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.