For about 7 years, Sharpie scribble art was just something I did now and then. I'd do a few drawings in a spurt, then not do any for a while. I sold the kid's names drawings, but the rest were just for my own amusement. I had a cool way of shading, but wasn't sure just what to do with it.
Finally, around 2012, after my dad's death in August, and I moved in with my mom, I looked Sharpie art up online. It just never really occurred to me before that. I blogged, I looked up things to do with that, but art wasn't something I ever bothered to look up.
When I finally did look it up, the best Sharpie art I found was, the black and white work by Jessie Armand. I saw videos like this, and later, ones like the Lamborghini he draws on above. It just looked so cool. So, every once in a while, I'd do some "doodle art," black and white drawings, inspired by Jessie's work. None of mine every comes out as cool as his, but it's really fun to do. Here's a few of my large doodle art pieces.
Always good advice. Life throws shit at you. Rise Above. 18" X 24"
A plethora of hearts. 18" X 24"
The D.I Y./ Do It Yourself mantra didn't come from the home improvement world, it came from punk rock. 18" X 24"
A complicated heart. 18' X 24", #sharpiedoodleart, #sharpiescribblestyle
This is my take on a photo Barspinner Ryan Brennan, now an accomplished free diver, snapped. It was just a cool pic, and I like drawing animals, so I wanted to give it a try. It's 11" x 14," and with Ryan's OK, I'd like to sell some copies of this one. I definitely need to do more water oriented drawings like surfing, diving, sea animals, and all that. They work good with my Sharpie style. Sharpies on paper, #sharpiescribblestyle
The top of these two pics is a small Bob Marley drawing I did. It's 8 1/2" X 11," and there may be some copies available around if you dig it. The bottom pic is a close-up of the drawing of Mike Ness of Social Distortion drawing that was in the last post. This drawing is in th epossession of Social Distortion themselves, now. In nearly all of my musician drawings, I put lyrics, song titles, and album titles in that background. Up close you can read them, but from 10 feet away or so, they blend into a cool background texture. Both are Sharpies on paper, in my unique scribble style. #sharpiescribblestyle
I had been drawing different things in my scribble style with Sharpies for years before I got around to looking up Sharpie art online. The coolest stuff I found then was black and white "doodle art" by artist Jessie Armand. I've been trying to do similar stuff, just for the heck of it, ever since. My doodle drawings aren't as cool as Jessie's, but I like doing this type of drawing when my brain is tired from my more tedious scribble style work. Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24".
Blogger's note- It's 2026 now, and I'm doing most of my writing on Substack, a platform designed specifically for writers. Check it out:
This is Erin, who got a drawing I did of singer Lana Del Rey for her 16th birthday recently. Her mom Lisa said she was "over the moon." Finishing a drawing I really like feels great. But seeing a photo of someone who got one of my drawings as a present is as cool as it gets. There's a close-up photo of the drawing a few posts back.
As a long time skateboarder and one time skate industry guy, I was really stoked on this opportunity. In this photo, all three ladies are in the Skateboarding Hall of Fame. On the left is Vicki Vickers, in the middle is Deanna Calkins, and on the right is Robin Logan, from the family that created the Logan Earth Ski boards. After receiving a drawing of mine as a gift herself over a year ago, Robin has had me do drawings of friends as gifts. This past Mother's Day, Vicki and Deanna got these drawings as gifts from Robin, both of photos from their heyday as pioneering women skaters.
As a Sharpie artist, what do I do when my brain is tired from concentrating? Adult coloring... sort of. I draw freehand "doodle art" pieces, and then color them. This "Love is the Answer" drawing full of hears still isn't finished, but you can see it if you find me at the Winston-Salem First Friday Gallery Hop tonight (6/1/2018).
Here's the first drawing Robin Logan (above) had me do, her older brother Bruce Logan.
I never spent much time painting pictures as a kid. I was always drawing with pencils, and later ballpoint pens. That's why I started drawing with markers in 2002, and later switched to using Sharpie markers almost exclusively. I was in my own little world, and had no idea that there were people out there doing cool stuff with Sharpie markers.
In 2012, my dad had a stroke and died a few months later. While he was in the nursing home, I quit driving a taxi, and spent the time with him that could. I wound up moving in with my mom when he died in August of that year. I couldn't find a job, and started spending more time drawing in my weird "scribble style" with Sharpies. It was around that time that I finally got around to looking up "Sharpie art" on the web. The standout artist I found was Jessie Armand. He does these amazing designs using only black Sharpies most of the time.
His work is totally different than mine, and much better in my opinion. It looked like fun, so I do a doodle art drawing every now and then, my version of his style. They're getting better, but they're still not near as cool looking as Jessie's stuff. Here's Jessie working on a Lamborghini. Hey, no pressure, it's not like the owner would be mad if you jacked up a $175,000 car. Cool stuff.
When I first heard of the idea of a Doodle Wall in 2002, it was much more random than this. But this time lapse gives a quick look at the idea.
It was 2002, and I was renting this tiny room that a Mexican family built on the side of their house in Garden Grove, California. Basically, they would just rent it out cheap to young Mexican guys new to the country. But I worked with the dad of the family, and when I got booted from my old place, he said I could move in. It was dark, and felt like a cave. One day on MTV's House of Style with Cindy Crawford, I saw a segment about making a doodle wall. The idea was to buy a roll of butcher paper, tape it up to a wall, and have you and your friends just randomly doodle on it.
So I had the idea of drawing a mural on the wall. I wanted it to be like I was sitting in a cave, looking out at a sunset. I've never been a painter, so I bought a cheap pack of 12 markers, got a big roll of paper, taped it up on the wall, and started drawing. It completely sucked. The marker colors just weren't cutting it. So I started making big collages of photos cut out of my old BMX, skateboard, and rock climbing magazines. In between the photos I would experiment with different kinds of doodles, trying to find a good way to shade with markers. I ended up getting booted out by the Mexican family, and put all my stuff in storage. So I stopped drawing.
In late 2003, I cleared up a problem with the DMV, got my driver's license back, and went back to taxi driving. I lived in my taxi, figuring I could save up enough to rent a room in a few months. But the taxi company took out the dispatch radios and put in a computer dispatch system. That completely screwed up the business, and I lived in my cab, worked 70 to 100 hours a week, and scraped by for over two years.
I was burned out, really fat, and hating life. At that point, a cab driver named Richard offered me a different deal. He had a little indie art gallery housed in an industrial unit in Anaheim. He said I could live in the gallery for $50 a week, and drive his taxi on the weekends. I took the deal, and suddenly I was sleeping on a couch in a big room whose walls were covered with art by Orange County artists. On the weekends, the gallery was open, and local bands played. But it was quiet during the week. Most of the time it was just me, a cat named P.A., and her six kittens. So I became the janitor/kitten wrangler and artist in the gallery. In the crazy years of full time taxi driving, I totally gave up on doing anything creative. I just struggled to make $600 a week to pay the taxi company for the cab, $300 a week to buy gas, and food money for me. On my second night in the gallery, I drew a little picture. I just kept drawing, making big drawing with markers, taking up where I'd left off 2 1/2 years earlier. One day while drawing a tree, I scribbled a bunch of colors over each other, and it looked pretty cool. I kept playing with the idea, and my "scribble style" of shading with Sharpie markers was born.
Here's a later clip of the AAA Electra 99 Gallery (and museum), hosted by founder Richard Johnson, where my creativity was reborn in 2005.
AAA Electra 99 was so far underground in 2002, you needed spelunking gear to find it. That's part of what made it great.
