Client: How many can you do per hour?

Alison: Each situation is different - It's like asking how many words are you going to speak per hour. But I tell people to estimate ten faces per hour.

Client: I'm only having 8 girls.

Alison: It's the same price whether you want one or two hours. Would you like me to keep drawing even after everybody is done?

Client: Maybe you can draw a group picture after drawing each girl individually.

I am so nice. She's only paying the regular 11x17 price, but I'm thinking I'd like to bring a larger paper (which also means carrying a larger drawing board). I like to enjoy my work. Enjoy creating pictures.

AND I even decided to practice my lines before going to the party. Hmm, 8 on a page, how can I practice that?

I just picked 8 photos at random and imitated Party conditions as much as possible. I'm even hungry and a litl uncomfortable and using a marker that I wouldn't usually want. And it's the middle of the night already. Of course, this sort of stuff doesn't usually happen all at once, but a Party Artist has to be ready for it. To keep performing even if conditions aren't perfect.

And I ended up enjoying the exercise so much that I'm thinking I might prefer to do the group picture even before the regular individuals. I'm looking forward to this Party.

I did wish I didn't put on any of the less important necks - until the end. Because it caused a problem finding where to put the 8th face. Can you tell which one was compromised because of that?

Sometimes I'm asked to draw very fast and skip the color - to draw as many people as possible in a large party.

Here are some samples of that. Even though I love Color, I also like the pace of Black/White. Person, person, person, next!

for Party Entertainment Ideas Inc

Click once on any picture to ENLARGE. Click twice on it to return to blog.

Here's a quote, something I wrote on this blog. From September 27th.

"Makes me feel like I should be going in to something else - like cartoons. But we can get so scattered. I'm happily busy round the clock doing Caricatures, Face-Painting, and Balloons. Sometimes other work when it just lands at my doorstep."

I just came across this entry. And I realized that I just had one of those times. One of those times when I ended up 'doing something else'.

A producer from CNN recently asked me to make a small black/white 'Caricature' of him and his boss. He described the story of his boss telling him a story about using graphics in the olden days. Not the writer, I suggested ideas a few ideas for him.

But he had his own ideas, so I drew what He wanted.

Here's his response:
"The event we were at was CNN Heroes: 2008.
Maybe we could make that the title of the piece or incorporate it in the sketch.
Let's go with:
Boss ' In Providence we used cartoons for graphics.
Me ' Funny, I just use them to kiss up."





Here's the picture I came up with based on his photos. His ideas. The woman in the magazine was standing next to my client in his photo. [thumb "cnn.jpg" size="medium" /] This was a little outside my box. Outside of the things I usually do. As I wrote: "other work when it just lands at my doorstep."