Will Spencer 00:00:40

Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

Will Spencer 00:00:44

This is a weekly show featuring in.

Forrest Dickison 00:00:46

Depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers.

Will Spencer 00:00:50

Who help us understand our changing world.

Forrest Dickison 00:00:52

New episodes release every Friday.

Will Spencer 00:00:55

My guest this week is Forrest Dickison and he's a husband, father, fine artist and author of the outstanding new children's book Crispin's Rainy Day.

Will Spencer 00:01:04

I think everyone has at least some artistic talent, whether in singing, dancing, cooking, sculpting or poetry.

Will Spencer 00:01:12

If anyone tries hard enough, they'll find a creative outlet they enjoy that can glorify God and even bless their loved ones.

Will Spencer 00:01:20

But artists?

Will Spencer 00:01:21

They're a different breed from my time in the music industry.

Will Spencer 00:01:24

I discovered people who actually recharged by being in the studio.

Will Spencer 00:01:28

Now I always found producing music to be a grind, which is why I left when I realized I couldn't compete with those who lived to write music.

Will Spencer 00:01:37

Learning that I didn't have that gift, though, helped me appreciate it in others while leading me to discover my own gifts in writing and sometimes photography.

Will Spencer 00:01:46

Today, I admire and appreciate those who are blessed with artistic gifts woven into their being, and I do so with a sense of awe.

Will Spencer 00:01:54

Not in a way that idolizes the man or woman, though.

Will Spencer 00:01:57

A little time in any creative field reveals that artistic talent doesn't always equate to moral uprightness.

Will Spencer 00:02:04

Often it's quite the opposite.

Will Spencer 00:02:06

Instead, I see artistic gifts as a unique calling, different in character from that of pastors, doctors or scientists, but the same in substance.

Will Spencer 00:02:16

In other words, a gift is a gift, and while it's meant for you, you didn't create it, God did and he gave it to you.

Will Spencer 00:02:23

If you should be blessed to discover that gift, then it's what you do with it that matters.

Will Spencer 00:02:28

It's like in the Parable of the Talents, whether you have one, two or three.

Will Spencer 00:02:33

Will you use it to magnify God's kingdom or hide it in fear?

Will Spencer 00:02:37

Will you be faithful over little or faithful over much?

Will Spencer 00:02:41

And will you use your gifts to one day here, enter into the joy of your Lord?

Will Spencer 00:02:46

That brings me back to Forrest Dickerson and his new book, Crispin's Rainy Day, just released on Canon Press.

Will Spencer 00:02:53

You may have seen it hanging around in the background of Doug Wilson's recent videos.

Will Spencer 00:02:57

Now, I haven't been blessed with kids just yet, so I don't read many children's books, but this has to be one of the finest I've come across, both in picture and in story.

Will Spencer 00:03:07

It tells the tale of a young boy and his sister on the aforementioned rainy day, who then go on a swashbuckling adventure with pirate frogs wherein the siblings unique gifts shine.

Will Spencer 00:03:19

Now, I don't want to spoil it, but the fact that there's even a spoilable plot point in a children's book says enough.

Will Spencer 00:03:26

And not only did Forrest write the story, which we'll discuss, but he also illustrated it beautifully.

Will Spencer 00:03:31

If you're a parent, your kids will love it.

Will Spencer 00:03:34

And if you're looking for wholesome Christian entertainment, this makes a great Christmas gift for for any young family.

Will Spencer 00:03:40

This book is the result of Forrest's life devoted to the visual artspainting, drawing and more.

Will Spencer 00:03:46

It's the latest achievement of someone who to me exemplifies recognizing, cultivating and sharing one's gifts for God's glory.

Will Spencer 00:03:55

And I hope Forrest's story inspires you to recognize your own gifts or those of your children, sparking the next generation of Christian artists to make Christianity beautiful again.

Will Spencer 00:04:06

If you enjoy this podcast, thank you.

Will Spencer 00:04:09

Please leave a five star rating on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and share your favorite episodes with friends.

Will Spencer 00:04:15

To support the show financially, become a paid subscriber@willspencerpod.substack.com for ad free interviews and perks or click Buy Me a Coffee in the show notes.

Will Spencer 00:04:26

Most importantly though, please support our advertisers.

Will Spencer 00:04:30

Your purchases help build multigenerational wealth in the Christian community as we work to rebuild a Christian foundation for the West.

Will Spencer 00:04:38

And please welcome this week's guest on the podcast, the author and illustrator of Crispin's Rainy Day, out now on Canon Press, Forrest Dickerson.

Forrest Dickison 00:04:49

Forrest, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Guest 00:04:51

You bet.

Guest 00:04:52

Well, thanks for having me.

Forrest Dickison 00:04:54

I've got your book here, Crispin's Rainy Day.

Forrest Dickison 00:04:59

I don't read a lot of kids books, but I actually, I genuinely love this one.

Forrest Dickison 00:05:03

This was heartwarming, it was exciting, it was beautifully drawn and the messaging in it was just, it was really touching.

Forrest Dickison 00:05:11

So I just wanted to congratulate you on this.

Forrest Dickison 00:05:13

Not that I'm a connoisseur of the art, but this was an excellent book.

Guest 00:05:18

Thank you sir.

Guest 00:05:18

I appreciate it.

Forrest Dickison 00:05:20

So I wanted to get started.

Forrest Dickison 00:05:22

I've also, as I mentioned to you, I'd also seen your paintings in the gallery and Moscow.

Forrest Dickison 00:05:27

So I've been looking forward to having this conversation because the visual arts are not one of my skill sets.

Forrest Dickison 00:05:32

I do enjoy travel, photography, but painting and drawing and things like this are beyond me.

Forrest Dickison 00:05:36

So I've been looking forward to talking with you about your art and the process of getting to where you've been and Also the books that you've created.

Guest 00:05:43

Great, let's do it.

Forrest Dickison 00:05:45

All right, so maybe we can just start at the beginning.

Forrest Dickison 00:05:51

When did you begin drawing, painting?

Forrest Dickison 00:05:53

What was the beginning of that?

Forrest Dickison 00:05:54

What did that look like for you?

Forrest Dickison 00:05:56

And I guess also how was it nurtured to the point where like, hey, I can actually maybe do something with this?

Guest 00:06:02

Yeah, so I.

Guest 00:06:05

I don't remember a time when I wasn't drawing.

Guest 00:06:08

I think every kid begins their life drawing.

Guest 00:06:13

I was just one of those that didn't stop.

Guest 00:06:16

So my friends, classmates, they kind of petered out, you know, in early grade school.

Guest 00:06:23

And I was the kid that wanted to stay in from recess and draw skateboarders, snowboarders, monsters, anything that, you know, piqued my interest at the time.

Guest 00:06:35

So I'd always been doing it.

Guest 00:06:39

I loved Calvin and Hobbes, Tintin, Asterix.

Guest 00:06:43

I loved, you know, old Disney animation, hand drawn animation.

Guest 00:06:49

My mom did a good job of hanging some nice prints on our walls growing up.

Guest 00:06:54

So we had old masters, John Singer Sargent, Soroya, Winslow Homer, you know, we had some pretty good prints on the walls, so she had great taste.

Guest 00:07:06

So I was always surrounded by stories and pictures.

Guest 00:07:10

And then later in high school was when I realized that I was probably not going to be able to do anything else with my life.

Forrest Dickison 00:07:23

Praise God, I love it.

Guest 00:07:25

So there was only one option.

Guest 00:07:26

Nothing else really interested me.

Guest 00:07:29

I thought maybe a marine biologist could be interesting, but I just thought manatees were cool.

Guest 00:07:34

And that was a phase.

Guest 00:07:35

I had a manatee phase.

Guest 00:07:37

And they said, we all have them, maybe I'll do that someday.

Guest 00:07:42

Yeah.

Guest 00:07:42

So I went to the.

Guest 00:07:44

I graduated from Logos and then went to the University of Idaho, which is the local university here in Moscow, and jumped in with their, at their fine art program.

Guest 00:07:54

The program was kind of in between professors at the time, so there weren't dedicated drawing or painting professors there while I was attending.

Guest 00:08:05

So I got a lot of instruction from the Internet books and was given a lot of free time to just pursue it on my own.

Guest 00:08:14

So.

Guest 00:08:16

And then, yeah, I think it was my junior year, I started working with Canon Press on.

Forrest Dickison 00:08:23

In college.

Guest 00:08:24

In college, yes.

Guest 00:08:25

Yes.

Guest 00:08:27

I think the first project we did together was the Riot and the dance biology textbook that Dr.

Guest 00:08:33

Gordon Wilson wrote.

Guest 00:08:36

It has since ballooned into a whole Nature Doc series that you can find on Canon.

Guest 00:08:43

Plus Vid Angel, I think has it as well, but I'm not sure.

Guest 00:08:48

So it started as a biology textbook.

Guest 00:08:50

So I was illustrating Beatles things whose names I cannot remember.

Forrest Dickison 00:08:58

Right.

Guest 00:08:58

And then from there I Started working with Nate Wilson pretty early on as well.

Guest 00:09:05

We started doing.

Guest 00:09:06

I started helping him out with some pitch decks for some of his novels for film pitches.

Guest 00:09:17

And then we started working on hello Ninja, the board book.

Guest 00:09:20

And that was 2013, I think we started.

Guest 00:09:24

That came out in 2014.

Guest 00:09:30

Yeah.

Guest 00:09:30

And then that was kind of how my career started, was biology textbooks.

Guest 00:09:36

Hello Ninja.

Guest 00:09:37

And then Cannon Press is.

Guest 00:09:39

They produce curriculum books, all kinds of different books, trade books, a few novels, things like that.

Guest 00:09:46

So I was immediately stretched into all kinds of different artistic categories right off the bat, which I'm very grateful for.

Guest 00:09:57

So.

Guest 00:09:57

Yeah, that's an introduction.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:00

I'm glad you said that, because I'm looking at the Crispin's rainy day art style.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:06

It's got a little bit of the.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:09

As at Howl's Moving Castle Miyazaki kind of feeling to it, at least in the eyes.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:14

But as I looked at this book and looked at the drawings, looked at the art, and then I compared it with what I saw at the gallery.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:22

There was one particular painting of yours.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:24

It had sort of like a.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:25

It sort of had a magenta sky.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:27

You probably know the one that I'm thinking of looking out over an idyllic landscape.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:31

And something about that sunset really caught me.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:33

But there couldn't be a bigger difference, at least to me.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:38

There couldn't be a bigger difference between what you painted in that painting and the art style of this textbook.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:43

And I think it makes sense that you would have done so much different stuff, and that's how you would be able to cross the line.

Forrest Dickison 00:10:51

So many different lines in visual arts to different styles.

Guest 00:10:54

Yeah.

Guest 00:10:55

That's interesting to hear you say that, because I don't think about it too much.

Guest 00:11:01

I just think in terms of genre.

Guest 00:11:03

I'm trying to make a nice painting that will be.

Guest 00:11:06

It's a composition that can stand on its own.

Guest 00:11:09

There's no characters in it, so it's just a landscape painting.

Guest 00:11:13

But I'm using a lot of the same muscles to illustrate a page of a picture book.

Guest 00:11:20

There's so.

Guest 00:11:21

And that started out as, I guess, a curiosity for any kind of image making I was interested in.

Guest 00:11:34

So whether it was cartoons, like I said, animation, printmaking, board game art, video game art, biology textbooks, anything that was interesting to me, I chased it, which has been really helpful.

Guest 00:11:56

And one reason I did that, because I just needed money.

Guest 00:11:59

So anybody who was willing to pay, I said, yeah, let's do it.

Guest 00:12:03

Sure.

Guest 00:12:04

But what that gave me was kind of an ability, an ability to jump between mediums or genres.

Guest 00:12:10

Without too much trouble.

Guest 00:12:13

So, yeah.

Forrest Dickison 00:12:16

So when you.

Forrest Dickison 00:12:18

When you started out as a kid, I guess you were probably drawing in, like, school notebooks with a pen or a pencil or something like that, or did you just jump right into watercolors or acrylics?

Forrest Dickison 00:12:28

Like, how did.

Forrest Dickison 00:12:28

How did that take take shape?

Forrest Dickison 00:12:30

And also, as I look at Crispin's Rainy Day, what was this done in?

Forrest Dickison 00:12:35

Was this digital?

Forrest Dickison 00:12:35

Was this Illustrator, or was it hand drawn or some combination?

Guest 00:12:40

It was a combination.

Guest 00:12:42

All the colors are.

Guest 00:12:44

The colors are digital, but I made an effort to make them look as traditional as possible.

Guest 00:12:53

The line work is all traditional.

Guest 00:12:55

So it's dip pen and dip pen and ink on Bristol board.

Guest 00:13:01

So I penciled and inked traditionally and then colored it digitally.

Guest 00:13:06

I was going to color it traditionally, but we were running out of time and I had to get it done.

Guest 00:13:11

So.

Guest 00:13:14

And then what was the other part of that question?

Forrest Dickison 00:13:17

So was there.

Forrest Dickison 00:13:17

Was there a medium that was interesting to you off the bat, or was it just, you know, right into whatever you could get into your hand?

Guest 00:13:25

Yeah, no, right off the bat, there was no medium that caught my interest.

Guest 00:13:30

It was just drawing.

Guest 00:13:31

So it was pencil and paper, and then color just was a way to enhance what I was already drawing.

Guest 00:13:39

So colored pencils when I was younger.

Guest 00:13:42

And then Logos School does a great job of giving art instruction to its students that I found out is rare and not something that's done in most schools across the country.

Guest 00:13:58

So when I have friends, I told them I spent.

Guest 00:14:04

I had instructors during elementary school that taught me, you know, they would draw a sunflower, and then I would have to copy the sunflower.

Guest 00:14:14

All my art friends were blown away because they never had any kind of instruction like that from their public schools.

Guest 00:14:22

So I'm grateful to Logos for giving me art lessons that I definitely did not appreciate at the time.

Guest 00:14:28

I thought they were boring, but it was a good foundation for what I would eventually do.

Guest 00:14:34

So it was all just pencil, pen, and ink.

Guest 00:14:36

And then I loved animation, but that was hand drawn.

Guest 00:14:42

Animation was an art form that was kind of on the way out when I was just getting old enough to enter the workforce.

Guest 00:14:52

So I kind of set that aside and went and pursued oil painting.

Guest 00:14:57

That was what I chased in college.

Guest 00:15:03

I.

Guest 00:15:05

It was a good way to combine my interests, my interest for being outside, taking hikes, going on trips with image making.

Guest 00:15:16

So I was able to go outside and paint and respond to the landscape and the light directly, which was something that I found compelling.

Guest 00:15:27

So it was pencil, paper, and then oil paint, and those have been my two go to mediums for a while now.

Forrest Dickison 00:15:38

Can you?

Forrest Dickison 00:15:39

So again, I'm not a visual artist.

Forrest Dickison 00:15:41

Like, I like landscape photography and travel photography.

Forrest Dickison 00:15:45

Can you talk a little bit about the process of painting a landscape in the landscape?

Forrest Dickison 00:15:51

This is one of like, maybe at some point in my life I will pursue that, maybe I will chase that, because that's something that I think speaks to me.

Forrest Dickison 00:15:59

So maybe you could talk a little bit about how you got into that, what the process has been like, learning that, what your process is for doing a painting like that as well.

Forrest Dickison 00:16:06

That would bless me quite a bit.

Guest 00:16:08

Yeah, it's thrilling.

Guest 00:16:11

I remember the first time I went out, I had bought these water soluble oil paints, which, if you think about it, makes no sense at all because water and oil don't mix.

Guest 00:16:19

But somehow they were able to take these paints, introduce a molecule or remove a molecule that ruined it and became water soluble.

Guest 00:16:30

And I went out with some friends, it was freezing cold.

Guest 00:16:34

I grabbed water from a creek to mix my paints and I made an atrocious little painting of some birch trees.

Guest 00:16:42

But it was thrilling because it felt like hunting.

Guest 00:16:47

I was out there in the wild, ready to kill something.

Guest 00:16:52

It felt primal.

Guest 00:16:55

It was challenging.

Guest 00:16:56

You have 360 degrees of view around your easel.

Guest 00:17:02

You have temperature, you have sound, you have wind, all these different factors that are just bombarding your senses.

Guest 00:17:09

And you have to pick one little thing out of that cacophony of sensation and scrape it onto a little canvas with some colored dirt and then, you know, make it convincing so that you can take that experience that you had in the wild, put it onto a little piece of vegetable guts stretched over some canvas, and then give it to somebody else.

Guest 00:17:36

And if it's done well there, they can experience what you did almost as effectively, which I think is fascinating.

Guest 00:17:48

So I enjoy the process of hunting.

Guest 00:17:52

It's challenging.

Guest 00:17:53

And it's clear whether you succeed or fail, there's not a lot of wishy, washy gray area.

Guest 00:18:01

You either make a nice painting or you don't.

Guest 00:18:04

And then I enjoy being able to kind of bottle that sensation or experience and frame it nicely, give it to somebody else so that they can then enjoy it as well.

Forrest Dickison 00:18:19

When you take the canvas out there in into the wild, do you finish it all at once?

Forrest Dickison 00:18:25

Is that, is that the goal?

Forrest Dickison 00:18:26

Like, I've got X amount of time to finish it before the sun sets or a storm rolls in.

Forrest Dickison 00:18:30

Or can you actually.

Forrest Dickison 00:18:31

Can you, can you bring it back and try again or add to it?

Guest 00:18:36

Yeah, both.

Guest 00:18:37

It's Nice to finish an omnispotter, as they're called, but that rarely happens.

Guest 00:18:43

Usually you only have an hour or two before the light changes.

Guest 00:18:49

Your subject matter is completely different, so you have to be quick.

Guest 00:18:54

And then once.

Guest 00:18:55

Once you've got that impression down, you can take it back to the studio.

Guest 00:18:58

And I'll.

Guest 00:18:59

I'll generally just most of my plein air.

Guest 00:19:02

This is what it's called when you paint plein air.

Guest 00:19:04

It's the open air.

Guest 00:19:07

When you're painting plein air, I generally just make studies and then bring it back to the studio for larger pieces or I'll fix it up in the studio.

Guest 00:19:17

It's challenging to get something finished out there in the field.

Forrest Dickison 00:19:21

Okay, that makes sense because I was imagining, well, you only have X amount of time, just with the light being the way it is and the care and the thought and the attention to detail that goes into a beautiful piece.

Forrest Dickison 00:19:32

Maybe it'll come together in the course of a couple hours.

Forrest Dickison 00:19:35

But it didn't seem likely to me that lightning would strike that often.

Guest 00:19:38

Yeah, yeah.

Guest 00:19:39

No, it doesn't.

Guest 00:19:40

And there is something charming about a sketch.

Guest 00:19:44

So I do like an unfinished sketch.

Guest 00:19:46

There's a lot of energy if it's done well.

Guest 00:19:50

If it's not entirely finished, then there's more for the viewer's imagination to do when it's looking at that particular painting.

Guest 00:19:57

So they can finish it on their end and then it becomes a little more sticky in their own mind, I think.

Guest 00:20:03

So there's a charm to an unfinished sketch, but generally it's a good idea to finish things.

Forrest Dickison 00:20:10

Oh, okay.

Forrest Dickison 00:20:11

So you mean so you will do like a pencil sketch of the landscape, and then someone could look at that and their mind could fill in the details, the colors, versus a finished painting, which leaves less room for the imagination.

Guest 00:20:25

Yes.

Guest 00:20:26

A pencil sketch or a color sketch.

Guest 00:20:28

So a really quick little color scribble.

Guest 00:20:32

Either way.

Forrest Dickison 00:20:33

A color scribble.

Forrest Dickison 00:20:35

Well, so, okay, I'm glad we're talking about this because I'm thinking about the art exhibit that was in Moscow during Grace Agenda.

Forrest Dickison 00:20:42

And one of the things I noticed, again, this is coming from someone who doesn't have a fine arts background.

Forrest Dickison 00:20:47

I don't have enough language.

Forrest Dickison 00:20:49

I know what I see, I know what I like, and I can look critically at things as opposed to like, that's cool.

Forrest Dickison 00:20:53

And just walk away.

Forrest Dickison 00:20:54

So I noticed that there was a difference between some of the paintings you had done, which I guess I would call them more impressionistic, and some of the more hyper realistic, hyper detailed kind of Approaches which had a different kind of appeal.

Forrest Dickison 00:21:07

I wonder if you can talk through the differences between those, because I imagine it's like a six of one, half dozen, another of the other.

Forrest Dickison 00:21:14

An artist's approach, someone's personal taste.

Forrest Dickison 00:21:17

But maybe you can talk about the selection of styles in that regard.

Guest 00:21:21

Yes.

Guest 00:21:21

So, yeah, personal taste has a lot to do with it, but.

Guest 00:21:27

And I've been through a lot of different styles on my fine art journey, but I've recently landed in, I guess, what you call more of an Impressionistic camp.

Guest 00:21:39

Because when I'm painting, what interests me is the soul of a place or the overall impression of a landscape.

Guest 00:21:51

My goal is to frame a window that is sort of a.

Guest 00:21:59

Well, an entrance into another world.

Guest 00:22:01

So I'm not looking.

Guest 00:22:02

I'm not that interested in detail.

Guest 00:22:04

I'm not interested in subject matter as much as the light.

Guest 00:22:12

So the subject matter obviously matters.

Guest 00:22:15

But I'm looking for that broad impression, color harmony, something that feels more like the place than looks just like a representational photograph of the place.

Guest 00:22:28

The strength of an Impressionist painting, if it's done well, is what we talked about earlier, where you have something that is not entirely finished.

Guest 00:22:38

And so when somebody looks at it and it's, you know, there's a brushstroke every other inch or something, but then you step back and it all kind of coheres into this unified piece of art that is the viewer's mind finishing the painting kind of with the artist.

Guest 00:23:01

And so instead of.

Guest 00:23:03

Instead of me just giving the viewer everything, you know, here's everything, down to the little hairs that doesn't.

Guest 00:23:11

It's not as much of a poetic take on the landscape.

Guest 00:23:14

It's more just a one to one representation, which can be impressive, but it doesn't scratch the itch that I'm trying to scratch, which is a broad impression of a place that is delivered straight to your soul.

Guest 00:23:34

You know, I'm trying to bypass all the information.

Guest 00:23:38

Tree, grass, clouds.

Guest 00:23:40

And just give you the impression of what it felt like to be there, which is, I think, that style, simpler design, broader brushstrokes, color harmonies that are not exactly the same as what you'd see in nature.

Guest 00:23:57

It actually does a better job of feeling like a place than a photograph.

Guest 00:24:02

Wood.

Guest 00:24:05

Yeah.

Guest 00:24:06

So I'm trying to get the most out of a painting when I do it.

Guest 00:24:10

And that impressionistic style, I think is.

Guest 00:24:16

It lends itself well to that more poetic take on the landscape.

Forrest Dickison 00:24:22

When you say you're trying to get the most out of it, what exactly do you mean by that?

Forrest Dickison 00:24:27

Like, the most evocative feeling, the most.

Forrest Dickison 00:24:30

The viewer feels the most engrossed in it, or you have effectively communicated what it felt like to be there?

Forrest Dickison 00:24:37

Maybe all of the above, yes.

Guest 00:24:39

But making the most of the medium.

Guest 00:24:41

So if I'm going to make a painting, I want it to feel like a painting.

Guest 00:24:44

What does painting do?

Guest 00:24:46

Well, that nothing else can do?

Guest 00:24:48

And it would be, you know, cobbling together sloppy, abstract shapes that, if you took them apart, wouldn't make any sense.

Guest 00:24:56

But you put them all together, you soften an edge here, you harden an edge here, you get the color harmonies just right.

Guest 00:25:03

It all of a sudden pops into this representation of a memory.

Guest 00:26:25

So that's.

Guest 00:26:26

That's what painting does, that nothing else really can do.

Guest 00:26:29

So if with Crispin's Rainy Day, I needed something a little more specific, something that lended itself to gesture and expression and characterization.

Guest 00:26:37

So that's.

Guest 00:26:39

I'm gonna grab the pen so that I could get really detailed expressions out of the characters.

Guest 00:26:44

I couldn't get.

Guest 00:26:46

I mean, you could.

Guest 00:26:47

I could have painted the whole thing, but it would have taken forever, and the expressions wouldn't be as iconic.

Guest 00:26:56

So by making them.

Guest 00:26:59

By turning these characters into lines, you're sort of boiling them down to their simplest form so that they can be delivered quickly and effectively.

Guest 00:27:07

Almost like, I don't know, emojis.

Guest 00:27:12

Yeah.

Guest 00:27:13

So when I'm painting, I don't want to be making comics.

Guest 00:27:16

I don't want to be making a photograph.

Guest 00:27:18

I want to be making a painting feel as much like a painting as possible so that it can be just what it is.

Forrest Dickison 00:27:28

So as you say that, I've got the book.

Forrest Dickison 00:27:30

I've got Crispin's Rainy Day here.

Forrest Dickison 00:27:31

I want to hold.

Forrest Dickison 00:27:32

Hold something up to the camera for those who are watching.

Forrest Dickison 00:27:36

So I guess you use the word iconic.

Forrest Dickison 00:27:39

And so this is the.

Forrest Dickison 00:27:40

I don't know, spoiler, I guess, but where he finds the lightning sword.

Forrest Dickison 00:27:44

And I guess I've never.

Forrest Dickison 00:27:45

This language is great because it's helping me interpret linguistically things I've only seen visually.

Forrest Dickison 00:27:51

So when you say iconic, obviously, like this image of Crispin with a sword, I look at this, and I immediately know what's happening.

Forrest Dickison 00:28:00

Right.

Forrest Dickison 00:28:00

There's not really a whole lot of room for ambiguity.

Forrest Dickison 00:28:02

It's there, it's clear, the lines are sharp, the action is communicated.

Forrest Dickison 00:28:06

Versus, if you were to try and do this in a painting, there would be a lot more interpretive work on the viewer's end.

Forrest Dickison 00:28:12

Like, what am I actually looking at?

Forrest Dickison 00:28:14

What is the meaning of being Crispin.

Forrest Dickison 00:28:17

It moves less, I suppose.

Guest 00:28:19

Right.

Guest 00:28:20

And it depends.

Guest 00:28:21

If I had painted it photorealistically or if I had painted it with a high degree of detail, it could have done something similar.

Guest 00:28:28

But the goal here in that image, in every image in this book, is the goal is to deliver the story effectively.

Guest 00:28:36

And so tying it all down by means of black and white line work is, I thought, was an effective way to do that.

Forrest Dickison 00:28:46

So maybe we can talk a little bit about how that came together.

Forrest Dickison 00:28:50

This makes a little bit more sense how something like this would happen.

Forrest Dickison 00:28:53

Maybe beginning with a story outline, maybe in the form of text, and then breaking it into a storyboard kind of form and settling on that.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:01

But maybe you can walk people through.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:02

Like, what does it take to produce a children's book?

Forrest Dickison 00:29:05

Because I can look at this and I can say, this is deceptively simple.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:09

You know, it's.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:10

It's a.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:10

You know, it's a.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:11

It's a 5, 10, 15 minute experience.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:13

You know, you're meant to be read probably multiple times.

Will Spencer 00:29:16

Do it again, Daddy.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:17

Like that.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:18

But like.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:19

But it's not going to take three hours to go through the book.

Forrest Dickison 00:29:21

And that's only possible because of probably many hours on the front end to make that process, that reading process so simple.

Guest 00:29:31

Yeah.

Guest 00:29:32

I wanted to make the highest quality peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I could.

Guest 00:29:36

I know it's going to take seconds to consume or minutes, but I know from personal experience, the books that I loved growing up, those little.

Guest 00:29:47

Those few minutes where your parents are reading to you or you're reading by yourself can have outsized impact down the line.

Guest 00:29:57

So, yeah, with this book in particular, I started with an image of a boy jumping through a puddle.

Guest 00:30:02

That was what I wanted.

Guest 00:30:05

I didn't have any idea what was in the puddle.

Guest 00:30:07

There wasn't Rose, the sibling, the little sister was not around at that point.

Guest 00:30:12

I just liked the idea of a backyard adventure.

Guest 00:30:15

A puddle is something that everybody can relate to.

Guest 00:30:17

We've all seen one, we've probably all jumped in one.

Guest 00:30:20

There it is.

Guest 00:30:23

So I thought, that's a great little entrance to a world that anyone can access in their backyard.

Guest 00:30:29

So I started there, and then also.

Guest 00:30:31

And then the next thing that came was the color palette.

Guest 00:30:33

I had this very specific idea in mind for this pop of yellow, the yellow rain jacket against grays and greens and blues of a kind of a rainy day.

Guest 00:30:46

So I had the color palette.

Guest 00:30:47

I had the boy jumping through a puddle.

Guest 00:30:48

And then from there I was bouncing between images and text.

Guest 00:30:53

So I would Sketch some ideas and then write some words that would maybe that could go with those images.

Guest 00:31:00

And it was really just a lot of trial and error.

Guest 00:31:02

I would take one direction until I was bored or confused, and then I would back up to where I was still interested and then take that and run with it.

Guest 00:31:12

And that was kind of the process.

Guest 00:31:16

Anytime, Anytime I got bored, I scrapped it, went back to where I still liked it and then kept running from there.

Guest 00:31:23

So the story really took shape once, I think once I decided that he was going to jump through the puddle and fall into an ocean and meet up with a crew of his own, you know, his own crew of pirate frogs.

Guest 00:31:39

That made me happy.

Guest 00:31:40

So I ran with that.

Guest 00:31:42

Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.

Guest 00:31:45

So, yeah, I remember the feeling very vividly of him.

Guest 00:31:51

The wish fulfillment for a kid of having your own crew of pirate frogs just waiting to do your bidding.

Guest 00:31:57

Seemed like it was a worthwhile endeavor.

Guest 00:32:01

And then because there needed to be a story and not just a boy and his pirate frogs doing whatever they wanted, I introduced the Rose, the.

Guest 00:32:12

His sister.

Guest 00:32:14

And so then the story became more about.

Guest 00:32:15

It became about their relationship.

Guest 00:32:17

How does a brother.

Guest 00:32:18

How do a brother and a sister work together in this world?

Guest 00:32:24

That's fantastical and a whole lot of fun and very rainy.

Forrest Dickison 00:32:36

So the story was your original creation?

Guest 00:32:39

Yes.

Forrest Dickison 00:32:41

That's beautiful.

Forrest Dickison 00:32:42

That I didn't expect.

Forrest Dickison 00:32:44

I read through this and I thought it was so moving because how do you, in our modern context, how do you portray a woman's participation or a little girl's participation in a hero story in a way that doesn't make her into the Rey Skywalker boss babe, but that also doesn't relegate her to a second class character.

Forrest Dickison 00:33:08

And you struck that.

Forrest Dickison 00:33:09

That I will not spoil, but you struck that balance beautifully, I thought.

Guest 00:33:15

Thank you.

Guest 00:33:16

Yeah, I'm glad to hear that you are picking up on that because that was what I set out to do once the sister came along is when I got really excited because I knew that it could be done.

Guest 00:33:28

It's been done before.

Guest 00:33:30

How do you have a female character who's strong in a uniquely feminine way?

Guest 00:33:39

How do you have a boy character who's strong in a uniquely masculine way, such that they do work together and it elevates both of them in their particular station.

Guest 00:33:50

It's just there's, you know, it's too easy to take them out.

Guest 00:33:55

Mostly what happens is you have a girl character that's turned into a second rate boy character just because.

Guest 00:34:02

And you know, it's then it's miniature Wonder Woman, or like you said, Rey Skywalker, whatever.

Guest 00:34:09

Or you just have to make the girl character actually heroic, but then put down the boy so that he's a loser and guilty for existing.

Guest 00:34:22

And I wanted to figure out a way to have both of those things in harmony in one story.

Forrest Dickison 00:34:30

Well, again, I don't want to spoil it for the listeners because I want everyone to go and buy this book for their kids.

Forrest Dickison 00:34:35

But what was the.

Forrest Dickison 00:34:36

And maybe even for themselves or for.

Forrest Dickison 00:34:38

I mean, Christmas is coming up, so you can buy it for family members with young children too.

Forrest Dickison 00:34:42

But this book is what, for like, 5 to 10 year olds?

Forrest Dickison 00:34:44

That's what the rough age range.

Guest 00:34:47

Yeah, I wrote it for my girls, and they're ages 6 to 2.

Guest 00:34:52

I have a 6 year old, a 4 year old, and a 2 year old and a 2 year old.

Guest 00:34:57

But yeah, this is probably bad to admit, but age never factored into what I was thinking along the way.

Guest 00:35:05

I just was 6 year old in general, but something that the parents would.

Guest 00:35:10

Parents needed to like it as well because they're the ones reading it to the kids.

Guest 00:35:14

So.

Forrest Dickison 00:35:16

So as you were.

Forrest Dickison 00:35:17

So as you were writing the story, like, what resources did you turn to to try and find how to strike that balance between the siblings where the little girl could have a very valuable role in the story without.

Forrest Dickison 00:35:29

Without stepping on the boy's role in the story and vice versa?

Guest 00:35:35

Well, honestly, it was a lot of Miyazaki.

Guest 00:35:39

He actually, he's one of the few creators that really gets feminine strength.

Guest 00:35:44

I think it was important that Rose in this story not have a character arc.

Guest 00:35:53

So all the angst and frustration is on Crispin's side.

Guest 00:35:57

He's the one that is desperate to find this lightning blade and loses it at his little sister because he's frustrated.

Guest 00:36:06

Rose, on the other hand, she says what she wants on the first page, and by the end of the book, she gets exactly what she wants.

Guest 00:36:15

She never loses her cool, she never gets in the way of the mission.

Guest 00:36:19

In fact, she's vital to the mission.

Guest 00:36:21

So Miyazaki does that in most of his stories.

Guest 00:36:29

His female characters are great.

Guest 00:36:32

There's a few that are not so great, but in general, that was the flavor that I wanted to highlight in this story.

Forrest Dickison 00:36:42

Thank you for pointing that out, because there was something about the two characters that I couldn't put my finger on.

Forrest Dickison 00:36:49

But you nailed it.

Forrest Dickison 00:36:50

Yes.

Forrest Dickison 00:36:51

Crispin has the angst, he has the arc, he has the journey in this particular way.

Forrest Dickison 00:36:56

And then you have Rose, and she's a consistent Force throughout.

Forrest Dickison 00:37:01

And I guess I picked up on that, but I couldn't quite.

Forrest Dickison 00:37:04

There was a relief in encountering her character, not just in the completion of the story, but also the role that she plays.

Forrest Dickison 00:37:12

Okay, so there's a lot going on in this story.

Guest 00:37:16

Yeah, there's a lot, yeah.

Guest 00:37:18

Rose, Part of the critiques I got from early on, when I was showing drafts of this around, was that she was not interesting as a character because she, you know, she had no character arc.

Guest 00:37:30

But that only just told me that I was on the right track.

Guest 00:37:35

Because I think not every character needs to have an arc to be compelling.

Guest 00:37:39

Rose is somebody who is who.

Guest 00:37:41

She knows who she is, she knows what she wants.

Guest 00:37:44

And because she's unflustered by the chaos around her, everything sort of conforms to her vision.

Guest 00:37:54

So she compels this rowdy crew of pirate frogs by not reacting to them.

Guest 00:38:05

I think that's something that is incredibly important for especially younger girls to learn is reacting is never helpful.

Guest 00:38:15

By reacting, you're just putting that other person in charge.

Guest 00:38:18

So if you stay calm, keep your emotions in check, you can control any situation that you've been given.

Forrest Dickison 00:38:29

That's wonderful.

Forrest Dickison 00:38:30

That I did pick up on in a couple of the scenes that she was very non reactive in environments where I think the opposite is portrayed in culture where girls are encouraged to be reactive.

Forrest Dickison 00:38:45

There's one particular scene I'm thinking of, you probably know, the one where she's confronted with a big challenge very suddenly didn't quite go the way that she wanted it to.

Forrest Dickison 00:38:53

And her response is like, oh, drat, here we go again.

Forrest Dickison 00:38:56

You know what I mean?

Forrest Dickison 00:38:57

Like in a very resigned, in a very grounded way.

Forrest Dickison 00:38:59

And I was like, as a reader, of course I'm invested in Crispin's story, but as a reader and as a man who's sensitive to some of these themes in culture today regarding feminism and the male versus female roles and women being second rate versions of men and all that, to have a little girl character who is authentically a little girl and isn't trying to be a bad version of little boy was incredibly refreshing.

Guest 00:39:27

Good.

Guest 00:39:27

Glad to hear you say that.

Guest 00:39:29

I thought so too.

Forrest Dickison 00:39:32

And I think the other thing that was really, that was really nice about it was you didn't shy away from.

Forrest Dickison 00:39:38

And I think this is probably okay to say because it's in the first part of the book of the little girl having a more domestic role, an explicitly domestic role, but that didn't feel demeaning.

Forrest Dickison 00:39:48

And that's the part as I was Working the way through the story.

Forrest Dickison 00:39:51

How is it going to balance this without it seeming demeaning?

Forrest Dickison 00:39:54

Because I know that's, of course, what everyone in Moscow gets accused of being, not what they actually are.

Forrest Dickison 00:39:59

I think Pastor Doug just did the theobros essay a couple days ago, and he was sort of talking about that.

Forrest Dickison 00:40:05

But you managed to strike that balance very well.

Forrest Dickison 00:40:08

Of her being in a.

Forrest Dickison 00:40:10

I guess we call it the domestic role, but it.

Forrest Dickison 00:40:12

Not.

Forrest Dickison 00:40:12

But it being an enhancement of her character in the story in general.

Guest 00:40:17

Yeah.

Guest 00:40:17

I mean, yeah, it's just a big, dumb, boring lie that the domestic role is uninteresting and unfulfilling.

Guest 00:40:26

I think it's.

Guest 00:40:28

Yeah.

Guest 00:40:29

One of feminism's biggest crimes is that it produces incredibly boring characters, boring people.

Guest 00:40:36

I just.

Guest 00:40:36

It's.

Guest 00:40:36

I hate it.

Guest 00:40:37

It's just.

Guest 00:40:38

It's so uncompelling.

Guest 00:40:41

So I made sure I.

Guest 00:40:43

Yeah, I wanted Rose to offend all the wrong people.

Guest 00:40:47

So she's.

Guest 00:40:50

You know, at what point the pirates yell at the dragon to give us back our maid?

Guest 00:40:56

So it's.

Guest 00:40:58

I just leaned into the stereotypes as much as I could, because in this day and age.

Guest 00:41:04

Well, in any day and age, the stereotypes, you know, they're.

Guest 00:41:08

They ring true for a reason.

Guest 00:41:13

Yeah.

Guest 00:41:13

And also, I have three little girls, so, yeah, I've noticed that they tend to be, well, feminine.

Guest 00:41:23

You know, they're not.

Guest 00:41:23

They're not out there playing with trucks and making up, turning everything into a gun.

Guest 00:41:28

They.

Guest 00:41:29

Everything they touch turns into a nest or a baby or some kind of cooking utensil.

Guest 00:41:35

And nobody taught them that.

Guest 00:41:37

That's just who they are.

Guest 00:41:38

And it's glorious.

Guest 00:41:39

Why would I want to make that.

Guest 00:41:40

Why would I want to turn them into something that they're not?

Guest 00:41:44

So, yeah, I wanted Rose to be strong, compelling, and maintain while maintaining her femininity.

Forrest Dickison 00:41:57

And Crispin got to be a little.

Forrest Dickison 00:41:58

He's very obviously a little boy.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:00

You know, he's not a man doing little boy things.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:04

He's a little boy with little boy emotions on this big quest.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:08

And I got the balance of the characters, and that's the only two characters of the book really are Crispin and Rose.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:17

And you balanced it.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:18

And that was the thing that I think really struck me.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:20

Again, this is like a little kids book, which is that there's so much to unpack in a little kids book.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:26

Feels completely appropriate at the same time.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:29

But you.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:29

You managed to also.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:30

I mean, Crispin feels authentically like a little boy.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:33

He's a little boy on an adventure with little boy emotions.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:36

And he Brings his sister along almost reluctantly, but she plays a role in the story.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:41

It's just a.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:41

There's something.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:42

I don't know.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:43

I don't feel ashamed to say that.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:44

It's just a very powerful story that you crafted and along with the visuals as well.

Guest 00:42:49

Thank you.

Guest 00:42:50

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:52

So.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:53

So maybe we can talk also about hello Ninja.

Forrest Dickison 00:42:55

So I had a copy of the first hello Ninja book, which I won in an NSA raffle, but I can't find it.

Forrest Dickison 00:43:04

I moved recently, so maybe it's in a box or maybe I donated it.

Forrest Dickison 00:43:07

I don't have a lot of little kids running around, so I'm not.

Forrest Dickison 00:43:10

Who am I going to read this to?

Forrest Dickison 00:43:11

So maybe you could talk a little bit about that project as well.

Guest 00:43:14

Yeah.

Guest 00:43:15

So that was the first thing that Nate and I worked on together.

Guest 00:43:18

That was.

Guest 00:43:19

I think I was still a senior in college when I jumped onto that.

Guest 00:43:24

And he was just curious about the board book market.

Guest 00:43:29

He wanted to try something.

Guest 00:43:31

So he wrote.

Guest 00:43:32

I think he wrote three, actually.

Guest 00:43:34

One was hello Ninja, one was Blah, blah, Black Sheep.

Guest 00:43:37

And then maybe the third one never got written, but there was another third one with zebras, I believe.

Guest 00:43:44

But yeah.

Guest 00:43:47

So my goal with Ninja was just I wanted to make a board book that didn't look like a lot of the board books that I had seen.

Guest 00:43:55

I wanted something that was colorful, had depth, was fully painted.

Guest 00:44:00

It was all digitally done, so it wasn't traditional paint.

Guest 00:44:03

But I was a art student at the time, so I was just trying to paint things that I was basically practicing what I had been seeing.

Guest 00:44:13

So I wanted different lighting situations, different color palettes, and that was kind of.

Guest 00:44:20

That was it.

Guest 00:44:20

That was as far as I was thinking with that book.

Guest 00:44:25

And then it went out there.

Guest 00:44:26

It made its way into the Starbucks Pick of the week, which was one of Nate's other books.

Guest 00:44:33

A sample of it was going to be out there.

Guest 00:44:34

Somehow that fell through, so we just slotted a Ninja instead.

Guest 00:44:39

That went well.

Guest 00:44:40

So from there it made its way into Target.

Guest 00:44:42

It sold well at Target.

Guest 00:44:44

And at that point, I think Nate and I were both thinking, this is it couldn't go any further than this.

Guest 00:44:49

We had moved on creatively, at least I had.

Guest 00:44:53

But then Nate's agent in LA picked it up and decided to run with it.

Guest 00:44:57

And she shopped it around to a bunch of different studios, and it ended up at Netflix, against all odds.

Guest 00:45:08

And I think 2018 was when we started working on the show with a studio up in Vancouver called Atomic Cartoons.

Guest 00:45:20

So.

Guest 00:45:21

And Nate was a producer And a writer.

Guest 00:45:24

I was a design consultant and a designer as well.

Guest 00:45:29

So we both had some creative control throughout the whole process.

Forrest Dickison 00:45:38

What was that process like, watching that just kind of experiment, reach the heights of culture?

Forrest Dickison 00:45:44

In some ways.

Guest 00:45:47

It was fantastic.

Guest 00:45:48

I learned a lot along the way and, well, probably more looking back is where all the lessons came from.

Guest 00:45:55

But very grateful for it.

Guest 00:45:58

I assumed that anything I touched from that point on would just be swept up into the machine and make millions of dollars and be a huge hit.

Forrest Dickison 00:46:07

Oh, obviously.

Guest 00:46:08

Obviously, that's what I assumed.

Guest 00:46:09

It hasn't worked out exactly like that, what I know.

Guest 00:46:15

But lots of lessons were learned.

Guest 00:46:17

It was a great process.

Guest 00:46:19

Working with Netflix was actually pretty great.

Guest 00:46:23

Working with Atomic Cartoons was fantastic.

Guest 00:46:26

They were all talented and very professional people.

Guest 00:46:29

So overall, it was a really fun experience.

Guest 00:46:36

Yes.

Guest 00:46:36

Has yet to be replicated, but we're working on it.

Forrest Dickison 00:46:40

So what is the hello Ninja series about?

Forrest Dickison 00:46:44

What was the overall vision?

Forrest Dickison 00:46:47

What were you guys trying to achieve with it originally?

Forrest Dickison 00:46:49

And then how did that take shape as it blew up?

Guest 00:46:53

Yeah, Nate could probably tell you more about the original vision.

Guest 00:46:56

I just know it was.

Guest 00:46:58

It was.

Guest 00:46:58

The original vision for me was make it as fun as possible.

Guest 00:47:01

He just handed me the manuscript, and I just thought, how can I squeeze as many fun things to paint as possible into this little short board book?

Guest 00:47:11

So that was my goal.

Guest 00:47:12

Make it fun, make it full of light, make it a good time.

Guest 00:47:17

And that vision, make it fun was maintained throughout the whole process.

Guest 00:47:22

But once it was turned into a show, we were very consciously trying to make a show that was genuinely healthy for kids, imagination.

Guest 00:47:34

So the goal was not to just provide a little escape from reality.

Guest 00:47:39

We wanted something that would encourage kids on their own journeys to become better characters themselves.

Guest 00:47:48

So we wanted to enforce play patterns, behavior, imaginative adventuring that would be imitated by the viewers in a way that was constructive, healthy, normal.

Guest 00:48:03

Because we knew all the competition was doing the same, but pointing kids in the wrong direction for the most part.

Guest 00:48:10

So it just became one of Netflix's most expensive snacks that they ever made for kids, at least.

Forrest Dickison 00:48:21

I mean, it was expensive.

Forrest Dickison 00:48:22

Go ahead.

Guest 00:48:23

Yeah, they, you know, it was a year of production.

Guest 00:48:29

Many lots of money and time and manpower was made for was put into this show that, you know, it's.

Guest 00:48:38

It's four seasons.

Guest 00:48:39

Each episode is maybe 10 minutes long.

Guest 00:48:41

So we wanted to just leave the audience better than we found them.

Guest 00:48:46

So there were a few battles we had about, you know, when there's some feminine feminist tendencies that were trying to creep in or this or that.

Guest 00:49:00

And the other thing, you know, but overall, it wasn't a whole lot that we had to fight about.

Guest 00:49:08

So, yeah, I'm proud of it.

Guest 00:49:11

I'm happy to have got to be a part of it, and I think it's a good, solid show.

Forrest Dickison 00:49:19

Yeah.

Forrest Dickison 00:49:20

That was going to be my next question as you bring this healthy, wholesome kids story into Netflix, which for me, I imagine that it's somewhat of a meat grinder to take a good idea and twist it around into some woke zombie version of what it once was.

Forrest Dickison 00:49:39

To hear that it came out true to the original vision.

Forrest Dickison 00:49:42

That's actually pretty encouraging to me.

Guest 00:49:45

Yeah, God was very kind and I think we were teamed up with the right people and Netflix.

Guest 00:49:54

This was before.

Guest 00:49:55

This was before 2020.

Guest 00:49:57

This was before things at Netflix went extremely woke.

Guest 00:50:01

They already were.

Guest 00:50:02

But there's no way that two white guys like myself and Nate could go make a show about a little Japanese boy today with Netflix at least, and maybe it'll swing back, who knows?

Guest 00:50:16

But I think we snuck in right at the tail end of when that would be acceptable and workable.

Guest 00:50:24

So, yeah, I don't know.

Guest 00:50:27

The biggest lesson was all I can do is the best that I can do at the time, and if God chooses to bless it, then no one's going to stop him.

Guest 00:50:37

So that was it.

Forrest Dickison 00:50:39

Maybe you could say more about that because I imagine that there are probably some parents listening and listening and probably some.

Forrest Dickison 00:50:45

Some creatives as well, you know, who, of course, I've had my own creative processes that I've been involved in.

Forrest Dickison 00:50:51

Again, like, photography was a big one for me, but maybe you can speak more about that, about, you know, trust, like doing the best you can and trusting God with the results.

Guest 00:51:01

Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it.

Guest 00:51:05

You want to do the best you can so that if God does bless it, you're not embarrassed once it's out there and famous.

Guest 00:51:14

But also so that, you know, if you.

Guest 00:51:16

If you make something to a certain.

Guest 00:51:19

If you make something excellent, it will get out there.

Guest 00:51:23

I think cream rises, but the rising, that's all God.

Guest 00:51:31

So as an artist, all you can really focus on is making great cream.

Guest 00:51:36

Like, do.

Guest 00:51:37

Do what you can to make your craft as excellent as possible.

Guest 00:51:41

Position yourself, if you can, with the right people to make it go.

Guest 00:51:46

But, you know, we plant water, but it's God who brings the increase.

Guest 00:51:52

So everything I've worked on since Ninja is, you know, has not gone as nearly as explosive, but it doesn't really bother me because I'm still just.

Guest 00:52:07

I know I'm doing the same thing that I was doing then, for whatever reason, nothing has worked out quite the same way.

Guest 00:52:12

But God is the one that's going to bless it or not when he feels like it.

Forrest Dickison 00:53:38

I think there's real wisdom of that.

Forrest Dickison 00:53:40

I've had some tweets go mega viral around the world, and if I keep trying to achieve that same thing again, not even like, maybe I'll get there, but I'll drive myself crazy trying to do it.

Forrest Dickison 00:53:53

When ultimately, when something like that is happening, it's like, well, this is clearly a God thing and praise him for making this possible.

Forrest Dickison 00:54:00

But I'm not gonna be able to make lightning strike twice.

Forrest Dickison 00:54:04

I just have to do the best job that I can with everything that I put my hand to, and God will take care of the rest.

Forrest Dickison 00:54:10

You said something really interesting, too.

Forrest Dickison 00:54:11

You said, put your all into it so that you're not embarrassed, because I guess it is kind of possible that something could do really well.

Forrest Dickison 00:54:18

And it's like, oh, there's a typo there, or there's a mistake there.

Forrest Dickison 00:54:21

Like God can do that as well.

Forrest Dickison 00:54:23

Which I tend to forget that.

Guest 00:54:27

Right.

Guest 00:54:27

And Ninja was actually interesting because the first version of the book that you apparently have somewhere in a box.

Forrest Dickison 00:54:33

Yes.

Guest 00:54:35

I was a student when I made it, so.

Guest 00:54:37

Oh, yeah, it was a little bit.

Guest 00:54:40

You know, I look at it now and I think, oh, wow, that's.

Guest 00:54:43

You know, I could do so much better.

Guest 00:54:44

But God didn't care.

Guest 00:54:45

I did what I could and he took it and ran with it.

Guest 00:54:48

And then we ended up selling the book rights to HarperCollins, and they went and made four new ninja books.

Guest 00:54:56

So we remade the first book, we made another one, and then we made two kind of spin off, I can read Ninja books.

Guest 00:55:03

And so I was actually able to go back and just recreate the first book with, you know, four years of artistic expertise under my belt, which I was grateful for.

Guest 00:55:17

So I could kind of tinker with it once it was already out there, which is not an opportunity that is often given to artists.

Forrest Dickison 00:55:25

Yes, I can.

Forrest Dickison 00:55:26

I can relate to that, where I go back and listen to something, maybe an interview that I did or something like that, and I look at that, it's like, oh, I would do that so much better now.

Forrest Dickison 00:55:37

That's just part of it.

Forrest Dickison 00:55:39

So maybe you can talk a little bit about thinking back on your experience as an artist, especially for the parents who are listening.

Forrest Dickison 00:55:49

What can they do?

Forrest Dickison 00:55:50

What helped you cultivate your gifts and abilities that was unique to your upbringing, who maybe Some teachers that made a difference, maybe some things that your parents did that really gave you an added push in your gifts.

Forrest Dickison 00:56:04

Because I imagine there's probably more than a few parents listening that have spotted what they think or what might even really be genuine artistic talent and interest in their children, and that they don't know how to cultivate that because they don't have it themselves.

Forrest Dickison 00:56:16

So maybe you can share a little bit about maybe some of the individuals or some of the decisions that were made for you to help.

Forrest Dickison 00:56:23

To help shepherd you in a particular direction.

Guest 00:56:27

Yeah.

Guest 00:56:28

So I think there's two answers to that question.

Guest 00:56:31

The first is that my parents were never concerned, really, about my desire to become an artist.

Guest 00:56:38

They were only ever encouraging, which I was very grateful for, because instead of making me complacent and lazy in my pursuit of artistic excellence, I only ever wanted to, you know, please them.

Guest 00:56:55

So it was encouraging that they were only ever encouraging.

Guest 00:57:01

Obviously, they weren't trying to hold me back or they weren't asking me questions like, how are you going to make money?

Guest 00:57:08

Maybe they ought to have been.

Guest 00:57:12

They never worried about it.

Guest 00:57:13

They only ever encouraged me.

Guest 00:57:14

Bought me art supplies, gave me art lessons, and that just made me want to work hard to not let them down, I guess.

Guest 00:57:24

And then my high school basketball coach, I credit him the most with the work ethic.

Guest 00:57:33

So talent only gets you so far.

Guest 00:57:37

Even interest only gets you so far.

Guest 00:57:39

You can love something, you can be good at it, but unless you're.

Guest 00:57:44

Unless you have the skill set, the muscle memory that it takes to show up and actually put the work in, all that interest and intent is not going to go anywhere.

Guest 00:57:55

So I learned my work ethic.

Guest 00:57:59

What little work ethic I have comes from high school basketball.

Guest 00:58:03

So high school basketball was where I learned to just keep pushing even when I wanted to lie down and give up and, you know, be done.

Guest 00:58:12

So athletics, combined with nothing but encouragement from my parents, I think enabled me to actually make it as a professional artist.

Guest 00:58:27

And then I'll say one more thing.

Guest 00:58:28

We weren't very good.

Guest 00:58:30

Our high school basketball team was not very good.

Guest 00:58:32

So we lost a lot.

Guest 00:58:35

And at the end of the game, the score was always objective, and it did not care about how you felt.

Guest 00:58:43

Artists can tend to be coddled.

Guest 00:58:46

Their emotions can be coddled by their parents, by their peers, because the artistic temperament is given a free pass, because that's just the way that artists are.

Guest 00:58:54

And let's not, you know, we'll just leave them there.

Guest 00:58:57

They're weird.

Guest 00:58:58

They are weird, but they need Artists need to be in absolute control of their emotions so that when you put something out into the world and it doesn't go well, it's.

Guest 00:59:16

You're not affected by it.

Guest 00:59:17

So it's losing at basketball all the time, knowing that there's objective standards for excellence, objective standards for beauty, truth, goodness.

Guest 00:59:27

That all apply to what you're making is you have to get there emotionally, intellectually, so that you don't get out into the world.

Guest 00:59:36

And just think that likes on Instagram translates to success as a human being.

Guest 00:59:43

So develop a thick skin, get used to losing, but don't ever settle with losing.

Guest 00:59:51

Just keep grinding, keep pushing, always be chasing that excellence.

Forrest Dickison 01:00:00

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Forrest Dickison 01:00:02

Because it seems like it ties into some of what we said about non reactivity.

Forrest Dickison 01:00:09

It ties into discipline and it ties in also to the only way that we really achieve excellence is through failure.

Forrest Dickison 01:00:19

And so I think that there's a tendency that we have in culture today, and I think it shows up across culture, to not tell somebody when they've failed at something, which does them a great disservice.

Forrest Dickison 01:00:32

You have to, like you said, a basketball score is objective, doesn't matter how you feel about it.

Forrest Dickison 01:00:38

But because we think of art as subjective and to some extent it is.

Forrest Dickison 01:00:42

But I think we all know when we listen to a song that we like or a good song, whether or not we like it or look at a beautiful painting or whatever it is, we know when something lands.

Forrest Dickison 01:00:52

But if we're afraid to tell somebody when it doesn't, how will they know what it takes to produce something that does?

Forrest Dickison 01:00:59

And I think a lot of the hesitation that people have is like, well, I don't want to hurt their feelings.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:03

Like, well, maybe they kind of need their feelings to be hurt.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:06

You don't intentionally hurt their feelings.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:07

Right.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:08

Like, I'm going to get them.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:09

But you have to.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:10

Maybe you can talk some.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:11

Because you had to work through that.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:12

Like every professional artist that I've ever met has had to work through countless failures emotionally.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:19

Right.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:20

The thing that they really liked, like, you know, they put that out there and it's like, no, it doesn't work what this is.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:25

Right.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:25

So maybe you can talk some of.

Forrest Dickison 01:01:27

Because that's the professional side of being an artist.

Guest 01:01:30

Yeah, it's just, I mean, it's cliche.

Guest 01:01:33

It's not how many times you get hit, but how many times you get back up.

Guest 01:01:36

It's just, can you do it over and over again?

Guest 01:01:38

And being an artist, you're putting your whole soul into something.

Guest 01:01:44

When you're creating it, it's like, you are.

Guest 01:01:48

God, this is amazing.

Guest 01:01:50

The inspiration is flowing, and then you put it out there.

Guest 01:01:54

Nobody cares.

Guest 01:01:55

It gets 10 likes on social media, which is.

Guest 01:01:58

Or you put it out there, you hand it to your mom, and they just go, that's nice.

Guest 01:02:02

Slap it on the fridge, and then it's in the trash the next day.

Guest 01:02:06

Yeah, it's funny.

Guest 01:02:08

My girls won't stop drawing, which is good.

Guest 01:02:11

They're good at it and they love it.

Guest 01:02:14

They're making books constantly.

Guest 01:02:17

But this is something that we're dealing with.

Guest 01:02:20

There's six and four.

Guest 01:02:21

But when I throw away their drawings all the time, because at first I was trying to keep everything because I didn't want to hurt their feelings, and I wanted to have this record of this pure artistic expression.

Guest 01:02:35

But I realized quickly that that was not actually helping them grow.

Guest 01:02:38

Like, no, yeah, you made a nice drawing.

Guest 01:02:40

Will put on the fridge for a day, maybe, and then it's in the trash because it's onto the next one.

Guest 01:02:44

Like, you know, if it's really excellent, I'll stick it in a frame, put it on the wall.

Guest 01:02:50

But.

Guest 01:02:52

And once.

Guest 01:02:52

Yeah, now they're.

Guest 01:02:53

They're totally comfortable with their drawings being trashed all the time.

Guest 01:02:56

Not.

Guest 01:02:57

Not by me.

Forrest Dickison 01:02:58

Right.

Guest 01:02:59

But, you know, thrown into the trash.

Guest 01:03:02

And that's.

Guest 01:03:04

I think it's.

Guest 01:03:05

That's the mindset that I think every artist needs to cultivate, is that the work is just work.

Guest 01:03:10

It's not who you are.

Guest 01:03:12

It's.

Guest 01:03:13

It's.

Guest 01:03:15

It's something that you're producing in order to bless other people if they are not blessed by it.

Guest 01:03:21

You can't get offended at that.

Guest 01:03:23

So if you put it out there and nobody likes it, all that tells me is that you put it out there is because you wanted praise.

Guest 01:03:31

You wanted your own ego to be scratched, and you wanted your friends to say, wow, I could never do that.

Guest 01:03:36

You know, but the whole point is that you're making food for somebody else's soul.

Guest 01:03:44

You want them to be uplifted, encouraged, inspired.

Guest 01:03:48

So then if you frame it that way, you punt something, you put a painting up on the wall, and nobody is uplifted or encouraged.

Guest 01:03:57

That wouldn't make any sense to throw a fit about that.

Guest 01:03:59

You say, oh, I'll just have to make it better.

Guest 01:04:03

And then hopefully it will achieve its goal.

Forrest Dickison 01:04:08

Can you talk about if you'd be willing to one of your experiences where there was something that you were particularly attached to, and you put it out there, and it maybe Went over like a lead balloon.

Forrest Dickison 01:04:17

And you had to work through that.

Guest 01:04:21

Hmm.

Guest 01:04:26

Maybe there have been too many to count, but I couldn't.

Guest 01:04:29

I can't remember.

Guest 01:04:29

I don't know.

Guest 01:04:30

It just.

Guest 01:04:31

I think my ditch might be on the other side where I.

Guest 01:04:34

Maybe I preemptively, you know, despise my own work just so that it's.

Guest 01:04:40

When somebody else doesn't like it, I can.

Guest 01:04:41

Well, I beat you to it.

Guest 01:04:43

I also think it's not any good.

Guest 01:04:44

So, whatever.

Guest 01:04:45

You can't hurt me, you can't fire me.

Guest 01:04:47

I quit.

Guest 01:04:49

So there's that other.

Guest 01:04:52

I think that's my ditch is to be a little more.

Guest 01:04:57

To cut the cord a little too readily, maybe, or to be.

Guest 01:05:01

To just throw it out there and move on, you know?

Guest 01:05:07

Yeah.

Guest 01:05:08

So I can't.

Guest 01:05:08

I can't.

Guest 01:05:09

Sorry.

Guest 01:05:09

I can't recall a time when I was devastated that somebody didn't like what I did.

Guest 01:05:13

I'm sure it happened.

Guest 01:05:14

I know it happened, but I just.

Guest 01:05:16

I don't know.

Guest 01:05:16

I don't remember.

Forrest Dickison 01:05:18

No, I mean, what I'm getting at, I think, and that makes a lot of sense, that you would preemptively dismiss your own work for fear of being hurt.

Forrest Dickison 01:05:27

And you're right, that is definitely a ditch.

Forrest Dickison 01:05:30

Because I'm interested for the parents listening and for the creative people listening who struggle with these issues either in themselves or their kids.

Forrest Dickison 01:05:38

Because I think that there are so many gifted and talented children, and adults for that matter, who have learned to dismiss their own work or have learned to overvalue their own work and finding that way through that path, navigating that.

Forrest Dickison 01:05:52

But then also how we can learn to cultivate our own creative process, whether or not we want to go pro with it.

Forrest Dickison 01:05:58

Because I think everyone has a different.

Forrest Dickison 01:06:00

We'll call it a creative gift and a different feel, whether it be music or the visual arts or writing, but the process of birthing it, of shipping it, as they say in the tech world, that's the terrifying thing.

Forrest Dickison 01:06:11

It's easier to leave something unfinished or keep it private than to actually subject it to someone looking at it.

Forrest Dickison 01:06:17

And so I think that's really important for people to learn how to do for their own well being, for their own creativity, for glorifying God, and also especially for parents who are watching their children grow and are trying to express gifts and want to know how to cultivate them, but also knowing that it's a hard world.

Forrest Dickison 01:06:36

Right.

Forrest Dickison 01:06:36

And just because you think something is amazing doesn't mean anyone else will.

Forrest Dickison 01:06:40

But you also have to think it's amazing, too.

Forrest Dickison 01:06:42

Maybe.

Forrest Dickison 01:06:43

I hope I'm putting my thoughts together the right way.

Guest 01:06:45

Oh, yeah, that's all.

Guest 01:06:47

It all makes sense, I think.

Guest 01:06:51

Yeah.

Guest 01:06:52

Well, going back to the other ditch, where if you're out there trashing your own work before anyone else can, that's just as selfish as looking for the ego trip, where you're just looking for praise.

Guest 01:07:05

So either you're just looking for praise or you throw it out there and then you just say, oh, it's so bad.

Guest 01:07:09

I'm no good, I'm no good.

Guest 01:07:11

That's just as selfish and just as great.

Guest 01:07:13

You should stop it.

Guest 01:07:16

And it's also a disservice to your audience.

Guest 01:07:18

So if you throw something out there and it does connect, it does bless them, they do like it.

Guest 01:07:23

And then you're out there saying, as it's no good, you're just telling those people that their taste is bad and that this thing that they genuinely had affection for is dumb from maybe one of their heroes.

Guest 01:07:37

So trashing your own work is selfish.

Guest 01:07:41

Looking for praise is selfish.

Guest 01:07:44

So the whole point is, like I said, to bless somebody else.

Guest 01:07:49

So if it's about you, it's going to end in tears.

Guest 01:07:57

It is challenging because at the end of the day, you're the one that has to make it.

Guest 01:08:00

It's your tastes, your skill level, your time, blood, sweat and tears that is going into this project.

Guest 01:08:08

So you do have to like it, and you do have to know it intimately inside and out just to make it, you know, before you can ship it.

Guest 01:08:19

But at the end of the day, you're just cooking a meal.

Guest 01:08:22

You're making something to feed somebody else.

Guest 01:08:26

And when you look at it that way, you don't want to be the chef that puts something on the table and just say, yeah, it's, you know, I could have done better, or there wasn't as much salt, and everyone's just enjoying the meal and you're over here saying, yeah, it wasn't salty enough, sorry, apologizing for it and ruining everybody's experience.

Guest 01:08:45

Just put it out there and just make a, you know, flag a note, okay, needs more salt.

Guest 01:08:52

So next time the meal will be a little bit better.

Guest 01:08:55

Next time it'll be a little bit better.

Guest 01:08:57

And just don't make it about yourself.

Guest 01:09:00

Once you start, once it's out there.

Forrest Dickison 01:09:04

Can you think, okay, so addressing the other ditch, then, can you think of when you had to learn how to accept praise?

Forrest Dickison 01:09:10

Because that is definitely a thing where people don't know how to graciously.

Forrest Dickison 01:09:14

Someone says, that's amazing.

Forrest Dickison 01:09:15

And if the tendency is to say, oh, no, no, it's terrible, like, no, you want to honor them in their experience, maybe you can talk about that.

Guest 01:09:25

Yeah, this.

Guest 01:09:26

Going back to basketball, one of my friends, one of my teammates, his dad just told him, look, at the end of the game, if somebody says, good game, doesn't matter if you won or lost, all you have to say back is, good game, Great job.

Guest 01:09:38

You know, you don't.

Guest 01:09:40

You don't need to say, I shot so poorly or, yeah, you know, and then.

Guest 01:09:43

Or flatter them and, you know, you did really great, too.

Guest 01:09:45

You know, all you need to say is thank you.

Guest 01:09:48

And then, you know, if somebody.

Guest 01:09:53

Yeah, the more I make things, the more I realize that it's not.

Guest 01:09:58

It's.

Guest 01:09:58

I'm just sort of showing up and putting stuff together.

Guest 01:10:00

But the idea and the art sort of comes from somewhere else.

Guest 01:10:05

I'm sort of just an archaeologist discovering something.

Guest 01:10:08

That's what it feels like.

Guest 01:10:10

So when somebody else comes and says, I loved this, you know, I'm.

Guest 01:10:15

I'm just free to say, oh, thank you.

Guest 01:10:17

I also thought that was great.

Guest 01:10:18

Wasn't it awesome?

Guest 01:10:19

And it's something that's just totally divorced from my own ego, my own pride, and we're free to enjoy it together, because now it's out there.

Guest 01:10:30

It doesn't really belong to me anymore.

Guest 01:10:32

It's just this artifact floating in the wild.

Guest 01:10:38

So, yeah, if somebody praises you, just say, thank you.

Guest 01:10:41

That's it.

Guest 01:10:42

And it's.

Guest 01:10:42

Yeah.

Guest 01:10:43

Then you bite your tongue.

Guest 01:10:44

You don't say, I'll do better next time.

Guest 01:10:46

Yeah, I still feel that.

Guest 01:10:48

Don't say, I'll do better next time, or don't trash your work.

Guest 01:10:52

But definitely, definitely don't rely on praise as a fuel to keep you going.

Guest 01:11:04

Praise is nice, it's encouraging, but it's not.

Guest 01:11:09

You're not really going to.

Guest 01:11:10

You never learn from it.

Guest 01:11:12

You only really learn from critique, honest critique.

Guest 01:11:17

So say.

Forrest Dickison 01:11:19

Say more about that.

Guest 01:11:21

I mean, if you throw something out in the world and, well, let's take social media for another example.

Guest 01:11:26

You post a drawing, and of course no one's going to.

Guest 01:11:29

I mean, maybe this happens, I guess, but people don't jump in the comments and just say, you stink.

Guest 01:11:33

Go home, quit drawing.

Guest 01:11:34

Everyone just says, wow, amazing.

Guest 01:11:36

Amazing.

Guest 01:11:36

You're the best.

Guest 01:11:37

Oh, I wish I could draw like you, whatever it is.

Guest 01:11:40

And then that becomes sort of your.

Guest 01:11:43

The end goal of what it is you're doing.

Guest 01:11:46

That praise is.

Guest 01:11:48

It's just going to stunt your growth because you're not actually going to learn anything.

Guest 01:11:51

So if you don't, if you throw something out there, no one's offering constructive criticism.

Guest 01:11:57

They're just making your head a little bit bigger.

Guest 01:12:00

And the worst thing you can do as a creative is learn to rely on that, or even worse, to love it.

Guest 01:12:08

To love praise.

Guest 01:12:10

You should always feel a little bit uncomfortable when somebody says, great job.

Guest 01:12:13

This is awesome.

Guest 01:12:16

Yeah.

Guest 01:12:17

So you don't.

Guest 01:12:18

And praise is good because it means that somebody else was blessed.

Guest 01:12:25

That's all it tells you.

Guest 01:12:27

But if you throw something out there and you get a criticism, that's really, actually helpful data.

Guest 01:12:34

Because now you can go back and say, okay, this didn't land either because the audience missed it or because I failed to deliver.

Guest 01:12:43

And if I failed to deliver, then you can go and say, how was it this story?

Guest 01:12:49

Was it color drawing?

Guest 01:12:51

And then you can dissect it.

Guest 01:12:53

And maybe the audience picked up on something that they think is the problem.

Guest 01:12:59

But you have to be intelligent enough to identify the problem somewhere else so that you fix it over here.

Guest 01:13:07

And then that particular reaction goes away, if that makes any sense.

Guest 01:13:13

So when people don't like something, that's when I really pay attention.

Guest 01:13:18

Because then you have to ask, why didn't they like it?

Guest 01:13:22

Is it their problem?

Guest 01:13:22

Is it my problem?

Guest 01:13:23

Is it the works problem?

Guest 01:13:25

And then once you identify a problem, then there's an opportunity for education and growth, and that's exciting.

Guest 01:13:33

Growth is always fun.

Forrest Dickison 01:13:36

And that's why it's so important to subject yourself to valid criticism, even though it might hurt your feelings, even though you have an emotional attachment to something.

Forrest Dickison 01:13:44

I mean, the royal you, of course, that's the way that you're going to grow is by finding out what works and what didn't from an objective observer.

Forrest Dickison 01:13:51

Not just friends, not just family.

Forrest Dickison 01:13:53

Right.

Forrest Dickison 01:13:53

Who, of course they're going to love what you do, because they love you.

Forrest Dickison 01:13:57

But there is something about, like, no, you put it up and you let the public look at it and you let them tear it apart.

Forrest Dickison 01:14:03

Yeah, it's terrible, but you got to do it.

Guest 01:14:06

Yeah, absolutely.

Forrest Dickison 01:14:08

So maybe you can share a little bit with maybe some of the projects that you have coming up for either Cannonball or Cannon Press or what you're working on, what you're working on yourself.

Guest 01:14:18

Yeah.

Guest 01:14:19

So right now I'm working full time with Canon Press on some animation content that is.

Guest 01:14:27

We're trying to get a.

Guest 01:14:28

Right now there's a show and a feature that we're building out, sort of elaborate pitch decks for.

Guest 01:14:35

So I'M doing some short sample animation for these projects that we will then go out and attempt to wrangle some funding for.

Guest 01:14:45

So that's what I'm doing full time right now.

Guest 01:14:48

I'm painting on the side.

Guest 01:14:49

There's the gallery that you saw as a new addition to Moscow, owned by or run by New St.

Guest 01:14:58

Andrews College.

Guest 01:14:59

So I'm supplying some paintings there.

Guest 01:15:02

And then I'm working on a graphic novel on the other side as well.

Guest 01:15:09

Those are the main projects that I've got going at the moment.

Forrest Dickison 01:15:14

So you're.

Forrest Dickison 01:15:15

So how do you.

Forrest Dickison 01:15:16

I mean, I guess you're all.

Forrest Dickison 01:15:17

It sounds like you're always creating something.

Will Spencer 01:15:18

Whether you're at work or whether you're.

Forrest Dickison 01:15:20

Working on the graphic novel or you're painting.

Forrest Dickison 01:15:22

Like, is this.

Forrest Dickison 01:15:22

Is this just a constant state of, I guess a state of mind that you're in?

Guest 01:15:28

Yes, it's.

Guest 01:15:30

Yeah.

Guest 01:15:31

The short answer is yes.

Guest 01:15:33

I mean, I will say that Sundays are extremely important.

Guest 01:15:40

And you start to understand the way that.

Guest 01:15:43

Why God did it the way that he did.

Guest 01:15:45

Because I know that I can just, you know, all six cylinders for six weeks just run flat out knowing that on Sunday I can just collapse and, you know, spend time with my family and rest and I'm not allowed to draw.

Guest 01:16:03

I don't draw on Sundays.

Guest 01:16:04

That's, you know.

Guest 01:16:06

So, yeah, Sundays are extra, extra sweet these days.

Forrest Dickison 01:16:14

Do you have a day set aside or a time of the week set aside to do your painting?

Forrest Dickison 01:16:19

Because I would imagine there's something very personal about that.

Forrest Dickison 01:16:22

This is, for me, this is what I'm doing.

Forrest Dickison 01:16:23

Or maybe I'm wrong about that, but it would seem to me that this is something that requires such focus and there's a degree of intimacy to it as well.

Forrest Dickison 01:16:32

Or is it just whenever it comes up during the week?

Guest 01:16:35

No.

Guest 01:16:36

Yeah.

Guest 01:16:36

Generally the weekends are when I paint these days, but it's either.

Guest 01:16:43

But that is flexible as well.

Guest 01:16:46

So I've been doing just early mornings.

Guest 01:16:49

I'm up early, working, then the kids are up getting them ready for school.

Guest 01:16:53

Then it's off to work with Cannon Press and then home for dinner, spending time with the family until they're in bed.

Guest 01:17:02

And then maybe I'll do a little bit of work.

Guest 01:17:04

But usually I try to get to bed early so that I can get up early again the next day.

Forrest Dickison 01:17:10

The rhythms of a professional artist.

Forrest Dickison 01:17:12

Sound like a professional anything?

Forrest Dickison 01:17:14

Amazing.

Guest 01:17:14

Yes.

Guest 01:17:15

It turns out it's work.

Forrest Dickison 01:17:18

You mean you're not just up at 3:00 in the morning waiting for the.

Guest 01:17:21

Muse to appear well, no, I am, but it's.

Guest 01:17:28

Yeah, sometimes it shows up, but I'm there whether or not the muse is there.

Guest 01:17:32

That's the goal.

Forrest Dickison 01:17:34

And you're working on.

Forrest Dickison 01:17:36

Just, just real quickly, you're working on animation now.

Forrest Dickison 01:17:39

So I think you had mentioned earlier that you wanted to be getting into animation and now you finally worked your way around to that.

Guest 01:17:45

Yeah, it's.

Guest 01:17:46

I've.

Guest 01:17:46

I'm very grateful for how that's worked out.

Guest 01:17:48

So we don't.

Guest 01:17:50

Nothing is nailed down yet, but we're all hopeful.

Guest 01:17:54

We have projects that we like.

Guest 01:17:56

But it's.

Guest 01:17:58

Yeah, I'm doing traditional hand drawn animation and it's.

Forrest Dickison 01:18:02

Oh wow.

Guest 01:18:03

Extremely fun.

Guest 01:18:04

Some of the most fun I've had in my entire career, I would say.

Forrest Dickison 01:18:08

So, so hand drawn, like cell animation?

Guest 01:18:11

Yes.

Guest 01:18:12

Yeah.

Guest 01:18:12

So it's not, it's not on paper.

Guest 01:18:14

We're drawing directly onto the computer, but still all we're doing is we're skipping the scanning process.

Guest 01:18:22

Other than that, it's the same.

Forrest Dickison 01:18:25

Oh my goodness.

Forrest Dickison 01:18:26

See, that is something.

Forrest Dickison 01:18:28

So now I'm going to say that is something I could never do.

Guest 01:18:31

Yeah, it is absurd.

Guest 01:18:35

I can't.

Guest 01:18:36

It doesn't.

Guest 01:18:36

Yeah, it's a lot of work.

Forrest Dickison 01:18:39

Yes.

Forrest Dickison 01:18:41

A lot of very detail oriented micro work in a way.

Forrest Dickison 01:18:46

Just the subtle changes of a facial expression.

Forrest Dickison 01:18:49

Oh, I couldn't do it.

Guest 01:18:50

Right.

Guest 01:18:51

And back to how we started this conversation.

Guest 01:18:53

This is why when I'm painting, I'm trying to be sloppy and loose and relax and just have fun.

Guest 01:18:58

Because during my day job I'm worrying about turning a character in three dimensional space on a page and it's just, there's math involved.

Forrest Dickison 01:19:10

It's a little more complicated.

Forrest Dickison 01:19:12

See, that makes a lot of sense.

Forrest Dickison 01:19:14

Like we started talking about the difference between like a crispin and the impressionistic painting in the gallery.

Forrest Dickison 01:19:20

That makes a lot of sense to me that you know, producing something as detail oriented and as precise as this, how appealing it would be if you're always in the headspace to be drawing or painting, to produce something so much more loose and evocative, I guess.

Guest 01:19:35

Right.

Forrest Dickison 01:19:37

Well, this has been fantastic.

Forrest Dickison 01:19:39

I know you've got a lot of work to do today.

Forrest Dickison 01:19:41

Thank you so much for the generosity of your time and walking me and walking us through your artwork.

Forrest Dickison 01:19:47

Is there some place that people can go online to find a gallery of your paintings or images of your paintings or something like that?

Guest 01:19:55

Yeah.

Guest 01:19:56

Forrestdickison.com you can go there.

Guest 01:20:00

There's a newsletter to sign up for.

Guest 01:20:02

The only time I send out a newsletter is When I have new paintings, which is rare these days, but then you can find me on Instagram.

Guest 01:20:10

I do have a Twitter, but mostly I repost paintings of dead people, so that's not really my own work.

Forrest Dickison 01:20:19

Oh, paintings of dead people.

Guest 01:20:21

Yeah, you know, the masters, the old.

Forrest Dickison 01:20:24

Oh, okay.

Guest 01:20:24

Yeah, the old dead guys who really knew how to paint.

Guest 01:20:28

You know, I just repost.

Guest 01:20:29

What?

Guest 01:20:30

I like Twitter.

Guest 01:20:31

So paintings of dead people.

Guest 01:20:33

I should say paintings by dead people.

Guest 01:20:35

That's not a terrible.

Guest 01:20:37

Yeah, secret.

Guest 01:20:41

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Guest 01:20:46

We don't need to go there.

Forrest Dickison 01:20:47

No, we don't.

Guest 01:20:47

Paintings by peop.

Guest 01:20:49

By old masters who are now deceased, but because their paintings are still around, they stood the test of time and they're great.

Guest 01:20:58

Paintings of dead people.

Guest 01:21:00

That's terrible.

Guest 01:21:00

What a way to sign off.

Forrest Dickison 01:21:02

That's perfect.

Guest 01:21:06

Who are some of your favorite masters?

Forrest Dickison 01:21:08

No, it's so good.

Forrest Dickison 01:21:10

That's great.

Forrest Dickison 01:21:11

Who are some of your favorite masters?

Guest 01:21:14

My favorite dead people.

Forrest Dickison 01:21:15

Yes, exactly.

Forrest Dickison 01:21:17

Your favorite paintings of dead people.

Forrest Dickison 01:21:22

It's so good.

Forrest Dickison 01:21:23

That's great.

Guest 01:21:24

I love John Singer Sargent.

Guest 01:21:26

I love Joaquin Soroya.

Guest 01:21:29

I love the old Japanese masters.

Guest 01:21:31

Yoshida Hiroshi in particular.

Guest 01:21:36

I love the California Impressionists.

Guest 01:21:38

So Edgar Payne, William Wendt are some of my favorites.

Guest 01:21:42

NC Wyeth, I love the end pages of Crispin's Rainy Day are a nod to NC Wyeth.

Guest 01:21:49

Okay.

Guest 01:21:51

And recently I've been reading a biography of the artist Maynard Dixon, who was painting a little before NC Wyeth in the American Southwest.

Guest 01:22:07

So, yeah, those are some of my go to's.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:12

I've always been a big fan of Alfred Bierstadt.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:16

And Caspar David.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:17

And Caspar David Friedreich.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:19

I originally liked the Wander above the Sea of Fog.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:22

I think that's still a classic painting, but there's so many others of his that are so beautiful.

Guest 01:22:27

Yeah, that's a good one.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:29

And Bierstadt's landscapes of the American west is like time traveling.

Guest 01:22:34

Yeah, those are great.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:36

Wonderful.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:37

Well, thank you so much again for your time.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:39

We'll be sure to send people to your website and your Twitter.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:41

Thank you so much, Forrest.

Guest 01:22:43

Yeah, thanks for having me, Will.

Guest 01:22:44

Take care.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:45

Lord bless you.

Forrest Dickison 01:22:46

Take care.