Person #3 off the street

A bearded, bespectacled man in a jumper sweater holds onto a strap hanging from a horizontal tube. The tube is about level with his head.

About

I deliberately avoid Rush Hour always. That is, whenever possible. But when I woke up 15 minutes late on Monday, I knew I was headed straight into it.

After waiting at the bus stop for an hour, I finally got a seat on a bus. The person in the seat next to me had some rather large bag on his lap, as if he was going to test all of the campus' sports facilities and was using gold-plated equipment to do it. He was taking up a seat and a half. I sat in the half seat next to him, too glad that I had gotten a seat at all at rush hour, to notice that there was still another seat to my right. It was quickly taken up. Now, I usually try to do something on bus rides, but squashed together as we were, it was impossible for me to even reach for my cell phone.

And that's when I saw him. This really tall man with his most interesting face. I hadn't drawn people from life since the previous year, so it seemed like a good idea to try to capture him. He was also looking in my general direction: I was right in the sweep angle between his girlfriend and the window he was looking out of. Only thing was, I had to get something to draw on.

I had recently been given this little spiral notebook –about 5 inches wide– by the environmentalists club. There had been some sort of problem at our recycling center, and they had a lot of paper written on one side and no one to send it to. Their creative solution was to cut it into 5-inch pieces, bind it together, and give it out for free. Lucky me, I had that in the outermost pocket of my bag, which I actually could reach. Getting a pencil out, however was another matter.

This drawing took me 30 minutes, which means I am getting better. I do think I drew him slightly older than he looked in reality, but I'm hoping that's simply an effect of not having shaded him.

I couldn't get his name.

Number 2 pencil on recycled paper.