Illustration

I have started work on a practice illustration. I am fairly confident in my ability to get a solid likeness and render it to my satisfaction, however, The piece of the illustration puzzle I need to work on is to place a caricature into context, to that end I am doing a depiction of Sarah Palin as the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. I am also going to start taking news stories and thinking about how I would illustrated them.

I want to move into doing illustration work for publication and this seems like good practice. Any ideas you folks have would be greatly appreciated.

Speedpainting.

Here are some recent digital speed paintings that I have done:

Putin

Finally finished this one of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Originally this was an assignment for Seiler's class but alas didn't finish in time being that other stuff came up. Anyway hope you like it. My monitor calibrating equipment should come in this week and I will recheck all my colored works to make sure they are what I want them to be.

Miranda Kerr Sketch.

Here is a sketch I did for the monthly jam over at the Drawing Board of Model Miranda Kerr. There are several changes that I can already see I will make when I go to paint this but anyway here it is:

I am also working on sketches of Lady Gaga, Alan Rickman (Professor Snape) and a better Jon Stewart. All of these will eventually be painted. I have also been working on a painting of Putin and Trump.

Been a bit...

It has been awhile since I have updated this blog, sorry about that. I have been rather busy. I recently completed doing caricatures of my daughters entire Brownie Troop. The troop leaders originally wanted simple pencil drawings but I decided to go with higher quality digital ones instead. This has led to a potential private art lesson gig, so that is great.

I am getting ready to relaunch my website and start a second one for the pets. First I need to get monitor calibrating equipment which I hope to do soon. More on that as things develop.

Here are some of the things I have been drawing:

Here is a sketch I did of the great Mel Brooks for his birthday thread in the ISCA forum.

Here I turned the sketch into a fully rendered caricature painting. You can see all the changes I made between the two.

This one of me and the one below of my brother Scott were both taken from a larger piece I did for my father featuring his three kids.

Evie

Sorry for my lack of recent posts. I made some adjustments to the Randy Travis in my previous post and updated that post to include them. Nothing major just adjusted the ear and made the background all the same color, I had noticed there were some off spots in it.

Above is a caricature of Evie painted in photoshop. Still working out some printing issues but otherwise I am very happy with it. I enjoyed working on all the fur.

In other news I have tendinitis in my right wrist so I have been using my left hand more. This brings me to the below image. There is a thread on the ISCA forum for speedpaintings digital caricatures done in under an hour. Reading through this thread inspired me to attempt one myself........left handed. This is the result. It is Brian Baumgartner who plays Kevin on The Office (the American version). While I am no way completely happy with it, for my left hand I am rather pleased. I intend to do more of these in the near future. I am probably going to take this one to completion eventually as well, but maybe not.

Hopefully soon my wrist will be better so I can get back to working on homework for Seiler's class and the other things I have going on.

Randy done.

This is the finished Randy Travis. I am getting ready to do an update to my website, I will let you know when that happens. My wrist is starting to feel better but not quite back to full strength yet.

The latest assignment.

Finally able to post the next assignment. Took longer than I would have liked but over all I am happy with it. I have a few other projects on my plate. A bunch of caricatures for my daughters Girl Scout troop as well as a colored pencil portrait and finishing up a dog caricature that I have been doing.

My drawing hands wrist has been bothering me a bit lately so I haven't drawn as much per day to try and rest it up. I have also been training myself to draw lefty. Very interesting experience that is.

Hopefully I will have something new to post soon. Maybe that Randy when I finish it.

Feeling Randy.

Hello again folks. Been rather busy with various projects. Still not done with the next assignment for the class. I was unhappy with the direction it was going so reworked it. My wrist is starting to bother me a bit so I am reluctantly taking a bit of a break from drawing or at least trying to.

Above is a Randy Travis that I am almost finished with. I watch American Idol and as soon as I watched him on the show I knew I wanted to draw him. What an interesting face. I may or may not color this. We shall see.

The third assignment

The third assignment was a study in values (you can see now how I incorporated this lesson in with the Rowan Atkinson). The sketch this is done from was Seiler's I just did the painting from it. I am well on my way to completing my next assignment which is similar though it is monochromatic not just black and white.

Rowan along.......

As promised here are some sketches from the second lesson followed by a progression of Rowan Atkinsom depictions starting with the Sketchbook Pro sketch through to the completed photoshop painting.

class sketches

Here are some sketches I did for the first lesson in Seiler's Caricature class.
They are in reverse order.

I will post images from the second lesson soon though I actually watched the third lesson prior to doing the finished drawing so I incorporated the learning from that lesson as well. It is going to be a finished piece of Rowan Atkinson. I have been working on it all morning but went a wee bit too long between my last two saves and when I went to save it photoshop shutdown unexpectedly losing about an hour or so of work. Grrrrr!!!! gotta remember to save more frequently. Oh well it is good practice. Looking back at the Hanks below now, I can't believe I turned that crap in.

Some sketches and a decision.

Here are a few sketches I have done recently in Sketchbook Pro:


I drew Dolly for the March contest over at e-caricatures. I may or may not do a more finished version.

Jon has such a fascinating face. I have drawn it a dozen times and none of them I am completely satisfied with. This probably comes closest to where I want it to be. One day I hope to do a finished colored version of him.

I drew Coulter because I love her long neck. Every time I see her I feel compelled to start drawing her but haven't until now. This one I will turn into a finished colored painting eventually (digital painting that is). Will make a great companion piece for my O'Reilly.

I think I have mentioned in previous posts that I wanted to take a couple courses at Schoolism.com I want to take Character Design with Stephen Silver and A Caricature class by Jason Seiler. Unfortunately I can't afford both. I had decided to take Silver's course this year and Seiler's another year, but re-thinking it I have decided to take them both after all. However instead of taking the full course I will take the self-taught versions. While I have no doubt that the full version is well worth every penny, at present it is more economical for me to take the self-taught versions and take both. I will post progress updates as soon as I begin either of them (hopefully within the week if I am correct in thinking I can start them as soon as I pay being that they are self-taught).

I am almost done working on a dog caricature and will soon begin working on a colored pencil portrait for another client. Haven't done one of those in a bit, I look forward to it. I am also starting preliminary work for a special personal project I want to have completed by April. More on that later.

Cintiq Review

I recently purchased a Wacom Cintiq21UX. I thought about getting the smaller version for the cost savings but being used to a larger Intuos, I didn’t think I would like it. Having tried both at the NYComicon I confirmed my suspicions. I wanted the big one. They were offering a discount if purchased there so I ordered it (thanks to a fortuitous timing of my tax return which cleared that day).

I couldn’t wait till they delivered it less than a week later (with very inexpensive shipping). The day the delivery was due I had to have checked out the window a dozen times an hour for the UPS truck.

Finally it arrived. I took the stand out of the box and placed it on my newly cleared desk (where the Intuos previously dwelled). All seemed to be going fine until I put the Cintiq on the stand and realized that if I wanted to tilt it down to a more horizontal position (which I certainly did) than my desk would need modifying.

The way y desk is configured my monitor is on a raised platform toward the back end of the desk. The platform consisted of 3 sections: the middle one which had the monitor on it and the two end ones which angled in toward the front. Those end sections had to go, so I put the Cintiq back into the box and did the necessary modifications all while hearing the Cintiq’s siren song beckoning (and faintly in the background the Intuoses mocking laughter).

Finally I got it all set up and spent about an hour or so configuring my system. I have it set up so that the Cintiq is my main monitor and my Dell monitor is my secondary one with the desktop continuing up form one to the other.

I find the Cintiq to be a fantastic tool. It has made it far easier to do detail work. With the Intuos I sometimes had to guesstimate where to draw whereas with the Cintiq, I know. I also like being able to draw on the Cintiq with my reference on the other monitor thus freeing up valuable screen realestate. Another benefit of the Cintiq is that it doesn’t succumb to Cliff’s First Law of Flat Surfaces: They can and will collect clutter. The Intuous did frequently.

The Cintiq has programmable buttons and a touchstrip on either side of the display. You can set them up differently depending on the program you are using. I currently have mine tweaked for photoshop but not yet for my other art programs. The pen also has a programmable side switch which acts in the same manner. On the other end of the pen is an ‘eraser’. The ‘eraser’ is an eraser by default in most art programs but can be changed just like the other buttons and switches. By default it uses whatever settings the eraser is set on without regard to the settings of the current drawing tool. This can be changed so that it keeps the settings of the tool you are working on already thus you don’t find yourself erasing more or less than you intended.

The only thing I have found annoying is the right side touch strip which I have a habit of hitting with my palm. This seems to be a rather common problem. The discontinued 20” inch model had this problems solved by placing the touchstrips in a different location, not sure why they didn’t do that with the 21”. Overall well worth the money (now if only I could convince the wife of that).

Sketchin with Sketchbook Pro.

I am starting to really dig Sketchbook Pro. It is great for just doodling or sketching. I still haven't gotten around to learning all its ins and outs but I have been using photoshop7 for ages and I have barely scratched its surface.

Here are two sketches of NCN members I did recently.

Mike Carlon:


Joe Bluhm:

Me Again

Wow a lot more people have drawn me. Some of these are from the Drawingboard and some from the NCN Firing Squad:

By Guido Salimbeni:


Another By Rocky:


By Mike Carlon:


By Ritalin:


By Ramanjit Kaur:


Another by Chris N:


By Murgunstrum:


By Joser:


By Cucukahuna:


by About Faces:


Thank you all!

Been busy.

It has been awhile since I have had a chance to post. Since my last post I attended the NYComicon and learned a good deal. I also met several great people including Joe Bluhm. I purchased a caricature from him which I will post soon (Thanks Joe!). If you are not familiar with his work you should rectify that. As soon as I have more time I will post a more complete description of my trip there.

I have also become a member of the NCN and purchased a Wacom Cintiq (review on it's way)

I have been playing around with my Cintiq and Sketchbook pro when I haven't been working on a couple of commissions. Here is a sketch I did of a coworker:


I will have more pictures to show soon of what I have been working on.

Life Drawing

This Monday I went to a life drawing session. Getting together with fellow artists is always a great thing and this was no exception.

These first two are of other artists who were there drawn during a break.


I am still working on proportion, I noticed I tended to shorten the legs. I look forward to going again.