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"

My Sharpie Scribble Style Art 2005-2019 - #22

 Rock, blues, and the Godfather of soul...  Jimi Hendrix.  I like a good challenge, so I decided to go all out and try to draw one of the most iconic photos of one of the most iconic rock stars of all time.  Hey Joe, what do you think of this one?  This was requested by the couple that bought 8 or 10 drawings from me, and it's now living in Kentucky.  Jimi lighting his guitar on fire at the Monterey Pop Festival.  18" X 24" #sharpiescribblestyle

 While there is rap/hip hop I really like, I'm not a huge fan, generally.  But I'd been wanting to draw this photo of the Notorious B.I.G. for months.  I really like this one.  Where Brooklyn at?  18" X 24"

 I know a girl who lives on a hill...  Three guys, two big beards, three chords most of the time, and 30+ years of kickin' ass with blues and rock.  ZZ Top.  Yes, the lettering on the side is in my scribble style.  I need to do more high quality lettering.  This one was also requested by the couple in Kentucky.  18" X 24" 

 Another blues legend, and the pride of Austin.  In 1987, while I was in Austin for a BMX freestyle contest, we went riding down at Sixth Street one night.  We locked up our bikes in a big pile, and some locals led us into a bar for a few beers.  When we came out, I told them, "Hey, that bluesy guy on the guitar was pretty good."  They freaked.  "Pretty good? That's fuckin' Stevie Ray Vaughn!"  I'd never heard of him.  But I can say I saw him play in a bar, just didn't realize it until later.  Epic.  18" X 24"

 Another one I did for the couple in Kentucky.  It's a man's world.  Or at least it was, when the Godfather of soul was on the stage.  Another one for the couple in Kentucky.  Check out the YouTube video of James Brown with Joss Stone as a guest.  Great clip.  "18" X 24"

 Drawing so many legendary rockers for so many months, I realized I'd never drawn Elvis.  So I found a cool pic and gave it a shot.  The colors wound up kind of weird on this one.  But it did sell.  18" X 24"

This is the last one requested by the couple in Kentucky.  I always prefer live concert photos with hard shadows.  But this was for the woman's mother, a huge Beatles fan, and she wanted this photo drawn.  I was nervous, traditional portraits with good lighting are the hardest to do with my style of drawing.  But this came out really well, and mom was very happy with it. This also reigns at the drawing that took me the longest, about 55 hours of work to make this happen.  Eleanor Rigby is the lyrics in the background.  18" X 24" #sharpiescrbblestyle

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.

My Sharpie Scribble Style Art 2005-2019 - #20

 Let the commissions begin...  Tupac Shakur was one of the early requests I got from the artist/collector who bought my Kurt Cobain drawing.  Here's a weird thing about drawing people with Sharpies the way I do.  There are no skin tone colors in the Sharpie marker palette.  So at this point in my drawing, I made skin tones look "right" with only black and gray markers, and shadows.  Lots of shadows.  Later I started using pink, light blue, and lavender to shade white and gray areas or skin tones.  So here's my little secret, anyone I draw, whether black, white, Latino or whatever, I use shadows and the exact same colors to shade them.  Pink, light blue, lavender, gray, and black, in that order.  Whatever the race or skin tone, I color them with the same colors of Sharpies.

 This was the first request I got from the guy who bought my Kurt Cobain drawing.  I didn't want to do the same Bob Marley photo that everyone uses, so I did some searching, and really liked this photo.  Since it was largely shades of blue, I added the reggae colors of red, gold, and green in the letters of  "ONE LOVE."  I've done so many drawings over a couple of years, that I forgot about this one.  Looking back, I really like this one a lot.

 This was a drawing I did to replace the spot in the Earshot show for one of the drawings that sold first.  Everything for the show had to be music related, since it was in a music shop.  That's the main reason why I've drawn so many musicians and bands.  I love doing them, as long as the music doesn't suck, because I listen to it while I draw, for about a week.  To get a little out of the box, but still in the music realm, I decided to draw The Blues Brothers.  I wanted to get the band from the movie in the drawing, not just Jake and Elwood, so I combined the two photos.  In the blue of the background, there are song lyrics and quotes from the Saturday Night Live appearances, and from the Blues Brothers movie.  This one was one of the first bought by the couple who kept me busy through much of the spring of 2018.

 A friend of mine in Winston-Salem let me store my personal stuff in a spare closet while I was living in the tent.  As a "Thank You," I told him I'd draw his favorite singer or athlete.  He told me Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood were his favorite singers.  I found this cool photo of Carrie and Miranda singing their duet "Something Bad."  So I drew that.  Their hair came out a little too yellow, but all in all, this one came out pretty well.

I did this drawing when I had time in between the paying drawings.  Then I just had it in my sketch pad, for months, and I never remembered it when I visited his house.  It became an inside joke that I would bring it by soon.  As luck would have it, I had this in a poster tube with another drawing, which I gave to a guy who bought the second drawing.  Out of nowhere, that guy suddenly decided he was going to direct my "art career."  So we had a falling out, and I never got Carrie and Miranda back.  So I need re-draw one or both of them for my friend at some point. 

 This Michael Jackson drawing was requested by the guy who bought Kurt Cobain, but then he flaked out on paying me when I finished drawing Michael.  I've never been a huge M.J. fan.  I know he was one of the most talented singers, songwriters, dancers, and all around performers ever.  Yeah, I watched the world premiere of "Thriller" on MTV, like my whole generation, and a like a few of his songs.  But he's never been a favorite of mine.  But of all the drawings I've done, technically, this is one of my best.  This drawing wound up in a juried show in the Delurk Gallery in Winston-Salem, which was really cool.  I think this ended up being one of the drawings, $1900 worth total, I left behind when I left North Carolina in a hurry.  So I'll never get paid for it.  Live and learn.

When I started meeting people in the Trade Street art scene in Winston-Salem, one person in particular really took to my work, and she went on to do a lot to promote my work locally.  When we started talking, in was late January and Black history month was coming up.  While neither one of us is black, she asked if I would want to do something for Black History Month.  No problem, I was down with that.  It was really a no brainer for me, Dr. Maya Angelou, largely known as America's Poet Laureate, lived the last few decades of her life in Winston-Salem.  She had passed away (no one dies in North Carolina, they all "pass") in 2014, and so I decided to draw her.  I went to work, picked her poem "Human Family" to ad to the drawing, fully legible, not as a texture in the background like I do with most musician drawings. 

So this drawing wound up in the front window of a studio/gallery in Winston-Salem all through February of 2018, and there was a lot of good feedback on it from people.  It eventually sold for $250, which is what the woman at the studio priced my drawings at.  I was never sure who bought it, but I got paid my share, and it was able to stay on display in that studio. 

In addition, the woman at that gallery managed to get this drawing up on stage at a garden party for Maya Angelou's 90th birthday.  A bunch of the best regional poets read their own poems, and Dr. Angelou's, on stage at this park, standing right next to my drawing.  That was a really cool thing to have this drawing involved with.  At that event, I met Maya Angelou's only niece, and archivist, the woman in charge of Dr. Angelou's legacy. 

Because so many people really liked that drawing, the woman there made 10 full size prints of it, and there were 3 or 4 sort of off color proofs, screw-ups, as well.  I signed and numbered all of these, including the screw-ups.  They were supposed to be sold for $100 each, and I'd get $35 of that.  I got paid for one.  Dr. Maya Angelou's niece and archivist got a free print for her collection.  I never got paid for the rest.  So that whole mess was a big lesson in the art business, and I'm operating at a really low level, small sums of money. 

That's why I'm not naming this woman.  I don't think she intentionally set out to scam me.  I did get paid well for a few things that sold through her studio.  The vast majority of my paid work came from other places.  I got a lot of local publicity from her promoting my work.  But she also was struggling with money, trying to make her dream art studio pay off.  I think she just was strapped for cash, and not of the highest integrity, so lagging in paying me, or selling stuff behind my back, was a way to make ends meet. 

The lesson here is that if you're an artist, you NEED to either watch and handle your own business well, or have someone you completely trust handle it.  So while I was working all the time and struggling to survive as a homeless guy, I lost at least $700 or so, and I left $1900 in work behind when I left North Carolina.  So if anyone out there makes me a cool offer to help sell my art, and I'm taking my time to make a decision about whether to work with you, or not, this is why.  "Good opportunities" are often not that good when it comes down to it.

My Sharpie Scribble Style Art 2005-2019 - #18

 The punk stuff... and Metallica...  I did this drawing for me, got it mostly done, then it sat for months as I was busy doing work for other people.  I wound up giving it to Social Distortion bass player Brent Harding outside their show here in Richmond last fall.  So it wound up on their tour bus.  Not sure what happened to it then.  I imagine they get a ton of stuff from fans. 

Social Distortion is my favorite band.  The third punk show that my BMX friend Mike Sarrail took me to, in 1988, Social Distortion played, at Scream off Wilshire in L.A..  Punk still seemed too thrashy to me, and I just wasn't getting it.  Then they played Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire."  I was like, "Oh shit, this punk band is playing Johnny Cash, the coolest country singer ever."  I was hooked from then on, and it opened me up to punk rock as a whole.  Mike continued to introduce me to new music and we went to a ton of shows, and I even shot video of some.  18" X 24" #sharpiescribblestyle

 I just did this drawing of Joe Strummer for Facebook friend Brent Schulze.  I never got into The Clash really, my mistake.  When I draw anyone, especially a musician or band, I totally dive into their music and story while I draw the pic.  The Clash is now on my list of stuff to listen to regularly.  "London is drowning, and I... I live by the river."  Actually, I DO live by the river at the moment.  So that song's been in my head a lot, lately.  11" X 14" #sharpiescribblestyle

 From the Godfathers of punk rock back in 1974.  Joey Ramone.  Hey, ho, let's go.  Oh, and there's a story about the quote at the bottom.  Ask me sometime.  18" X 24"

 What's punk about a little girl riding an alligator at the L.A. gator farm in the 1950's?  Everything.  That's punk as fuck.  The caption of this one is: "Most progress in the world comes from the freaks, geeks, dorks, and weirdos."  12" X 18"

 Three of four of The Ramones in action.  Sheena is a punk rocker now.  And I'm an old crusty one.

A security guard at the awesome new library in Winston-Salem, NC asked me to do this for her husband, for his birthday.  It was a big spend on her salary.  She bought it, surprised him, then told me two days later, "He likes it, I'm not even allowed to touch the drawing now."  Metallica in the round. 

My Sharpie Scribble Style Art 2005-2019 - #17

 Odds and ends...  As I mentioned way back in this series of blog posts, when I decided to start building my Sharpie art into a business, I knew I had to step up my art game.  I looked through a bunch of art online, asking myself what I would want to put on my own wall.  I ended up drawing a simple, stencil-style face, of Bruce Lee, my first hero.  As my skills improved, I knew I wanted to go back to Bruce Lee, and do my own take on the classic poster that all us kids of my era knew Bruce Lee from.  This is that drawing.  I was pretty dang happy with this one.  The flames in the back could been a bit better, and I added a bunch of Bruce Lee's quotes on the left, which was cool.  This drawing is 18" X 24", and is now living in California.

 This is my "four legged niece," my sister's dog, Willow Belle Durham.  Willow is a very lovable dog, an Aussie Doodle, and probably my favorite extended family member at this point.  She was part grown, but still a puppy, at the time of the drawing.  Willow Durham is her name on Facebook, and she'd love to friend you.  She's not prolific at posting, but maybe you can get her a little more active online.  Other facts about Willow, she will offer you a paw to shake if you mention (University of North) Carolina, and she'll bark is you ask her about Duke.  She also likes scarves.   12" X 18"

 Here's a full grown Willow in a photo I took of her with Taffy, the ceramic tribute my mom did in the 1970's to her (my mom's) dog, Taffy, a golden cocker spaniel.  When I was a little kid, Taffy was still living at my grandma's house.  So to me, this is my favorite dog picture from our family.

 Being perpetually broke while living with my mom, I drew/made this photo collage for her on her birthday a couple of years ago.  The photos are of her two grandchildren, Katherine and Ethan, through their lives.  Mom was pretty stoked on it.

 This is an 8 1/2" X 11" drawing I did recently, starting with a magazine photo of BMX freestyler Monte Hill doing a turndown.  I did this to illustrate my poem "Become," one of the few poems of mine that survived, because I memorized it.  Here's the poem:

Become

You must risk

If you're to succeed

For when you grow

Sometimes you bleed

Each must climb

Over the fence

For the only cage

Is ignorance

Each Jedi knight

and Shaolin monk

Evolved from

A lowly punk

Don't get caught

In the world's throws

We must become

Our own heroes

-The White Bear

(my BMX nickname/poetry pen name)

This is why you don't see many selfies from me.  I make goofy faces and don't smile.  The 20 years of struggling with homelessness and working hard as a taxi driver have taken their toll.   I'm fat, and my teeth are basically all rotted or broken off at this point, and I look like shit.  That said, here I am with seven drawings taped up on the front window of an empty storefront, on Broad Street, to show off my stuff off at the October First Friday Art Walk in Richmond's Arts District.  #sharpiescribblestyle

My Sharpie Scribble Style Art 2005-2019 #16

 Let's talk water...  Once I got going in 2016, and drew every single day all spring, on drawings I was selling, I wanted to try something new.  Water of most any kind is one of the hardest things to draw or paint really well.  Obviously, I have along way to go on that.  But these are the tries I've made at drawing water-based photos well.  Above, an old photo I found of surfing legend Kelly Slater in a small barrel.  It was a decent start at something technically hard to draw.

 A while later, I wanted to try another surf related drawing.  I wanted to step it up by drawing a really good, and hot, female surfer.  I immediately looked up photos of pro surfer Karina Petroni.  I gave her and her friends a few rides in my taxi during the U.S. Open of Surfing week in Huntington Beach, California, in 2008.  Karina is not only very attractive, and an amazing surfer, but came across as a really cool person.  So I went looking for a really good photo of her to draw as my second surfing pic attempt.  I couldn't find a surfing drawing that worked really well with my style.  But I found this great "duck dive" photo.

For all of you who don't surf, a "duck dive" is when a surfer points the nose of their board down, into the face of an incoming wave they want to pass by.  Sometimes they can paddle over a wave.  Other times, it's too big or too close, and they "duck dive," like ducks do, diving through the wave.  This drawing came out better than the Kelly Slater pic, but it still is along way from awesome.  What can I say, water is hard (to draw). 

 Somewhere in 2016, my BMX friend from the early 1990's, BMX jumper, "Barspinner" Ryan Brennan, started taking time off to go hang out in Hawaii.  Before too long, he started posted photos of him free diving, going for depth, swimming with sea turtles and dolphins, and even the occasional tiger shark.  As I kept looking on Facebook for people to do drawings for, Ryan asked me to draw this on.  On the left is Ryan in a camo wetsuit, coming up from a 66 foot free dive at a place called the Blue Hole, in Arizona.  I added the line, "There's another world one breath away."  Ryan was stoked on that. 

Ryan now regularly dives to depths of about 150 feet on a single breath, and is teaching others free diving and talking tourists out on dives.  He has a bunch of great pics on Instagram @barspinnerr.  He's given me permission to draw them so sell, as long as I send him some cool stuff along the way.  Before the free diving, he built a BMX trick team business, and still runs it, spending part of his time in Hawaii and part in California. 

I did another drawing of a sea turtle from one of Ryan's drawings a while back.  Then a Facebook friend asked me for an original sea turtle drawing.  So above is a close-up of the second sea turtle drawing I've done, form one of Ryan's diving photos.  This one was an 11" X 14" original.

I later went back and re-drew another version of the same photo as an 11" X 17" drawing, and I have copies available of this one for sale. 

My Sharpie Scribble Style Art 2005-2019 - #15

 Star Wars... and some weird timing...  As 2016 was coming to an end, I decided to draw a picture for me.  So I drew Yoda, my favorite character, and tried to visualize The Force in the background.  That didn't really work, but Yoda looked cool. 

 A month or so later, I decided to keep the Star Wars series going, and draw Darth Vader.  For that one, I put a lot of the negativity we all hear, both as kids and adults, in the back ground, representing the Dark Side.

 Well, with Yoda and Vader drawn, it seemed logical to draw Princess Leia around Christmas of 2016.  A couple days after I started drawing this, Carrie Fisher went to the hospital for a heart episode, and the suddenly died right after that.  That was really sad, especially since I just discovered her one woman show, "Wishful Drinking," then.  It's hilarious.  The timing of the whole thing was just too weird.  18" X 24"

Shortly after I started my old school BMX blog, FREESTYLIN' Mag Tales (now deleted) in 2008, the top female rider of the 80's Krys Dauchy, started commenting and emailing.  We became web friends, and she helped me through that tough period.  She refers to her home as the House of Chaos, and years later, I drew this for her.  

Looking for new ways to sell drawings, I advertised on Craigslist to draw people's favorite athletes or musicians.  I got one job from that, and a woman in a town half an hour away gave me a deposit to draw Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.  This is that drawing.  I had a friend in California ask if it was for sale when I showed it on Facebook.  I said, "No," and wound up drawing another Jerry Garcia drawing for her to give to a friend.  I never did get the rest of the money from the woman who ordered this, so I sold it to someone else months later.  "What a long, strange trip it's been."  The background is my freehand work, as someone who's naturally weird, but has never taken acid, trying to draw something that would appeal to people who've done way too much acid.  18" X 24"

I got this commission through a woman at a studio/gallery in Winston-Salem, NC.  Mary Oliver is a really good poet I'd never head of, and she's also from northern Ohio, like me.  In fact, she grew up a few miles from where my grandma and her sisters grew up.  But there weren't any really good photos of her.  I did the best I could, and this is one of my least favorite drawings from a technical perspective.  Her poem, "Wild Geese," is a really cool one.  The high school English teacher who ordered this liked it, and that's what counts.  In the months since I drew this, Mary Oliver passed away.  If you like poetry, check her work out. 

My Sharpie Scribble Style Art 2005-2019 - #14

 Getting started making money...  I did a handful of smaller drawings as I first started to work towards making money with my Sharpie art in late 2015.  Then I got the idea to draw Johnny Cash, my favorite singer/songwriter from the country music my mom always had on the radio when I was a kid.  Johnny Cash was also a big influence on the leader of my favorite band, Mike Ness of Social Distortion.  I actually traded this drawing, sort of accidentally, for sandwiches for  my mom and me.  We showed it to Jo, the owner of the small, but awesome, Deli on Main, in Kenrersville, NC.  My mom often bought Amish noodles there, and Jo made great sandwiches for lunch.  I took the drawing in to show her at a time when my mom and me were totally broke.  Jo liked it, and asked what I wanted for it.  I joked that I'd trade it for lunch.  Jo took me seriously, and asked what we wanted.  Last I heard, this drawing is still up on the wall at Deli on Main.  Didn't make much, but it was a great lunch when we were broke.  18" X 24"

After Johnny Cash, Jo at the Deli asked if I could do one of her favorite musician, Janis Joplin.  No problem.  So I made some money on this one, and it's in Jo's house, last I heard.  18" X 24" #sharpiescribblestyle

 My cousin Matt, who I hadn't seen since childhood, was coming through the area (of NC) for work, and stopped at my sister's house for the afternoon.  He turned into a really cool guy, and the three of us spent the afternoon catching up.  When I showed him the Sharpie work I was doing, he wanted me to do Slash from Guns n' Roses.  Still early on in my work at drawing musicians, I wasn't sure how to draw a picture that wasbasically black on black on black.  I did my best for the time.  I've since learned I can tone the black with under colors, so I have red/black, green/black, blue/black, or purple/black, that all look slightly different. 18" X 24"

 Us young boys of Generation X had two main heroes as little kids.  Bruce Lee and Evel Knievel.  I decided to draw Evel, but, as weird as it sounds, there aren't very many good still photos of him jumping.  Most of it is sketchy movie film footage.  This didn't come out that well, but I had to try.  #18" X 24"

 Back in the BMX drawings, I mentioned Mike "Boozer" Brown, who is paralyzed and has serious health issues right now.  I kept getting drawings to him too late to raffle off at the BMX jumping jams held to help him, so I told him I'd draw his favorite musician.  Keith Richards was his pick.  Not totally stoked on the face on this one.  But Mike liked it, and that's what mattered.  18" X 24"

Dealing with my mom's drama day after day, I got to thinking about the Dementors J.K. Rowling brought to life in the Harry Potter books.  She said the Dementors were "depression personified."  One thing depression does is steal your dreams.  So I drew this one freehand of a Dementor trying to suck up my dreams.  It hung on the back of my door, so I could see it when I was drawing when I lived in my mom's apartment.  18" X 24" #sharpiescribblestyle, WPOS Kreative 2019, #wposkreative