BART Commuters & Matisse

Here’s the sketches I did on my 13 minute commute this morning and yesterday. I’m discovering that if I draw really slowly, even though the train car jiggles a lot, I’m able to do a better job of capturing a likeness.

Yesterday on the trip home, a young African-American man, slightly scented with marijuana, sat down facing me, our knees nearly touching. He had tightly braided cornrows and large, gentle but glassy eyes which he promptly soothed with eye drops. I really wanted to draw him and asked his permission–there was no way I could do it unnoticed. He slowly shook his head from side to side.

Then he reached over and took my Moleskine sketchbook from my hand, opened it to the first page, and carefully studied every page. A minute before we reached my stop he handed it back, still shaking his head slowly, saying “My life is all bad and….no, no….not drawing me…no.” (I couldn’t hear everything he said because of the rumble of the train). I don’t think he heard me either when I tried to say something encouraging. He was so young and already felt so hopeless about his life.

On a more positive note, when I opened my new biography of Matisse the first thing I saw was this drawing (click on it to enlarge):

With the tilted head and closed eyes, I thought “sleepy commuter!” and was excited becase it is so much like the kind of drawing I’m enjoying doing right now. I’m only on the second chapter of the first huge volume and I’m already captivated.

As a young man Matisse worked as a clerk in a law office and “treated the job as no more than a minor inconvenience, enrolling without his father’s knowledge in classes at the free art school installed a two minutes’ walk away in the attics of the ancient, crumbling Palais de Fervaques. Classes were held before and after work, from 6 to 8 in the morning and 7:30 to 10 at night.” He made the above sketch 50 years later of that law office’s front door. It reminded me of Danny Gregory’s drawings. I bet there are no art schools offering classes from 6 to 8 in the morning any more, and certainly no free ones!