Acrylic, ink, and watercolor on canvas board / 9″x12″

2025

WARNING: THIS ART PIECE FEATURES STRONG LANGUAGE AND PROFANITY. IF YOU ARE UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THIS AT ALL, PLEASE DO NOT CLICK ON THE IMAGE AND I ADVISE YOU TO LEAVE THIS PAGE. CLICKING ON THE IMAGE WILL UNBLUR IT.

I was leaving my office and walking through the parking lot to my vehicle when some random guy across the street started yelling at me. I looked over at him and he was walking towards me and shouting “F*ck you”, “F*cker”, and “B*tch” at me over and over again. At one point he implied that I had insulted his outfit. I did no such thing and I didn’t say or do anything to provoke this guy, unless walking and minding my own business set him off. As the man got closer to me, I noticed that he was wearing a dirty, maroon suit jacket and pants with an equally dirty white shirt that looked like someone puked on it. The man was also carrying what looked like a stuffed animal in the shape of a dog but I wasn’t entirely sure because he had it tucked under his arm. His face was dirty and he looked like he was sunburned in a few places. I assumed he was a homeless person with mental or behavioral issues because I occasionally see people like this hanging around the neighborhood. However, this was the first time I was seeing this particular individual and the first time I was directly confronted in this manner.

I was almost at my vehicle when the man got really close to me (within 15 feet) and his next verbal assault was extremely violent so I got in my vehicle as calmly as I could and then drove out of the parking lot. The man watched me drive away before continuing on his way down the street. I pulled off onto a side street and then called the police. I talked to a dispatcher and explained what had just happened. After documenting the general information of the incident and a description of the man, the dispatcher asked if the man appeared to be intoxicated. I said I didn’t know but based on what he was saying and doing at the time, I thought he was going to harm me. When I mentioned the violent threat, the dispatcher asked if the man had a weapon and I said I didn’t know because he wasn’t carrying anything in the open, other than that stuffed animal. The dispatcher said they would contact an officer in the area to look for the man and then we concluded the call. I hoped the police took this matter seriously because I wasn’t contacted for a follow up. The man was walking towards a residential neighborhood and I was worried that he might stumble across some other unsuspecting person and harass them as well.

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I worked on this art piece a little bit every day over a couple of weeks. I changed it several times because I wasn’t satisfied with how each rendition turned out. For the last version I painted an abstract background with red, orange, and yellow acrylics because this incident took place in the summer and it was very hot outside. I painted the portrait of the man a few times but each version wasn’t very good because I don’t make portraits and he ended up looking very cartoonish in every attempt I made. I decided to go with cartoonish and exaggerated some of the facial features like the eyes to imply that this guy was crazy or not in stable condition. I had a hard time deciding on how I wanted to portray the eyes because I tried the classic “squiggly red lines” to show them being bloodshot which didn’t work, and then I tried a speckled dot approach which made them look like jawbreaker candy. I repainted the eyeballs white and then made the irises a solid black with tiny red pupils. Then I used pink and red watercolors to paint over the white to make the eyes look bloodshot again. I was ok with how the eyes turned out this time because they project an unsettling atmosphere as if this guy sees you, but he doesn’t really see you clearly. The rest of the man’s face looked rally flat in comparison to the eyes so I used red and brown watercolors to try and make the face look dirty and sunburned. I had to repeat the process several times before I got it right. Too much pigment and it looked like he had rolled around in the mud. Not enough pigment and it looked like he was bleeding. I was going to leave his suit jacket plain, but I highlighted it with neon colors to draw attention to it because the man specifically referred to his clothing during his unhinged shouting at me. I used watercolors on the shirt to make it look really nasty. I painted a small dog off to the side to represent the stuffed animal the man was carrying. The last step was to paint and write all the profanity this guy was shouting at me. I intentionally misspelled some of the words and phrases to show that the man wasn’t making any sense.

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