by Marty Coleman | Oct 17, 2024 | San Jose, Sketchbook History Tour |
Eulipian People
In the last post I told about having to commute by bus to my job in Downtown San Jose, California from the suburbs. The job was at Eulipia Restaurant and I chose to apply there because I liked their ad in the newspaper. It was cool and hip and it made me want to be there. I had plenty of restaurant experience at that point and got a job as a waiter. I later became head waiter and manager. This job was going to carry me over until I got a more permanent job or get back into Graduate School. Little did I know I wouldn’t leave Eulipia for 13 years.
What ended up happening was I got into San Jose State University as a graduate student working towards my MFA. I kept the job through graduation. Then I started applying for teaching positions at the college level. I quickly landed a part-time instructor position but a full-time gig eluded me year after year so I always kept my job at Eulipia even as I was working teaching at three different community colleges nearby. Before you know it 13 years had passed. In 1993 I retrained myself to be a computer artist and landed an animator job in Tulsa, Oklahoma and moved away the next year.
Those years at Eulipia were truly wonderful years. I loved the work and the people. I did a lot of drawings of my co-workers both in my sketchbook and larger pieces in charcoal and Prismacolor pencils that got up to 6′ x 4′. I also did extensive photography of many co-workers and made contacts with many customers that led to many photography commissions and projects. I will show those in a later post.
Here are some of the sketchbook drawings from that era, 1981-1994.
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by Marty Coleman | Oct 11, 2024 | Sketchbook History Tour, Travel |
Bus People
Back in 1981/82 my first wife, Kathy, and I were living with her parents in San Jose, California. We had returned to the Bay Area after my failed graduate school effort at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. That’s a story for another time but the result was we returned home with no money and no jobs so living with her parents was really the only option. Once we were there I quickly landed a job at a restaurant in downtown San Jose called Eulipia. To get there from their suburban home I took the bus every day. The first nine are from that year of bus travel.
Drawing on a moving vehicle of any kind is a challenge. You have to let go of precision. It forces you to let your physical action in the world be part of your image of the world. It’s an incredible teaching tool in developing both style and ability. If I was teaching drawing now I would make that an essential assignment.
Fast forward 21 years to 2003 and I am in Europe with my daughters on vacation. We travel by train, bus, car and subway and I draw while on them all. The final three are from that trip to give you an idea of how my style and ability changed and progressed over those 2 decades. While they were drawn live I worked on them quite a bit afterwards so they are much more polished than the earlier drawings.
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by Marty Coleman | Sep 27, 2024 | Sketchbook History Tour |
Interregnum, 2000-2003
In 2000 my divorce from my first wife, Kathy, was final. In 2003 I started dating Linda. In between I dated. Recently I scanned my sketchbooks from 2000 to 2003 and found these drawings of women I dated (or met in anticipation of maybe dating) during that time. Almost, but not all, of these were the result of online dating. Many people tell horror stories of online dating but with few exceptions my experience was overwhelmingly positive. None of them turned out to be who I was fated to marry but the women I met were smart, kind, sensitive, aware, interesting, attractive and wonderful. I learned a lot from that time and those relationships, even if it was just one date in some cases, and going through that made me confident when I finally found Linda, that she was the right one for me!
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by Marty Coleman | Sep 25, 2024 | Sketchbook History Tour, Travel |
Las Vegas Drawings
Linda attended a conference at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and I tagged along because why not. I did what I usually do when traveling and that is get up early, get a coffee and pastry and do some drawing. I was on my own the last 2 days while she attended the conference so I spent some time at the pool and drew there as well. I also found a great opportunity during lunch at a noodle place.
I took the opportunity to draw in my big sketchbook and use my copic Gasenfude brush, which is very much like using a sumi brush. The one exception is the ‘Early Morning Coffee with Phone’ which is with my regular Copic pen and in my smaller sketchbook.
People often ask me how long it takes me to do drawings like these. On average each drawing took about an hour to an hour and a half, except for the one in the smaller sketchbook. Beside each drawing but one is a photograph of the scene itself. These were taken after doing the drawing so the original people have often changed positions or left completely and have been replaced by others.
One of the interesting things about this type of drawing is whether the person I am drawing realizes they are being drawn. I try to be discreet enough so they aren’t conscious of me drawing but sometimes it happens that they notice. ‘Alone at the Pool’ is an example. I had just started drawing her head when she seemed to be aware of me drawing her. I wasn’t sure but I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable so I directed my attention to drawing the surrounding structures and scene. She soon forgot about me and by the time I came back to her she had moved into a completely different position and I had to make up most of her body. It turned out I sort of blew it and had drawn a structure where her feet should be, as you can see.
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by Marty Coleman | Sep 11, 2024 | Sketchbook History Tour |
Masked People
Long before Covid struck I was drawing masked people. It first started with beauty masks that people put on. I guess my wife must have done it a few times and I thought it looked really cool, I don’t remember for sure. But I know that ever since I’ve loved the image of a woman with a beauty mask on. Somewhere along the way I started drawing faces with patterns on them, like ‘plaid person peering’ and recognized that as another type of mask. Back in the 80s and 90s I was doing a lot of figure drawing, either in the classes I was teaching or on my own. I got bored with just drawing the figure so I started playing around with layering translucent clothing on top of the body, mostly just to see if I could develop the skill to do it. But that lead to me thinking about covering and uncovering one’s body with clothing and that led in turn to the idea of a mask on one’s face.
The first time I drew a person with an actual mask on was when I moved to Oklahoma. I got a new dentist, Dr. Laura Murcko, and we hit it off. I always bring my sketchbook to my appointments and at one point, after she had given my novacaine and we had a few minutes before it set in, I asked her if I could draw her and since she had her mask on that is how I started the drawing. I did just a quick sketch then did the rest later. I don’t know if I ever showed it to her because she moved away shortly thereafter.
I would occasionally draw someone with a mask, like my daughter when she was going to a masquerade ball, but for the most part if I drew someone with a mask, it was a made up image, at least the mask part was, like the church image. I really did draw the violinist but of course she did not have a beauty mask on at the time.
Of course then came Covid and there were people all around with masks on.
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