Sunday Sketching by Illustrator Christoph Niemann
My wife and I started to read a couple of pages of illustrator Christoph Niemann’s book Sunday Sketching every single morning over a hot beverage—a custom we established and came to really enjoy over the last year. It was not until Advent season 2023 that a book was part of this routine when we started to read Janosch’s story-of-the-day in Morgen kommt der Weihnachtsbär (Tomorrow the Christmas bear is coming) to each other.
Sunday Sketching has proven to be a worthy successor: Christoph Niemann combines his ingenious illustrations with written thoughts on his creative process, the struggles and perks of being a creative person, and creativity itself. The result is a book I never put away without at least one thought, smile, or idea that stays with me for the day.
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.
I cherish plain truths like this and Niemann is dropping them at an incredibly high rate which makes me feel like I’m experiencing something very special when reading his lines or listening to his words. You can do the latter by watching the Niemann episode of Netflix documentary Abstract: The Art of Design—which is available in full on Youtube.