Drawings - 1970
1970. My Junior year at art school, so I’m like 20 or so. We were two years removed from the King assassination, the following riots, The Convention, and Chicago Police were ordered to shoot to kill (not that they hadn’t been doing that anyway), Bobby Kennedy’s assasination, the draft was in full swing and Vietnam too, nuclear Armageddon was still a real possibility. Only a few Chicago neighborhoods were desegregated, so after work, by 6pm, you’d better be on the bus going home, and not be in the wrong place at the wrong time. ~ Still, it was all, great fun. View On Black
And it seemed as if the world was finally either, gonna’ change or explode.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySOrLL8ZEHQ - “Ball of Confusion” The Temptations ~ #24, Billboard Top 100, 1970
I’m back in Chicago. It is my second year at trying my hand at the art fair circuit in the City. I was scared as hell. I had drawings and photos out, although I was gravitating more and more towards photography and 16mm documentaries by this time.
I was still very shy then, and hadn’t yet developed a public persona or alter ego who could do the glad-hander, back-slapper, carnival-barker chores when needed; like at art fairs. He –“BossBob,” as he would turn out to be – was to come, seven or eight years later, when I got on radio.
At the art fairs I would bring out a Polaroid camera (4”x5”) and my drawing pad and some pencils and shyly try to talk people into letting me do a portrait. I never really wished to be a painter, but a cartoonist/caricaturist for Mad and Cracked Magazines, and DC Comics, and my drawings reflected my love of, and influences by mad guys: Mort Drucker, Wallace (Wally) Wood, Jack Severin, and Jack Davis. “What, Me Worry?”
People were often nice to us shy, cute, young, wet-behind-the-ears-and-everywhere-else, baby-faced artists in our tie-dyed shirts, jeans and fringed Native-American leather boots, and let us have a go.
Often I’d have to take a Polaroid and draw from that as I didn’t quite know how to as yet direct a live, sitting patron. Also, I didn’t consider myself to be a great colorist, but more of an inker, so I’d do the line drawings, and let one of my friends put chalk or pencil shadings to them. I'd usually work 2B and 3B with softer for hair and stuff. I was fairly sure-handed, and seldom used an eraser.
I could draw figures, but they took too long and I really was most interested in faces. I’d sell a few now and then: sometimes to patrons, but usually to other attending artists. We’d draw each other and fool around when the exhibition crowds got slow. I think, the other artists could also appreciate a cartoon style portrait more than the gen public, too.
Odd factoids: 1. whenever I drew a face, I always started with the nose, and worked out from there. Always.
2. My visual style was set by those artists at Mad magazine, and their deep, crowded, complex, and complicated visual styles and panels. There was no such thing as negative space with them guys.
These were a few faces in the crowds. Upper left and right (Reggie?) look familiar – like neighborhood people, but I can no longer put names to them.
Oh, and I am no longer shy. Give me a crowd of one, a bare light bulb, and it is “SHOWTIME, BABY!” But, I guess you all kinda’ knew that by now. :-)
And, it seems as if the world has decided some sort of change is better than out-and-out self-destruction.
Texture courtesy: flypapertextures.blogspot.com/2009/09/flypaper-tex-box-1_...
Drawings - 1970
1970. My Junior year at art school, so I’m like 20 or so. We were two years removed from the King assassination, the following riots, The Convention, and Chicago Police were ordered to shoot to kill (not that they hadn’t been doing that anyway), Bobby Kennedy’s assasination, the draft was in full swing and Vietnam too, nuclear Armageddon was still a real possibility. Only a few Chicago neighborhoods were desegregated, so after work, by 6pm, you’d better be on the bus going home, and not be in the wrong place at the wrong time. ~ Still, it was all, great fun. View On Black
And it seemed as if the world was finally either, gonna’ change or explode.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySOrLL8ZEHQ - “Ball of Confusion” The Temptations ~ #24, Billboard Top 100, 1970
I’m back in Chicago. It is my second year at trying my hand at the art fair circuit in the City. I was scared as hell. I had drawings and photos out, although I was gravitating more and more towards photography and 16mm documentaries by this time.
I was still very shy then, and hadn’t yet developed a public persona or alter ego who could do the glad-hander, back-slapper, carnival-barker chores when needed; like at art fairs. He –“BossBob,” as he would turn out to be – was to come, seven or eight years later, when I got on radio.
At the art fairs I would bring out a Polaroid camera (4”x5”) and my drawing pad and some pencils and shyly try to talk people into letting me do a portrait. I never really wished to be a painter, but a cartoonist/caricaturist for Mad and Cracked Magazines, and DC Comics, and my drawings reflected my love of, and influences by mad guys: Mort Drucker, Wallace (Wally) Wood, Jack Severin, and Jack Davis. “What, Me Worry?”
People were often nice to us shy, cute, young, wet-behind-the-ears-and-everywhere-else, baby-faced artists in our tie-dyed shirts, jeans and fringed Native-American leather boots, and let us have a go.
Often I’d have to take a Polaroid and draw from that as I didn’t quite know how to as yet direct a live, sitting patron. Also, I didn’t consider myself to be a great colorist, but more of an inker, so I’d do the line drawings, and let one of my friends put chalk or pencil shadings to them. I'd usually work 2B and 3B with softer for hair and stuff. I was fairly sure-handed, and seldom used an eraser.
I could draw figures, but they took too long and I really was most interested in faces. I’d sell a few now and then: sometimes to patrons, but usually to other attending artists. We’d draw each other and fool around when the exhibition crowds got slow. I think, the other artists could also appreciate a cartoon style portrait more than the gen public, too.
Odd factoids: 1. whenever I drew a face, I always started with the nose, and worked out from there. Always.
2. My visual style was set by those artists at Mad magazine, and their deep, crowded, complex, and complicated visual styles and panels. There was no such thing as negative space with them guys.
These were a few faces in the crowds. Upper left and right (Reggie?) look familiar – like neighborhood people, but I can no longer put names to them.
Oh, and I am no longer shy. Give me a crowd of one, a bare light bulb, and it is “SHOWTIME, BABY!” But, I guess you all kinda’ knew that by now. :-)
And, it seems as if the world has decided some sort of change is better than out-and-out self-destruction.
Texture courtesy: flypapertextures.blogspot.com/2009/09/flypaper-tex-box-1_...