Emily's blog is on hiatus for the moment...

...how's this for a caricature? :-)

Sweet 16!

On Saturday night, I had a blast drawing at a Sweet 16 party held in a very hip restaurant that featured interesting minimalist decor and conveyor-belt sushi! The birthday girl and all her friends were total sweethearts:

The lighting which made the atmosphere so trendy necessitated the use of my battery-powered clip-on lamp. The restaurant really had no areas roomy enough for my easel, (let alone near an electrical outlet for my standard lighting) so I sat in the lounge and used my clipboard, drawing a few girls at a time...

The girls sat at the super-long table (back right)

One nice thing about being in a crowded restaurant is that a few people who were not party guests asked for business cards! After I'd drawn the girls and the new 16-year-old's brother and parents, the management of the restaurant asked me to stay on and draw them, as one was leaving due to a promotion. So here they are!

I love my job....I think I've mentioned that a few times on this blog :-)

Jazz Festival preview party

Last night, I was part of the ambiance/entertainment at the preview mixer for the upcoming Chester County Jazz Festival, being presented by Sugarbaby Events. For openers, we first got to enjoy (video snippet below!) hearing Henderson HS's Honors Jazz band:

It's becoming a social-media-savvy world we're living in: the big screen carried a live image of Tweet Chat, people were encouraged to Tweet ( #chescojazzfest) about our evening and we could see it right there bigger than life. Of course, I did too:

Now for some faces from the easel:

I drew her bosoms well--but I missed this gal's dimple...I'll have to see if I can connect with her (through social media, of course!) and fix that somehow!

 The last band of the evening was smoooooooooth jazz. :-) (video snippet below, too)

See you this summer at the Chester County Jazz Festival! June 30-July 1 in West Chester, PA!

Acrylic painting FINISHED...

Oftentimes, people ask caricaturists: "Do you do real art?" (The more tactful will say,"Do you do any other kind of art besides caricatures?) I usually say no, that I stay busy with caricature, and besides I love the art form. Once in awhile, I'll venture into other genres, but those projects tend to stay on the back burner...not today, though! 

This is a personal commission that I procrastinated on for a year and a half...

Nekoda's Jungle 24"' x 36" acrylic

It's also the biggest canvas painting I've ever done, with a cast of...many. It's even varnished--that was the only thing I had to buy to get it done. (Some of my acrylic paint tubes are decades old and they are still usable!)

Go backwards in time with me:

The boar and the deer had been added at various visits by my friends Celestia and Marlo.

Above: This is the state it stayed in for a long time....About two weeks ago I decided to finish it---adding butterflies, beetles, a hippo, a panther, a cheetah, a lion, a zebra, a sloth, a gazelle, a hyena, and various flowers. 

More canvases now await me (not this big!)