Tag: Creative Alliance

Posted on

Girls against boys.

So, something that’s been frustrating me lately: even though the attendance at our sessions is more or less evenly split between men and women—sometimes the girls actually outnumber the guys, which surprises some of our friends who assume that it’s only guys who want to draw our models—since late spring, the artists who’ve been sending us sketches have been men. Annie Wu ended that trend last month, but still, she was the lone female artist who shared her drawings with us.  What gives, ladies?

This time around, the lovely Lily Stark White has been the one woman to send us her drawings:

3908885900_b960cbf2b9_b3908886410_5a97015233_b

We also had some people find us through two blogs, both by women, so we’re going to return the favor—even if they didn’t send us their sketches themselves. 😉 (To be fair, this past session I relied too much on the reminder cards I handed out to solicit sketches from folks and forgot to actually remind everyone while on stage.) Check out Bridget (Vaughn)’s Art Blog and Kristin Nohe’s Suburbs blog for their awesome drawings of Deviana.

And, lastly, here’s a sketch of Deviana from our door guy, Bill:

bill_deviana

Obviously, Bill’s a guy, though he whines like a 4-year-old girl about how we never post his sketches, even though we link to his blog on our front page. So there you go, Bill—I ended this post about how we don’t get enough sketches from women with your unmistakeably male drawing.

Anyway—sketches. We love getting them—from everyone.

Don’t forget, we’ll have the lovely Elle Devene of Gilded Lily Burlesque posing for us this Monday night at the Windup Space—and check out Gilded Lily’s show with the Baltimore Improv Group tonight at the Creative Alliance. Hope you have your tickets already, since they’re probably selling out as I type this. Couldn’t get tickets? Then check out the Xotic fashion show at the Windup Space tonight instead.

And then there’s Hampden Fest tomorrow. Stop by Atomic Books and say hi to Benn, who’s given us a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies *and*  Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters to give away on Monday.

Oh, and 2nd Saturdays in Station North is tomorrow, too! Lots of fun—and free—performances!

Whatever you do this weekend, have fun, and see you on Monday!

—Alexis

Posted on

Sketches from 2/9 session with Maria Bella

Finally, all my whining about how so few people send us their sketches has paid off. Without further ado, here’s just a sampling of what you, our talented “art monkeys” (that’s the Dr. Sketchy’s term of endearment for our beloved audience members), have sent us so far.

davidn1_0209092- and 5-minutes sketches by David Newbold.

briand_020909_2By Brian Dugan.

annikar_020909By Annika Romeyn.

genea_020909By Gene Azzam.

masha020909_img3By Masha Schwartz.

maryt_020909

headsdownAbove two sketches by Mary Tully.

Our first contest, as always, was the non-dominant (aka “opposite”) hand drawing contest. Seriously, either some folks cheat to get some free alcohol, or else our audience is always full of ambidextrous freaks, in which case I’m totally jealous.

masha020909_img4

Left-handed drawing by righty Masha Schwartz.

gene_opphandBy Gene Azzam, who was one of two folks rewarded (or punished, depending on how you look at it) for his ambidexterity with a Woo-Woo! shot, which tasted exactly like a grape Jolly Rancher–with not even a hint of alcohol at the end. Very dangerously delicious…

In honor of  Maria’s next performance (the SIN show at Club One–which is tonight, btw), our second contest was to incorporate one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins. If you can’t remember what they all are–I sure as hell couldn’t, without help–check out the SIN flyer in our earlier blog post. Here are just a few of the brilliant results:

gene_greed

Greed, by Gene Azzam.

briand_020909_3Brian Dugan impressively incorporated all seven. (And yes, Maria was using fake money for this pose. Folks, if our models don’t have even have real money to use as props, you know you should tip them generously.)

david2_020909winnerWhen we decided on this contest before the session, Aaron and I had wondered if anyone would dare portray our svelte model as the epitome of gluttony, and someone did–specifically David Newbold, one of our two winners for this contest. His brass balls won him a brand-spanking new sketchbook provided by Artist and Craftsman Supply.  (Since we kinda flubbed the store’s location at the session, I’ll remind all of you now that it’s located on the corner of North and Howard.)

In our one nod to tomorrow’s Hallmark holiday, the next contest was to draw a romance cover featuring Maria Bella. The winner didn’t send in his drawing, so we can’t show it at the moment (hopefully Jeff, our awesome photographer, did get a shot of the winner so we can include it in the recap–the night’s a wine-soaked blur in my mind at this point), but it was definitely an illustration after Aaron’s pulp-loving heart.  For his efforts, the winner walked away with a copy of The Look of Love, as well as an issue of Hi-Fructose (which, despite the fact that they need a good copy editor, is one of my favorite art magazines) from Atomic Books, which, for those of you new to Baltimore or otherwise clueless, is on Falls Rd., just off the Avenue in Hampden.

briand_020909For his awesome entry for this contest, Brian Dugan not only drew Maria, but our photographer Jeff, as well as Zach from TuffNerd Productions, who, as Aaron mentioned earlier, videotaped this session.

We’ll have the rest of the drawings posted in our sketches album over on MySpace soon.  Don’t think you’re off the hook if you didn’t send in your drawings yet–send them in and we’ll post them. Remember, the more drawings I get, the less whining you get from me about this… ;-p

Remember, you can see Maria Bella and Lucille Lingerhans von Spankenstein tonight at the SIN show at Club One, and with the rest of Gilded Lily tomorrow night at the Tassels and Champagne show at Creative Alliance. Seriously, guys–I’d be more impressed if a guy took me to a Gilded Lily performance instead of the usual dinner and a movie for Valentine’s Day.

–Alexis

Posted on

Maria Bella, SIN, and spilled beer.

intropiece2

Last night was crazy nuts, in a good way. Apparently Baltimore loves Maria Bella because we had folks showing up at 6:05 and effectively sold out at ten till 7. TAKE NOTE, we seem to be getting a lot of attention these days from the media and web searches, so if you absolutely want to make sure you can get in to draw, make sure to show up early.

We’ll post the rest of the pictures in a few days, but, if you can’t wait and are hoping to catch Maria Bella (and Lucille Lingerhans von Spankenstein, who modeled for us on Jan. 26), check out SIN at Club One this Friday.

Maria, Lucille, and the rest of their Gilded Lily sisters (and brother Paco–almost all of whom have modeled for us in the past) will also be performing at the Creative Alliance on Saturday night for a special Valentine’s Day show. Seriously, folks–if you think Dr. Sketchy’s is fun, you really, really need to check out a Gilded Lily performance.

In any case, Monday was a hectic night. Folks drew a ton of amazing drawings and drank a ton of alcohol if the empties had anything to say about it. My dumb ass managed to drop an entire beer in my lap and had to run home in the middle to change pants and run back. (Out of the bazillion times in the last couple years that I’ve drank 15 shots, 23 beers, ran into a wall, rolled down some steps, and had crawl in the front door of my apartment I’ve NOT ONCE spilled a beer in my lap . . . but the one time I do–sober, mind you–I’m helping host a Dr. Sketchy’s session.)

Oh well, we’re not professional folks…we’re doing this to have just as much fun as you do. If we’re not as tipsy as you by the end of it, we’ve obviously done something wrong. 🙂

There almost wasn’t a session at all last night by the way…apparently God took it upon himself to snap a 30 inch water main in half over on Guilford…a large portion of Mt.Vernon lost water, had their basements flooded out, and spent the afternoon showering at a friend’s house (thank you, Bill). Dionysus doesn’t take shit from the new kid on the block, though, and was able to dodge all that biblical nonsense.

As usual there were some amazing prizes from Atomic Books, Artist & Craftsman Supply, and mysterious shots from Dionysus referred to as “Woo-woo”s (named for the exclamation yelled after drinking them). Don’t know what was in it, not going to ask.

BTW, toward the end we noticed someone had somehow snuck some outside food past us. Please don’t do this, folks…the only thing that makes this worth it for Dionysus to host us is the chance to sell a you few beers and maybe an Autumn Chicken Sandwich. (Oh my God–they’re amazing. Alexis could eat them every night and not get tired of them.) Anyway, for the same reason you can’t take a bag of Taco Bell into the Charleston, you can’t take food into Dionysus. It is a restaurant…and I’m telling ya, if Lynn suddenly cartwheels into the room and beheads somebody with a halberd or something, I’m taking off running and you’re on your own. (So is Bill, Jeff, and Alexis…I’m running.)

We’ll mention this again when we’re a little closer to the next session, along with a couple other things, since honestly, even *I* wouldn’t have read down this far, but I figure I’d toss it in here real quick.

Thankyou to Maria Bella for a stunning performance, our generous sponsors Atomic Books and Artist & Craftsman Supply, Dionysus and company for the foodspacedrink, Jeff for photos, Zak of TuffNerd Productions for taking video (which means we should have some more media on here in a bit:) ), and Bill for handling door and doing all the other stuff Bill does.

Next session is Febuary 23rd with the lovely Lady Vile. Check back in a day or two for the rest of this session’s photos and a flyer for the next one. 🙂