Party sketchies

I was at a July 4th party I usually go to, and I took my sketchbook along to keep my hands busy (when I was not eating excellent homemade barbecue and bratwurst). Here are two guys at the party. Note the iPhone in one of the guys' hands. Nowadays you cannot converse with anyone without them also having their iPhone on and looking at it and texting people while you talk to them. It pisses me off. Unless sketching while socializing is equally offensive.

My live drawings impressed a couple of children and some adults as well. I often forget that many other people don't draw or paint. They look at a drawing being done and think it's some sort of magic. Well I think so too, it's just that my own drawing isn't very magical. I need to do more of these pencil drawings. I need to do lots of studies on how clothing and fabric drapes and bunches on people's bodies. My single-line Pitt drawing pen isn't that great for studies like that. So I think I'll keep a pencil notebook. Also it's easier to do concept drawings in pencil, where you can erase if you want.

I really feel that I am on a purposeful quest now, something I haven't felt for a long time. My goal is to become a professional fantasy and science fiction illustrator again. To do this I have to re-learn just about everything I know about making art, because it is all digital now. I also have to solve some problems in my art that I have never even begun to solve in the thirty or so years I have been (or was on hiatus from being) professional. That is: 1. My art is devoid of drama and movement, and modern fantasy/sf art is ALL drama and movement. I need to pack action into my work. 2. I need to depict beautiful women. They don't need to be scantily clad but it's better if they are. I have never done an image of a really beautiful woman. I need LOTS of them. 3. I need to do graceful, action-filled, well-drawn human figures in unbelievable costumes. There are a lot more things I need to do. And it is in front of me all the time on the deviantART screen that there are THOUSANDS of artists, many of them Asian or Russian, who are only in their early 20s and already getting lots of professional work and drawing fantastic stuff that annihilates mine.

So there you go. More pencils and more digital action and girls. If you don't like this, then just ask for more vintage airbrush nebula pieces from the 1990s. (You'll get them anyway.)