Connect with Nobody Support Art:
www.instagram.com/martin_balsam
www.twitter.com/martin_balsam
www.facebook.com/needmoney4artsupplies
www.needmoney4artsupplies.myportfolio.com
Made with pen, ink pencil and gel pen. Started off as a quick sketch to loosen the cobwebs but turned into a piece that I dived into and developed more of my own style.
Quick sketches for the processing of incomplete thoughts. Everything is created twice, first in thought, second in form. I am still thinking and still forming and still being formed.
An exercise in observation - quick sketch. I was told that if I made a drawing a day for 365 days, that in a year, I might have a couple nice drawings.
For our 10th anniversary this past Monday, we went on a hike at Land's End. It was cold and blustery! Got a quick sketch in from the labyrinth. Rain lines added as it started to rain by my son.
I used to sketch in my car much more often. I'd go downtown and quick sketch people, scenes--whatever moved the spirit. With this sketch, I got the idea for a series...a what if ordinary moments in life were done in Picasso fashion. In this case, it was a Dad with his two kids. I never pursued the idea any further than a handful of quick sketches, but I wonder, what if I painted Dad with two kids Picasso style? It's still on my bucket list. What about you? What's on your bucket list regarding art ideas, projects?
Done for a friend for a new writing idea featuring her character (the baby), and mine - because I haven’t written anything in over a year and was running low on motivation on that front until this. Also, babies are hard to draw
Imperfect Lines, Honest Presence
This sketch is not perfect—and that’s exactly why it’s alive. The bold figure, the dissolving hat, the tilted chair: all of it feels unfinished, fleeting, caught in motion. It’s what the Japanese call wabi-sabi—finding beauty in the imperfect, the impermanent, the incomplete.
But there’s something deeper here too. A quick sketch is not just what the eye records. It’s what the soul permits. To draw without fixing, without polishing, is to admit the world will not hold still for us. Life slips past. The lines break off. And yet, somehow, the essence remains.
When you sketch this way, you are not the master of the moment—you are its guest. The pencil does not carve permanence; it pays attention. The act of drawing becomes an act of being present, of honoring what is already vanishing.
So here’s a challenge: grab a pencil and sketch someone near you in sixty seconds. Do not erase. Do not perfect. Let the lines falter. When you finish, ask yourself: What truth did the imperfection reveal?
Perhaps presence itself is the real art.
This is my first upload. I did a quick sketch of Gale and Katniss from the Hunger Games,. I have been doing sketches of passages from books lately and this is one. This is the scene on the day of the reaping. Gale and she are in the woods. Gale is spreading goat cheese and she Katniss is picking berries.
