Tomorrow I'll be drawing at a 50th Birthday. I'm supposed to draw 20 (or more) people on a page. Haven't done that in a while, so I decided to practice from photos of people on the web.

It's a good thing that I do my homework. So I'll 'know my lines' before it's time to go on.

Because the first picture I made, started making, hmmmm, no way am I going to fit twenty people on this 22x28 paper:

So I started again, figuring that I would make the first person, the 'Guest of Honor' largest, and make the other people smaller. But I kept forgetting - kept making everyone the same size. Forced myself to get smaller, but it was too late. Forced myself to finish the picture with twenty people no matter what size/part I made them:

I like these pictures. I feel comfortable to approach tomorrow's project. No predraw.

I sincerely hope the set-up is good - hoping for a good spot at a good table. If I have to use my easel, the drawing board is too heavy and cumbersome to feel 'right'.

I love my jobs. No matter how much I study and plan, I can never control Everything about it. Yet I know what my approach will be. Well, at least I know what questions to ask myself.

Oh what to do - Everyone upright? Or flipping around on their heads? Wild predraws directing the faces? Or direct inking without predraws? Color? Or Black/white? And those are just general decisions about the Composition. The questions continue as I figure out how to draw each face!

Creating Artwork is a way to Exercise the ability to make Decisions.

When I see how some of these kids are posing with their Caricatures, I'm thinking that "Wow - I really like these people."

Most people in this world just want some attention, some appreciation. Fun. Any sort of positive interaction. And they respond with such pleasant surprises to people who give them this attention.

It's so easy to be angry at the world. To not try. To just sit there angry because we don't already Have everything we want. But the strife of life isn't anybody else's fault. The people out here are just good people. Enjoying the ride even though they are striving to fulfill their own hopes and dreams too.

I'm so happy that I have the opportunity to see so many people:

Whew - I sure worked hard at this school. A Guidance Counselor asked me to give the students their choice - Did they want a tame Caricature or a Wild Caricature.

Drawing fast, one of the Fun things about Party Caricature is that we don't know how the Artist would be affected. It's very difficult to

Either Come Up With Something Funny on command,

Or to get a likeness while toning down what you see which is creating that likeness.

But there I was, asking the students which they wanted. And handling high-school-type paperwork - checking off lists, keeping counts..... Constantly interrupting my Zone, the Artist's Zone.....

But it was Okay. A-Okay, I'd say. A wonderful group of students. A wonderful exercise for me. Most of the students wanted real Artwork

• something diffferent, something wild. A frequent response was something like - 'Ah, heck. Just go for it.' I was On.

It's late at night now - I'm just going to post of few of them. More coming soon - I'm fascinated to see what I came up with: