Christoph Niemann is an illustrator, artist and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Wired and The New Yorker. We love all of his work but our eyes gravitate to the original ink and pencil drawings of his travels. We get a glimpse of the artist on an interview with The Talks:

“Actually, I can say that the steps that lead to my finished drawings are very unspectacular. It’s more like with a sculpture, where I chip away piece by piece from a stone and slowly get closer to the final form — to hopefully have an elegant form where the reader is in any kind of way emotionally touched. But creating never happens in those big gestures that the final product suggests in the end. It’s a rather boring film that plays in my head.”

“There is so much frustration that is necessary in this process: it is difficult, it’s difficult when you draw, 80% of it can be fine and then there is a pretty high chance that the last 20% gets messed up again and I have to start from the beginning. And when you have to erase an idea, there’s always this pain to let something go and restart. But I think the most important difference between a person who is successful in art and a person who is not successful is how much frustration a person can take without losing this childish enthusiasm.”

You can follow the artist on his website, Facebook and Instagram. Some of his prints are available here in his shop.

Images: Courtesy of Christoph Niemann.