More Barack Obama, this time a pencil sketch

I started the day determined to be far more productive than yesterday, a good night’s sleep always helps. The morning was so so but by the afternoon I was back on track. I used some self-levelling gel on my canvas abstract and spent ages using acrylic inks and a cocktail stick creating a lovely pattern in yellow, gold, silver, orange and red. As I was able to apply some texture to another area without touching the gel I decided to crack on. Everything was beginning to come together and I decided to take the colour over the edge of the canvas. That would have been fine had I not tilted the canvas to a 45 degree angle. I realised what I’d done quickly enough to prevent the entire gel ending up on the table, but not before the pattern had morphed into something else. I tweaked it as best I could but it’s not what it was, sigh. Note to self engage brain before and during painting. On arriving home Ewan couldn’t resist touching it so it now has added texture. Such a helpful boy!!!

Whilst waiting for Ewan to finish his swimming lesson, I managed a sketch of Barack Obama. It took slightly less than an hour. The skin tones are better than my last attempt so overall I’m a happy bunny.

This evening was life drawing class. My quick studies were much better than the detailed one today. Coincidentally I heard an interesting debate on Premier Christian radio about whether Christians should do life drawing. I’d never thought of it as an issue, but for some it apparently is! The topic came up this evening because the art school is moving to using a church hall and they want to continue to offer life drawing, but need to check permissions before they can make arrangements.

Barack Obama – the world in his hands Caricature

Yesterday I started this caricature drawing of Barack Obama. It was progressing well, until I decided to use grey pen for his skin. I know, I know, I’ve said this before, when will I ever learn. I should have used a Copic marker pen, not a pigment pen, sigh…

Anyway here’s Barack, the skin tone is too dark, I know, but it was that or leave him even more blotchy – I didn’t like that option!

As I haven’t done a caricature for a while, I thought I’d post him. I’ve also finished my abstracts. Two have worked really well but the third is so-so. Still debating the Summer exhibition entry, no decision yet. I can have a maximum of 2 entries, so they need to be right. I suspect they need to be fairly traditional but looking at the judges that might not be the case. Don’t you wish you could read minds sometimes?

A Toast to Diplomacy (Finally)

-- Pruttiporn Kerdchoochuen

In the spirit of my imaginary chain-smoking, heavy-drinking Scouser grandma (don't we all have one of those?), let me lead off by saying, "Ah, 'as a good 'ead on 'is shoulders, tha' Barack." I think that sums up, more or less, the new President's speech in Cairo. A lot of what he said was nothing new, really. Promoting cross-cultural understanding, emphasizing Islam's integral role in world (and especially Western) progress and appealing to moderate Muslims, he repeats the words spoken, written, taught, and sometimes screamed in frustration (with a lot of hand wringing and hair pulling) by a significant number of people that went all but unheeded in the past eight years. In short, he was presenting a policy of commonsense toward the Islamic world, that felt as invigorating and reassuring after eight years of craziness as a simple American moo cow fucking burger (thank you, Lewis Black) would to an American tongue returning from a sojourn in the East. And let's face it - your brain was probably sighing with as much relief as mine to be hearing, at long last, a President who can actually string together complex sentences and coherent ideas and who manages to sound dignified, smart, and not like he had been out all night drinking moonshine and running his head into a brick wall for Dick Cheney's pleasure.

Let's toast to diplomacy and human rights values. It's been a while. Cheers.