Some Sugar Ann Spice for Thanksgiving

Before leaving town to stuff ourselves silly over the Thanksgiving holiday, we had the lovely Sugar Ann Spice come up from DC to pose for what turned out to be one of our largest audiences yet—a pleasant surprise, considering the cold and rainy weather that night. What we should have been worrying about, though, was how the weather would affect the already horrible traffic between DC and Baltimore. When Sugar let us know the weather and traffic gods of DC had conspired to delay her arrival, we were forced to implement our ultimate backup plan: Alexis took the stage not just as the usual co-hostess, but also as the model.

Here are some sketches from that set, first from Diego Molano (click the image for a closer view):

Brian Dugan:

Mike Hasson:

When Sugar took the stage, we started off with our customary first contest of the evening: the “left-handed” or non-dominant hand drawing.

The talented creators of two of these drawings were each rewarded with a mystery shot mixed by Russell, the Windup Space’s owner, who always does a fantastic job of serving up some tasty adult beverages (and sometimes equally adult music selections) for our artists.

From Mike Hasson:

I think the first time Sugar modeled for us was also the first time we played the “random noun” game, in which we ask the audience to shout out the first person, place, or thing that comes to their minds, and then the audience incorporates the best suggestion into their drawings for the chance to win one of our prizes. The best suggestion that evening by far (and, maybe with the exception of last session’s) was Patrick Stewart. Here’s Brian Dugan’s entry:

And here’s Sugar holding Mike Hasson’s entry, which reads, “Begin the assimilation!”:

Considering that we’re big dorks and that our audience is usually filled with bigger dorks, it shouldn’t surprise you that this is not the first Star Trek-themed contest in the history of Dr. Sketchy’s Baltimore, and surely it will not be the last. (It gets even geekier, so keep reading.) In all fairness, this was easily interpreted as an X-Men themed contest, but that only makes the evidence of dorkiness that much more damning—besides, none of you kids who made Professor Xavier references in your drawings sent us those drawings, so the old folks win this one.

(Did we mention that Alexis was throwing out even more old-age barbs than usual? We think it’s a symptom of her premature mid-life crisis, and we apologize on her behalf. She promises to pick on the kids more next time.)

Actually, we had two lucky winners for this contest, who each took home a fantastic assortment of art supplies from Artist & Craftsman Supply, on North and Howard, just two blocks down the street from the Windup Space. Which means, if you ever come to Dr. Sketchy’s straight from work and realize that you forgot to take your sketchbook along, you can just stop by A&C on your way and pick up a new pad and some pencils.

Here’s a gorgeous painting by Bryce Homick:

For the next contest, Aaron presented the audience with a quote to interpret and incorporate into their drawings: “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”

This Thanksgiving-themed contest was another that turned out to divide the kids from the older folks. For those of you not in the know (i.e. aren’t familiar with sitcoms from the late ’70s), you can see a clip from that famous WKRP in Cincinnati episode here, though if you’re bored, it’s worth seeing the whole “Turkeys Away” episode on Hulu to see Lonnie Anderson playing the seemingly-dumb blonde (emphasis on “seemingly”) and Andy Travis’s gloriously tight jeans.

We suspect Brian Dugan got the reference because he’s a pop culture fiend who probably caught the show in reruns, unless he’s using some really amazing anti-wrinkle cream:

But the kids won this time, since this sole finalist referring to the source didn’t win the copy of the absolutely awesome Bettie Page: Queen of Hearts art book by Jim Silke, generously provided by Atomic Books in Hampden. But with or without the reference, all the drawings were awesome, and we’re a little sad that we didn’t get more scans of these. 😦

Our last contest of the evening was to incorporate Doctor Who, in honor of the 46th anniversary of the premiere of the original series on the BBC. We warned you this session was especially dork-tastic…

If our collective memory is correct (which it often is not, considering the amount of alcohol we consume at these sessions), Brian Dugan recovered from his defeat in the last contest to win this one, and took home a copy of Ragnar’s quirky children’s book, Got Your Nose! from Baby Tattoo Books.

Here’s one more lovely sketch from Bryce Homick:

Very special thanks to the simply stunning Sugar Ann Spice for braving the most horrific DC traffic yet again to pose for us that evening, and to all of you lovely and talented folks who came out to draw her! And to Bill the door guy, Jeff the photographer, and Russell the owner/’tender/iPod jockey! But especially, again, to all of you who came out despite the rain and were good sports about the brief model substitute—not only were you guys the biggest group we’ve had so far, but possibly the liveliest. You guys kick ass! Just send us more sketches next time. 😉

Join us tomorrow (or tonight, if you’re reading this at your desk with a bad case of the Mondays) for another awesome night of drawing, drinks, and crazy contests, when the fantastic ballerina/trapeze artist/fashion designer Nicolette Le Faye will be posing for your pleasure.