I was working on the 3-dimensionality of my drawings today.
Here's an example of what I did.
I tried paying attention to the shapes (as well as the emotions of course) in the first picture,
and then I did better when I tried it a second time:

Egads. I woke up this morning
and had a new addition to what I was writing last night.
Of course, I've seen all kinds of emotions
on people labelled 'retarded'

as well as on people who have not been so labelled.
I've certainly seen them looking happy, enjoying life.
But I haven't seen such dejection as I drew last night
in anyone who hasn't been 'in one of those groups.
It was the ultimate in sadness.
More overwhelming even than if you tried to imitate the expression in my picture.
Too sad.
Why/how can someone be treated/forgotten this way??? Something is wrong here. Even in the kindness our society gives them. Something has been taken away from their lives.

Those of you who have been following this blog
know that I've been studying expressions these days.
So when I saw this young man (about 20 years old) on a schoolbus, you would understand that I'd be so affected by his dulled-out expression.

I was drivng to my friend's house. I saw a large young man in the window of a small schoolbus that passed by. I guessed it was a busful of 'retarded' people, In a program. People labelled retarded by people that supposedly 'know'. Based on their 'charts'. You know what I'm writing about. What other adults would you see as passengers like this?

Maybe it was because I was studying expressions. Maybe it was because I was listening to the theme song from 'Romeo and Juliet". Anyway, I was overwhelmed with sadness for this young man. His expression. It looked like he felt 'left out'. Like he had given up. On happiness. For the rest of his life.

As a party entertainer, part of my job is attitude. I walk in Upbeat! Energy. "Let's Get this Party Going. Yay!" I wondered - had anybody ever tried to do that for this young man? And found a way to communicate happy energy with him? Had his caregivers and teachers thought they were doing him a favour by putting him in Special groups of people who somehow couldn't fit in (be accepted) by 'regular' people?

I tried to describe this to my friend. Tried to draw the stranger's picture from memory:

Why? Why did this happen to him? His mother probably didn't see the direction his life would take
even though he did nothing 'wrong'
because of the 'care' he was given. >br>

He was probably a beautiful baby. Reaching for and expecting acceptance and love in this world. How/why did he end up with such sadness? Looked like he knew that the good jobs and the popular girls were

not for him.
Or maybe he even thought he had no chance for any real job or lover.
It was just his expression that I saw that made him look 'different'. Put on a smile, high self-esteem, belief in success, and he would look completely different.

I don't like it. I can only think that this young man's early caregivers and teachers
were still children themselves. Fresh out of school. Well-meaning. Trying to do a good job. Afraid to admit that they just didn't know what they were really doing.
They were too young to look past the current moment. They were blind to the result that, if they'd be honest with themselves, the result that even young children know will happen.
This is the result. A man with this expression. Dulled out.

Why??? How can any of us understand why?

Is this what any parent would want for his child?

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I have tons of pictures and photos around here.
I scatter lots of pictures into the world - several parties per week.
My life is making pictures. That's what I do.

Piles of pictures wherever I go.

I usually have a sketchbook or a folder of paper with me.
Today, I decided to lighten a folder that I'd been carrying around.
Here are some of the papers that I took out.
Pictures that I drew in my spare time.

And here are some that I took the time to shade a little:

These 2 might be interesting to you. I was thinking about what I could do at a party I did recently. I had been hired to do CLOWNICATURES (instead of my usual CARICATURES). Clownicatures is something that my friend in Denver told me about. Jim Loshbaugh showed me to take the Caricature and embellish it to look like a Clown. It's the same idea as putting my FACE-PAINTINGS onto my Caricatures. But it's specifically for Clowns. The one of the man is actually a flop - I messed up clowning his face, but it made me laugh.It happens. But the one of the woman is ok:

People are not statues. I am not drawing still-lifes here.
We can open and close our mouths. Smile, be pleasant, serious, contemplative (which changes our mouths, cheeks and eyes). We squint in the sun. Our eyelids get heavy when we're tired. We raise our eyebrows. Turn left and right, up and down. So my best pictures capture an emotion(s) as well as the physical shapes.

Today I spent some time just studying a few emotions.

There's so many, but I gotta start somewhere.
I chose Laughing and Aloof because I see that a lot at Parties.
Here's the results:

I drew that from the following studies:

Since I don't have to answer to a teacher, my studies lead me in any direction that catches my interest. It's so interesting that our different faces would naturally move in the same 'dance' depending on what we're thinking. I ended up making several pictures of 'ashamed' because I don't see that drawn very often: