Kenny Roberts- My latest Sharpie drawing

This is my latest Sharpie Scribble Style drawing, motorcycle racer Kenny Roberts, known to many as "King Kenny."  This is another project given to me by Sean Ewing, a lifelong BMX and motorcycle enthusiast and rider, and a guy who I've done several really cool drawings for.  Sharpie markers on paper, 18" X 24",about 45 hours of work, #sharpiescribblestyle, November 2024.

Kenny Roberts rose up in California to become a great flat track motorcycle racer on the dirt tracks as a young man.  He moved on up to road racing, got sponsored by Yamaha, and was the first guy to touch his knee to the ground while leaning into turns.  In the late 1970's and early 1980's.  Kenny went on to become the first American World Champion at road racing, long dominated by the Europeans at the time.  Then he won the World Championship a second year in a row.  Check the videos below for footage and the story of Kenny Roberts.  

The Legend of King Kenny: America's First Grand Prix Champion

Kenny Roberts vs. Barry Sheene / 1979 British Grand Prix

Why I'm not doing any drawing right now...

Janis Joplin drawing I did last year (2023), one of the most detailed drawings I've done with my Sharpies.  #sharpiescribblestyle

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't shared any new drawings in a few months now. If you've followed my blog or social media, at any consistent level, you also know I'm a homeless guy.  I'm not your typical homeless guy, by any means.  I work 7 days a week, writing, blogging, and drawing usually, and doing social media every day to promote the art and writing, and keep in touch with the people who follow my work.  

But it's winter here in Southern California, and that means it's our rainy season.  When I first moved to SoCal, back in the 1980's, the rainy season was from early December to the end of February.  Back then, by March first the rain was over.  Southern California is known for is great weather, so I'm not complaining.  But it's different here.  We rarely get a quick downpour that's gone in 20 minutes, and almost never get actual thunderstorms.  I think I've seen lightning three times in California.  

This is desert that's right next to the ocean, much different than Florida, which California often gets compared to.  We get long, slow rains that often last two to four days.  It's gray and ugly, with steady rain, almost the whole time.  All winter here, it's chilly, in the 50 to 65 degree (F) range, often with some wind.  No big deal, until you're outside in it around the clock, and it gets down to 40 or 45 degrees at night.  Now I know people in most of the country are laughing.  Hey, I grew up in Ohio and Idaho, I saw plenty of cold and snowy weather as a kid.  My family survived a week during the Blizzard of '78 with our power out, heating our living room with the Franklin stove, one of those steel fireplaces.  I appreciate the lack of weather in SoCal, a lot.  

Young Bob Dylan Sharpie drawing I did in 2018.  

But the winter rainy season here, when you're homeless, is a time of panhandling money for basic needs (food, bus fare, laundry, other daily needs) during the sunny days, then hiding as much as possible, and hanging out in dry places (libraries, fast food restaurants, buses, metro trains etc.) during the rainy days.  It costs extra money to stay dry when homeless.  

It's a time of just surviving much of the winter.  I get a lot less done as far as writing and particularly with artwork, because I spend a lot more time scraping up money, dodging the rain, drying out clothes and sometimes my sleeping bag, and hanging out in places where I can't draw.  There's more daily "work" to surviving as a homeless person during the rainy season.  

With the climate change going on, the Southern California rainy season has stretched out, as well.  We may get rain in November, and  those rain storms now stretch into March, and often April, maybe even May.  It used to be that on March 1st, there would be no rain, at all, until early December.  Now this season of having rainstorms every week lasts maybe six or eight weeks longer into the spring.  

This year, in addition to the normal rainy season to deal, a bunch of other stuff happened.  I signed up for Food Stamps again(called CalFresh), the one government program that really helps, in late November.  I got one months worth a couple days later.  I normally get those loaded on my card the 2nd of each month.  But they didn't show up in December, or in January.  That meant I had to panhandle much more to buy everyday food, right after the holidays when regular people pretty much stop giving to homeless people.  So I was struggling for day to day food in early January.  I called up the office twice, and they said, we'll load your card in a day or two.  Then it didn't happen.  

In addition, the sketchy prepaid debit card I had, that lets me get my art money out  of my Paypal, that account got shut down.  No notice, no reason.  Eventually I got a notice saying it expired, but the expiration date on the card  wasn't until 2025.  That happened in December.  After that, I couldn't sell artwork the way I normally do, using Paypal for payments,  So that was a a double financial hit during the already sketchy rainy season.  

Then I got really sick in mid January.  I was just worn down, more tired than usual, not eating much at all, and caught some infection when my system was depressed.  I went to the hospital, where I spent 2 1/2 days, getting antibiotics.  Then got shipped to a "homeless recuperative facility" way up in Palmdale.  When I left the hospital, they had either lost my sleeping bag and blanket, or thrown it away.  When you sleep outside, a sleeping bag is pretty important. The infection I got turned to cellulitis in my left leg, which got really swollen, and super painful.  Initially I was told I would be at the recuperative place for 90 days.  Then that got cut to just over two weeks.  The recuperative places are super low budget, and while the staff was really cool, I didn't always get my meds on time, and didn't heal as fast as expected.

 Stevie Ray Vaughn Sharpie drawing I did back in 2018.

I could barely walk a few painful steps when I went in there.  By the end of the two weeks,  I'd lost about 10-15 pounds, because we didn't get a whole lot of food.  by the time I left, I was walking about a quarter mile to the local library every day.  My leg was still really swollen by the end of each day, and still swells up every day.  

I expected to be sent back out to the streets.  But then I got sent to a "transitional housing" place on the outskirts of downtown L.A..  It was an 80 or 100 year old, dilapidated, building.  The rundown, old hotel was a real looney bin of characters.  One of the residents was walking around with a baseball bat under his arm in the lobby, because someone had dissed him a couple days before.  The food was pig slop.  There was mold or mildew all over the window sill of my room, and some on the mattresses.  The toilet didn't flush, and there were no public restrooms in the building, which had been a mediocre hotel, in probably the 1940's.  The elevator was tiny, and had the safety thing you had to pull across before hitting the button to go up or down.  

I was supposed to live there, with no food stamps, surviving off of their horrible, cold food, for 3 to 6 months, while they tried to find me "permanent housing."  Now, that sounds good to average people.  But "permanent housing" means being diagnosed as either having mental illness or serious addiction, then getting S.S. Disability or SSI.  Then you eventually get approved, living in poverty, in a ghetto apartment that is empty because the people in the ghetto don't want to live there.  

"Housing" programs DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT help you get back to working in some normal way, and making a good living again.  When you go into housing, you are going to rely on a government check, and several local programs, FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.  You're not allowed to earn very much money.  If you find a decent job, and start making money, you lose your housing, your food stamps, your monthly government check, and your medical insurance and prescription benefits.  My point is, there is a reason that there are 40,000 homeless people in L.A. county. If the "housing programs" were really better than living on the streets, the homeless people would flood into them.  Most people, myself included, would rather live homeless, rather than to be in the current housing programs.  The people going into housing are the worst of the worst, the people who just don't care anymore.  

I can actually work every day as an artist and writer, living outside.  I'm (supposedly) allowed to earn money, and try to get my life back on track.  The homeless programs of this country are creating a separate population of people, and they are government sponsored drug addicts, for the most part.  There are over 7 million men already living this way, and more every day.  I don't want to be a government sponsored drug addict.  I don't drink ANY alcohol.  The last beer I had was in 2009, I think.  I don't do any drugs.  I don't take any prescription drugs, except when I'm sick, like for the leg infection.  I don't do any recreational drugs, at all.  My last hit off a joint was at a Cirque du Soleil crew party in 1997 or '98, and before that was in Boise in 1987.  I don't have a work history after the years of not being able to find a job while in North Carolina, which, combined with being old and out of shape, make a "real job" pretty much impossible.  If there was a job I could have found that would pay enough to rent a place to live, I would have done it years ago.  So I keep working to create my own job, some combination of my art and writing.  Not being able to get a real bank account has been one big issue over the last few years. 

Evel Knievel Sharpie drawing I did in 2023.

 

Anyhow, I left the sketchy ass transitional housing, the government sponsored crack house in downtown L.A., after one night, and went back to the streets.  Right into the storm that dumped over 7 inches of rain in about four days.  A few nights later, someone stole my shopping bag with some of my stuff, while I was sleeping.  It had all my spare clothes in it. 

So, to recap, I lost my food stamps in late December (but finally got them going again a couple weeks ago).  I lost use of the debit card that I use to get money out of Paypal, so I can't get paid to draw right now.  I lost my sleeping bag and blanket.  A friend here loaned me a sleeping bag, but it's really not good under about 48 degrees.  It's much better than nothing.  And I lost all my spare clothes.  I have the clothes I'm wearing, and two extra pairs of socks right now.  That makes laundry a bit of a problem.  Then I left my big sketchpad in a restaurant one night, and lost that.  That was totally my fault, I was tired and just spaced off and left it behind.  I do still have my Sharpies and basic art supplies.

So I'm working to slowly replace all the stuff I lost, and get back just to a basic street survival level.  Then figure out a new debit card I can get, and get back to drawing.  This is everyday life as a working, homeless, artist/ blogger.  But it was just a whole bunch of hits in a short period of time, and that time was the worst part of the year for weather here. It's just been a rough winter.  

I'm writing a lot now, and I will get back to drawing, but probably not for a couple more months.  Check out my Substack for some of the deeper writing I've been doing link below).  Yes, this is a depressing, whiny post.  I don't write these very often.  I'm not asking for help, I'm just explaining my current situation.  My Patreon money from February and March is in Paypal, but I can't access it yet.  There's just a bunch of little steps I need to take to get back to "homeless normal," and then work to rise beyond that.  So that's where I'm at, for any of you wondering.  Lots more writing coming, and the drawings will start up again when I can do it.  

"Regrets"  The drawing that was in my big sketchpad when I left it in a restaurant one night, about a month ago.  I did this Sharpie drawing in October and November of 2023.  

I'm doing most of my writing on Substack lately, a platform designed specifically for writers.  Check it out.

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack- "Steve Emig Art"

    
 

Creative Life- 2/12/2024

Would you sleep on this mattress, not knowing who had slept there before?  This is what "transitional housing" looks like.  Imagine a 100 year old hotel building, on the outskirts of downtown L.A., and the whole building matches this mattress.  Everything is run down.  The toilet didn't flush either.  I was supposed to live here for several months, eating the pig slop they called food, with no functional toilet, for the CHANCE of getting a "permanent" (aka 2 year lease) apartment subsidized.  There was a wet, black substance, possibly black mold, growing on the wide window sill.  I picked the other mattress, about half as bad.  I was out at 6:30 the next morning, even though I knew there were several days of rain coming.  The "programs" all of you hear about for the homeless, are for the drug addicts and lazy fuckers who never want to work again.  The system is creating government sponsored drug addicts that your tax dollars (and inflation) pay the living expenses for.  There are at least 7 or 8 million of these people across the U.S. that you're paying for already.  There are plenty of those people.  But I'm not one of them.  There are no programs (other than food stamps (Cal Fresh) for people actually trying to work and earn a living again.  See this post for more info on that.

Just to be clear, my goal is to start a small business selling ebooks, real books, a few T-shirts, and my Sharpie art.  I want to use the proceeds from this business to rent a room or apartment, buy a BMX cruiser, start riding again to the level I can, and start slowly losing weight.  That's the goal.  That's always been the goal, since I landed back out on the streets of SoCal in the summer of 2019.  

The main reason a "real job" is out of the question is that, after living in North Carolina for ten years (2008-2018), where I couldn't find ANY job (except taxi driving for a year), I have no work history.  The last "real job" I had that could verify my employment would be a warehouse I worked at in 1997, where I tested computer monitors, drove a forklift, and loaded trucks.  Every job I've had since, taxi driving and "real jobs," the companies have all gone out of business, or been bought out and no longer exist.  I'm 57, really overweight, and can't do any physical jobs at this point.  But there's a lot I can do online.  

At this point, I have a better chance of creating a small business of writing and art, than I have of getting a real job that pays enough to rent a place to live.  I also used to be a part time flipper, buying storage unit auction units, and selling the stuff for cash.  That's a good way to make some money, week to week.  With a vehicle and a place to store stuff, I could do that as well.  That would combine well with the online business idea.  I always made some money doing that, I did it part time when I drove a taxi in 2004-2007.  So that's the goal, create my own job, rent a place to live, and stabilize my life again.  Then get a bike.  That's all I've been trying to do for nearly 5 years now.  

It's hard trying to build a business right off of the streets.  Really hard.  But that's the only realistic option right now.  And we're heading into a major recession (don't believe the media hype, we're in a recession, financial YouTube is talking about it daily).  I've built online stores twice since 2019, and both times my inability to get a legit bank account held me back.  I didn't realize something that simple would be such an issue.  But when you can't show proof of a physical address, it's an issue.  And no, a P.O. Box won't work.  

Anyhow, here's the last 3 1/2 months worth of drama.  At the end of November, I signed back up for food stamps (aka Cal Fresh), mine had expired at the end October.  I got approved for six months, like usual.  They had the first month on my card the next day.  Cool.  Then I got a free "Obama phone," because I couldn't scrape up enough money to buy a Trac phone, after mine got stolen last summer.

My food stamps didn't come in December, so I figured what I got at the end of November was for December, instead of back-timed for November.  Then they didn't come in January.  I called them in January.  The woman said the money would be on my card in three days.  It didn't come.  So I called again, that woman said they owed me for December and January, and it would all be on my card the next day.  It didn't come again.  As of now, for reasons no one can explain, I haven't had my food stamps payments for December, January, or February.  I'm in the system, it says so on the computer.  But they won't send the payments to my card, for some reason.  If I don't qualify, just say so, and I'll figure something else out.  But their online system says I should be getting the payments, and I'm not getting them, I'm in the system.

I also had a prepaid bank card thing, which allowed me to transfer money out of Paypal, and similar sources, so I could get paid for doing artwork, or other work online.  That card got shut down, no reason given, in December as well.  Then, since I've been following crypto for a couple of years now, I signed up for a Coinbase account.  I know the crypto major bull market is in its early stages, and will play out over the next 12 -18 months.  So I was planning to scrape up $50 or $100, and put it in Bitcoin, Eth, and a couple others, and just let it ride for the next year, as the cycle plays out.  I couldn't fund the account, my "Obama phone" wasn't accepted.  Then, a couple of days later, the new Google account I opened, to have a separate email for the crypto account, got shut down for no reason, as well.  That's the third Google account I've had shut down with no notice, with no reason given.  

With no food stamps in January, I struggled to scrape up food money.  Normal people are pretty generous to homeless people from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  Then the generosity just shuts off.  January is always the hardest month to scrape through.  I was going through my days, and not eating much.  I actually "work" much of every day, though I have to bounce from location to location to do it.  Other than the library, I have to pay, I have to buy something, at most of the locations I work at daily, like fast food joints, Starbucks and similar locations, etc.  Buying a drink or food gives me access to heat or A/C, a place to sit, power (sometimes) wifi, and a bathroom.  So I have to buy something to use those places, and I need bus fare to get from place to place.  That's just everyday life in my situation.  

Because I wasn't eating much, and not eating well, my immune system got depressed.  I got sick in the middle of January, and went to the hospital for three days.  I had some infection that normally I could fight off.  My lack of decent food, and battling the chilly weather, wore me down.  I had some infection, and it landed in my lower left leg, a form of cellulitis.  I've been prone to that since I was a taxi driver in 2007.  When I was leaving the hospital, it took half a day for them to find my belongings, that I had to leave with security in the E.R., when I checked in. When they found my stuff, My sleeping bag and blanket were gone.  The hospital either lost them, or threw them away.  That's a bummer.

From the hospital I got sent to a "homeless rehab" place up in Palmdale.  The people working there were all cool, the food was decent, but luke warm or cold.   But the place was completely underfunded for the services they are supposed to provide.  They had problems getting me my antibiotics three times a day the first few days.  I could barely walk when I got there, and just laid in my little bed, with my leg elevated on my backpack.  I healed up, mostly.  But now my left leg swells up with fluid each day, then the fluid drains at night.  It's still improving over time.  It was back to pretty much normal size this morning.

I talked to the social workers about looking into "housing" after a few days in the rehab place.  Then I didn't see them again.  My social worker went ahead and signed me up for the housing system, at the beginning of February, and I was taken to the sketchy-ass building in downtown L.A., with the nasty mattress in the photo above, and no working toilet for my room.  So I left.

Then I had to deal with a couple of 38 to 40 degree (F) nights, the first with no sleeping bag.  Luckily, a person I know in this area gave me a sleeping bag the second day.  That was a life saver.  It's good down to about 45 or 50 degrees, so I want to buy a moving blanket for additional warmth at night.  Those are compact, and are good insulation for their size.  I squeaked through the huge rainstorm, 7.25 to 8.25 inches of rain in about four days, where I'm at.  One night, I set down my big, trash bag wrapped sketch pad, to put on my poncho, when leaving a business.  I spaced out, and left my sketchpad there.  It had the finished "Regrets" drawing (below), a large doodle art (black and white) drawing, and a couple smaller things.  Not a huge loss, but still a bummer.  So I have to buy a new sketch pad before I can do any more drawings.  Another thing on the list.

Then last night, while I was sleeping, some motherfucker stole my shopping bag, which was tucked behind my legs while I slept.  All my clothes were in it, and about 15 razors, since I have to buy a 20-pack of razors to get one, these days.  So I have the clothes on my back, my laptop, Obama phone, and Sharpies and my basic art supplies.  I have the new sleeping bag.  And that's it.  

I want to be perfectly clear, I'm NOT asking, or hinting that I need help.  I'm just writing this post to explain how fucked up life can be, to vent, and to let everyone know the kinds of things I deal with, and don't write about most of the time.  This is why I scrape by, and haven't been able to get back on my feet.  When you're homeless, things you need, everyday items, are getting lost or stolen, on a regular basis.  These setbacks can take months to recover from.  

It's a beautiful, but chilly morning here in The Valley, north of L.A..  I've been here in a fast food place for over an hour, and it's still only 52 degrees (F) out right now.  It's been a crazy winter, and I'm doing my best to survive, and keep plugging away at the overall goal of getting a functioning business going, and making a living again some day.  But it's been a crazy winter, I have a bunch of stuff to replace, and I can't even do artwork right now.  But I keep plugging away at it.  

So that's my status right now, as a creative guy working to earn a legit living again.  Again, I'm not asking for help or any items.  I'm just writing about the things I normally don't write about, and letting everyone who follows my work know how things are going.  Thanks for reading, thanks to all who have bought drawings from me, helped me out in some other way, or support me on Patreon (I can't access that $$ right now either, but will be able to soon).  More stuff to come.  I'll try to keep it interesting, most of the time.  

Both legs were swollen at this point, even my hands were.  But the left lower leg was more swollen.  This is the morning after I got to the homeless recuperation place in Palmdale, after three days in the hospital, in mid January.  

"Regrets."  This is the #sharpiescribblestyle drawing that was in the big sketchpad that I left in a restaurant.  It wasn't there when I checked a day later.  Nobody wanted to buy this one, but technically, it's one of my better drawings.  I wanted to do something weird for Halloween, try another idea, and this was the result.  I hope whomever nabbed it likes it.   

I've been doing a lot of writing on Substack lately, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack

 

"Regrets" My latest Sharpie Scribble Style drawing

"Regrets."  My latest Sharpie Scribble Style drawing.  18" X 24", Sharpies on paper.  This drawing is for sale, message me on Facebook if interested.  #sharpiescribblestyle

Check out over 200 of my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings on Pinterest

I finished up my last Sharpie drawing around the beginning of October 2023, and didn't have another commission drawing lined up.  October was heading in, leading up to Halloween, so I decided it would be cool to draw a "Halloween drawing."  My first thought was to draw Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and the unofficial Queen of Halloween.  But then I thought, 1) I don't know if anyone would want to buy my drawing of her.  My drawings take so long, around 40 to 45 hours of drawing each, spread over two to three weeks, that I try sell them, to help me survive, day to day.  Being a homeless working artist (with no work history after my taxi driving years), I can't find a "real job" today that would pay my rent.  So I simply need to try and sell every drawing to get buy.  Artists aren't supposed to say that, but it's my reality.  There's still this thing in art that artists are supposed to act like money doesn't exist.  Screw that.  We all have bills to pay, even at my level of living.  Besides most artists have not actually sold 100 original pieces that takes two to three weeks to finish, I have.  2) With all of Elvira's cleavage in view, no wife would let a guy keep my Elvira drawing up all year 'round, and I didn't know if anyone would want to pay a couple hundred bucks for a Halloween decoration.  So I gave up on drawing Elvira.  She's amazing, Elvira the character, and Cassandra, the woman behind the character.

Then I started thinking, "OK, what is REALLY scary?"  We all see the fake witches, ghosts, ghouls, zombies, werewolves, and all that kind of stuff, all through October, and it's no big deal."  In addition, I needed something that would be interesting visually, something worth drawing.  What popped into head then was this crazy cemetery I used to go to when I lived in Winston-Salem, NC.  It's right on the edge of downtown, where I used to hang out every day when I lived there, usually going to the library.  The cemetery started with the Moravian "God's Acre" graveyard in Old Salem, the historical part of Salem, and a big tourist attraction.  Salem, NC was founded in 1766, so it's an old cemetery.  The Winston cemetery apparently began right next to it, part of it built into small hills.  Winston, the industrial city built on the tobacco and textile industries, began in 1849.  R.J. Reynolds, the company, was founded, and is still headquartered there.  R.J. Reynolds, the man, is actually buried in this cemetery I'm talking about.  It is the craziest, most medieval looking American cemetery I've ever seen.  

Some of the hillside crypts in the Winston-Salem/Old Salem cemetery.  This is one of the coolest looking old cemeteries I've ever seen.  If you ever become a vampire on the East Coast, I recommend checking this place out to live in.  Photo borrowed from Cemetery Tourist blog.

So then my thinking went to the cool old crypts and abandoned churches.  I thought of drawing either a dark interior of a creepy looking abandoned church, or a really cool looking crypt, like those in the photo above, could look really cool and Halloweenish.  Something with a lot of shadows.  At that point, I started looking on the internet for cool looking crypts and spooky looking abandoned churches.  While I was doing that search for cool photos to work from, these graveyard statue photos came up in the searches.  Like these below.  

I loved these cemetery statues of sad angels.  The poses were depressed and they were amazing sculptures.  Dark, a little creepy, and, best of all, lots of shades and shadows.  Then I started thinking, "OK, what theme best goes with these, for a drawing.  What is most scary in life?  What would make an angel sad?  The idea came to me, "regrets."  We all meet death at some point, and the scariest thing I could think of would be to be lying on your deathbed with a whole bunch of regrets of the things you did in life.  Or worse, all the things you didn't do that you really wanted to do.  So that top angel, and the theme of regrets, became the idea behind this drawing.  At that point, I didn't know how well a stone sculpture of an angel, or the out-of-focus background with questions of possible regrets, would work with my Sharpie style.  This drawing is one of my experiments.  "Hey, I wonder if this will work?  Or if I'll spend 45 hours and it will suck?  So I started drawing.  

Over the last few weeks, the stuff I do to survive day to day took more time than usual, so I slowed down on the drawing.  But I finally finished it today.  As the artist, I really like how the angel turned out, I don't know if there's 50 shades of gray in this drawing but I think there's at least 43 shades.  The background doesn't look as cool as I hoped.  I don't hate it, but don't totally love it either.  That's just my take on this experimental drawing project.  I definitely want to draw some more cool sculptures at some point.  In fact, I started a "Sculptures: Shadows are Magic" board on Pinterest, collecting photos of other ones I really like.  

The drawing at the top is the end result of my Halloween drawing experiment.  Let me know on Facebook or Twitter what you think.  

I'm doing a lot of writing these days on a New platform designed specifically for writers, called Substack.  I'm writing mostly about creativity, creative scenes, art, writing, and some futurist and economics stuff, too, once in a while.  Check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear's Substack  

Latest Sharpie Scribble Style drawing- Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin, kickin' ass, singing live, and showing why she was the queen of bluesy rock in the late 1960's.  My #sharpiescribblestyle drawing for a couple in NorCal.  18" X 24"

In late 2015, 7 1/2 crazy years ago, I started trying to really sell my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings.  I had been living with my mom in a small town in central North Carolina, after my dad's death.  I was struggling with serious depression for a few years, partly because I couldn't find any "real" job after taxi driving died off in California a few years earlier.  I applied for 140 different local jobs in a couple of years, and didn't get any of them.  That had never happened to me before.  We were living off my mom's social security check, which she didn't manage well.  One night just trying to figure out some way to make a little bit of money on my own, I decided to try selling some of my Sharpie drawings.  

My Sharpie Scribble Style technique was something I invented while living in an indie art gallery in 2005.  I had tried drawing a mural with markers back in 2002, in this tiny, dingy room I lived in.  I kept playing around, trying to find a technique to shade different colors with markers, to get beyond the basic 12 or 24 colors.  The layering of different colors of scribbles to get different hues and to blend colors is something I stumbled upon while living in the AAA Electra Gallery later on.  I had been drawing different things, on and off, for ten years, using the style.  But nothing really cool.  

Janis' name, hand drawn style inspired by actual Big Brother & the Holding Company concert posters, from the late 1960's.  The name is surrounded by song lyrics and song titles in the background, with colors over them.

When I decided to step up my art, and try to sell something, I spent about three hours one night looking through all kinds of art, trying to answer one simple question, "What could I draw that I would want to put on my own wall?"  I dug through work, from Picasso and Monet to Banksy and Shephard Fairey.  I decided on a simple stencil drawing of Bruce Lee.  That's how I started drawing people.  A couple weeks later, I sold a drawing for $25 to someone on Facebook.  I kept drawing people.  Within a couple of months, I decided to draw Johnny Cash, a favorite of mine from childhood.  

I showed the drawing to a woman who had a little Amish food store and sandwich shop in downtown Kernersville, NC, where we lived.  She asked what I'd want for the drawing.  Jokingly, I said, "Lunch for me and mom would be cool."  She replied, "What do you want?"  So I traded my first musician drawing, Johnny Cash, for a couple of great sandwiches and drinks.  A week or two later, we were back in the shop, and Jo, the owner asked, "could you draw Janis Joplin for me?"  That was my first musician drawing request.  My skills were much less developed then, but I drew a pretty good rendition of a popular Janis photo, with with lots of shadows, which made drawing easier.  That was in early 2016, and I've been drawing musicians ever since, mostly by request.  I've lost track, but I've sold around 100 original drawings since 2016.

Close up of the latest Janis Joplin drawing.  

For 7 1/2 years now, I've been drawing nearly continuously.  My drawings went from taking 12 to 15 hours to draw a 12" X 18" drawing, to 40 to 45 hours or more to draw an 18" X 24" drawing.  During the drawing process,  I watch all the interviews I can find about whomever I'm drawing, as well as listen to their music (for musicians), and watch any documentaries about them.  I try to understand the person or group as much as I can.  As the years passed, this has been one of the coolest parts of the process for me.  

I love Janis' music, I used to listen to the Pearl album, in particular, quite a bit, years ago.  It was great to dig into her story while drawing this piece.  I knew she died from a drug overdose, and was part of the now infamous "27 Club," artists who died at the age 27.  That group unfortunately included Jimi Hendrix, who died shortly before Janis, Jim Morrison, and more recent musicians like Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse.  

I didn't know that Janis didn't start really singing until high school.  I didn't know that she was part of a bluegrass folk band early on, or that she was bisexual.  I also didn't know that she died accidentally of a heroin overdose, while recording the Pearl album in Hollywood.  I thought it was just crazy, excessive partying.  Her life and career was really on an upswing at the time of her death, and she had quit using hard drugs months before.  Hendrix had died of an overdose just over two weeks before she OD'd, which hit Janis hard.  The people around her seem to think she was just feeling down, struggling with the the long periods of alone time during recording, and decided to get a bit of heroin again just to take the edge off the sadness, and she wound up with really pure stuff.  It was enough to end her life, to everyone's surprise.  The band finished up Pearl, and it was released just three months after her death.  This is one of my top 5 favorite drawings I've done, it came out better than expected.  

Here are some of the best videos I came across of Janis Joplin while doing this drawing.

Janis' last interview with Dick Cavett

Janis- "Ball and Chain" Monterey Pop Festival- This performance really thrust her into the limelight as an up and coming performer.

"Cry Baby" - Live in Toronto

Janis: The Way She Was documentary -1974- 25 minutes

Little Girl Blue documentary - 90 minutes

Melissa Etherige and Joss Stone tribute to Janis, introduced by Kris Kristofferson, who wrote "Me & my Bobby McGee"

Vicky Vickers, Deanna Caulkins, and Robin Logan- Skateboard Hall of Fame women with my drawings

  1970's era skateboard Hall of Fame women Vicky Vickers, Deanna Caulkins, and Robin Logan, with drawings I did for them.  This happened a while back, but I just found the photo, misfiled in my hard drive.

About 4 or 5 years ago, a friend of mine, who was also a friend of Robin Logan, had me do a drawing for Robin's birthday.  Robin is from the Logan family, that put out the Logan Earth Ski skateboards in the 1960's and 1970's, and they are still putting out boards.  Robin later had me do a couple of other drawings for her, including one for older brother Bruce.  She also had me do these two drawings from classic photos of Vicky Vickers and Deanna Caulkins, when they got inducted into the Skateboard Hall of of Fame.  I was stoked on this project, because these women were teenage girls, already top skaters, tearing it up on skateboards, back when I first got into skateboarding, during the 1970's boom.  It was just a really cool project for me to be a part of.  So that's Vicky, Deanna, and Robin above (L to R), the day she gave them the drawings.  

As I improved, and became a bit better known for my Sharpie Scribble Style, after I started seriously selling drawings in late 2015, I began to get a few special projects.  Yes, they're all cool, but I was asked to do 2 or 3 drawings for people's birthday's, a couple of memorial drawings for people's friends who had died, and then projects like this, for women who were defining skateboarding when I was a kid, just getting into it.  Those are the projects that have more weight, where I really wanted to do my best.  

Like any artist, I'm never 100% happy with any drawing I do.  There are screw-ups in every one, in most cases, that only I notice.  I shade in ink, and I very rarely use any whiteout to touch up.  So I have to blend in any tiny mistakes I make, or start the drawing all over if it's a big enough mistake.  The pressure is on, artistically, in every drawing.  But certain projects hold a bit more pressure.  

In any case, I just found this photo above, misfiled in a folder, and wanted to share it, since it's cool to see women that had a lot of influence in early action sports with my work on their walls.  Thank you Robin Logan for tapping me to do these two drawings.  

Video as we know it now didn't really exist in the 1970's, and there isn't a lot of film of individual skateboarders then.  But here's an intro piece of Deanna Caulkins from her induction into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame.  

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How long Have I been thinking about Creative Scenes?

This is an article about my Sharpie Scribble Style artwork, in the local Kernersville, NC newspaper, from October of 2016.  As you can see, the idea of Creative Scenes was already on my mind then, six years ago.

I was trying seveal different blogs at the time, this was about 8 months before I started this blog (Steve Emig: The White Bear).  In some of those blogs, I wrote about the concept of  Creative Scenes, and the role they play in innovation, art, action sports, and even economic development.  I even published a blog called How to Make Your Lame City Better.  Really.  

Being stuck in North Carolina for ten years, unable to find ANY "real" job the whole time, I did a lot of thinking.  One big theme was "What would it take for area to NOT SUCK?"  Creative Scenes, inspired by what I had experienced in BMX freestyle and creative jobs (Wizard Publications, the AFA, Vision, TV crews, Cirque du Soleil), and also by Richard Florida's 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class, was a big theme for me then.  Winston-Salem's Trade Street art scene actually grew, and was really cool when I left in 2018.  But there just weren't enough people buying art at any serious price to earn money from it.  You couldn't get past a hobby level, unless you sold a ton of art online.  I was selling more than most people, and I lived in a tent most of that time.  That meant a "real" job, and I couldn't get hired for anything there.  Except for about a year of driving a taxi while living in the cab, which was pointless.  

In any case, I've been thinking about Creative Scenes for a long time, and mentioned them to the reporter doing the interview.  
 

M.C. Emig Skateparks: a new direction for my Sharpie art- 5/7/2022

 This is M.C. Emig Skatepark #5, the first large drawing (18" X 21") I've done in this style.  The "M.C." is a nod to M.C. Escher, whose work we are all familiar with, and inspired this general idea.  But my name is Steve Emig, and this is a drawing of a possible (if not super rideable) skatepark.  That's there the name came from.  This post is how I came to this new direction in my Sharpie art.

I'm still writing this post... don't read it yet... not done!

I've been drawing as long as I can remember.  I drew with crayons as a little kid, with pencils as a grade schooler, and basic black Bic pens and pencils while in high school.  My dad was a draftsman that worked his way up to being a design engineer, so he drew big drawings of machine parts for a living.  When I was a kid, he would occasionally bring drawings home to work on, and he taught me how to understand them,  So drawing was natural to me, and I was always that kid doodling in his notebooks all through school.  In second grade, drawing Speed Racer's Mach 5 race car was the cool thing.  At another school in 3rd grade, Army jeeps, tanks, and halftracks were the hot thing.  My dad taught me to draw jeeps while on a camping trip, which upped my game, making me one of the two best kids at drawing that year.  

My mom did ceramics when I was little, and other crafts, so there were creative hobbies always happening in my house.  But at the same time, working class people in 1970's Ohio had no love for people who called themselves "artists."  When somebody like Andy Warhol would show up on TV, adults were quick to denigrate "those crazy, lazy people who didn't have real jobs, and just did art in New York City or Los Angeles."  It was simply known in my childhood world that art was not something you could ever make a living at.  Adults didn't have to tell us that, their attitudes about art said it all.  People had to work "real jobs," often jobs they hated, but did because it was necessary to work and make a living.  Decent working people could have hobbies, but not get arrogant and uppity, and think they could actually make a living with art of any kind.  I only met one professional artist when I was a kid.  A friend's dad made cool little sculptures, a group of seals laying on a rock, was the one I remember.  I couldn't believe that he actually made a living sculpting.  "But what does he do for a job?" I kept asking my friend.  "Sculpting is his job," she replied.  

One of the "M.C. Escher Skateparks" that I did earlier this year.  Sketched freehand in pen, then shaded.

So I grew up in a world where I was often encouraged to draw, as a kid, but where doing any kind of "art" as an adult was simply not an option.  Becoming a draftsman like my dad was the only way to draw for a living.  Like a lot of people in Generation X and earlier generations, this led to an inner conflict when doing creative work.  One part of me had a strong drive to draw or do creative work, and socially programmed side of me thought it was bad or evil to try and earn money doing creative work.  I've spent decades working through those issues.  

The M.C. Emig Skatepark idea, above, started when I was in high school, after I got into BMX the summer after my sophomore year of high school.  I would sit in class sometimes and doodle little ramps, at a time when simple quarterpipes and halfpipes were the only actual ramps that existed.  If a halfpipe had a channel or roll-in, that was as complex as they got in 1983 or 84.  But I would sometimes scrawl little ramp set-ups on notebook paper while bored in one class or another.  

I also took drafting for two years in high school, and pottery my senior year, and I was pretty good at both, getting all A's, I believe.  While people think of pottery as a lazy person's, "easy A" class, it wasn't at Boise High School.  My teacher, Mrs, Feuss, made it pretty easy to get a B, if you did the work, and tried your best.  But even in pottery, we had to work to get an A.  I not only got A's, I also made a bunch of whiskey jugs on the side, which I sold to mountain men, for $5 each.  My best friend Darrin was doing that, and got me into both pottery, and selling the handmade whiskey jugs.  So I got A's in pottery, and made a $5 profit, after paying the $40 materials fee for the year.  I also aced drafting, which came pretty natural to me, thanks to my dad, and most people figured I'd be a design engineer, too.  But there was a big difference.  My dad could actually understand mechanical things, and fix them.  I couldn't.  He just got how machines worked, and I didn't.  I could draw the pictures, but I didn't get how things actually operated.  My interests lay elsewhere.  

When I graduated high school in 1984, there was no money to go to college, So I "took a year off."  I worked in a restaurant, and kept riding my bike, practicing freestyle tricks, and doing a few shows, part of the one trick team in Idaho, with Jay Bickel.  A year later, my family moved to San Jose, when my dad got a new job.  I worked my summer job in Boise, managing a tiny amusement park called the Boise Fun Spot.  Then I packed up my land yacht, a 1971 brown, Pontiac Bonneville, and drove solo to San Jose, to join my parents and sister.  

When I got there, I quickly found a job at a local Pizza Hut.  I worked nights, rode during the day, and started a BMX freestyle zine to meet the other San Francisco Bay Area riders.  The zine worked, and I soon met the legendary Curb Dogs team, the Skyway factory team guys, and a bunch of really good amateurs.  Eleven issues of my zine, San Jose Stylin', landed me a job in Southern California.  I flew to SoCal at the end of July in 1986.  I had my bike, a suitcase, and $80 when I left.  I started my new job at Wizard Publications, home of BMX Action and FREESTYLIN' magazines, the next day.  

I was used to being busy every minute at Pizza Hut, and Wizard was just the opposite at first.  My primary job was to proofread both magazines, which was about one week's work each month.  I had a lot of free time in my little office the rest of the time, for the first couple of months.  I started reading the MLA Stylebook, to learn proofreading on the fly.  I read back issues of both magazines, learning about the history of BMX racing, jumping, and freestyle.  I also started drawing little ramp drawings again, isometric, "3D" looking sketches.  Ramps were real simple then, and I drew weird combinations of quarterpipes and halfpipes, linked together in cool combos and at weird angles.  One day I drew one, a completely crazy one, with ramps at completely unrealistic angles and directions.  I called it an M.C. Escher Skatepark.  My co-workers thought it was funny.  And that was it.  I drew a few more, just goofing around.  

As time went on, I got busier, and didn't really have time to draw at work anymore.  Over the years I would get a sketchpad and draw with pens once in a while, usually for a couple of months at a time.  Then I wouldn't draw for many months.  I made zines, produced low budget BMX and skateboard videos, and worked a whole bunch of odd jobs, from video store clerk to TV show crew guy, and I didn't draw much.  

Then in 2005, while working as a taxi driver, another driver made me an offer.  I could live in his indie art gallery, in an industrial building, and drive his taxi on the weekends.  I'd been working nearly every single day, 10-18 hours a day, seven days a week, for 2 1/2 years.  I was burned out, and took the offer.  Suddenly I was alone all day, in a big room full of art created by several young artists, with a mama cat and six tiny kittens for company.  On day two, I drew a little drawing on a post-it note.  A couple days later, I bought a pack of generic markers, and a roll of banner paper.  I started making big drawings, adding art to some of the poems I'd written.  I tried to find a way to shade colors well with markers.  I upgraded to a 24 pack of colored, standard Sharpie markers, and soon after figured out a way to layer different colored scribbles, and get more nuanced colors and shading.  That probably happened in September of 2005.  I kept playing with that idea, day after day.  I soon figured out that the smaller, ultra fine Sharpies worked better.  My Sharpie Scribble Style was born.  I spent 5 or 6 more months living at the gallery, figuring out which colors blended well with each other to produce different hues. 

I went back to driving a taxi full time in June of 2006, but I took my Sharpies and got an 11" X 14" sketch pad, and drew while sitting in my taxi, waiting for fares.  I lived in my taxi, making enough money to pay taxi lease, buy gas, and eat, but not enough to rent an apartment.  I drew a few different styles, and kept improving with my scribble style.  Eventually, taxi driving took a dive, due to computer dispatching, and I wound up homeless, living on the streets.  After a year, I took my family's standing offer to move to North Carolina, where they all ended up living.  I quickly went into a deep depression, I couldn't find any job, and I hated living there.  

I struggled with depression, lived in homeless shelters a while, drove a taxi for a year, and my dad had a stroke and later died.  I wound up living with my mom, who I never really got along with.  Again, I couldn't find any job there, even after putting in 140 applications over a couple of years.  

In late 2015, I didn't have a dime to my name.  I had a room of my own, in my mom's tiny apartment, a refurbished laptop still running Windows XP, a sketchpad, my Sharpies, and a pretty solid following from years of writing my Old School BMX blogs.  I decided to step up my art game, and see if I could sell drawings to make a little bit of money for myself.  I found a stencil of Bruce Lee, a street art drawing, and drew it in my style.   I put it Facebook, and sold it for $20.  Then I sold another.  By the Spring of 2016, I was drawing every day, and making a couple of hundred dollars a month from Sharpie drawings.  Unfortunately, my mom had a way of falling into a crisis that just happened to need the exact amount of money I had, time after time.  I couldn't even buy art supplies much of the time, let alone money to get my own life kickstarted again.

M.C. Emig Skatepark #1, sketched freehand in pen, inked with a Sharpie, then colored with Sharpie Scribble Style, 9" X 12".

I eventually moved out, and lived in a tent in the woods of Winston-Salem, about ten miles away.  I got a chance to do an art show at a cool, old school record shop, called Earshot Music.  I spent a couple of months doing 8 big drawings of musicians.  One sold the day before the show, and six more sold at the show, or shortly after.  I was suddenly pounding out a drawing a week, making $120 to $150 each.  Each drawing took about 40-45 hours to draw.  It wasn't much money per hour, but I survived, and became a part of Winston-Salem's cool little Trade Street Art scene.

Since I drew several musicians for the music shop art show, people kept asking me to draw musicians.  I've been drawing big #sharpiescribblestyle drawings, and scraping by as a homeless, but working artist, ever since.  I left North Carolina, ran out of bus fare in Richmond, Virginia, and lived on the streets there for 9-10 months, then an old friend bought me a bus ticket back to California.  I was working to help promote his online BMX store when I first got here.  That project didn't go as hoped, and I ghosted out of there, and have been on the streets of the L.A. area, ever since the summer of 2019.  I was selling drawings on Hollywood Boulevard pre-Covid, planning to survive the winter rainy season, and then promote my artwork full bore in the Spring of 2020.  Yeah, we all know what happened in the Spring of 2020.  

I went back into survival mode, and did sell a few drawings, just not very many, all through the pandemic.  Now as we're coming out of that funk, I'm back to figuring out how to best promote my work, and raise my income level until I can rent a place of my own, again, and get back to "regular" life.  

Since I've been doing drawings based on photos of famous people, making lots of copies to sell was never really an option.  Copyright law, and 21st century use of images and files, are miles apart at this point.  While I can make an artistic representation of someone's photo, and it's fair use, making lots of prints or posters can lead to a copyright lawsuit, whether frivolous, or serious.  At this point most of my portraits come out really well, but I needed to find  better subject matter to draw, something where it was all my work, using my own photos, or all my ideas.  

As this was rolling around my head, I heard about NFT's, Non Fungible Tokens, or blockchain linked art and collectibles.  When I dug into that world to learn the basics, I saw most people were doing big series of art pieces.  Most of those were computer generated  "profile pics" or PFP's.  But the photographers doing NFT's and others that took off, were usually a series of similar themed work.  I thought about what I could do as a series of similar pieces, to make NFT's out of.  My aliens smoking cigarettes, which I call Grey Trash, came to mind.  I've been drawing them since 2009 or so.  I drew a whole bunch of those  in early 2022, to see how many different types I could come up with. 

One of the Grey Trash aliens I drew earlier this year, playing with different ideas.

 

Those were fun, and I wound up doing about 35 little alien drawings, each with a different saying.  But nobody was really bowled over by the aliens, though I love them.  Then, one day I was sitting at a fast food place, and I didn't have my Sharpies with me, just a black Bic pen, and a small sketch pad.  I started drawing some isometric shapes, going way back to my drafting days in high school.  Then I drew a couple of my M.C. Escher skateparks, like I did back in 1986, and put them on Facebook for people to check out.  Much to my surprise, quite a few people liked them, and one guy wanted to buy the sketches.  Then another person messaged me, asking about doing a collaboration.  I told him I'd draw a new "M.C. Escher skatepark" for him.  I sat down at the library to draw the next day, and listened to a couple of M.C. Escher documentaries while I drew.  I looked at my drawing and thought, "This sucks.  What if I tried to seriously draw a weird skatepark, something that was comparable in quality to Escher's work?" 

This is the piece of cardboard I scribbled on one night, playing with the idea of doing serious, M.C. Escher caliber drawings.  It was on this piece of cardboard that I figured out the repeating pattern of little hip jump ramps.

I was so stoked on the idea, that I grabbed a Sharpie, and scribbled ideas on a piece of cardboard, while at the place where I slept homeless, that night.  That's where I figured out I could make a repeating pattern of little hip jumps, like in the top center of the drawing at the top of this post.  I couldn't wait to wake up, and get to work the next morning.  While I didn't have real drafting tools, like a drafting board, T-square, and triangles, I did have a protractor and a ruler.  That was enough to draw a big, more complex, symmetrical skatepark.  I drew it in pencil, with proper angles, and then inked the main lines with a standard black Sharpie marker.  Then I spent the next couple of days coloring it, not sure how the finished drawing would turn out.  M.C. Emig Skatepark #5, at the top, is the result.  As soon as I got it done, I knew I was on to something.  

So these designs, inspired by, but not copying, some of M.C. Escher's work, are the new direction I'm going with my #sharpiescribblestyle.  There are so many directions to go with this basic idea, I just want to keep exploring and playing around with it.  I like the idea of making a 3D looking, symmetrical design, that looks cool hanging on a wall, but is also a weird skatepark.  

So that's where I'm at right now, and as of this moment, M.C. Escher Skatepark #5 is for sale, message me on Facebook or Twitter, if interested.  Thanks for reading this long post, if you made it this far, and stay tuned for more weird "skatepark" drawings, coming soon.  

I started a new blog, check it out:

The Spot Finder

More recent Sharpie Scribble Style drawings- 4/16/2022

OK, one Sharpie drawing and another weird skatepark sketch.  Ken from NorCal liked the two "M.C. Escher Skatepark" drawings, and snapped those up.  Then he asked me to draw this drawing of him on a golf course.  The photo was taken on a trip that had a great personal meaning to him, and he was waiting for other golfers to play through.  I loved this huge pine tree in the foreground.  The yellow areas in the grass really pop in the photo, but are blended in better in the actual drawing.  Sometimes certain colors pop really hard in photos with my Sharpie drawings.  Below is a close-up of the tree bark, which took many hours to draw.  This one is 18" X 24", #sharpiescribblestyle.

Another "M.C. Escher Skatepark drawing.  Freehand isometric pen and ink, 9" X 12".  
 

Grey Trash pic of the day- 3/25/2022

 "It's 420 somewhere."  It's Friday, so here's a drawing for the stoners out there.  I only smoked weed for a year or so, right out of high school.  But I'm 100% pro legalization (for all the the states still behind the curve).  

I have a new blog now, check it out:

The Spot Finder     #thespotfinder

Grey Trash drawing of the day- 3/22/2022

"If you don't think you can make a difference in the world, far tin a crowded elevator and watch what happens."  One person can change things.  Somethings, anyhow.  #greytrash, #sharpiescribblestyle .
 

I have a new blog now, check it out:

The Spot Finder     #thespotfinder

Grey Trash drawing of the day- 3/21/2022

 The older I get, the more I believe this idea.  "Most progress in the world  comes from the freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos."  Cheers to all the other weirdos out there.  

Grey Trash: It started with Norbit

 This is Norbit, one of the three aliens that crashed in 1947 north of Roswell, now living in "Grey Valley" mobile home park, in a canyon hidden deep on a military base.   

After going down north of Roswell in 1947, one crew member died in the crash, and the second died in transit to a U.S.  Army Air Force Base in Roswell, months before the U.S. Air Force was created.  This guy knew very little English, he was the engineer of the craft, not the crew chief.  When the military asked what his name was, he thought they were asking him where he came from.  He said, "In orbit," in the best English he could manage.  They misunderstood him, and thought his name was Norbit.  The name stuck, as the weeks passed, and he learned English, and the government personnel learned of his world and ways.  

Yes, the Roswell crash was 75 years ago.  But Grey aliens have a natural lifespan of about 150 Earth years, and Norbit was 35, in our years, when his ship crashed.  At 110 years old now, he's got plenty of life left, comparable to a 60-year-old here on Earth.  

Norbit has been working with various U.S. government agencies, mostly on engineering projects, since 1947.  And yes millennials, he smokes.  His planet actually has air that's quite toxic by Earth standards, and the Greys have adapted to it over thousands of years, and their bodies flush airborne toxins out much better than ours do.  He picked up smoking in the 1940's, when many of the humans he worked with smoked, and hasn't stopped.  He still shows no signs of lung cancer, and telling to stop smoking really pisses him off.

Norbit, overall, is really low key, like many engineers.  He doesn't talk a lot, he likes solving tough engineering problems, and keeps to himself much of his off time.  He enjoys playing backgammon and a few card games now and then, and watching science based shows on TV and YouTube. 

While he was the first Grey to live here on Earth, among humans, for an extended period, he's not alone.  It turns out that, as advanced as the Greys spacecraft are, our lightning here on Earth can really do a number on them, or at least the craft from a few decades ago.  As more and more craft crashed on Earth, more and more Grey aliens crashed in the 1950's, 60's, and since.  The survivors all lived in secret bases, deep underground, until the mid 1970's.  At that point they had a bit of a mutiny, and demanded to be able to live somewhere on the surface.  

After much debate, a well hidden little canyon,  a ways east of  White Sands missile range, in western New Mexico, was chosen as the site.  Government officials moved in a bunch of single wide mobile homes, drilled a well for water, and put in the basic necessities.  The 53 Greys in the U.S. at the time all moved in, and the place soon got nicknamed "Grey Valley."  

Since aliens don't officially exist, they can't travel anywhere in public, so they're pretty much stuck in Grey Valley.  There is a big cave next to their trailer park, with a pub in the front part, just out of sight.  There are several lower levels hollowed out in it, for labs, machine shops, and tech rooms, for the various types of work they do.  They had TV early on, and eventually got internet a couple years after it came out.  

So now most of the aliens there are active online, using aliases.  Several play multi-player online games, and interact with humans who think they're just another person on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram somewhere.  They also buy a shitload of stuff from Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and other online shops. Everything they order gets delivered to a main gate loading dock, miles away, then transported by truck to Grey Valley.  Most of them are into buying crypto as well, and several have become crypto millionaires, which doesn't make the U.S. government very happy.  But they do their respective jobs, and otherwise keep low profiles.  So the feds tolerate their online interactions, and crypto and a bit of stock trading. 

After many years living as a small group in a trailer park, though, some of them are getting kind of weird.  In the future I'll share with you my drawings of this odd, quirky group of aliens.  They are the Grey Trash.  Here are a couple more.  There are many more to come, with their thoughts on different things.  

Moron disclaimer:  Just in case you're a complete fucking idiot (and many of you are, judging by your online posts), this story is all FICTION.  The Grey aliens living in secret bases is an American urban legend at this point, and my Grey Trash drawings are my take on this idea.  I have no idea if aliens actually exist, if the Greys exist, if a UFO is what crashed outside Roswell, or any of the other things people have heard about aliens.  I started drawing aliens in 1998 or so, and first drew one smoking a cigarette in 2009.  It just made me laugh, and the idea of "white trash aliens living in a trailer park," began to form in my head.  

Recent Sharpie Scribble Style drawings 3/17/2022

All three of these drawings are my large size, 18" X 24", drawn in my unique Sharpie Scribble Style.  The tribute to the early days of Thrasher magazine (above) is one I wanted to do to promote my art to some new people.  That's Chuck Treece with a layback on a sketched out backyard ramp, and a few other pics from 1980's Thrasher issues.  I wanted to capture that vibe from the days when skating was still done only by weirdos, there wasn't much money in it, and backyard ramps and street skating were new.  In the background are all the main names of skaters I could think of from that era.  

One of the guys from the weekly HB Tuesdays BMX freestyle sessions in Huntington Beach, Sean Ewing, asked me to do this drawing below.  It's Malcom Smith, the first legendary American motocross racer, hauling ass in the early days.  I drew this from Sean's photo, of a painting, of the original panning photo.  Trying to get the feeling of speed was the challenge in his one.

While I'm not a big fan of golf in general, I loved drawing the photo at the bottom.  The pic has special meaning for Ken in NorCal.  It was a great weekend of his life, a photo snapped while waiting for some other golfers to play through, who were taking their good ol' time.  I love that big pine tree in the foreground, and all the shadows in the original photo.  

These large drawings take me around 40-45 hours to do.  I don't make much per hour for doing them, but doing about 100 of these drawings in the last six years has really honed my skills, and I keep improving,  I'm working on a transition to work that takes less time, and makes more money, to get myself off the streets, and stabilize my life.  Like any artist, I have a whole bunch of my own ideas I want to draw, on different subjects, stacked up in my mind.  Getting an apartment and living like a human again, should give me a little more time to get to some of those ideas.  But the large drawings look the best in my style.  I need to raise my prices dramatically soon, to cover the hours I put into these things.