Drawn & Quartered

There are few things more satisfying than having an artist use my photography as a reference.

The online artist mentoring group Visual Arts Passage contacted me about the possibility of building an evening of “quick art” around my portraits. Friend and colleague Matthew Salacuse referred them to me, and spoke well of his experience with them, so of course I was game!

We went back-and-forth on which 4 to 5 images to choose, initially including a self portrait, and a picture of my daughter, but in the end we landed on a nice mix of characters, some famous, some not.

Organizer Timmy Trabon described it as, “I started an online art school with a pal years ago and as a community building thing we host an open to the public drawing event every Thursday night. It’s kinda like an art podcast with a couple hundred live listeners. Each week we choose four photos and our guest artists draw from the reference live. The audience draws along to and shares their work in real time. We end up streaming all the work at the end of the show.”

They get a good mix of artists, of various ages and backgrounds, some highly-skilled artisans, others keen amateurs. Many of the images from the sessions are on Instagram with the hashtag: #illustrationisolation

Top image: Willie Nelson, by Randy Sweitzer (“Parallel pen and Prismacolor pencils on acrylic-squee-geed recycled pasta box”).

Second Image: Left, Lucy from the Montclair Children series, by Helms Master; Right, by Kelly Stribling Sutherland (“This started as a drawing, then oil, then digital drawn”).

Bottom Image: Clockwise from top left, Nick Offerman by Anna Littlewood, by Pete Cassell, by Rebecca Avalos, by Nate Sweitzer (“Prismacolor, Pastel, and paint marker on chipboard.”)