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...

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