Waterknot's Creative Process

How I Make the Work

I’m Josh Nusbaum, the founder, primary artist, designer and creative director behind Waterknot. If you’re curious about who makes Waterknot’s artwork and how I work, here’s the longer version.

I’ve been drawing, painting, printmaking and generally making things for nearly 50 years. Long before Waterknot existed, I studied Studio Art and Environmental Studies in college—a combination that, looking back, feels like a pretty direct line to the work I make today.

My senior project took me into the Grand Canyon and Sierra Nevada to paint landscapes. In the years that followed, I continued working in traditional media, including oil painting and hand-carved block printing, and showed that work in solo gallery and restaurant exhibitions.

Then came Waterknot.

I started the company more than 15 years ago with a hundred-year-old letterpress that I rehabbed and operated by foot, printing our earliest cards myself, one at a time. When handset type proved creatively constraining and economically impractical, we moved to photopolymer plates, which gave me considerably more freedom in what I could design and print.

Over time, my studio continued to evolve. Pencils, paint, carving tools and ink were joined by a scanner, Wacom tablet, Photoshop, an iPad and Apple Pencil. Today, my practice is largely digital and includes generative AI.

I use these newer tools to create and develop imagery, often through extensive experimentation and iteration as I work toward a particular idea, composition, mood and visual language. That imagery then goes through further hands-on design and refinement—which can include painting, color and texture work, compositional changes, editing and post-production—before becoming a finished Waterknot piece.

The use of these newer technologies raises complicated questions, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise.

But they’re also one chapter in a much longer creative practice. The tools I use have changed enormously over the years. The impulse to make things has not.

My process today

Every Waterknot design is conceived, directed and completed by me. I develop the concepts, determine the creative direction, handle the design and typography, and make all final decisions about what becomes a Waterknot piece.

The imagery comes together in different ways depending on the work. Most is developed through my own creative process, while a smaller portion incorporates artwork licensed from other artists, who are credited on those individual designs.

For my own work, creation is a process of idea generation and iteration. I might begin with an idea, a phrase, a visual concept, a sketch or simply something I want a card to communicate. From there I experiment with imagery and composition, make choices, reject a great deal, change direction, refine and try again.

Newer image-making technologies are now part of that process and, for some of my work, an important part. I don’t want to minimize their role by describing them as simply “assistive.” They can produce imagery that becomes a significant component of the finished work.

But the technology doesn’t decide what Waterknot should say, what an image should communicate, which direction is worth pursuing, what belongs in the collection, or when something finally works. Those decisions remain mine.

My methods have changed considerably over a lifetime of making things, but my role hasn’t. I’m still the person developing the ideas, steering the creative direction, making the choices and deciding when the work is finished.

The complicated part

I understand why these technologies make many artists and customers uncomfortable. I share some of those concerns.

There are important and still-evolving questions about how these technologies are developed and trained, consent and compensation for creators, the effect they may have on creative livelihoods, and the energy and resources required to operate them. Those questions matter to me both as an artist and as the owner of a business that has made environmental and social responsibility part of its values from the beginning.

I don’t have a tidy answer that resolves those contradictions.

Waterknot makes physical products, which means we use resources. We print on paper. We package and ship things around the country. Our goal has never been to pretend that making things has no impact. Instead, we’ve tried to understand that impact, make thoughtful choices where we can, and continue improving as better options become available.

I approach newer creative technologies with a similar mindset.

As one small part of that effort, Waterknot supports the Mozilla Foundation, whose work includes advancing more open, accountable and human-centered approaches to technology. We know a donation doesn’t resolve the complicated questions surrounding these tools, but supporting people working directly on those questions feels like one meaningful way we can participate.

Using these tools doesn’t mean I dismiss the concerns surrounding them, nor do those concerns erase the ways the tools have become useful within my commercial art practice. I can hold both things to be true. I will continue paying attention, asking questions and reevaluating my choices as the technology—and our understanding of its consequences—evolves.

Art, commerce and change

Waterknot is a very small independent creative business. Making art for a living has always required me to balance creativity with the practical realities of running a sustainable business.

That balance has changed repeatedly over the years. Handset type gave way to photopolymer plates. A foot-powered letterpress eventually gave way to commercial printing. Drawing and painting were joined by digital illustration. Scanners, Photoshop, tablets and other technologies changed what I could make and how efficiently I could make it. Today’s newer image-making tools represent another significant change—not necessarily identical to the ones that came before, and not without their own difficult questions.

I don’t believe there is one correct way for every artist to navigate this moment. I respect artists who choose not to use these technologies, just as I hope there is room for thoughtful disagreement about how they can or should be used.

For me, part of navigating that change has meant deciding where these tools do—and don’t—belong in my own creative life. I use them in my commercial visual-art practice. I don’t use them in my music or in my personal or literary writing. These are different creative practices for me, and I’ve chosen different boundaries for each.

The tools will undoubtedly keep changing. I expect my practice will too.

I still seem to be here to make marks.