Sketching musicians in the dark

All sketches are ink in small Moleskine notebook
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The Fishtank Ensemble performs a fascinating mix of Eastern European/Klezmer/Gypsy/Flamenco/Japanese music and their beautiful lead singer has the most astonishing, operatic voice. They were performing at Ashkenaz on a Wednesday night while I was on vacation and I went by myself to hear them since for everyone else it was a “school night.”

It was a fabulous, thrilling performance, and much of the music was very fast so I was drawing really fast too, even though I could just barely see what I was doing. Here are some more of my sketchy drawings from that night. If only they could convey the excitement of the music!

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The square instrument above is a Japanese shamisen. The lead singer plays violin and saw and can make her voice sound just an ethereal saw.

Left above: The lead singer is tall, slim and dazzling, (my drawing doesn’t do her justice), wearing a flippy little black skirt and a very small jeweled black velvet top with bare midriff and delicate high heeled sandals.

Right above: On the other hand, this woman who was dancing in front of me looked like she was trying to make herself look dumpy. She was wearing striped kneesocks with oxford shoes, a short baggy sweater on top of a long baggy shirt and a bulky pleated knit skirt. She had her hair in pigtails and was wearing big glasses. But she was having a ton of fun dancing up a storm.