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...

Technique part 3 - Brian Cowen (stage1)

OK, I've had a few emails recently asking about improving caricature skills, etc. so I thought I'd re-iterate here a point I consider very important. And that's if you don't get your basic morph (exaggeration) correct then all the fine digital painting or finely hatched pencil work is not going to make a successful caricature. Ever.

If you're not getting a successful caricature at the line stage then you will never improve on it by rendering it to death in whatever medium you're using. The above line drawing of the exiting Irish Prime minister Brian Cowen hopefully illustrates how, technically, if you've got the line right then you can stop right there. Job done. Also, good lines in a good line drawing will have body and weight to them and will suggest the volume of the character it describes. A good place to see this is in the line art of the great Marvel artists of yesteryear.

The purpose of fine hatching (or the painting in of every blood vessel and liverspot) is to add the 'Wow' factor, and never to make the caricature more 'successful'.
Therefore, your succesful caricature relies on two things: great morphing and great rendering of medium, but only great morphing can stand alone.

Now I'm off to add a load of furious cross-hatching to the above, ha, ha!

Keep on creatin'!

Nick Cave

Another Nick Cave - and certainly not the last.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Vince Vaughn

Susannah York...

...who has exited stage left for the last time. My main memory is from watchin' endless repeats of The Battle Of Britain on Saturday afternoon tv. Who wants to bet it's made the schedule for this weekend?

Stevie Wonder

Coming towards the end of the creation of all the individual roughs for the canvas. Stage 2 is to pull all the characters together and work out a composition for them all.

Jamie Cullum

JT Taylor

Roughin' away..

Ray Charles

Johnny Cash

More rough stuff...

Frank Sinatra - young

2011 already! - Let's go to it...

So, happy new year! Hope every one had a good break and that you're looking to 2011 to make some great art. Thanks to everyone who has dropped by over the last year and left their comments - always welcome. Nice to know people want to see what I'm working on and I have evey intention in producing and uploading regular artwork through the coming twelve months; so stay tuned.
Can't imagine there'll be any great changes in the format: just looking to refine the pencil and digital work. There's no dirth of ideas and experiments that I want to conduct to try and push the boundaries - I hope I can find time to really sink my teeth into it.
There'll be more real painting going on but it'll be mostly wrapped up in the canvas commission. I'm also looking to expand on comic and character design in 2011 which will go hand in hand with a need to revisit and study the rest of the human form - the skills are lacking! I've neglected this a bit over the last five years as I've been concentrating on the face. But I'll still be morphing and caricaturing - it's just too much fun.

Thanks for checkin' in - and keep on creating!