When I first moved to New York one of the biggest things changes I had to get used to was using public transportation for everything. Most cities or places I lived in prior were either small enough I could bike or skate everywhere, or when I was in South America had more informal modes of public transportation and I would often change how I would go places and commute. But in NYC, Manhattan is a grid and life revolves around the subway. I always loved taking the subway when I visited NYC and other cities, but now I would take it every day, taking between 35-45 minutes to get to work one way, for a total of between 1-1.5 hours every day.
And for someone like me who values the freedom of having my own transport (between my assemblage of skateboards, cars, motorcycles, bicycles I've pretty much had them all) and enjoys a frequent break in routine, the newness of it quickly faded and I realized I had to figure out a way to not go insane for those one a half hours each day. Sometimes I would read, but often the constant noise and commotion of other passengers would distract me and it was difficult for me to absorb the words. Sometimes I would bring my laptop along finishing up last minute projects before work, but this was difficult to do in a crowded train car). I needed more than reading, working, or solely listening to music as it wasn't enough to keep me occupied on anything other than the fact that I was stuck in transit and not able be productive. So I started figuring out ways I could be more creatively productive using my iPhone while I was underground en route. I started utilizing my notepad each and every day to capture short writings, poems, ideas for projects, and an assortment of others.
I then discovered the notepad sketch feature (how did I never know this existed before that time, I have no idea) and that's when I really came alive. My iPhone notepad became my new best friend. I would dive into it all the time while en route (and as New Yorkers, we are ALWAYS en route - and usually in a hurry), to and from work, meeting friends in the big city or Brooklyn, off to catch a tango dance on the pier, having picnics in Central Park, or any of the other fond memories traveling about in NYC. I wanted to write this post as a sort of introduction to the behind-the-scenes from where a lot of my writings and sketches originate. And most of the time its in my iPhone notepad (the other times its either in my Moleskin sketchbook, a napkin, Post-It note, or some other various scrap of paper I'd quickly grabbed to capture an idea). As I build upon my blockchain art collection and series, I plan to share some of these earlier notes and sketch ideas that often end up turning into full-fledged poems, produced songs, paintings, or even built structures for my architecture-obsessions.
When possible, I will try to pair these initial origin ideas and concept sketches with the final outputs they inspired. Some have more direct or apparent connections, others are a little more vague. Here I am sharing a series of three digital sketches I did on my iPhone while I was in the NYC subway commuting from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I did a series of colorful faces, often half-faces because I like to believe that our minds complete the rest of the image in our imaginations when symmetry is implied. I have always had a deep fascination with faces, even back since I started taking art seriously around 13 years old. My high school AP art portfolio concentration also centered around portraiture, although I couldn't quite grapple with the concept of a deep thesis investigation, I was learning the ins and outs of capturing expression, emoting a feeling with just the glance of the featured figure, and of course learning the forms, scales and proportions.
