Share Your Funniest/Craziest Stories of Drawing in Public

[Rudydemon]

So after reading the thread about thoughts on drawing in public I thought it might be fun for people to share their craziest/funniest stories from drawing in public.

I'll start us off. This is the first one that comes to mind for me, not too terribly crazy or funny, but still something that happened.

So some time ago, when we couldn't sleep, my friend and I (He usually worked night shift, I was a student with no discernible sleep schedule) we would meet up at this 24hr diner that was placed between our two abodes.

It was after 3 on a seemingly normal Wednesday morning. I was drawing on my laptop, he was writing on his, and we were sitting at the now closed bar in the diner because it had the best plug locations.

A man stumbles loudly into the diner and then makes his way up to the bar. Standing next to me I see him from the corner of my eye trying to get someone to serve him a drink.

"Bars close after 2am here" I try to tell him but he ignores me. I shrug and go back to work. He will figure it out soon.

When no one comes to the bar to serve him, he turns to me. He points at my tablet. "Whats that? It lets you draw on your computer!?"

I have gotten this enough drawing in public that is only mildly irritates me to explain it again. "Yeah its called a tablet."

He stares at my art for a few moments before exclaimed "You have terrible footwork!" (I am drawing a foot at this moment) I can't help but wonder why telling a stranger their art is terrible is socially acceptable, and ignore the man now.

"Hey! Hey! You've ever seen Naruto? Your art reminds me of Naruto. Its a great show!" I have been watching Naruto since I was in middle school. I am 22 at this moment. "yeah" i mutter back. and go back to work.

He twiddles his thumbs before yelling at the waiters "Hey! Someone serve me, I wanna buy this lady here a drink!"

"They don't serve alcohol after 2", I try to explain again, and am ignored.

"Bars close at 2 sir", the waiter tries to explain. This man doesn't want to hear it, but eventually give up on his venture.

Quiet.

Then, "I've got a bottle of Jack in my car, if you wanna go have a few swigs with me". At this point I am highly confused by this mans persistence. I have shown no warmth. I am dressed like I am homeless. Obviously busy. And there is a diner full of drunk and attractive young woman. Why are you bothering me. My friend (6ft 8in, 300+ man) is still sitting quietly besides me.

"No", and I go back to work.

Man attempts to get a drink out of the waiter again, and is denied, at this point, the hostess asks me if the man is bothering me. He is, but not enough that I feel like he should be kicked out. Honestly, he should figure my disinterest out soon enough. I shrug and go back to work.

Quiet.

Twiddle.

"So.. Ive got an 8 ball of coke in my car, if you wanna.." eyebrow waggle.

I am staring at my screen intently. Is he just gonna keep on upping the anty? What next, 'Ive got a hooker and some X in car, wanna go party'? When will it stop?

"No"

Back to work.

He sits quietly next to me for a few more minutes before finally ambling out of the diner and into the night.

Sigh.

At this point I turn to my friend. He is laughing.

"So? No help from you?"

He laughs some more. "You seemed to be doing a mighty fine job stonewalling him. Didn't think I needed to intrude".

He was right.

[maddadam94]

oh my lord, i've got quite a story.

so, i like sketching people. meaning: i go out, sit down somewhere, and draw the people around me. in secret. usually no one notices anything, i'm very... good at hiding what i'm doing. or more like, i've gotten quite good at it, in the beginning one or two people noticed, but they were all very friendly and not weirded out or anything.

except one time. which was... all kinds of crazy, and that's why i'll tell you now what happened.

i was sitting in a café, had just ordered sth and started to draw a woman sitting a few tables across. she was with a friend, chatting away, and i thought "oh good, she won't notice a thing" - because that's how it usually is.
like i said, i am pretty discreet and work quick, i don't stare endlessly and stuff like that. so she must have been really sensitive about it, because suddenly i could hear her say to her friend "what the hell is that cow staring at?" (and i swear, i am seriously doing this drawing people thing for years, and i know when people notice and they usually never do)
naturally, i stopped drawing and tried to appear busy doing sth else.
but she went on saying to her friend stuff like "she totally stared at me" "what the hell is her problem" and so on. i was pretty weirded out by then, because i had barely drawn her at all, i had literally looked at her for 2 seconds.
then i heard her say "i'm going over there, i'll punch her in the face if she looks at me again"
so... crap. she came over. i played innocent while told me again to mind my own business. which i continued to do (trying not to freak out because she was seriously scary).
she went back to her table again, and i thought "phew". so i gathered my drawings and (of course) decided to just pay and leave. then i heard her again: "dude, i think she fucking drew me! i'm going over there again". and yup, now she was really pissed.
she wanted to know if i'd drawn her, and i said no. but she kept on nagging so i showed her some doodle, which was not the scratchy sketch i'd drawn of her. but she didn't buy it. so then she exclaimed, loudly, that drawing people without their consent is forbidden. that she could call the police. and by that time i was like "look, i'm sorry, i'm sorry" (slightly pathetic). she went back to her table. i was very freaked out. then i heard her again, saying to her friend "no wait, i'll call the police, i've had it" (what???) and i more or less ran over to their table and started to explain (i was shaking. like i said, pathetic) that i was really sorry, and (big mistake) i didn't think this was any reason to call the police. then the woman's friend pointed out that drawing apparently is like taking photos of someone without asking, and that i could go and read that up somewhere. people were looking by now, it was.. quite a scene. when i'm freaked out, nervous, i automatically start to bawl, so my voice started quivering and shit like that.
luckily, i finally decided to make a run for it and took off.

so yes, it was sort of traumatizing. but then again, not really, it just made me even more careful, and stuff like that has never happened again. it was pretty embarrassing, though, the fact that i started crying and everyone was watching. i feel like i made a really poor exit.

[miesmud]

I don't have a lot interesting stories, but I have one moment I found pretty funny.

I was drawing on my phone in the bus, and there was a mother with a rather young child on her lap sitting next to me. I was just peacefully painting a face when the kid pointed at my screen and said "Polar bear!". Though my painting was clearly a human face, but then the mom agreed and said "Yeah, a polar bear!" I was wearing headphones, so I pretended to not hear them. But I was so confused. It didn't look like a polar bear at all, so why did the child call it a polar bear, and why did the mother agree?

[Rudydemon]

Oh man. That's both horrible and crazy. I'm glad you made it out of there at least physically intact. Thou how she acted was terribly abusive.

(thou I do feel like sketching people is not actually illegal. I think I've read something about that. Finding it hard to really find any concrete legal data on that)

But damn. Thank you for sharing.

[Cielle]

Here is a story from a time I was traveling alone and I had run out of money. I was going home later that day, didn't want to pay to pull more money out of an ATM when I wouldn't be able to use the currency in my country. Anyway, all I had was enough money for a coffee, so I decided to sketch to pass the time and enjoy my last bit of time in Oslo. Anyway, I was sitting outside at a cafe on a busy-ish plaza, when I notice a mother and daughter rapidly speaking Chinese and pointing my direction. I didn't think much of it until the mother came over to me, put her arm around me and said "cheese!" while the daughter took our picture. I smiled and posed of course, because what else was I going to do? The mom thanked me and the daughter looked at me apologetically, and the two of them went on their merry way. To this day I have no idea what it was all about.

[Kura]

I used to work drawing caricatures, and at one of the events I worked at (an anime convention) there was always these same two guys that would show up every year completely high out of their minds. They would fit the 'stereotypical white teens always on weed that think everything is amazing' trop you see in bad teen movie to the letter. None of the artists there actually hated working with them even though their requests would turn out odley elaborate. They were just so friggen hyped about every little thing.

So their request would go something along the lines of

Guy: ooh... draw me with uhhh... oh! I know. Can you draw me holding like... I pirate sword?

Me: Yes.

Guy: DUUUUUUDE holy shit man I'm I pirate oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my goooooddd. Hey! Hey! Hey! If I'm a pirate. Does that mean I can have a... a... beard, and a... a.. oh!! A wooden leg!!"

Guy 2: What about a bird?

Guy: YES! A bird! A bird with a wooden leg! And he can talk!! Make him talking!

Me: Sure.

Guy: MY PIRATE FLAG CAN HAVE THE WEED LEAF!!!!

Me: Yup.

Guy2: Ohhhh shhiiiiiiiit this is so awesome!!

Guy 2: Woah!!! And for me like... make me fighting a dragon.

cosplayer walks by

Guy 2: Oh!!! I want the cats ears like her!!! Can you draw cat ears on me??

Guy 2: Wait... am I allowed to fight dragons if I have cat ears.

Me: Yup.

Guy 2: Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As you can imagine, they never stopped talking and discovering stuff to add.

[niinasalmelin]

This old guy in karaoke pub wanted me to draw him but kept complaining how I didn't manage to catch his KILLERS SOUL in my drawings (according to him he had been in Afganistan and done some shady stuff but who knows, in the same table there was a other guy who said he used to be very good pro boxer. They had drank whole day). Then he tried to forcingly kiss me and I thought this is the perfect time to leave. All in all 2/5 experience wouldn't recommend but it's interesting memory. I wonder if I still have those sketches..

[niinasalmelin]

I'm sorry this happened to you. She clearly over-reacted to that and could've been much more polite to you. I have done some sketching on public as well and usually even if people notice they haven't reacted badly, more than that they want to see and ask me to draw their friends. But I guess I've managed to dodge the bullet so far.

[maddadam94]

oh thanks guys. and no, i'm pretty sure that drawing people is not illegal. not like i actually did read it up. anyway, by now, i can laugh about it!

[maddadam94]

hahaha, that one actually reminded me:

back in school, i must have been like.. 13 years old? we had this project going, everyone was supposed to sort of creatively express a fairytale (write a poem, act it out, whatever) but anyway, i decided to draw some of my chosen story's characters.

i was really into manga back then. the sparkly kind of manga. meaning: i also drew all things very manga, very sparkly, but mostly, very disproportionately (which has nothing to do with manga, i just combined manga and a poor sense of proportions).

so when i presented my drawings, which featured a lovely princess girl, in front of the class, one boy raised his hand and asked me:

"why is the girl wearing a plastic bag on her head?"

the "plastic bag" was supposed to be the girl's hair.

in hindsight, i can only agree with the boy, though, since i do remember that drawing phase, and i did tend to give my characters this enormous hair helmet.

[zeesmileyface]

Oh man! I am sorry to hear that your experience was like that. It sounds like the woman was wanting to stir up some trouble. I don't believe it is illegal due to deniability. If they did call the cops that would be crazy. The cops would probably look at the woman in complete disbelief that they are indeed wasting there time on something as trivial as that.

Next time you should just own it. You are drawing them and they should feel happy that they are appealing enough to be captured.

[acealmansoori]

I actually have a similar story, I was on LAX airport on my way to Korea. I was flying internationally and kind of lost at the airport, so I saw two airlines attendants gazing at me as I felt lost, so I went to ask them.

"Excuse me, where could I check in for KoreaAir?" I said quite nervously, thankfully one of them replied and didn't just brush me off. She pointed at the other end of the airport, and told me it will be written above if ever got lost again. the moment I looked back to thank them the other attendant was taking a picture of me and giggling. So I didn't think that was weird, and asked if she would like a selfie and we took one. Next thing I saw a couple of Chinese women coming my way and asking if they could take a selfie too xD That was bizarre and at the same time very cool lol

Sketching stories, I never had any strange ones to be honest, most people would just look for a second and leave you alone. Reading books though, sometimes I find annoying people telling me either I should read more autobiographies or non-fiction. Which I ignore very happily.

[punkarsenic]

i guess my funniest public drawing scenario was at a music festival - it was a quiet gig so i was drawing the performers and people in the crowd if they sat still enough. this girl sits next to me, getting out her own sketchbook. now, like, i swear shes drawing me. i swear it. so i play the game, shes kinda cute, and draw her. were both glancing at eachothers sketchbooks and end up talking - turns out she was drawing an oc who looked like me, but on purpose. we was flirting. with sketchbooks.

it lasted six days but its the thought that counts.

[indagold]

For a really boring precollege course I was forced to go to the financial district of NY, brookfield mall and sketch people. It was really unpleasant mostly because how uptight everyone is because of 9/11, at least i'm assuming. Cops are everywhere and they constantly tell you to move. I could not find anyone at all to draw and finally I came across this lady just sitting at a table alone and glaring angrily. I drew her just because she looked hilarious and there was nothing else to do, Too bad it was short lived because a cop came up to her upset that she was sitting there too long and demanded to know why which made her leave.

[Puppisama]

Is a short story:
I was taking C++ clases on saturday, but that day there was a massive christian reunion on the streets, I'm not against religions or anything but these people get annoying with the converting people and stuff, and I always appreciante to be undisturbed, so I just start sketching waiting for the cab home when I notice a group of them approaching to me, then I start sketching disturbing things hahaha, when then came really close they saw what I was drawing and left quietly... I wanted to laugh really hard.