Caricature 34/500: Baldwin

It has been a busy week of freelance work so I haven't had a chance to draw any caricatures at all for a few days. Plus, our homework for Life Drawing Class this week is a real challenge so I will be tied up with it for the next couple of evenings.


Here is one of Alec Baldwin that I sketched up on paper and then inked with a marker. I scanned it into Photoshop and did the coloring digitally with my Wacom tablet. I think it turned out pretty good. The Fair Xty knew who it was which is my main test. I am becoming more comfortable with the Wacom tablet and the coloring is coming more easily as well.


This is a short post but the caricature is a decent representation of the style I hope to eventually master. Somewhat cartoony, not too detailed but still bares a resemblance to the subject.

Life Drawing Class: Week 4

Just a few photos of my 20 minute sketches from class today and a couple of homework assignments. Last week was a holiday so there was no class and therefore we had a double homework assignment. 


The first was to draw a self portrait at 3/4 view. I did the nose too big but the teacher liked it. She actually asked me if she could keep it so I guess that is fair enough approval. I sketched it with pencil and then used pastels for the color. This one took me a couple of hours since I did it while the Fair Xty watched a movie in the other room.


















The second homework assignment was a self portrait at front or 3/4 view including your hand. It took me awhile but I finally decided a way to use my hand that fits my specific style.




Here are some sketches from today's class. There were some hard poses today, particularly the "feet first" one. They are not great sketches but keep in mind we only get from 15 to 25 minutes to do the entire thing. Then she moves to a different pose and we start over. Only two more classes and next week's homework is to draw your friends or family in an interesting pose.

Caricatures 32 & 33: A Couple TV Sketches

A Person of Interest to me.

I have some nice caricatures in the works. The trouble is that it takes a while to make the fancy colored ones and I can't keep up with regular posting and get them all finished, especially when I am trying to add bodies to some of the newer ones. Time to throw in a little fodder to hold you over. Here are a couple of quick sketches I did the other day while watching television (what else?). One of them turned out decent and the other did not...


First we watched an episode of the new drama Person of Interest starring Jim Caviezel, the guy that played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ and Michael Emerson of L.O.S.T. Michael Emerson is definitely caricature-worthy. He has close eyes and a crooked mouth to go with many other out-of-the-ordinary features. He also has an injury on the show that makes him appear to have a fused or non existent neck. I initially had some trouble with this guy until I browsed the web to see other drawings of him, so I was influenced by other caricatures (cheated) a bit but he still came out of my pencil.

My apologies to Ms Hunt.

The second one was a disaster. She seems so unique and caricaturable. I guess I just haven't drawn women enough to get it right. She is supposed to be Hetty from NCIS: Los Angeles played by Linda Hunt. I know it is not worthy of blogging about but I can't just give you the highlights of my sketchpad; you'd think I was much better at this than I really am.


I will definitely have to revisit these two with better efforts. Once I reach my 500 I plan to do many more scenes... like the whole cast of a show or team, etc. Won't that be fun!

Life Drawing Class: Week 3

Just a quick post from this week's life drawing class at Pasadena City College. this week we had a professional model sit in. He could sit for 20 minutes without moving a muscle. Compared to the (self proclaimed) pole dancer last week who would jump off the podium to get a drink of coffee in the middle of a pose it was quite a treat to see how it is supposed to be done. The down side was that he twisted himself into a lot of difficult poses.


It was one of those days where my drawings weren't coming together. Most of them were embarrassing to hold up for the class. This one was the best of the group. 15-20 minutes was just going too fast for me.

Caricature 31/500: Homeland

I'm a US military veteran. I served with the 101st Airborne in the US Army, one of the most famous divisions in modern military history. Much has been written about the Screaming Eagles, particularly their WWII and Vietnam involvement. One of my favorite books on the 101st is Stephen E. Ambrose's Band Of Brothers.It is also an excellent 2002 HBO Mini-series starring Damian Lewis as Captain Dick Winters, Easy Company's CO (and eventual Battalion Commander). Lewis does a great job as the HDIC and I was very pleased to see him don a uniform again in last fall's Homeland on Showtime.


Homeland is about a US Marine who spent 8 years as a POW in Afghanistan. He is rescued and comes home as a national hero. The twist is that a CIA special agent played by Claire Danes has received a tip that a US POW has been turned and is now a spy for a terrorist group. She doesn't have a name but suspects Lewis' character Nick Brody. The show is loaded with enough misdirection and red herrings to keep the audience guessing deep into the season.


This is my favorite caricature so far. It is not overly detailed but captures the subject well and is of the cartoonish quality I want. I emphasized his small mouth with pursed lips, longish face and slightly crooked nose. I drew the sketch out for this one and inked it with a marker before scanning it into photoshop and adding the color digitally.


Next, I need to devote some time adding bodies to this latest batch of caricatures and putting together some scenes with backgrounds. 

Caricature 30/500: Cheech

As so often happens, today's caricature was taken from a recent time investment in mindless television. I was watching the new Rob Schneider show Rob which is about an average Joe white guy that marries into a large family of Latinos. The patriarch of the family is Cheech Marin, formerly of Cheech and Chong, the perpetually high duo of the 1970s. He's a lot older now and doesn't have the trademark mustache but his puffy eyes and round face make him very drawable.


I sketched this one out in pencil and scanned it without taking the time to ink it first. I thought I would try out the old Wacom tablet to ink it this time. I found that it was much harder to make a steady line, especially when pressing very lightly to draw a thin one. It also didn't fatten out as much as a pen or marker when I pressed. Perhaps there is an adjustment for that. I would say that inking by hand is easier and more controllable but computer inking is the future so I am going to keep trying. It is much easier to erase on computer, that's for sure.






The coloring is also done on computer and I am finding that easier with each try. This one has a base layer of orange, a highlight layer of white and a shadow layer of black. Simple and quick. 


I think if I was to redo this one I would puff up the eyes more to make them little more than slits but otherwise it is not too shabby. Some come together easily like this one and others still don't come at all. At least the days of my 3 hour sketches are over.

Homework: Self Portrait

As you know, the Fair Xty and I are taking a Life Drawing class at the local community college on Saturdays. Last week's homework assignment was to draw a picture of your foot. This week was a bit more difficult... Draw a portrait of yourself.


I had done a few mediocre caricatures of myself but this one had to be on full-size 18/24 paper so no freebies for me. My foot drawing was in full color but I had used colored pencils which proved to be very inefficient on such a large canvas. I decided to head down to the local art store and pick up some pastels. They were a little expensive at $79 but I thought the set of 45 would offer the widest array of colors I might need and Xty can use them too. There were cheaper sets available but they didn't have the variety I wanted and cheaper pastels are more filler and less color so they aren't as vibrant. I have now used them on a couple of drawings and they are very bright and blend well. Don't skimp on pastels if you can help it.


The assignment was for a front facing portrait. This is how most of my caricatures have been so it is a fairly easy pose (compared to 3/4 portrait). I have been drawing in a cartoony style for the last couple of months and it definitely shows in my life drawing. I took a quick shot with my webcam and sketched it out lightly with a pencil. Then i got out the pastels and laid down a base color almost exactly the same way as I did it with the computer in the TC post. Next came a layer of deeper pinks and browns for the forehead, cheeks and shadow areas. For the beard shadow I used a bluegreen color and then went over that with a colored pencil for the whiskers. Finally, I did the highlights with white pastel and colored pencil. The hair was done in the same fashion. I had to spend a little time on the eyes to make them look round and used gray pencil to shade under the lids and around the teeth to add depth. The shirt and background were just pastels with some shading and highlights for wrinkles and lighting effects. The eyes are too close together and the nose is exaggerated but it doesn't look too bad.

Caricature 29/500: Carlos Estevez - Winning!

Here is a quick drawing I made of the Warlock himself, Charlie Sheen. Is it a good, detailed drawing that I spent a lot of time on? Nope but it looks like Charlie and I did it fast, like 15 minutes. That is a far cry from the 3-4 hours I was spending on my first couple of caricatures just a month and a half ago.


If you haven't been keeping up, The Fair Xty and I have been taking an art class at the local community college. It is live drawing and the poses are timed. That means you have to hustle if you want to get a drawing done before the model moves to a new pose. This makes you commit to your lines and it is the best single thing I have gotten out of the class so far. Just let 'er rip!


Since then, my caricatures have been more confident and have been coming together faster. I still have trainwrecks littering my sketchpad but it is getting easier. I am well into my second sketchbook now and can already see a difference. I can't wait to see what book 6 or 7 looks like. The smaller time investment is making it more likely that I can stick with it.

Caricature 27-28/500: Magnum pi Part 3, TC

My first attempt

So I am finally back on track with the Magnum pi Series. I tried this one weeks ago but just wasn't happy with it so I tried it again and still wasn't happy with it. Then I decided if I was ever going to finish this I should lean on props a little to make him more recognizable.


I am talking about Theodore Calvin, AKA TC, Magnum's buddy and helicopter pilot played by Roger E. Mosley.


My first drawing is ok but still too detailed. I need to capture likeness in far fewer pencil strokes to keep it a bit cartoonish. The version I ended up going with is far simpler. While the person itself doesn't look as much like TC, once you get all the props in there is it pretty unmistakable, especially once I lump him into a scene with the other players.


The final version uses digital coloring. I thought it would be neat to show you a few of the steps it takes to get to that point so here goes...

Here is the initial sketch I made.

I inked the sketch with special markers.
I'm not quite ready for quill pens yet.

Next I scanned the drawing into Photoshop,
turned the line art into a layer and painted
a layer of base color under the line art layer.

Here is the drawing with all
of the base colors painted in.

Here I added multiple layers of
shading and highlighting in various
levels of opacity. My 15 years of
Photoshop experience is coming in handy.

Here is the body sketch I made. I want to have TC
leaning out of his helicopter so I drew him at an angle
and holding the flying yoke. The right arm will not be
seen so I didn't bother drawing it.

Here is the final after adding all the layers
as shown in the face pictures above.
I also added a headset which was drawn
in Photoshop with the Wacom tablet.

Lesson 11: Art Class or... "What's Nude With You?"

So Xty and I decided to take (well, I talked her into it) a life drawing art class at Pasadena City College. Eight Saturdays until mid-March we devote to drawing 5 to 15 minute sketches of nude models.


It has definitely been educational. There are about 10 of us in the class with the model standing or sitting in the middle of a perimeter of student tables. We do a few warm-up drawings of 2 minute poses and then start on some longer ones. Every time the timer dings, the model faces a different direction and holds a different pose. We are forced to act quickly and draw strong confident lines. From a guy who's first caricatures were clocked in hours, this is good practice on committing to what you see and transferring it to your hand.


The first thing we do when we step into the classroom is to pin our homework to the wall and get a critique. This week's homework assignment was to draw our foot including our leg so I hammed it up by wearing a holey sock. Once the critique is over, we do our warm up drawings, get a few lessons on perspective or technique and start on our longer 10-15 minute sketches.

We have had three classes so far with alternating female and male models. Since the body types are always different and the poses are always different every sketch is unique and each has it's own challenges. Sometimes you get to draw the classic "Titanic" pose and sometimes all you see is the top of the model's head. 

The instructor keeps telling me my proportions are often way out of whack but I am still capturing the subject well and have a natural cartoonish style. Lucky for me... that's what I was going for.

Caricature 25-26/500: Cryer Me A River

I know it has been longer than usual for me to get a post up. I have been working on a redo of Part 3 in the Magnum pi Series but it might be a couple more days so I am going to skip ahead/back once more.


Today's caricaster (caricature disaster) is Jon Cryer AKA Alan Harper from Two and a Half Men AKA Ducky from Pretty in Pink. I seem to have a caricature preference for pathetic nerds. Many are goofy looking and therefore easy to caricaturize. That is my hypothesis but it didn't prove easy in this case. I tried a couple of times.


The first one is a decent drawing, it just doesn't really look like him. I made his face too fat and he looks a little too feminine. 


For the second one I tried to show the hopeless resigned look of someone who can never get a break, much like his character on TAAHM. He is not that easy to capture. I added an nonathletic body to this one with sloping shoulders which helps to add to his recognizability. I think if I put him next to a guy wearing shorts and a bowling shirt you may be able to spot him in a crowd. I am working on a Charlie Sheen to go next to him so stay tuned!