August 8 -15

It was a long two weeks at MP and Legoland and I'm not sure how I made it through. I was starting to really get stressed out, because I wasn't drawing well and I didn't have time to balance my work and relaxation time. I didn't have my camera on Monday, so the week started off on Wednesday, the 8th.

August 8th

This girl and her little brother insisted on having their eyes bug out every time I looked at them, so that's how I drew them. Their family seemed to think that I drew the little boy super cute, but I jacked up his eyes a little.


August 9th

I've been drawing after J. a lot when I have been coming in after work and people insist on having their kids drawn by him until he completely exited the park. However, I was able to sneak this little boy past him. I feel like I really got his nose and grin and he was pretty happy with it as well.


These kids were pretty fun to draw. I think this might be the cutest baby that I've ever draw and I don't think that pacifier hurt the drawing any. I would've liked to have drawn the little boy as well as I drew his sister, but I figure if I can at least get one cute face out of the two, I didn't do too bad.


This kid just came from Hawaii, so I drew him on a desert island.


I love drawing families, but I still haven't really come up with a good way to get everyone to fit in there very well. The youngest child always looks good, but by the time I get to the father, there is almost no room to work with. I am almost tempted to start with the father and move from right to left...at least the baby won't have the biggest head...



These kids were pretty cool. I don't think they could decided right away what they wanted to be drawn as. I think at first the parents wanted to get the whole family drawn, but it was getting late and they just got the boys. I think that I might have suggested a rocket and I hooked them up with something that would've looked modern in the 1950's.



August 10th

This family dispersed before I could take their picture, but it was a decent likeness...they all seemed to like it.


Mario and Luigi. The kid on the right assumed that I had never drawn Mario in my life and that I had never even see a picture of him, because he felt the need to even tell me that Mario had an "M" on his hat and Luigi had an "L".


This one was pretty typical and unexciting, but I think that it looked cute and I captured her smile pretty well.


Father/Son, Mario/Luigi's have become my favorite caricatures to draw. It seems like it's been pretty recent that I've been getting these requests, but they seem to turn out well every time. I stayed an hour later to finish this one and I listened to them talk about staying in some luxury hotel and having a Lexus, a Jaguar, and a pimp SUV back in Texas, but they didn't even let me keep the 6 cents change.


August 11th

Saturdays at Castle...Boy, do I loath them. As mentioned in previous posts, the Castle stand just sends out bad vibes. Whether it's the fact that there is never any customers until after noon and you opened at before ten or the fact that the person coming in at noon is never there when they are supposed to be, the whole day just seems too long and I just want to leave as soon as I get done opening. As a result of my boredom, I drew this guitar and a few simple bodies on some scrap cardboard to pass the time. I didn't think that they looked too bad, so I took pictures of them.










The day started to pick up and I sort of zoned into my own little world once I started drawing people. This kid had his tongue out the whole time, so I drew it that way. He looks a few years older in the caricature than I would've liked, but he'll grow into it.



The likeness of this one was a stretch, but I liked my subtle execution of the pregnant bikini and the cute baby with a shovel and a pale. They ended up getting a matte and frame, so I didn't mind that it didn't look much like them.


I never know what they are going to think when they see how I draw their teeth, if the smile gets bigger, I did a good job.


This kid didn't speak English, so his mother translated to me that he wanted to be riding on a yellow dirt bike and have long hair blowing in the wind to show how fast he was going. His brother made fun of him and said that he looked like a girl, but I don't think he minded.


Father/Son, Mario/Luigi...Classic.


It was good likeness. She looks cute.


This guy was with his daughter and he really wanted her to get draw. She resisted for awhile and he said that he would get one if she got one. He wanted to be drawn as a Klingon and although I had only drawn Vulcan's before, I knew this would be a challenge. I am not a Trekkie. I haven't even seen all the motion pictures, but I did see Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country. That movie was filled with Klingon's and so I used that movie as my reference. I drew the uniform like in the movie and the guy's wife told me that I drew it wrong and I had to fix it...I got it figured out eventually and he loved it, but you've gotta cross your fingers when you are crossing someone with a sci fi character that you know nothing about...


This is his daughter. Good likeness...I like the dolphin as well.


I think that this was his son. He was super quiet.


By the time, I got to this drawing. I had enough of working at the Castle stand and my sketches felt like they were getting worse and worse. Luckily, T. showed up from his gig and I was able to bail out of there with little to no conflict.



August 13th

I got Sunday off and when I came back in on Monday, I was still exhausted. The red-head had a really goofy face and while I was drawing her, I wished that I had the skills of Joe Bluhm, so that I could really draw her ridiculous. I did my best and they were both happy.



This girl seemed frozen, so I tried to draw her that way.


I love drawing caricatures at a theme park in the summer because you get to hear interesting stories about people. Apparently, the guy on the left is the long lost brother of the guy on the right and they just met for the first time, earlier in the week. They seemed really different, but I think that makes for good caricatures. At the end, when I offered them a matte and a frame, their mother says, "I don't need a frame. I can frame pictures myself. I am a serious artist..." At first, I was sort of offended that she was judging my talent as an artist, by the way that I choose to make a living, but then I figure she had to be poor and unemployed or else I probably would've heard of her.


August 14th

Just another Jedi.


She turned out kinda cute, but I didn't think it was a good likeness.


I felt like a little exaggeration...it was one of my best over the past two weeks.


August 15th

This guy was pretty cool. He wanted to know where the cool people hung out in San Diego on Wednesday nights. I had no idea, I was working.


This kid approached the stand with 3 other kids and his mother. I was willing to give them a discount. If you get 3 kids drawn, then I'll throw in the 4th one for free. They only wanted two of the kids draw and felt like a fair counter offer was Buy one, get one free...it's not hamburgers, it's caricatures.



These fellas were cool...They had a hard time sitting still and the little one was a little cranky, but I think that I got a good likeness.



I think that her grandpa was Santa Claus.


It seemed like it took forever to finish this one, but I eventually got it done.



Fin.

August 4th

I worked up at the castle caricature stand on Saturday and as soon as I got there, I just wasn't feeling it. There's just something about the atmosphere up there, that just brings me back to bad memories from past summers. I was working with M. (probably for the last time) and although working with her usually puts me in a good mood, I was rather cynical all day and part of it was because no one wanted to get drawn. At KPT or First Aid, I am a selling wizard, but at Castle, I am just a jester dancing for coins. I didn't draw many people or get very good sales, but among the sketches that I sold, I feel like I got a few good likenesses.

He wasn't the first person that I remember drawing that day, but it was definitely the drawing that I was most pleased with. This dude looked like he could kill me on any given day, but he was from the midwest (Detroit) and I knew that we shared a bond.

This kid was pretty fun to draw. I felt like I had already drawn him earlier in the year as Yoda, but I didn't give him the ears. This kid insisted that I give him big green ears...so I did.

After the kid that wanted to look like Yoda, this kid came up from behind and said, "Don't draw me with big ears or horns." He was pretty cool...He gave me a $3 tip.

I don't really remember what I did after drawing this young man, but after having a large part of my day being filled with relatively unsatisfying drawings, the thinning of the crowd and a failed prank, I had decided that I wasn't going to draw any more that day. It wasn't a terrible day as far as sales go, but it was the whole castle feel that was getting to me. I am scheduled to work there this coming Saturday as well, so hopefully I will break free of my castle curse and really kick some a$$.

The much anticipated post for the dates July 23-28

Since I started drawing three days a week, I have less time to update the images on my blog. I know that I have an excess of fans that anxiously await my quips and incredulous statements, so I will try to update it more often.

July 23

I drew this kid's head really large. I decided that I was going to start with the eyes on a few sketches and see if I had more luck getting good exaggerations if I started from the inside of the face instead of the face shape.

This couple was pretty cool. They got their kids drawn earlier in the day and they decided that they were going to get one as well. I started with the guy and then drew the girl. They loved the nose that I drew on him and she loved how big that I made her teeth.

July 25

This kid was probably the coolest person that I ever drew. We talked about Disneyland and Universal Studios and he told me about how he races super cross dirt bikes across the country and that he is the Southwest Champion. He loved the caricature and as he walked away, he gave me a $3 tip. Mad Props.

T. hustled these people pretty well. He got them in the chair, drew their faces, and sold himself a frame...They came back a little later and watched me draw the snowboard girl and heard me say that I could draw bodies for $5 and wanted me to re-draw their sketches. I didn't really like the way it turned out, but I think that I had a decent likeness on the little girl.

I don't draw cars very often, but when I do, they never turn out the way that they are supposed to. I figure that I would be better off just drawing a wedge with wheels like a boy scout pinewood derby car or a dune-buggy like Ned Flanders at the Super Bowl.

July 28

I started drawing on this day with the intention of getting some absolutely killer likenesses...I'm not sure where I was going with these next two, but her grandmother loved them.

I thought this girl turned out looking really cute. I'm not that good at drawing babies, but I think that this one was alright.

I liked the drawing of the kid on the right a little more than the one on the left.

M. drew her daughter like a mother pushing around some monkeys in stroller and then she decided that she wanted to get a caricature as well. She was really nice and later in the day she gave me her business card and told me to call her if I ever make it up to SF... ;)

Scottish people are the best. There is just something about the accent that makes me think about the toughest, rowdiest, group of people that you'll ever meet. These girls sounded a bit more Americanized than their father (who happened to think that the caricatures was great.)

The parents stood behind me and had a discussion in Spanish the whole time I drew his face and just as I started to put on color, they leaned over to me and whispered, "He looks so sad." I looked over and the kid and saw him with a frown and I said "Uh huh." They said, "In the picture, he looks sad." I sort of looked at the kid and looked back at the parents and thought, "Well, I didn't make him sad, he was sad when he sat down."

Corn rows...will I ever be able to draw corn rows?

July 30

I just wasn't in the mood for drawing on Monday. I just sort of wanted to stand there and stare out into space. I started talking to B. about people that we've drawn over the weekend and demos. I ranted and raved about how he didn't have any of my demos up and that I needed to be able to tell the kiddies that I could draw well enough to have art on the wall of the stand. He said that he hated hockey players, so as a prank, I drew this bearded man as a hockey player.

Not that I don't love drawing people during the day, but the last people that roll up and double your sales, just hit the spot and make you glad that you came in for 3 hours on a Monday night, instead of laying on the couch. These kids were a riot. I thought it was funny about the hockey jersey, baseball cap, and soccer...I think that I rocked it...the family did too, they bought a matte and frame.

Peace out...