No paper: what’s an artist to do?

Ink on Biscotti package 4.5″ x 5
(Click image to enlarge, select “All Sizes”)

So there I was standing in a checkout line at Trader Joes that wasn’t moving, with the store crammed full of pre-Thanksgiving shoppers who like me, put off doing their week’s grocery shopping until Sunday evening. I was already feeling kind of down and grumpy because of the end of the weekend and lack of progress/success in the studio today.

After a few minutes I was also bored and started trying to think of what I could do to pass the long wait. Naturally I thought of sketching but I’d left my sketchbook in the car. I searched my pockets and bag for paper to no avail. I looked around at the display in front of me, and considered ripping off a piece of the cardboard and drawing on it but figured that might be frowned upon.

I looked in my cart and found the perfect canvas — the back of my bag of Trader Joes Biscotti (to be exact, “Trader Giotto’s Chocolate Almond Biscotti”). So I grabbed my pen and drew the people in line in front of me and the checker and bagger. By the time I got up to the checkout stand, I was in a much better mood and would have been happy to stand in line even longer, drawing more people.

The checker apologized for the long lines and I told him I’d amused myself by drawing on the package he’d just scanned. He looked at it again and said he thought it came that way. Then he started chatting with me about his lack of skill at drawing and how his father won’t shop there because of the long lines, while the people behind me stood there waiting. To hurry things along I asked for my $20 cash back and he apologized again, saying he forgot about it because he got so interested in my drawing.