Artist Dave Roberts and his unusual medium
Once you clear the WTF? hurdle — and we know it might take a minute — there are some interesting things to note about Dave Roberts’ Etch-a-Sketch images beyond the simple novelty of making art with a toy.
First: “Yes,” addressing the obvious question, “it’s as hard as it looks.” Imagine drawing when your hand can’t cradle and control the pencil tip. You must manipulate it remotely, using motions not usually associated with drawing to move dials that let you draw only vertically or horizontally; curves require such a pinpoint, simultaneous coordination of both that for most it only happens by accident or serious skill. You and I? We’d be lucky to draw an acceptable stick figure under those conditions. Roberts is working on an image of Bellagio that actually looks like Bellagio.
Second: Unlike more traditional artists, who often impart a distinctive visual quality to their brush- or pen strokes, the Etch-a-Sketch artist can’t show his hand. Given the nature of the toy, that’d mean he’s screwed up, his line gone astray. In a medium that’s all about the difficulty of control, the minimum threshold of acceptability is perfection.
Third: Imagine the meticulousness required. So much, in fact, that patience and focus are in some ways the art’s content as much as the image. Take Bellagio, above. How many hours you got into that so far, Dave?
“About 25,” he estimates. He’s half-done.
Roberts, 35, started tinkering with Etch-a-Sketches in high school — “I saw I could kind of do something with it” — though he contented himself mostly with cartoon characters. He began upping his game in 2001, moving first to portraits, then to more complex scenes: buildings, a stand of palm trees.
“A year and a half ago, I hunkered down, I was like, I gotta do this every day — it’s now or never.” He works the graveyard shift as a maintenance carpenter on the Strip, meaning he has late-night, kid-free time to bear down on this. As far as he or we know, he’s the only Etch-a-Sketch artist in Vegas, though he networks with a few others nationwide, and has come to the attention of the game’s maker.
“People’s reaction keeps me going,” he says. As does the medium itself. “It keeps taunting me. Can I do this? Then I try it. And it keeps kind of coming out the way I want it to.” People are sometimes skeptical. That was Photoshopped, It’s not real.
Shush. It’s real.
Can he even imagine wanting to go into another art form? He’s tried his hand at charcoal drawing, watercolors ... nah. “This is my thing, and I love it,” he says. “I can’t even imagine wanting to go into another art form.”