Marshall: Well, here Stan is yes - here Stan
is and he is bursting - and brimming with the mirth and magic of life - oh there he
is, yes, there he is and he is bursting and brimming with the mirth and magic of life. [Intro] Marshall: Dude, dude! We're here on the Draftsmen
Podcast to talk about something art related. Let's talk about something art related, Stan.
You start. Stan: Let's just jump in - let's talk about
scribbling. Marshall: This is a Draftsmen Podcast and
we're going to talk about scribbling? Stan: Yeah, can you believe it? We're rebels. Marshall: Do you have a way that you want
to start or you want me to start us? Stan: Go ahead. I’m curious what you have
to say about scribbling [Chuckles]. This is so bad. Can you sell it? Marshall: With the main topic being drawing- Stan: Yeah- Marshall: There has to be at least one satellite
cluster around there about scribbling - and so that's what we're going to talk about for
an hour here or so [Chuckles]. Stan: Scribbling doesn't just mean like with
your pencil - I mean, although, you know, we're probably going to talk a lot about scribbling
with a pencil, but the idea of scribbling is more of just like exploring ideas. Just
kind of throwing stuff down whether it's text or little doodles with your pencil, it's the
process of discovering things - you know, exploration. Marshall: Well yeah, if you're gonna go for
the figurative view of it right away, why don't we start with the concrete process of
scribbling. Let's start this way - this is a good way to take anything up, make a spectrum
- on one extreme, you have the really scribbly, so scribbly that nobody knows what it means
and on the other extreme you have the really computer printer precision where every line
goes down exactly where it's supposed to be the first time and maybe before talking about
scribbling, we should talk about the advantage of not scribbling. The person who - when they have something
to say, they just hit write what they have to say first shot and that's not a bad thing
and if you can do that, why not do that? But last night in class with Vance, we're teaching
this concept art boot camp and one of our students, Boyan, was sort of apologizing for
not scribbling, and yet he is not lacking in imagination and ideas - they just go - they
go down precise very quickly. Winsor McCay drew that way, Kim Jung Gi draws that way. A lot of great improvisational drafters are
that way and if they don't start that way, I think they get that way just out of efficiency.
So, no demonizing of the precise types - if they don't suffer from the side effect of
not putting out, that's one extreme. Stan: Okay. Marshall: If you can do your job and explore
and make everything work with a clean precise line, yay for you. Stan: That's kind of the approach that I was
taught at Watts Atelier. Jeff Watts has a philosophy that a drawing should look good
at every stage. So, if you put down five lines ,those five lines should be designed really
well - they should be - they should be attractive lines. You should just look at and be like
"Wow that's a cool abstraction", or whatever you know. The line quality is good thick to thin, you
know, there's variation and the shapes just look dynamic and not boring, they're just
interesting to look at. So that is one approach is to just start and always have things look
good no matter when you stop. That's the way I was taught . Marshall: That is most certainly not the way
I was taught. Stan: Yeah, so we are opposites but both have
benefits. Marshall: Yeah I’ve envied what you do because
I’m embarrassed to draw in front of people because of the awkwardness of the line and
it's like "Well, I can make that line really beautiful if you just give me a few hours
to work on this piece where nobody's watching and it'll be like watching paint dry but I’ll
be following the thick and thin of that line". It's just - it's a different - they're two
opposite extremes, really. Stan: Yeah, but there is a benefit to the
way you were taught. I mean, if you're a student at least, if you're not like at the level
of Jeff Watts that literally every line that comes out is beautiful, if you're not there
yet, this philosophy, this approach can bring a lot of anxiety, you know? It's a lot of
pressure and sometimes you just need to scribble to figure out where you're headed, you know? Marshall: Yeah. Stan: Without the pressure of making it look
good. So, there is a lot of power in not caring if something looks good. There's a different
purpose to this sketch that you're doing, it's not to present to others it's to explore
your own ideas. Marshall: We're laying out a spectrum here
- so let's go to the other extreme. The other extreme would be the person who can only scribble.
They scribble and they never discover and so we'll rule that out - we'll call that a
non-good thing unless it's therapeutic. Now, on that side of scribbling, you get Edward
Sorel he was a great editorial illustrator, still active ,and he would carry the scribbling
all the way through to the finished piece and I did not like his style when I first
saw it, the same reason I didn't like Heinrich Klein style is that I associated it with getting
scolded for scribbling, not that I - I don't think I ever got scolded for scribbling but
yet it was so much of an icon of my generation "You're not supposed to scribble" that I imagined
getting scolded for scribbling. And it also might be why some people like
Edward Sorel’s style is that it's - they associate it with defying the grown-ups by
scribbling. There is a kind of "I don't care what you think of this". It's like a raving
madman just going into this manic flurry of words and then finds the words and they all
make sense. But those are two extremes, we've got the
very clean and the very scribbly on a spectrum and we can chop off one end of the spectrum
and I think where we're headed is the scribbling to discover and then once we've discovered,
refining that or simplifying it - animators do this, animators will try it a number of
different ways and then when they find it, it's not that they - well, I guess you could
say they refine it, but they simplify it. They take - they put fewer lines in there,
they clean it up. Stan: Yeah, so what you were describing there
with those artists is the scribbling is the art - it's not a concept, it's not exploration
of thought, it is the art, it's meant to be the final product, right? Marshall: Yeah. Stan: So, we should just move past that. I
mean, we're just talking about style at that point where you could do whatever you want,
style is just your thing. So going - you know, now we going back to the scribbling to discover.
I think first of all it's important to note that scribbling is not clear communication
- art or drawing or the visual you know, picture making is a language - it's a visual language
and so if you are communicating to your viewers, scribbling is not a clear form of communication. Marshall: Right. Stan: You have to start refining if you want
to be clear in your communication. I want to make an analogy here to writing because
we can scribble with writing with the way we take notes and stuff like that or brainstorm
ideas. It's not just important to clearly communicate your thoughts to other people,
it's also important to communicate them clearly to yourself. Marshall: Yeah. Stan: So for example with writing or taking
notes, Marshall have you ever had this happen to you where you have an idea in your mind,
you write it down, you write down some quick, like quick idea of something, some words to
help you remember it later and then a few days later, a week later a month later, whatever,
time passes by, you look at that and you have no idea what you're saying? Marshall: Yeah, sometimes my handwriting's
so messy that I have to get out a loop and imagine how I was putting that letter down
to even figure out what it says. But yeah, the concepts too. Stan: Yeah, not just your handwriting, but
you said some word, you put some words down that were supposed to be like entryways into
the thoughts you had, but the thought- Marshall: Yeah, that's what happens with me
all the time. Stan: But the thought, you forgot the thought.
And so, creating that entryway, that door to that thought is useless if you forgot the
room that you're leading to, right? So, this is - I think it's become an important part
of my note-taking is to always when I take notes, I could have these quick shorthand
ways of taking notes but I always have to go back and process them while they're still
fresh in my mind, so that I, future Stan, who I always have to remember that my brain
is an idiot and it's gonna forget, I have to speak to future Stan as if it's some other
person and clearly communicate my thoughts if I really want to remember this. I could look - I could think "Never mind,
I jotted that down but it's not that important" and I could just ignore it. But if it really
is something I want to remember, I have to refine it, I have to come back and process
that information once I have more time. The same thing should apply I think to scribbling
with drawing when you're sketching. You can have an idea pop into your head and you can
scribble it down real quick. But then, if it really is important to you and you like
this idea, try to refine it soon before this vision leaves your head because it's gonna
disappear unless you refine it enough to the point where it is a good enough reminder to
yourself of what it is that this visual thing represents to you. Marshall: Yes, songwriters have said the same
thing that it's the most important thing is to get the first impulse, the first intensity,
the thing that brought up the idea in the first place - get it into form and then later
you'll elaborate on it, but if you don't, at least get that kernel, unpolished as it
is, then you're gonna lose that kernel. Have you seen Elizabeth Gilbert's Ted Talk
on the muses? Stan: No. Marshall: Oh, she has a talk that I went through
with a classic in just recently. It's about where the term "Genius" came from and the
idea is that we are vessels of genius as opposed to being geniuses. Stan: Okay. Marshall: She is a celebrated author whose
work I’ve been living in for the last year, and her Ted talk is related to this strike
when the iron's hot thing. If the muse is giving you an idea and you're saying "I’m
too busy"... Stan: Yeah. Marshall: The muse will say "Okay, I’ll
find somebody else" and it's a- Stan: "Find somebody else"... Marshall: Game of pretend perhaps, but it's
a game of pretend that makes you take the ritual seriously that first strikes are very
important and so even if you get them roughly, at least you got them. You got the seed even
if the seed is a little damaged, it can still grow into a good tree. Stan: Yeah, but I mean, I think the seed - we
have to be honest with ourselves of how clear that seed really is. Marshall: Okay, go ahead. Stan: It's kind of a bad habit to constantly
come up with these ideas and jot them down and have this fantasy that - this has purpose
- that this will actually provide us with some value. That okay, we put this down, it'll
be there, we'll remember it. But the scribble is very temporary. And so, it is a very good
skill to be able to quickly refine your scribbles and you got to start practicing that skill
as well, daily. If you are somebody that sketches things and
comes up with a lot of ideas all the time, you have to have a ritual, a part of your
routine to refine your scribbles, whether that's in words or with doodles, because it's
a bad habit to just jot down scribbles and then years later, all you have is a bunch
of doorways to empty rooms. Marshall: That makes sense - that scribbling
is a means to an end. No - if we if we bounce over to there, scribbling is not an end-all,
it's a means to an end - we're trying to communicate something clearly but we can't - we don't
have a clear grasp of it yet or our mind is running too fast to be able to catch up with
a train of thought but at least we've got something to grip. This brings up what I think may be one of
the greatest advantages of scribbling, and that is that it short circuits the ability
to feel self-conscious. When you are chasing something and trying to grab it, you are not
thinking "How do I look in front of the camera", you are in the midst of striving for a very
specific thing and as soon as we get the idea that somebody's watching us and judging us,
it creates that part that makes us unable to chase well. So, scribbling, because it's meant to be thrown
away, because it's messy means "All right, I’m in private now, I don't have to worry
how I’m coming across. I can worry about the thing I’m working on". The unself consciousness
that it can trigger. Stan: Yeah. To make your creativity be really
wide, you have to constantly take risks and go down paths that you have no idea if they're
going to work or not. Maybe even some just have a high percentage of failure but you
want to explore an idea and you're okay that it's going to lead anywhere. That's really
what creativity is about. You have to be okay taking risks with exploring ideas. Marshall: I mean, this is sort of getting
to the end right at the beginning. [Laughter] Here's why I think it's a big deal- Stan: Okay. Marshall: I don't know of a more important
rhythm of creativity than freedom and restraint - wildness and control and preferably in that
order. Especially on a project that builds in stages. If you're working on a hundred
million dollar film, the closer you get to the end, the harder it is to change anything.
But the closer you get to a live solo performance, the easier it is to change anything because
there's less at stake. So on projects where there's anything at stake,
there's a principle of diverging to begin - start wild, start impulsively, scribble.
And if you don't mind going in the direction of Edward Sorel, you can do that all the way
up until the end of the project - scribble, scribble, scribble, but if you see it as a
way to discover, it's sort of like you dig here and you dig here and you dig here and
you dig here and you dig here and you aren't doing that much, but once you've found the
treasure chest, now the job is to focus on lifting the treasure chest out and sorting
through the treasure. Stan: I don't know if I completely understand
your you know, freedom versus restraint - what do you mean? Is there a balance between the
two? Do they clash? Marshall: Here's what I mean is that let's
take the hundred million dollar film for example, this has happened on some films where they
are ready to go to production, maybe they are even in production and then we realize
- we went about this the wrong way. This should have been set in a different setting and nobody
thought of that. We should have cast it different. The casting on Back to The Future had to be
changed once they started shooting. These are really problematic expensive issues to
deal with once you're in production. But they are nothing to deal with if you're sitting
in an office talking with somebody saying "Why don't we cast so-and-so. Oh yeah, or
so-and-so or so-and-so" and then you change your mind. You're essentially at that point
with low stakes to abandon anything. So, the natural rhythm for safety is to get
every possible idea out of the way. Hey, did I tell you last week, Stan about the Goodby
and Silverstein master class? Stan: Did you? I don't - 12The two guys who
do the commercials. They do so many of the Super Bowl commercials and for the last 30
years or so they've just done some of the funniest best commercials. - hello. - Hello - for ten thousand dollars, who- Marshall: They have a master class, they're
an agency in San Francisco and one of their associates was talking about when you go into
a room with them for a session that when you leave, there's been no stone unturned. The
agency is so good at what they do and you can see that inside that agency there is a
company philosophy - is that before we commit to anything, let's consider everything. How
stupid, how wild, how daring, how impossible, how risky, how ruinous, how wonderful - everything
and that way you have the freedom to not censor anything and then that's only half of the
equation - that's the kindergarten side of the equation where you can be anything. At
some point you have to choose your major and narrow down. That's what I mean when I’m talking about
the freedom and restraint. Stan: Okay. Yeah, I totally see that. Yeah,
no, that's definitely true. I think there always needs to be that option though to start
over no matter where in the process you are, you know? Because sometimes you do need to
actually begin to find a problem with the solution you chose, and you have to have the
confidence and the thick skin or whatever to be okay with the fact that you have to
undo and redo. I mean, Pixar is kind of known for that. They've
been - they've like been really far in the process and they're like "This story is not
working" and they start over. I forgot which movie that was like a really big thing on. Marshall: Well, Toy Story took them something
like two years to write the first script and they definitely had huge changes in Woody's
character. Yeah, there's a lot of stories about that. - See, you weren't thinking of flying but
yeah. - well - - you know Andy loves toys to fly! - really? Stan: Yeah, I think several other movies were
like that and that's okay. That's actually what makes it so awesome is they keep exploring
and they keep going back - they're like "Nope, that's not working, we gotta go back" and
they're okay. They're not afraid to keep going down a path and find out if it truly is working
and then when it's not, go back. I think that's what creativity is all about. Marshall: There's there's a few ways we could
go with this- Stan: Yeah. Marshall: How much more do you have to say? Stan: I have two big topics that I still want
to kind of say something about - one is a question that someone asked me about gesture
drawing and scribbling versus gesture drawing and something more like the Riley method with
rhythms and stuff with clean lines- Marshall: I’m interested. Stan: Somebody was asking me, because they
were watching my figure drawing class online and my gesture drawing approach is very different
from like Nicolaides, right? In his book, The Natural Way to Draw, I haven't read it
but you are very familiar with it. He scribbles, the way he does a gesture drawing
is in lots of scribbles, very loose - getting kind of the feel for it with energetic lines,
right? Marshall: Yes. Stan: The way I teach it is to simplify - is
to think methodically about it get clean simple lines instead of like an explosion of thought
and feeling. It's to think about it, analyze it. So, they're very different approaches
but they both work, they're both fine. Marshall: Yeah. Stan: So, the question to me was like - these
are opposing ways, which one is correct? Marshall: Yeah, that's not the way to look
at it though. Stan: No, it's not the way to look at it.
These are both just techniques we talked in the last episode with James, I explained the
difference between principles, concepts and techniques and trying to understand gesture
with a technique is not the right way to understand gesture. Quick sketch is - you're studying something
specific. Most of the time we tend to study gesture with quick sketch, but you don't have
to study gesture. You could be practicing something completely different. You could
do quick sketch manikinized drawings, you could do quick sketch value you know, value
compositions, it could be anything. But you know, focusing on quick sketch gesture, the
scribbling versus the CSI you know, CS straight line simplification, those are techniques
to practice the principles or the concepts of gesture. Marshall: That's right. Stan: All you're really practicing is identifying
the idea of the pose - what is happening. A gesture, literally. Like if I gesture you
something with my hands or with my face, I’m sending an idea to you, I’m communicating
something. And so, a gesture of a pose is like what's the body language, what's the
- what is it communicated here and you could show that with any technique. I mean, you literally could practice gesture
with value as well. Like you could - there's a lot of artists that actually just use the
side of the pencil and they map the shadow and the light patterns but they're very gestural
- they're still focused on the movement of the tones and how that shows the gesture of
the pose. And so, those are just techniques, it's the wrong question. Marshall: A good way to look at it though,
since people want that kind of - which one's right? Which one's better? Stan: Yeah. Marshall: Maybe the best way to look at it
is to say "Let's have you just draw, draw, draw" and then after you've drawn for a while,
look at it and say "What does this drawing need? What do you do naturally that nobody
needs to teach you?" children don't need to be taught to scribble because they naturally
do it, but then some children might be scolded for scribbling and so they get too careful. Everyone's going to bias a different way but
if you have a bias in one direction so far that you're scared of the other direction,
that's where you'd say "Let's do some exercises to balance this out". And both that Riley
rhythm or precision or CSI or simplify to one line in a subordinate line, that should
be a part of training but so should throw all caution to the wind and let the line go
down faster than you're able to keep up with it to see what happens, and that way you're
comfortable playing the music improvisationally, which is difficult for some people, and you're
comfortable reading the charts and hitting the notes accurately which is difficult for
some people. It's to have the skills on both ends of the spectrum. Stan: Yeah. Whatever technique you choose
to use, you have to understand the benefits - the strengths and the weaknesses of them
and that you are developing habits as you practice this stuff., and so one - you know,
because I was trained by Jeff Watts and with the idea that every line should look good,
I’m aware of the issue that if you're - if you're always practicing scribbling to communicate
your ideas, you can get into the habit of bad line quality. Marshall: Yes indeed. Stan: Because you're always practicing scribbly
messy lines and so you're not training your hand to put down attractive lines with design,
with intent. And so, if you do scribble, that's fine but balance it out with some with some
good line quality practice. Marshall: This is one of the main hazards
of it is the inability to pull out of it - a habit of sloppiness. Yeah, we've talked about
it before. Drinking has hazards if you can't not drink. Stan: Yeah. Marshall: And scribbling has hazards if you
can't not scribble. Stan: Yeah, and having good line quality has
hazards if you can't scribble - if you can't - if you can't loosen up, exactly yeah. Marshall: Hey, here's a use of scribbling
that I know about from experience - it's scribbling as a last gasp of desperation to make a piece
work. It's scribbling to redeem. It's that you overwork a watercolor, you put all this
time into it and you've just killed it by overworking it- Stan: Okay. Marshall: But you just dump water on top of
it and it shakes it up and it looks intentional or it sets up a new start and so you overwork
a drawing and you attack it and you find that like with some people, the only way you can
bring them to life is by attacking - you just go in and scribble all over that thing and
that way, there is a sense of this was a throwaway and it might bring it back to life or it may
make a bigger mess. But I I know that I’m not the only person who's had that inclination. Stan: Yeah. Marshall: And it is very seldom redeemed a
piece. But when I think about it, it has, it has redeemed a piece that it makes it so
that it's no longer precious. Baron's story would have students work on a piece for a
period of time or they were invested in it and then he required that they would tear
it up in front of the class. I had heard that story and I asked him to
confirm it and he did confirm it, and it was for that reason that if you are going to tweak
and tweak and tweak and you're not willing to destroy and start over, then you've got
a habit that has to be worked on. Stan: Yeah, dumping water on it is really
just having a fresh start. It's the same thing that Pixar would do if they developed their
idea too far and realized it's not working, they dump a bucket of water on it and there's
still a kind of a ghost of what they did, but now they can take it down a different
path knowing where you know, one path failed they can you know, go down a different path
based on that. It's the same thing. Marshall: So yeah, in a way we're saying that
you're we're going to start over but it may be though that there is a sense of "This looks
awful, I’ll mess it up and pretend I meant it to be that way". That to me, that's why
I call it "A last gasp of desperation". Stan: But that's a technique. Marshall: Okay. By the time you get there,
it's probably better and it would - if you can make it an enjoyable experience, it would
be better to start over. Stan: Sure, I mean, but really just use it
for really as exploration. If you didn't - if you're failing, spilling water on it maybe
it'll look good and it'll look like you succeeded - yeah, I mean, you're just kind of faking
it but like what's your goal here? Is it to trick people into thinking you're good or
is it to really communicate something meaningful? [Laughter] You know? Marshall: No, it was it was to redeem something
that didn't work [Chuckles]. Hope - yeah, to save face as much as anything else. Stan: Yeah, okay. [Laughter] Marshall: Yeah,
maybe it was not a worthy point to bring up but I’m trying to cover - I’m trying to
do the diverging thing - all the reasons we scribble. I’m sure I’m leaving out most
of them. Stan: Yeah. Marshall: But no, the main - the whole point
of this is scribble to discover. Stan: Yes. I think that's the name of the
episode. Marshall: I think - yeah, we didn't even need
to do this episode. All we needed to do was give them the title [Laughter] and the bright
ones will say "I get it, it's okay to scribble Your Thang" that's related to what we're talking
about - it's something I’ve been really invested in for the past like six to eight
to nine months or whatever. Marshall: I wanna hear. Stan: The Zettelkasten method. Marshall: Can you spell it or say it slowly? Stan: Zettel-kasten. Marshall: Zettel-Kasten method. Stan: It's a German word, it means "slip box".
Do you know what a slip box is? Marshall: No. Stan: Imagine like a wall - a cabinet or a
drawer full of tiny little drawers that you can open up that have little index cards in
them, those are slip boxes. Marshall: All right. Stan: Or I mean, they could really just be
anything - it could be a bunch of shoe boxes stacked amongst each other. But that was - this
method was developed a long time ago before computers and that's why originally it was
with little index cards that were all connected together. Whatever your system is, you take
the notes and then those notes kind of live there in this isolated place and then maybe
years later you read another book and some of the concepts could be related to the other
concepts you learned from that other book. Marshall: Yes. Stan: And you take notes on that second book
and they're all isolated in the other area where you took notes. Marshall: I feel the problem. Stan: Yeah. And so, you're never really connecting
all these ideas together and seeing how they relate, how they contradict each other, how
they support each other, how they lead to other ideas. They just live separately and
sometimes you'll think - you'll remember something like "Where did I read that?" and now you
have to go scavenging for where you took that note and going through all these books and
trying to find it, instead of having one system where all of your knowledge base lives and
where anytime you add to that knowledge base with any notes from anywhere, whether they're
just fleeting notes, your own scribbles, you're adding them to the same system. Marshall: It's like a treasure chest in a
way though. Stan: Kind of, yeah. And it's meant to be
a thing that you have a conversation with because a lot of the stuff you put in there,
you're gonna forget, right? Marshall: Yes. Stan: But that's kind of the purpose is if
you do it properly, it's okay to forget because it's all about discovery and it's about using
this second brain to help you remember all this stuff and run across things and surprise
you sometimes. And if you have it organized the way that the Zettelkasten is organized,
it helps you go down these paths and discover things that you learned a long time ago and
how they're connected to this thing that you're learning now. Marshall: How? Stan: There's a really good book written about
it - it's called "How to take Smart Notes" Marshall: Okay. Stan: If people want to learn more about it.
There's also a really good article kind of introducing people to it that I’ll link
to as well. It's on Zettelkasten.de/Introduction and that's a really good kind of quick you
know, half hour read to get you familiar with it. But I’ll try to give my interpretation
of it. Marshall: Okay. Stan: We take what are called "Fleeting Notes",
which are like scribbles, right? These are things that kind of - they flee - they come
in and out, we scribble them down or we take literature notes which are - we're reading
something, we're absorbing a video or we're reading an article, whatever it is. It's some
literature we're absorbing and we're just taking notes from it. All of those notes are not organized and that's
usually where we stop, right? That's the problem I presented . Marshall: Okay. Stan: The next step in the process is really
what makes it good - is that after you take your scribbles or your literature notes, you
process them. You convert them into evergreen notes or permanent notes or zettles, whatever
words you want to use - these are all - they mean the same thing. The purpose of them is that they're permanent
- you have processed them in your own way, you understand what you're - what you're writing,
you're not just copying quotes from a book - you wrote them down in your own words, you
wrote them in a way that makes sense to you so you try to keep your notes atomic - meaning
it's one piece of information, it's not 10 pieces of information, kind of all into this
one thing which ends up being more of like an index of thoughts. This is one thought but you can make it as
thorough as you want on this one thought. Marshall: Okay, yeah. It's the smallest beat
possible. Smallest unit. Stan: Yeah. Every time you run through your
fleeting notes or your literature notes, you're gonna organize them into permanent notes that
make sense. That's where the processing comes in. That's where the real work comes in, you
have to think about it and not just write it - jot it down as a quick thing I have to
remember. The next step in the process after you wrote
this atomic note is to connect it to other notes that are already in your zettle casting,
and you could either put them in an index, like an entryway to a keyword or you can literally
connect them to another note like you open up another note that's related and you see
"Oh, I could actually say something else about that other thing and link to this new note
because these thoughts are related", and now I I kind of add another sentence into this
one and create a link to the other one and it creates this web, right? And you can do
that to as many as you want. You don't have to connect it to one. If this new note is related to five other
notes that are in your system, you connect them all. Right now people are thinking like
this is a lot of work - and it is. [Laughter] Marshall: That's exactly what I'm
think. Stan: It is. Marshall: I was sitting here feeling uncomfortable
because I was thinking - I thought you were going to make this easier for me. You're telling
me that I’ve got a lot of work to do once I’ve got those things down. Stan: No, it's not easy, it's work. But [Chuckles]
doing this has exponential benefits that come back. You don't put in all this time taking
notes that you forget. Anything that you put down and you say "This is worth remembering,
this is worth adding to my permanent collection of ideas", that means it's worth spending
a few minutes connecting it to other notes. It's not just a way of organizing or cleaning
up. That process - I’ve been going through this for like six to nine months now - this
process of figuring out what this is connected to that I’ve already written down is in
itself extremely valuable because it forces me to think deeper about this information
that I just learned, and analyze how is it related; does it contradict - and in doing
so it helps me discover things. It leads me down to other paths. Marshall: Yeah. Stan: I it allows me to come up with new ideas
because just seeing two things side by side creates a new thing and now I have a brand
new idea that I can now go and explore, and that's how you become better at creativity.
That's how you become more creative, and this sort of system helps you be more creative
and I’ve never really thought of myself as a creative person, but now I see that it's
really not about like are you creative or not, it's really about the systems you're
using and how you manage your thoughts and your notes and just the process you have of
managing your knowledge. Because like now, I’m - like I’m way more creative. Marshall: That is an evolutionary leap in
you is that you went from the passive verb of 'I am creative' which is what does that
mean - being creative has to do with what you do, what you accomplish, how you're able
to make connections and so, your tools are helping you to lift up and get a bigger view
of the map rather than being in the streets where you can't see around - just the fact
that you've lifted up over it and say "Hey, I didn't know that right over here this was
connected to this". I am really sold on that. But here's what I’m getting out of what
you're saying that makes me uncomfortable, it's what I said already - I’ve got so many
thousands of pages of ideas that the only thing I’ve done like this is to try to have
keywords in there - to say this relates to composition/guide the eye or something like
that and then the notes have still gotten so bloated that when I type in those words,
it's just I’ve got 40 or 50 things that I’ve got to sift through. So, the main thing I’m getting from this
is that you've got to be responsible, Marshall. When you ideate, your responsibility for having
that experience is that you've got to go through some of the work of raising the child as well. Stan: Yes. Marshall: You've got to go through some of
the work of taking care of all of this grunt work which I’m - here is what I’m getting
from you, it's not grunt work. Stan: No. Marshall: It is pulling the camera up and
seeing how things interrelate so that you're ingesting a blue hat view. The "Blue Hat"
is the big view of what's this all about - you're lifting up and ingesting that by making those
connections - getting more familiar with your territory. Stan: Yeah, like so, you have this problem
where you have thousands of notes, you've put in a lot of time taking those notes, but
your system isn't made for you to discover and flow naturally through all of those notes
in a quick way, thus, in a way, that work you did put into it is more of a waste of
time than if you had spent an extra few more - you know, another few minutes every single
time but now in a way that exponentially grows your ability to go you know, to discover new
ideas and stuff like that. Marshall: Yeah. Stan: So, adding a little bit more time makes
that effort you already did put in way more meaningful. Marshall: In a way, it's opening doors, it's
building bridges, it's making an opening in the fence so that you can get from one side
to the other, it's seeing how one thing connects to another and I am so - I mean, I understand
the problem and I am sold on what you're telling me, but I’m also sobered by the fact that
I am in such habits of ideating, ideating, ideating, ideating and then having to take
forever to find it that this would be a change of habit. Now, is this related to that program, that
app that you were telling me about when we did the Light Box? Stan: Yes, it is. RoamResearch.com is a paid
app, $15 a month. It allows you to use the Zettelkasten method - it's not made specifically
for Zettelkasten, it's just that - they go really well together. You can use Roam Research
for just like any kind of note taking, whatever. But it doesn't structure a Zettelkasten for
you, you have to do it yourself it's kind of like you can use Adobe Premiere to make
whatever type of video you want - you can make an animation, you could make a 3D VR
video, you could make a live action video, you could make a stop-motion video. It's a tool and you can have your own systems
in place. This is a tool that allows Zettelkasten to work because other note-taking apps don't
allow you to make connections between all these things, they're more hierarchical. Marshall: Yes. Stan: This note-taking system is not hierarchical,
it is - god, I forgot the word. Marshall: Lateral? Stan: No, it's literally you can connect anything
to anything else. Marshall: Yeah, De Bono's green hat is called
lateral thinking but it's along those same lines - instead of a hierarchy, it's just
a like, like, like, like, like, connected to, connected to, connected to and it can
create comp - you can create complex paths of thought but each path of thought is sensible
- there is a lateral connection. Stan: Yeah, well, I just want to say Roam
Research is not the only app that has the tools that will allow you to do this. I mean,
you literally could just do this with a shoe box and some note cards. That's how it was
used originally. Marshall: Yeah. Stan: And I understand that me explaining
this right now like people are gonna be confused and like "Okay, wait, so what do I do?" [Laughter].
Like me introducing this is not a way to explain to people how to do it, it's just to present
this idea and if you're interested, you're gonna have to do some work. This is not easy. This is not easy, but for the creative types
who are thinkers, who are trying to develop ideas, who take a lot of notes, being extremely
organized in those processes is going to be very useful for you so you know, look into
it. Marshall: Okay. Here's what I’m getting
out of it that relates back to the topic of this "Scribble to Discover". Stan: Yeah. Marshall: This gives permission to scribble,
scribble, scribble, scribble, scribble, you are allowed to go with any train of thought
you want if you are willing to do the work- Stan: Of processing. Marshall: Discovering the connections and
taking the time to shift into another mode so it allows you - it encourages the opportunity
to not worry about it because later you're going to worry about it in a way that's constructive
and makes everything easier later. Is that right? Stan: Yeah? It's sharpening the saw before
you cut down the tree [Chuckles]. It's a little bit more work but cutting down the trees can
be so much easier and in this analogy, cutting down the tree is creating work. The purpose
of this system is not - again, it's not to collect information, it's to create new things. Marshall: Yeah. Stan: It's for writers, it's for artists,
it's for researchers, it's for people who are going to create things, it's not for people
who collect ideas. Marshall: I made it a point many years ago
in my notes to separate them into resources which are other people's material and then
I have a few categories of "This is my own material" and that division has been important
to me. But a lot of times, it's you go to the other people's material, you go to the
resources and research and then that gives you ideas for putting things into your own
bucket of ideas and then when you're in your own bucket of ideas, you recognize that "I
need to go to other people to see what they've said about it", so that becomes a dynamic. Stan: I guess I just want to say if you are
interested in learning more about it, I would go look at the links I have in the lesson
notes and read more about it. My explanation was not meant as a tutorial of how to do it.
It's something you have to practice doing, but it's worth it. It's a really important
skill. Marshall: Yes. Stan: Because the earlier you start doing
this, the better. Because you know, Marshall, you have already a system you've developed
for decades and all these notes you've taken, it would be very difficult for you to take
what you've already done and convert into a Zettelkasten. Marshall: That's why I feel threatened by
it more than excited by it, but I’d like to feel excited by it. Stan: I don't think this is -this would be
good for you. Marshall: But I wish I had it. Right now I’m
relying on keywords. Stan: Keywords are great, I use keywords in
mind as well as little you know, another way of entering ideas but the links are not just
at the top of you know, a keyword where all these ideas are linked with a word. These
ideas are linked within the idea itself, you know? I’m saying something like for example,
I have - right now I’m looking at a permanent note I have about how to process literature
notes and fleeting notes and turn them into permanent notes [Laughter]. I made a permanent note about that and within
the text of my explanation for myself of how to do it, I have links to one, two, three,
fou,r five other permanent notes. Those five other permanent notes are the four types of
smart notes - permanent nodes should be connected to relevant notes, digest information to make
it your own, xenos should be atomic, develop scribbles into complete ideas. And if I open
each one of those, those in themselves are also complete ideas that are now linked to
other ideas. And the reason that that's better than just
having them connected with a keyword is that I - by reading it, I understand why I would
go to that next permanent note because it's in the context of the note I’m reading. Marshall: Okay. Stan: If it's just connected with some word
like "Learning", it's like well okay, why would I click on this other thing related
to this specific note I’m reading? Just because it's also regarding learning, I have
you know there's 50 other things that are related to learning, but how are they related
together. And if they're linked to each other in context, it inspires a journey through
your own thoughts - so you're reading you think "Oh, I got - okay, now I want to see
what this means" and then you click on it you go into the next one, you keep reading
and then you skip some and then you're like "Oh, I want to click on this one now because
I know why I have this here" and you keep going and you discover things you forgot about.
And it's much quicker that way when it's in context. Marshall: Yeah. This is talking about scribbling
ideas, this is talking about freedom at the - in the brainstorming and the early stages
of creative process. If we bring this back to drawing, the difference is we're talking
about figurative scribbling or literal scribbling- Stan: Yeah. Marshall: I did not know the value of scribbling
to discover until I saw some of my best students become really good professionals that they
just had it in them because there's a Howard Pyle painting of a man on a horse and I think
it was Henry Pitts who did the book about Howard Pyle that shows how he began it with
a scribbled line. And that had a big influence on Justin Sweet. Justin scribbles to discover.
It's where I took the term from. Vance scribbles to discover. Daumier scribbled to discover.
Some really great artists had that as part of their process and they - some of them are
people you would not think of as scribblers, but they are not afraid. I think it's got an analogy to scat singing
that I don't know how to scat sing yet, so I can't demonstrate but Cliff Edwards who
did the voice for Jiminy Cricket and the Disney Pinocchio did a version of singing in the
rain that has scat singing on it. [Music] Scat singing is fearless, making sounds
that come out rhythmically, that some wonderful improvisations come out of it, and I think
that's the spirit to go about scribbling is that it is play and it is exploration and
then when it becomes discovery, then we say "Now I’m ready to go to the next stage". And it isn't just applicable between drawing
and writing, graphic designers often start very carefully with a shape and then they'll
start to relate other shapes to it but graphic designers also scribble and with vector image
hoses that can put out perfectly clean vector shapes but give them in random and surprising
arrangements would be a way to apply scribbling to discover to the design process. Frank Gehry, though, the architect literally
scribbles when he's in the first stages of designing a building of all things. So, I
think that this is applicable to drafts people as something that the careful mind may not
have considered with seriousness and that the creative mind can say "Hey, let's spend
a few days or a week to see how the principle of fearless exploration and even making a
mess can lead us to things that we might invest in that we never would have if we were being
careful". Stan: Yeah. My main message I guess through
this whole episode is when people hear the phrase "Scribbling to Discover", I think it's
very easy to focus on the word "Scribbling" and forget about the "To Discover" part of
it. Marshall: Yeah. Stan: And so, we're not saying "scribbling
to collect", we're saying "scribbling to discover". Don't scribble just to scribble, scribble
with a purpose. Usually after you scribble and you discover, you then have to refine
to continue to discover and to continue to scribble. And so, refinement and processing
of that information that you're scribbling is required to discover. So, focus on the discovery part of that phrase.
That's the purpose. Marshall: Yes, if you're inclined to keep
scribbling. Stan: Yes. Marshall: And if you're inclined to jump too
quickly ahead to "I’ve got to have the answer now", then scribble means multiple options,
no investment, speed dating and then deciding. Stan: Yeah. Marshall: Yeah, this was enjoyable. [Laughter] See you next session. Stan: Yup. See you next week. Marshall: Bye.
