This Is The Martez Randle Entry

Taking you back now to Wednesday night. I'm downtown at Room 710, having stepped outside for a smoke after Marvin played with The Gorey Boys for the last time.

I'm already having a cool day, but then this complete stranger approaches me.

The guy's holding a sketch pad and pencil and shakes my hand, introducing himself. He's Martez Randle and he does sketchs in 5 minutes or less. He's not a characaturist, and he works for love of drawing, for tips and donations. I am in no way obligated to by the portrait if I don't like it, and if I do like it any donation will be appreciated. He assures me that in 4 minutes, 5 tops, he will capture my features in a portrait that anyone who knows me will recognize as me.

I look in my pocket. I bought a beer and tipped the waiter, so I'm down to a Fiver and 2 Ones. I tell him I can only give him $5 if I like it, and ask him if it's worth his time. He enthusiastically tells me that it's all practice, and it's always worth his time. "It's a spiritual thing," he explains.

How can I turn THIS down?!!

He doesn't ask me to pose, he just starts sketching right there on the street, conversing with me casually as he does so.

He's from Chicago. His wife grew up here in Round Rock, and when he took her to Chicago, she hated it. "How's that possible?" "Well, we went in the winter."

He's got twin sons in college, both in MENSA. He explains that his only job in raising them was not letting them be lazy. He recounted one time when they were young and their grades slipped, and he had to have "the talk" with them. They looked at the problem and discovered that the only problem was that they were being lazy. No problem after that. (Did I mention that they're in MENSA?)

As I'm chatting with him and his eyes are taking in the lines and shadows and highlights that make me recognizable from everyone else on the planet, I'm thinking to myself that it's really no surprise that this cat has a couple of genius sons! You know when you look into a person's eyes and you immediately see a soul that has nothing to hide? That's Martez. His easy way of speaking to you and the words he uses and how he uses them convey a guy who has seen some stuff in his lifetime... and UNDERSTOOD what he saw, and LEARNED from it!

He's been sketching for 35 years. He's done, like, 650 sketchs for people since he's been in Austin.

I tell him if he's any good (I still haven't seen the portrait at this point) he should DEFINITELY be able to get a showing of some sort here, some kind of "Faces Of Austin" type of thing. Then he tells me (brainturst that I am, with my 135 IQ) that he doesn't have any of the sketches.

DUH! He SELLS THE ORIGINALS! They're sketches, not photographs!

While Martez is sketching, a guy walks up to me and hands me a tiny, gorgeous orange flower. I look at him, and he's holding another flower. I mean no disrespect here, but this guy has the kind of gaze that most of the strangers who come up to you on the street have -- as oposed to the insightful depth that Martez's eyes reveal. I give the Flower Guy a dollar and he says "I'm not gonna lie to you, I was hoping for two. I wanna get a girlfriend." I don't know what this means exactly, but I still have $6 in my pocket, so I give him my other Single. Martez looks up and calls him by name (but I didn't quite catch it, with the street noise and the surrealness of this whole scene). The Flower Guy wanders off and Martez wraps up his drawing.

I'm eager to see Martez's take on me. When I was a kid -- basically, up until I turned 14 or so, when I started getting leading roles in the community theatre troupe I was a part of for 8 and a half years -- I drew. And I drew pretty well. (That is to say, people were always telling me how well I drew, even though I could see all the mistakes I made with each picture.)

Plus, one of the first things I did when Brian and Tommy and I got into Flash animation back in 1998-ish was to create toon versions of all of us (Tommy, Kelly, Brian and me). I mean, all I did was essentially import digital photographs of each of us into Flash and then trace over them. But to be honest, I actually did use the knowlege I had learned from drawing since I was 5 years old.

Art is not just about what you put on the page, it's about what you don't. It's choices. It's personal taste and personal perception.

It took me a long time to create cartoon versions of each of us because I would try to be literal in my interpretation of all the things I saw in those pics, and it just didn't convey the "sense" of what we looked like. Then I would remove lines, leave out details that the camera showed, but somehow misrepresented us.

Also, when I was a kid I used to dig on toons like the animated version of Punky Brewster or the animated version of Mr. T. And I loved reading comic book adaptations of movies. (I almost said "my favorite movies", which is largely true, but I dug on the comic book adaptations of just about any movie.) There was some fascination for me in seeing images of things I was familiar with in real life being drawn by someone.

And so the first thing I did when I started getting to know PCs was to attempt cartoon versions of myself. I mean, having an ego the size of mine, there was NOTHING I wanted to see made into a cartoon or comic book more than ME!!! And I had never had a lot of luck at drawing me as a kid. I could draw John Meric, I could draw Rod Serling, I could draw my heroes from Star Trek, but I couldn't get me down convincingly.

Until 1998, I could never capture my appearance on paper.

Then Martez Randle comes up to me an offers to do it for a paltry $5 in 5 minutes.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but when I saw it I was surprised.




First of all, his style is different from what I was expecting. I guess in 5 minutes I was expecting a more minimalistic style -- like comic artist Alex Toth, who drew some of the greatest ZORRO comics ever! But Martez's portrait contains shadows and highlights. And you can see every strand of hair on my head, in my eyebrows on on my chin. You can even see individual eyelashes! And there's something about the eyes, they seem be a different texture than the skin. And they have personality, they're not just these vacant, maniquin orbs.

Moreover, when look at this protrait I see me just a smidge older than a teen. Like what I looked like as a teen, only grown into a young man. Now, when I look in the mirror I see a slightly different guy -- I see someone who could stand to work out a bit and maybe is no longer in his "prime". But when I saw Martez's protrait I saw someone very close to the guy I imagine when I think of myself. Looking at the picture now, I catch nuances of characteristics I FEEL, but that aren't reflected in a mirror.

Does that make any sense?

It's like this guy was able to capture more than what is seen by the human eye.

But then, that's kind of why art exists, right? Portrait artists didn't cease to exist when the camera was invented. Movies didn't disappear when documentaries were created. Hell, the invention of fiction itself reveals the purpose of all art: We experience stuff in everyday life, but the artist gives those experiences that Something Other, that little extra that makes it... I don't know... worthwhile in some way.

It's choices. It's personal taste and it's personal perception.

"It's a spiritual thing."