My Sharpie Scribble Style Art 2005-2019 - #21

 Rockers, rappers, and Fortnite...  This is the second Notorious B.I.G. drawing I did.  This was requested by the guy who bought two drawings right after I got out of the hospital here in Richmond, last August.  18" X 24" #sharpiescribblestyle

 This is one of the orders I had lined up when I left North Carolina in a hurry last August.  It was requested by an old school BMXer and Facebook friend in the Midwest.  I landed here in Richmond by accident, with about $3 in my pocket, didn't know anyone, and nowhere to stay.  It was crazy hot during the days, and I was just laying down on loading docks and empty parking lots to sleep at night, since it was warm, and went days without raining.  But I didn't get a whole lot of actual sleep.  I did this drawing while working at McDonald's and a library here.  At night, I'd lay my trash bag wrapped sketchpad down, and lay on top of it, with my backpack as a pillow.  Actually I'm living similar to that still, but I sleep better, despite the cold.  Anyhow, I would literally doze off while drawing Robert Plant, and I screwed up a lot more than I ever have.  I was just exhausted while I drew this.

I try to do each drawing with no touching up of any kind.  I get one pass with each color of scribbles, and if I try to go back over any part, it screws it up.  Every two or three drawings, though, I use a dab or two of white out, and color over a small spot.  I screwed up Robert Plant so much by dozing off while drawing, that I touched up about 12 little spots with white-out and colored over them.  It ended up looking alright, but the Robert Plant drawing, because of how crazy my life was at the time, has the most mistakes and fixes of any drawing I've done. 18" X 24"

 This is the second Prince drawing I did, about a year after he died.  I did the first drawing (below) shortly after his death.  I knew Prince as a pop star from high school, the Purple Rain era.  I dig the song "Little Red Corvette," and that album was part of the soundtrack of high school for me in Boise, Idaho.  My favorite Prince song came on the next album.  "Raspberry Beret" always reminds me of The Boise Fun Spot, this weird little amusement park I worked at the two summers after high school, and was manager of the second summer.

Like I've mentioned before, I dig into the music of whomever I draw, and watch documentaries, and interviews with them during the week or so I'm drawing.  When I started looking up Prince, it blew my fucking mind.  I really had no idea just how much of a musical genius he was, and the incredible amount of work he produced.  The Superbowl Halftime show in the rain.  The flat out blazing guitar solo at the Rock n' Roll Hall of fame jam for George Harrison.  That acoustic clip where he plays three or four songs and just owns the audience.  This musical genius went unrecognized by me, I wish I wold have gone to a concert of his, or two.  I wrote him off as a good pop singer, and largely ignored him later on.  My mistake.  After drawing the first Prince drawing, I had the idea to do another one with the infamous symbol huge and integrated into him.  I can't even remember who bought this one.  I think it sold at Earshot Music.

 My nephew Ethan is in high school now, and I've drawn him a whole bunch of baseball drawings over the years.  I didn't know what to draw him last Christmas.  He got so into video games, like many high school kids, that my sister and brother-in-law actually installed a doorbell in his room, with a button on the wall, right outside the kitchen, downstairs.  That's the only way to get his attention.  Whenever I talked to my sister the last year or so, she said he was playing Fortnite.  So I drew this.  It's hanging on his game room door. 

 I was still pretty new at drawing musicians when Prince died.  But I liked enough of his music, that I wanted to do a tribute drawing.  This is the first one, and it's where I really dove into his music and story, like I mentioned above, and really became a fan of his work, if too late.  This is the one drawing of mine that has managed to escape the U.S. of A., and was bought by an English skater friend.  This Prince drawing is hanging on a wall in the U.K. now.

This young Bob Dylan, "with all the hair," was requested by the artist/collector who bought the Kurt Cobain drawing, and 3 or 4 others over about a year. As I was doing it, the clock was ticking for me in North Carolina.  Being a homeless guy, I managed to get arrested for buying donuts in an Aldi grocery store in Winston-Salem, about a month before my first show there.  I pushed shopping carts for quarters in the parking lot, that's how I made food and bus money that summer in the tent.  I was told by the police officer working security to leave the property one day, and I did. But I was hungry, I didn't have bus fare, and had a long walk ahead of me on a really hot, summer day.  So I went back into Aldi's and bought a pack of donuts with my Food Stamp card.  I got arrested on the way out, and spent three days in jail.  That was the first time I went to jail, except for a couple hours in a holding cell once in about '88, because of a traffic warrant.  

For whatever reason, the charges weren't dropped in court, like my public defender expected.  I got some first time criminal program, and I did about half of the community service, but couldn't pay the fine.  So I went back to court for the "real" sentence.  This is when I was doing a drawing a week, making about $500 a month, just enough to stay alive while living in my tent in the woods.  

In the time between my first sentence, and the real one, this blog had managed to completely piss off some prominent people in Winston-Salem.  It's along story.  But apparently they took offense to a homeless guy blogging, to a homeless guy having the most popular website in Winston, and that a homeless guy who'd never been to college was writing about the economy and a coming recession, you know, the potential recession the financial people are now thinking might happen this year or next.  I was ahead of the curve writing about that subject. 

I went back to court in June of 2018, and got a sentence of 50 more hours of community service, and over $600 in fines and fees, AND a 30 day suspended jail sentence if I didn't complete those.  As I mentioned, at age 52, this was my first criminal offense EVER.  Yes, the sentence seemed a bit much.  I didn't make enough money to pay the fines, even if I didn't spend a dime eating for the month.  At the same time, the woman at the studio gallery suddenly stopped selling anything of mine, it appeared that she had been told to make sure I didn't make any money.  I scraped by, found I had 30 more days to pay the fines, and $100 was added on.  I was physically threatened by a group of guys out at my tent one night.  I was looking at going to jail for what would inevitably be a really rough 30 days.  All because some prominent douchebags didn't like my blogging. It continues to amaze me how many people don't believe in our right to free speech here on the Eastern side of the country.  Hey, if you don't like what I write, don't bother reading it. 

I did some thinking.  I'd spent most of my adult life in Southern California, where a lot of stupid stuff happens.  But people don't regularly get threatened physically just for sharing ideas.  I knew not every place was like North Carolina.  In fact most places weren't.  I had no reason to stay there, and lots of reasons to leave.  So I left.  

I finished this bob Dylan drawing the day before I was leaving.  I told the guy who ordered it, the guy who was totally excited to see it three days earlier, that I needed to get it to him and get paid, as I was moving out of North Carolina.  I would use his money from the Dylan drawing to get a bus ticket to Chicago, to visit a friend there for a couple weeks, and then decide where to go.  Probably back to Southern California. 

 The guy who ordered this young Bob Dylan drawing ghosted on me.  I didn't hear a word from him the day he was supposed to pick up the drawing and pay me for it.  So I left anyhow, but I only had about $70.  After taking a regional bus to Greensboro, I got a ticket to the only place I could afford to get to, Richmond, Virginia, a city I'd never been to, and knew nothing about.  I landed here at the beginning of August 2018, with about $3 in my pocket.  I've lived on the streets here ever since.  I'm still homeless, still drawing, and still blogging.  

This drawing is hanging on the wall of The Mix Gallery here in Richmond's Arts District, at 12 Wst Broad.  They own it, but I believe it is for sale.