New Sketchbook

The itty bitty sticker in the corner is the logo for Heritage of Pride, the organization that plans the Gay Pride march every year in Manhattan. The design is, of course, by Keith Haring.

Risk & Subway Bassist

These sketches are from a few days ago.

I tend to rush through my drawings and clearly the only one that looks even remotely polished is the lower left one with the "Risk is serious bizness" caption. It's a self-portrait. I'm a terrific geek.

The others are in various states of undress, as it were.

As a little kid, I would just straight-up draw characters and scenes out of nothing, using my ever-trusty ballpoint pen. This was very impressive, but ultimately limiting. Why? Because while all the detail I would put in was very nice, I'd have all the figures arranged in boring poses with stock expressions that I'd have drawn a million times before. I'm trying to get away from that.

The guy on the first page, top right, is a good example of my first approach. I was aiming to draw a funny little old timey fat guy, but I got so caught up with other details that he was left with a very bland slouch. Maybe he's just chilling. Maybe he's stoned. Yick.

Second page, top, I was posing a skeleton and wound up with a much more expressive figure. Now, hardly either of those drawings are polished or complete, but I think the girl in the panels is more successful. She's not as detailed, but I think the fat guy needs more cleaning and messing around with, whereas stick-girl just needs flesh and decent backgrounds.

Bottom right dude on the first page is in sort of an in-between state: he's expressing SOMETHING, but the scene needs a lot of cleaning up and some reposing. He's supposed to be a misanthropic jazz musician on a subway. Could you tell?

Hello World