Our regular model didn't show up on time, so a couple of sketchers jumped right in. When the real guy showed up, he was kind of dull compared to these two. It was also fun drawing clothes. I like clothes. I wear them almost every day.

I just knew one or more of you jokers would try that one, so I co-opted you. This is a guy named Chris, and he whipped off his robe with a flourish like he was a freakin Chippendale. And he spent way too much of his posing time doing neck rolls and bicep-flexing. Sure were a lot of drawers there, though. I didn't do a head count, but it must have been at least 20. Good to see.

I could tell you that this is a spitting image of the model, that his head really was shaped like this, and you wouldn't be able to dispute me. Unless you were one of the other sketchers, in which case shut the fuck up. I don't go around challenging your verisimilitude, so keep your nose out of mine. The man's head looked exactly like this, I swear. And we're really only judging with our eyes anyway, and they vary from person to person. Maybe my retina is elongated, or maybe my vitreous humor is more humorous than yours. It's all relative is what I'm saying. And maybe Marco or whatever his name is, I forget, maybe Marco got his head caught in a door, maybe he was having a fight with his wife about the lasagna and he stuck his head in the doorway to give her a little make-up kiss just as she slammed it, and now his head really does look like that, and so now I was right all along. I was prescient. You see what I'm saying? We make up this shit as we go along, and pretend it's writ in stone or whatnot. But it's not. Is what I'm saying.

Yesterday a friend told me that my problem with Christianity had its roots in my rocky relationship with my father as a child. I considered this thoughtfully for a few moments as my friend waited expectantly. Then I smote them with my mighty sword.

See? Was I lyin? It is what it is. I yam what I yam. You are what you eat. Mission accomplished.

Bet you think we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel, doncha? No, this isn't the model, actually, just another artist who likes to get all up in the models' business, thus blocking the view of anyone else on that side of the room. Just as well; I was so distracted by having the easel-tosser right next to me that my actual model-drawing was subpar.

.......... In case you're one of those who think that I, caught in the throes of some perverted fantasy, invented those wings, take a gander at this, and know that if I ever let down my Fortress-of-Solitude-like defenses and vouchsafe the blogging world a glimpse of my perverted fantasies, they would involve knickers, Snickers, and wicker, which kinds of disgusts you, don't it, which is why the fortress will remain unbreached for the foreseeable future, for the good of all mankind, so chalk up one thing I've done for the good of mankind in my life.Yesss!

Kay, bye.

There's more than one way to skin a cat. But I, for one, certainly don't want to know what the various ways are. Be that as it may, I see now that it appears that she's sitting on an American flag. It's really a beach towel; no political statement intended. Say, how do you like that foreshortening? Brandi doesn't really have giant elephant legs. That's called Artistic License. Mine's been suspended for several years now, but I still draw on it anyway. I'll probably just keep on until I'm pulled over.

This was like taking a test in high school. The buzzer sounded at 20 minutes. "Okay, pencils down! PENCILS DOWN, PEOPLE!" says Mr. Mintle. And then he had Bernard collect the papers. Okay, I got carried away. Mr. Mintle was off drinking beer somewhere. But the fact remains, time ran out before I got to redo her face. Dommage. That's French for "cheese", I think. I don't know why they say "cheese" at moments like this, but they do. Maybe the French are used to having their picture taken whenever they're shamed, which is evidently quite often. I'll have to ask Amanda about that.

A larger version may be seen by clicking on the priapic box to the right.

Kind of a disappointment, though. Only one easel collapse between them. But enough about them, this blog is a celebration of ME! I had a stunning revelation about myself last night: I rarely hold my arms akimbo any more. I used to hold my arms akimbo with some regularity, especially when confronting the mysteries of my car. For example, when it wouldn't start no matter how determinedly I ground the ignition into a pile of toxic dust, I would get out and stand a few feet away from it and stare at it with arms akimbo. I would hold this pose for several minutes, thinking, perhaps, that if the car noticed how exasperated I was, it would start itself spontaneously out of shame. That never happened, of course, and after a while I would usually scratch my head and go back in the house, if I were lucky enough to be home, and watch the Three Stooges until I forgot I had a problem. More often than not, though, I would have broken down in public. My car, too. In which case I would go sit on the curb and sob. Not with arms akimbo, though, because that would make me tip over. And then if that happened, I would no longer look like a model citizen who had run into a patch of bad luck, but more like a homeless guy, a forlorn schizophrenic--or as you Republicans would have it, a dirty parasitic welfare cheat. Okay, bringing it on home now. I think the reason I don't hold my arms akimbo any more is that you need to have a waist to do that with any kind of authority. If you no longer have one, then you run the risk of passersby humming to themselves "I'm a little teapot, short and stout..."

Despite the fact that it sounds like the title to a Yiddish porn flick, it was a grueling night. My brush was too tiny. BTW, the sexual innuendo part is over, I'm being literal now. I didn't mean for this to be such a realistic painting--doesn't do justice to watercolors. But this little brush, I, I just couldn't loosen up.

...so every year the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn has this Draw-a-thon, where they fill one of their buildings with naked people and pizzas and cokes and let them do stuff all night long. Well, actually, they kind of do that every weekend, but once a year they have a theme. Figure Drawing. Each room is devoted to length of time: there's a 1-minute pose room, 20-minute pose room, 3-hour pose room, you get the picture. And through the night the models circulate around the rooms. I'm told the event draws the city's top figure models--it's a real showcase for them--and one of them, of course, is Aviva (see below). Imagine drawing the Big Island of Hawaii, only it's made of butterscotch pudding. That's Aviva. What's special about her is not just that she's huge, it's that she carries herself with grace and makes you feel that she looks exactly the way she's supposed to look. The only downside to the event was that it was incredibly crowded. There were at least 50,000 drawers in the 1-minute room alone. I had brought my laptop and tablet, but the one picture of Aviva I posted is all I could handle. Sitting on the floor with your legs loaded with computer equipment is a good way to lose all feeling below the waist, if that were ever a goal of yours, and I had to leave the room by grabbing people's legs and dragging myself across the floor. Amanda was smart and brought a folding stool thing that expanded into a chaise longue with umbrella and cupholders. Long story short, (I hate that phrase. That's why I put it in, of course) Amanda and Lydia and I left kinda early, but it was still a pretty amazing experience.What was interesting was that the level of the student work was just about the same as that of the students in my local group. The only difference I could see was that everyone wore black. There's no color allowed in art school clothing in New York. I, in my Norfolk attire, must have looked like a stray piece of confetti stuck on a little black cocktail dress.

Mike Bell is my fall-back position. Whenever the figure-drawing isn't going so well, I can always shift my focus to Mike. Whenever Mr. Mintle is flinging his easel down with a loud bang (and I finally caught on that he does it on purpose, because he always stares at me in a demented way every time it happens) I can always assuage my frayed nerves by capturing Mike in action.

Kind of an off night.

Explanation to come.

Jes tryin out different brushes in Painter. Just as in the real world, picking up a different tool makes you draw differently. Also paper. Last week I bought a sketchpad from Eagleton's, which Deborah quit but won't tell us why, and it was a little too toothy for my micron pen, which works best on a very smooth surface, so my drawings in this sketchpad are not up to my usual quality, because that silky smooth sensual stroke is missing, there's too much friction. "That's what she said!" That's from The Office, by the way. What is it about making an effortless absolutely black line on a white piece of paper that's so satisfying? Something very elemental, wired into the primitive part of our brains. Which, in the case of us males, is essentially the whole brain. Hence the notion that "That's what she said!" is funny. I promise I'll never use the word "hence" in a post again. I'm aware that I crossed over a line on that one.

A Springtime Tuesday night. The drone of bizarre music, punctuated by the occasional crashes of Third-World-manufactured easels collapsing. Mr. Mintle's monologue burbling in the background like a stream swollen by melting winter snows. Crazed alcohol-fueled arguments drifting up from downstairs. Come to think of it, I didn't hear any noise from downstairs. They must have heard the easel-drops and thought it was gunfire, and scattered.

Jesus, it was hot in there tonight. There. That's it. That's all I have to say. Don't complain, or I'll find another Dan Hill song to post.