There’s a photo I saw recently of a Model T Ford parked in the middle of a dusty Kansas field. Its back wheels are jacked up off the ground, a rope looped around the axle, and trailing off toward some kind of agricultural contraption. The car isn’t driving. It’s threshing wheat.

When Henry Ford designed the Model T, he probably didn’t think of it as a grain mill. But that’s what happens when a tool gets into the hands of people who don’t just want to own it—they want to use it. Twist it, hack it, break it open. Make it theirs.

I've spent much of my creative life asking that question: "What else could this be?"

The best tools are the ones that don't flinch when you ask.

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The Model T was famously affordable and fabulously simple. A sturdy chassis. A motor you could understand without an engineering degree.

People turned them into sawmills and makeshift ambulances, motorboats and skimobiles. They stripped them down the frame to haul livestock and souped them up to outrun Prohibition agents. A minister turned one into a mobile church complete with an organ. Whatever the problem, the Model T could probably be adapted to solve it.

It wasn’t about the car. It was about what people could do with it.

That mindset—the desire to reimagine, to repurpose, to tinker—feels essential to human creativity. It’s the difference between being a consumer and being an inventor, a taker and a maker.

When I sit down at my desk to make art, that same spirit guides my hands.

I take cheap tempera sticks meant for preschoolers and combine them with professional watercolors. I rebind old pulp novels to make sketchbooks and paint murals on used UPS boxes. My illustrated journals blend comic books, field notes, IKEA instructions, and street maps. I break forms and mash genres because hybrid tools make the most authentic art.

Some of my favorite pages came from “mistakes”—tools used in the wrong way, materials misbehaving. A dried-up marker. A clogged pen. A toothbrush dipped in calligraphy ink. Or a cup of tea. Pages that are meant for words but end up filled with drawings instead. Or vice versa.

The accidents are the best part. They open new doors. Tools meant to behave themselves but refusing to cooperate. An ink stain bleeding into a marker drawing turns into a storm cloud. A messy brush stroke turns into a manic beard. What was meant to be a profile morphs into a chicken playing a banjo. I follow, wherever the disaster may lead.

This kind of artistic repurposing isn't just about pretty pictures—it's about power. When I break down and remake tools, I'm reclaiming my agency. I'm deciding what they're for, not their manufacturers. There's a private joy in that defiance, even if no one else notices or cares.

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Think about other accidental revolutions. The microwave was born from a melted candy bar. Duct tape, invented to seal ammunition boxes, now gets used for everything from space missions to art installations to shoe repair. DJs turned turntables into instruments. Chefs adapted blowtorches and centrifuges from labs to kitchens.

The most groundbreaking tools are the ones that get misused and reimagined. The ones that let you ask, “What else could this be?”

This kind of creativity doesn’t require genius. It requires permission—the kind you give yourself.

There's something kinda radical about adapting tools—physical or metaphorical—into things that work for you. Even if it means dirty hands. Even if someone thinks you're doing it wrong. Especially if they do.

After all, history isn't shaped by people who followed the instructions.

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So here’s my point: ingenuity isn’t just about invention. It’s about adaptation. And that requires a certain kind of courage—the courage to break the rules, to ignore the label, to void the warranty.

To see a thing not for what it was meant to be, but for what it could be.

That’s where the art is.

Go ahead—use the wrong brush. Mix the cheap with the precious. Write in the margins. And have the audacity to void the warranty.

Your pal,

Danny

P.S. Eleven years ago, we launched Sketchbook School with a course called Beginning.
We were trying something brand new — an online course with different wonderful artists teaching their unique approaches to making sketchbook art. It was a huge hit. But we stopped making it available a few years ago — except for this week. Click here to sign up before midnight on Sunday and get lifetime access to the course that's changed so many lives — including mine! Don't miss this.