DMA#48: Drawing Sneaky Art in Times Square: AI Slop & the Radical Act of Paying Attention

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If you want to test the absolute limits of your nervous system, try sitting in the middle of Times Square with a sketchbook, a pen, and an open microphone...

It is a sensory assault. It does not smell like inspiration; it smells like roasted nuts, diesel exhaust, and the sweat of ten thousand tourists realising they’ve lost their Marriott room key. The noise is a physical weight. Sirens, pedicabs aggressively looping Alecia Keys, and people dressed as off-brand Spider-Man aggressively demanding five dollars for a photo.

“Drawing in New York is combat journalism. You’re trying to capture lightning in a bottle while the bottle is being kicked down Broadway by a guy screaming at his phone.”

But this is exactly why I do this. When I started New York Cartoons, the core promise to you, the reader, was that I wasn’t just going to send you polished, sterile drawings from the safety of an air-conditioned studio. The promise was to show you what living, surviving, and creating in New York City actually looks like. The chaos, the invisible labour, and the absurd encounters that fuel the work.

So, for this week’s episode of Draw Me Anything, I took the studio to the street!

My guest was the brilliant Nishant Jain, better known to his massive audience as The Sneaky Artist. Nishant came down from Canada to sit with me in the blistering epicentre of Manhattan. For an hour, amidst the absolute bedlam of Times Square, we drew the chaos in real-time.

Before the stream started, a tall man holding a brown paper bag whipped towards us before locking eyes with me… it was, of course, my neighbour and pal Anthony LeDonne. Because of course it was. (You can see his SYML entry here.) When I introduced him to Nishant, I’d mentioned we were nerding out about Derrida last time we spoke. When he asked who that was, I knew he’d be in for an education… Nishant gave him a primer on the arsehole French philosopher and his musings. I could see the hamster in Anthony’s brain begin to sweat, then die in a mad panic. Derrida: It’s one helluva conversation starter.

What started as a live drawing session quickly spiralled into one of the most profound, quotable, and vital conversations I’ve had in years. We talked about everything from French philosophy and the existential threat of tech companies to the mindfulness of observation and the stark contrast between Canadian politeness and New York velocity.

Here’s what happens when you put two process-junkies in the loudest intersection on Earth…

Part I: Vancouver VS. New York

There’s a distinct difference in the way a New Yorker observes the world versus the way a Canadian does, and watching Nishant work was a masterclass in pacing.

Nishant possesses a terrifying level of calm. He didn’t fight the chaos. He observed it. “In Canada, the environment gives you the space to think,” Nishant told me, his eyes tracking a guy in a chaotic neon jacket. There is a physical and auditory room to breathe. The silence lets you construct the narrative. But in New York, the noise forces you to react. It’s an entirely different muscle.

He’s right. Drawing in New York is combat journalism. You’re trying to capture lightning in a bottle while the bottle is being kicked down Broadway by a guy screaming at his phone.

But despite the velocity of the city, Nishant’s process is startlingly deliberate. As we talked, he casually built what would become a beautifully complex drawing of the scene. He wasn’t rushing. He was practising what he calls the radical act of paying attention.

“...your body and mind are absorbed in the union of an ask, which is to look to interpret and then to put it down, translate it. And in a lot of ways, you shut out a lot of concerns, you stop thinking about time, you stop thinking about your responsibilities of service, and you're just here for a while.”

Part II: The Mindfulness of the Pen, and the Radical Act of Paying Attention

We spend so much of our time talking about “mindfulness” as this sterile, corporate buzzword. (I’ve written about this before) Tech companies have commodified it. They sell us apps that ding to remind us to breathe, which we check on the same glowing rectangles that are actively destroying our attention spans.

Nishant’s approach to drawing is the exact antidote to this. For him, drawing isn’t about producing a piece of “content” for an algorithm. It is a grounding mechanism.

“Drawing isn’t about making a pretty picture,” Nishant said, his pen moving carefully across the paper. “It is about forcing yourself to sit still in a world that profits entirely off your distraction. When you draw something, you are forced to actually see it. You aren’t just looking at it. You are understanding its geometry, its weight, and its relationship to the things around it. You are acknowledging its existence in a way that taking a photograph never will.”

That hit me like a freight train. In the digital mailstrom, we take thousands of photos we will never look at again. We consume the world in half-second swipes. But when you drag a pen across watercolour paper, you’re making a physical record of time spent. You are saying, I was