Sunday, July 10, 2011

Sketches from UTR

If doing something twice constitutes the beginning of a habit, then I have effectively formed the habit of doing little sketches of friends and acquaintances at reenactments.

I had enormous amounts of fun with this at Under the Redcoat, and even though I'm shockingly late posting about it, I wanted to share my drawings from the event.  Like last time, they are all fairly small (so as to fit in my drawing box) and are roughly 5x7" each. 

Nicole
Nicole

Other-Sarah churning ice cream
Other-Sarah making ice cream

Sarah- 1st go 'round
Sarah
I like this little sketch, but utterly failed to capture her likeness.  This was highly irritating.  See below.

Sarah and Jenny
Sarah (again) and Jenny
As you can see, for a brief while I switched from charcoal to graphite pencil... I was incredibly frustrated by my lack of ability to capture Sarah's likeness when initially using charcoal.  The second drawing was even worse (really bad in fact, and I can assure you it will never be posted anywhere online!) so I gave the graphite a try.  On this third go, this time in graphite, it wasn't totally awful so I let it be.

I feel like an invisible challenge has been laid down though.  Sarah is such an animated and vivacious person that capturing her in a flat, still format felt somehow a little unnatural and far more difficult than I had anticipated.  I will have to try again when I next see her.  And maybe again and again...

Abby
Abby
Right before I was about to leave for the day, I saw Abby walking across Market Square, rushed up to speak with her, and she kindly agreed to sit for me.   As we sat there (she very still and I sketching quickly) a lot of people apparently came up to see what was going on.   This included the official CW photographer who even videoed us.  I was blithely unaware of most of our audience however... I hadn't even realized how much I block out my surroundings when I'm drawing!  If there'd been an attack, I'd probably have died first.

Conclusion- I'll definitely be doing this drawing schtick again at my next reenactment.  I love being able to engage peoples' interest in a slightly different way than normal, and I'd really like to start building up an impression around the idea of a traveling portraitist.  Lots of very vague ideas at the moment, but it could certainly become something.

8 comments:

  1. I am really enjoying your sketches! Keep up the good work.

    Alena

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  2. Beautiful work! Really glad to see these up.

    -Sarah T-A

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  3. This is really fascinating - and it's a great idea to become a traveling portraitist!
    We definately have to see more of your amazing skills...and your miniature portraits (mentioned in an earlier post)!
    Sabine

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  4. I feel like a copycat but I definitely want to take some drawingg supplies with me to our next costume outing now ! Your sketches are amazing - as usual I must say.

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  5. OH MY GOD. These are absolutely, incredibly gorgeous! I'm truly impressed by your skills. I hope I'm at an event with you so you can draw me :)

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  6. Thanks everyone!

    Sabine- I'll hopefully be posting more miniature stuff quite soon... I'm almost finished with the one I posted about previously. :)

    Green-Martha- I don't know if it counts as being a copy-cat if a whole ocean seperates our events! ;) You should definitely take drawing supplies around too, it's SO much fun and a great way to interact with the public!

    Taylor- Um, you're going to be at Jenny's Regency evening this Saturday, right? Just sayin'.

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  7. Those are wonderful sketches! I'm sad I missed seeing it on Saturday. I bet it would have been fun to watch you sketch.

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  8. You're coming, too!? Yay!

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