On my way to Cocoa Beach on January 24th to perform for a wedding I felt a developing cold. By the time I got there, I had a cold – and still have it. But, the show must go on! But could I continue my further altering my approach to caricature to some thing a bit more comic-booky illustration?

Somehow I did, in between sneezing and feeling awful. After the 24th event I rested and did all I could to be prepared for the next event on the 27th. Still sick for this event near Clermont, I really worked at not having a set place for the head and working harder to get each person’s story into the illustration….in between a runny nose and taking in many cough drops.

The 27th event had a lot of young people at it and worked on the larger paper for each. Three of those are the last of the pictures here.

Please let me know how you like this approach. I love, my friend, Trisha Kirby’s response of this approach. “It’s like an entire comic book or illustrated novel wrapped into one image.”

Here are a few from both events:

I’ve been sick this past week and worked to get better for work to do and two events Thursday and Saturday.

I was fortunate to draw for an assisted living facility Thursday. As always, i hear so many wonderful stories. Here are a few and their stories….

A note of the photographs: Had something fading out most all I took. Sorry about that.

Kathryn long hauled bananas for a couple decades back when few women were on the road in a cab by themselves for days on end. These days she crochets.

Gloria’s family goes back, far, far back in Florida history. Family owns or lives on the islands in the Suwanee River. She isn’t able to get back into the Florida wilds she loves and misses fishing. These days she likes to play the organ.

Jessie is a Scottish lassie who loves cards and clowning around. Even her brightly colored attire reflects her playful fun.

Earl is full Cherokee. He mentioned his displeasure with how things have turned out for the Cherokee. Otehrwise, Earl struggles with what to say and his memory. I have him in the early 1800s in Tennessee approaching an American Army encampment.

Debbie has a number of things she likes to do, like reading romances. She also loves watching old western TV programs, like Maverick, Laramie, Tales of the Wells Fargo, etc.

Save

Been doin’ that interactive illustrative life coaching thing this evening! A return visit for this family event. Great folks that included fellow civil servants, educators and an opportunity to get some nifty photos of a really cool historic home, now hair salon, I’ve wanted to get closeup photos of in St. Cloud!

It’s Robin’s 30th anniversary with the organization! Here’s her card. Pencils first!

Out here in Palm Bay picking up the brand new Dunnellon book!

Here’s the inked art for #Inktober today!

Here’s part of the Swampy’s Florida post:
Swampy says Happy World Octopus Day!
More about the legend of the St Augustine Monster:  http://swampysflorida.com/?p=11318

On the #drawing board today: Signed and drew in lots and lots of Swampy’s Florida books today at Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park for “Speak Up Homosassa Springs”. Here are a couple photos from teh event.

The young fellow was funny. I asked him about what he likes and found him very articulate. So as he spoke of how he would like to wash things, I asked what he would like to wash. A car. How will you be sure the cars get washed? Will you be a manager? Yes. And on it went. He’s a thinking youngster and hope he stays that way!

I attended the first meeting of the new Central Florida Expressway board meeting this morning. The organization previously had been racked by scandal and accusations. This new board for the toll roads in Central Florida will hold sway of toll roads and soon-to-be-toll roads in four counties- Orange, Seminole, Lake and Osceola. Members of the board acknowledged to previous problems and sought not to repeat them.

It was a standing room only room. Seemed it was mostly filled with road builders and contractors. The fellow who oversees construction of the organizations roads was kind enough to get me a chair, after standing for a good part of the meeting. Once seated, i pulled out the sketchbook and doodled the above and another page of sketches.

This has been a busy week of caricature events! this one in Altamonte Springs, Florida. A medical office brought me in for an open house. The event went very well. I was concerned because i haven’t been sleeping much in the past few weeks and especially the past week. My likenesses could have been better, but the engagement with the crowd was the best at this event than others in the past few weeks. What really assisted that was the lack of blaring music/soccer games and other noise. It gave me a chance to interact with the crowd and working at getting the crowd to interact with themselves.

Also dropped off an illustration that got got bogged down in massive miscommunication and ended up getting kicked back to me. Haven’t had that happen in – well, I don’t know when. Quite jarring and surprising. Part of the problem, as I saw it, is that I thought the conversation between me and the client were also part of the instructions to get the artwork done.

Apparently, we should have gotten more familiar with each other. It also would have helped if I hadn’t been on the road so much and finding myself in various parts of the state with car problems so that I could have communicated with the client better and not worked on the art work off and on. I also struggled with the project as the request was to create the illustration with pencil. i thought that would be a breeze and approached it as I approach all my illustrations. However, this had a lot of mechanical parts in a rather boring setting and that i tried to enliven it a bit, which I work at in all my work. The client, it seems was looking for a very technical look which is positively not something I do.

Bottom line is that client wasn’t familiar with my work as I thought and if I had developed a contract between us, we might have better nailed down what was expected. In that I was doing the project for a relative of a friend of mine, a contract didn’t seem necessary. I do my best to avoid these traps. Though they come up at times, I have always done my best to salvage the project and can’t think of a time that a project crashed and burned. The client does want to regroup and reapproach the project, but I think we are too far apart in what I do and what they want, so I’m stepping away so that they can find an illustrator who can accomplish far better what they want. Lots of time and materials poured into the project. My loss, just at a time when i can’t afford to let that happen.

Possibly more caricatures Saturday. But that’s likely the last for a week or so. I have plenty else to do and will be featuring here in the coming week.