Dr. Sketchy's Road Show

[Ghoulish Delight]

I just had a fun surprise of an evening.

Yesterday I received an email from The Box Gallery announcing the arrival, tonight, of Dr. Sketchy's Road Show.

Dr. Sketchy's is a group, originally started in NY, that I first heard of through BoingBoing. They get together a couple times a month at either an art studio or some awesome bar, and have a night of live models and drawing. This year they started the same in L.A., and I've been meaning to get the gumption up to go, despite my lack of artistic skill or talent.

But now they've taken it on the road, going up and down the California coast, a different location each night. And tonight it stopped at my favorite art gallery/hair salon, literally 5 minutes from work. No more excuses!

If I'd spent time thinking about it, I'd have been nervous as hell. I've barely done any figure drawing, and I have never drawn a live model. So the chicken-out factor was high. However with but a day's notice, a late evening at work that left me barely enough time to even grab dinner before showing up, and a bit of moral support from the wife tagging along, I didn't have time enough to let the nerves creep in. I just showed up, pencil in hand, ready to go.

Long story short I had a very good time. I made a few spectacularly awful drawings, and I made a few that I quite liked. In 3 hours, we had 19 different poses between 2 models to draw (several 1 and 2 minute poses to warm up, a 5 minutes, a few 10 minutes, and then 4 20 minute). It was a lot of drawing, I was definitely exhausted by the last 20 minute pose. But it was a really awesome experience.

The next one is tomorrow in Long Beach at DDR Projects. Then the following night in Sherman Oaks at Van Eaton Galleries. Then on up the coast from there. Full schedule here. And info on the regular schedule (1st and 3rd Sundays every month) in L.A. here.

Here are a few of my drawings from tonight that I'm not embarrassed by.