Oops...

Apologies to Liv for using 'cacophony' as part of both SSS's in her birthday letter (I only just noticed when reprinting here).

Looks like my perspicacious, multi-variate vocabulary has become mordantly cessatious...

Narcissistic vicissitude

“That's a totally awesome title!” wailed Beverly.

“Yeah, man, like, whatever,” breathed Karl.

The euphonic tones of a belittling harpsichord eased beyond the wafting drone of a bagpipe. Little caring for the state of mind of poor Mrs. Wannabe, the voluminous chords arced crescendingly, crashing desultorily into tonal oblivion.

“That's a totally awesome tune!” caterwauled Beverly.

“Yeah, man, like, whatever,” decanted Karl, “and enough with the wailing and caterwauling already. If I was more cliched, I'd say you're harshing my buzz... but, instead, I'd have to say you're cradling my wanton hedonism... yeah, totally.”

Arriving late was tantamount to murder. Punctuality ruled. Franklin winced at the belligerent cacophony. La Cucaracha expectorated painfully from the doorbell.

“That's a totally awesome tune!” hissed Beverly.

“Just answer the door, man,” sentenced Karl.

What hideous manner of she-beast was this? Oh, right, Beverly. Franklin disregarded her dishevelment.

“Evening, Mrs. Wannabe,” polited Franklin, as he roughly grabbed Karl and dragged him out the door, and out of their lives forever.

“That's a totally awesome exit!” mused Beverly.

THE END

Throttling gargoyles

Rampant screeches filled murky, stifling air. Horrified onlookers gasped, haltingly. Acrid sulfur breathed from openings in the walls, gaping voids resistant to frantic grasping. Eyes like burning embers glared mercilessly from each corner, further detail hidden by clamouring darkness.

An engine growled to life, slicing the scene with cacophany. Was this the heroism required? No. A cowardly escape instead. Bodies went limp as hope died, and a final cry was heard.

THE END

Gilmore Girls

Part of my birthday gift to Liv, here's the mother/daughter combo from GG - as true fans like me refer to it ;)

And, if you've seen the show, you know Lorelai is crazy, so here's an earlier (accidentally) psycho version...

(This post has the added advantage that if Liv didn't know who the hell the pictures were of, she can now pretend they aren't indicative of my "non-representational" period - as I will now euphemistically call it - and that they are instead stunningly perfect recreations of GG likeness).

Rose Byrne

Kristen Bell

Jessica Alba

Eliza Dushku

Bridget Moynahan

To avoid me cheating

you can compare to the original:

Obviously needs some refining, but not bad considering I was sitting at my computer while drawing, which isn't ideal. It really shows when I don't bother to get the initial dimensions just right. Must... be... more... patient!

Morena Baccarin

No real attempt at detail in this one, just a quick (few minutes) sketch to try out my new mechanical pencil. The future of drawing has arrived!

Experiments

I thought I'd put this new-fangled computer gizmo to work and see what it could do with my shading picture. Here're a few different looks. I've touched up hand-drawn pictures via my computer previously, and I think I may play around with that some more over time.

Jennifer Garner

Shading

The drawings keep on comin' ...

Horrors from the past

I've done another couple of new drawings, but I can't post them here yet. Instead, here are some of my (previously unpublished) efforts from the dim, dark past of 1998-2000. As dodgy as I think they are technically, they have plenty of positives too. I'm not sure if I simply spent more time on shading and details in the past (or my eyes have simply gotten worse!) but the likeness factor seems higher in these than my recent attempts.

Guess who?

Rather than spoon feed you with the name of my subject, I thought I'd test out my accuracy by getting others to guess who I've drawn :) To be honest, I'll be stunned if anyone works this one out.

I'm actually genuinely pleased with the end result here. While I tend to think I'd prefer more realism, I'm not sure that is really what I'm aiming for. I guess I'm more trying to convey the beauty in my chosen subjects, without necessarily being restricted to accuracy. That's what photos are for! So if you don't know who this is, that's totally fine, as long as you see something in it that you like :)

Here are the intermediate pictures, each of which I would have been happy to stop at:

Ali Larter - Take 2

Since I wasn't convinced by the likeness of my first attempt, I thought I'd give it another go.

This time I was really happy with the framework. If I decided to stick with just line drawing, I think I'd be OK!

But, instead, I persisted with more detail and shading:

Once again, the likeness was still missing, so I tweaked the chin and mouth a little, and voila!

It still isn't right, but voila sounds impressive ;) And, regardless, I think it's a better result than the previous one, so mission accomplished (in the Iraq war sense of the term...)

Ali Larter

If seeing the intermediate steps isn't interesting, let me know, and I'll just put up the final product each time I do something new. In the meantime, here are the 3 magic steps on the way to an (I feel) improving product.

Something different

Ok, it's not really abstract, as it still clearly represents objects within the source photo, but I'm trying to overcome a few self-imposed barriers in my drawing. This is one attempt. Has it been successful? That's in the eye of the beholder :)

Or maybe it's just me being lazy again...

Veronica Mars

I managed to squeeze a little extra patience out of myself for this picture, although I still don't think I hit the mark as far as likeness goes. I do like it as a stand-alone picture though, if not compared to the original photo.

First the framework, to hopefully avoid the worst mistakes early...

I then changed away from the framework for the head/hair almost immediately as I added detail, and had to redraw the face a number of times to get the proportions OK...

Shame I didn't notice the pattern until I got this far into the picture. But my laziness was overcome, and I added more detail...

Similarly, was going to leave the T-shirt white, but trying hard to get a matching look. Voila!

And here's where I sat to draw it :)

Yarra

What do you get if you take this photo and then rush a drawing of it?

You get this half-impression, half-reproduction mish mash.

Not particularly happy with it, but at least it's evidence I'm doing some drawing...