Two from tonight...

The Phillies lost but I had fun drawing...

September is in the air...

There were some remarkable faces/stories in front of my easel last night...
This adorable little girl was so shy at first, that her dad sat her on his lap and told her I was drawing HIM. When I showed her the picture, she giggled, "That's NOT YOU, Daddy!"

This drawing kept getting laughs from passersby, so the girl was getting really antsy, especially when one uninformed bystander shook her head disapprovingly and told her it looked pretty silly. So I pointed to the sign, and said, "Well, it DOES say caricatures, not portraits!" The bystander said, "Oh! It's supposed to be like that!?"
Sigh...
When I showed the couple, they were happy--and relieved!

This couple--a brother and sister--had beautiful accents. They were visiting from Wales, UK. (They did tell me the city, but to me it was not only non-pronounceable, but also un-spellable.) The best part was, seeing their faces when I asked them if they'd ever been to Alton Towers theme park in England, (they had) where I have some friends among their caricaturists!

Quadruple!

They were pretty thrilled with their drawing...enough to invite me to their restaurant for a free meal!

Couples of various sorts...

Chest hair-- I mean---Father and daughter:

Mother and son:

Long-married couple: (she jokingly asked me not to make him "too Italian" !?)

Company Picnic, with bees

September gigs are fun, except for the bees buzzing around my easel. Had a few of those today! (festivities were in a wooded park next to a stream). Here are a few of my subjects:

A run on ballpark BW's

For some reason, I was inundated with requests for black-and-white drawings at the Phillies game last night. This seems to happen once in a while, when you get a crowd with a follow-the-leader mentality watching. They like how it looks, maybe don't realize there is also a color option, or just don't want to spend the extra to get color. I think there is also a correlation to how the team is doing--right now, there is not much hope for the Phighting Phils to make the playoffs.

Muggy night in Baltimore

The Orioles hosted the Red Sox last night so I headed down to draw in the late summer twilight...
This couple traveled all the way from Iowa to see the game and head on to the beautiful beaches in Delaware.

More Degas Sketches..

I am still working on the Aug/Sept NCN Face-off, and got some very good pointers from the judges. Here are the current results. The next stage is to paint it in Photoshop.

Out-of-studio caricature

On a perfect, gig-free Labor Day weekend, I still managed to get some artwork
(caricature from photos) done in the company of wonderful friends, in a most peaceful, soothing place...
Here's the artwork:
A foreman father and his two sons...

And here's the place: (thank you Barb!)

Offending the Masters, Part 2

Here is a revised sketch of Degas. One of the judges felt I should try to be less subtle in my exaggeration, so I enlarged the eyes and made the mouth area smaller. I'm not sure about it... but trial and error is usually helpful. He also said it takes going through the 90% of bad ideas to get to the 10% good ones...