you study the thing that will get you ahead. You take the job that will pay you well and safely. So you make these pragmatic decisions for life, and that's what's drilled into you. And that was my environment. And this is despite being in a family, an extended family of very creative people with creative, like, artisan businesses. Still, the idea of being creative full time is kind of like it doesn't even occur to you. Nobody in my circle was doing that. So I was cursed with being good at math and science, which meant that my decisions have been made for me. You are going to be an engineer. You're going to study Science. And I was always curious, so I just went with it. And I studied to be a mechanical engineer. I worked with race cars. I worked in car engines. I studied, like, it made me very curious about things, and I wanted to keep studying more. And I did a master's degree in biomechanics working on robots and human body mechanics and how to integrate the two and how to understand the human body as if it's a mechanical system that needs certain care. So these things made me very curious. But all my life, ever since I knew that this is something a person does, the books that I read are written by a human being. Ever since I came to that realization, all I wanted to be was a writer. Like, all I wanted to do was tell stories, make people laugh. Humor was always my thing because I grew up reading very funny writers, and that's what I wanted to do with my life. I have been enamored by words always. And I believe in the power of words. And I wanted to have the best words. I wanted to have the best words to do all the things that I wanted to. All the change I wanted to affect in the world. So through my bachelor's studies, undergrad studies, and my master's, I kept writing like I had a blog when Blogspot was a blogger was a big thing. I started drawing comics on a whim with stick figures because I was bored with too much time on my hands in my last semester, and I wanted to make fun of my friends. So I just started making comics, making fun of them. Isn't it so. Or could. Orkut was a social media thingy then. I don't know if you know about Orkut at all.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I don't. I don't think I do.

[Nishant Jain]

It was huge just after MySpace, Orkut, just before Facebook, and they had this thing called testimonials that you could write for your friends. And you're supposed to write like, you're supposed to give them a. Like a testimonial of some kind.

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's very funny as just a premise, like a testimonial for a friend. It's very late stage capitalism too.

[Nishant Jain]

Which is funny because it's early stage capitalism.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I know it.

[Nishant Jain]

There is no money in this. This is what you do. So I started making these comics that I call testimonials, except I'm not being sincere. I'm mocking my friends and drawn with stick figures. And I understood at this point that, you know, there are certain things I want to say to their face as a joke and get people to Laugh. There are certain things I want to write as stories and get people to laugh. And then there are certain things you want to say that are not good as stories, that are not good as haiku, not good as sonnets, but they work as a four panel comic.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right.

[Nishant Jain]

So I understood that, you know, the message you want to give out. You. It's also your job to pick the best medium for it. And we have choices. So since that day, I realized, okay, I want to write jokes, I want to write stories, and I want to write a novel someday, but I also want to make comics. So I started doing all of these things in addition to my studies. Yeah, I would do my experiments and my classes all day, come back home, and I would draw comics. I would write film scripts, I would write short stories, I would write haiku. I would just. That's all I wanted to do. I started writing political satire and I dreamed of becoming the Indian Jon Stewart. This happened, this happened, this happened. And I started a PhD program. My PhD program was after my master's degree, Me taking on another impossible challenge. I was working with stroke patients on my way to becoming a neuroscientist. The idea was to help stroke patients and understand as a mechanical engineer how their body is not working. And these experiments, this research brought me to the Northwestern University in Chicago, which is the great, beautiful, most favorite city of my life. I absolutely love Chicago more than any other city in the world. And instantly, I fell in love with Chicago in the middle of the polar vortex of 2013 -30 degrees. And in three days, I was in love with the city. And I just knew that everything about the city is magical to me. So I would do my experiments, which would be like 8, 10 hours on my FE with stroke patients. And then I would go to comedy clubs and I would try my hand at open mic and it would.

[Andy J. Pizza]

You've really done it all. You've really tried to have so many lives. I very much relate. But continue.

[Nishant Jain]

I just wanted to say things, and I wanted to say things however I could. This is because, you know, the Internet is also evolving. Like, blogger stops being a thing. Facebook becomes a thing. Facebook stops sending links out. Suddenly it becomes only about images. So comics become more important for me because nobody's reading anymore. Then they stop sending. You know, you can't take them to your website. You have to have it on Facebook. So I had these Facebook albums, and then that stops working so well either. So what do I do now? I started writing for a television show in India after all my studies. I Started writing for a YouTube show in India. Then I started doing stand up because I started writing stand up for a person who was hosting this YouTube show. And I thought, what if? What is it like to do it? And I want to go on stage and I want my legs to shiver and I want to try it. So it was scary as heck, but it felt good. And Chicago did this to me. Like this city. I would be there and I tell people this story. Like there's this one person I saw, and I would see him all the time. He would always do open mics. And whenever I was there, which was not very often, I'd always see him there. And he'd go on stage, he'd do his five minute set, and he would always suck. Like he'd never get a laugh. His humor was just weird. Nobody got it, Nobody cared. But he was always there. Every night I went out, he was also always there. And I looked at him and I thought of two things. Firstly, this beautiful, crazy American thing that nobody tells you that's a bad idea. Don't do it.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, America's this unbelievable place for good and for bad.

[Nishant Jain]

But for good and for bad, you go to some dark places with it. But also beautiful things happen. Like no other place in the world can you be. Where somebody, you can just shoot out any idea and someone or the other will say, go for it. Nobody will tell you that sucks. Stop it. Give up this dream and the whole world is full of people who believe in, you know, pragmatism, but not in America. America is just like, you can make a million bucks from it. Do it. Just push and you'll get there.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

So I saw this guy pushing. The second thing was, if he can push and he sucks, what the heck am I doing? Why am I not pushing with the thing that I want so bad? So this is something I love to give credit to. America and Chicago. No other place in the world could I have done it. Because of this country, because of the. The culture of this brilliant, amazing city, I gave myself the permission to chase my dreams. And I told my professor the next day that I want to quit. I told my parents. That was a fun conversation that lasted a couple of weeks that I want to.

[Andy J. Pizza]

So that's a good stand up bit right there. That's a good conversation that lasted a couple weeks. Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

Different angles every morning. This is how I'm going to tell you. This is the angle of approach this morning over breakfast, over lunch, over dinner, why I want to do this. It's important as an Indian person. You have to convince your parents, even if you're in your late 20s. They knew that I was going to do it anyway, but I just needed them to be on board with it. So finally I got them to understand, and they. They. They supported it, which is amazing. And my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, also supported it. She was like, what are you wasting your time for? Just quit. Start doing this. So I quit my PhD program and I started writing the greatest novel in the world. And you haven't read it yet, and it's not out yet because I couldn't finish it. Yeah. It is hard to write a novel. It is so hard. I tried. I made five drafts, and every time, I'd get stuck at, like, 40%. And maybe in the fifth draft, I was writing by hand because I thought, maybe this unlocks something if I write by hand. And I had this fountain pen because I thought, maybe this just does some magic for me.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

And I still got stuck. And that was the time when I thought, I hate words. I've been writing political satire, and this is 2016, 2017, and political upheaval everywhere in India as well as the US And I'm seeing around me all my heroes fail. And I'm seeing that political satire doesn't really seem to work. People don't. Aren't convinced. People don't change their minds. So what is going on here? Does Stephen Colbert just play for his gallery? Is he just preaching to his own choir? And obviously that works, but is that it? Is that the point? Like, why?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

[Nishant Jain]

I just.

[Andy J. Pizza]

This is a thing I think about a lot. I. I personally feel like preaching to the choir. I always feel like someone has to do that. I actually think there's there. You know, rallying the troops is another way to think about it. But I personally have a closer conviction to what you seem to be talking about, which is I want to soften people's hearts and minds. And that's where my creative energy often wants to go.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah. So I thought that the reason to do this was that with humor, you can share bitter truths, and it makes it easier to swallow. And that's the great goal. That's the great goal beyond just the laughter. And that's why I idolize these people. And I saw them fail, and I saw them shrug it off and just continue with the next day with their work as if it wasn't such a big deal. And it just felt like I thought completely differently. And I started thinking, so all of this collided at once. Failing with words, seeing words fail to do what I thought they were supposed to do, and then thinking, what else? And I am trying at the same time. After getting a lot of pushback for a lot of my comics in India, online, getting a lot of pushback from people I knew who I thought would get it, but they've been sort of taken. The red is the red pill. Yeah, I think red pill. So early. Red pill. And they like, I'm getting so much pushback from people I know and trust and love. And I started thinking, what is it that I can do? How do we get to a truth that nobody can deny? And these are thoughts in my head. This is not overt. This is not something I know I'm doing with intentionality. But I think these are the forces that moved me towards. With frustration. Picking up that notebook, picking up that fountain pen, going to a cafe, sitting down in Starbucks, looking at some people and thinking, I just don't want to deal with words for a while. What can I do? Maybe I'll just draw what's in front of me. And one of the things I thought then was that if I draw from what I see, maybe I'll be able to draw a little better. And maybe my comics don't need to be stick figures anymore. That's what I thought. I'll just draw better environments. And I started doing this, and I just loved it. I made a shitty drawing this day, next day, next day after that. And I thought, these drawings aren't very good. They're not as good as I want them to be. But I love this time that I spent doing this. I want to push. So I started doing that every day. I would go to a cafe in this great city of Chicago. New neighborhood every day, look at new people every day. These fantastic, dramatic people of America. Everybody's a main character. And so much, so much to see.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Such a good description of it. I completely agree.

[Nishant Jain]

It's just fascinating to me, you know, you don't. Again, I can't keep saying this enough. You don't get this anywhere else. People who are absolutely convinced the sitcom is going, the cameras are on them, and they're right. This is the shot. Say the thing. Say the line on the phone on the bus. Saying the line for the whole bus to listen. They're like, unbelievable. So much courage, and I needed that. I needed to see it. So I wanted to chase these people, and I wanted just. I want to draw this guy. I want to draw this guy. Want to draw that Guy. And that's what I started doing. And I started the. The way this worked. And that's why the book is about this. To find joy in the process. To find joy out of something that has nothing to do with the result of the drawing. The business of finding these people was fun. The business of observing them was fun. The sketchbook in an unfamiliar country where I feel out of place, gave me a permission slip that you're allowed to sit in this cafe. Another unique American thing. Nowhere else do people use cafes like this. Just sit all day with one cup of coffee and you're allowed to do that. You're allowed to use the cafe this way. And so you can watch other people using the cafe this way. And I did it because I saw other people do it. And I thought a sketchbook gave me the permission to do the same. And I started drawing. And I started taking this joy from the process of observation. From the process of observation as a way to better understand people without necessarily intruding in their lives, in their personal space. Observing people as a way to strip away the surface differences and then arrive at something that is similar to me. These people. That guy who looks very different from me is not that different because he ordered the same coffee as me. That person. Soon after Chicago, we moved to north central Wisconsin. So a little town in Wisconsin called Eau Claire, completely out of, you know, anything I've seen. The only image I had of Wisconsin in my life was that 70s show. Yeah, that's it. That's the only thing I knew. And this was it. Nobody's doing anything. People are just add up.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Do you feel like it was a. Pretty much. Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

Nothing's happening. There's one Main Street. Everybody's hanging out. And that's all you do.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

So it was just go get in someone's basement.

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's pretty. Yeah. You know, do whatever.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah, yeah. So go to a cafe and see these people who I would be afraid to approach in real life because these are the images. We pick up images from television. And you realize that's not friendly. That's a danger. Stay away from that. But these people are not that different. They're ordering coffee like me. They sit like me. They wait for their friends. They laugh with their friends the way I would. They are living their life in the parks in summer the way I want to. All of like, there are so many ways that we're not different from each other. And this is the truth that my drawings were bringing me to. And so the reason to continue drawing was also not because the drawings are good, but because I'm finding something that's making me truly at peace with my world. Yeah. So this whole journey has been really complicated. It sounds like all these different directions, but right from day one, from the day I read my first book by Roald Dahl and I realized I'm allowed to write as well. I saw the drawings by Quentin Blake and I thought, maybe I can draw like this. That's not intimidating. Since that day, it's always been the same path I've followed. It's a path of curiosity. The thing I'm curious for, whether it's race cars, whether it's the person in Chicago talking into their phone dramatically, is the thing I chase. And that's what's brought me here today.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I completely agree. And my follow up question was I do see one straight line and that's the line of curiosity from the beginning to the end. Like you followed that, you followed that everywhere you went. And I just did an episode about this where I had a really great opportunity recently. I've had a few this year that just felt particularly good for me. Like, so perfect, such a perfect fit that I've been reflecting on. Like, what were the things that kind of led to this? And there were, in a lot of the big ones were these curiosities that I didn't, I could not possibly have seen any reward at the end of them. And you kind of get into this with the book. One of the dichotomies that, that we explore a lot on this show, because I think you need both, but you have to be able to go in and out of them, are these two very different types of creativity. So strategy, which is having an end in mind and then working backwards, I think that's an interesting type of creativity that can do some good things. And then curiosity is exact opposite, is you're starting, you have no idea where it's going to go. So I wondered, curiosity is a huge theme in the book. Could you talk a little bit about what you feel like the relationship is between drawing and curiosity? Yes.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah. So absolutely. So curiosity is the thing that is unspoken inside you. You can't always put words to it. And we are a very text heavy society. Like from the moment we wake up, whether it's a tweet or messages or emails or headlines, everything is words all around us. And so, you know, very quickly this becomes a way of understanding the world or the way of expressing the world, the way of sharing thoughts and emotions. And if you can't put it in words, Maybe it's not even a real thing. So for me, what it's done is, as a person who loved words their whole life, drawing showed me how much of the world exists outside of language. The process of drawing was a way of fulfilling curiosity. Because I see something, and that thing that I see, I know it. But the more you see it, the more you translate it, the more you get into the business of only seeing the lines and the shapes and the colors and the shadows and. And then I do this job of translating it on the page. And the more you do it, the more you get into the zone of it. You can do this entire cycle without words getting in the way. I didn't put it into words. I just saw it. And then I translated it with my pen, with my brush, and it's here now. And this is what it is. And if you ask me to describe it, why would I do that? This is what it is. We keep trying to put things into words. And what drawing has shown me is that there is so much curiosity we have for the world that does not exist in words. It is not meant to be put into words. It cannot be expressed that way. It's so much greater than language. And the more you draw, the more you allow that side of you, that massive, big amount of curiosity, well inside you, to express itself. And it's stopped by the need for words, by the need to put it into a text message, the need to put it into a fancy post somewhere on some platform or the other, which is a reduction into words. So drawing and curiosity are, you know, curiosity is what shows you something. Drawing is what shows you a way to translate it. And this, this. These two things combined. Sight, senses, absorption, filtering. Curiosity is a filter. So you see so much of the world, but what do you care about? What do you focus on? What do you blur out? That's your curiosity. So it's this filter that takes away a lot of noise, a lot of data, a lot of information, and then it leaves out certain things that you really care about. And then based on what you're using, whether it's a pen or a brush or colors or just ink, you translate it and you reduce it further. So you filter it more and more and more. And then the final filter is your skill level at depicting it and the style that you choose to draw with. And then you have all these filters that are your body and your mind, and then it's on the page and no words entered. This whole process.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, I really like what you were saying about words versus Images. There seems to be a philosophical thing here too, of words are really useful for taking things apart and separating things and. And disconnecting them. Like, that's the tree, that's the ground, that's the sky. They're all these different things when we name them, whereas when you're at them or you're drawing them, it's really a composition, it's a whole. And so I like.

[Nishant Jain]

Where does the mountain stop being the mountain?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right, exactly.

[Nishant Jain]

Where does the mountain stop being. You know, a discrete unit is the mountain, but it's always part of a mountain range. So at what point is it not the rest of the range? These are all distinctions we make to make communication convenient. But by putting things into boxes, we reduce them. And we need to understand that these are reductions. And the more we just accept the world the way it is and the way it's presented, which is in words, because of all the platforms we're on now, right from childhood, people are experiencing the world in these words that are filtered for virality. Words that are filtered for what is optimal attention baiting clickbaity words.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

And then that becomes the filter through which you understand and express the world. And that reduces your whole worldview so much. So this is an essential way to counter a lot of that programming that all of us go through now.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I like that. And there's a really cool way where that aligns to what you're getting at before, where. Before you're thinking about this political satire and how it maybe further separates us. And I thought about you talking about words in this way of clickbait and SEO and categorization. If the words you use get you filtered into different parts of the Internet versus an image is not going to do that. I wonder if you could talk to us about curiosity spiral, because I felt like that really gets at how drawing. What I liked about this whole thing is how it gets you in touch with your curiosity. And I felt like that because that's a really difficult thing to do. And I felt like this exercise really illustrates what that is.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah, so I'll go backwards on that answer because you touched on a lot of beautiful things and remind me in case I slip and I forget something.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, that's fine.

[Nishant Jain]

Firstly, this is something you see so often people don't value their own curiosity. The process of growing up is understanding that there are things I'm good at, things I'm not good at, and often the things we let go as children. Everybody used to draw as children, use colors as children, and then you Grow up. And everybody around the world, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, has the same story. Someone told me I'm not good enough. Or I thought it's not practical. I looked at somebody else's work and got jealous and thought I'm useless. And so I stopped. And this is such a tragic thing. So one of the most important things for me to express is that we are all curious as human beings and we all have unique curiosity. But the way we think about art is that it's not my curiosity that matters. What matters is that I, you know, there is a sense of what is great curiosity. The value I bring is by again externalizing my work and meeting X, Y, Z standards.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Like tapping into what. What are people curious about?

[Nishant Jain]

What I'm right, what do other people want? Always, what do other people want? And we devalue our own curiosity. So this exercise that I've got in the book is about how to tap into your curiosity. And you can't do that, you know, again, too many words will not work. I don't want to give you a treatise on it. So the exercise is to now tap into the thing without letting words get in the way. No hesitations, no second thoughts, screw all of these thoughts, just get into the drawing of it and start getting into that non verbal image based curiosity inside you. So how it goes is people are afraid of the blank page. And I am an impatient person and I am very curious about certain things and I don't care about other things. And that's how my art has evolved. So this lesson comes from all of those factors of me expressing themselves honestly. You start with anything that makes you curious. You look in front of you and whatever it is that catches your eye, don't overthink it. Don't ask yourself why, don't ask if it's profound, don't let words get in the way. Just pick the damn thing and draw the first thing that catches your eye. It looks like something and it looks, it stopped you for some moments, so you drew that first. And since that is now the start of your curiosity, you spiral out. And this advice is particularly useful because people don't always have a lot of time to draw and they feel like if I can't give it two hours, should I even start? And this is me giving them permission to not think like that. You spiral out. And then the curiosity spiral constructs itself. What it does, what it says to you is that as you move away from that element of first curiosity by, by default, you are less curious. As you trail away, you Spiral away. And you allow yourself to be less curious, allow yourself to be not interested, allow yourself to not care. As you move away from your point of curiosity, you give less attention to the things there. You give fewer lines to them. You give fewer details. You give them less time. And the thing that made you curious and the things around it are the things that get all of your attention because it made you curious. What this does is it immediately gives you a way to start. You get over, like, for me, the longest time, you know, that blank page was. Is always fearful. But the moment you put pen to page, that fear decreases. And the moment you get into it more and more and more, it's gone. As soon as the process begins, those outside thoughts are gone. So the fastest way that you can close that gap is good for you. So I would get into it, and then immediately I would allow myself to tap into my impatience. If I'm impatient, if I don't care, if I think that thing doesn't matter, I am allowed to go with that feeling. And what that means is that without really, really consciously thinking of it, I am expressing my curiosity both for the things I care about and the things I don't care about. So I'm navigating this beautiful scene in front of me in this interesting way that is directly related to my personality. I like what people are doing. I am always curious about those people at the bus stop. So that's where my drawing starts. But drawing windows is super tedious. I don't want to draw windows, so the building behind them just gets very quick lines, and I don't want to draw the windows. This drawing, therefore, for most of, like, pretty much all of the drawing, stays within the zone of my joy. These are the things I enjoy, so I'm spending time with them. And then when it's done and you look at it, it tells you what I was curious about, and it tells you what I didn't care for. So this, you know, whether my lines are good, whether my skill is great. This drawing is my drawing. It can never be anybody else's because this is an authentic representation of what I care for and what I don't care for.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, I think it's brilliant. I love that you get. Artistically, you get a focal point, naturally, you get a thing where we're having a soft focus on everything else because you're detailing the thing that you're really energized and drawn to. And then I love. It's an exercise of reacquainting yourself and affirming what I like and I'm interested in, that's something I need to take seriously and listen to. And then the things that are not as interesting, I can let them go. And it's a way to tune into your point of view. And that's so difficult to do. Honestly, like, like you said, going to school and everything. We turn.

[Nishant Jain]

I learned a lot of stuff around urban sketchers and people who do this. They sit in public and they draw, draw. And I would meet so many people who felt like they want to draw a thing, but they are intimidated by all the other stuff around it and they feel obligated to draw everything with an equal amount of detail. So one of the things I tell people is this, that your taste is not just the stuff you love. You have to allow yourself to hate certain things. Yes, like hate sounds like, oh, such a terrible word. But it's so useful. You have to know what you don't care for. And you have to move away from those things too, as much as you move towards what you love. And this coming out on the page makes it yours. And then you know, all of it is joy. And you have a reason to get into it again the next day because you then spend two hours getting the perspective on those windows right. That you don't want to, that you don't care for, but you felt obligated to do.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I completely agree. And one of the ways that I practice this and try to encourage artists to think about, think about. You've probably spent a lot of time thinking about what you love about your hero's work. Spend just as much time looking for what you don't like, what you don't. Try to find things that your heroes do that you're like, I hate when they do that. I hate when they add that song to the album that I'm like, don't skip that thing, whatever it is, because that's telling you something about your taste and point of view. It's telling you of how you want to do it differently. And I think I. I think it's a great insight that you've added there. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not Available in all states or situations.

[Nishant Jain]

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[Andy J. Pizza]

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[Nishant Jain]

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[Nishant Jain]

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[Nishant Jain]

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[Andy J. Pizza]

The app, online and in stores. One thing I wanted to ask you about was this idea of leaving some room for magic. You talk about that in the book. Maybe you could speak to that a little bit. I think it fits nicely with this exploration on curiosity.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah, sure. I think I have the drawing that gave me this idea too.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Oh, cool. Maybe to tell that story of what that's all about.

[Nishant Jain]

This is the drawing. And what happened on this page is that I drew this because I wanted to draw this bridge. This is in Seattle, and I wanted to draw this fun bridge. And I started drawing it, and I drew the background and I drew the sky, and then I came down this way for the foreground. And just as I was here, that's when this father and son walked into the page. They walked into the page and they had this little exchange where the son asks the father, what is with that thing, that drawbridge? And the father explains how it works. And it goes up and down and the child is fascinated. And they occupied the spot that was empty on my page in that moment, and I put them in. And now if you look at this drawing, it seems like as if the whole drawing is constructed around them. So when you draw on location, and this is part of my argument for why more people should draw on location and not always only out of photographs. When you draw on location, you spend a half hour or an hour at that spot. So what you do is you're giving this space, this scene, your time and your attention, and it's a constantly shifting tableau. This is not a still image. People come in and out, things change, ships come in, whatever stuff happens. And sometimes stuff happens that irritates you, like this car comes and blocks your view. But sometimes something magical will just come into that space in the last five minutes of your time there and completely own the scene now. And you needed them to do that, and they're right here. So the idea is at a very General philosophical level that if you leave room for magic in your page, sometimes that magic appears, but you have to be in the business of leaving some room for it, which means giving time, waiting faithfully, which means watching and observing, which means going out there day after day after day, looking in your regular ordinary world, in ordinary places for magical stuff to happen. And if we start doing this, this also happens in the way you draw. This happens in the process by which you draw. This happens in the process by which you see. The more you do this, it gets us to appreciate how beautiful our everyday world is. Like, you don't have to be in remarkable Instagram worthy places, big cities of the world. There is incredible beauty everywhere and it's waiting for us to see it. And some of it is that magical thing that happens when you give from your end the gift of time and attention.

[Andy J. Pizza]

And I like how you also add that this is true in your everyday life. Like I thought about it through the lens of your calendar. Do you have any space where you don't know what's going to happen? And it gets back to that curiosity versus strategy. Like strategy is all about. One of the reasons I talk about strategy on the show so much is because I think creative people find that direction sometimes. Some creative people find that really difficult to have a goal in mind and work backwards. I think it's a type of thinking and being creative that's really powerful if you can harness it. But the world mostly over indexes on strategy of like, okay, here's the next month. Here's what we need to fit in ever. There is no room. There's no room for. I didn't know that was going to happen. Right. And part of the reason why is what you're getting at. Like some. A lot of times if you leave room, you don't. You're not in control. What shows up, that car does obscure the view or whatever. But there, yeah, there's a comfort to.

[Nishant Jain]

We are so addicted to control. And I want to just add that there are a lot of people who are who've appointed themselves in the business of telling you how to do things. And it's so important that you never listen to such people. And they'll give you all the tips for success and they'll tell you how to optimize your life and you should never listen to such people because they are not in the habit of doing things right. A lot of people are very successful at selling people newsletters on how to be successful.

[Andy J. Pizza]

So true.

[Nishant Jain]

And that is a weird vicious loop. Like I don't know what you're successful at because your success is at telling people you're successful.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Very true.

[Nishant Jain]

So the strategy has its place. But when we over index on strategy, we over index on outcome. And the more we over index on results and outcomes, the, the narrower we make our worldview and our experience. So this is something that's very important to me because the process of art for me was the process of becoming a child again. Children draw because they take joy in putting that crayon on the page and making big marks. Look at the color coming out on the page. If I add green to it, look at what happens. They're taking joy in that process once they're done. And I have a near 2 year old at this point, once he's done, he literally tears it apart. He's done with it, he doesn't care. We want to save it. I keep begging him to not tear it so I can frame it. And he just, he doesn't care. He'll tear it because that's fun now and then he'll draw again. The more we grow up, we forget to take joy from process. We only care if it's good enough, Quote unquote good enough. The return on investment is worth it if so. And so people are impressed. I'll only do it if the result is worth it. So from process oriented people, we become results oriented people. And how this manifests a lot, especially in men, is our world shrinks because we'll only do the things we are good at doing because the process, the result is good enough. And of course every year that field shrinks. So you get older and older and older and eventually you reach that age. I'm not there yet, luckily, where your world is basically just news and sports and that's it, that's all you talk about, that's all you know and nothing outside. It's. It's the opposite. As I see, at least in my experience with women, the older women get, the more they're eager to explore their world and do things and just enjoy things and be curious and do things for the fun of it. And I feel like for me it's been understanding that. And as a person who loves to plan things, I have three, I have four notebooks and I have notion that is full of all my plans. Google Calendar also I digitally analog every way I plan in 100 million ways. And I have tried and rejected dozens of tools before this as well. I think what I'm really taking from it is that when you fixate on Destinations, you're only. You're postponing joy until you reach that destination. That's one part. So 90% of the journey, which is 90% of life, you are sacrificing joy so that at the end, hopefully, you will be happy. Secondly, it presupposes that you are fit to decide the destination. You know, what the best destination would be. And so you go through this life on an optimized path, not going left or right. And I ask what you're on this planet to do. Were you here just to get to that destination, or were you here to explore this mad, beautiful world we live in? You're supposed to take every detour. You're supposed to stop at every scenic vista. You're supposed to get lost. These things have come to me from trying to be an artist. These things have not made me an artist, but these things are gifts that my art practice has given me because I trusted my curiosity, which showed me there is so much more to be happy about. You said something wonderful. You said, leaving room for magic in your calendar, which is such a rich thing to do. Like, the biggest thing that I've gotten this year has come from saying no to a bunch of things. Last year, I let go of the kind of commissions I was doing. I let go of a lot of things that were making me money, but I didn't want to be doing that. And I left room in my calendar, basically, and things would drop in and I have space for them. And now things that happened two years ago that I did just because I had space and nothing to do, are circling back and becoming bigger things that I really want to do. Not knowing destination, just following curiosity, makes for such a rich, wonderful life in which you, like, who cares where you end up? Like, destinations, straight lines, all of these things, like, they're part of $300 courses with marketers and growth gurus. And, like, those are words that work for them because they don't care. They don't care about the everyday. But if you want to be happy today, I don't think strategy is the way to do it.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, I love that. I think. I love what you said about it. Touches on the last question I have for you. This idea of, like, whenever I started this podcast, even after it started taking off, which was started almost 10 years ago, one of the things that was a commitment for me was I never want to lose my. If this is my lab, I want to be in the field. I want to be making illustration for clients. I want to be working on picture books. I want to be deeply invested in my creativity and then I can speak to that. I never want to lose that connection. I feel like very interested in that. Just kind of these two different lanes, right?

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

And I never wanted to become one. Become someone who was just talking about being.

[Nishant Jain]

Talking head, you know? Yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

But I like, you know, I actually feel. I always try to give credit to. I heard someone talk about how some. There are these incredible coaches that never were excellent at the game and they ended up being, you know, so we do have. And I have teachers in art school that were incredible teachers and didn't end up pursuing it. So I'm not saying you can't do that, but for me personally, that's been true. Like, I want to. I want to be in the field and then I want to be in the lab, and I want there to be a relationship between those two things. And getting to that, I wanted to ask you if this, following your curiosity, this on site drawing and kind of like the way that you observe yourself doing it and noticing what you're noticing and all that, it has a very scientific quality. Have you ever thought about how it relates to your relationship to neuroscience and biomechanics and all that kind of stuff? Because there is kind of a relationship there.

[Nishant Jain]

That's. That's a good observation. You know, it's something. So this is something my mother says to me.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

She'll say, why did you waste all that time studying if this is what you wanted to do? And I tell her that nothing is wasted. Everything adds up. There are ideas I have from my life as an engineer that play a big role in my art today, in my writing today. Ideas cross. Like ideas are not stopped at the boundary of genre or field of study. They bleed into everything around us.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yes.

[Nishant Jain]

One of the best things I learned as a control engineer in my master's program was the idea of accuracy versus precision. This is a lesson I share in the book as well.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

So this applies to designing very small systems that move very little, little micrometers or millimeters and have to do exactly that every time. So, you know, CD players and chips that have little moving parts, all of that. Precision control devices. But it applies to being an artist also. And it came to me when I was trying to be an artist. Accuracy is when you always hit the bullseye. So you're always correct. If you never hit the bullseye, you're not accurate. If you always miss the bullseye, but you always hit the ring just outside it, you're not accurate, but you're precise. Precision is not how correct you are. Precision is how consistent you are. A lot of devices, when designed for precision control, don't have to be accurate. They do have to be precise. They have to do the same thing every time, even if they're offset a little bit from the right point. That's okay as long as it's precise and consistent. As an artist, we don't have to be accurate. This is the most common misconception people have, the idea that there is an accurate, perfect solution that you have to reach. Engineers think like this. Very often there is an optimized solution. We have to get to a lot of people coding for AI, therefore, think this way. Also. There is a perfect art that we will optimize towards. Yeah. The point of this is to not be accurate. The point is to be what brings style, what brings you out is your consistency. Are you always you. Are you always honest? Are you never faking it? If you do this consistently, if your perspective is always off just a little bit, always like that, if your heads are always just a little larger than the rest of the body, that becomes your style. Just do it consistently. Just stay with those things that are part of you. Stay with the quote, unquote. Mistakes that are part of you, that are your personality. All of those things add up to become your style. All of those things add up to become your honest representation. And that is what we want to get to. That brings us that joy. There's this quote I always share by my favorite musician, Miles Davis. Miles Davis said, once is a mistake, twice is an idea. Three times his style.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Love it, no better. That's so good.

[Nishant Jain]

Style comes from staying with the things you think of as your mistakes. Staying with those things until they give you some kind of bright idea, some kind of thing that maybe, maybe this will work. Maybe this will work out for me. And then staying with that and keeping at it, keeping at it until people look at it and they don't see the mistake. So I'll give you a visual example.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Please do.

[Nishant Jain]

I started drawing people out of curiosity, and I wanted to draw these people who were passing by so early. In Chicago, I started drawing people at corner cafes. I'd look out at people at the traffic light and try to draw them before they're gone. So like 15 seconds, 20 seconds sometimes, if you're lucky, and you never know how much time you have. So quick instinct. Put myself in this situation where hesitations can't enter the picture. Just do it, do it, do it, do it, do it. And I realized As I was getting kind of better at it. So this is a recent page from like three years ago. As I was getting kind of better at it, I realized, you know, I am getting decent at this, but I really suck at drawing shoes. So bright idea. What if I don't draw feet?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah. And that's very you.

[Nishant Jain]

My tiny people don't have feet, and this is a mistake. People have feet, Nishant, but you do it and you do it. And once it is styled, that's not a mistake. That's just his style.

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's a great example for people that are listening and not watching. It's a full two page spread of all of his people drawings, and they're very recognizable and they're littered throughout the book. And I think it really drives the point home.

[Nishant Jain]

I do also want to say, before I forget, I want to tell you how much I appreciate your podcast because you give me company a lot of the times when I'm driving. And I love it because I can see that your ideas come from a place of creation. Like, your ideas are not you typing them into an idea generator and deciding, let's talk 30 minutes about this thing. It's not SEO driven. It feels like it is curiosity driven, and I really appreciate that. I take a lot of lessons from it. I have a podcast in which I primarily have conversations with other sketchers, but I've been slowly giving myself the space to just talk about my practice and my journey and my creativity. And listening to others such as yourself gives me, you know, that. That space that I'm also allowed to do this. So I take a lot of permission from you.

[Andy J. Pizza]

That's great, man. And you're very profound. And where do you tell people the name of the show so they can go find it?

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah, sure. So it's the sneaky art podcast. And like I said, I'm a contrarian, so I didn't follow any of the rules. It's a podcast about art that has no visuals. It's purely audio.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

People said you should do a half hour show. Nobody wants to listen for longer. So I have three hour long episodes.

[Andy J. Pizza]

You're good at trusting yourself, man. I love it.

[Nishant Jain]

What a joy it is to talk to somebody for the first time in your life and convince them through conversation that they should tell you everything. And let's do this. Let's keep going for three hours.

[Andy J. Pizza]

It's true. I totally. It's very tempting.

[Nishant Jain]

Every episode of my show is me talking to somebody, often for the first time in my life, and staying at it until they start telling me stories. And once that point is reached, I know that I can just shut up and back out. And now this will just run. So it's a discovery in learn, in learning how to listen, learning how to learning where inspiration comes from. People who learn from all these different places and depict their world in all these different ways for different reasons. Art is not always. Art is not about making pretty drawings. Art is not about the result. What does it give us? Why do we do it? It was my question because this is my journey. Why am I making art like I was writing stories, I was writing jokes, why am I suddenly drawing things? The first time I sold art, Andy, somebody said they wanted to buy it. I posted on Reddit, somebody said they wanted to buy it. And I thought, this is the craziest thing in the world. I didn't even put a funny caption. You just want the raw drawing. Why would you give me money for this? But again, America, you know, it just. Only in America this can happen. So I was like, yeah, sure, I'll take the money. I went to Lincoln. I met them at Lincoln Park Zoo. It was a drawing of Chicago skyline from the Lincoln Park Zoo. And I gave it to them there. And that's the first time I sold art. And it gave me the confidence that so much can be said, so much can be shared, and so much can resonate with people through just, just some lines and shapes.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I, I agree with that. One last thing, maybe you could just end it with telling us the two different definitions of sneaky art.

[Nishant Jain]

Okay. Yeah. So this, these definitions evolved. One, when I started doing this, this was me being sneaky. I was tremendously self conscious. I was anxious about being in public and doing this silly, ridiculous thing. A grown adult trying to learn to draw. So I started drawing with the fountain pen. So I wouldn't erase and I would draw quickly. And I would draw in a little sketchbook so I could get out of there quickly and nobody would see me. Sit in the corner seat in cafes, nobody behind you. Draw very quickly, get out of there before anybody asks, what are you doing? And I have to show my terrible pages. So I was being sneaky in the pursuit of art. The more I did this, the more I understood. And as I started to accept my role as this and start not push out the shame, this unnecessary shame, I started to see and especially after moving to Wisconsin, you know, you'd think I'm in a small place. What is artistic? What is beautiful? What am I going to draw? But I kept finding things, the more I just walked out with the sketchbook. Just look. And I realized art is everywhere. Beautiful things are everywhere. And what they need from us is time and attention. And if we give that, then they reveal themselves. I realized that the world is full of sneaky art. Waiting, hiding in plain sight, waiting to be seen. I was trying to be sneaky to begin. And I realized that the art is sneaky, too. It's right there, but you can't see it until you're willing to give it time and attention.

[Andy J. Pizza]

There's two things I want to bring up. We were talking about. We were talking about embracing chaos, emotional, embracing the not straight path, going on these different. Letting things kind of derail you. And you brought up the. This example from scuba diving that I thought was really great. And then I want to go to something else, too.

[Nishant Jain]

Sure. So the first lesson in scuba diving that I took, I was. This was. I quit my PhD program. I had three weeks, three months paid leave to take.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

And I started backpacking across Europe before moving to the US to live with my girlfriend. And I was in Montenegro and was taking a scuba diving lesson, and I was flailing in the water, five feet underwater, trying to keep myself in, looking in one direction, facing one direction, completely straight and still. But you can't do that in water. And I didn't accept it. My scuba instructor was two feet in front of me, two feet above me, floating above me with the light shining on his face in this Zen meditative pose, folded his legs, put his arms to his sides, and he showed me in that moment that in order to have control, in order to be at peace, you have to relinquish the idea of control. You cannot live in a chaotic world trying to control every variable and then find peace. This is something I've had to accept. This is something I've had to appreciate again and again and again. Because a creative life is full of chaos and variables that you just can't know. You cannot know it. It. And you have to find peace in the not knowing.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Very true. I think I love what you said about accepting, kind of embracing the chaos in a chaotic environment. It reminds me of how I noticed in my own creative journey that I started out as a kid making videos, doing a fake radio show, drawing pictures, just doing all of these different things, right? And then the world says, no, you need to get it together. You need to get the order, get the straight line. What is it going to be? And I was like, all right, I'll be an illustrator. That's what I'm going to do. That's my path. And then I did that, pursued that. And then a decade later, all of a sudden, they're telling me, yeah, well, if you're going to want to be an illustrator, you're going to need a fake radio show called a podcast. You're going to have to have some videos. You're going to. And I'm like, what the hell? Like, no, I want to draw. Okay. And I think that it reminds me of that. Of like, oh, yeah. The reason I chose a creative path is because I wanted it to be creative. I wanted it to be chaotic, unexpected, trying new things, doing new things. And there is this kind of letting go that you have to. You gotta kind of roll with it.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah. And that's. I feel like this is the best part of it for me. It's also the worst part of it for me. Not like. So when I quit my life in academia, I also quit a structured 9 to 5 situation. Like, knowing what my deliverables are, knowing who I'm accountable to if I was in a big project, knowing when we are 20% through, 50% through. So one of the things I let go of was all these numbers that help to structure your life. In a creative life, I tried to force fit numbers. How many pages did I write today? How many things did I draw today? How many hours did I work today as a way to somehow signal productivity or feel. Allow myself to feel happy about my day. Yeah. Which doesn't have a realistic output at this moment until, like months down the line. Learning to embrace this situation was so important and learning to not quantify it, to not struggle to put productivity measures into it. It took so much learning and unlearning, like these old ideas of my old life that aren't applicable anymore because you can't tell when the project is done. You can't tell how, what the returns will be. Things will multiply and things will become other things, and things will manifest in ways that you can't imagine. And that is the great joy. Like, we are so lucky. Here's something I get. I just finished my book tour. I went to seven cities or eight, and one of the most common questions you get from people is this. Especially with all this AI stuff around us and the news we get about is so hard now to be an artist.

[Andy J. Pizza]

We'll just say it's PR is what it is, but go on. Sorry.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah, it is so hard now. How do you decide to be an artist in today's world? It is so hard to make money. It is a terrible time to try to be a creative full time. And my counter is that this is the best time in human history to be an artist. Objectively, it has never, ever been easier. You can go next door to an art supply store and buy a 64 thing of colors. Any medium you want, any sketchbook you want, any surface you want, any pen you want. You can on your phone, go on the podcast app, Find the Creative Pep talk podcast. Listen to all these ideas about how to be a creative. Leonardo da Vinci would kill to be in your place. You can make an audience and sell them art directly. You don't have to beg your local gallerist curator to give you permission to frame something on the walls. True. And make friends with, you know, schmooze with all the famous artists in order to become known. You get to do it however you want. We are alive in the best time to be an artist. We have the freedom to learn. We have the freedom to pick up skills and to make an audience and to sell to that audience. With it comes the responsibility now to make that work. Yeah, how do we. How will you sell? What will you sell? What will they buy? Why will they buy it? A little bit of the strategy is in this part. So this is that flip side that you were talking about. You know, curiosity versus curiosity is what makes you an artist. Strategy is what keeps you as an artist. Maybe.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, I think so.

[Nishant Jain]

I think at least in terms of thinking as a professional artist, like anybody can draw and find joy and you're an artist. I agree. But the idea of a professional artist is somebody who also makes money from it. And to do that, you need some element of thinking outside of yourself. Yeah. And that's where all these things that are business like, things, planning things, strategy things, they start to play a role. And it becomes. I feel like it is incumbent upon me to sustain that curious child inside me that I pick up the strategy slack and I learn how to. How to make it sustainable. How do I make. How do I keep this freedom to do whatever I want? I can truly whatever I want.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I completely agree. And a big theme for me throughout the show is realizing that you need both the strategic creativity and the curiosity based creativity. And I think there's two watch outs for it. One is you have to. The. The first hurdle is going from being a purely curious, creative person to learning the strategy side, which is intimidating for in all kinds of different ways. It's kind of like writing a joke. Like, okay, how do I get to that punchline? It's not comedy acting. It's not just like, oh, being silly in the moment. It's. I need to construct this. That hurdle is difficult because it's intimidating. Then the second hurdle, I think, is after you learn that that strategic way of thinking is very intoxicating. Once you have some control of it. It's just like what you were saying, like, once you can put a funny comment under the drawing and now you've added value to it, it's very hard not to want to do that always. It's very hard to then let the curiosity back in and let the chaos back in and let the lack of control back in that. Then that's the second hurdle. But then. So. But they don't have to be at odds. You have. The thing you have to do is figure out, how do I reach to the one that I need it when I need it? Yeah, it's tough. It's really freaking tough. I think it's one of the biggest battles of being a creative person.

[Nishant Jain]

Absolutely. And I think the challenge of being a creative person is to be enthusiastic about this great difficult battle, which is a lifelong battle. It's never going to end and you're never done with it. It's like, so one little idea again, enjoying the wrestling.

[Andy J. Pizza]

You know, that's what it is like. Just like you say. Go on.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah. So there's this little idea I share in the book. It's called knowing the Difference between finite and infinite games.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I was gonna ask you about this because I think it's a great. A great point.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah. So finite games are games where they end, so they're finite. There is a way to keep score. There are rules. There's a winner, there's a loser. So most sports tend to be finite games. Infinite games are games that don't have rules, even though we try to impose them, that don't have score, even though we try to keep score. They're not supposed to end. They're supposed to be fun to play. You play them because you want to keep playing them. And life, your life is an infinite game. And the practice of art is also an infinite game. You don't keep score. You just have to find a way to keep doing it and to keep doing it and to keep doing it, because the doing it is the joy of it.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah, I love that. I think there's a. There's a Venn diagram here for a creative professional where for the longest time I really thought, like, oh, so much is about taste, and really about taste is really a result because when you can taste, this piece that I'm making makes me feel like this. I can trust people out there, they exist that will feel the same way. Okay, that's like a result thing. Then Kendall Hilligas told me, she was like, she's an illustrator. She was like, I think it's about process. And now I am right in the middle of this Venn diagram where I think it's something about taste and tolerance. Tolerance being like, I have this, I'm a machine that does this and I like doing it. It's always, it's fun, it's. And, and, and so then the way I, the metaphor I came up with is it's kind of like if you're Coca Cola and you've got all the machine to make these fizzy drinks, like part of it is, okay, getting in tune with how, doing that really well, knowing the process, knowing what, what kind of thing do you create? Then it's about tapping it, then having a, some insight into the market to say, okay, they don't want sugary ones anymore. But my machine makes these things. Well, I can make soda water or I can make, you know, probiotic water or whatever. And I think it's having some kind of knowledge of what, what do I produce naturally. And it's. And I enjoy it. Just like you were saying, like just drawing for the sake of it. And then, then, and only then, because I think the other thing is we do the opposite way. We start with what does the world want? They want what? Sugary drinks. Okay, we got to get them. I've got to be a machine that creates those. You know what I mean? Does that make sense?

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah. And then at some point I'll add, you need to have a marketing department.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right?

[Nishant Jain]

So here's how I, I told you about the two week conversation with my parents. So one of the arguments sometime during these two weeks, one of my approaches to tackle this argument was that think of me as an entrepreneur. I'm making a product and it happens to be art. Or it happens at that time it was a novel. Artist wasn't in the picture. I'm going to write and I'm going to make comics and my job is to sell them. So I'm making a product and I'm selling. I'm just a businessman, except I am on both ends of the supply demand curve. I make the supply, but it is also my job to create the demand for it. You have the freedom to do whatever kind of art you want, but it is also part of your job to Create the market for it. Why should people care about my art? That's my job. There is so much art in the world, and I can't be the best artist in the world. There's no point trying to be that because anybody can go on Instagram and now on your phone, you can access all the art and in the history of humanity, instantly. So trying to be the best is not the point. Why should somebody care about me doing this? This is a question I have to answer. This is a question I had to answer myself. Why am I doing this with my life? Who cares? Why me?

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

And that why and how that works is my job to figure out. And it's my job to make that thing desirable.

[Andy J. Pizza]

And you've done a great job with it in the way that you've packaged what you do, the way you've named it, the way you talk about it, the way you present it. Lots of. Lots of people can do observational drawing or go out and do these on site drawing. And you've taken your own point of view that is informed by what you found valuable and interesting about it. Right. Like the. The sneaky art side in both different ways. And then all. All of these other things that you've taken from it. One of the things you said that I wanted to get down before we head out is you were talking about if you go to a city and you're. You're not leaving that space for the magic, and you just go to. What. What did you say? Do you remember this bit? Like you're talking about going to a restaurant.

[Nishant Jain]

No, I don't remember.

[Andy J. Pizza]

You're talking about, like, looking up on Google and you're like, oh, that one has a 4.8.

[Nishant Jain]

All right. Yes.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

So, you know, we. Before I step into a restaurant now, this is the default. I go on Maps and I'm not going to step inside a restaurant that has less than 4.6 out of 5.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Right.

[Nishant Jain]

Firstly, who the heck am I that I deserve only better than that?

[Andy J. Pizza]

I mean, I'm the same. I do the same thing. Yeah.

[Nishant Jain]

How much are we curating our human experience so that we only trust these. These arbitrary numbers? Who leaves reviews? I don't know if you're the kind of person who leaves reviews for stuff on Google Maps, but I think. I think it's. You have to be insane to be the person who leaves reviews for every place. So you're listening to the most crazy people who eat at restaurants and they're telling you, you should go here. And enough of them love It. So you go there and you don't look left or right. You just go from point A to point B, following the path Google Maps told you. Listening to your thing because you're outside, so you're listening to your music. We're all walking in these bubbles of audio, visual control, insensitive to our world. We are passing through our world like robots and not seeing it, not allowing ourselves to look up. Remember the route, remember the street markers you walked by. Nobody can trace their path back because only Google took them there. So this is such a new thing in our world, but it has completely. We have delegated the business of being in the world just so we can be in the content loop. I can Instagram a little longer. I can listen to another podcast. I can listen to the same pop music that Spotify throws at me again and again a little longer instead of actually looking at the world around me. And what a reduction of the human experience. Yeah, there's going to be. There's going to be a backlash against. I feel like people are so frustrated with being less than human.

[Andy J. Pizza]

I feel like this is something I want. I try to encourage myself to see and encourage my kids and encourage artists around me. Like, have a little faith in humanity. Like when we constantly. When we do things for a couple decades that are killing us, we pretty much always think, okay, let everyone, let's just demonize this because this is, like, not so good. No matter how good, it feels like we. We have more resilience than people give us credit for. I love this. We usually end the show with a cta. It's a call to adventure. It's a thing you can do. I'm going to call this one. No, no point B. And it's an idea where you go, go pick a point A, don't have a point B, Let. And the reason I think it's important is because, like I said, your whole life in this era, in this economy, everything you're doing is encouraging you to be in your strategic brain, to get the right outcome, to get joy at the end, to get money at the end, to know you're all about B. Well, it's all we're thinking about. I'm always trying to collect ways to. How do you tap back into the other one? How do you get there? And so let's do one. You go pick a point A. Go drive there. Nothing else. Everything else is. And I love that you said that because we went to Italy in the summer. And the funniest thing is, like, all of my kids Favorite meal was one that happened on accident while we were waiting for somebody else. We saw this hole in the wall place, and they were the loveliest people ever. It was super cheap. They were just, like, so friendly. There was no menus. All the people were local, and it was just like, yeah, this was. We had a huge itinerary. So many places we had to hit. A lot of them were lovely. Right. But this is the one they talk about, and it's the. As a point B, we didn't plan.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah, that's. That's amazing. I think it's lovely that, you know, you allowed for that again. You left possibility for that magical thing to come into your. Your trip, and that's what made it happen. Like, because you're there, and it's possible. That's how it can happen. And if you only went by reservation or you planned and scoped everything, that there wouldn't be room for that to come into your life. And that's so true. Like, the more room we leave for discovery, maybe you discover something.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Yeah. I love it.

[Nishant Jain]

Yeah.

[Andy J. Pizza]

And thanks for giving me extra time. I just wanted to get some of that stuff down. Everyone, go check out Nishant's substack podcast. All the things. We'll put them in the notes, buy the book. Buy the freaking book that's gonna be at the top of the show. Notes, go check it out. It's really great. Like you say, it's not super heavy on the how to. It's really about how to give yourself permission and find the beauty and how you do it. And I. I think you made something really great, man.

[Nishant Jain]

Thank you so much, Andy. This was such a joy.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Okay. This is kind of becoming a theme on this show. Talking about curiosity. It must be, because it's on my mind. I told you a couple episodes ago about my new book that I did with Sophie, my wife, called Mysterious Things coming out in the summer. And one of the core new characters, new invisible things that we introduce is curiosity. So I think that's going to be a theme for a while, and I think it's really essential to you as an artist, but even more so you as a human. I think that curiosity is super key, so we're going to keep hammering that. I think it's important. It's hard to stay curious in a world like the one we find ourselves in. The pressures and demands and the chaos and what have you. Thanks, Nishant, for giving me so much time. It was a blast chatting with you. Thanks to Sophie Miller for being a producer and editor on the show. Thanks to Connor Jones for the sound design, the animation, the the video, the video editing, the the. I missed one. But you know I say them every week. Sound design, animation, audio edits, video edits. There he goes. All those. We love him. So, so helpful. Thanks to Yoni Wolf and the band Y for our theme music and soundtrack and thanks to all of you for listening. Until I speak to you again, stay pepped up y'.

[Nishant Jain]

All.

[Andy J. Pizza]

Okay, the podcast is over, so I don't know why you're still listening, but I am glad that you enjoyed it enough to stick to the end. I have one more thing for you. If you're in a place where you're feeling a lack of clarity and you want to figure out your industry, market and niche and find the perfect strategic side project to do next, go sign up to our [e-mail] and you will get a confirmation email that will give you the download of our Creative Career Path Handbooklet. And the whole process is in there. And you might also get a few bonuses in there depending on when you sign up. But again, thanks for listening. Glad you enjoyed the episode and stay pepped up y'.

[Nishant Jain]

All. Hello, this is Jack Wilson, the host of the History of Literature Podcast. For the past 10 years, I've been talking to novelists, biographers, and scholars about the greatest books in the history of the world and the men and women who wrote them. Like our recent episodes on Dante in Love, a starter pack of 10 Indian classics, the pop culture that influenced Sylvia Plath, and a talk with scientist and novelist Alan Lightman about the wonders of nature. Join us at the History of Literature Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.