Drawing Project: Artist - James Jean

Image: One of James Jeans complete art works, Enoki II Acrylic on 3 canvases, 72 x 90" 2013

James Jean is an artist from New York and now lives and works in Los Angeles. After 2007 he left illustration and began working on personal projects and exhibitions. 

He studied at the school of Visual Arts in New York and began working as a cover artist for DC / Vertigo comics. 

images: http://www.jamesjean.com/sketchbook/2008_1.htm

Drawn on A5 moleskine sketchbook

James Jeans sketchbook work is created to use the sketches as a resource for future reference and to document ideas. It also serves a purpose to enhance the skill to draw. The images are drawn in public situations and hold a lot of cultural context such as drawings from a train, a coffee house or the people in the pictures all suggest travel. 

The drawings themselves are a tangle of detailed sections which overlap each other suggesting movement. The content appears to show situations of everyday life, it is sometimes unclear whether the subject is an acquaintance of the artist or a complete stranger. 

An artists sketchbook is actually quite a personal thing, the sketches on each page is a snapshot that the artist as an individual has observed in a way which another might not. 

James jeans sketchbook serves as a collection for ideas and references for his more detailed and main projects, but this collection of drawing made in every day life can be considered a piece in themselves. Each image appears to be peaceful and thoughtful. The subjects are looking away and appear to be working on something or looking at a particular object. In particular, i find the overlapping of the sketches to be rather interesting, its as if the artist got so far with one piece of a face or an arm when the subject moved, so the artist would have to begin the line again to copy the new pose.  

Using this inspiration i would like to take away the idea of creating drawings which show the natural poses and the peacefulness that you can see from James Jeans drawings. In public places where people go about their every day lives, it is interesting to notice small things that we normally wouldn't even pay attention to. 

This also links to my initial idea of looking at the world in front of us rather than being absorbed into this world of technology and seeing life through a camera lens or the screen of a mobile phone. 

To draw the figures itself requires paying attention to the details and looking harder at what is around you. During the process of drawing, i think that you tend to think about what you are observing in more detail and think about the subject you are drawing.