Yesterday I was driving through Canarsie on my way to Park Slope. Took a break next to a vacant lot that had this wall around it. I was inspired by the real graffiti there:

I tried to make sense out of it - Just what did this kid do? I decided that he squashed the drunken-styled letters together, and added 'graffiti-stuff'. I wish I had some photos of the big graffiti productions here to show you. I tried to turn this graffiti study into a production-type image:

Good - especially the Wesley one. But it was too tedious to help me represent this attitude (when appropriate) at Caricature Parties. So I went back to the original reference, copied it, and tried to apply That:

Maybe I'm just making up stories, but I wonder if Grafitti might be 'ghetto'-art. Crowded conditions, not enough supplies so they had to squash their letters together on the paper....

It worked! Yesterday's studying worked!

Here are some photos from last night. I applied yesterday's studying - the couples were done with the amorphic shape principle. I also like the dark outline that I used to bring the two people together as 'one' shape:

We can compare them with some other pictures that I created recently - just about a week ago. I like these pictures too, but I prefer the new stuff that I did with amorphic shapes for couples. Here are last the pictures that I made before yesterday's studying:

Once again, I've found that you don't know what you're going to learn until you go through the studying.

You don't know what you're going to experience until you go there.

Art is Life.

Tonight I'll be working at a Sweet 16 in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Sweet 16. What will that be like? I've worked at many Sweet 16's. From my experience, I'd say that That means Couples. Not my favoriate thing to do.

But there's nothing like studying to make me look forward to the experience. Because if I study, I'll be working out a problem, an idea. So I'll look forward to using what I studied.

The first thing I did was to draw some couples directly. I wanted to remember to overlap them. And I decided that tonight, I'd either want them looking directly at me or both looking to the same side. Looking directly at me is the easiest for me - I don't need much more than an oval with an X for a predraw:

I've been wanting to work on my 3/4 views for 3-dimensionality, so I practiced that too (more of a predraw - if I do it enough, I won't need it so much):

Then I remembered something that I love to do. When it jumps out at me and I see how I can wrap thge 2nd person's face in the leftover space of the first person. This is most likely to happen when someone has a very long thin face.

But I decided to just make it happen for me. By drawing the 2nd person as an amorphic shape:

Ick. Something I didn't like about that. So I decided to make then BOTH from amorphic shapes! That came out real cool. Real 'caricatureeeee':

And I'm off! About to go have some fun at Alana's Sweet 16. Parties can be what we make them to be. Life can be what we make it be. Parties, Life, School, can be fun, interesting, boring, scary, magical..... We can choose to change our experience if we don't like the one we're in.

Beauty. What is it?

I was just laying around on the floor of my office. As usual, there are piles of pictures everywhere. (I admit it - not just on my desktop, not just on my walls, in my files or in my car, but also on my floor, in my pockets, in other rooms......)

Anyhoos, I was laying on the floor relaxing, daydreaming .... An old picture of a stranger that I had drawn was in my line of vision. Relaxing, I had been so pleased to see this 'woman' peeking over at me. She seemed so comforting. As though she understands me. As though I could trust her. Beautiful!

She spoke to my heart as beauty, but I know that she doesn't 'qualify' as officially beautiful. My interpretation makes her beautiful.

And here's a picture that I recently drew at a party where I made a 'standard' beauty. I like this image too, but I don't think that we all have to look like this to look beautiful: