Jolly Yule Y'all

Just a small post to wish those who check in here 'happy holidays' and seasonal greetings, etc.
Thanks again to those who've joined up as a member and/or taken the time to comment - it's always appreciated - and I hope you check back in 2012 for more visual goodies.

To those who are waiting for artwork: thanks for your patience, they're in various stages of completion and will be with you soon.

See you back here in the new year - good times!

Russ

Christopher Hitchens

Had to break off from my current work to acknowledge, in virtual graphite, the death of Christopher Hitchens. I first read his writing back in 2006 when my brother and my American sister-in-law visited from the States bringing with them, and leaving behind, a copy of the American magazine 'Details'. There was an article written within, taken from Christopher Hitchens' book 'Letters to a Young Contrarian', which was set out as a top ten of 'advice' for free-thinkers and aspiring writers. It all resonated deeply and I've been a fan ever since. Now sadly he has died far too soon from esophageal cancer, but not without writing and talking on it right up to the end. I can't really think of anyone living who can step into his shoes.
I've sketched him many times although I've never uploaded any drawings - but now is the time.
Jerry Falwell - matchbox - enema! (you look it up). Thank you, Christopher!

Commission Art - b&W stage

Recent work...

Ian Botham - In colour

Here's a colour version of a sketch I did a little while ago (link) The ref material wasn't great for fine detail but I'm happy-ish with the result. It has been hanging around on my hard drive, semi complete, for too long and was a struggle to get back into - It's so easy to lose momentum on an involved piece.

George Papandreou

George in happier times. Still hanging on in there at last look...

Julian Barnes Part3

More JB stages after a break away down the South West. The end is in sight...

Julian Barnes Part 2

Julian Barnes Part1

Haven't  been posting lately as I've only been producing poop. However, I got the urge after a short break, to create something out of the 2011 Man Booker Prize winner's face. It's a work in process, so the above is stage 1and, although I have some vague ideas of where I'm going to take it, I'm just going to see how it plays out and put up the various stages as they materialise. It might give a glimpse of the chaos that informs my process. Stay tuned for part 2 - coming soon(ish)

Hideo Kojima

A recent commission of the creator of the Metal Gears games series and Vice President of Konami Entertainment.

W.H. Auden

David Hasselhoff

The Hoff. Burgers, puppies and talking car just outta shot.

Lou Reed

The more I progressed with this the more I thought I was doing David Gedge from The Wedding Present (who in turn, bore an uneasy resemblace to John Major). So who had the best hair? Who had the best tunes? The best policies? You decide.
Anyway, in what sounds dangerously like a plan; that's gonna be it for straight headshots for a while. Going to be concentrating on full body action shots with simpler flat colouring...hmm, we'll see!

Roberto Mancini

Photoshop with Cintiq

Commissions - B&W stages...

Thought I'd post some recent commission work at line art stage. If you're a fan of comic work then you'll know that black white line art has as much power, perhaps even more, than full colour work. I try and get a snap of the b&w stage when doing colour work as I really like it ... and in some cases wish I could stop it there.
FYI: The artwork can been seen fixed to a light box where a print out of the rough stage sits sandwiched between the two.

Ian Curtis

Anjelica Huston

Trying to get a few more female faces done...

Ian McShane

Another great face to study - could approach drawing it in many different ways...

Segata Sanshiro!

...and third, Segata Sanshiro: the fictional character invented to help sell the Sega Saturn games console back in the late nineties.

Reiko Nagase!

More commission work...this time the glamourous CG gal from the ridge racer series of video games...

Mario!

Some recent commission work for a yet-to-be-launched French web site. Always a bit of a weird one caricaturing a cartoon character instead of a real person. So this is my take on the energetic Italian-American virtual plumber.

Ian Botham

Saw the documentary on England cricket badboy Ian Botham the other night and couldn't think of why he hadn't hitherto entered my mind as a possible subject for facial foolery. As they said in the doc'; he was a national treasure for a time (while spending the rest of it as an anti-hero)
I originally wanted to draw him when he went through his Paul Calf stage but there were few hi-res pic's to work from. So a later, cleaned up Beefy (albeit with a few extra lines) had to be the subject material.

Web Site Updated!

Just to say I've been working behind the scenes updating my caricature site. There are now pages for digital pencil work as well as extra pages for regular pencil work and vector. With well over 200 images within the site it now comprises a better 'one-stop-shop' for viewing (nearly) everything so far.

The only area not covered at present is digital paint, mainly as I have so little that falls into that category. As soon as a few more pieces have been created then a dedicated page will go up.

It seems there are two schools of thought when showcasing artwork online; one: put up a small, select gallery of your absolute best work; and two: put up a large selection of everything and have your web site more of an online storage depot. Having spent a few years in the former camp I'm now trying out the latter. I've still left out the real scrappier stuff although I may add a page in the future for sketches and roughs that I think have merit. I've trawled back as far as I dare go and the keen-eyed will see a progression (of sorts) especially in the early pencil sketches from 2006 up to the digi-pencil stuff I'm currently doing.

My real problem was how to add pages without adding loads of buttons and cluttering up the place. I went  with a system utilising the usual up-and-down 'tree' system that branches out from the home page but which also used a side-to-side (or left and right) approach once you landed on the first page of the gallery.
For instance, by clicking 'vector'  this will take you to page one of the vector section of the gallery. To then see more pages within that vector section hit the left and right arrows situated within the flourished border and these will take you through the dedicated pages within that section. The same principle works within all the various sections of the galleries. Not only does it sort out the problem of not letting the buttons become more numerous and overcrowded but I can also add future pages which will slot right in without having to fundamentally re-structure the site.

With so many links, etc I've checked and double-checked that everything's working, that all the links are taking you where they should and that there are no spelling errors, but if you discover anything erroneous then you're welcome to hit me up so I can then sort it.

Hope ya like it!

Sketchbook stuff...Captain Beefheart

Tryin' some stuff...

Thom Yorke

Fellow Oxfordian...

Billy Bob Thornton

 

It's been interesting to notice how time spent doing caricatures is affected by the format - especially when the formats are similar. For instance, the above pic of Billy Bob took me: 2h 20m. I found that on average I would only spend an hour to 1h 30m on real pencil drawings - for a similar overall effect. The only theory I have is that with the digital pencil I'm probably editing and trying different things along the way - sometimes scrubbing out whole sections of an involved piece. With real pencil I'm committed - but I do a lot of screwing up of paper.

Cy Twombly

The artist Cy Twombly who died yesterday.

Can't sleep, so I decided to finish this up. Gotta be the latest upload I've ever made. Or do I mean the earliest? Either way, I'm going to pay for it later.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

The French tennis ace...

Sebastian Vettel

Rough Sketchin'...

Bashar al-Assad

Syrian president...Something going on with pointed ears at the moment!

How? Why?

Got a new gadget running on the right of the blog in case anyone is interested in the thinking behind illustration and caricature. It's purely to collate previous posts I've written - in answer to specific questions I've received - in one handy access point. It doesn't make one comprehensive treatise, although I'll certainly add to them if I find myself writing anything coherent in the future. Also, in no way are they supposed to be the last words on the 'right way' to draw - but if they helped... then all to the good! Hope you enjoy 'em...

Paul Collingwood

Tools: photoshop + wack 'em sin-teeeeeeeeeeeek

Rory McIlroy

US Open champ and record breakin' Rory!

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

There's a glam-Cam'-slam going on...or something.
Currently frustrated at finding her voice mail messages left at No.10 ignored - it's Argentinian president Cristina Fernández De Kirchner.

Jeff as Rooster

 Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn in  the Coen brothers' remake of True Grit. Enjoyed the film - looked great.

Martin Jol

Should've been a relative walk in the park but this one needed about five attempts - goes like that sometimes...

Internal Wall Sign For Studio

Here are some snaps of some studio decoration I recently undertook. Now and then I like to make a print or frame an image and try and spruce up the joint. The five images on the left (top to bottom) shows the original layout for a wall mounted image I wanted to go in my studio. I took the digital files round to a mate who's got a large scale colour printer who turned them into vinyl adhesive prints (giant stickers, basically).

In the top/right image you can see I've started to cut up the individual images as the prints came out on one sheet.
The right/middle image shows a crop of Steve Buscemi which has already been applied (wet) to the blank sign material. This is made out of dibond, which is a thin polyethylene core sandwiched by two thin sheets of aluminium and comes in various colours. Dibond (or alupanel, as it's sometimes called) makes for a strong but slim sheet material and with its attractive finish it's great for signage.
The bottom/right image shows the finished sign fixed with gold wall mounts.

Job done!

John Bolton

Bush's bulldog. And possible future leader of the free world?

Steve Buscemi

It's been a stretch since I've found time for some digital colour work - so it's good to finally get my morph of the great face of Steve Buscemi aired. Found it hard to stop tweakin' so I'm not sure it's finished; an all-too-familiar story...

Virginia Woolf

An old 'un from the vaults.

Martin Amis x2

Great writer - great face. Colour work to come real soon...ish.

Werner Herzog

Haven't done any proper drawing for ages - and boy, I'm out of sync.

Judi Dench

Started eons ago. Finished today.

Gustav Mahler

Tools: Ps2 + Cintiq

I'm slap in the middle of a some busy painting so I've just got time to try and finish some drawings that were temporarily abandoned for whatever whim or fancy overtook them at the time. So; here's another baton-jocky to add to the collection.

Right! Back to the day job...

Carlo Ancelotti

Found an hour after a full day of painting to sketch the above.

John Irving

Howard Jacobson

The Man Booker Prize winner from last year.

Hosni Mubarak

Found a bit of time to etch the sessile statesman.

Paul Newman

Only McQueen is cooler.

Novak Djokovic

Giant Slayer!

Carlos Tevez

At last Carlos is on the field. He's been sat on my virtual bench since last July. I know he's not with the reds anymore but it's languished for so long on my hard drive that he's half way to retirement, ha, ha!

More...