Sketching Dubya

I’ve been trying to develop a caricature of G.W. Bush. I’ve got a particular cartoon in mind, though as I was scanning these in I realized that a generic Uncle Sam figure would work better than one of Bush. But hey, it’s good practice, and who knows what ideas I might come up with in the future. This pencil sketch on the left was the first one I did, and I think the most successful.

I’ve started to get a feel for the characteristics that make Bush’s face recognizable — he’s got his father’s arrow-like nose, thin lips, and that long distance between his nose and mouth. He’s also got pretty fuzzily-bounded eyebrows, and his eyes are close together. Still, this second pencil sketch on the right looks a bit too much like David Letterman.

I also tried using a brush marker, figuring that being forced to work more broadly might help. I didn’t quite get his hair lines up with the rest of his face, and he looks like Ollie North here.

This last one started out well, but at some point started morphing into — damn, I can’t remember that newscaster’s name. I first thought Sam Donaldson, but no, he’s the one who looks like a Vulcan secret agent. Damn, who the hell am I thinking of? I’ll suddenly remember at 4 AM.

Ah, Tom Brokaw! Google Sets to the rescue! I entered dan rather, sam donaldson, and david brinkley, and Brokaw turned up in the resulting set.

Upper-body workout, and other stuff

I decided to push myself today, looking for levels of poundage that would challenge me to complete a set of 10 reps (after starting with a lighter set of 15).

(  Workout numbers  )

I may need to get a set of those magnetic weight add-ons to get my barbells up to 24lbs. Or experiment with water-filled milk bottles or something.

I really ought to have done these in the morning, rather than letting them go till the late evening, but then I would have been up and about even later, and might not have had time to get other stuff done.

Other stuff: I cancelled my New York Sports Club membership. Should have done it last month, or earlier; I haven’t been using it.

And I called my health insurance company, just to say Hey, y’know how I filled out the little form on the back of my invoice, telling you to change my mailing address to one in New Jersey? Well, you folks have figured out that it’s because I’m living in New Jersey now, right? Well, as it turns out, no, they hadn’t. They do have a policy that covers NJ, and they’re sending me the forms to change over, and I’m still covered in the meantime. And they cover all the same doctors in NY, NJ, Connecticut and Rhode Island, so I could keep my old doctor if I liked him (which I don’t) and hadn’t just chosen him because he was convenient to my old apartment (which he was). And I surfed their website and found that they’ve got a buttload of doctors near me. Another obstacle-to-Atkins soon to be removed.