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.

The Subway Sleeper

The New York City subway has inspired many of my drawings. Most have actually started on the subway as sketches of passengers or notes taken on overheard conversations. I've been hit (often literally) with some of my best ideas while riding the train to work in the morning. Even waiting on the platform can show you something interesting.

The drawing above is based on a man I saw napping on a subway platform bench. Unlike a park bench that is just one long strip of rear-state (!), most subway platform benches have thick, rigid arm-rests that divide them up into individual seats. The man's lower half was wedged into one such seat, and his upper half was curled over an armrest, his head and arms lolling to the side. It looked supremely uncomfortable, and yet he was napping like a champion, as all my annoying efforts to wake him proved fruitless (and NO he was not dead - I checked). Thanks to his accomplishment, I realized just how perfectly ill-suited to napping those benches are. I also realized that a person can sleep anywhere if he is either tired enough, or really, really good at sleeping.