Huh ~ Makes me wonder why I keep studying/practicing. My previous Party Caricatures were fine.

I had thousands of emails piled up here. Today I tried to clear some away to clear up Space on my Computer. Glad I noticed at least One email that had some interesting Pictures. Opened it, and found four Caricatures of Women that I had drawn at a Party back in 2015. That's 4 Years ago. It was quite fine. I particularly like the way I indicated the woman's body in the Black/White one ~ the body just showed up by (default?).

I booked a last-minute Event just a couple of hours ago. To draw at a Party of Teenage Boys. Just to keep my Zone, I decided to draw some teenage boys. So I Googled it and found a random photo of 4 teenage boys to use as reference. I quickly drew them ~ because it's almost 3am, and I want to go to sleep.

Looking. At first I wondered ~ Is it any better than the ones I drew 4 Years ago? It is more Active. But is that Better? Or just Different. I draw differently every day.

Then I realized that it's like going to the gym. Just because I Can do it, doesn't mean that I don't have to do it regularly to 'stay in shape'.

Getting back into my regular Exaggerated Caricatures tonight. Staying afloat.

I randomly chose a couple of photographs from my website to use as Reference material. Turned out that I could still come up with something else ~ even though I felt like I had drawn Perfect Caricatures at the Parties.

I'm wondering if there's an unending amount of different things we can do for each face. An unending amount of different decisions we can make each time. We're affected by different things that we see when we're drawing live, and we're affected by different things going on in our studies when we're drawing on our time off.

The people didn't look any different tonight, but I was able to come up with different ideas since I wanted to draw something different. I was probably affected by the desire to please the Guests when I was drawing at the Party. And I was probably affected by my current interest in drawing the weights of objects lately. I didn't set out to do that. But I think that's what I'm seeing in my drawings for the past few days

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

When I look through the Thousands of Photos that I haven't had time to post here yet, I can still remember the Parties where I drew them. Even though I go to several Parties every week. Even though I may have only been with these people for 5 or 10 minutes. Our interactions still affect me.

I'll post one of them now. I drew this Caricature several Years ago. At a House Party. I was drawing in the Living Room. Practically everybody in this Family was Blonde and So Beautiful ~ and I felt very comfortable with them. I figure that if I can remember the Party when I see the Caricatures, for sure Party Guests remember the Event when they see (or display) the Caricatures. Good times: