《Sunday Sketching》

“I tend to take things extreme.”

知道 Christoph Niemann 是从 Netflix 的纪录片 《Abstract: The Art of Design》，当时觉得是有多么热爱生活的人才可以设计出这些有温度的作品。用他自己的话说，就是可以把一些我们不自知的或者习以为常的事物以另一种方式表达出来，带来新的角度新的美感，岂不快哉？确实，看他的作品，总觉得是不是远不够热爱我的生活，怎么这些小细节也可以这么迷人美好，而我们却总在追寻诗和远方。

以下作品来自 Niemann 的书和 Ins：

以下摘自他的作品 《Sunday Sketching》，他在这本书里用故事和插画的形式讲述了自己的故事，他说生活无法预测，“Life is not predictable, and I’m not always able to maintain this system.” 但他一直践行让自己不被生活裹挟，一直坚持在生活和艺术的碰撞里创作自己满意的作品。

我以问答的形式来整理了这本书带给我的灵感：

- 对于艺术和设计，后天的努力是不是可以弥补天赋的不足？

Slowly I've realize that there may be some core that I can't mold. This core is where my grand artist ideals collide with the limitations of my skills, the inherent insecurity of performing in front of an audience, and the element of chance in the creative process.

- 舒适圈一定得是非常舒服的状态吗？

However, the most dangerous comfort zones are the ones where we are busy, maybe even stressed.

Being busy is a great excuse for not asking yourself where you are going. Moving to another continent in my twenties had been hard, expensive, and the most inspiring thing I had ever done, and now it was time to shake things up again.

- 我为什么要选择设计这条路？

The gateway drug is not creating art, but experiencing art: seeing a painting, reading a book, or listening to music that expresses something that you always knew, but were never aware of. Having the whole world explained (or even better, turned upside down) just by looking at a few marks on a piece of paper is the greatest thrill I know.

If experiencing art is so amazing, how great must it be to actually MAKE this stuff?

- 看着自己几年前的设计作品，觉得比现在的自己好，怎么办，很焦虑！

Your audience will always judge you by your best work, and then expect you to repeat it.

Every athlete, every musician practices every day. Why should it be different for artists?

Writing, drawing, designing - these are skills, not natural talent. Becoming good at any of them is very hard, and it takes exactly ten thousand hours.

- 如果有一天你发现你坚持做的事情不是对的事情？

The small but distinct downside of focusing on your craft is that you become blindsided. What if I’m spending all my energy getting good at the wrong thing?

It's hard to judge what you are doing wrong. Even harder,to be aware of what you are doing right.

- 艺术有什么用？艺术能拯救世界吗？

In this blinding ocean of smooth two-second HAHAs we have to remind ourselves that the art that really moves us is often slow, strange, and nagging.

But even if my work can never stop a tyrant or global warming, I inevitably contribute to how our world is perceived.

- 如果有一天灵感枯竭了怎么办？

In my experience,the really valuable new ideas come from the process. 

The process being: You take what you know and expose it to something you don't know and observe what happens.

- 艺术家最重要的技能是什么？

The most important skill you can have as a artist: 

Open your mind as wide as you can and check out every connection between any two elements.

Most of these experiments yield nothing,but somewhere in this ocean of meaningless gibberish,something might click.