Holiday Party Work (completed)

Wee I am now a caricature artist! The Holiday Party at the Pediatric Hospital was a big success! The holiday party had 1200 children, there was NYPD on site to do crowd control.

I drew some where between 115-150 caricatures in 4.5 hours . My table was the most popular of all the entertainers I was seated between 10 face painters to my left and 2 origami makers to my right. Luckily this set up worked as these 2 other activities distracted the children while they waited in line for me. Whew that was tiring next time I'm going in with planned breaks and such. I didn't' even have time to drink my water every time I looked up there was like a crowd 15 deep.

At first I didn't get any customers as all the parents made a beeline to santa for presents and a photo but after the first 2-3 people started noticing that there was live caricature drawing so that's when it was very very busy.

My drawing skill it seems does have a limit it will go dry if it's used too much in one sitting. I could literally hear my talent go "Fizzle" and just be like oh hells no I have 2 more hours to go and I can't draw? At some point I was asking myself the question so what's a face but 2 almond shaped things with dots in the middle, a nose and some lips in a smily gesture? I was even thinking that if my former art class drawing 2 professor saw me he'll have died from sheer embarrassment because that's how bad some of my drawing were coming out. So I bluffed it for the rest of the event every now and then I would find a few drops of drawing ability left and those lucky few got professional level caricatures.

I kept thinking hey this must be what a warlock would if he lifetapped all the way down to zero. Man that was one helluva endurance test to be that tired and yet need to continue performing because people were waiting.

Pay: $0,
Lunch: Subways Turkey sandwich and grape soda (free)
Experience: amazing
Feedback: I'd do it again next year.

Things learned:
got over stage fright in 10 mins
learned to draw even faster than ever because the very young ones absolutely could not sit still


Things I need to work on:
more skill .. I am not able to consistantly capture a likeness it really was hit or miss

I woke up late too! 7:30am and needed to do alot of stuff before I was ready to leave. I made a sign for my table using an old caricature of myself as how else are people to know what I'm doing. Then tried to update mywebsite only to realize that my usb hub had died, website making software broke, and that I had forgotten how to edit a website. So my last idea at 9:15am was to just upload my entire directory and crossed my fingers and hope it works. Luckily that worked.

The children were very well behaved, most of the issues I had were keeping track of who was first and what not. Otherwise I didn't really pay much attention to the rest of the room as I was very busy drawing away.

Holiday Project: Charity Party for Children

Hi Everyone,

If everything goes according to plan I will be attending a holiday party as an Entertainer! I plan to be volunteering my "Face painting & caricature skills" at a Pediatric Holiday Party for 500 children sponsored by the Metropolitan Hospital. zomg 500? what does that even look like?

I have to admit my face painting skills are iffy at best since prior to this I have never painted on someone's face nor did it occur to me that faces were meant to be painted on. Anyways since this is a great experience to try and its a good deed as well. I made a super fast portfolio on blogger so I have something to show the volunteer director. Please see the pics below I picked some from that speedy portfolio. If they are full on volunteer entertainers I will contact other city owned hospitals / orphanages or shelters and offer my services there. I refuse to believe that I can't get a spot in those?

Oh yea and did I mention that most places are full for volunteering to serve food to the homeless. WTF I'm offering for free and they're full? okies probably everyone else is feeling generous as well so I need to offer something that most people do not have. Art!

Fears: people .. giant crowds, performance anxiety, stage fright Etc_phobia . But yes this is the first step in my quest on self improvement.

Skills: caricature probably as I actually have a few years of drawing experience under my belt. Face painting if I get accepted for that spot will be the most challenging as I'd literally have had less than 7 hours of training on it. That's learning on the fly.

Issues: Who's paying for the paints? how do i keep the stuff clean? how's the drying time on skin, blending on skin vs. paper. Inorder to achieve blending on paper I loaded my brush with 2-3 colors and painted them in quick strokes but with real people's faces I dont think that's going to work first off its going to run as skin is pretty much waterproof. I am thinking of painting thinly and using as little water as possible to speed up drying time and so i can use layers to "blend".

Benefits: Meeting new people, possible network, and a confidence builder. There's no better meter of your training than to have it perform under pressure and less than ideal circumstances.