SketchCrazed – surreal, lurid, unzipped

SketchCrazed is an opportunity for me to share the very strange drawings I do, cloaked in this transparent attempt to give them a sense of purpose and intentionality. But you’re probably not fooled! The common thread is in the attempt to explore new relationships of form, contrast, and pattern, and to see where they take me.

Portrait of author Hermann Hesse (I hope)

We sketch artists can be reluctant to do a portrait of someone because we all have our own styles. You never know what someone else might think. Even when an artist has a wildly crazy style, what if the subject doesn’t think your cool painting of them makes them look good?

© @mrsomebody

Example: I once had a family portrait painted by none other than the famous northwest artist Alden Mason (true story). And he suggested it, not me. I just wanted a painting by him. So at one point he was getting cold feet and he met up with me and was trying to back out – he was reluctant because what if we don’t think it looks like us? If you are familiar with Alden’s style, you will know that there’s no way that it will look anything like us! He went ahead and did the painting and it looks nothing like us and we love it, to finish that story.

So when I did this portrait of Hermann Hesse, I was feeling a little self-conscious about it until a friend of mine told me “oh yeah, I recognize him immediately”. My photo source was from the book cover on the left. I actually did an acrylic painting from this sketch as well. See a crop of it on the right, but that's another story.

He wrote some great books including Steppenwolf and Siddhartha.

surreal, lurid, unzipped

Thanks for checking out this SketchCrazed post. Please follow me at @mrsomebody and comment your thoughts below!