This is the first drawing I made in China, after the first day’s work at the animation studio. Not pictured is the crowd of twenty people watching me draw. One was a little old lady who hooked the end of her umbrella onto a bridge so she could lean over the heads of some of my audience for a better view.
This view is typical of many of the buildings I saw in Suzhou: concrete, few windows, obstructed views, the only decoration in the form of small red stars to represent the glories of communism.
This is the drawing I made in the photo used in the last post. The buildings bowed and curved all over, though maybe not as much as in this drawing. I didn’t have a straight edge with me, but the idea is right: not a straight line anywhere. Every once in a while, I heard a toilet flush inside the building, and then sewage poured out a pipe into the canal seconds later. You can see the pipe in the photo.
Wires stretched between buildings in such quantities that you’d think they were trying to strangle pedestrians. The wires were bent and kinked up so much that I wondered where they’d come from and how often they’d been reused. This alley was fairly close to the animation studio, which may even be in the shot, but I forget which building it was.
The building on the right and the rooftop I’m standing on to draw this are parts of the four story Cuckoo’s Egg Animation Studio that I was working at to make Scooby-Doo retakes. The fence on the right had cucumbers growing all over it. The city was predominantly concrete gray, but it wasn’t unusual to find a hidden corner here and there with vegetables growing in it.
I had a very nice experience while making this . I squatted on my right heel while drawing, to keep my backside off the wet paving stones. A nearly toothless old man saw me, and brought over a short three-legged stool for me to sit on. A little later, it started to rain. Someone else among the spectators (people always gathered when I made drawings) came over and held an umbrella over me for the entire two hours it took to make this drawing.
As I neared the end of the drawing, the owner of the moped seen on the left walked out of the gate in the middle and was about to drive off on it but was stopped by several people in my audience. The moped owner saw what I was doing and became part of my audience.
After I finished, the man holding the umbrella helpfully wrote the name of the place on my drawing in Chinese. He then used hand gestures to communicate that he owned a restaurant across the street, where he invited me to have some food. I went over and had a bowl of rice and tea, while the man (and the entire crowd of 15-20 people) crammed into the little restaurant to talk with me. The only person who spoke English was a six year old boy, who did the translations.
I had made an appointment to draw the Maître d' at the hotel restaurant. I wasn’t used to the 13 hour difference in time zones yet and missed the appointment by a few hours. I decided to draw the Maître d' station instead. As I was drawing, a large rat ran from the lobby on the right and into the restaurant on the left.
The next day, I was drawing in a gazebo on a small pond at the hotel when I realized I could see the Maître d' station from the gazebo through a large glass wall. The model I wanted to draw was there, helping customers. I decided to stay where I was and make the portrait I wanted to make. As I was drawing, a crowd of about 200 people dressed for a wedding went into the dining room. A little later, two boys in tuxedos came out and walked over to the gazebo to see what I was doing.
One of the boys looked at my drawing wide-eyed, then looked back at the Maître d' lady, then started pointing at her while excitedly talking to his friend. Then, they both ran back into the hotel, straight for the Maître d', who was a very tall young woman. She bent down so they could talk to her. They pointed at me several times, and then ran back into the dining room.
A few minutes later, what seemed like about thirty kids, all under the age of eight, all in fancy party clothes, came trooping out to see me. Unlike other audiences I’d had until then, they wanted me to make portraits of them. I started drawing, happy to have so many willing models. As I made each drawing, I gave it to whichever kid had posed for it. One little girl hugged it to her chest and bowed as she said “xie xie nie” (thank you).
The line got longer the more drawings I made. After two hours or so, I had made about thirty quick sketches and my pencil was worn down to little more than a point. By then, some parents came out to see what was going on. I held up my tiny pencil, to show them I couldn’t continue. They understood and told the kids that the drawing session was over. They all thanked me, bowed, and walked away with about half my sketchbook under their arms.
I started packing up my things to go, but before I was done, something like a hundred kids came out to say good-bye. Every one of them gave me a small bag of candies. It was so much that I had to get a big bag to carry them all. I shared it at the studio the next day.
I don’t have the drawing of the Maître d', or can’t find it. I may have given it to her, I’m not sure. Otherwise, I would post it here.
This canal exuded the most horrible odor I’d ever experienced. The water looked normal but smelled like it should have been incandescent orange. It had so much garbage in it that rats ran across the surface as if it was a sidewalk. It took tremendous willpower to stand there for the twenty minutes it took to make this drawing.
This path leads to Tai Hu, or “Big Lake,” though this view is heading back to the parking lot. Tai Hu is indeed big. It is so big that it looks like an ocean. When I stood on its bank, I couldn’t see land on the other side, but it was there. These stone steps are where they kept the mosquitoes for the lake. It was uncomfortable to stand there getting bitten all over, but I thought it was interesting to draw these stones, each oriented differently from the rest, so I stuck with it. That is what happens when you love drawing in perspective. This particular scene, to perspective enthusiasts, was a fun challenge.
This ricksha was always parked outside the animation studio. I think I hired it a few times, but after I learned the route to the hotel, preferred to walk.
I made this while I waited for my American colleague, Bob Nesler, to find me so we could go back to the hotel. This is the day I learned that we were both followed by military police (or something like it) everywhere we went in China.
Bob left for the US after two weeks, leaving me on my own. I don’t think I’d ever felt so alone. My wife and daughter were in LA, and I was surrounded by people from a totally foreign culture. Most couldn’t speak English. The few who could had such thick accents it was difficult to understand them. I made this drawing of these helpless crabs, claws bound and in a cage, as I thought about these things.
The ricksha driver. Just as happy to smoke as to have a fare. I only met one man in China who didn’t smoke. The rest did it so much that you’d think they did it in place of breathing air, as if breathing required unfiltered cigarettes. I think I only saw one woman smoking. That, or none.
This is Bob, too tall for the tiny chairs in the studio. When he left China, or tried to, his tickets were mysteriously cancelled, then just as mysteriously replaced with tickets on a Chinese plane that, according to Bob, had two passengers on an otherwise empty jumbo jet: himself and a woman who sat beside him and interrogated him all the way back to Los Angeles about his purpose in China. In other words, was he a spy?
Roger, the IT guy. I first spoke to Roger by phone when I was still in LA. I couldn’t understand a word he said because of his pronunciation. Strangely, I understood him just fine in China, though his pronunciation was no better. I think that being able to see his face and hand gestures helped a lot.
Here I am at 35 years old. I made this self-portrait because a clerk I had drawn earlier complained about her likeness. I wanted to prove to myself I hadn’t forgotten how to draw. Thinking about it later, I realized she wasn’t complaining about the likeness, but had wanted to look prettier.
This is the drawing the model complained about. She wanted to be portrayed smiling. I wasn’t sure how to do that, since she wasn’t smiling. The whole time I spent drawing this, she was staring at the page and offerings comments on where the lines belonged.
This is one of the two translators who went with me to most places in China (and Bob, when he was there). A funny thing about Bob is that he seemed to intimidate the people we met. The result is that I was unable to draw any people until he left. After that, everyone wanted to sit for a portrait.
This is a waitress at the dining room of the hotel I stayed at. The hotel had very mournful zither music playing at all times. It never stopped, not even in the middle of the night. When I hear it now, it always transports me back to those lonely weeks in China.
Beautiful in a sad sort of way. The drawings reflect the starkness and lack of joy so fundamental for a good life. Thank you for sharing☺️
Thank you so much for sharing these wonderful pictures and stories from China. These begin to bring the truth about the plight of the real Chinese people that we seldom learn of through the filtered channels of news. Praying for China and her people.