He quickly sketched the facial features and then grabbed his airbrush and painted the details of Winfield’s face.
“I am looking for the thing that makes that person different than anyone else I have seen,” he said Wednesday morning. “I am looking for uniqueness in the individual.”
Winfield looked at the painting of himself and smiled.
“I like it,” he said. “I have never had one done before. I have seen some done before and they don’t look like the person.
“He is very accurate.”
For the past few years, Bernsen has been returning to Beeville to draw willing people as part of the Barnhart Workshop Series.
By now, Bernsen was already drawing another person, instructor Luis Peña.
As he drew, Bernsen pointed to Peña’s mustache, glasses and lack of hair as accents for his piece.
“Any sort of facial hair is a good place to start out with,” Bernsen said. “It is an elaborate thought process. The drawing is only 10 percent of it. Getting to know them is 90 percent of it.”
Bernsen, a former Beeville resident now living in Arlington, fell into the art of caricatures after taking a summer job at Six Flags in Dallas.
“It was a fluke,” he said.
As he drew, Bernsen told those in the room at the college art building that he had drawn a few caricatures before that 1994 summer job at Six Flags Over Texas but not much. “As far as someone sitting down in front of me, I had never done it before,” he said.
Bernsen worked at the amusement park for the next few summers and took a full-time position there for about three more years.
Having graduated from Coastal Bend College in 1993, Bernsen also received his bachelor of fine arts degree from Southwest Texas State University in 1996.
Bernsen said he is glad he found this art form while still in college.
“I had no idea what I was going to do,” he said. “I fell in love with it.”
Since Six Flags, Bernsen has worked for different theme parks, two state fairs and two shopping malls.
Now, he is turning his attention away from the malls and theme parks and concentrating on fairs and studio work.
“It is a little quieter but you still get the excited people,” Bernsen said comparing his work at fairs to that of the amusement park.
Bernsen makes his art look easy as a he quickly sketches out the silhouette and begins air brushing inside the outline.
Easily a veteran of the art, Bernsen is quick to admit that he is still learning.
“You are not practicing on them,” Bernsen recalled being told when he first took the job at Six Flags. “You are practicing for them.”
Unlike some forms of painting or drawing, time is not on the artist’s side.
“I like to do as much detail as I can in the shortest amount of time,” he said.
Students of the college looked on as Bernsen worked.
“He has a flannel pattern on his shirt? How are you going to do that,” one asked.
“That is simple,” he said as he sprayed a blue line of paint onto the paper.
Bernsen seemed unfazed by the checkered pattern as he skipped the minor details and drew the major lines of the pattern.
Finishing his drawing, Bernsen added shadows and highlights to the picture.
“I want this to have some depth,” he said.
Handing the paper to Peña, Bernsen was given an approving smile.
“Oh, that is good,” Peña said. “That came out good.”
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