Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School Burlesque Life-Drawing was very risqué tonight

Here is the poster and description for the July 7, 2014 life-drawing session from the Toronto Branch website:

Poster illustration by Jeremy Cardarelli. Two Toronto trouble makers go out of the comic pages and into the dungeon at the upcoming Dr.Sketchy's Toronto session. Naughty tattooed hottie Kensie Vicioüs and beefcake batboy Toronto Batman will be posing together in their skimpiest costumes.

Watch out - Kensie heard Toronto Batman has been a very bad bat. She just may have to punish him.

Special Emcee: Gracie Klutz!!

Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School is the little New York art event that became a movement. Started in 2005 by artist Molly Crabapple, the concept is simple. Artist’s draw glamorous burlesque dancers, compete in contests, and win wacky prizes. From it’s humble Brooklyn beginnings, Dr. Sketchy’s now has over 100 branches around the globe, including Los Angeles, London, Rome, Tokyo, and Melbourne. Learn more about Dr. Sketchy's here: http://www.drsketchy.com/
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Dr Sketchy's Anti-Art School Burlesque life-drawing last night was based on comic book figures but truly seemed more BDSM. They were a kinky Batman and Catwoman, let's say. Batman and his masked Madame of Meows posed with fun and hilarity for us. They are actually married and were a great couple to draw! Despite the short poses, mostly 5 min, some 10min, one 15min, and the complexity of two figures interlacing, there were some beautiful drawings in the room. Such talented artists all over!

Here are mine. They're all done on 18" x 24" 80lb Strathmore archival drawing paper with graphite, the regular kind and the water-soluble kind. I am a little uncomfortable posting these, they are so risqué, but I do keep a record of my drawings and paintings on this blog, so chalk it up and on with the show.

The two below are the full drawing that was cropped in #4, and #6 with a solarizing filter (I like this effect on that drawing).

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EMBED CODE AT YOUTUBE BROKEN FOR OVER A YEAR!

Something truly shocking - the EMBED CODE at YOUTUBE has been broken for over a year!

Take a look:

[iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="422" src="//www.

youtube.com/embed/VVbeyT-Oh7A?rel=0" width="750"]

See where I underlined. The SCR="//WWW.

Do you see what's missing?

The videos APPEAR where you've embedded them (in Blogger, for instance) but THEY DON'T PLAY!

TO CORRECT THE BROKEN CODE: add "https:" manually. Like this:

src="https://www.

SPREAD THE WORD! Something like this is as unforgivable as it is unbelievable.

Ellen El alerted me to this article, YouTube Is About To Delete Independent Artists From Its Site in Forbes Magazine, as a possible reason for YouTube's faulty embed codes. However, if true, an intentional act by YouTube without telling subscribers, one surmizes whether there could be some law suits in the offing over it.

Since I always include a direct link - for people who follow me by email - anyone who has been interested in seeing my videos has been able to go to YouTube and watch them there. Meaning I haven't had any complaints - people just figured it was their Internet connection or that YouTube was experiencing technical difficulties at that moment.

I wondered why my video view counts were down and thought I had lost my audience after not posting videos for awhile. It was YouTube itself un-enabling watching videos embedded on other sites.

YouTube is far too large and powerful not to fix this issue. There's a reason they are not permitting us to post watchable videos on our sites. What it is, frankly, despite the Forbes article, I couldn't guess.

I just know that YouTube has been giving out BROKEN CODE for over a year - I found videos without the proper link as far back as May 2013.

I've spent hours correcting everything I've uploaded.

Here's a video I posted fairly recently. I'm not even going to add the direct link. See if it is finally watchable from here. And don't ask me what that dumb little link to my YouTube site is that appears at the beginning - it's not something I added or authorized - just click the x to close it. I subtitled this video, so click on CC if you would like to read or get the words translated as they are being spoken (poem fragment starts 25sec in).



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Keesha on Canada Day

My baby is looking rather good for her age. Keesha will be 15 at the end of August.

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Yes, it was delicious.
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Happy Canada Day

How can rain clouds be so dark? Black little thunderclaps roaming the sky.

A Canada Day of intermittent storms, gutter-filling downpours, a misty moody sky, and the air so thick with humidity we know we are living inside one.

One of my favourite kinds of days - torrential rains for 10 minutes, stormy little clouds roving like black pirate ships, and a sun that shines through a wide cloud cover making the sky so white it is visionary.

And then, the clearings of blue. The hot, direct sun on your skin.

Enjoy your day!

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Sunday Self-Portrait

Somehow I managed to get one done this week - looking into an image in the tablet looking at me while watching Season 4 of Game of Thrones (finally). I clipped the drawing onto a bar of an upright laundry drier thing and clamped the lamps on and took some photos but like the one shot with 'creative lighting' best. Now... back to the show!

I also used dots to map the proportions before I began drawing with the ink and this method seemed to help with the likeness, on which I can never comment since, really, our eyes aren't constructed to look at ourselves are they - and what we see in a mirror isn't what people see when they look at us.

Sunday Self-Portrait, June 30, 2014 - taken late at night with a daylight bulb shining from one side in a clamp lamp that was covered by a sheet of white mylar. I totally like the mood the lighting creates here. ©Brenda Clews, 11" x 8.5", Noodler's #41 Brown ink, white conté crayon (later I erased the conté), Pentallic 130lb paper.

The drawing photographed in direct sun the next day. It's not too bad though the eyes are a bit too dark again - ink is so unforgiving, a few extra dots and that's it. I think this drawing would be better scanned but I can't seem to connect my scanner to my newer computer. ©Brenda Clews, 11" x 8.5", Noodler's #41 Brown ink, Pentallic 130lb paper.

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Sunday Self-Portrait

Sunday Self-portrait - June 22nd, finished on the 24th. ©Brenda Clews, 2014. 15" x 11", mixed media on Pentalic 130lb paper.

Is there a decent resemblance? I have no idea. I struggled with the drawing, and used lots of different media, including, finally, a ball point pen. Also, I am, once again, without a computer and so it is difficult to see if the photograph is accurate against the original - I think so, but will have to await a better screen to know for sure.

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