Layers Upon Layers Upon Layers

When I saw this image hit my blog page after uploading, I thought to myself, that is one nasty-looking face:

Even though I'm the one who drew it, I could never really tell whether it was supposed to be a man or a woman. Either way, he/she is not very good looking!

This drawing started as a thick Sharpie marker outline. The outline didn't come out as cleanly as I had hoped, and so I added some coarse cross-hatching, still using the Sharpie - you can just make it out on the face, if you tilt your screen toward you to lighten the image. Then I added finer cross-hatching, with a smaller pen. I still wasn't satisfied, so I added more fine cross-hatching. Then one more layer of fine cross-hatching, and finally, I tried a bit of cross-hatching. I basically worked this drawing to the brink of oblivion, and while it could probably have benefitted from a little restraint, I like how the layers of texture make the skin look sort of leathery. This is especially true of the face, where the marker and pen overlap the most. Coupled with the dark eyes and exposed teeth, it makes for a sinister portrait.

Around the time I was working on this drawing, I visited a flea market in Soho where I met a man selling "Shawnpie" markers. They looked like suspiciously like Sharpie markers, but he insisted they were of his own creation. His name was unfortunately not Shawn, but this did not stop him - he wasn't going to be outdone by the fat-cat marker-makers and their sinister corporatocracy. He had apparently taken matters into his own hands, and was hawking his personal product on the streets of New York.

Not-Shawn, if you're reading this, while I did not buy your wares that day, I was reminded by them of how much fun it can be to draw with big fat Sharpies. I almost gave up on this drawing, but your sales pitch inspired me to keep at it until it was finished. It is dedicated, in part, to you.

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.