Will Draw For Food Uh I Mean Money

As I write this, the Carolina Panthers, led by Quarterback Cam Newton, are in NorCal, a week away from playing in the Superbowl.  I did the drawing above as a demo of my style to the people around here who aren't into the BMX and skating drawings I often do.

Meanwhile, I'm shamelessly begging for cash.  Or, as it's called these days, crowdfunding.  I'm looking for 43 people who would like me to do an original drawing for a $25 donation.  Click to find out more:  Steve's art/writing business start-up.

Props from the local newspeople

On a whim, I shared a pic of my Cam Newton drawings with a couple local WFMY News 2 people.  Both weather man Grant Gilmore and sports anchor Liz Crawford gave me a really positive response on the drawings.  Thanks a lot.  Liz gets to go out west to cover the Superbowl.  Not a bad gig.

I also took the pics to several local stores who sell Carolina Panthers gear, and got a really good response from everyone I met.  One woman ordered a couple of drawings, and three or four took phone pics of my work to share and post.  Finally feels like I'm gaining a little traction at getting this little business going.  Like the Panthers I need to #Keep Pounding.  

Turning My Hobby Into a Small Business

Over the last 12 years, I've worked as a taxi driver and done some odd jobs as I slowly developed a unique style of drawing with Sharpie markers.  The top drawing above is my "four-legged niece" Willow, which I did for my sister a couple months ago.  Willow is an Aussie-Doodle, she's very friendly, her favorite color is pink (yeah, I know dogs are color blind) and she's my sister's dog.  As a meme on Facebook said recently, "Every parent of teenagers needs a dog, so when they come home someone is glad to see them."

The lower pic is a drawing of my old BMX buddy, Keith Treanor, busting a fakie footplant that would make Todd Anderson proud.  These are just two examples of the work I'm doing with Sharpie markers these days in my unique "scribble style."

The time has come to turn my hobby into a small business, and I'm looking for a total of 43 people to ante up $25 each for a BMX zine and an original  12" X 18" drawing.  You can hear the whole story on my Go Fund Me page.  Thanks to those of you who've helped me out so far, and those who will in the near future.  I'm doing a ton of drawings cheap to raise money to get my broken computer refurbished.  It's hard to start an internet business without a computer, but I'm not letting that stop me. 

Cam Newton Keep Pounding drawing

Winter storm Jonas Brothers turned the last couple of days into mandatory snow days for everyone in the state of North Carolina.  The weather wasn't as bad as predicted, but I spent the time eating home made chili and drawing another Cam Newton/Carolina Panthers drawing.  I'm not totally happy with my lettering, but Cam turned out pretty cool.  Below is a close-up of the detail.  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24".

Cam Newton Superman Drawing

I was showing my neighbor my recent drawings, and he liked the Bruce Lee one best.  Like many people around here (Kernersville, NC), he liked my style of drawings, but couldn't relate to the bike and skate drawings I've been doing.  At his suggestion, I drew this big pic of Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton.  At I write this, Cam is favored to be the NFL MVP this year, the Panthers are 16-1 going into the NFC Championship game at home, and the Panther bandwagon has gone nationwide.  So for all the Carolina people checking this out, here's what I can do with a traditional sports photo.  I can draw your kids, yourself, your dog, or your favorite athlete or performer.  18" X 24," Sharpies on paper.

Chris Miller Skateboard Drawing

I've been looking for stylish bike and skate pics to practice this new style of mine.  You can't get any more stylish than Chris Miller on vert.  Miller's frontside nosebones were as stylish as anything on vert.  I drew this one just for myself, it's on my wall.  12" X 18" Sharpies on paper.

Keith Treanor Fakie Footplant

Once I got going on this new drawing style, I wanted to find a good photo of my old riding buddy Keith to draw.  I pulled this fakie footplant pic off his Facebook page and drew it.  Like all BMX street riders, we've spent thousands of hours in obscure concrete places that were never intended for bike riding.  With these obscure spots comes a lot of graffiti, from simple tags, to amazing murals.  To add some color to the wall Keith's footplanting on, I layered several colors of words, mostly the names of influential riders from the old school days, giving it a graffiti wall look.  In the bottom right, I added the cover artwork from my 1990 video, The Ultimate Weekend, which featured Keith jumping over the reaching hand of John Povah.  I'm pretty stoked on how this one came out, and I want to do more drawings like this.  18" X 24," Sharpies on paper.

Dustin Pedroia Drawing

I forgot to take a good photo of the Dustin Pedroia drawing on the right before I gave it to my nephew.  This was my Christmas gift to my nephew Ethan.  He's a huge Rex Sox fan, so I found a great action shot of Pedroia diving for a ball, and blew it up and drew it for him. 

When I asked my niece and nephew to hold up their drawings for a photo, I assumed they would have their faces showing.  Things you don't realize when you don't have kids.  18" X 24," Sharpies on paper.

Frosty Has A Secret Drawing

I did this little cartoon back in 2008, to send to some people for Christmas.  The caption on the bottom reads, "Sometimes, late at night, when the children are all asleep, Frosty polishes off a twelve pack."  It made me laugh when I drew it, which was the whole point.

Justin Bieber Drawing

Let me preface this by saying that I'm not a Justin Bieber fan.  But my niece Katherine is, and I drew this for a Christmas present for her.  I asked my sister who my niece and nephew's favorite performers or sports stars were, and for Katherine it was Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber.  My first thought was, "I need to introduce my niece to some better music."  Then I started looking up photos of the two stars, trying to find one with good shadow play that would work with my drawing style.  This one of Bieber fit the bill.  I went with a graffiti wall look in the background, and actually, I'm pretty stoked with how this drawing came out.  Even better, my niece Katherine liked it, and said they needed to put it up in their game room.  Her brother, Ethan said "Nooooooo!  No Bieber in the game room!"  Then the kids put both of their drawings back in the poster tubes and proceeded to hit each other over the head with the tubes. 

Ahhh... the family at Christmas.  Gotta love it.  Sharpie markers on paper, 18" X 24".

Steve Crandall from FBM Bikes

Once I got going on this newer style of drawings, I was looking for photos to draw.  I picked this one of FBM bikes owner Steve Crandall mostly because I use words in the background as shading, and I wanted to come up with a bunch of things FBM could be an acronym for.  I met Steve and the early FBM crew in my living room in about 1993 or 1994, I think.  I came downstairs to eat breakfast, and there were some guys sleeping on the couches and living room floor that I didn't know.  This may sound strange to many of you, but in those days when the BMX industry was in a lull, we all slept on other rider's couches and floors when we traveled to save money.  Since I was roommates with S&M Bikes owner Chris Moeller, our apartment was pretty much a motel for traveling riders from around the world.  So I got talking to Steve and the other guys, and added some new friends to my BMX extended family. 

In the early days, I believe FBM stood for Fat Bald Men, which made fun of the old, non-rider guys who were running the BMX industry at the time.  A few years later, a fire tore through the FBM office, and they joked that FBM stood for Fire Bikes Mayhem. 

Anyhow, I pulled this pic of Steve off of Facebook and did the drawing.  I wrote about a dozen different things that FBM could stand for in the background, mostly to amuse myself.  Sharpies on paper, 12" X 18".

Rodney Mullen Ollie Melancholy

If you've ridden a skateboard in the last 30 years, you've heard of Rodney Mullen.  In the late 70's he began as a dorky freestyle skater from Florida.  Along the way, he invented the flat ground ollie, the ollie kickflip, the double kickflip, the 360 flip, and a slew of other tricks that the entire skateboarding realm is now based on.  He was the freestyle skating world champion for nine or ten years in a row.  Then freestyle began to fade, and with much coaxing, Rodney took his board to the street, and completely redefined the young genre of street skating in the early 90's.  Now in his 40's, Rodney Mullen is not only still progressing as a skateboarder, but he's also featured in several TED Talks, speaking about the culture of skateboarding and the nature of creativity itself.  He's a really, REALLY smart guy. 

I was lucky enough to get to know Rodney in 1986, and have been a fan every since.  This trick, the ollie melancholy, is basically Rodney trying to do the highest, most tweaked ollie possible.  The original photo I drew this from is a classic in skateboarding.  This drawing is up on my wall.  Sharpies on paper, 12" X 18".

Skateboarder Smith Grind Drawing

I've spent much of my life in the BMX and skateboard world, so when I started drawing in this new style, I went looking for good bike and skate pics to draw.  The Smith Grind is a classic skateboard vert move, and just looks really stylish.  I think this was the first skateboard pic I drew in this style.  Not perfect by any means, and I definitely shouldn't have colored his arms all black.  But I like the basic idea, and may do another one like this sometime. 

Brother and sister drawing

I was contacted by a woman at church who'd seen one of my drawings to do this one.  I did this from a small photo, and she wanted a sepia tone look.  This particular photo didn't have quite the shadow play I wanted, but the photo had a really special meaning, so I did my best with it.

Ninja Turtle Drawing

As most of you know, this is Michelangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.  This one I drew for a friend in Maryland who wanted to give it to his girlfriend's son for Christmas.  It's not my standard style, but it turned out pretty well, and young Luke was stoked on it, which is what matters.

BMX Lookback Drawing

After doing the handful of drawings in the last few posts, it was obvious I needed to do a BMX drawing.  I searched for a good lookback pic that would work.  I'm really stoked on how this one came out, and it's the background my Facebook page right now.  Not sure who this is, but it's a really tweaked lookback, one of the classic BMX tricks, first called a Leary after legendary racer Harry Leary.

WIllow the Dog Drawing

When I told my sister I was doing pics for my niece and nephew, Katherine and Ethan, my she asked me if I could do one of their dog Willow.  I wasn't sure I could do a dog in this style, but Willow's spots and this particular photo worked really well.  So here's my four-legged niece,  Willow,  in one of the rare moments when you can actually see her face well.  I was really stoked on how this turned out.  I'm pretty sure Willow was, too.  For those wondering, she's an Aussie-Doodle, half Australian Shepherd and half Poodle. 

Cheerleading Drawing For My Niece

When I first came to North Carolina several years ago, I was broke and decided to draw some pics for my niece and nephew that I was just getting to know.  I drew their names and faded the colors in them from light to dark.  She was about nine then, and just starting in cheerleading.  Before I knew it, I was drawing these names for a whole bunch of her cheerleader friends.  I even did a few on canvas, but Sharpies don't work well on canvas, and I'm not a painter.

Well, many years have passed, and my niece Katherine is now a varsity cheerleader.  This is the first drawing I did for her in this new style.  But her school colors didn't come through enough, so I did another one for her.  Before I took these pics over to them, I made copies at the nearby office store, and accidentally left this original in the copy machine.  I went by the next day, and not only had the young women working there kept it, but they told me they thought it was awesome.  Pretty cool to hear from random people I don't know.  Again, the faces didn't come out as good as I wanted, but other than that, I was pretty happy with this one.

Drawing of My Nephew Playing Baseball

After doing the Bruce Lee and Taxi Driver drawings in the last two posts, I wanted to try a sports-related drawing in this new style.  I had a photo from the newspaper of my nephew Ethan playing baseball on the wall by my computer.  It was pretty small and black & white, but had great action and the ball was right at the bat.  It's really rare to see an action photo that good in a local paper, and it had enough shadows for me to do in my style.  He's a big Boston Red Sox fan, so the words in the back say things like his name and Boston Red Sox.  Doing full body drawings this size, the face never comes out quite as good as I want.  But all in all, it came out pretty cool.  He liked it.

Taxi Driver drawing

After doing the Bruce Lee drawing in the last post, I looked for other images that meant something to me.  Since I was a taxi driver for several years in both Orange County, California and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I've seen a lot of crazy stuff.  I even published a zine all about taxi driving once.  Cab driving isn't a normal job, it's actually set up like a small business... a very competitive business that requires working 80 to 110 hours a week sometimes.  You have to be pretty crazy to do it in the first place.  Among other things, it has the highest number of murders per capita of any job in the U.S.  I could go on and on, but taxi drivers deal with a really wide selection of humans, and see a lot of the dark side of society.  This may be why so many big names have played taxi drivers on film.  Bruce Willis played a futuristic taxi driver in the movie The Fifth Element.  Super model Cindy Crawford played a taxi driver in an 80's music video.  Acclaimed director Robert Altman played a taxi driver in the into to George Carlin's What Am I Doing In New Jersey comedy special.  Jamie Foxx played a taxi driver in the movie thriller Collateral.  Even Queen Latifah played a taxi driver in the movie Taxi, working with a young Jimmy Fallon.

But there's one taxi film that stands above them all.  That's Robert Deniro playing the disturbed cabbie Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's classic 1976 film Taxi Driver.  I saw a painting in Winston-Salem of that character that was just amazing.  So I knew I had to do it my own way.  As I was blowing up the initial photo, I accidentally cut off half of Deniro's face.  I loved it, and used that for the drawing.

For the words on the side, I wrote "Taxi Driver," and "Are you talkin' to me?"  The classic quote from the movie.  But I also added the words "Drive, Die, Cash."  Those words are not from the movie.  In one of the cabs I was driving, I flipped down the visor one day and on the roof above it was graffiti left by another driver.  It was scrawled in pen on the fabric of the roof.  There was a skull and crossbones, and around it were the words, "drive, die, cash."  To me that completely summed up that crazy occupation.  So I added them to this drawing, along with the yellow and checker pattern widely associated with old school taxis.  I was pretty stoked on this one.  Sharpies on paper, 12" X 18."

Bruce Lee drawing

This is the drawing that really started me in a whole new direction.  I'd been doing my Sharpie "scribble style" drawing for about ten years, and I tried a whole bunch of different visual looks.  But none of them got me really stoked.  They were fun to do, but I knew something was missing all that time. 

Then, back about last November, I was still out of work, and couldn't find a job.  Between my weight, my age, and my last 12 years of work history which was made up of taxi driving and gaps in employment, I was not hearing back from any of the jobs I applied for.  Having spent most of my adult life in Southern California around people in the action sports world, my thought was, "OK, I'll create my own job."  On that day, I decided to quit thinking of myself as "unemployed," and start thinking of myself as a self-employed artist.  Basically, I reframed the situation.  A couple days later, I woke up in the morning and thought, "man, I really need to step up my artwork."  That night, I sat down at the computer and spent a couple hours looking at all kinds of art online.  I was trying to figure out what really got me stoked.  I'm a big fan of graffiti art, especially the really intricate murals.  But I noticed that I kept going back to stencils.  Stencils are a simple, high contrast form of street art made famous by UK urban artist Banksy.  As a zine publisher in the 80's, I'd worked a lot with Xerox art, which was also high contrast images.

As I looked through page after page of urban art, I asked myself, "What would I want to put up on my wall?"  It's a simple question, but it changed everything.  As a kid from the 70's, martial artist and movie star Bruce Lee was a big influence on me as a kid.  So I found this image of him, blew it up, and drew it in my own style.  I put his quote, "Be like water my friend." under it.  I finally made something that I actually wanted to put on my own wall.  This drawing started me in a whole new direction, which I've only begun to really explore.  Sharpies on paper, 12" X 18".

Alien on a skateboard

Since my laptop literally broke in late November, I've been ignoring this blog.  In addition, I was doing a bunch of drawings for Christmas which I didn't want to post, so I wouldn't spoil anyone's surprise.  So I'm going to play catch up now, posting a whole bunch of drawings in a couple of days. 

Back in 2012, I took the trash out and found three old skateboard decks sitting by the dumpster.  I'd never put art on a skateboard before, so I figured it was time to try.  The saying, "I'm not crazy, and if you say I am one more time, I'll send my invisible ninja leprechauns after you," is something I said to a friend one night who called me crazy.  It just popped into my head, and we both laughed.  I'd been drawing aliens, often smoking cigarettes, for a while, so I went with that.  I did a bunch of random scribble art and put it on, collage style, behind the drawing.  So it's Sharpies on paper, collage, and the whole mess stuck to an old skateboard deck with Mod Podge.  As an experiment, it came out pretty well.  I did a couple other boards as well, which are sitting in my bedroom to this day.  I definitely want to do some more skate decks in the future.