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Somewhere along the way we started assuming that the thing you were made to do and the thing that pays your bills are supposed to be the same thing.
John Hendrix does not think that is true, and he has spent a twenty-year career and a whole graduate program arguing otherwise.
In this episode, we talk with illustrator, author, and Washington University art professor John Hendrix about making work that is too weird for the church and too churchy for everyone else, why perseverance beats talent every single time, and what changes when you stop treating your art like a monument and start treating it like a sandcastle.
John gets into his path from Marvel how-to books to Eisner-nominated graphic novels, the ten years that passed before his first book existed, why he thinks school is about community rather than skill, and the emails he still gets about drawing the Holy Ghost as a small blue cartoon.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Why your calling might not be your career and why John thinks that is fine, freeing, and a great deal healthier than the alternative.
- Treating your work like sandcastles instead of monuments and what changes when you stop asking whether a drawing will outlive you.
- The ten years between art school and his first book and why perseverance, not talent, is what actually separates the people who make it.
- Being too weird for the church and too churchy for everyone else including the publisher who passed on his sketchbooks for seeming suspiciously sincere.
- Why “I have no idea” is a complete sentence and how doubt turned out to be a feature of his faith rather than a bug in it.
Whether you are deep into a creative career, quietly wondering whether you picked the wrong one, or just trying to work out why twelve productive hours still ends with the feeling that you are behind, this conversation goes somewhere worth following. It is also the only episode where you will hear about losing a national fencing bout to a sixty-five-year-old Frenchman.
ABOUT THE CREATIVE
John Hendrix is an illustrator, author, and educator based in St. Louis. He is the Founding Chair of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also teaches.
His books include The Faithful Spy, an NPR Best Book of 2018 about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the plot to kill Hitler, and The Mythmakers, an Eisner-nominated graphic novel about the friendship between J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. His new book, One Hundred Things You Love to Draw, a follow-up to Drawing Is Magic, arrives this fall, and he is currently at work on a graphic novel about the Salem witch trials.
Website
https://www.johnhendrix.com
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/johnhendrix
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Brad Woodard
Brad is an illustrator and designer behind Brave the Woods, a full-service studio working with clients like PBS Kids, Ford, Target, and USPS. His bold, playful style and heart-led storytelling shine through everything from brand campaigns to children’s books.
Dustin Lee
Dustin is the founder of RetroSupply, a shop for retro-inspired brushes, textures, and digital tools used by tens of thousands of creatives from indie artists to major studios. He shares what it’s really like to run a creative business while keeping it small, weird, and intentional.
Credits
Audio/video editing: Clara Wright
Cover art: Brad Woodard
Intro animation: Seth Austin
Intro music: “Snakes and Fire” (Instrumental) by Pär Hagström
