Beck.E’s daily drawings – interview!
Take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. Now do it every day. Online artist BECK.E has built a daily art blog to get people to appreciate life’s small details expressed in simple lines. “For a drawing to have life, draw life”…
Website: BECK.E’s daily drawings
Online store: BECK.E’s boutique
How did your first BECK.E daily weekday drawing come about?
A week after I graduated from Tyler School of Art in 2004, I met my future husband (also an artist). We spent three years building a life for ourselves, adopting pets (family members): a boxer named Mayo (born on Cinco de Mayo), and three white and orange cats (all brothers, two from a different litter). All four pets have been featured in my daily weekday drawings in some shape or form. Looking back, it seems it I needed to get my life in order to start drawing my life.
I designed the template first. One evening in July, I sat on my living room couch looking around at what to draw. I drew my tv, a lamp, and my dog Mayo. Then Mayo farted. Then my husband Dan said, “Dude, she just totally farted on me.” From then on I’ve been writing on my drawings. It’s as simple as that.
I couldn’t imagine not doing a daily weekday drawing. Many say they love how I draw the mundane, or “out of the ordinary is the extraordinary”. I am happy that one day my kids will have these drawings to look at, and to better understand how we lived at our ages. Heck, I hope our kids get the art gene, too!
All artists have different influences. It’s nice to compare them. What were yours?
“Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein influenced me greatly when I was growing up, as it wasn’t like any other children’s book I had. It didn’t matter that the drawings in this humorours, touching book of illustrations and poems were purely black and white. They were brilliant to me. I wanted to one day be clever in my drawings, too.
My mom was hugely supportive: I can’t remember not having endless amounts of crayons, paints, and paper. My dad would like me to thank him too, but (I think his wit is genetic) he once said a cat I painted looked like it got hit by a car.
Professor Stanley Whitney in junior college disproved everything I thought I knew about art as a kid. On the first day of drawing class he wanted to throw all our drawings out the window. He didn’t sugarcoat anything, and it was for our own good. For example, he’d ask the class: “We all know you can draw, but what can you do with it?” The most important thing I learned is that the drawing itself is the most important thing in art, whether it be for a painting or a sculpture. I’ll never forget the nickname he gave me: “What the Heck Beck”.
Does having a daily art blog make you wildly rich and famous?
I still have a day job (see drawing). Both my husband and I are working on creating full-time art projects (Dan can be commissioned for portraits). E-mail for more information. Yes, I advertise my husband. Wouldn’t you?
What does the future hold for BECK.E?
I’ll continue to do my daily weekday drawings but I’m branching out to children’s books. All updates will be posted on drawings by BECK.E, where a new drawing is uploaded every weekday.
Hang on – haven’t you just brought out a BECK.E book?
Yep! In January 2008 my first book will be published and available for purchase online at BECK.E’s boutique or at drawings by BECK.E. “2007 Daily Weekday Drawings” will be all of my daily weekday drawings from 2007. Your coffee table will thank you.
BECK.E – biography
Website: BECK.E’s daily drawings
Online store: BECK.E’s boutique
Email: [email protected]
BECK.E was born Rebecca Leigh Eason in 1982 in Paducah, Kentucky, and was raised with two brothers to have jolly good times in Wichita, Kansas, and Allentown, Pennsylvania. Every school year that art class was offered she was in it. So kids, “be cool and stay in school”. She took part in the county’s Gifted & Talented Art Program, and in was the Art Club President in the junior year of high school, and participating in and winning numerous local art shows. She graduated with Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2004, shortly after meeting the man of her dreams. She currently resides in West Chester, Pennsylvania, with a boxer and three cats, with plans to move to Oregon in a couple of years to settle down, raise a family, and to continue to create art.
© 2008 BECK.E
