Saturday is Portrait Day?

Today was an all-day game day with friends. These are always a lot of fun, but I have often struggled to get any drawing or painting done on days like this. Until, that is, I realized I could just take my sketchbook and draw friends while we’re playing games. It’s not like they’re moving around an awful lot, and everyone often returns to similar poses as they think about what they’re gonna do next. So I ended up doing these two quick portraits. Drawing from life is always so weird, because I’m definitely not nailing the proportions or likenesses quite right, but there’s still this feeling of getting some essence of character - of capturing some immediacy or truth that I just have so much trouble getting working from photos.

-ZR