Carry On, Brave Soul!

Oh snap, gentle readers. I've got a seriously fresh drawing for you all today:

I saw this man on the subway on a day when there were no faces to draw - everyone was buried in a book. I was about to put my sketchpad away, but then I thought to myself, there's always SOMETHING to be drawn - even hands or shoes are good practice. So I started drawing the wrinkles and folds in this gentleman's pants - specifically his crotch, because that area had the most folds. And the more folds I drew, the most interesting that crotch became - so interesting that an entire drawing grew out of it!

Now, did I enjoy staring at this man's "zone" for twenty minutes? Not very much. But these are hazards that, as an artist, I must face. Did Rembrant cringe from the cadaver's exposed tendons while painting "The Anatomy Lesson"? Did Michaelangelo blanch at chiseling "David"'s buoyant scrotum? These artists bravely looked the specter of bare anatomy in the face, without even a barrier of wrinkled slacks to protect them. Following their example, I was emboldened to do the same.

At any rate, this developed in stages. I got the man down on paper on the train, filled in the seats and the wall behind him at home, and then did the arm-rest and railing the next day. Finally, I completed the poster behind him just yesterday. I wasn't quite sure what to put in that space for some time, but after perusing many, many images of subway posters online, I settled for a Halls ad which appeared on the subway around this time last year. It showed a woman with all the signs of a cold (red nose, watery eyes) looking determinedly into the distance, with the caption, "Carry On, Brave Soul!" Somehow, this seemed appropriate.

What I have to work on now are my angles and perspective, which got a little wonky as I was drawing the subway door and the seat the man was sitting on. Practice practice practice practice practice practice practice...

My what large markers you have

Compared to some of the other drawings I have posted so far, this one is pretty tame. I include it here because it was, at the time I drew it, an interesting exercise for me:

During the summer of 2004, I was commuting daily from my parents' house on Long Island into Manhattan, where I worked with a certain sandwich-eating individual. Two friends of mine from high school were commuting as well, and we used to take the train together. As it was 7am and we were all fresh college graduates used to staying up later than was probably good for us, we probably spent more time sleeping than talking, but this was actually fortunate for me. Not because I didn't want to talk to my friends, but because it allowed me to practice drawing them while they slept.

At the time, I was working very hard to change the way in which I approached drawing in general. For years up to that point, I had been drawing mostly in pencil. I put in a lot of practice and was very good at drawing from life (I'm saving some of my still life drawings for later posts), but over time I felt myself becoming too rigid. I also got used to taking a lot of time to get a drawing to where I wanted it to be - drawing a line, erasing it, drawing it again, etc. To challenge myself, I started drawing using only large, fat sharpie markers. This way, I couldn't erase - once I put a line down, I had to make it work - and I would have loosen up. The drawing above, of one of my sleeping friends, was made shortly after I started working this way, and was my first remotely successful attempt.

On another morning train-ride, I also started this drawing of a man sleeping with his scarf pulled over his eyes. It remains unfinished, so I can't justify creating an entire post out of it, but I include it here as another, perhaps more assured example of what I was trying to accomplish.