Before the Mazes
Also known as Before the Mazes - What I Drew.
Some of my first mazes were hand drawn in 9 x 12 Artist’s Sketch pads, but these sketches did not start with mazes initially. I filled the blank pages of the sketch pads with drawings of all types. Pencil drawings of faces. Pen and marker drawings of objects. I experimented with many types looks and techniques. 90% of it was terrible, but 20% of it was interesting, ok maybe 10%. I tended to draw minimal designs with lots of spaces and when I found a look I liked I would use it multiple times. Let’s look at a few of the initial drawings.
The Unplugged Head. I used pencil to fill a head with thoughts (difficult to see on the scan) and gave it a electrical outlet plug on the back of the neck. The eye you see is in a state of hypnotization. I have always had a problem with Lemmings, not the game, that was great. The followers. This was probably done one day as I was thinking about that. In high school I bought fabric paint and drew this on a white t-shirt that became my favorite thing to wear, because, high school ?
I then started drawing faces made of 1-3 colors drawn with markers, heavily spaced and made of think lines like these. I made dozens of these. I tried to give personalities to faces with drawing them in interesting, happy colors.
My next branch led to keeping the colors, but allowing myself to use new line shapes to build more interesting characters. Things were still a bit weird, but I enjoyed spending my time filling large sketch pads with these concepts. Looking back, I always used white space as part of the images. Below are The Native American, Piano Man, and Gee Shucks.
I must have bought some colored pencils or the markers started to dry out, because the next set of drawings were all in colored pencil. Let’s call these Awkward Mosaic and Abstract Happy Face. I did these until I moved on to black and white drawings of faces closer to the ones above. Those are so terrible they will not be posted here.
I have no idea what I was thinking when I drew most of these things, like Awkward in Pajamas below. I do like the right arm bent positioning of the character as they give the gazer a feeling of “What do you think you are looking at?” (exactly they say to themselves).
Eventually I started drawing cartoons and mini comic strips. I created an alien character that I named Oscar. Oscar, or O.S.C.A.R. of course standing for….I have no idea but the A would be Alien. I must have been inspired by Alf or Third Rock From The Sun because I would put the alien in everyday situations. Eventually those aliens became mazes…which you can read about here !
So that’s how I started drawing. Check out my About Page for more information.
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