I have been doing this for more than two years at my local library here in teeny-tiny Skiatook, OK. I go Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and do free sketches of anyone who will be by "victim." Usually kids. I try to spin out simple pencil sketches in five miinutes, or thereabouts.

It's challenging and fun, and definitely helps the old "eye/hand" duo, and it definitely helped my painting.

I invite mothers (especially mothers) to stand behind and watch it all go together. Whether it's good, or not so good, they ooh and aah, of course because they can't do it.

One day, a little girl stood beside my watching me sketch a teen boy. Quietly, she leaned forward and said softly, "That doesn't look like him."

I asked her if I had ever drawn her.

"Yes," she replied.

"Was it any good?" I asked.

"Oh yes," she replied, "you're a very great artist, you know."

I've always wondered how I could be great enough to sketch her flawlessly and not the teen boy.

But it's always fun, and a great source of free models. It also lets me pick the good heads for later development in oil.

Dear LInda

Thank you for this thread.

It is hard to gather the courage to start out in public. I will try to get hold of a plain cast to start off with as you have suggested.

I have a part time job now (that is worked usually over 5 and a half days) and am arranging other responsibilities to allow time to focus on my drawing once again. I am hoping to cut my hours down to just 3 days (say 10-12 hours a day instead of 6 or so hours a day) so that will leave time to practice. I really have missed my practice time, I certainly have gone backwards that is for sure. Your suggestion of how to get from chook scratch to something reasonable would certainly work.

Richard, what a wonderful thing to do. I hope you post some of your drawings here!

Ngaire, I am so impressed by your dedication to your art and your will to succeed at this. Please keep us posted as to how it's coming along.

One never knows the extent one's actions influence others down the road. I just think it is so important to get visual artists into the public consciousness. I recently did a 2-hour portrait demonstration at a "family day" at an art museum here. At one point I backed up and nearly stepped on several of the children sitting on the floor using crayons to sketch on their drawing pads along with me. (There must have been twenty of them.) Many of them told me they wanted to be artists, too, so I gave them all a pep talk.

Hi Richard,
This sentence rekindles a recent event i had, when i was doing public portrait drawing for a charity event raising funds for the "special athletes". I had 7 portraits done throughout the day, and 2 of them were of special people.

My first model, an intellectually disabled person, couldn't sit still as he couldn't understand fully what i meant. Fortunately he wasn't fidgeting a lot so i could capture a general likeness of him. But i wasn't happy with the work, and had the same question you had, reeling through my head.

By the 2nd special model, who seemed to be attention deficit and couldn't sit still, i had realised the most important thing that we could do for these live sessions, was to challenge ourselves to get a "general likeness within that time period".

I had works with pretty good likeness for a couple of models in between the special models. That was after i'd cleared up my thoughts, and went down to measuring and assessing them quickly.
But it helped the most by breaking out of my routine - varying the start-out points when drawing the faces! That was when "the holy light of creativity" shone of me!!
So i hope this little story will be helpful in your next public art session, Richard!

I've been looking for ways to get models too. Today I decided to place an ad on freecycle.org. It's a site where you're only allowed to post items that you are giving away free. Well, I posted a "Free charcoal portrait" ad today, and have already gotten seven responses from people who seem eager to participate. I don't know how many of them will follow through, but if I got seven responses in just a few hours, I think I'll be able to find models for sessions a few times per week.

I'm hoping to do fairly sustained poses, but we'll see how tolerant they are of it.

Some respondants expressed a desire to pose for paintings. I'm not sure they know how long that will take, but we'll see how it goes.

Great idea, Jeff! I may try that too.

I'm trying to organize an open studio here in town, and the university students are an unknown at the moment. My first interviewee forgot to show up, then when I called, she apologized, saying she'd come right down. Nope - that interview was to check for dependability. A no show first thing does not cut it.

Please report back on how dependable your freecycle folks are, okay?
Free beats paying a model, for sure!

Okay, now I have a date to go to a senior apartment building in a couple of weeks. The residents are eager for portraits!

This came as a result of the Freecycle ad.

J

That is SO cool, Jeff. I hope you have lots of fun and practice

You've inspired me. I'm about to put flyers out in mailboxes in my neighborhood, with a deal - sit for 3 hours and get a free portrait.
I used to be my neighborhood president, so most folks here know me already, which is a plus for this sort of thing.

There's an elderly male neighbor who likes to tease me: he enjoys telling me and friends that I am going to paint him nude. Well, if he tries that now, I think I'll turn the tables and tell him our drawing group would be happy to take him up on the offer! ;)

All my friends thought I was crazy when I did this. I would trade anybody a charcoal that they would sit for, for an oil that they would sit for me. I saw it as getting two models for free but most of my friends thought I was giving my work away too cheap. The good thing as I am not my biggest collector. I still do it now only it cost them three settings. Ha! Hey, an artist as to do what he's gotta do.

Clayton

What great idea! ( I am still my biggest collector)