Day 11 - Draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw, draw...

Day 11 of my tenure as the Artist in Residence at The Rey Center was marked by rain.

Lots of rain.

I mean - lots of rain.

So, rather than idly wandering around town seeking out gazebos, wine, and drowned Barbies–as I had been squandering my time before–I actually buckled down and got work done.

A lot of work.

I didn't quite realize how much I'd done yesterday alone until I photographed it all. Sadly, the pictures didn't come out as well as they could have, but here's yesterday's output.

I did some work on an incredibly tasteless, fart-intensive personal project.

Then I finished up the last of the rough sketches for an upcoming book with Islandport Press.

Then I worked on finished character designs for that same book. I'm really happy with these. I tried to give an idea of the personality of each kid through the body position.

This is Albert, the main character.

I'm sad to say that the rest of these characters remain nameless, although I think the Asian girl should be named Kim, after my intrepid editor at Islandport, Melissa Kim.

Please feel free to send along name suggestions for any of the kids. I'm always happy to steal other people's ideas.

Is it you, Melissa Kim? Yes!

And, that's it for today, y'all. Seems like a pretty good amount of work for one day.

Tomorrow,  I'm off in search of the remaining gazebos in town.

Yet Another New Portrait

I know...
I know...
I'm like a portrait machine, huh?
This is 12" x 9", graphite and chalk on toned pastel paper.
I'm thinking it would be cool to do a bunch of portraits like this, from self-portraits posted online.
I could call it "Hey! Look At Me!"

Another New Portrait

And, it seems I've already used this title for a post. It's a good thing that Google is here looking out for me.
This is a pencil drawing I did as a demonstration for a portrait class I'm teaching. This one took a couple of weeks. I'm still not totally convinced that it's finished, but it's pretty darned close...