This is one of the pictures that I posted at facebook several years ago, but I hadn't posted it to my website until now. Apparently I was into the same sort of simplifying back then that I've been developing now.

The first picture is an Exaggerated Caricature. The 2nd picture is when I simplified it even more.

I know what I want, and I get in and out of it along my journey. Respecting my path, my abilities and my comfort in doing it and my facility with seeing what to do got better and better over time. But I was interested in Simplified Cartoons with Nice Line Quality all along

Easy-going. Easy does it.

I work so hard. I never scrimp on Quality. So when I'm asked to draw more than one person in a picture during a Party, I've been feeling like I have to give the situation the intense focus that it needs to coordinate everyone's faces together. I feel it as an intense pressure. Intense physical pressure out to every cell of my body. Intense brain pressure focusing In onto this one project. And I have to hide it. To keep the Party Attitude. To look and act light and easy even though I'm feeling such Pressure.

So here I am in my Studio ~ just focusing on how to Simplify my approach. Only for those times when it's just not reasonable to give it so much intensity. These are Party Drawings. Supposed to be light and easy fun. For references, I used random photos taken from all over this blog.

My first attempt was to just draw simple basic Caricatures ~ one at a time ~ Not bothering to determine ahead of time how the Faces will fit together. In other words, giving up what makes me Special.

I ended up sticking in the faces whereever I could. It could work. I feel like people would be pleased with it. But I have to do better than that. I would Not cut back on my hard work if this is how the Group Caricature would turn out. I don't feel like it's enough Quality:

So then I imposed just a little bit of placement planning onto the Composition. I would usually figure out at this point how the individual shapes would all fit together, but I didn't do that this time. In order to Simplify my focus. I just predrew an Oval for each placement, and then I did my Simple Linework Basic Caricature. And I trusted that I would be able to coordinate it all together into one cohesive picture before it was all finished.

And I feel really pleased with it. Not as wildly Ze-Ahrt that I could do if everyone cooperated for as long as I want while I seriously FOcus, but still a happy fun cohesive picture of the people all together. And that's what they want at a Party. Light and easy and fun

And then I was getting tired. It's literally time to go to sleeep.

I figure this is a good time to see how quickly I can draw a 5 person Caricature.

Oh. This took me almost 25 minutes ~ even though I did it with No thinking, No predrawing, No shading. Not bad ~ it is more than 10 Faces per hour. But perhaps I can develop a way to do it even Faster. Some other time. hmmmmm