The Nature phase... When someone asks me how I do my drawings these days, I immediately say, "I cheat." As a rule, for all the rock star, band, and athlete drawings, which is most of what I do these days, I blow up a photo, I tape the copies of the blown up photo together, and I listen to something cool and pencil the entire back of the thing. Then I tape it down on my drawing paper, and go over the basic outline and shadows, a graphite transfer, to get the basic image. I don't do this because I can't draw, I do this because I want the final drawing to kick ass. When it comes to faces, I'm actually not that good at freehand drawing a face, and getting the expression just right. That's always been hard for me. That's why I tell people, "I don't do portraits." Yet, I mostly draw people, often huge faces. But I transfer the basic image in pencil, and then ink the outline in Sharpies, and then color it in, color by color, in my scribble style. When people see my very faint outlines, most of the time they can't even make out what it is. I'd not a paint-by-numbers thing, there's a fair amount of talent, and a lot of experience, involved.
I get two basic reactions from giving people that disclaimer.
Artists listen to me say that and say, "That's not cheating, lots of people do something like that for their basic image." Non-artists, or
blocked artists (who don't realize they're blocked artists), say something mean usually, like, "Oh, so you just get an outline and color it." Uh, yeah. Whatever bub.
With my basic disclaimer now written, and read by you, the tree frog above was drawn freehand,
in ink. No pencil at all. I was looking at a tiny, maybe 2" X 2", photo in a magazine. So yeah, I can actually draw reasonably well. I hand drew the outline for the frog above, and the flowers below, in light Sharpie colors, like pink or yellow ultra fine markers. Then I outlined where I could in black fine point (standard size) Sharpie, and started coloring in from there. The tree frog above is 14" X 17", I believe.
I like browsing through big art and photo books at a major bookstore, or used book store, mostly graffiti and street art books. But I go through all kinds of stuff, but not a lot of traditional art really gets me stoked. The work by painter Georgia O'Keefe
really stoked me. The first book of hers I saw, there was a painting called "Red Canna." It was a big painting of a flower, but it was reds and oranges and yellows, like flames. I just looked at that painting in the book and said to myself,
"That's what creativity FEELS like." I instantly became a fan of hers. Georgia O'Keefe is best known for painting huge pictures of flowers, and also desert landscapes, because she lived in New Mexico for years.
So back in 2012, my dad died, I stopped driving a taxi in Winston-Salem (wasn't making any money), I moved in with my mom, and I wanted to step up my drawing game beyond the goofy alien drawings. So I tried a few, big, Georgia O'Keefe-style flower drawings. I drew the lily above, and this rose, and a couple other big flowers. It was a really cool experiment, I learned I could do some really cool shading in my scribble style, I could fade colors well. So that's what these were. I didn't draw them to sell, but I did end up selling them for $20-$25 each, I think. I think these were both 14" X 17". These came out well, but drawing flowers just isn't my thing.
My tools. I did this to put on Facebook or one of my blogs, back in maybe 2013-2014. In the back is a folder I made to keep my finished drawings. It's a doodle style, loosely based on Jessie Armand's Sharpie doodle art style, but I colored it in and wrote "create" on it. I just wanted to make a cool looking folder, even though it was just for myself. So that's what in this photo.
Horrible photo, as many of these are, I was using a camera that was already over 6-7 years old. When I was doing the kids' name drawings now and then, people occasionally asked me to do some other random thing. So a friend of someone at our church had a kid of 4 or 5 who loved alligators. So the dad asked me to draw a couple, cartoonish alligators. This was one of them. I found a picture online to work from, and drew this guy freehand. The dad was stoked, the kid was stoked, it was easy, and I made $40 or so. Good deal all around. I think this was 12" X 18" back in 2013-2014 or so.
I did this peace sign, which was a huge symbol of the Hippie Days of the late 1960's-early 1970's. So it was a symbol I saw a lot, and thought was cool, when I was first really looking out at the world as a 4-5-6-year-old kid. So I drew one back in 2009 or so. This was basically an exercise in fading colors. I don't know what happened to this one.
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