Toying with art

Ohio Art’s Etch A Sketch has gone platinum 100 times over, but until Angeleno artist Christoph Leland Brown got his hands on the classic children’s toy, Hollywood failed to take notice.

Today Brown’s efforts are being featured at Etch A Fest, an exhibition of more than 200 of his Etch A Sketch creations.

“I came out of the womb drawing,” says Brown. But it wasn’t until he began playing with an Etch A Sketch in bars while living in Chicago that he discovered the medium’s potential as an artistic tool.

Still, sketching on the toy was little more than a creative hobby.

“I never thought it would be anything until I landed here and got a job at Psychobabble,” he says.

During downtime between slinging lattes at the Los Feliz coffee shop, Brown would play with a pocket Etch A Sketch. His highly detailed sketches and lightning-fast speed caught the eyes of his customers, and soon he had his first Etch exhibition hanging on the shop’s walls.

All the while, he continued to frequent local watering holes, crafting portraits and highly detailed scenes just for fun. At one of these gigs, he met actor Kiefer Sutherland. “I was Etch A Sketching and he said I should be a painter or real artist,” says Brown. Another night, a customer offered $20 for one of his Etch A Sketch drawings.

After that first sale, Brown began trying to capitalize on his skill, doing Etch A Sketch portraits at parties such as Martin Scorsese’s Oscar fete, teaching Etch A Sketch lessons to children, and helping other Etch A Sketch artists increase their speed as part of his Etch U business venture.

Brown was also picking up work as an extra, and his sketching caught the attention of celebrities, including Susan Sarandon, Goldie Hawn and Ruda Lee.

“I can draw realistic drawings and paintings in no time at all, but everyone’s interested in Etch A Sketch,” says Brown, who comes from an artistically inclined family in Enid, Okla.

“Everyone seems to respond to the Etch A Sketch and the compositions that can be created because they think it’s impossible,” Brown says. “The reason people can’t do it is because it unites the analytical side of the brain with the artistic side.”

Brown estimates that there are about 20 other artists across the country working in the medium, including George Vlosich, whose renderings of baseball players have garnered national media attention.

That wasn’t exactly what the Ohio Art company had in mind when it first began mass producing the Etch A Sketch child’s drawing toy on July 12, 1960.

Invented by Arthur Granjean and originally called L’Ecran Magique, or the magic screen, an image is created when users turn a pair of knobs, manipulating pulleys and levers inside the device to scrape aluminum powder and plastic beads off the inside of the viewing window. What is left behind is an etching that disappears when the device is shaken.

The sketch pallet comes in varying sizes and shapes, from the heart-shaped “Love to Sketch” model to the classic, which is 9.75 by 8 by 1.75 inches. The pocket-size model that Brown often works on is just 4.25 by 3.75 by .5 inches.

Brown would like to see another evolution of the toy -- a tool geared specifically toward artists.

“I’d like to have a picture frame window size, so I could make huge pieces,” he says. “And a darker, bolder line that would allow for better composition.”

The festival will feature portraits of celebrities Brown has met and worked with, re-creations of masterpieces by Andy Warhol and other pop-art luminaries, and portraits of Michael Jackson that capture his various surgically enhanced iterations as well as the likeness of his beloved pet chimp, Bubbles.

Brown works with the pocket version of the toy because he finds it better suited to creating fine detail. His friend Abbi Cooke runs a company called the Archivist that preserves Brown’s art.

Preservation is sticky, delicate work -- and anything but child’s play. To freeze an image, the toy is first carefully placed in a vise. Next, a hole is drilled in the back and a suction device is used to drain the filling before the image is fixed with a spray adhesive. Draining the filling alone takes an hour, and the drying process takes many more.

Afterward, the toy still has to be handled carefully; the process, which Brown and Cooke continue to refine, is not entirely permanent. Not yet, anyway.

“My goal is to have the process down so well that you could throw it across the room and it would stay,” says Brown.

So those attending the show can look, but don’t touch.

All proceeds from the event will be donated to help build a no-kill dog shelter that the Canyon News, a community newspaper that emphasizes coverage of the deaf community and canine causes, is helping to create. Brown illustrates a regular feature for the paper.

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Etch A Fest

Where: Del Mar Theater, 5036 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Today, all ages, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Party, 6 p.m.-2 a.m., includes one-woman shows by Sheryl Arensen and Terri Simmons; 11 p.m. performance by Critter Jones; midnight dance party with DJ Brett.

Cost: $20

Info: (323) 463-3850 or (323) 463-3971 or www.etchu.com