Transit sketches

[avram]

I’m getting better at drawing in moving vehicles. Some recent material from Sketchpad Minor:

These women were sitting across the aisle from me on my bus trip up to Boston last Friday. The one on the left, with her hair in a kerchief, was directly across from me (I think). The other was diagonally behind; I got her profile because she was looking out the window. I was too overwhelmed with social withdrawal symptoms on the ride back to draw, or even read. I mostly just slept.

I drew this guy on the subway today, coming back from the gym. I started with a woman across the car, but she moved shortly after I started when her friends found seats. I got her nose and one eye. This guy was writing something, so he was pretty intent and didn’t move much.

Carrying Sketchpad Minor (my name for my small Moleskine sketchpad) and a small pen (Sakura Pigma Micron 005; that’s permanent, waterproof, pigment ink with a .20mm tip — I love modern technology!) in my hip pocket (more than three decades wearing pants and I’ve only now discovered a use for hip pockets) has made me much more likely to whip ’em out and start sketching on a passing whim, just as I’d hoped it would. On the down side, I’m nattering on about art supplies again. (Hey, there are far worse things I could natter on about.)

And the new, OSX-compatible scanner has made me more likely to stick art in my journal entries. Again, all according to plan. Next, I gain control of the Senate....

Comments

[camfangrrl.livejournal.com]

The thought just occurred to me. People say that maybe we should all be paranoid because The State and The Goverment and Big Brother are aiming ever-more cameras at us, attached to street signs and hidden in billboards and whatever. But here we are, you are watching people on subways, preserving their images in ink all unknown to them, and I'm taking my little Powershot digital camera, folding it in the palm of my hand and trying to catch candid shots of everyday_people on Manhattan streets or in subways, and we're Watching, too. Is the difference merely in what's done with the images, and not the fact of them being taken? And since we are not beautiful and unique snowflakes that way, wouldn't it be interesting to find out our own images been drawn or photographed, all unknowing, by other people?

[avram]

The paranoia level is probably lower because we're not sticking these images into a database and correlating them with lots of other information. Though who knows? Maybe someone will see one of those sketches and say "Hey, that's Alice, she said she was with her mother in Philly that weekend!"

I could set up my own super-secret intelligence agency, based on covert drawing.

It's not always covert. One time I was sitting on a train, sketching a couple of guys who were sitting on the platform bench. They saw me, and started posing.