Two days after Michael Brown, 18, was shot and killed by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, Eric Harris, also 18, accepted a challenge posted on Instagram to draw a portrait of the slain teen.
“Some guy popped up on my page said I should draw him,” Harris said. “The fact that somebody asked me to do it, I said, ‘Okay, I will.’”
He then continued drawing and made portraits of Brown’s parents, Lesley McSpadden and Michael Brown Sr.
“I felt bad that the mom had to go through what she did,” Harris said. “I don’t like seeing women crying, for the fact that they are our backbones and they complete us males and we need them to be strong.”
Brown, as the world now knows, was a recent graduate of Normandy High School with plans to attend Vatterott College. Harris is a recent graduate of neighboring Jennings High School and is taking classes at St. Louis Community College – Florissant Valley with plans to transfer to a state university and develop his drawing skills into a career in graphic design.
In the meantime, he hopes to earn money with his drawing skills. “I’ll try to make a living off it,” he said. “I can’t find a job right now.”
He considers himself an “all-rounder,” with interests in extreme sports, skateboarding, anime and photography. He ran track and cross-country in high school. He is a self-taught artist who has been drawing since 4th grade and drawing portraits since 10th grade.
Harris is friends with a cousin of the slain teen and attended the funeral on Monday with the family. “They tried to keep moving forward and treat it like it was just another day,” Harris said. He made enlarged versions of his drawings and presented them to the family as gifts.
He did not know Michael Brown personally, but did see him a couple of times while he was alive.
“He’s not really dead, in a sense,” Harris said of Michael Brown. “He’s not dead in spirit.”
Follow Eric Harris on Instagram at 0reckless_youth0 or email him at Eric.harris8799@yahoo.com.
