Let the commissions begin... Tupac Shakur was one of the early requests I got from the artist/collector who bought my Kurt Cobain drawing. Here's a weird thing about drawing people with Sharpies the way I do. There are no skin tone colors in the Sharpie marker palette. So at this point in my drawing, I made skin tones look "right" with only black and gray markers, and shadows. Lots of shadows. Later I started using pink, light blue, and lavender to shade white and gray areas or skin tones. So here's my little secret, anyone I draw, whether black, white, Latino or whatever, I use shadows and the exact same colors to shade them. Pink, light blue, lavender, gray, and black, in that order. Whatever the race or skin tone, I color them with the same colors of Sharpies.
This was the first request I got from the guy who bought my Kurt Cobain drawing. I didn't want to do the same Bob Marley photo that everyone uses, so I did some searching, and really liked this photo. Since it was largely shades of blue, I added the reggae colors of red, gold, and green in the letters of "ONE LOVE." I've done so many drawings over a couple of years, that I forgot about this one. Looking back, I really like this one a lot.
This was a drawing I did to replace the spot in the Earshot show for one of the drawings that sold first. Everything for the show had to be music related, since it was in a music shop. That's the main reason why I've drawn so many musicians and bands. I love doing them, as long as the music doesn't suck, because I listen to it while I draw, for about a week. To get a little out of the box, but still in the music realm, I decided to draw The Blues Brothers. I wanted to get the band from the movie in the drawing, not just Jake and Elwood, so I combined the two photos. In the blue of the background, there are song lyrics and quotes from the Saturday Night Live appearances, and from the
Blues Brothers movie. This one was one of the first bought by the couple who kept me busy through much of the spring of 2018.
A friend of mine in Winston-Salem let me store my personal stuff in a spare closet while I was living in the tent. As a "Thank You," I told him I'd draw his favorite singer or athlete. He told me Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood were his favorite singers. I found this cool photo of Carrie and Miranda singing their duet "Something Bad." So I drew that. Their hair came out a little too yellow, but all in all, this one came out pretty well.
I did this drawing when I had time in between the paying drawings. Then I just had it in my sketch pad, for months, and I never remembered it when I visited his house. It became an inside joke that I would bring it by soon. As luck would have it, I had this in a poster tube with another drawing, which I gave to a guy who bought the second drawing. Out of nowhere, that guy suddenly decided he was going to direct my "art career." So we had a falling out, and I never got Carrie and Miranda back. So I need re-draw one or both of them for my friend at some point.
This Michael Jackson drawing was requested by the guy who bought Kurt Cobain, but then he flaked out on paying me when I finished drawing Michael. I've never been a huge M.J. fan. I know he was one of the most talented singers, songwriters, dancers, and all around performers ever. Yeah, I watched the world premiere of "Thriller" on MTV, like my whole generation, and a like a few of his songs. But he's never been a favorite of mine. But of all the drawings I've done, technically, this is one of my best. This drawing wound up in a juried show in the Delurk Gallery in Winston-Salem, which was really cool. I think this ended up being one of the drawings, $1900 worth total, I left behind when I left North Carolina in a hurry. So I'll never get paid for it. Live and learn.
When I started meeting people in the Trade Street art scene in Winston-Salem, one person in particular really took to my work, and she went on to do a lot to promote my work locally. When we started talking, in was late January and Black history month was coming up. While neither one of us is black, she asked if I would want to do something for Black History Month. No problem, I was down with that. It was really a no brainer for me, Dr. Maya Angelou, largely known as America's Poet Laureate, lived the last few decades of her life in Winston-Salem. She had passed away (no one dies in North Carolina, they all "pass") in 2014, and so I decided to draw her. I went to work, picked her poem "Human Family" to ad to the drawing, fully legible, not as a texture in the background like I do with most musician drawings.
So this drawing wound up in the front window of a studio/gallery in Winston-Salem all through February of 2018, and there was a lot of good feedback on it from people. It eventually sold for $250, which is what the woman at the studio priced my drawings at. I was never sure who bought it, but I got paid my share, and it was able to stay on display in that studio.
In addition, the woman at that gallery managed to get this drawing up on stage at a garden party for Maya Angelou's 90th birthday. A bunch of the best regional poets read their own poems, and Dr. Angelou's, on stage at this park, standing right next to my drawing. That was a really cool thing to have this drawing involved with. At that event, I met Maya Angelou's only niece, and archivist, the woman in charge of Dr. Angelou's legacy.
Because so many people really liked that drawing, the woman there made 10 full size prints of it, and there were 3 or 4 sort of off color proofs, screw-ups, as well. I signed and numbered all of these, including the screw-ups. They were supposed to be sold for $100 each, and I'd get $35 of that. I got paid for one. Dr. Maya Angelou's niece and archivist got a free print for her collection. I never got paid for the rest. So that whole mess was a big lesson in the art business, and I'm operating at a really low level, small sums of money.
That's why I'm not naming this woman. I don't think she intentionally set out to scam me. I did get paid well for a few things that sold through her studio. The vast majority of my paid work came from other places. I got a lot of local publicity from her promoting my work. But she also was struggling with money, trying to make her dream art studio pay off. I think she just was strapped for cash, and not of the highest integrity, so lagging in paying me, or selling stuff behind my back, was a way to make ends meet.
The lesson here is that if you're an artist, you NEED to either watch and handle your own business well, or have someone you
completely trust handle it. So while I was working all the time and struggling to survive as a homeless guy, I lost at least $700 or so, and I left $1900 in work behind when I left North Carolina. So if anyone out there makes me a cool offer to help sell my art, and I'm taking my time to make a decision about whether to work with you, or not, this is why. "Good opportunities" are often not that good when it comes down to it.
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