Finding a Likeness

January 1, 2024

National Book Critics Circle Award winner Baker (Human Smoke) tries his hand at illustration. While he has tackled heavy topics such as World War II and secret government programs in previous works, this book is a joyful and often humorous respite. Baker chronicles his artistic growth from 2019 through 2022, showcasing his many sketches, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. His subjects include nature photographs, portraits of activists, and images of ordinary scenes. The book includes asides in art history (about John Singer Sargent) and social history (about Dorothy Day). Baker took art courses and used social media for further guidance and finding styles and subjects. The pages are dominated by artwork, and the text ranges from caption-length to a few paragraphs per page. The book's tone is humorous yet optimistic, Baker's reactions to his own work range from self-deprecating to satisfied, and readers can trace the development of his skills. Nuggets of art advice, about tracing and digital enhancement, are scattered throughout. VERDICT A fun chronicle of a writer's attempt to get better at visual art, which will likely inspire readers to give it a go as well.--Jeffrey Meyer

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 5, 2024
The understated and art-filled latest from novelist Baker (Baseless) chronicles how he learned to paint and draw. Burnt out after writing a book on “horrible government programs” and seeking artistic “rehabilitation” in May 2019, Baker proposed a book about painting to his editor. To research it, he embarked on a quest that led him down a rabbit hole of YouTube how-to videos, onto the Instagram pages of artists he admired, and to a four-day art workshop where he learned to better see (“In every direction, the world seemed freshly canvas-worthy”). After abandoning oils for less toxic gouache paint, Baker moved on to pencil drawings of faces and was rewarded with a thrilling “vibration of newfound proficiency... strange little rushes of almost confidence.” Elsewhere, he discusses his 2020 decision to trace images, a taboo practice for many artists (“containment-breech buzzers went off in my head”) yet one that led to visible progress in his art. By December 2021, “I had plenty of notes. It was time to write.” Baker details how he met his artistic goal without freighting the narrative with extended metaphors or self-aggrandizement, making for an ode to the ups and downs of the creative process that’s refreshingly direct if sometimes a bit surface-level. Generously interspersed with the author’s work (his amateurish early efforts hearteningly improve), this will fortify anyone learning a new skill. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency.

February 1, 2024
The celebrated novelist tries his hand at visual art. In 2019, after Baker finished Baseless, a nonfiction book about "horrible government programs that happened in secret a long time ago," he "was wiped out. I needed a rehabilitation program. A less bleak way of looking at the world." He set out to learn about artists with which he was unfamiliar and "try to master some of their techniques." This handsome art book, amply illustrated with photos of subjects he drew and reproductions of paintings he copied, is the result. The author begins in a chatty style that emulates a children's tale: "Hi, this is me. Welcome to my book Finding a Likeness." From there, he documents the multiyear self-directed course that began in 2019 with Baker watching instructional YouTube videos, buying how-to-paint books, and turning to Pinterest, which was "uncannily good" at helping him discover artists. The narrative describes in detail the artistic activities that Baker, who lives in Maine, pursued over the next two years, from the four-day plein-air workshop in Camden, where his instructor passed along advice he had received ("Open your damn eyes!"); to his brief obsession with painting clouds, the "puffy, huge, lunglike, breathing, hippopotami of the sky"; and the online courses he took once the pandemic began. The book gets monotonous after a while--Baker tried this technique, then this one, then this one--but he is a witty guide, open about his failures and stumbles. For example, he says about his attempt to draw former New Yorker editor Harold Ross, "I tried twice and stopped. I'd made him look like a boxing promoter"; about his drawing of James Marcus, former editor of Harper's, he says he looked "stretched, a little like Beavis in Beavis and Butt-Head." An amiable journey through an author's attempts at mastering art.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 15, 2024
A venturesome writer with many books and awards to his credit, Baker was so pummeled and depleted by his work on Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act (2020) he needed to find "a less bleak way of looking at the world." The son of artists, he initially tried painting, then discovered his affinity for drawing. Like Amy Tan in The Backyard Bird Chronicles (2024), Baker began his artistic immersion just before COVID-19 hit and decided at the outset to document his experiences, writing pithily and candidly about the classes he takes in person and the superb instructors he finds online. He displays their art and his efforts, which evolve from tentative attempts to increasingly expressive and polished images. His forte turns out to be portraits; working from photographs, he draws people he admires as well as strangers and shares his work on various art platforms, pleased by the feedback. He experiments with different mediums and techniques and searches for artists new to him whose work he finds instructive and inspiring, art he showcases as he tells their stories, adding more depth to this sumptuous and exhilarating volume. "Drawing was rearranging my brain," Baker rejoices; readers will feel enlivened by his quest and ebullience.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.