2007-08-18 Jennifer and Roy Drawing Each Other From Opposite Ends of the Bed

2007-08-18 Jennifer and Roy Drawing Each Other From Opposite Ends of the Bed, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

On Saturday morning, Jennifer and I woke up pretty late, and lay in bed reading. At a certain point, I picked up my Moleskine, turned to a clean spread, and did a rough sketch of Jennifer.

She had popped a pile of pillows at the foot of the bed, and was lying with her feet near my shoulder. Luxury.

When I was done, I handed the sketch to her, and said, 'Hey... Why don'tcha do a quick drawing of me?'

When we were away recently in Mpumalanga, we both drew in my proper sketchbook. That was the first time she's ever handled artist's tools. She really enjoyed that.

'But I can't draw!' she said, when I handed her the Moleskine in bed.

'It's not about drawing,' I said. 'It's about having fun. And later, we can colour it together after I've scanned it. Just have fun.'

So we both had fun.

Jennifer did the colouring of her portrait of me, and I did the colouring of my version of her.

We then both worked together on getting the highlights and shadows done.

This painting was made in three phases... (1) I drew Jennifer in my Moleskine. (2) Jennifer drew me. (3) I scanned the pic, then imported it into ArtRage 2.5, and Jennifer and I both coloured it while we had coffee at Mugg & Bean in Parkhurst. We were working on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc mounted on its mobile easel.