This “weekend” thing is an unusual concept. I woke up Saturday with loads of cartooning to do, but it did not need to be done all at once, and I knew I could dig into it Monday morning. So I decided to take it easy and have one of these “weekends” I’ve heard so much about.

level_head and lady_anne road-tripped out to Utah to meet us, on the pretext of taking some books off our hands. In truth we all just wanted to get together and talk and play and eat, which we did. Sandra and I were meeting them for the first time, though it felt like we already knew them thanks to the LJ Blogosphere and comments from kelloggs2066 and rowyn.

They’re generous, wonderful, fun people, and all I had to offer in return for great company were a couple of caricatures.

Here’s level_head, hopefully at least marginally recognizable to those of you who have also had the pleasure of making his acquaintance In Real Life. When I was coloring it Gleek pulled out the “Tuscan Red” prismacolor marker and handed it to me. I asked her what I was supposed to color with it, impressed that she’d gotten the color of his turtleneck picked out so well. She pointed to the shoes. I looked under the table at his black shoes, and camped a grin up at the enthusiastic 3-year old.

   “Are you SURE?” I asked
   She fetched out another reddish color, and announced “This one!”

I looked down at his black shoes again, and then reached into my bucket of Prismacolor and withdrew a black marker.

   “Oh, yeah,” Gleek giggled. I think she just wanted him to have fancy red shoes, instead of something functional for putting feet in.

I ended up using the Tuscan Red for the turtleneck.

lady_anne was more difficult. I don’t do a good job of drawing women in the first place, and caricature is even more difficult. Still, she and I were both pleased with how it came out.

Let’s be clear: this is NOT what she was wearing on Saturday. It’s what everyone IMAGINES her wearing, though, at least in some sense, and it would hardly do to unravel the fantasy by drawing her in a sweatshirt. We collaborated on the colors for the dress, and level_head drew a sample tiara so I’d know what style to shoot for. Gleek got a little upset when she saw that HER PAPER WAS BEING USED BY SOMEONE ELSE, but as soon as we explained that the crown was for her to color, she was fine with it.

She posed the waving hand for me, which was helpful, but which also resulted in her right hand being something like 100 times larger than her left in the picture. It’s caricature, though. Everything above the neck is disproportionately large. If she didn’t want a huge right hand, she should have kept it below her shoulder.

Anyway, with the caricatures drawn, it was time for dinner. We grilled, we set the table, we threw away the nasty garden-fresh cucumbers with their toxic rind-resin, and then we ate: marinated pork kabobs, skewered veggies (sans nasty cukes), and some polenta I threw together on the stove.

It was a really nice visit. sandratayler already mentioned the Grave Robbers from Outer Space that we closed the evening with. This morning our guests returned, fixed breakfast for the household-plus, and then we all piled into the Mormon Assault Vehicle (our eight-seat Chevy Venture) and took a nice Sunday drive up Provo Canyon to Aspen Grove at the foot of Primrose Cirque. The fall colors were just a titch past their prime, the reddest trees having already dropped their leaves, but it was still inspiringly scenic.

We saw them off shortly after our return from the canyon. They’re on their way back down I-15 now, likely planning to visit other friends in Vegas tonight. I can’t thank them enough. I mean, besides the great company, if it hadn’t been for their visit, I would have settled into my default weekend behavior: work. Having an actual “weekend” was really, really nice. And the work can wait.

It’ll wait another 12 hours, too.