Drawing from life may be an attempt at neutrality, to capture the lines and shapes of a setting, without creating value, without passing judgement: simply relaying what the seer sees. Such an ideal is usually lost on subway riders who catch someone hunched over a sketchpad, tracing their figure. Because it is invasive to be looked at, and a robbery to be drawn. How dare our likenesses be taken down without our permission, and kept in somebody else's private property!?
A friend of mine encountered this quandry a few times too many, and has since resorted to drawing the rows of feet across from him. When caught, he's met with a begrudging crossing of the legs, and disgruntled glare. It beats the several verbal warnings he's received trying to draw a whole figure.
To avoid this entirely, I've resorted to drawing subway ads. It's a lesser challenge to copy an image than to draw straight from surroundings, but oh well. I've started choosing my subway seat based on what ads I can sit across from. The more faces or figures in the picture the better. Sometimes, it's only text I can copy, but that's an exercise in itself: drawing typography.
While drawing from life can be an act of organic discovery of what is--the space between two things in an instant, the curve of an arm or a pole--copying an image, I find more of an interrogation. Copying an image shows me what was made, and I'm left asking why is this photographed person's head so peculiarly tilted and how exactly are they smiling? Why do the letters have such a distinct serif? These images are designed for the specific purpose of convincing viewers. In copying their visual elements, I may decode their tactics.
With this distinction, copying the ads may be a much more radical act--which goes unrecognized by those who notice me doing so. In those moments, I'm seen as the artist: sketchpad in lap--thank God he's not drawing me--why--he's copying that person in the ad! Out of the corner of my eye, I see them watching, their back-and-forth between sketchpad and subject. I'll smile, but I won't look towards them; I like to maintain the romantic image of the artist engulfed in his work.
And this work is engulfing. Many (myself included) lament the mall-ification of New York and the indulgent reclusion our technology affords us. All the same, most people on the subways (again myself included) are beneficiaries and/or benefactors of the chain-stores and tech startups which have sanitized New York's famed grit. There's no revolution in my sketchpad, but I will claim greater consciousness about my surroundings because of it. I don't know how my awareness of advertising may dissolve the advertiser's presence and power, but I know it's a step.