I am an artist/illustrator. 

I like to draw everyday. Sometimes an idea will come to me and I’ll continue a series of drawings on the same topic. It’s one of my favorite things to do as a daily drawing exercise. 

Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I turn them into a themed collection of works. 

Just before Covid exploded I started obsessing over the massive tent cities filled with homeless people that were popping up all over town. I live in Santa Monica, California, which is already known as, “the home of the homeless”, but this felt different. I started taking pictures of the communities and drawing them. Then the lockdown happened. During this time the only people I’d see were the homeless or other fellow dog walkers. My neighborhood started to become homeless central!

There were campers lining the streets with people living in them. There were cardboard boxes doubling as houses in front of shuttered stores. People were sleeping in my alley on thrown out sofas. There were homeless guys taking advantage of the park across the street from my house. Every morning one of them would cook on the built-in grills. And another guy I’d see just laying on a table enjoying the sunny afternoons. 

I, like most everyone else, was locked up tight in my apartment drawing all day and watching movies every night. I was fortunate enough to have two paying gigs illustrating books for kids over this period. It saved my sanity. Since everything has opened up again I’ve become less social. I don’t go out a lot. I’m still feeling isolated. Perhaps still identifying with the homeless people I’m still drawing. But the illustrations have become lighter in tone and concentrate on one character in particular. He shows up grilling in the park on Super Bowl Sunday. He’s seen sitting on a broken toilet in the alley reading the newspaper doing his business. Sitting in the rain. Napping on a bus bench. Reading “Naked Lunch” in the park. 

I’m still drawing everyday. A lot of my recent ideas come from the national day calendar. How can one resist drawing about National nose picking day?