Sneaky sketch artist to leave surprises in free libraries throughout Vancouver 

'The Sneaky Artist' Nishant Jain will be leaving miniature sketches in Little Free Libraries throughout Vancouver for the next month. (Courtesy: Nishant Jain)

Sneaky by name, sneaky by nature - you probably wouldn’t recognize the face of Nishant Jain if it passed you on the street.

Much more likely to ring a bell is the Instagram-famous artist’s canary yellow biro, a simple utensil that has gone on to become a calling card of sorts.

Operating under the alias ‘the sneaky artist’, the elusive creative is most often found lurking near bus stops or in quiet corners of cafes, his face bowed as his vibrant pen scribbles surrounding scenes into a miniature sketchbook.

Undercover operations are, to put it simply, Jain's thing, and his latest project is no different.

For the next month Jain will be stealthily sliding sketches into books that have been left in Little Free Libraries throughout Vancouver. The goal, he says, is to encourage his followers to take their thumbs off their phone screens and put their nose in a novel instead.

“I feel like we are living in such connected times, but we are living such disconnected, isolated lives,” says the artist.

“A little free library is like a ray of hope in the middle of that, because there's this unspoken communication between the people who run it, who manage it, who contribute to it, who take from it.”

What awaits inside for the unsuspecting reader will be a simple sketch. A scribbling of a couple canoodling on the bus, perhaps, or a drawing of a neighbour walking her puppy in the park.

Jain is the first to admit that his subjects and settings are neither fantastical nor unique in nature.

The small, unpretentious pictures are usually of normal people doing normal things. Among his most recent artworks are a sketch of a woman snapping photos of ducks in a pond, another of people waiting at a traffic light to cross the road, and one of a family eating a picnic in the park.

It might even be surprising to some that the lines that come from that famous yellow pen, squiggled in just a few quick moments, resonate with his audience on such a deep level.

Yet those who are charmed by Jain’s pieces understand that the mundanity of their content is what makes them so magical. Each highlights a brief moment of quotidian joy. Little things, says Jain, that we could all do well to give a little more attention to.

“The real sadness of the world is that we don't look up anymore. We're just looking down,” he says.

“Everybody walks around enclosed inside a media bubble that they’ve created, and we don’t notice each other, and I think it would be a more kind and beautiful world if we noticed each other a little bit more.”

Jain becoming embroiled in the local library scene is apt given his first creative drive was to create the very things that are found within them. The artist had been writing a book when he started sketching as a form of procrastination.

The book never quite took off, but that’s far from what can be said about his art.

“I never anticipated blowing up on Instagram,” says the artist, nodding to his over-300,000 followers.

“I just wanted to do this little thing that felt nice without anybody knowing about it.”

Now, the sketches are so successful that the artist, who had abandoned a PhD in neuroscience halfway through to work on that fateful book, can make a career of doing what he loves the most. Often, his work is commissioned, but Jain says he doesn't want his pieces to only be available to those who can pay.

“I really take a lot of joy from just giving art away to people. I believe, as a personal philosophy, that everybody should own art, everybody should have a connection to art in their lives, and that aspect of ownership should not be restricted to an economic transaction," he says.

It’s the reason why Jain is considering carrying on his project into the next year, where he’ll shift his weekly library drops into a once-a-month event.

Those hoping to snatch a sketch for themselves can follow the artist’s Instagram, or sign up to his newsletter, for hints as to where they may be.

Jain might be sneaky, but he's not one for keeping secrets.