Drawing again

A week ago I gave a small art lesson to the 14-15 year old girls in our ward during their mutual night. I was a nervous wreck, but I think it went well. I showed them some of my artwork, talked about a few things, then handed out some diagrams showing the correct proportions of an adult head & face and then we put them into practice.

After sharing with them the reason I like doing portraits, it made me realize how little I've done it in recent years. Since I gave up shoe making, though, I have been drawing a little more often. I finally finished the one I gave to Aaron for his birthday (back in APRIL!!!) and gave it to him for Christmas.


There are a few things about it that I'm not completely happy with, but it's okay. Aaron took it to work to hang in his office, so at least I don't have to look at it everyday and drive myself crazy because I can't figure out what's bugging me about it.

This summer I had a lady contact me about drawing a portrait of her youngest grandson to give to his mother for Christmas. I'd done several portraits for her years ago when Aaron and I lived in Seattle (she was my father-in-law's co-worker).

She also wants a portrait of him for herself, so I'll be drawing this one again soon.

I've been drawing charcoal portraits since high school. This is a scanned photocopy (hence the washed out look) of one of my very first commissioned works.

Isn't she precious? Her name is Maggie.

I have this folder on my computer where I keep copies of the portraits I draw. Unfortunately I'm not always good about remembering to get a copy or photo before I hand over the portrait, so for every one that I do have record of, there are probably 2 that I don't have. Here are a handful of the ones I've got.

I've drawn lots of babies...





...and plenty of kids.




I've drawn a lot of my loved ones...





...as well as friends and family who are no longer with us.





There are lots of couples...




...and some groups.




I hope this doesn't seem like an ad. It's not supposed to be.

Most of the above portraits I was satisfied with, while others... not so much.

I've let this ability of mine get pushed aside for quite a while now. Other more important things have occupied my time. But however hard it is to find the time to do this type of thing, teaching that class to those girls reminded me of the "use it or lose it" rule-- and I really don't want to lose it.