This drawing takes two figures inspired by a couple of men I saw at an Alameda bookstore and places them in a pose that evokes a popular religious motif of the Renaissance era. The pose recalls paintings of what was called “the descent,” in which the crucified Christ is taken down from the cross by loved ones and followers. An example of the descent is THIS painting by Pieter Paul Rubens. In the background of my drawing, I replaced the cross with a an imaged lifted and modified from a photo of a streetlamp on a rainy night.
Certain things always remind me of the 1970s. The afro, the platform shoe, the applejack hat, and the colors — goldenrod, rust, pea green, and bizarres shade of pinkish red-purple. This drawing, inspired by the man ahead of me in the express lane at Whole Foods, combines the quintessential Black 1970s hair style with two colors drawn from the 1970s color palette.
It’s turning out to be another retro kind of day here in the SF Bay Area. Then again, a trip to City Lights books is just the thing to turn one’s mind to thoughts of mid-century counterculture.
This drawing, like the previous one, incorporates a cool retro wallpaper design, and the figure deliberately recalls the late 1960s and early ’70s. The man he is based on did not have quite as bushy a beard as this drawing suggests, overall, the gentleman I saw browsing in City Lights books looked a lot like this picture. His was kind of a Black beatnik/summer of love/anti-war protester kind of look. At the same time, though, it’s also kind of a timeless, as well. After all, can you imagine a time in which a t-shirt and jeans will not be in style?
I was feeling kind of retro when I did this drawing. I came across a reprint of a book by one of my favorite childhood illustrators, M. Sasek and I decided that the table, background, and color scheme of today’s drawing should invoke his wonderfully simple and evocative designs. The bold colors and cut-out style shapes in his work bring to mind the best of think of mid-century illustration and design, an aesthetic that has been adopted (and adapted) by contemporary artists like Shag. The background in this drawing is based on a photo of an authentic 1950s wallpaper pattern, repeated and then recolored to match the brown and blue color scheme of the rest of the piece.
Just outside the entrance to the Home of Chicken and Waffles in Jack London Square, the teenager in this drawing was having an animated conversation with two of his female friends. They were talking about the young women’s outfits. Both were wearing high-heeled platform pumps that matched their outfits, and he was criticizing both women for their inability to walk gracefully in their shoes. Several of entering patrons as well as a couple passers by stopped to laugh because he was right. Neither of the women could walk easily in heels. We all laughed a little harder when he said that if they really wanted to know how to walk in those shoes, they needed to watch him. He stood on his toes and took a several strides back in forth in front of the door, walking with such confidence and grace that it was almost like watching Tyra Banks herself. The response from one his two friends was priceless. “Of course you can walk in heels,” she said. “You’re a boy!”
… another group portrait. I really enjoy the challenges of drawing a collection of figures, especially when the composition runs all the way to the edges of the page. This is much the same as drawing an urban landscape or even a rural landscape in that the space is defined by the objects that populate it as well as the space between and around those objects. Part of the fun of doing this type of sketch is the experience of each figure as two different images. There is a distinct difference between how each figure looks when I am drawing it and how it looks in the context of all the others. Add color, and each figure is transformed further still.
Tomorrow’s drawing will be another group scene/composite portrait. But today I’m feeling very inspired by my memory of one of the attendees at The Art of Living Black exhibition at American Steel (on Mandela Parkway). His bright white hair and plain black dress stood out against the large and colorful collage paintings* on the wall behind him (only his t-shirt is visible in this drawing, but he was also wearing black trousers and a pair of black oxfords).
8-Rock
*The paintings were created by South African artist Fortune Sitole, whose depictions of South African townships are absolutely beautiful.
I spend most of my working days in relatively quiet and sparsely populated settings–libraries, cafes, my office. Even so, I get a lot of inspiration from the Black folks I encounter in these locations. So, when I find myself in big crowds–concerts, opening night at the theater, plays, well-attended gallery openings–I often see more wonderful subjects for art that I have time to transfer to individual drawings. Lately, I’ve attended a number of events in large, diverse crowds, and I’ve decided to make each of the next few drawings a compositive portrait of the men who populate Oakland’s Black art and music scene. From galleries to concert venues, Oakland’s men of African descent represent a wide and wonderful range of aesthetics inspired by everything from politics to film to sports to 80s prep. If you know of any interesting art or music events coming up in the East Bay or San Francisco, send me a message a eightrock@ymail.com and I’ll try to check it out.
