Literary Graffiti

[Davey Do]

Years ago, I watched a movie where a character played by Ben Kingsley drew charcoal pencil pictures in books over the text. Thinking this was really cool, I undertook the process myself, drawing over text in relatively useless books using my art pens. I termed this process "Literary Graffiti".

Upon joining an artists website, I noted a couple of my favorite artists used the same technique with ink, watercolors, acrylics, and what have you. Again, I thought this was so cool that we shared a love for this grunge type of art.

We all go through phases, and artists do so with their style and use of media. A couple of months ago, I got into making inked stamps so I coupled ink stamping with literary graffiti.

 

[Davey Do]

Since I've retired, one of the pleasures which I've enjoyed is going through some of my 200 + or - drawing journals that span a period of about 50 years.

One consistency I noted was that I had an array of characters used over and over again. Characters such as Davey Do, my dog Dopey Joe, family members, Jesus, Abraham Lincoln, and Elvis, so I made stamps out of many of those characters.

 

[Davey Do]

I've also made some generic characters which represent an amalgam of people that I've known.

I call this character "Girl!":

 

[Davey Do]

In doing art, loose association is my stock in trade. Since I was on a jailhouse theme, I thought of the song, "Green Green Grass of Home".

 

[Davey Do]

My Davey Do Character has several personas, ranging from likeably innocent to arrogantly obnoxious.

[Davey Do]

To give you an idea of how long I've played around wit literary graffiti, this is a page from the same book, dated January 9, 2009:

 

 

There is so much symbolism in this one-paged drawing that I could write several paragraphs on what was going on when it was created. That's one of the great thongs about art:  We (editorially speaking) can recall a situation, point fingers, throw stones, make fun of someone and no one is the wiser or gets hurt by it.