Log0015
Stop Start
A little after 7am and 200 miles from the outskirts of LA, a young man stood, beginning his Saturday morning shift. If it weren’t for the fluff under his chin the kid could’ve passed for 14. Out here in the lower reaches of the Sierras he would spend the next 10 hours, in fifteen minute intervals, twisting his sign.
We’d pulled up in front of him, right as he’d spun us to a stop. Given he was the first, and only person I saw, I spent the next quarter of an hour wondering about who he was as I scratched away in my sketchbook.
With a shiny pair of boots, and a clean set of high vis, I had to assume he was pretty new on the job. His pants were completely unstained, with no rips nor any paint on them. Judging by the month it wouldn’t of surprised me if he were straight out of school. The question I began to ponder then was, is this kid opting for construction over college or construction before college? He looked like the sort for neither.
It was almost comical the way he’d meticulously parked his car, blocking half the road and in full sight of the queuing vehicles. The slick polished WRX looked aggressive. The way it sat there seemed to state “yes, that’s my car!” in a manner that vaguely symbolized his maturity. But it was juxtaposed with a bright red, freshly packed, lunchbox sitting beside it. Some part of me wondered whether his co-workers up the road, in their late 50s and with their beat-up pick trucks, were more jealous of the kid’s car or his of lunch. It might be cruel to assume on both counts, his mother was good to him.
I know that working in crews like this can be tough as the new kid. You get handed the worst jobs, the most shit and the least pay. Until you’ve done some time and proved yourself useful you won’t stop being the butt of the foreman’s unending jokes. Half a moustache and a hot car are not the kind of things to earn respect, but stand there for 10 hours, without compliant, that’s a good start.
When you get used to drawing people you start to see everything differently, you take in so much more of the world around you. You notice the small, now important details. Soon you’ll start to dream about those details and what they tell us about the character beneath.
Eventually, things like lighting, posture and composition will start to become tools that evoke character. It’s not so much that when the subject shifts his weight to lean on the stop pole and we sense his utter boredom, it is why this happens, and how it can be conveyed.
At this point, my mind had really begun to wander. I can only imagine what these fifteen minute intervals were doing to his. Slowly the other face of the sign came around. With not so much as a nod, he gazed blankly as we rolled on by.