$KETCHY SCHEME PAYS OFF
Honestly ‘bad’ art
They’re the worst portraits money can buy — he guarantees it.
Big Apple street artist Ricky Brown spends as little time as possible creating “terrible” portraits with a Sharpie that even he admits are “bare-minimum doodles.”
And his work ethic — or lack thereof — is paying off.
“On a good day, I can walk away with like $1,000, which is crazy considering they’re really bad. I’ve probably drawn 10,000 at this point,” Brown, 24, told The Post. “I just accumulate a lot of money during the summer and then just coast through the winter.”
His “Really Bad Portraits” are done on printer paper, take him just 60 seconds to draw and sell for $5 a piece.
In addition to the single portraits, the Bed-Stuy denizen offers a $100 lifetime membership.
“It’s the best bang for your buck — but only one person has ever bought it, and then I never saw him again,” Brown said. “I was hoping he would constantly follow me around day and night, hounding me for portraits, but I guess he just wanted to support a local artist.”
Unlike caricature artists, who aim to deliver hyperbolic but somewhat crafted cartoons that can take as long as listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird,” Brown admits his work is more akin to a grade school art class, with squiggly lines and malformed features.
“They’re like a child’s drawing,” he said. “Super quick and crummy — that’s the gold standard for me.”
When Brown set up shop at Washington Square Park on Wednesday, his first customer was Lee Klein, a poet, essayist and curator. Lee said Brown’s interpretation made him look much younger and didn’t include his “crazy amblyopic [lazy] eye.”
“I feel like this has kinda got the zany spirit of me,” Lee, 56, said of the depiction. “His truncation is pretty good. By doing the worst portraits, being self-effacing, eventually some gallery will come here and rebrand him.”
As The Post left the park that day, Brown continued to hawk his art to tourists and NYU graduates in black caps and purple gowns.
“They’re terrible, I promise,” he shouted.