I got to get out of here already - 10-year-old's party in Brooklyn this evening. But I got glued to my own studies.

I used to study Animation from Mark Stansberry (creator of Puddin). And the first thing we did at each class was to draw a live model. I revisited one of those drawings today. My own self-imposed assignment was to add form to the old picture.

Here's the old picture, my first try of today, and then the one that I liked. I can see that the first one had plenty of form. But it was too tight, too closed.

I'm back ! You have no way of knowing this, but all the previous dates in this blog are out of whack. Looks like something happened when I got things going on My New Computer! Yay! A New Computer! But it's been about a Month since I've been able to post new stuff.

Let's see now. What would I like to show? Here's some Caricature work that I was doing on my spare time. From a photo. The first picture - what a washout. Why bother, I thought. So then I did picture #2. A nice plain Caricature. That passes, but it's not quite mambo baffo, if you know what I mean. Just a picture of the man:

I decided that I'd like to pull out the mouth area, so I made picture #3. What could I have been thinking?!?

Picture #4 is getting better. But it's kinda ugly:

Maybe I'm getting somewhere with picture #5.

But this isn't a job; I'm just playing around. I don't feel like fussing anymore. So here's the easier exaggeration, the standard one that would have been expected. If I was in a hurry, I could have just done something that looks Right. But this is me - I try new things. :

Still deciding. Oils or Acrylics. Oils or Acrylics. I just finished another Painted Caricature:

I struggled through with this using Acrylics because I love the bright colors of Acrylics. But the actual experience of using paints that dry so fast causing me to keep putting globs of hard gunky paint in the rag while I spend so much time nervously cleaning the brush which pulls me away from the Painting Zone is it worth it? I e I even tried an Acrylic paint Slow-Drying-Gel this time. Made it a litl better, but no where's near as pleasant to work with as Oils. I'm really an Oil Painter! Maybe they've come out with brighter Oil Paints now - It is 2008 you know. Anyway, I struggled with this picture until the very end. As I finished adding color to the white flowers, my mood finally lifted. Every time I see this painting, I can't help but smile.

And here's a quick picture of the girl's mother:

And a few more people that I drew at the last party where I brought my regular camera: