Nelson Mandela

The last roots train has left the station... goodbye, Junior Murvin

Sad to hear this morning of the death of Junior Murvin. Like everyone else with working ear drums, I love his collab with Lee Perry on Police & Thieves, but his other songs are well worth checking out.  If you like his falsetto delivery and LSP's Black Ark production then I recommend  his first album - also titled 'Police & Thieves' - as a good entry point to his catalogue. Roots Train is a cracking opener...

Owen Wilson

Stuart Broad

Ah, the fluctuating fortunes that comprises English national cricket. It's all handbags at the mo' aint it? Still, here's an oddly beatific looking Broad - don't know what happened there...

Mark Webber

Chin! - Done with Sketchbook Pro.

Benjamin Britten

Sketch!

Young Don

 

Donald Sutherland, in his pomp. Etched in Sketchbook Pro.

Zlatan Ibrahimović

So what's that black bra all about then?
Loved drawing this face - so many great features...

Heisenberg - Colour WIP

Colour stuff going on in the lab...

Dee Dee Ramone

1,2,3,4...

W.I.P.

Cooked colour stuff coming soon-ish... just like Christmas.

Chris Hemsworth...

...as Thor, God of Thunder, no less.

Michael C Hall

Although I had every intention of doing a nice stretch with Mr Hall's face - and he's got a great face to stretch with - this drawing ended up straightening itself out as I progressed. It sort of finished up as a half-way-house between a portrait and a caricature. Don't mind too much as the purpose of the exercise was to concentrate on getting symmetries and levels correct. Good practice.

Sofie Gråbøl

Was intended to be a rough and chewy sketch like the last post but it got more and more involved. Great face!

Walter White

A very rough sketch of the hit character Walter White from Breaking Bad, played by Bryan Cranston. Would be cool to colour up...so maybe I'll do just that, when I get 5!

John Cole

Another distinct BBC voice from the past, now silent.

Luis Suarez

I don't usually like to mix colour with cross-hatched black & white drawings. Not sure why; something to do with wanting the hatching to do all the work, perhaps, but every now and then I let it go. When I finished this one, and was thinking on this issue, I remembered the late, great, French cartoonist Claude Serre whose books I'd owned from a very young age. He was definitely a big influence on me and worth checking out if you're not familiar with his work. His cartoons all involved highly detailed and cross-hatched black & white pen work, which made a virtue of the fact that the focus of the piece was usually rendered in colour. Well, if it was good enough for Monsieur Serre...

Call It, Friend-O!

I've been working my way through the books of Cormac McCarthy who has held top spot in my favourite authors poll for a while now. Though I watched the film adaptation No Country For Old Men back when it came out I've only just recently finished reading the book. So here's my little bit of fan art for a great modern bogeyman of modern literature, Anton Chigurh, who lies at the black heart of it all. Beautifully played by Javier Bardem, of course...

John Bishop

Got about 50% through this with everything going great when the computer crashed. I always save as I go along but this time the computer acted weird and I'd somehow managed to save the file with the image half off the edge of the drawing area, thus cropping John's face. Useless! Nothing worse than starting over when you felt you'd nailed the original, as you never think you can replicate it - let alone getting back the wasted time. Oh well, I'm quite happy with version two (which somewhat lessens the pain!) but I could've done without it.

Silk Purses & Sow's Ears

As anyone who puts their caricature services out there will know, you very quickly compile a set of requests and 'conditions' that you ask of your customer in order that they get the best possible piece of artwork that you can deliver. These can involve things like payment terms, lead times/delivery and reference images, etc. They exist to ensure that the commsission runs as smooth as possible with everyone coming out happy from the arrangement.

This post was prompted while musing on reference images: the photos that the customer sends of their boss/spouse/kids/best man, etc. which you're going to use to capture their likeness.
I always ask for clear headshots of the subjects, which are preferably taken somewhere between mid-to-close-up and not across the other side of a conference hall; and preferably in natural light. This last request is a bit of an 'ask' as most photos are taken indoors, often at dimly lit parties. As most caricaturists know, the reason for asking for outdoor images is that the natural light source provides good directional shadows and the architecture of the face is easier to discern.  A photo taken indoors with poor lighting - and with the subject's face lit up with a strong flash - does little to provide interesting contours and elevations - it only supplies the dimensions and positions - which are essential, but not sufficient. The other bugbear is the extremely low res' postage stamp-sized images - ones where all detail is impossible to see regardless of how well lit they are. If you end up with a combination of the two then you have every right to weep into your palette.
The above scenarios happen all too often and I am always suprised that people are willing to pay good money while supplying sub-standard images.

Below is a three-stager of a recent commission which had prompted my thoughts on reference images. The customer was great to deal with, but the deadline was tight and the supplied images of the three guys were very small. The artwork was originally going to be A2 size - a bit of a stretch to fill, regarding the reference image sizes - but just prior to starting the final artwork, the customer changed to wanting it at A3. This was for other reasons entirely - though probably for the best under the circumstances. The reference pictures had the further complication of having a weird form of pixelation, as though they'd corrupted somewhere along the way (I would show them here but I generally don't like to upload photos of people supplied in good faith and without their permission - so please just take my word for it). No more larger, clearer images could be supplied so I had to make good with what I had.

Unipin & Copic Ciao markers on smooth Gold line Bristol Board h/weight paper

All the above made me think further on the many factors that can hamper the smooth running of a commission. As with most jobs, a secondary skill is demanded of the caricature artist - the need for the ability to adapt to the situation. This ability is arguably equal to the primary one of actually being able to caricature in the first place - a fact that is taken as a 'given'.
So, when represented with bad reference photos, vague instruction, poor communication and very tight deadlines, only you can decide whether the commission really is do-able. But once taken on, the goal is to then make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Splitter!

After a bit of chin scratchin' as to the wisdom of it all, I decided to create a new blog in order to split the comic/fantasy/cartoon illos from the caricature posts. I usually like to keep things 'similar', so that was one big reason, but the other main incentive was that I have specific caricature links connecting to this blog, so I didn't want to confuse those seeking caricature related stuff. That's not to say you won't ever see the odd recognisable fizzog slipped in over there, but it's mainly going to be a dumping ground for pics 'n' stuff from the more crepuscular regions of my noggin'. So if you like macabre/alien/bot/zombie/space/comic-character/fan-art/pulp/gals then it might repay you a visit...

Thanks for checkin' in - fresh stuff soon...

Recent Digital Commission

A recent commission. Was cool to do some digital again...
Very busy at present and am itchin' like insanity to get to do some personal stuff.
But. There. Is. Just. No. Time.

Great words from Tom Richmond...

Tom Richmond's well-written and informative column is always worth a read, and his latest post is a great insight into how to go about trying to earn a living through humorous art and what your expectations should be. It's encouraging and realistic - go check it out.

Underbite from the underworld...

Acrylic paint on A4 200gsm Goldline watercolour paper

Agh, but it's been a while. This has been my longest gap between posts, ever - but it's not through idleness, faithful visitor. Just very very busy with the day job - which tends to spill over into the 'evening job'...
I've managed to grab a bit of time here and there just for painting and drawing some fun stuff that doesn't involve too much brain power - which is how I like to relax. So it's another look-in for the undead!

I've been enjoying painting a lot recently. Digital is bloody marvellous but if the computer's not behaving then it becomes a hideous experience. I've got a lot of that at the moment, so I've mainly eschewed the virtual and found refuge in the actual - you just can't beat the real thing. When was the last time your paint brush gave you an error message or found that your tubes of paint had crashed? Exactly.

That being said, I should be on for a cool digital vector commission soon (which is rare) and if all goes to plan I'll post it here.

Anyway, back to this post's paint job: coupla progress shots here:

Judge Death in Colour

Inks: Sketchbook Pro - Colours: Photoshop

Just thought I'd throw some colour at it, just to tickle myself. Don't know why he's being zapped but it's sure making him gurn. Shouldn't wear a metal lid in a thunderstorm, p'raps?