#24 Focus

This was an interesting one, and something I needed to learn. The example was, again, done in pencil, but the lesson applies to other media. The instructor called this exercise "leaving the forehead alone," but I interpreted it rather as knowing how to focus on the important part.

This woman's face contains a lot of wrinkles and laugh lines, and the instructor's point was that if you strove for complete verisimilitude, the lines take over the face and you don't get to the essence of the person. Her solution was to completely leave the forehead out of it.

That's a little bit harder to do in watercolor than in pencil (I think), but I did take her point, so I left the forehead a focus of light, with no lines marring the surface, merely suggested her rather wispy hair, and focused the viewer's attention completely on the facial expression and particularly on the eyes. I also followed her example by not painting the details of the shirt, but rather suggesting them with light and shadow.

I think the result is a pleasing resemblance in which you see the personality of the model and not every minute detail of her face.

I messed up the proportions of the glasses big-time, but tried to make them recede to become just part of the visual focus on the eyes.

#30Faces30Days
"Opal" on Sktchy
Uniball pen, watercolor, in Bee sketchbook

#21 Nuance

Today's exercise was about creating nuance by using only one color (or shades and tones of one color) to do the portrait. This model was a bit moody looking, so the color was blue. I used cobalt, ultramarine, and some deep blue-green-black color from my palette of Paul Jackson's paints, can't remember the name but I love the color.

This was a useful exercise. It really made me focus on what are mid-tones, what are darks, where the whites should be left. The fact that she had blonde hair was also an interesting challenge, one which I don't think I quite achieved.

And for some reason, although I faithfully copied the tiniest whites in the eyes in their exact locations, in the photo she is looking directly at the viewer, but in my picture she is gazing off somewhere else. I have yet to solve that trick with the eyes, and never know where they are going to be looking.

#30Faces30Days
"Anna" on Sktchy
Pencil, watercolor, in Bee sketchbook

Scrunchy #20

I don't believe I have ever drawn a person who was holding a facial expression this extreme! The idea, once again, was crosshatching in one color, and although I didn't plan to do anything but paint his portrait, because I did the drawing first in black ink and because all of his hair was black, I did end up doing quite a lot of inadvertent cross-hatching to achieve that! His hair was thick and black, and I needed to go over and over some parts to get it to feel right.

When I draw people, I almost always begin with the eyes, but this time I started with those thick black expressive eyebrows. It felt like a weird  place to start, but with his screwed-up expression it was the natural place that led outward to everything else. For once, I think the proportions are exactly correct!

Since it was a black and white photo, I decided I would stick to the plan, so I pulled out my trusty Daniel Smith Shadow Violet and did all the details in monochrome. I also went over his hair one more time with the paint, just to get it to feel more dense. I'm sure the faithful cross-hatchers would cry "Cheat!" but I don't care. I only want to capture the likeness, and I think I did that this time. More testing of the ability to draw teeth, too. A good challenge.

#30Faces30Days
Portrait #20—"Scrunchy" on Sktchy
Uniball pen, watercolor, in Bee mixed media sketchbook

P.S. I didn't win the Bean Recipe contest. So this face can represent my reaction to that, as well. 😆

Portrait #19

This week's lesson was a sort of negative space thing, where we were supposed to allow the dark background to define the lighted side of the face, and also let the shadowed side of the face stand out against a light background.

It was supposed to be in pencil, with cross-hatching, but Homey Don't Play Dat. For those of you too young to get this reference, here's a video:

And here is Marcel:

#30Faces30Days #19—Marcel @ Sktchy
Pencil, watercolor, in Bee multimedia sketchbook

Circus time

The other thing I did with my time between January 18-30, which I forgot to post about in the last blog entry, was attend two Performers' Showcases. Every year libraries all over the United States do Summer Reading Club for their child patrons (and some for teens), and in Southern California we have a couple of Performers' Showcases so that people who have "acts" for children can come, put on a five-minute demonstration of the contents of their "show," and be booked for performances by librarians.

The biggest one is in Orange County, and attracts maybe 75 acts and probably about 150 librarians. It's held at the Yorba Linda Community Center in their big auditorium, this year on January 23rd.

When I was a teen librarian, I attended these for the first couple of years and then realized that they are almost exclusively aimed at younger children, with the plethora of magicians, storytellers, musical groups, puppets, and such-like, and quit hoping to find teen programming there. Instead, I turned my focus to creating my own, which leads to the reason why I was at the showcases.

I decided that, as a summer side hustle, I would teach art and crafts workshops for teens. So I put together a series of postcards advertising such activities as contour drawing, beginning watercolor, T-shirt stenciling, and suminagashi (paper marbling), and I signed up for the showcases. At the Yorba Linda one I didn't get to present, but did have my own table (well a third of a table, like everyone else) where I could talk to passing librarians in the morning, at breaks, and during lunch, hand out my postcards and business cards, and solicit business. It was somewhat passive soliciting, since the majority of the librarians who attend are children's librarians and I had to rely on their good will to take the postcards back to their teen librarians at their branches. And some libraries sadly don't do teen summer reading programs. But I passed out at least 50 postcards at that venue, and am hopeful of some results.

On January 31st, I drove in the opposite direction, to the Ventura County Performers' Showcase at the Camarillo Library. This one was much smaller, with maybe 30 librarians and 30 performers, but at this one I got to stand up front and present my classes by talking about what I do and showing a powerpoint of some of the features of each workshop. Again, I passed out a lot of postcards, and am waiting for the results.

I was fortunate, a couple of months ago, to become one of the featured presenters of workshops for Los Angeles Public Library's year-long "L.A. Made" program, so I have already taught a few workshops at LAPL and  have about 12 bookings scheduled between July and October of this year (and even a couple for next winter and spring). But I'm hoping that these showcases will yield even more opportunities to teach and earn.

At the Yorba Linda showcase, you spend a lot of time sitting at your table waiting for people to come by, or biding your time during other people's performances, so I pulled out my sketchbook and captured a few images of the performers around me (above right, and below). The fact that most people have their noses in their cell phones makes it both easier and more boring! I drew a couple of their puppets, too, for comic relief.

More portraits are forthcoming!

Old business, new contest

If you follow me here, I imagine you've been wondering what happened: A portrait a day for 18 days, and then...crickets.

Two things:
One was a class for which I was readying myself. I contracted with Library Juice Academy to teach an online course in Young Adult Literature beginning today (February 3rd), and since I had never taught online before, I had to:

• Take my 10-week in-person class for UCLA and adapt it/pare it down to work in six weeks online;
• Learn to use Moodle;
• Learn how to record a voiceover lecture behind my Powerpoints, synch up voice with slides, export as an MP4 file, and upload to YouTube as a video;
• Battle with Microsoft over how to make this last process work on the Mac (the most challenging part! The upshot? "Sorry, we can't help you. Have a nice day.")

In the end, it turned out to be moot, because A. I didn't have enough sign-ups, and B. even if I had, California has passed some new law about how you can use and employ independent contractors and the upshot is, LJA is "disavowing" all its California lecturers except those who have already established their staying power and popularity to the point where LJA can put them on the payroll. So, the deal is off, no class. Honestly, I'm just as happy, because now I can take my work somewhere else and market it more lucratively, or hey, start my own school? And I did learn a lot, which I can export to other endeavors.

Thing number two was another contest entry! You will recall my map for theydrawandtravel.com. Well, that website has a sister site, literally—Nate Padavick runs TDAT, and his sister, Salli Swindell, runs theydrawandcook.com. This contest is for "Beans Around the World," and is co-sponsored by the U.S. Dry Bean Council (who knew there was such a thing?). There are four prizes of $1K apiece and, as with the map, always a chance to be in a book at some point.

I did my Bonanza Beans recipe, which is simple but tasty, and added on a bonus dish (Tennessee Corn Pone) that you can make with the leftover beans when you're sick of eating them on their own merits. Here it is:

It was interesting to see in what ways making the map was more challenging and in what ways designing the flow of the recipe took ingenuity. If you would like to, you can go to the website and "heart" my entry, though I don't know if it makes any difference to the judging! https://www.theydrawandcook.com/illustrations/15377-bonanza-beans ...and be sure to look at the other 339 entries, most of which are amazing! So many styles, so much talent, and so many innovative ways to eat beans! I'm sure the "Council" will be pleased with their results.

This week, since I'm not teaching, I plan to get back into some of my other projects, including portraits and decluttering. I'll get back to you.