Pep Guardiola Caricature Portrait

 

Caricature portrait of the Man City soccer legend, Pep Guardiola.

Tools; Sketchbook Pro + Affinity Photo

Daniel Sturridge

Hoping he's going to turn it on again for England's next outing in the Euros against Slovakia. Don't care how he dances when he scores, as long as he scores!

Gareth Bale

There's your target, England - lock him down, ha, ha!

Johan Cruyff

 

Total football requires total caricature. My tribute to the late, great soccer star, Johan Cruyff. Great memories of being a kid and watching him dazzle on the field.

Lionel Messi

Latest addition to my gallery of footballing greats, it's Mr Messi. More to come- at some point!

Tools: Sketchbook Pro & Photoshop

Roy Hodgson

You would not believe the amount of trouble trying to capture Roy Hodgson's face has given me! I think I've sat down on about five occasions to fix a caricature only to have each session ending in failure. Always strange to find out which subjects end up being the most difficult to caricature. It's not that he doesn't have strong features: the bags under the eyes; the large rounded ears; the architecture of the jowls - that nose! Sometimes the most 'obvious' becomes the most difficult. The above drawing is the nearest I've come and it's still not quite 'spot on'! Oh well....

Zlatan Ibrahimović

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

Mario Balotelli

Maz.

Uni Pin fineline pens + Goldline Bristol Board paper

I've always enjoyed a love/hate relationship with creating pen & ink caricature work, though I must say its downsides are in no way linked to a misguided view that digital art is superior. It's more to do with the fact that anything (be they malfunctioning computers or poor materials) that retard the speed of creating the image is incredibly frustrating and can also cause an inferior execution when drawing traditionally.

I'm old enough to have have been using traditional materials for a long time before I started down the digital route, but since I started sketching and inking digitally, I've rarely gone back to traditional (unless commissioned to do so) because despite my long experience with it I could never quite get the equipment to work faultlessly, and for me, working faultlessly only 80% of the time is no good. In the past, I inked artwork by toggling between traditional dip pen and rotring pens. Both are great and provided subtle differences in finish, but despite many hours over many years they never proved perfect as the ink flow was always interrupted by the slightest blockage. Even when making sure that the equipment in both approaches were scrupulously clean and all surfaces free from skin contact, flow would always get interrupted and the lines making up my cross-hatching would get scraggier and the whole image would suffer as well as protracting the whole process.
When cross-hatching I always seek to avoid broken flows, i.e.: the line starts and finishes exactly where I want it to. If you go back to fill in breaks it is not only time consuming, you'll also never get it accurate and the line will look wobbly and unsure. If you have a whole image made up of bad lines then the image will look poor regardless of how great your other drafting skills are. A good clean arc or straight line is what you want to get the full effect. This is paramount when inking traditionally as there's no second chance - with digital, of course, you can immediately erase a bad line and re-draw.

So recently I have been buying new pens to experiment with to see if I can bury this old problem.  I bought some fine line markers (by Uni Pin) having always been a bit snobbish when considering them in the past. However, I've found that on Goldline Bristol Board paper they work a charm and give a good finish. They're water proof and they're permanent - both must-have qualities.

Now, with an invigorated spirit and in-love once more with traditional inking tools, I created the above caricature of Mario Balotelli and will be looking to do some more trad images very soon, hoping to polish up my technique.

If you want to buy the original it will be for sale on the 'Art For Sale' page very soon.
Thanks for checking in.

Gareth Southgate

Gaz. Is he still advertising Pizza?

Joey Barton

'Allo, 'Allo, it's Monsieur Barton. Très funny.

Roberto Di Matteo

Bobby D.

Buscemi-Pelé-Smalls Mash-up!

Another little experiment working with multiple images for the purpose of more advanced and involved compositions. I liked how the colours worked so I decided to upload it...

Pelè

The great Pelè!