Buttnekkiddoodles

Latest installment from the graphic novella The Java Knot. “So, it’s more than a habit… this pull to draw out in public. I don’t bring a book to read, I’m too fidgety for that. I’d rather check out my surroundings. Mostly, if honesty overtakes me, I prefer to watch people. Closely. Some would call it staring. But that sounds too passive to me. I go over them like an eagle casing the river below, looking for movement beneath the surface. Trying at times to understand the substructure of cheek bones, jaw muscles, the coordination of a hand’s architecture as it returns coffee cup to saucer then glides to flip the page of a book. But I also watch, as if, like the eagle’s penetrating glare beneath the waves, I can sense a current of thought. Knit brows, pinching lips, the coordinated grip of the masseter and temporalis muscles setting molars firmly into their opposing cousins. Frustration? Displeasure? Disapproval? Disgust? And will my drawings capture a fleeting moment of unguarded commentary, which, if elusive to presumptuous certainty, feels as though I’m now driving the streets of that someone’s neighborhood.
I sauntered to my recently favored cafe to find an interesting looking gent, with long uncoiling ringlets of Grey hair, seated curbside at a table, both hands occupied, one with coffee, the other with cellphone. I seated myself at an adjacent table such that we were facing each other, if obliquely. He no sooner placed his cup, empty, upon the table than the waitress appeared from within the shop and replaced the depleted cup with a full one. ‘Keep ‘em coming?’ she asked. ‘Keep ‘em coming’, he said. She turned directly to me, and asked my pleasure as I pulled sketchbook and pens from my satchel. Hot cocoa, bitter, no whip.
About then, a bicyclist coming up the street, glided along side the curb, slowed, nearly stopping beside the gent working his second cup, deftly laying an envelop on the table before him, and continued on. No exchange of words, nor looks. No nod. As I opened my sketchbook to a fresh page with little fanfare, the envelope slid into his jacket in like fashion with the hand returning to cradle the cup. His heavy lidded eyes never wandered from the cell’s screen.
I had payed little attention to the parking meter directly behind him, but as I began laying in the preliminary lines of his head, torso, the table and meter, I was amused to see the words PAY HERE backing his right arm. The very arm which had retrieved the envelope as if an extension of the meter.”

Drawn with Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens and fountain pen on Stillman & Birn Beta Series sketchbook.

 
“Dogged pursuit. A month ago, I caught him, crouched over the shadowed keyboard and sunken screen. Same kiosk. Just as focused in the same gathered one-size-fits-all ball cap and banker’s bold pinstripes. Posture alternating between ankles crossed beneath the chair seat or stretched out before him. The library can be a noisy place with the self obsessed soliloquies, tutoring sessions, snoring, and phone calls but no distractions, no matter how grating or abrupt, pulled his jowly face from feasting on the grey-blue screen. And there’s a certain disinterestedness to these large rooms that excepting the acknowledging pinched grins of the passing regulars, allows for the in and out of the anonymous. Your business remains your business. Except these and those I chose to make my business.
And this guy, the crouching tiger in banker’s black’n’blue stripes, tracking something over the internet savanna, had come to my attention several times over the course of many months. But it was just last month, at the same booth, in the familiar attire and riveted posture, that I had inked his memory into my library. He really was a calm study. Little changing as I drew. The right mitt releasing the trapped mouse to tap the keys beneath his chin. The left mostly at rest on the desk yet dropping to tap at the keyboard or rising to knead his forehead.
Focus. No sign of fatigue, or boredom. No calls interrupting that steady gaze. Was he lying in wait, or had he already sunk his teeth in? Was this a cat-n-mouse game of gaining info and ground on the game while yielding as little of his position to the digital predation of marketers and hackers? To bring home the bacon without being lured into a poacher’s snare.” A snippet from the amorphous online graphic novella, The Java Knot.

Drawn with a Faber-Castell Essentio Black Leather fountain pen and Pitt Artist Pens

More from the online graphic short story, The Java Knot. “She got on just north of downtown. Black and White save for the bit-lip pout matching that large purse of hers. Now I’m not a fellow that often takes liberties, but I treat myself, now and then. The bag in fact was black. And sure, it’s shiny leather surface was a compliment to the noir sheen on the Prince Valiant hairdo that was busy channeling that iconic doll in those Irving Klaw portfolios. But for me, for the sake of that proud little fleshy porch beneath the sharp punctuation of a nose, the black bag had to go. I slid my hand into my satchel, came out with my marker and let it‘s red ink gush generously over her designer knock off. It was late October and Day of The Dead was upon us, but I’d bet my accrued airline points the Congo line of death heads that traipsed around her hoodie and down her sternum, was a three season parade. Sometimes, a subject’s sixth sense will kick in, and I’ll have eyes rise to meet mine. But neither the wiggling crowd on that jostling train car nor my gaze pulled her bronzed eyelids up and away from the same device that filled four fifths of the focus of the passengers. For the remaining 15 stops that face, which held not a glimmer of last summer’s sun, was slack save a couple times when her nostrils flexed and the corners of her mouth pulled slightly deeper into her cheeks. I hold that we are tribalizing as a society. And, many wear their tribal identities as fashion. So I play this game as to whom will exit at which stops. The Gold Coast, Cottage Grove, Wicker Park, South Side, Logan Square, Wrigley Field, Cermak. Will the guy in blue business attire with tan cap-toe shoes and Tin Tin haircut depart at Bryn Mawr? Will the art nerd jump off at Harrison? The buttoned down duo of Asian post teens discussing Hayek, they’ll leave at Foster. But there’s a region that draws the nondescripts. The stylish young woman with fur collar, knee-high riding boots, large silver Tibetan earrings beneath glamorously highlighted mane gathered in an impromptu knot and sporting a large linen book bag with the beret capped face of Che printed on it. The six foot plus middle-aged black woman wearing copper lipstick, a leopard skin pillbox hat, gloved in fingerless purple velvet, ankle long black lace skirt, John Lenin glasses and reading an Ursula K. Le Guin novel. The broad Hispanic dude with the no nonsense face, meaty hands, neck tattoos, multiple earrings, burnt orange Longhorns baseball cap, maroon leather jacket, Chuck Taylor high tops, and chef’s pants. In the nether region of north Chicago, as the train slows for the Loyola, Morse, and Jarvis stops, they rise. She rose too. Here, the tribal signifiers bleed and blend. Out into the night, leaving the tube lit morgue blue and metal of the train car, her face of white went. The doors closed. The train slid north and I saw her black bangs heading down the platform stairwell. But I never recall seeing her shoes. No recollection. I spent the remainder of that night, and the next afternoon conjuring and drawing, with the help of several large cups of hot cocoa, the possibilities of footwear. How I managed to miss that, escapes me.”

Drawn with Pitt Artist Pens and fountain pen filled with deAtrametis Document Black Ink on a Romeo unlined Ivory journal. The figure was drawn while on the CTA Red Line, the shoes were drawn from online references. Disclaimer, no lab animals participated in this drawing in any way. Further, this was drawn by an artist who is a frequent consumer of tree nuts and legumes.