Since my last post, many things have happened. As is the usual in life, if you live it.
We drew Dottie Lux, queen of burlesque and Red Hots Burlesque, at the Dr Sketchiest of Sketchy's. She was on fire that night, in one of her newest incarnations: Edward Scissor Fans. I went into the night feeling calm, we had plenty of volunteers to help set things up (thanks people!) and Dottie is wonderful to work with, so I knew that the night would go smoothly.
And I guess that I was on fire!
I've been using these Pentel brush pens and I'm in love. They make it easy to get a very expressive line, both thick and thin, and it is much more versatile than a single micron. In a short pose, you really don't have time to go back and forth between different pens to get different line widths. This pretty much does it all.
Dottie's wig was a very inspiring shape. It was big with dreadlock-ish curls, and most of my drawings started out trying to loosely define the shape. I think it was so much fun that everything else seemed to fall perfectly into place. I was mixing my favorite color (INDIGO) in with black and this worked well for outfit as well as skin.
So like I said, I was on FIRE. And I really like the work that I did. If you like it too, drawings are for sell/trade for AIDS/LifeCycle donations. Just leave me a comment.
We then had Randal the Fabulous pose with two distinctly different looks: Maxfield Parish Arabian nights/1960s draping/yoga AND Butler/naughty butler.
Randal was a feast for the eyes and his poses were AMBITIOUS and challenging. However, I only have a couple of drawings that I really like. I was a little more anxious walking into that night and wasn't feeling on my game.
Went out with on a spur of the moment drawing adventure with Diane and the SF Sketchers group as well on Saturday and did these little numbers.
We went up to Corona Heights and I had a great view of Sutro tower in the fog. It was a grey chilly morning, with not much contrast on the hillside. I wanted to bring in the curve of the road on the left and try to mimic some S curves with the dark trees as well. I also always admire the trees at the top of this hill. I find myself wanting to draw them every time I look at Sutro so I think that I had mentally already memorized their shapes!
I only had one of these drawings in me, so we went down to the Randall Museum afterward to get warm and draw animals.
I really love the guinea pigs and quails, the guineas were eating so they stayed still-ish. The quails were doing laps around their cages and didn't seem to be interested in posing for me. They have a puffer fish shape, round, with those adorable little feathers on top. They make cute noises. This was a fun and unexpected drawing day.
If you are looking for a drawing community, Laurie does a great job organizing SF Sketchers. They go out every week and can be found on Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/SF-Sketchers/
Also, if you are looking for any drawing groups, the SF Figure Drawing group on Meetup has something almost every night of the week. And we would love to see you at Dr Sketchy's!
Finally, to recap the Mom's Body Shop 'Have a Heart' Fundraiser, my friend Shelley started texting before noon that there was a line and it sounds like the crowd was non-stop all day. I went around 6pm and it took about an hour and a half to get tattooed. I'm getting a line of hearts up the back of my legs, like stocking seams. I figure that this is a good spot to add to if I continue to do AIDS/LifeCycle. This year I chose kitty hearts. I'll post a photo when I get a good one.
Last year, my friend Dave Groeschel's shop donated $1200 and it was a giant step towards raising my total to $6000. My team raised over $150,000 and total AIDS/LifeCycle raised over 14.2 million.
That is a great help to folks who need these services to stay alive and healthy, with dignity. It also goes a long way towards prevention, education and eventually stopping this disease altogether.
If you would like to help, please donate to: http://tiny.cc/Alice2014
