April 11th at Samji

The first activity of the day was a couple business looking ladies buzzing around the tile frames. They weren't interested in getting a caricature though. I had to rummage through some frames in the office and find what they were looking for and they changed their mind a couple times and were just mildly annoying.

They settled on this brown beauty.  I was rummaging to find it when Jong Ho arrived.

 And shortly after came Jinah who works up in the office.

And he took care of the frame for the girls. This is all very exciting.

And then my first sketch of the day was an old Taiwanese man. He had a really good face; the drawing came out fine. His son in law and daughter were with him, and they really seemed to like it. The most notable thing about that experience was how really really nice and good-natured the son in law was. Then Jong Ho went to lunch. Shortly after, a young couple from Thailand came to get drawn.

   One big regret I have from April the 11th is early in the day I had these really fish in a barrel situations that I sacrificed to speed and line quality when they could have brought some good laughs and maybe follow up customers.

    Next I drew an older Korean lady. Maybe she was about sixty.  I don't think she was too happy with her drawing, but I felt good about the likeness. My coworker to the left of me, Minjong, drew her friend and it was awesome and it looked like her and was funny and cute, so in comparison I probably seemed a little brutish, but also, the drawing wasn't wild and crazy either, so shame on me, then. But no photo. After this, we did a lot of standing and sitting around with no customers. Here's what that looks like roughly.

 

   Friday April the 11th spent a lot of time acting like it might get warm, but it probably won't. A warm day here at Samji always brings customers, and not only customers but happy customers. It's so palpably different the way customers respond to caricatures in warm weather. Or it might just be that warm weather brings a different type of crowd in altogether, a much better crowd. Hot weather is a different story of course. I guess I like the whim customers. I guess I need to think more about that crowd that knows what caricatures are and they want one. Those would almost have to be the people who come when it's too hot or too cold, but enough about the weather.
   The end of the long, dead time was brought by what seemed like some psycho girls. I could tell Jong Ho didn't want to draw them. They were so hyper and...like decoratey. As I drew them, though, I found them to be really great, but still very very intense. 

And the girl on the right, she'd gotten a lot of caricatures done, like in Spain and Newbrunswick and Portugal and Brunai and Antarctica. She did the thing where she tells me everything about herself and her friend, and I gotta make a drawing using that information. 

 Then out came the sun! Hooray! And I drew, whim customers, Cherri and Minji here. They were pretty awesome. They had a fun conversation amongst themselves that I could just pop into from time to time. I love when that happens. They don't get bored. They just hang out and chat and let me do my thing. I drew the girl on the right's mouth doing a different expression than what you see her doing in the photo, but mostly I wish I would have done her eyes a little different.

By now the sun was shining down on Korea with a warm friendly glow and nearly all the caricature customers were just sunshine enjoyers, wandering in and out of interesting experiences.

   MinJong did a great drawing of such a family.

My next customers were brothers from Abudabi. They were both electronics engineers.

   As I drew this drawing, my whole focus was don't get a reject. The girl and the mom had reject written on their faces and bodies and handbags, and then I finished, and it was a reject. Minjong did the redraw and she did a fine job.

 I enjoyed drawing this girl.

 But it came out like this.

 Which is fine.

And then this couple was pretty fun, but I flubbed her up. I think I'm getting a "big eyes" tendency I'm gonna have to keep in check.

   By now it got pretty chilly and slowed down a lot. I did a drawing of our stand that came out fun.

And then at the end of the day I got to draw the happiest most pleasant baby you could imagine.

 He was so cute and wide eyed and just unfathomably pleasant. He looked like the sunshine baby from Teletubbies or something, just as cute as can be. He did start to cry at the end, right after I think I caught him makin a poopy face.

 And that's a full day folks. Some good drawings some bad drawings, a reject, a baby make a poopy, all around a good day. Samji is by far the best spot to work at in Korea, especially in the spring time. This has been a lovely blog post, with Aaron Philby.