Cover Story: Goin' Berzerk with Eminem

Article Transcript

A lot of people ask me…. where the f@#% my head’s at when I create my artwork. Sh**, ... I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder where these thoughts spawn from. But I DO know… I’m here now to show you my process.

Eminem is a true artist who isn’t afraid to speak his mind or do whatever he feels like doing in his music. His voice changes a lot with every album, he’s a fan and student of the art of rap, and he has mastered so many different styles that it’s just ridiculously redonkadonk. As difficult as his voice is to mimic (I’ve been trying for years), his face is just as tough to capture, as it’s also always changing and morphing (into an immortal) and is just as expressive. He’s now sharper, leaner, and starting to show his age as a jowly ol’ fellow. But he’s still got lots of energy and intensity, especially in his eyes. And for someone as loud and aggressive as he is, he’s got a pretty small mouth. Eminem is like devil’s fire with an angel’s golden glow. With the brain of a poet and the tongue of a snake. With the nose of a ski jump and the cheekbones of a.... um, sharp-cheekbone-ed man.

I was able to finally do some video chats with Em, aka Marshall Mathers, and took these screencaps on my Eyefone! Wow! Before that, he never got back to me from all those letters and that cassette I sent him, even though I know I wrote the addresses on ‘em perfect. Oh well, I tried. He said he just never got around to checking the mail. Get it, checking the male? I spent a few hours sketching Em. I sketched enough quick sketches to make you retch and belch till you’re frickin’ sick, so I picked just six. I went with sharp, angular shapes to show his sharpness and a few curved shapes to show some of his remaining baby youthfulness. I gave him angry eyebrows that double as horny devil horns that are being pushed down by forehead wrinkles. In the final finished drawing, I don’t feel like I totally got him or drew him that cray cray, but I’m decently happy with it, knowing that it was just one attempt at him. That’s what I love about caricatures; you can always try drawing someone again and try to capture them better and different-er-ly the next time. Wow! What a fun life we have :DDD ! Check out Eminem’s music on iTunes or youtube or your local Betamax and 8-track shop if you’re not an obsessive fan Stan like me so you can follow my stupid reinterpretations of some of his lyrics along the way on this journey of epic proportions :D

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Ladies and gentlemen, it’s show time! Hurry, hurry, read this up! So without further ado, I bring to you… Marshall! f (in the style of Eminem’s “Business”)
“So... let’s start off with business, I got lots of space to show my art, what is this? Must be a rainbow in hand, help you understand, what I can, can I get a quick sketch? HELL NO!”

This took many hours: a quick sketch it was not. For this magic trick I’ll be using just those colors above for now until I realize later on that I’ll need black as well (SPOILER!). I start drawing with one color at a time, keeping those lines loosey-goosey to give my shapes some life and human error.
f (like from Em’s “Rap God”) “They said I draw like a robot, so call me DrawBot.”

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When it comes to the puckered mouth and pink eyes, I make them vibrant and start to fill up the paper grain.
ARRGGHGHHGHRRGGHH!!!
You gotta press hard to infuse that beautiful color into the paper! Here you can see a man that is me clearly exaggerating how hard that man needed to press the artstix. MUST.
PRESSSS.
HARDERRRR!!!
(think like a “Rap God”) “uh, suma lama duma lama you assumin’ I’m a human, what I gotta draw to get it through to you I’m super human, innovative and I draw with color so that any jaw I saw is getting stretched and sketched ‘cause that’s just what i do to you”

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The artist, I mean me, I mean I, I now starts lightly covering up the rest of the background and skin, making that ear recede by adding that cool, light background blue to it.

(I must eventually learn the actual names of these colors, as they’re on the box!)

Now I painstakingly start to tediously blend the background smooth with the exhaustingly ridiculous method of caking a full artstix into the very pores of the paper. This takes a few days (or an hour or so). The paper begins to curl at this point, and it begins to feel waxy and reflect light, energy and cameras in addition to reflecting upon its life as a sheet of paper and what a strange life that is.

(y’all remember “The Real Slim Shady”)
“I’m Slim shading,
Yes, I’m really shading
After all that Slim sketching I’m finally shading
He won’t have much skin pigment, he’s so pale, he’s so pale, he’s so pale”

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(á la “Cleaning out my Closet”)
“Picket signs for my artstick lines, making moms whine,
Sick of the constant bumpin’ motherf***in’ kids that are cryin’ ”

I blend the ears smoother with pink. Later I’ll realize that they are too bright and take away from the eyes’ focus
(SPOILER).
Ok. So I didn’t think I would use black in this piece and that in doing…. (uh) not so… it would be an interesting color palette choice. However, I now realize that to punch this drawing in the face balls I’ll need to use the darkest of all pigments, colors and hues. I add it to the pupils, upper eyelids and eyelashes and to the background, afterwards lightening the background with more of that light blue whose name I still don’t know (the box is like 10 feet away, but, like I have time for that, pshhshshSSHHH).

(sounds like “Sing for the Moment”)
“They say that art can alter moods and talk to you
Well it can if you draw up a big blue cockatoo!
See, what these kids do is, hear about us totin’ artstix, and
They wanna get some, cuz, they’re sold at Dick Blick’s Not knowin’, we re
ally just be drawlrin’ ourselves
We caricaturists, of course we draw big ears on those elves, you big-pored anus!”

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Time to spread some COLOR!
I don’t want my colors to be boring and separate from each other; instead, I want them to mingle and play with each other! Weeee! I also want to create an emphasis for this drawl-ring. I want the eyes to have the most contrast, the only white of the drawing, the only pure black, the vibrantest of all the vibrancies of colors and the overall focus. So that means muting the rest of the drawing and making it less intense and vibrant, more middle-valued and less crisp and detailed. Most of this I accomplish by laying a layer of laid-down light blue and by graying most of the sketch with bits of black smoothed out with white:

strokes of blue on that phallic phorehead

yellowing the purple eyebrow devil horns

lightening up that nose cave

cooling off his 5 o’clock butt

making his skin white-er and fish belly-er

ahhh, the power of blue. delish!

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Yeah, those eyes weren’t workin’. They didn’t stand out enough or pierce the veil of your mind, as the kids say. So I erase out some of that darkness and retry that retina, creating spinning pinwheels of hypnotic hellraisers. More shadow is needed under Em’s eyes as well. I want that fire to show behind his eyes. He’s a demon dragon, dawg.

(a lot like “White America”)
“Look at these eyes, baby blue, baby, intense as hell.
If they were brown, Shady’d look, somethin’ more like myself.
Let’s do the math; if I use black, there is more contrast. I didn’t have to gradiate or make all the colors look wack.”

TEXTURE + CONTRAST + VIBRANT COLORS = INTENSE INTENSITY!

EYE RECOVERY!!!

(goin’ “Berzerk”)
“Well they say that art is powerful with contrast and emphasis
All I know is I whited-out; his eyes are frickin’ laser beams, sis!”

So there ya go; this is how I achieve my patented “dream drawing™©” technique. It’s exhausting, takes forever and could probs be achieved quicker, easier and better with pastels. But hey, it’s been fun, guys! And by the way, if you steal this technique for your own work, I’ma k!%% you..... I’m just playin’, b!%$#es. You know I love you ;)

You can find me on facebook and instagram and the interwebs as Eric Goodwin Art and on youtube as me and others as Eric Goodwin

You guys have been great! Buh-bye :)

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