Cigar Daddy, 9x12 inches crayon on Rives BFK paper by Kenney Mencher

FREE SHIPPING Shipping takes 3-4 Weeks This ships from Round Lake Beach, Illinois. A suburb outside of Chicago. I use UPS and sometimes US Post.

Portraiture is one of my very first loves. From the time I can pick up a pencil I was always interested in the idea of drawing and representing the human head and face. Sometimes I even think that I could spend almost all of my artistic output on just drawing interesting faces. In this case my love of portraiture intersects with my love of drawing and looking at cigar daddies.

I use a light fast black crayon to draw rather than a pencil. Mainly because pencil can smear more easily and the same goes for working with charcoal. I’ve found that working with crayon makes the drawing much more durable and less susceptible to getting smudged or damaged especially during shipping. I also draw on a superheavy cotton fiber paper called Rives BFK. It’s kind of an expensive paper because it’s supposed to be used for printmaking and it’s made out of cotton rather than wood pulp. This makes it feel deliciously thick and sturdy almost like one is trying on the same paper that used to make money.

One of the things that I also love about drawing is that it allows my imagination to run free and I become a little bit more inventive sometimes because I’m not so worried about the finished product. I’m able to play around with mark making and textures more in drawing, because I don’t like it I don’t feel as invested in it and so I’m willing to throw away many of my drawings without showing them to anybody. I feel like this is one of my more successful drawings.