Exaggerations

When I came back from my weekend on Thursday, I was determined to take my sketches up a level. I was making a lot of sales in previous weeks, but I was starting to feel like the quality of my sketches was lacking. I was getting great likenesses, but for some reason, people weren't gravitating to me to get drawn. I had a few customers have my sketches re-drawn by other artists and felt like if I was going to have my sketches rejected, then they were going to be as a result of extreme exaggeration and not as a result of taste. On Sunday, I only drew 11 people, but I made all 11 count and all of them were masterpieces. I had two clients question the likeness based on taste, but only one of them walked off before I finished the drawing. My camera was out of batteries on Sunday, so I couldn't take any photos, but I told the best ones to email me a copy. Be sure to take a look at how much I pushed things compared to previous weeks. You won't be disappointed.

This was the first sketch that I drew to kick off my week. I don't particularly like Harry Potter, but I enjoyed the energy that this character allowed.

Nice Indian Couple from Northern California

This little girl was so full of energy, that I never thought I would get a decent likeness. She was running around the booth and carrying on, but I think that I was able to capture her.

These people watched me draw the previous two sketches and had to get drawn by me.

This lady was a really great sport. She wasn't really happy about how I made her look, but her husband loved it so much that he got drawn as well.

This kid brought it back at the end of the day and wanted more waves and clouds in the background. He wanted it to look like the gangster above, but I'm not really sure what he expected.

3/4 View

I asked if he wanted to get his kids drawn and he said, "No, just me." I couldn't believe it, so I hooked him up.

She said that she wanted to be drawn smiling, so I gave her a huge smile.

One of the best babies, I've ever drawn.

These two South African boys were very polite and talkative. I liked the robot on his hat.

Taylor and I split this family. He drew the kids and I drew the parents. I was feeling competitive so I tried to really exaggerate their features, especially the fu manchu.

Her husband made her get drawn, she looked at it and laughed and when I asked to take her picture, she walked off.

I love that she got drawn with a ukulele.

Christian Bale

From a picture of a previous customer.

Caricature Stamp Machine

These days off are going to be so good for me. I think I've hit a brick wall in my park sketch. I can still do brilliant caricatures of adult and teenage couples and even the parents in a family sketch look great, but maybe it's because I draw 100 kids a week that they are all starting to look the same. On both Saturday and Sunday this week, I had a rejected sketch, because the parents didn't think that it looked like the child. They were wrong and just liked the style of the other artist that I was working with, but they were trying to be a polite as possible and ended up upsetting me anyway. I might flip through my Joe Bluhm book a few times over the next couple days and hopefully break out of my slump. Here are some sketches that I did this weekend. Some of them are pretty good, but some are just mediocre. Enjoy...

These kids were a lot of fun. I'm not really a HUGE fan of AC/DC, but I love drawing kids as Angus Young. Perhaps it feels a little rebellious to draw kids at a children's theme park as icons that have song titles like "Highway to Hell". Meanwhile the other kid wanted to play keyboards and I couldn't help, but draw him like Hall and Oates playing a Yamaha Keytar.

I love drawing couples and since I've been drawing an exorbitant amount of children, this drawing was super refreshing. They were really nice and full of energy. So I hooked them up. I even put the dragon coaster in the background.

I think that I can still draw beautiful asian girl caricatures. This one turned out exceptionally well, considering the amount of stress that I had that day. I didn't take a picture of the girl, but check out the sketch.

I was really bored when I first opened the booth and there wasn't a guest in sight, so I drew this t-shirt for my band.

They all wanted to be musicians. I love drawing musicians.

I love the suit, that I gave him. It is super loose and cartoony. He chose my caricature over a Joker facepaint, so that was a small victory.

GI Joe.

I've drawn a million jedi's over the last 4 years, but why is this one special? Because it proves that I can still get a good likeness.

It's not typical that I will draw more than one caricature of a child in a day, but what is even less typical for me is to draw one of the caricatures as a gender confused princess. The skeleton is really good in my opinion. It is cartoony yet proportional.

This was the last caricature that I did on Sunday. I only drew 9 people that day, which was heartbreaking considering I drew 35 people the day before. When I drew this sketch, I wanted to prove that I could still draw a great caricature with a good likeness of the person. I drew her really slow and really took my time, because I felt like it was the only way to compete with Taylor visually, because he draws half as fast as me.

Thanks for reading and checking out my blog.