Somewhere down the line I’m going to want to increase the size of my pedestrian drawings, and it’ll be messy. I drew this one with India ink on butcher paper that was laid out on the lawn. Problem was I used both hands and had shut the front door, but I think I got in without leaving a trail. The result reminds me of some of the early scroll drawings of Huang Chih-yang, a Taiwanese artist I interviewed a few years ago. Read the interview in the Taipei Times here.
I’ve been experimenting with different surfaces and tools for my Pedestrian Series. The above drawings are both on cold-pressed watercolor paper, which holds up to a lot more than the Arches Cover paper I used for a recent commission, 489 Scooters. The top drawing was made with my now-usual Sakura Pigma pens, and the bottom with India ink and a tortillon (a rolled-up paper smudging tool).
These drawings of pedestrians are kind of a spin-off from my Scooter Series. As you might expect, there aren’t nearly as many scooters here in California as there were in Taiwan, where I used to live. I posted some early attempts at pedestrians (here and here), but I’ve refined my style since then. I’ve done these drawings from park benches, inside my girlfriend’s car, or just sitting on the curb. That works well for these small pieces, but I’d like to work larger, so starting Friday I’m going to be drawing from inside the window of a gallery in downtown Berkeley. Check back soon for updates.
I’ve gone back and forth on the Chinese name chops for my scooter drawings, and now they’re back. I’d worried that it might seem a little hokey or make the allusion to Chinese calligraphy too obvious, but in the end I decided the bit of red amid all that black and white looks so good that it was worth it. Unfortunately I lost my chops in the move from Taiwan, but a friend of mine sent a couple new ones along and here they are. (Thank you Mr. Wheeler.)
When I compared the new image with the old, I realized my old chops printed my Chinese nickname backwards — “Bu-a” (布阿) instead of “A-bu” (阿布). It wasn’t really backwards as vertical Chinese text usually reads right to left, but with just the two characters you can’t tell whether you’re reading two single-character columns vertically or one two-character row horizontally. I like it better the new way. No doubt this will horrify the first Chinese person who notices, and I’ll be informed that I’ve ruined all the scooter drawings before/since I started using the new chops.
BLAKE CARTER | GERMS 
