When I sketch on the Metro, I prefer to do the whole sketch start-to-finish on the train itself in order to preserve the spontaneity of the moment. However, this is not always doable, so on sketches that I really want to color in, but don’t have the time to do so, I jot down color notes on the sketch itself and color them in later with my markers, as was the case here.
Continuing the story (read: “saga”) of my severely broken foot IMO this latest series of Retro Sketches, this drawing was a satirical take on my second round of emergency surgery. After the pins-and-wiring contraption assembled inside my foot from the first emergency surgery fell apart, the second surgery had to be as perfect as they come. And perfect it was: the surgeon performing the procedure was the official foot surgeon for a major league soccer team. Deft and agile as a watchmaker, he managed to bolt together the tiny pieces of the fragile shattered bone with one titanium screw. It was, as he claimed, the best foot surgery he’d ever done (he actually called his colleagues shortly afterwards in the post-midnight hours to brag of it!) Of course, surgery is still surgery, and my new prolonged period of recovery meant more time laying on my back with an elevated foot, so to help pass the time, I held my small sketchbook up in the air and scrawled away with my Pigma Micron pen, laying down as many lines, details, and dark areas as possible.
More often than not, when sketching people on the Washington, DC Metro, I try to do the line work and coloring all in one sitting, which keeps with the spontaneous and honest nature of the subject. Sometimes, though, the subject’s coloring is too good and the time too short. In these instances, I take my markers, dab a few swatches off to the side of the page in general relation the color’s placement, and then finish the coloring later on.
In 2006, I had a small stumble at work, which resulted in a major injury: a triple-fracture of the upper section of the fifth metatarsal in my right foot. The tiny crumble atop the tiny top section of this little bone resulted in two rounds of emergency surgery, two months of being laid-up on my back with my foot elevated, three months of physical therapy, and enough painkillers to put a smile on an elephant. There’s not much you can do when laying on your back, practically immobile, with your shattered-and-casted foot elevated gingerly on a pile of pillows, so I grabbed my small sketchbook, a Micron Pigma pen, downed a few happy pills, and started drawing.
When I sketch people on the Metro, I never know if I’ll have enough time (or luck) to capture the whole individual, or at least, just their heads. Sometimes, I end up somewhere in the middle, as was the case here. It also was the case where I simply didn’t have the right color marker for this gentleman’s rather nice light green shirt, so the best I could do was merely indicate the color and ascribe it to memory.
Here are two individuals I sketched on the Metro one morning. The bottom individual was easier to sketch; from an angle, I’m less likely to be noticed by the person I’m sketching, and I can sketch more continuously. When the person is in front of me, however, it’s much riskier. Hopefully, they’re too engrossed in their smart phones and tablets to notice, though I still need to predict when they’ll look up, at which time I put down the sketchbook and pen. Generally, I’m sketching them in bits and pieces, switching between working in a focused and controlled manner, and a manner which is rushed and spontaneous.
The more that I’d been incorporating markers into my sketching while on the train, the more I had decided to explore the medium a little bit. For this individual, whom had a rather shiny head, I decided to leave the highlight on his scalp simply as the paper showing through the swath of color.
Here’s a picture of a drawing I’m working on, and pen I’m doing it with. It’s a Pigma Micron 01, and I’m using it because not only it’s permanent ink, but because my yet-another Pigma Micron 05 has dried-out on me (which was yet-another Pigma Micron 05 pen to become detached from it’s cap accidentally for an extended period of time).
Oh well, it’s late, quiet, and peaceful, so I’m gonna scrawl away at this exercise in hand-lettering and illustration with my teeny tiny little black point.
This is the first drawing in my new “ugly sketchbook”, and to draw ugly, I really had to go off of my perfectionist meds. I was in the middle of processing lots of digital work, so I grabbed the nearest pen – a scratchy and near empty ballpoint – and scrawled away while files were saving and uploading. Then the pen stopped working, so I grabbed another, which was a goopy and smudgy ballpoint. Whatever; it’s an ugly sketchbook, so I drew a robot and wrote the words “Ugly Sketchbook”.
This blog is called Sketchbook Warrior, and though it’s all about sketching, none of it would happen without a sketchbook itself. Over the past two years, pretty much all of my sketching has been done in the small 4″ x 6″ hardcover sketchbooks by Art Alternatives. These great little sketchbooks, which are low on price and high on quality, have been my constant and reliable companions. They’re durable, the paper takes many media and doesn’t let too much bleed through to the subsequent pages, folds flat to allow 8″ x 6″ sketching and easy scanning, and with the money saved versus laying out almost three times as much for a Moleskine, you don’t mind screwing up a page or two (you have 120 pages to work with in these books!)
And since this is the 200th post on Sketchbook Warrior, I wanted to use the occasion to mention these sketchbooks, and to thank the fine and friendly people at Art Alternatives for sending me the gift of a new sketchbook. I also I want to extend a thank you to all of you whom have clicked onto and clicked around on this blog, came back and clicked some more, became followers, commented on posts, and in general participated and interacted with me in this realm of art and sketching and drawing and whatever else we do in these books that begin as blank pages and end up with incredible expressions of ourselves, each other, and the world around us all.
Jason Pearlman 