Young Bob Dylan, this is the last drawing I did before heading out of NC to visit a friend in the Midwest. I didn't get paid before I left for this one, which I was counting on. So I headed out on the bus trip on faith. Now I'm stuck in a city I've never been to before, Richmond, Virginia, and I need to sell this to buy my bus ticket the rest of the way up north.
It's 18" X 24", Sharpies on paper, done in my unique Sharpie scribble style, and took 35-40 hours to draw. In the background are chunks of lyrics to a whole bunch of his songs. Looking for $150. My price for new commissions is $175 now.
I did a pop up art show this morning, near a Starbuck's, just getting people's impressions of it as they rushed by trying to ignore me. A couple of guys really dug it. When you can stop someone who doesn't want to stop and talk, just with the drawing itself, that's a cool thing. Bob's needs a new home, and I need a bus ticket. Message Facebook or email me if interested: stevenemig13@gmail.com .
Michael Stipe/REM, 18" X 24," Sharpies on paper, sold. My sister had me do this one for my brother-in-law Nathan. He response, mostly because I'm a (until recently) homeless loser, was, "eh." If you're an REM fan and want to tell Nathan you actually like this drawing, send him a POLITE email or message to his business, here.
My take on the badass Bruce Lee poster that made me a fan of his in about 1971 when I was 5-years-old. 18" X 24", Sharpies on paper, sold, living in SoCal.
Michael Jackson tribute, 18" X 24," Sharpies on paper. This drawing went on tour at Delurk Gallery here in Winston-Salem as a part of their recent "Creatures of Fortune" show. It's now back in the front window of Designs, Vines, and Wines/Studios at 625 on Trade Street.
I did this drawing of poet Mary Oliver, and her really cool poem "Wild Geese" about three weeks ago. I'd never heard of her, and was glad to find out about her, since she grew up a few miles from where my late Grandma Kate grew up in Ohio. It took 4 or 5 days to draw, like all my large drawings do. This drawing ended up sparking a firestorm. I didn't get paid right away, which turned out to be because of a lost piece of paper, and a big miscommunication. Several of us have been getting a lot of pressure from the forces at be in the world, and the miscommunication looked like a intentional act from my point of view. I made a business decision that threatened one of the best relationships I've developed I've made here in the Winston-Salem Art scene. I'm sorry about all the pain that caused. I'm also sorry that so many lame people will go out of their way to keep creative people from making a living, because of some 80-year-old stereotype of artists not being responsible people or able to run a business. Communication people. It's important.
For anyone bothering to read this, let me tell you how I operate:
If you ask me to do a drawing, and I know you at all, I usually give you the benefit of the doubt and draw it without a deposit. When I 'm done with the drawing, I ask one of two things from you. 1) You pay me immediately, take your drawing, and we're both happy. 2) Tell me you don't like the drawing. In that case, you keep your money and I keep the drawing. We're both slightly less than happy, but still civil. But if you don't pay me promptly, or you EVER fuck me over. That's it, game over, FOREVER. Period. I will be asking for 50% deposits on commissioned drawings from now on, unless we already have a good working relationship.
Here's one of my favorite examples of the Doodle Wall idea. Years after beginning to do my Sharpie scribble style drawings, when I started to look up Sharpie art on the internet, Jessie Armand was the best around at this type of black and white work.
My original start to playing with markers for me way back in 2002 began with seeing a segment on making a doodle wall on big sheets of paper on Cindy Crawford's House of Style show on MTV. It must have been an old re-run, and it's not a show I ever really took the time to watch. I was just flipping channels one day, and the doodle wall thing caught my attention. I tried to do a mural on my wall on paper, and it completely sucked.
So I just kept playing with markers in different ways until I came up with my unique "scribble style" technique using Sharpies while living in the AAA Electra 99 Gallery owned by Fame Ass Arteest and taxi driving legend, Richard Johnson, in 2005.
Near the beginning of the interview below, you see a partially done drawing of a sea turtle. That's my take on a photo by Barspinner Ryan Brennan, who's become a hardcore free diver in Hawaii in the last couple years or so. If he likes the idea, I want to make some prints of the drawing to sell before too long and make us both a bit a cash.
I should have died about 6 or 8 times in the last 20 years. But I'm still here, just fat, with a mouthful of broken teeth, and I look like death warmed over. But I'm still here, alive, kicking, drawing and writing. Seeing myself on video I realized just how rough I look these days. Dang.
For those of you in the Winston-Salem/Triad area, you can see my Sharpie drawings in person at Rachel's studio: Designs, Vines, and Wines which lives in the Studios at 625, 625 Trade Street in downtown Winston-Salem. Or you can see some at Earshot Music, across the road from Hanes Mall, at 3254 Silas Creek Parkway, next to Marshall's, also in Winston-Salem. You can check out a bunch of my artwork on Facebook (Steve Emig in Winston-Salem) or on my Pinterest page.
