The Year of the Tent Art #1

These are some of the drawings I was doing in early 2017 while living with my mom in Kernersville.  We didn't get along.  We never have.  I couldn't find a "real job."  I started focusing on my art in late 2015 as my best shot of actually making a living again.  But the household I was living in was continually in financial crisis.  Every time I sold a drawing for $50, most of that money was needed for the crisis du jour.  For a year and a half, I was never able to re-invest the tiny bit of money I was making.  So one year ago today, after a really heated argument with my mom, I came to Winston-Salem to strike out on my own with the goal of turning my artwork into a living.  I came here with about $15 in my pocket, a box of Sharpie markers, a big tablet of sketch paper, and my niece's old Dell laptop.  In the next several posts, I'll show you what I've done in this past year.

May the 4th be with you...late

 Here's the Star Wars drawings I did a while back, all of which now live in Scotty Zabielski's beach house.  I originally did Yoda for myself, and Scotty liked it, so I did a couple more.  All of them are done in my Sharpie scribble style, 18" X  24."  One of these days I'll do another Yoda for myself... if I ever get the time. 

Toasting my trio of drawings with the epic R2D2 cup I nabbed at Goodwill for $1.  Cheers.  Now on to Cinco de Mayo, where Americans get hammered to celebrate the Mexican Americans they say they want deported every other day of the year.  Por que?!

The Star Wars drawings

 I was 11 when the original Star Wars movie came out, and I liked it just like most other kids.  I waited years for the second and third movies, and became a fan of the original trilogy characters especially.  In my bedroom/studio where I drew most of these, I had a whole bunch of cool photos taped up on the wall, including this high contrast photo of Yoda.  I'd been thinking about drawing it for months, and finally got around to it late in 2016.  I drew that one just for me, to hang on my wall.  I put a whole bunch of Yoda's quotes in the purple, which are actually harder to see in real life.  I also tried to figure a way to draw The Force.  I blended other colors around the outside to kind of give that impression.

 Once I drew the Yoda drawing, I started thinking of doing other Star Wars characters, and picked this photo of Princess Leia to draw.  In another weird quirk of fate, I was in the middle of drawing this when Carrie Fisher get sick, went to the hospital, and then died.  That was beyond weird, surreal, really.  I was watching lots of interviews of her as I drew it, and her one woman show, Wishful Drinking.  In the upper right hand part of the drawing, I put some of her quotes.

With Yoda and Leia drawn, I found a picture of Darth Vader, and drew that one, too.  Instead of quotes in the background, I put a bunch of negative stuff that we hear in everyday life that sums up The Dark Side of humanity.  In the bottom photo, I have the three drawings hung up, and I'm toasting them with my R2D2 fliptop mug.  I scored that great little treasure at Goodwill for a dollar.  As soon as I was done with these, somebody wanted them, and they're now living on the wall of a beach house in Illinois.