Preliminary Study for the Portrait of Kelly Felicia

Here is a sketch of my co-worker from the African country Liberia. Some of our colleagues call her Kelly and some call her Felicia. I call her Kelly Felicia, which amuses her.

I admire her immensely. She can do many things well. On the job she is versatile and a consummate professional. She can cook tirelessly, ring a cash register speedily, and break up a logjam in the Dish Pit expeditiously. And she does not complain; she is almost always cheerful.

Attempting her portrait, I am running into the quicksand of trying too hard, because getting this lovely and depth-revealing face just right is a fearsome responsibility. So the compromise I made with my artistic integrity was to do enough sketching of Kelly Felicia to learn how to make a reasonably recognizable face. This portrait was good enough to show her, and she smiled and said, “Oh. That is me.”

But something that is beyond Good is demanded of this remarkable subject. Back to the Drawing Board, then!