It's been quite a while since I made a Real Painting on Canvas. With tubes of Paint. And brushes that are like sticks that I hold in my hand.

So it was quite of trip to get back into it for this painting that I am making as a Gift for 2 Dentists. Based on the photo that they sent me.

First I got involed with an Oil Painting. Remembering so much stuff that I used to do. Such as starting with a neutral toned base so the lights would immediately be lighter than the background, and the darks would immediately be darker than the background. The Colors turned out to be way off ~ Not what I had in mind at all. Maybe it's because I was using Old Unlabeled Jars of medium. It was probably hard to know for sure which was turpentine, which was linseed oil, which was a mix, or something else..... Anyway, my dreams for the Painting were not apparent.

I realized that I WAS IMAGINING A BIG ACRYLIC PAINTING! So I started all over again (Man, Canvas sure has gotten expensive since I last made a painting). I had to buy new Acrylic Paints.... What to buy.... Make some space to Set Up in the Studio.....

And Voila! This is only the First Painting Session on the Acrylic Painting, but I feel thrilled with it. This is just what I wanted it to be..... Just what I am envisioning.

It feels so good to be back!

,,,,, to be continued.....

There are such subtle nuances that affect what we see. Such subtle nuances that affect a person's mood. Personality. So when we draw Caricatures, the result iS affected by so many choices along the way.

This isn't such a concern when we're drawing Party Caricatures. No time to study a person's whole personality. And no time to try out different lines. It's all just fun. We're all in the Party Zone.

But when making a Studio Caricature.... the choices become more critical. There's time to choose what we want to Caricature to be saying. Personality. We get subtle changes from each line ~ thicker? thinner? softer? harder? angular? curved? exactly where would that curve go?

Several years ago, I felt honored to draw the two Dentists from Preserve Your Teeth. They are quite respected among the Best Dentists around. (If you need dental help, I recommend that you email them to see what can be done: ESinfo@preserveyourteeth.com ).

These two Dentists are married to each other, and they work in the same office. Dr Urbankova, the one with the 'braid' does the general dentistry. Dr Engebretsen, represented here as the 'floating mask in the sky', does periodontics.

Very pleased with their pictures, but only the picture of the Dentist with the braid got framed and hung up. Because they wanted them both to be the Same Size. (I had drawn the picture Dr Urbankova on 8.5 x 11 paper. I had drawn the picture of Dr Engebretsen on 11 x 17 paper. So now they requested that I redraw the picture of the Dr Engebretsen onto 8.5" x 11" paper.

I did that:

Then I was imagining what it would look like in the Dentist Office. Both fine Carictures, but do they Match? When the pictures are hanging together? So I started playing around with making a full-face picture of Dr Engebretsen.

Nice. I gave them Both the new floating mask picture And the picture with the cap. But what I'm writing about in this post is the Subtle Nuances of drawing the Caricature. Here's a picture of what I went through before I settled on that excellent Full Face picture of Dr Engebretsen.

You can notice the subtle changes of things like:

even though I represented his 'Mouth' as a single line, where to bend it? Changes the expression.

and even though I chose 'Short Hair' to be indicated near the 'Baseball Cap', what type of line to use??

and I felt like the heart-shaped 'Adams Apple', although cute, was not a good idea in this case......

This was fun. I was hired to make some pictures for Bobcat One Man Band. I had to get myself into a playful mood to come out with this stuff.

Not sure if I ever posted this here before. But I needed Neeeeeeded, lol, a Self-Caricature today. I remembered this one that I liked so much that I didn't feel like drawing myself differently now.

It did take some effort to find it (re-find it?) on my computer, but it wasn't too bad.

You can click on the mp4 link to see a video of it being drawn. I felt like you would enjoy seeing it being created. It's especially fun because I duplicated and resized the Face Shape to use the Same Shape as the Nose Shape. I love being an Artist

• 20220210AlisonSelfCac.jpg 367.4K
• 20220210AlisonSelfCacVideo.mp4 1.4M