Hey y’all,
Last week I was lucky enough to spend a few days in New York City re-tracing my steps and visiting old haunts. Which is a terrible thing to call your friends but hey, we ain’t getting any younger.
And so with that in mind, I want to talk a little bit about the first time I fell off a turnip truck and landed in the 5 Boroughs with just a pencil, a dream, and a distorted sense of geography reality.
When I moved to New York City at the end of 2006 I'd drawn a lot of cartoons and comics but never much from life. Being about as broke as I’d ever been, a lot of my entertainment for those 2 years or so became drawing the folks I'd see on trains, or parks, or coffee houses, or bars.
And so, in no small way, New York City became my formal art education.
For an artist used to working in an exaggerated manner, born largely in the privacy of his own mind— Drawing under live fire like that was a powerful exercise and experience. One that I think helped to codify my fundamentals by creating a counterbalance to what came from my imagination.
See, up to that point, I’d only ever constructed a drawing from the “inside” by building up forms from gestures and shapes, then “skinning” those skeletons with refinement and detail. But the speed required to draw on a shaky train, under the probing eyes of strangers required a more inverted approach. One more based on contour drawing and eyeball measurements of the relationships present.
And as much as the practice of moving pen on paper a few thousand times helped, it turns out that better developing the skill of observation was THE biggest and most lasting takeaway.
To this day, I remember all of the moments in my sketchbook (and the emotions that hang on them) vividly, with far more re-call than any photo I have ever snapped. And as time went on, I found it really drastically improved not just my drawing, but my writing and storytelling.
There’s an immeasurable amount of story in how people tie their shoelaces or hug their groceries to their chest on the subway.
After moving back to North Carolina in 2008, I never quite found the interest or time to commit to life drawing quite as regularly. But every time I visit NYC, I find my head right back in my sketchbook.
One of the first attempts at putting all this study into practice was in a short story for 24SEVEN VOL 2., an anthology edited by my pal Ivan Brandon.
Despite its flaws I’m still proud of the effort. Maybe because making it is rooted so firmly in my memory. In that hazy moment in time right before the introduction of the first iPhone, gathering reference for the story involved a lot of time spent wandering around Manhattan lost in both mind and body.
Turns out I was learning how to draw maps too.
Despite being one of the most emo things I ever put to paper, I still like the image of a robot that got its heart ripped out by The Big Apple.
Luckily, New York is a good place to learn how to build something stronger.
Hope y’all have a great weekend.
More soon,
-j