Dear Diary,
Well. On Sunday I did my first caricaturing event ever. It was a blast! And I got to sit right outside the toilet. (The seat of power.) My cartooned portrait drawing did not cause a child to cry or, far worse, kick me. For it was a Halloween party: there was candy, there were witches and patch-eyed pirates and pink princesses and sturdy knights and puffy red spaceships. Any kicker, perhaps dressed as the Patriots’ Stephen Gostkowski, whoever that is, could have blended in with the costumed crowd, circled back, kicked me again. But no, these were all sweet little kids who sat calmly in the unheated barn at Codman Farm (CodmanFarm.org), steadfast and stoic; unlike myself, who was hopped up on candy corn. It snowed.
Sadly, I could not share a stall with goats.
How come diary is spelled like dairy? Dear Dairy.
My cartooning teacher, the infamous Mat Brown (MatBrown.net) of the Building #19 stores, had invited me to come try my hand at caricaturing, and it all benefited the Decibels Foundation (DecibelsFoundation.org), a group helping children with hearing loss. (A couple kids had these circular techy looking things behind their ear, like they possessed robot superpowers and/or the newest gadget by Apple. Nifty!) Mat was amazing to watch. While I drew a face, maybe a neck and some hair, Mat would draw a child’s entire body, dressed as a pirate, plus a 5-masted sailing schooner.Mat did over 28 caricatures in less than two hours. Phew! Afterwards I counted up the 100 drawings I thought I did and they totaled nine.
Comments
That is all awesome!
Oops. My bad.
Hope you had fun though.It is fun to watch Mat draw ain't it? Don't worry about your drawing speed. The more you do, the faster you get.
Hey, what kinda drawing materials did you use?
So Bill, you're coming, right? Hee hee!
For anyone curious, to prep, the two weeks before, I watched many YouTube videos of professionals drawing caricatures. There's some great videos out there. And then I caricatured photos of childrens' faces for an hour a day. That gave me confidence and reminded me of some things: like, position the eyes below the middle of the page or the hair won't fit, and practice mouths because I can't do mouths. And I decided that I would only be drawing "busts" of people: heads, necks, and a severed torso. Knowing I'd only be the backup helped immensely. It's funny, I wasn't nervous beforehand, just curious what was going to happen. (My first victim, I urged her to wait a few more minutes so she could get her drawing done by Mat. She refused. I sighed. She sat down. I sat down. I hovered marker over page and thought, "Well, I wonder how this is going to turn out.") Drawing in front of people is not at all like the shy attacks I get when I've got to speak in public. The good news is that caricaturing is nothing like public speaking.
Bill, I had a pad of 11" x 14" bristol paper (40% off at Michaels!), a thick Sharpie, and a really thick marker for outlining. Plus, during it, Mat gave me a flexible-tip marker thinggie to fill in the blacks. Which was a good thing: witches and pirates dress completely in black.
I was at 10 to 15 minutes per drawing. It'll be great when I get faster. Also, my stuff is more like illustration than caricature. I can't bear to make fun of people.
I'm looking forward to my next caricaturing opportunity!