Eric 5/5/10

I went to Centre with an amazing talented artist (well, many, many talented artists for that matter) named Lisa Brown (only one was named Lisa Brown, the others had different names).  You can check out some of her work here.  I was always in awe of how amazingly well she could draw.  Lisa had a fabulous knack for drawing her friends in both human and animal form (I was a Gay Pride Lion in some of her sketches).

Anyway, so when I asked for random ideas to draw, Lisa suggested a dragon.  Since her avatar/alternate reality/fantasy cartoon character is a dragon named Wertle, I had to pay homage to Lisa by drawing Wertle as a lady in waiting.

I have to admit that it's really intimidating to imitate an artist whom I know and respect through the very medium in which she excels.  Wertle is made of simple lines, but Lisa's ability has always been to take those very simple shapes and create instant, likable, and expressive characters.  This is something I am trying to improve upon in my own work.

The dress I used as inspiration came from a 14th C. French engraving called The Suicide of Lucretia.  In the work, Lucretia is stabbing herself and ruining her lovely gown. I thought it was a bit too much to kill off Wertle the first time I drew her.

I plan on keeping up with the random sketches.  Although, I think I like drawing real people with fantasy heads.  Not gonna lie, but I am sort of in love with my sketch from Monday.