Hi Reader:

💗 Literally a street artist. Joshua Smith makes perfect miniature sculptures of Urban Decay. Corner bodegas, photo booths, anonymous entryways, wheat-pasted posters, spraypainted tags, and signs with missing letters, graffiti, rust, weathering, and grime. See you on the corner, homey. Link​

💗 Bobby Fingers Blarney. I enjoy watching creative processes, I love strange ideas, and I am ape for a good Irish voiceover. All three and so much more can be found in one of the richest, strongest sets of videos I’ve seen lately. Bobby Fingers is insane, a meticulous craftsman and his channel is genius. I started with Drunk Mel Gibson Arrest Diorama. If you want to join me in searching for one of his treasures, send me the GPS coordinates.

💗 Vision quest. Imagine a search engine that uses images instead of words. You provide a picture (or a word), and it looks beyond the superficial subject matter to get at what truly defines the image. Way more sophisticated than Google Images, same.energy uses deep learning and a rich understanding of how visual style and mood work to provide you with dozens of images to respond to. Then, select one of them and branch off deeper and deeper. You can even set a switch to only provide public commons images you can reuse safely.

This is a super cool idea, but it’s still in beta and a little wonky. (I've tried for a month to set up an account so I can upload and save — but to no avail. See if you have better luck. Or don't. It's still pretty functional even without an account.) Link​

💗 Cut that mustard. What is an always popular, never trendy category? Mustard! And lo, there are zillions of choices in the condiment aisle. Unbox Inbox, a brilliant weekly newsletter, did a deep dive into all of the design choices made by mustard makers, dividing them into interesting categories and building a surprisingly inspiring gallery. I love things in categories (IKEA mustard? Who knew), and this essay takes it to the max. Peruse with relish. Link​

💗 Sparts fan. LJ Rader has a voluminous, encyclopedic art library in his head. He uses it to pair sports photos with art that mirror them. He’s completely self-taught, and he doesn’t use AI, yet he is a genius at finding the most amazing connections between two unlikely genres. It’s hard to explain — you gotta see it. Visit his Instagram account and read this article in the Times.

💗 💗Rhyme beyond reason. I have always been an Eminem fan. Now I understand why. He is a notes-making maniac and a word-loving fiend. Never heard of him? Don’t care for rap. Get over it. Read this article on his notetaking, then watch this excerpt from 60 Minutes. If you love language like I do, Slim Shady will blow you away.

💗 You don’t have to marry your mistress. I love the idea that art can be a passion without being a profession. To wit, this article on the various unlikely jobs artists have had and how this led them to discover their art.
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💗 Gouache almighty! James Gurney is an incredible painter and teacher. I adored his Dinotopia decades ago, and for the last few years, I’ve been hooked on his gou​ache demos on YouTube. Last month, Gurney started a weekly newsletter, and it’s a cornucopia. Try it here.​

💗 What Should I Draw? Don’t ask me. Click here.

Your pal,

Danny

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