Princeton portrait group

This morning I joined a portrait drawing group that meets in Princeton once a week. Everyone was so friendly and it was such good practice that I am looking forward to going back. It's been a long time since I've worked life sized and I really struggled for the first hour or so. I finally reverted back to my habit of working in miniature. This willow charcoal sketch is only about 4" high. The paper is the back of a BOKX 109 restaurant menu.

two charcoal studies

I drove over to Haverill this morning for a figure and still life set up with the Bradford Artists. The figure drawing is charcoal on 18x24 Rives' off white paper and the still life is charcoal on 8x10 MiTeints white pastel paper. It's so nice to get together with a group of artists and forget about the economy and real life in general for a couple of hours. Even with the frustration and difficulty of the work, it's very calming at the same time. Two artists commented that they were amused to see me going back and forth from one subject to another. One of them gave me a nickname: Speedy. Whenever the model took a break, I hurried over to the still life. When the model resumed his pose, I ran back to my easel. There was some wonderful work being done in this group, as usual.
After lunch I continued up the highway into Newburyport to see if the ice floes were floating down the river yet, but no luck. I hope I don't miss them again this year.