Art Doesn't Always Come Easy

   I have been struggling with this post for a few days. I'm not sure how to go about it or what to say. Drawing may seem like it should be an easy thing to talk about. An easy lighthearted subject. Well, it isn't for me. It brings me to times in my life that have left deep scars, times that I don't like to revisit. Times that I don't normally talk about, even with my family and closest friends.
   I gave someone some "advice" today. They told me they were stressing about trying to get a post together... I told them to relax, let it flow, and it would be awesome. I also told them if it was real and genuine and came from the gut, people would relate to it. So, for a change, I am going to take my own advice, and just write and see what happens.

   In this first picture I think I am about 23 years old. It's a horrible picture, I was caught off guard. I have never liked having my picture taken. Unfortunately, if you have the courtesy to ask if you can take a picture, I have the honesty to tell you I'd prefer you didn't. Over the years a lucky few have come up with some descent pictures of me. (In most of them I'm holding a fish) But this picture is not one of those.

   The only reason this picture is included here is because it is one of two in existence that connect me with my drawing. So, I thought it belonged here in this post. I am sitting on my girlfriend's couch. The picture I am drawing was of Belle and Beast, I was drawing the picture for her oldest daughter. I drew a similar picture of Alladin and Jasmine for her other daughter. I was about a year out of prison in this picture. I was free. I was in love. It was the best time period of my life.
   I couldn't always draw. Like every kid I played with crayons and markers, but I never had a particular interest for it, never showed any particular talent for it. I was too busy getting into things to take time to draw anyway. I taught myself how to draw at age eighteen sitting in prison. I started by looking at photos and artwork in magazines and trying to make reproductions. I remember zoning in on the drawings and blocking the rest of the world out for hours at a time. It was an escape for me in a very dark time.

   This first drawing, I drew from a Muscle and Fitness Magazine. I drew very similar pictures of the backside muscles, and a skeleton with all the bones labeled. I learned all the muscles and bones of the body from drawing these pictures. This picture is probably twenty-two years old. To survive that long in my possession is pretty amazing. This picture has been through a lot. It's done with ball point pen on yellow lined legal paper.
   Magazines were a commodity in prison, they were good for trades and bartering. They didn't usually stick around long. When your out of cigarettes, you can trade a magazine for twenty Buglers...
   Muscle and Fitness magazines always had information that I wanted to keep, so I would draw the diagrams and write the information out and keep it all in a file folder in my foot locker. By the end of my bit that folder was so full of papers the folder didn't really even fit around it any more. I used the folder and a big rubber-band  to just kind of hold everything together. I think this drawing is the only thing that remains of that folder.

Ball-point pen. Blue copy paper.

No.2 Pencil. White copy paper.

This next set of pictures are all over twenty years old also. Some of my earliest drawings. In my earliest days of drawing I drew a lot of skulls, demons, and monsters. I learned quick, and I developed a reputation as an artist in a very short time. An artist in the penitentiary has a distinct advantage. It is a skill that you can use that no one can take from you. It is a skill that many inmates want to take advantage of. I drew pictures for people to hang in their cells, or send to people they knew. I drew cards for holidays, and birthdays. I decorated envelopes and stationary. I etched drawings in the paint of peoples foot-lockers. I drew tattoo patterns, I even did a little tattooing. I did the artwork and people traded items from the commissary for it (Soap, stamps, envelopes, ramen noodles,, candy, etc). I did an etching on one guy's guitar in trade for a set of guitar strings, I traded the guitar strings to a tattoo guy for his radio. It was an asset and an escape.

Ball-point pen. Blue copy paper.

Ball-point pen. Blue copy paper.

   As I said, I drew a lot of skulls and such in the beginning, I've drawn hundreds if not thousands of skulls. I drew other things too. Dragons, wizards, ships and serpents, also hearts and flowers, cartoon characters, and some scenery. I tried to draw whatever people asked me to in order to make my next store order. But if I was just drawing to draw... It was usually some ominous or dark image. I think because that was the condition I was in. I was angry and rebellious, and those images fit my moods at that time. My drawings do seem to reflect my emotional condition of that time.

Ball-point pen. White copy paper.

   In this picture I was about twenty-four, I think. It's a Polaroid picture. And it's another terrible picture of me. But it is the only other picture I know of that ties me to my drawings. Ha! I thought I was so damn cool. :) This period of time I mentioned earlier I was happy to be a free man. I was in love. I had a good job. This was my first apartment of my own... On my own. It was the happiest time of my life. It was the only time in my life when I felt like everything was right. As it turned out, that apartment was the beginning of the end for the in love part of that statement. And another rapid succession of bad life-decisions followed that I don't think I have ever fully recovered from.

   But I'm drifting in this post, so I'll try to stay on the subject of the art for now. There is far to much in that whole story to get into here anyway.

Mural in colored pencil.

   This partial mural, is obviously of Calvin and Hobbs. A couple of my favorite cartoon characters of all time. I also have an infatuation with sneaking up on people and scaring them. I lived in this apartment for a year and in that time (working on it on and off) the mural did get completed... Or at least it covered nearly the whole wall. It was pretty huge. And pretty expensive, I went through countless Prisma-Color Pencils. They aren't really cheap. I always seemed to think of something else to add to it though. I had other pictures of it in different stages, but again... This is the only one that survives.

   When I moved from this apartment, my landlord raved about how cool it was and how impressed he was... And kindly asked me to paint over it before I left. I put about eight coats of paint on the bees-wax based pigment, and about two weeks after I moved out it bled through the paint and was still vaguely visible.

No.2 pencil on sketch paper.

Colored pencil on sketch paper. 

No.2 pencil on sketch paper.

   This next series of pictures are from different times and periods in my life. It would take me forever to explain the inspiration and emotion behind them all. Some of them hold memories, others not so much. Most of them are just experiments that I played with along the way. I started out drawing "tattoo flash". Simple pictures, and single images with no backgrounds or other detail. And a lot of my drawings over the years have followed that same line.
   Most of my more complete drawings have been given away. Many of those actually do have foregrounds, and backgrounds. I like to give them away... I drew them, I don't need them. I feel the same way about photography, there's no use taking/making the pictures if your not going to share them. There are quite a few of them out there. I was going to try to visit some of the people I'm still in touch with that have my drawings. I wanted to photograph a couple of them and include them in this post. But that just didn't end up being a practical idea. There is a picture of a Basset Hound puppy with a red ball, my best friends have that. There is a picture I did of Hulk Vs. The Thing, my brother has that. There is one of Wolverine Vs. Sabertooth that now belongs to one of my cousins. I also put several comic book character pictures up in a local card/comic shop to see how practical it might be to sell them... It wasn't. I did sell a couple of pictures though.

Colored pencil on sketch paper.

Colored pencil on sketch paper.

   Honestly, drawing has never been particularly "fun" for me. There are things that are enjoyable about it. But it is a very slow and tedious process for me. It requires every bit of focus I have to draw a picture. And I don't always have that to give. When I draw I still withdraw to... Another consciousnesses? I don't know... But the rest of the world disappears. And it's mentally taxing.
   I do my drawings in phases. By that I mean I will go through several months in which I'll draw a half dozen pictures or so. And then I will go through long periods of time (sometimes years) were I don't draw at all. Conditions have to be perfect for drawings to happen. I have to be in the right mood, and have the right inspiration, and emotional frame, and time, and patience, and etc. I think at present it has been almost six years since I have drawn a picture. The Basset Hound I mentioned above was my last drawing that I did. And it is probably my all time favorite drawing that I have done. But the final picture I included here of Halle Berry was drawn right before that one. It's also one of my favorites. I have never used fixatives on my drawings, so over the years the shading has faded a little more than the outlines and it looks slightly more cartoonish than when I first did it as a result of storing it poorly. But it is what it is.
   Thanks for coming by, I hope you enjoyed some of my drawings. I also hope I was successful in expressing where the drawings come from within me. Sometimes art doesn't come easy.

Colored pencil on heavy drawing paper.

   

Northern Express - By Marcia Doyle, Guest Post #2

   Well, here I am. Back after another hiatus... I have tried to get several posts up over the last couple of months to no avail. Call it writers block, lack of creativity, or pure laziness. It all boils down to the same. No posts.
   I think I am over whatever funk I was in, and I'm ready to get back to it. I tried yesterday to put up a post. It was going to be a collection of my favorite photos from this past winter. I spent more than three hours posting pictures and writing captions. When I had everything in order finally I went to publish the post and hit the delete post button instead of the publish button.
   I have to say I was a little traumatized. After so much time away from my blog, and the hours spent on the pictures, it was just about enough to send my laptop crashing into a wall... After I got a grip, I made a post on my facebook page explaining the ordeal, and that I WOULD get a post up on my blog as soon as I stopped swearing and could think straight again.
   It's funny how things work out sometimes. My post on facebook sparked a conversation with my friend Marcia Doyle, who writes the blog Menopausal Mother. One thing led to another and my plan has changed. Rather than a bland and impersonal post of generic pictures, I am pleased to bring you something much more personal, and meaningful. (At least it is in my eyes.)
   This is a poem she sent to me with one of my pictures in mind. And it pleases me to no end to feature it here. As I read her poem, I was touched with a bit of nostalgia, and I was brought back to a similar time, and a similar memory in my own life. And I was left with a sentimental longing for the past. I hope you enjoy.

Northern Express

By: Marcia Kester Doyle

In the distance

a train whistle echoes

its wheels clack against metal tracks

rock with winter darkness.

I remember the old phone booth

by the depot

where you called every night at nine

wearing your thin boxing jacket

and complaining of the cold

that chilled the glass around you.

Now

when I hear the trains

in the middle of the night

stirring my bones from sleep,

I lie in the dark

and sift through the sound

for a voice, soft and distant

like the whistle

on the Northern Express

If Marcia's poem invokes a feeling in you, or recalls some distant memory from your past. Feel free to share it here with a comment for her. Or if you would just like to tell her how wonderful she is... Your thoughts are always welcome. Thanks for coming by...