Car Form

Guess who's getting the deposit back from his old apartment!   That's right, I'm getting a check for $1150 baby!  Whoo!  I thought for sure management was going to deduct the hell out of my deposit to cover the cost of repairs, especially since the place had fallen apart over the course of my 10 to 12 year stay.  That apartment was such a wonderful place too.  Let me count the ways:  The bedroom lights stopped working after a blackout, two of the burners on the oven crapped out, the refurbished refrigerator died, the kitchen floor tiles were cracked to hell, the ceiling in my bathroom caved in once due to a plumbing problem upstairs, and even after the repair job it still leaked, just like the radiators, the list goes on and on.  During my last week the pipes under the kitchen sink broke and flooded the poor lady downstairs.

Ah the memories.  I thank myself every day for having moved out of that hell hole.

So today's masterpiece is dedicated to the $1150 deposit check that I hope to see in the next week or two!

Inking Practice and Memorized Art

Above right is the preliminary sketch.  Above left is the final inked drawing.  I never got the hang of inking, which is probably why I hate doing it.  The linework here is a little better than my usual, but it's still jittery, and the transitions from thick to thin are awkward.  I wish I knew how to make it look right.  Maybe if I sit down and ape Al Hirschfeld for a week it'll sink in. 

Anyway, today's drawing is my default attractive female face.  If I'm hanging around a bunch of other artists for an art jam, this is the one I whip out to make them say "look he can draw a pretty girl!"  Drawing a pretty girl automatically gets attention.  And this girl is different from my other drawings.  It's a mindless, memorized sketch that I can whip out on command in minutes, if not seconds(I'm refering to the sketch on the right, not the finished linework on the left, which could easily take another thirty minutes or more).  If I'm having a really bad art day, I sketch this out to make myself feel better. 

In general, I prefer drawing with construction lines because it forces me to use my brain to solve forms.  Memorized sketches like the one above teach me nothing, but it's nice to have a library of them on hand when I need to make something look good in a hurry.

Anyway I finished moving in to my new apartment recently.  And the first thing I want to say about that is WHAT A PAIN IN THE ASS.  Moving is a PAIN IN THE ASS.  Just had to get that off my chest.  I found my digital pen a couple of days ago, after scrounging around for WEEKS.  Almost had to buy a whole new tablet, which would've been another $400 bucks down the drain, but thank god I found the pen.  Before the move I even said to myself "John, you better not lose this god damn pen", so I put it in a safe place where I'd NEVER FIND IT.  Brilliant.

But now I'm back.  But not back to normal.  At least I can draw a little, but it's gonna be sporadic until I get one last thing settled, which I'll talk about when the time is right.

Realistic Vs Cartoony

At 18 or 19 years old, inspired heavily by the works of Norman Rockwell, I focused heavily on drawing photo-realistic artwork.  It used to fascinate me that a human being could draw another human being so accurately.  But once I figured out the technique(and believe me it's a technique, not a talent) I got bored very quickly.  The end result may look amazing, but the process made me feel like a human xerox machine, except less accurate.  It's like copying pixels one by one, for hours at a time, one dot at a time, like a machine.  Really, that's all it is.  Sound like fun?  It's not.  Here's a pencil sketch from when I was about twenty years old:

 

I learned that photo-realistic artwork requires very little skill, very little thought, just TREMENDOUS PATIENCE.  It's more about pleasing the crowds, less about self accomplishment.  Once I figured that out, whatever mystique Norman Rockwell used to have disappeared immediately. I later found out that he used a projector to shoot photos onto his canvas so that he could literally copy the image.  Lame Norman, very lame.  Ever see a painting of Rockwell's that wasn't photo referenced? Of course, in his day, photography was still a relatively new technology, and realistic drawings at that level of accuracy was a highly celebrated novelty.  Today it's a parlor trick and nobody cares.  At least I don't. 

Since then, I've focused on drawing from my imagination, only studying real life to better my ability to draw from scratch.  To me, art is about expression, about creation.  The process is far more satisfying than the end result.  Sure, a photo-realistic drawing may wow the crowds, but there's nothing quite like the feeling of having built something totally and completely by myself, without the use of drawing aids or parlor tricks, no matter how crappy the end result may be.  I'm prouder of my crappy lunch break napkin sketches than any of the other drawings I did during my Norman Rockwell wannabe phase:

 

That's why comic book artists like Alex Ross, and to a lesser extent, Adam Hughes never really appealed to me.  I mean, I love their work.  How can anyone say it doesn't look fantastic?  But to me, deep down, I know that all they're really doing is copying photos.

Napkin Doodles

I'm in the process of moving to a new apartment so I've been busy sorting thru crap and throwing stuff out.  By moving, I've managed to decrease my one bedroom apartment rent from $1150 a month to $800 a month with utilities INCLUDED.  Living in New York City is expensive, but I didn't realize how badly I was getting ripped off.  I've been living in this place for 12 years.  Shoulda moved out long ago.  That's what I get for being lazy and procrastinating.  Well I spent a lot of time searching, but it was worth it.  Also, just want to mention, Craig's List sucks for apartment hunting, 60 percent of the listings are scams.  So I did it the old fashioned way, knocked on doors and collected phone numbers to avoid paying a broker's fee.

Haven't had much time to draw at nights, but I should be all moved in by July 1st at the latest.  After that, well, we'll see.  I have one more thing that I need to resolve before I can resume drawing regularly at nights, but I'll make a post about that when the time comes.  Hopefully sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, I'm still drawing during my lunch breaks, and I recently got a scanner so here's some napkin doodles:

 

I'll be posting napkin doodles for the next month or two until the real world stops getting in the way.