“It’s a part of me that I allow to starve.” “Art has always been something of a luxury that I don’t allow myself to do,” Graziano said. Most of her work is done late at night, after her children are in bed. More intricate sketches take longer, and as a busy mother - Rosario is 3 and Santino is 1 - she doesn’t have long stretches of time to devote to art. This year, in honor of Etch A Sketch’s 50th anniversary, Graziano has committed to creating 50 sketches and writing a blog about it.Ĭreating 50 drawings is no small task Graziano estimates her portraits take at least 20 hours apiece. Now, Graziano said, she tries to “be true to the nature of the Etch A Sketch” and uses the straight lines most people create when using the toy. Graziano used to draw on the Etch A Sketch as she would with a pencil, with curved lines and no limitations. Over the years her technique has changed. She has been an official Etch A Sketch artist ever since. He was impressed and immediately wanted to know how many unassembled toys she needed. Graziano asked how to become an official artist, and he told her to send in some samples. She called the toy manufacturer to learn how to fix the problem.Īn Ohio Art employee told Graziano that they sent their official artists unassembled Etch A Sketches, which didn’t have excess powder or a stylus to ruin their drawings. When she shipped the Etch A Sketches across the country, excess powder that hadn’t drained from the toy shook onto the glass, fading the portraits. She found one on Craigslist, was referred to another and by the following year, she was sharing an art studio in Los Angeles with her then-boyfriend Grillo.Īfter a man from Connecticut asked her to do portraits of his children, Graziano decided she needed to learn how to make her images permanent. Graziano had a bachelor’s degree in math from Montana State, but her desire to combine art with a paycheck sent her back to architecture school in Bozeman for a master’s degree.īut after taking a class from a professor who had been a production designer in Hollywood, Graziano left Montana and headed for California to find a production design job of her own. She experimented with her Etch A Sketch art for a few years, relying on the toy instead of pencil and paper any time she needed to sketch something. By drilling a small hole in the Etch A Sketch and draining the excess powder, Graziano could create images that were about 90 percent permanent. Shaking the toy recoats the glass and erases the image. A stylus connected to rails that move horizontally and vertically scrapes powder off the glass, leaving the dark lines that create the image on the screen. That first drawing disappeared when she shook it, but someone told her that by drilling a hole in the toy and removing the excess powder, the image on the glass would be preserved.Įtch A Sketches are full of extremely sticky aluminum powder. It turned out so well, she said, that she wondered what else she might be able to create on the Etch A Sketch. While on a ski trip with friends in 2000, Graziano, then 30, did a “real cartoony” drawing on the toy. ![]() Graziano had an Etch A Sketch when she was a child, but she didn’t discover her talent for drawing on it until adulthood. Half-finished and barely begun sketches are on the table next to a black frame with a metal stylus attached - the underside of an Etch A Sketch that people rarely see. The drafting table where Graziano works is surrounded by Etch A Sketch portraits mounted in black boxes, ready for sale. The studio is in the basement of their Kalispell home, and it is cluttered with finished pieces and works in progress. “I’m trying to bridge that gap between ‘it’s a toy’ and ‘it’s an art,’” Graziano said recently from the studio she shares with her husband, painter and local real estate agent Roy Grillo. It just happens to have been created on a toy. A man curled into a ball grips the top of his downcast head. Images of Jon Bon Jovi and Frank Sinatra gaze out from behind familiar red plastic frames with white knobs at two corners. The contrast between those sketches and the artwork on the walls of Graziano’s studio is night and day. Perhaps that response isn’t surprising many people never got beyond the ability to draw more than a crude staircase on their childhood Etch A Sketches. People tend to react with skepticism or amazement when they see Pauline Graziano’s artwork.
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