Finished drawing Jamie

24x30 pencil, charcoal

Finished drawing Keith

24x30 pencil, charcoal

Work in Progress

Working on Keith - he posed for me on Tuesday.  Don't know if I'll get any time today to finish him up. Still have a lot of detail to do, but he's coming along. 

My Neighbour Steve

24x30  Pencil, charcoal

Finished a drawing of my neighbour Steve.  He has quite the  myriad of hats with pins - and every one is cuter than the next!  He spent many years working at the CNR - Canadian National Railway.  He's quite the little character.

Someone bought a drawing at the community pARTners gallery and wanted to take it right away, so I think I'll put the drawing of Steve up in that space.  

Another 15 minutes of fame

Lucky me!  An interview with the very pleasant Devin Wilger from The News Review.  This newspaper usually comes out on Thursdays.

with Devin Wilger from The News Review

http://www.yorktonnews.com/section/YORKTONNEWS

Finished drawing

Sold

24x30
pencil, charcoal

Newspaper article

Article by Calvin Daniels of Yorkton This Week

 
http://www.yorktonthisweek.com/article/20131127/YORKTON0101/131129804/-1/yorkton/local-artist-finds-faces-fascinating


Or the article can be read on my Pencil Paparazzi Solo Exhibition page on this blog   
http://lestren.blogspot.ca/p/blog-page_9.html

Work in progress

Might be able to finish him up today if I can take the time.  Not too much to do now.

Work in progress

Was able to spend some time on my guy today - but ouch - my fingers are sore from the doing the tiny beads.

My 15 minutes of fame

Andy Warhol is often misquoted as having said "In the future everyone will have their fifteen minutes of fame".  His quote was actually "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."  He often intentionally corrupted the quote in a variety of ways - just to mess with people. 

My 15 minutes....

Calvin Daniels from "Yorkton This Week" interviewing me about Pencil Paparazzi

http://www.yorktonthisweek.com/

The article on Pencil Paparazzi should be in the newspaper next week (Wednesday, Nov.27) 

Work in progress

Got a special request from a good friend today.  Guess I can work on it - seeing as my other picture is in the library until the end of January.

This will be a challenge because the top half of his face has red paint on it, and there is white paint across the entire face.  I don't want it to end up looking unfinished on the bottom because its lighter.  I guess I'll see how it goes.  And omg - how does one draw in the dots??  A challenge indeed.  I think I'll sleep on it.

A little investigative work

Did a bit of investigative work and found out who my mystery guy is - for my "work in progress" drawing that is up at the Yorkton library along with the gallery show.  Just as I figured, he's a really nice fellow.

The work in progress is in a case beside the gallery door - not directly in the gallery with the other drawings.  In there, I have a write up about how I do the portraits.  I chose showing this picture because there are so many layers I'm working on at once.  The jacket will end up having about 6 layers on it, and the hand is still at the fist layer - so its a good representation of "working from the bottom up".
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Yorkton-Public-Library/190875202330

Today it was just Murphy's law

We had to sneak the smaller drawings home and re-back them, as they were warping a bit with the humidity change.  Its my fault - I put the wrong backing on the 18 x 24s - it was too thin and too slippery as well.  We spent the afternoon replacing the backings with proper ones, making new hanging mechanisms and whipped back to the gallery and put them back up.  The whole thing looks much nicer and neater now.  Live and learn I guess!  We'll go back tomorrow and check on them again.  I'll keep my fingers crossed that they remain as we left them.  http://lestren.blogspot.ca/p/blog-page_9.html

Work in progress

Still working on this guy.  Wasn't able to spend too much time on him today.  It took me a while to figure out how to do his jacket.  I've done leather jackets before, but this one is a bit different.  I am doing it layer by layer and "scribbling" fine lines in it with a very sharp 2HB pencil.  I then blend it with a q-tip and do more layers - blending, erasing, etc.   This seems to be fairly slow-going for me.  I usually finish a pic like this in a day, but its working out okay, so I'll keep at it. 

Might be hard to see the scribbles - but those scratches will hopefully look like creases in the leather, once they are darkened, lightened, blended in, etc. 

Work in progress

Well, here's a fellow I just couldn't resist trying out.  I don't usually do the happy party-going, smiley, teeth-showing type of drawing, but he's so cute - I thought I'd see what I could do with him.  That - and I tried to update my blog, add google plus, change a few things, and played around till I totally screwed up our server somehow - so I figured I'd best stay out of trouble for the rest of the day. 

outlined pic and blocked in a bit with charcoal and q-tip

Blocked in the jacket.  Used paper towel type thing to soften and spread

This is after a couple of hours.

Well, he's coming along.  He'd almost look good unfinished - but its kinda late for that now.  If I did the "unfinished look" I wouldn't want his jacket done quite so much.  So there's no going back at this point.  I've got to finish up the face later as well - after I see how dark the overall pic will be.  The trick after that will be to not overdo him.  Oh well - if I do - I'll maybe just do him again.  I wonder who this guy is anyways.   I might have to ask around.

I saw the cutest guy ever at the A&W yesterday - I just might search him out and get him to officially pose for me.  I think I know who he is, but I'm not sure. He'd be a challenge, because I've never done tatoos before. Oh well - one thing at a time.  I'll finish this fellow up first. 

Another drawing of Heather

Yes, I have done this drawing previously - but I ended up doing another one (its a long story).  I enjoyed it though.  Wanted to see if I could do it a bit different than the one from 2012.

Heather getting ready for a Harley ride - Yorkton

Art is never finished, only abandoned. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

We finally got about 20 pictures matted - it took a long time, but it was worth it.  Now we have to put on the backings and the hangers for the upcoming show.   Had to spread them all over the living room to see how they fit together.  I'm glad we did that, because you never know what they look like together until you set them all out.








And, because I'm going to Regina on the weekend, I'm scouting out some supplies for candy wreaths for Kathryn.  Got the wreaths covered so now we need to get the candies.

Finished my drawing

Today's project

I had intentions of finishing up a few drawings today - but I got helping Hugh look at some pictures from Victoria and I noticed this fellow watching the parade beside us in Chinatown - he's just so cute, I had to start a pic of him. 






I'll have to force myself to finish him up tomorrow and finish a few others as well! 

Okay.  Done for today.  Will look at it again tomorrow.  Going to start on another biggie - I just might get the hang of it.

Artist's reception at the community pARTners gallery

Had a busy day - I hung out at the skate park and took photos of kids at the skateboard competition (for future drawings - I hope).  Yikes - got a lot of photos of people taking a launch into the pavement!  I could barely stand to watch.  No major injuries though thankfully.  Funny how they'd just get up and get back at it!

After that, there was the Helianthus XXXV artist's reception.  It was nice to meet some of the artists.  And the food table was lovely - an autumn theme - it was beautifully done and the goodies tasted great too!

Helianthus XXXV Artist's Reception

  

 Artist's reception will be held this Saturday at the community pARTners gallery.  

The subject was "Sunflowers", so I did some reading and found that traditionally, several Native American groups planted sunflowers on the north edges of their gardens as a "fourth sister" to the better known three sister combination of corn, beans and squash.   I was happy to be able to finally

The Fourth Sister