August 13th, 2006
Making Faces
“It’s intair-esting to watch you two werk,” the intoxicated, middle-aged woman said to me, as Jason and I furiously dashed off funny-looking (but not too funny-looking) likenesses of the next jittery, high-on-staying-up-late kid or the next wobbly, taking-full-advantage-of-the-open-bar adult.
God, I think she’s flirting with me….
She was standing to my left, uncomfortably close to me, watching as I scrawled on the pad with the scribbly, nervous line I use when I have to draw fast. I saw her look over at Jason, who can take a Sharpie and get someone down with a couple of bold, direct lines.
She leaned in to make sure she had my attention: “Looks like yer a million-stroke man,” she said, and then, turning to Jason, “while yer friend here can git the job dun in a just few moves.”
Ew.
Welcome to the wacky world of party caricature. While in college, my friend Jason and I did some of this to make money. Every once in a while we still get calls to do something back in Greenville and, usually, we do it. We’ve done dogs and their owners for the past two years at the “Canine Crawl.” Also, there’s a Jewish family that has been very good to us, wanting us back for every bar/bat mitzvah. Recently we did their youngest child’s — our last one for them.
Doing these on-the-spot drawings can be fun. It can also be agonizing. Sometimes a likeness just won’t come and you want to start the drawing over, but you’ve been drawing for five whole minutes and the person is getting impatient. And of course there are 10 more people behind them, waiting on you. It’s a bad spot to be in. You have no idea if your sketch is going to come together. You wonder if, when the person sees their drawing, they’ll call you out for being hack you are, in front of everyone. Will they yell at you? Tell you you don’t know how to draw?
And there are so many distractions: people trying to joke with you, asking you how long you’ve been doing this, or, in certain, very weird cases, trying to pick you up.
Incidentally, Mrs. Robinson had gone over to stand by Jason, then, after a few minutes, disappeared in to the crowd. I’d gone back to concentrating on the caricatures, which were getting worse. I had nailed the first 20 or so, but I could feel myself heading into a slump. Thankfully it was all little kids lined up in front of me. You can phone those in. Little kids are happy just to get a drawing, they don’t seem to care what it looks li…. Wait…. Oh no. She’s coming back over. Oh no. I just made eye contact with her. Oh no. She’s getting in line in front of me . What have I done to deserve this!?!
If there is a special section of hell where evil party caricaturists are forced to continue their work, the line in front of them stretches on for eternity, their drawings never turn out like they want them to, and the only subjects are women aged 45 and up. As far as I’m concerned, there is no good way to handle this cross-section of the population. I don’t know a single woman-of-a-certain-age who’s up for some good-natured raillery about her crow’s feet and extra chins, do you? But what are you supposed to do? Make them look 20? Then the portrait won’t look anything thing like them.
Most members of this demographic seems aware of the position they’d be putting you in, and they steer clear of your table.
But not this lady. She was ready to find out exactly what I thought she looked like. She took the seat across from me. It seemed insurmountable, I mean not only was I dealing with the aging thing, but it was obvious this person was insecure about her appearance and that she was going to tell me exactly what she thought of me and my drawing once I was done.
Come on, Witchger, you’ve been doing this your whole life. Let that art school training take over. Just draw….
Ten minutes later I ripped the marker and “colorstik” covered paper from my pad and presented it to her. She looked at it for a few seconds, then she grimaced. She proceeded to give me the same schpeel everyone who disapproves of their portrait gives me, verbatim: “Um…. Hmm…. Does this look like me…!?! How long have you been drawing…? Maybe you should keep practicing….”
But It’s cool. I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to my artwork.
Also, she was right. I’m not sure if it was somehow purposeful or not, but I had handed her one of the worst drawings I’ve ever done in my life.
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