"Happy Bobby McFerrin" by "Joyous Joan"
© Joan Lansberry, 2008

(from journal entry January 3, 2008
I was determined to do better artistically than I did last night. While I drew yesterday, we enjoyed one of Yo Yo Ma's albums. Over and over, I might add, for the new stereo will keep replaying until you stop it! So I thought I'd hunt out a photo of Yo Yo Ma in action. Alas, I could find no action photos, only stills of him with a surprisingly big instrument. I hadn't realized he played a cello, rather than a violin. Wanting an action scene, I wasn't having luck with my Google search, either. There was only links to "You Tube" videos of him.

I went to one, and enjoyed it greatly. I found I could make a screen capture whenever I liked:


Link to video underneath this freeze frame...

I got a sense of the lively rapport he and Bobby McFerrin were sharing, and hoped to capture some of that in my drawing. But OOOoh, the capture is SOOO tiny and fuzzy! So I tried capturing closer views in the film, as well as using other still photos of the two to get a better idea of their appearance. The result is a bit cartoonish, but considering the limitations I had, I'm not too displeased with it:


However, they both seem a bit skinny in the trunk...

I appreciated learning how McFerrin taught him to be more spontaneous and not so self conscious. Also, Yo Yo Ma said "The most important thing about performing is to make magic!" He and McFerrin certainly do make magic.

Although not greatly displeased, I'm still not 100% percent satisfied with that effort, so I decided to try another. I found some photos "for press release" at Bobby McFerrin's site. I found one suitable to work with, much easier being 1470x2000 pixels big, and this time got happy results.