Under the Helmet – Ohio State Buckeyes
9/3/2005 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 3, 2005
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Imagine sitting in class, listening to a teacher lecture about a designated subject. To help pass the time between scribbling down notes, a natural habit forms of doodling in the margins pictures of objects and people that are nearby. Ohio State junior Jay Richardson knows all about this scenario, as he turned the occasional classroom doodling into his favorite hobby.
Richardson, from nearby Dublin, Ohio, began drawing in elementary school, when he would draw caricatures of his teachers in attempt to amuse fellow classmates. The hobby came naturally to Richardson who looked around at objects and could easily produce them in the margin of his paper.
“Drawing was always something I could do,” Richardson said. “I could always draw stuff I saw. I used to draw kind of clowning around. I’d draw the teacher and it would be really funny and everybody would get a laugh at it.”
Richardson’s humble beginnings in the art world have made him very strict when it comes to what type of materials he currently uses. He focuses on pencil drawings, mainly because of the availability of the tool while in class. When he decides to inflict some color into his pieces, Richardson sticks with his pencils.
“Pencils were just what I had in class with me,” Richardson said. “You just get used to them. I just like the stuff you can do with pencils, you can shade with it, smear with it and erase with it. I do not really like paint that much. Just pencils and colored pencils and those are about it.”
His mom, Deborah, noticed her son had a knack for drawing and enrolled Jay in drawing classes at the Columbus College of Art and Design. She told her son if he enjoyed drawing, then keep doing it. Richardson attended the school for a year and the classes improved his technique and encouraged him to continue to improve his skills even after he stopped attending the school. As he continued taking art classes throughout high school, Richardson began to base his drawings on comic books, specifically “X-Men.”
“I used to always draw the guys from the comic books,” Richardson said. “I got really good at drawing the characters and I could make it look just like the comic book after awhile.”
Richardson’s love of drawing comic book characters continued to influence his art as he began high school. He describes his drawings as a mixture between realistic and abstract art, falling between the two in a caricature-type form. His drawings are realistic to some degree, but there are certain parts of a drawing he will exaggerate. When he draws teammates A.J. Hawk or Troy Smith he tends to make the already muscular football players bulkier than they appear in real life. He used the same technique on a piece he did of himself in high school.
“I drew an exaggerated picture of myself,” Richardson said. “It was a picture of me posing and I had my football jersey on. I drew myself bulkier then I actually am.”
The drawing was put in his high school art show, where his classmates voted Richardson’s self-portrait the best piece in the show. Competitions, however, are not up Richardson’s alley. He has never really wanted to make a big deal about his art because, for him, it is just for fun. He never seriously considered selling his drawings, although in retrospect, he wishes he would have worked harder and improved simply because he enjoyed drawing. Richardson has not completely shut out the idea of a career in art or design, though.
Like many artists, Richardson does not usually like his art when it is finished. Usually there is some detail that he would like to tweak or change on the finished product, even if other people seem to think his work is amazing.
“When it is finished, usually I do not like it,” Richardson said. “I usually think that I should have done something different or made an arm look bigger or something like that. Then my friends are like ‘That looks really good,’ and I am just like, ‘eh.’”
He credits his mom as being the most influential towards his favorite pastime.
“She was the one who put me in the Columbus College of Art and Design when I was younger,” Richardson said. “She has always encouraged me to continue doing things I have fun with.”
Although he does not find as much time as he would like to draw because of his studies and commitments as a defensive end for the Buckeyes, Richardson still finds during breaks in class he can still pick up a pencil and make the time move a little quicker.
