DANBURY, Conn. — Forget the ‘Mona Lisa’ or ‘The Starry Night.’ Bryan Madden from Danbury proves you don’t need pencils or paint to create a memorable piece; he's an Etch A Sketch artist.
“[My] first serious Etch-A-Sketch that I worked on, I was going to college in way Upstate New York and started sketching Yankee Stadium, the Bronx, the Harlem River. I didn’t think much of it, but people said you can’t erase this, so I’ve saved this for 15 years and now I’ve made it a career,” said Madden.
His career has turned into a collection that includes cityscapes and architecture, along with celebrities.
“I’ve probably done over a thousand Etch A Sketches,” said Madden.
His sketches have even led him to the stars.
“I’m a big music fan, so I sketched Iggy Pop before I went and saw Iggy and the Stooges perform in New York City one day, and I brought his sketch with me and I handed it to him as he was walking backstage," Madden said.
Madden added that he "managed to get one of my sketches to Smokey Robinson when he came to Ridgefield, Connecticut and he shared that online.”
Madden is part of a small circle of professional Etch A Sketch artists. He draws portraits at parties and events around the country. On his canvas, there’s little room for error.
“You only get one shot at it,” said Madden. “Sometimes I’ll be 75%, 90% of the way through it and then it gets a little difficult, because if you mess up in the last 10%, you just wasted hours, days.”
You can chalk it up to the world’s greatest fun fact.
“You know, somebody says name something you can do, you know I got people beat in Etch A Sketch,” said Madden.
However, there is a colorful message in the black and white.
“I think that’s part of what’s so fun about it, that you can scratch a piece of artwork out of just about anything, even something so difficult and primitive as an Etch A Sketch that only has up, down, left, right,” said Madden.
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