East Falls artist mixes love of Philly sports with Etch-a-Sketch nostalgia
For John Obringer, of Philadelphia’s East Falls neighborhood, a lifelong love of Etch-a-Sketch and Philly sports has led to a new venture that shakes up how fans celebrate their favorite teams.
John Obringer, of East Falls, has been drawing on Etch-a-Sketch toys — the classic shake-and-erase mechanical drawing board released in 1960 — since he was a kid.
“I’ve been sketching since I was really little. We would go on a lot of long car rides when I was a child, and my parents bought me an Etch-a-Sketch to use instead of video games,” Obringer told NBC10’s Matt DeLucia recently.
WATCH HEREAnd after putting the toy away for years, Obringer said he decided to dust off his old Etch-a-Sketch and wondered if he still had a knack for drawing with the toy.
“We moved into this house and we were unpacking boxes and I pulled it out,” he recalled.
Obringer then spent that summer etching, making images of some of the Philly sports logos that made an imprint on his life.
And, he found a cheerleader in his wife, Morganne.
She took pictures of some of his sketches — or, should we say ‘Etch-a-Sketches’? — and soon found fans of Philly sports were also fans of his work.
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“Immediately they’re like ‘this is the perfect gift for my boyfriend. I have no idea what else to get him. He loves Philly sports’,” Morganne said of the online response. “So, right away we had almost everyone sold.”
Obringer said he does Phillies logos and Eagles logos, along with images that tie together Philly fandom with a love of the city, drawing them all in Etch-a-Sketches over the course of several hours.
“It’s about eight hours of drawing,” he said of the time it takes to create a typical piece. “This helmet took me about ten hours.”
And, he said, there’s a lot of starting over because there is little room for error when using the two knobs to create masterpieces.
Now, Obringer creates works on Etch-a-Sketches and sells the works for about $50 a piece.
“A lot of love goes into each one of these sketches,” he said.