Iconic Teenager

Eddie Murphy's discovery

This guy was initially a little harder than I thought, despite being quite happy with the end result.

Scruffy

Sorry for the delay, been really busy.
Alright, last weeks answers- Nathan Lane, Clark Gable, Laura Linney, Christopher Guest( as Nigel Tufnel), and Zsa Zsa Gabor
Here's the next one, and I've got some catching up to do.

"Dahhlings"

Too easy...

"But this one goes up to Eleven!"

Two in a day!
I couldn't resist doing this one. Technically, not of the actor, but one of his characters.
I'm forever reminded of an old childhood friend when I see this guy, he too modeled himself after an amalgamation of rock stars.

Mrs Truman

They have been getting a bit tame these caricatures haven't they?
Time to start pushing things a bit me thinks, altho' I've never claimed to be Sebastian Kruger.
I thought this one would be a little harder than what she was, but here goes...

Who gives a damn?

Alright, the links are all in, in the previous posts.
I'm going to start doing the links and answers on a weekly basis, so I can hopefully see some more guesses in the comments boxes.
I'm also beginning to wonder what I got myself into with this 'caricature-a-day' assignment I set myself. The selection process is mostly out of my hands, although I am given some range to choose from, but it's all Movie Stars. It's certainly giving me a challenge, taking me outside my comfort zone. I'm having to pay careful attention to those little nuances of expression. These are all taking about half an hour, I'm doing them in my lunch break at work.
We've got an old classic today...

"You have to be loud...it's the theatre"

Alright, Yes Amy Gene Hackman, and then Minnie Driver.
This guy was my favourite Disney character to animate.

"Strangling the Cat"

James Bond uttered this great line about her character's singing ability in a "Bond" film

Tough Guy

Oh c'mon, Tom Selleck for the last one. Maybe a Detroit Tigers cap would've helped.
I'll start putting the photo links for them in soon.
This guy was tough tho', both in the characters he's play, but also to draw. I was wondering what I'd gotten myself into going and wouldn't have thought he'd be that hard to do. This is my second attempt at him. A bit closer to the mark, me thinks.

Mo'

Oops, there was a bit of a typo in that last title, all fixed now.
James Cromwell and Elijah Wood for the last two.
This one should be dead easy, mo's are almost as good as glasses in caricatures.

Forever Startled

Tuesday's caricature post here.
Looking at the finished pic here it could almost be another actor other than who it's meant to be, but no and I avoided adding the pointy ears.

Here pig, pig

Been very busy, sorry for the delay, will try and catch up.
That last one was meant to be Mischa Barton, anyone?
This one is for Monday, hopefully he's a bit more recognizable. I actually thought he was English, but no he's a native Californian.

OC

Yep, the last one was Mariska Hargitay.
I'm not that wrapped with this one, she was quite a bit harder to do, but we'll see who gets it. It's all part of the challenge of doing caricatures- most times you hit the mark, but sometimes you stray a little. The title should give a nudge in the right direction.

Jayne Mansfield's Daughter

I'm going to start trying to knock out some caricatures of "famous people", people we all should be able to recognize, not just my family, friends and work colleagues.
So, starting with an actor theme, I won't name them but allude to who they are, to see if I'm hitting the mark with likeness.
Here's the first one...

More Train People

Train people

Here's some sketches from the train trip home yesterday evening of unsuspecting passengers done with a fineliner pen. It was a bit of fun trying to pick interesting people to draw, the carriage wasn't overly full, so all people were seated, and I'd been hoping to draw someone standing in one of those various train-ride standing poses where they're trying to maintain their balance and either read or pass the boredom of the trip.

The funny thing about doing these sketches on this ride was that the fat guy I drew first in the top pic was deserted by his traveling companion halfway through the trip, and as he wasn't sitting far in front of me, must've figured out what I was doing and started watching me scope out the passengers and draw them. He kept trying to make eye contact with me, perhaps to get some sign of acknowledgement.

Hamish

Here's the hall monitor, ahh supervisor on the project I'm working on.
There's some good heads to caricature in this office.

Tool

There's been this 16 year old larrikin in the news a lot last week, who threw an open house party while his parents were away and attracted 500 "guests". As well as all the brouhaha about the police being called out and possible fines and his lack of remorse; his fashion sense has garnered a bit of attention.
Here's my sketch from on the train home one night with a bit of photoshop embellishment.

Holiday sketch dump

Here's a little bunch of stuff from my sketchbook from over the holidays.
More of my girls. I'm playing around with getting some proportions that I like.

A couple of unfinished girls...
and that's "col-erase carmine red" in use as my roughing pencil of choice.


...and an abandoned attempt at trying to sketch my daughter, who wouldn't sit still.

Train Girl

A quick sketch of a girl sitting opposite me on the train home at the end of last year.
She was originally drawn on the newspaper I'd been reading.
She had a prominent long neck which was too tempting to draw and I'd been in caricature mode too.

Fairy

A holiday sketch and a rare opportunity not to be drawing a picture of Dora, Thomas or Dorothy the Dinosaur (although I did do a Dora).
Madi wanted me to draw a picture of a fairy.
...and then proceeded to tell me that her hair had to sit in front of her shoulders, not behind.
For me it was an effort to resist the temptation to draw Tinkerbell.

More Holiday Snaps

Here's a few more snaps from the holidays, this time over in Perth. Unfortunately it was so hot most of the time that we were over there that most trips out were to pools or somewhere with water.
Here we were on our way home from a day out in Fremantle and had just had a cruise back up the Swan River to the city. This rather cool statue caught Madi's attention in the Hay Street Mall.
A happy little boy giving us a smile.
Madi and two of her cousins enjoying an icecream.
...and discovering her cousins scooter

Christmas Spirit

The madness of Christmas has now been and gone and we're only just recovering. Back from our holiday, trying to get ourselves organised and back to work tomorrow (groan...).
The Christmas house lights display. If only I didn't have to put them up and down again each year.
Twas the night before Christmas. Christmas Eve and it looks like Santa's been.
Madi and Cameron Christmas morning sharing some sibling love.
And the present unwrapping begins...
and keeps going...

Stretch

Christmas Holidays started a day earlier, Nice!!
Back to the daily sketches and doodles... Not sure if I'm going to be able to post as regularly over the Xmas break, but will try to put some stuff up.

Kris Kringle 6

Here we go, all finished.
It felt a little weird to be working with ink and then coloured pencil on paper after illustrating so much in the computer lately. I think I've gotten way to used to that undo tool and the ability to be able to switch off or modify layers.
All in all, I'm fairly happy with the result. I shouldn't fuss over it too much as I don't really know this guy. It's just me being picky. I'm not wrapped with the way the colouring worked out on his clothing, but ahh.
In hindsight, I should've gone with a less textured paper. I was after something with a bit of "tooth", but this probably had too much and I felt just restricted how I worked the colour.
You live and learn...
...and now it's just dawned on me, what has someone else got me?

Kris Kringle 5

Sorry for the delay, had work to do (shock, horror) and my wife's birthday.
Here we go, the inked in version on the final textured stock.It felt a bit funny putting down the inkwork after working on the pencil composition for so long. It's never been my favourite stage, I feel you can kinda "deaden" a drawing and lose some of that weight that pencilwork can get. Usually my preferred medium for inking in has been a black ball point pen. I've used this for a number of years when inking because I've been able to get some nice variation with line weight out of it. It's not particularly black tho' and I was after a darker line. I'll have to try out a brush marker in the future to get some nice thick and thin in my linework.
Now to colour....

Kris Kringle 4

He's not in today, bugger!
Here's another workover over the previous composition that I drew earlier.
I pushed back his right shoulder so that it creates a cleaner line down his back. I lowered his right forearm too and took some of the bend out of his wrist. I think it helps with the overall slouched look to his pose.
I've added the head quickly from yesterday.
...and he's ended up with his face really close to the screen too which is great for that gag. I've spent enough time on him now. Time to transfer him onto the final piece of paper and tie down the linework...

Kris Kringle 3

A bit more playing about here, trying to nail some of his features. There's something quite distinct about his upper lip and his chin under than goatee.

This is a first rough of the pose and composition I'm thinking of for the final piece. I've kept it deliberately rough, so that I'm looking primarily at the shapes and composition and not being seduced by sexy linework(By sexy linework, I mean a really nice appealing stroke or line that may actually be wrong but just looks nice and therefore restricts you from changing it).

There's a few little things here that I'm not happy with, so on a separate sheet of paper, working over the top of this drawing, I will now work at exploring what looks best and what I can improve.

First up, his head- here I'm going to play with pushing the shapes around a bit and seeing what I can exaggerate without straying too far from him being recognisable. As he doesn't appear to be a personality type person, I'm trying hard to nail the visual "look" of him, and the more things I get accurate the better.

I wanted to fill out the back of his head a bit more, and have played around with his chin a bit trying to capture the essence of that, and also accentuating his forehead.

I think with a profile (which I haven't done before as a caricature) you really need to capture the "essence" of the shape that their profile makes. My thoughts with regards to caricatures in general are that you need to capture the shape of the persons head, and then make that triangle that encompasses their eyes, nose and mouth as recognisable as possible as it is those features especially in that small area that we all instinctively recognise- that's what we look at when we talk to a person.

Kris Kringle 2

Here we go, "Live caricature" process...
This is probably also a perfect supplement to my earlier discussions on caricatures.
This is the view I have of Peter Wake from my desk. Not a whole lot to go on, and I don't usually do caricatures in profile. But the info is there at least. I've got to try and snatch looks of him now without giving away what I'm up to. At least with someone you know, you've got an excuse for looking at them, I've got to try and be subtle here, and not give him the impression I'm some sort of weirdo. At least he's in reasonable proximity and I can pretend I'm looking out the window that he sits next to. Exploring some of his features here and trying to catch that "first impression" that you get from looking at him. Also trying to work out what sort of pose I'm going to draw him in. Even tho' he wears glasses and I usually do the cheat with glasses of drawing the frame and whacking dots for pupils in them, he's got these great droopy eyes with bags under them that are just begging to be drawn. He sits right up against his desk slouching back in his chair, and has his monitor up really close; I doubt there's 30cm between the end of his nose and the monitor.
He was looking in my direction at one point having a conversation with someone else, and that was a great opportunity to capture something of the rest of his face from a different angle.

He also does this thing where he leans back in his chair and places his hands on or just behind his head. Having a play with this for a pose, and exploring the 3/4 angle.Nah, profile shows of the closeness of the monitor more than I could get with a 3/4 pose. The arms up also obscure his head a bit too much too.
I feel a bit creepy spending this much time looking at another man and analysing his features.
More to follow...

Kris Kringle

Oh Gawd! The office has decided for the Christmas party to have a Kris Kringle and I've gotten someone I don't know to buy a pressie for. Chances were that this was going to happen anyway, as I don't know probably half of the staff. It turns out the bloke sits across a little way from me. In the throws of asking the receptionist who he was, I quickly whipped up this pic below to check I had the right person. This presented the next dilemma, what to get someone you don't know. This bloke's a programmer who I have nothing to do with during my job.
Then it dawned on me, I could do him a caricature, colour it up and bung it in a frame.
So you'll see some thought processes here over the next week as I try and capture someone I don't know.