Romeo and Juliet

This past Sunday my wife Juli and I went to the Highland Park Bowl to watch Romeo and Juliet.  We left home at 4pm to walk 20 min. to Lake Ave. to catch the bus that would take us past the Popeyes restaurant. But, when we got there they were closed. So I decided that we needed to walk from there to downtown since the next bus was not due for an hour.

That walk took 40 min. and we were a bit foot sore by the time we got to the bus terminal. That of course was after stopping at Subway to try to get a sandwich and realized we had left our money at home, ugh! It was only a few minutes for the next bus to leave so we got to the part at about 6:15pm.

It was a short walk down the hill to the Bowl. Few people had gotten there at that point the cast was rehearsing a lot right up to 7:15. Three of our friends made it out to watch with us and we were on the front row.

The cast stuck to the original lines closely and they added is some modern music and dance. Overall it was fun. As soon as I was setup I pulled out the sketchbook and drew the stage. It was fun and I kept drawing till it got too dark to continue but here it is.

I will be doing a few sketches from the out of focus shots I took while there with my camera. the one below is of one of the first scenes with Juliet.

Revised Heroes of the Salvation Army

So, a bit of a laugh here. I spent some time with family during my vacation and I got an earfull about ONE of my heroes. Namely Evangeline Booth. Now taking criticism is no problem so I took it in and got to work. What they had to say was she looked to harsh, to much the prude.

Yes she did change sharply with age, but what I drew was too much. So I went in and softened her up a bit. That is the nice thing about digital images. You can redo what you've drawn. Included in this post is the before and after.

                                                                This is the before.

                                                                 This was after.

The changes are subtle. All the facial lines were made much more slender, the side of the face was brought in a touch and the chin was softened. I did bring in the nose just a bit and I lengthened her lips a bit so they did not look like she pouting or pursed. I tried to eliminate most of the wrinkles around the face so she did not look angry but, slightly smiling.  Oh, and yes she would never have worn brown shoes - so I changed that too. If you click on the images to bring them up to full size then click back and forth you can see the differences.