Diego Najera Nollie Drawing

hi

A lot of things I draw for other people, but there's also some photos I see that I just need to draw for myself.  When Sole Technology VP and old skate friend Don Brown posted this pic on Facebook two or three weeks ago, I knew I just had to draw it.  The photos that work best with my style are ones with good action and lots of shadows.  This original photo had both.  The skater is Diego Najera, who I know nothing about, and the trick is either a straight nollie or nollie kickflip, I'm not sure.  I added the e'S logos just to see how they would look, since that's his shoe sponsor, and since I've been hooked up with several free pairs of Etnies ( e'S shoes sister company) BITD.  Why did I put six logos in?  I think I had a flashback to the Vision Street Wear days where we were told to put logos EVERYWHERE.  In any case, this is my favorite drawing of the past few months, I'm really stoked on how it came out.  Sharpies on paper, 18" X 24", #shadowsandsharpies .

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.

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. 

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."

Sharpie Art Doodle Heart Drawing

Welcome to my art blog.  If you're reading this, you probably just received one of my sketchy, last minute flyers, and you want to see what I'm all about.  In a nutshell, in 2005, I actually lived in an indie art gallery in California, while driving a taxi on the weekends owned by the gallery owner.  After not doing anything creative for the few previous years, I started drawing and doing other creative work again.  During that time, I devised this way of shading by scribbling several colors of markers over each other.  For lack of a better name, I call this "scribble style."  In the decade since, I found that ultra fine point Sharpie markers work best for this technique, and I use plain old fine point black Sharpies to outline.  Now if you search "Sharpie art" on Google or You Tube, you'll most likely see something like the black and white "doodle art" above.  The drawing above is my attempt to try some of that style of doodle art, with a red heart in the middle shaded in my unique "scribble style." 

As of right now (Halloween, 2015), I've decided to really focus on my art, instead of just doing the stuff I like and the occasional drawing I'm asked to do.  To see the things I typically sell, check out the past few posts.  If you go back even further, you'll see some of my work from the last three years.  If you would like me to draw something for you, you can call me at (335) 937-3436 or email me at stevenemig13@gmail.com .  You can also friend me on Facebook, I'm on there as Steve Emig, and I share my artwork there, as well.  In the coming weeks and months I'll share more of my work on this blog, as well as write about my weird adventures in life that involved many aspects of creativity (and occasionally stupidity).  Thanks for checking my blog out, feel free to let me know what you think.

Kid name drawings

For some reason, my camera chose this photo for the flash to go out, which is why it's a little blurry.  This is the latest of the kid's name drawings I've done, this one's for a member of our church who has a new granddaughter.  I've done 40 or 50 of these over the past few years, without promoting them at all.  I did the first two for my niece and nephew several years ago, when my niece was about nine.  Next thing I know, all her cheerleading friends wanted one, too.  That's how it started.  These are 9" X 12", Sharpie markers on paper, and I fade the name from a lighter color in the center to darker edges.  I've sold most of these for $20 to $30.  But for the rest of this year I'll do them for $10, because I'm focusing on my artwork more, and need to get my name out there.  If you'd like one (or more), call me at (336) 937-3436, or email me at stevenemig13@gmail.com.  These don't look that hard, but I spend 3 to 4 hours doing each one of these.  Again, because of the time involved, I can only do a limited amount of these before Christmas. 

Emig Family Tree Drawing

 Emig family tree drawing, Sharpie markers on paper, mosaic scribble style, 12" X 18", 2015.  Earlier this year I started playing around with this "mosaic style," and that's most of what I'm doing right now.  I did a tree in this style, put the pic on Facebook, and a bunch of people liked and commented on it.  Then my aunt wanted me to do a tree with her newest grandson's name in it.  While I was drawing that tree, a thought popped into my head, "Hey, I could do family trees."  So I did this one for my mom, with my parents, sister, niece, and nephew's names, and our family name in the leaves.  I did another one since, and now I'm doing these twice as big, 18" X 24", so I can fit more names on the tree.  These take about 20 hours of work to do, and I'm charging $50 (plus shipping if you're out of the area) for the rest of this year for these.  Because of the time involved, I can only do a limited number of family trees before Christmas.  If you'd like one, call me and order one ASAP.  Steve Emig, (336) 937-3436, or email stevenemig13@gmail.com.  Below is a closer look at the family name and individual names in the tree.

Crap it's going to be one of those days drawing

The title pretty much sums up the day I was having.  Sometimes you do art just to amuse yourself, which is the case here.  Sharpie markers on paper, 14" X 17".  $20 if you're having a crappy day, too.

Abstract Interconnecting Curves Drawing

Abstract interconnecting curves, for lack of a better name.  Sharpie markers on paper, 14" X 17".  I used to draw interconnecting shapes like this in pen and ink in the early 90's.  So I tried a couple of these in marker and colored them with my "scribble style."  This is the better of the two, $20.

Alien smoking cigarette drawing on skateboard deck

 Skateboard deck art, Sharpie markers on paper, then Mod Podged onto an old skate deck I found.  I did kind of a collage on the top, bottom, and edges.  As for the aliens...  I used to draw aliens doing street art in California, and one day I drew a grey alien smoking a cigarette, and it just made me laugh.  So I drew a bunch more, with weird and funny captions.  This caption reads, "I'm not crazy!  And if you say I am one more time, I'll send my invisible, ninja leprechauns after you."  Somebody called me crazy one night, and that was my response.  Not for sale.

Cana Lily Drawing

Cana Lily, Sharpie markers on paper, 14" X 17", 2012.  After drawing in my "scribble style" for several years, I wanted to try some different styles.  I did a few flowers inspired by Georgia O'Keefe's work.  This is the only one I have left.  $20.