Once again, my services were called upon to create painted caricature gifts for the speakers of Western Conservative Summit. Thinking I had two weeks to knock these out, I focused my time on teaching and other projects. Then, right before starting, I get an out of town chalk art gig in St. Paul, Minnesota for the last week, shortening my time by one week. Add to this the fact that I need to create the art and schematic for the chalk art event, and suddenly my time to pull this off becomes four days.
But things are different this year from last. Since starting last year, I have worked tirelessly studying the art of caricature and practicing pushing the boundaries of expression. Last year’s portraits were fairly timid. This year, I tried to push outside of that (and still I realize I have much further to go). Also last year, I was just getting used to that new technique. I had never really worked that way in the past and so last year’s process was fairly experimental. Now I’ve had a whole year of practice on this technique, including a number of landscape paintings. In reality, if I would have had more time, I probably would have butchered the job. I forced myself to try and get each piece completed in three hours, which means having to make some serious design decisions on the fly.
I am very pleased at the final result. As I put the finishing touches to Linda Chavez’s jacket, I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, the project is complete.
From top, l-r: Former Senator Jim DeMint, Dennis Prager, Dr. Ben Carson, Sen. Mike Lee, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin, Katie Pavlich, Linda Chavez, Sen. Tim Scott, Betsy Mccaughey, Daniel Hannan, Hugh Hewitt
