The Mighty Boosh

This was my final assignment for Jason Seiler's class. Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett aka Vince Noir and Howard Moon from BBC's The Mighty Boosh.


(click to enlarge)

Bruce Willis Caricature

Here's a digital painting I did of Bruce Willis for a Schoolism assignment a few weeks ago.

The Mighty Boosh caricature illustration

Here's a sneak preview of my final illustration assignment for Jason Seiler's Schoolism course. Vince Noir and Howard Moon from The Mighty Boosh. Might need a few more adjustments, then I'll start painting it.

Bruce Lee update

I've been working a bit more on my Bruce Lee Sketch, made it a bit more caricature-like, less portrait-like, and added a bit more tone. I think I'm ready to transfer it to canvas!

Another Bruce Lee sketch

I'm thinking about what to paint on the huge canvas that's been sitting in my room for months. Here's a sketch I did today of Bruce Lee, that I'd like to have a go at painting. I'm trying to make the most of the bank holiday weekend and get a lot of sketching done. Most of the ones I did today were terrible, but I quite like this one. Needs a bit of work on the likeness, and a bit more exaggeration, but it's not bad.

Time for an update

I was looking at my online portfolio just now and thinking that a lot of the older pieces are not really worthy of being in there. My recent work is in a different league to some of those pencil drawings (some of which are over 12 years old!). Most of them are little more than sketches, so I'm planning to remove them from the portfolio, and probably just archive them in the blog, leaving only high quality work on the main website. I might redo some of the old caricatures, as I did with the Fran Healy one, so I can compare old to new and see how much I've improved. It's always encouraging to see your own progress as an artist.

I'm also starting to want a new design for the site (haha - the joys of being a web designer!), but that will have to wait!

Here's some more sketches from Schoolism assignments:

Caricature Assignment 4 - Monochromatic painting of Jason Seiler

The photo for this piece was labelled Matthew. I thought it looked suspiciously like Jason, but figured he might have a brother/cousin who looked like him. Apparently it is him after all. Well, he was fun to paint, and I feel like I'm getting the hang of this values thing. I know we've got a lesson coming up which focuses on painting hair, so I may rework the hair after watching that lesson. Comments welcome.

Schoolism Assignment 3

First post of the year, that's pretty slack. Oh well, I've been busy with work, and doing Jason Seiler's Schoolism course, which I have to say is amazing, I'm learning so much! Here's my third assignment piece. We took a pencil sketch by Jason, and painted values over the top of it, using a photo reference. I made a few small adjustments based on Jason's critique, and I'm pretty happy with the finished product. I think it's my most realistic rendering to date. Hopefully all my future work will be of equal quality.

To see Jason's version, visit his website.

This week we have to produce both the sketch and the monochromatic value painting. I'll post that sometime next week.

Caricature commission

Here's a commission I started ages ago and finished recently. It took me a long time because it's huge, this one is only about 20% of the actual size, so I had to spend a long time on the details. I don't think I'll have time for any more commissions until after I've finished Jason Seiler's online caricature class, so if you want a caricature from me, you can email me around the start of April. Hopefully I will have time for some sketching and maybe some more acrylic painting before then.

Peter Petrelli

Got my scanner hooked up finally, so here's that Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) sketch I mentioned earlier. I'm not sure about the mouth, I was trying to capture that drooping lip thing he has sometimes, maybe I'll work on it later. Just started watching season 2 of Heroes, and despite starting off a bit slow, it's got me hooked again!


Peter Petrelli - Save the cheerleader, save the world!

Tags: Peter Petrelli, Milo Ventimiglia, Heroes, Caricature

Happy Birthday Jimmy!

Well, it's almost a month late, but I finally got round to doing this caricature for my good friend Jimmy's birthday present. Here he is looking a little pensive and a little emo. Happy birthday mate!

Bruce Lee painting video

Here's the video of me painting my sketch of Bruce Lee. It took about half an hour so I sped it up to 4x actual speed so you won't get too bored! The music is from Enter the Dragon, Game of Death and Karate Kid (yeah, I know Bruce Lee wasn't in Karate Kid, but hey, it's a martial arts film.) Let me know what you think, and if you have any advice or requests I'm happy to hear them.

Bruce Lee colouring

I added some monochrome tone to the Bruce Lee sketch I did yesterday, and gave him a bit more cranium. I also recorded the process, inspired by Joe Bluhm's video podcasts, I'll post it once I've uploaded it.


Bruce Lee coloured in Photoshop

Bruce Lee sketch

A quick photoshop sketch of Bruce Lee (about 20 mins). I'm still planning a huge Bruce Lee caricature in acrylics, but I want to explore his face a bit more first. Bruce has a lot of classic expressions which I want to test out before I start painting.


Bruce Lee caricature

Joe Bluhm's caricature videos

I haven't posted anything for a while, although I've got a few things on the go, but after watching this amazing series of videos by Joe Bluhm I'm really inspired to get some sketching and hopefully some digital painting done this weekend. The videos show Joe digitally painting over his sketch of Tom Cruise, describing his methods as he paints. A great insight into the mind of a great caricaturist, and the whole painting process only took him just over an hour!!

Tags: Joe Bluhm, Tom Cruise

New photoshop caricature

Here's one I did recently for my friend Paul's birthday. His birthday was actually in July. but I was busy then working on my self-caricature. He doesn't mind. I followed a pretty similar process with this one, except I sketched out the face and got a likeness before I even considered the body. He's a drummer, so I wanted to incorporate that, but I thought a full drum kit would be a bit too much so I went for the djembe drum instead. I took photos of myself with the drum for reference. Now I can get on with the acrylic painting I've been putting off for weeks!


Paul and djembe - click for full-size image

Tags: digital painting, caricature

And the winner is . . .

I'm proud to say I came third in this month's NCN caricature competition, for my self-caricature. Second prize went to Emily Anthony from the USA, and in first place - Shiva Zamanfar from Iran.

My prize will be a book entitled The Artist Revealed: Artists and Their Self-Portraits, donated by Court Jones. Looking forward to browsing through that!

It's an honour to recieve recognition from such talented artists as Court and the other two guest judges Jan Op De Beek and Kage Nakanishi, both of whose art has long been an inspiration for me.

I hope I'll have time to participate in more of the competitions in the future.

Tags: caricature

Self caricature

So, after two months of planning, sketching, rendering and revising, I've finally finished my self caricature, which was done as part of the National Caricaturist Network bi-monthly competition. There were deadlines for each stage, at which point I received a lot of feedback and advice from the judges and fellow NCN members. Overall it was a highly rewarding experience, and a valuable learning opportunity. I did the whole thing in Photoshop, which I had never painted with before. Here's the finished piece, and below you can see the stages I went through to meet the competition deadlines:


The final piece - Click to see detail

The first deadline was to plan out initial concepts in the form of thumbnail sketches. No detail or colour required at this stage, just ideas and general positioning. I decided to use a kung fu theme, substituting a paintbrush for a sword:


Thumbnail sketches - click for a closer look

Then it was time for the initial likeness sketches:

Initial likeness sketch - click for a closer look

I decided to have red paint on the brush, and some red paint streaked across my face, like Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. It was then pointed out to me that when drawing a face looking downwards like this, you need to pay special attention to perspective, especially the eyes, the outer corners of which should appear higher than the inner corners. As I'd overlooked this, my caricature didn't look like I was looking downwards, it just looked like I had childlike features, because I'd squashed the bottom of the face up without altering the eyes. Court Jones suggested I picture the head as a cylinder and draw guidelines on it to position the features. So here is sketch number 2:


Likeness sketch 2

So I sorted out the perspective thing, but lost the likeness. Here is my final attempt:


Final likeness sketches - click for a closer look

Good likeness now, but in the one on the left I had drawn it slightly slanted, so I just rotated it - the beauty of digital painting! Next stage was the final comp - a detailed sketch of the full caricature including body and any props. I came up with these three poses:


Final comp ideas - click for a closer look

The first sketch was my initial idea, but I thought the rear arm looked awkward, so altered it to the second one, but this was too rigid. I settled on the final sketch, which was deemed the most 'kung-fu' and dynamic. Again, as I was working digitally, I only had to redraw the arm on each image.

The final stage was colouring. Here's my stages:


Colouring stage 1

Here I just got some colour down and tried to get the eyes looking good, as they are often the main key to getting a good likeness. I was told the right eye looked too cat-like and it was suggested this was because I'd made the highlight too big. I think the green was also too bright.


Colouring stage 2

Now I was happy with the eyes, and started work on the body.


Colouring stage 3

I painted the brush handle green to match my eyes (nice touch!) I painted the t-shirt blue as it was in my source photo, but later decided to change it to white for more contrast, and so I could put some red paint on it, as I decided the paint wouldn't be visible on the shadow side of my face.


Final stage of colouring - Click for detail

Here's the finished piece again. I added some paint streaks to my arms aswell, and spent several hours rendering the jeans, shoes and t-shirt. Overall I'm very happy with the outcome, I think it's definitely my strongest piece to date, and look forward to the challenge of doing an even better one next time!

Tags: caricature, photoshop, digital art

Elisha Cuthbert caricature

People often say I don't draw enough women (it's because they're harder!), so here's one. Probably best known as Kim Bauer (Jack's daughter) in 24, it's Elisha Cuthbert. Someone asked me recently to draw some of the older 24 characters. Kim is first, expect more soon(ish).


Elisha Cuthbert

Self caricature preview

I'm currently taking part in a competition on the NCN forum, to produce a full-body self caricature. The idea is that it can be used on promotional materials i.e. website, business cards, stationery etc. The final deadline is in a couple of weeks, after that you should be able to see my picture in the sidebar of this site! Here's a sneak preview of my initial likeness sketch:

Grrrrrr . . . .

In other news, you may have noticed that my blog has gone from black to white. The rest of the website is going to go the same way over the next week or so. I think it's a vast improvement, let me know if you agree.

Tags: caricature

Everyone's a critic

Some Travis fans clearly not impressed with my Fran Healy caricature. The lovely Lavena describes it as "The shittiest 'artistic' rendering of Fran ever." A bit harsh I think! Anyway, that link is my number one source of visitors today, so she's done me a favour really. Thanks Lavena!

Tags: caricature, critic, travis, Fran Healy

Bruce Lee Caricature - First Attempt

Here's a 5 minute sketch I did last night of Bruce Lee. I definitely intend to do a full-sized acrylic painting of the little dragon, but I'm going to try a few different sketch versions first to make sure I get something I'm happy with. It will probably involve his upper body, since it's so distinctive, but I first need to learn how to caricature bodies!!

Bruce Lee - the Legend

I quite like this sketch, considering it took literally five minutes, and I usually spend a lot longer. That's the beauty of digital - no pencils to sharpen, no scanning required, and no problem if you make a mistake! The only problem is I think he looks too young, and maybe his eyebrows are slightly too high. I'll work on that next time.

Tags: bruce lee, caricature

Nathan Petrelli returns

After some advice from various people on the NCN forums, I've made another attempt at Mr. Petrelli. I made his face longer, thinner and not so much emphasis on the jaw. Apart from the wonky eyes (which I just noticed) I much prefer this version.

Sketch of Nathan Petrelli from Heroes

Fly man!! His brother Peter may have the lion's share when it comes to super powers, but will Nathan Petrelli (played by Adrian Pasdar) have the power to go against the plans of his mother and Linderman, to stop the explosion that will destroy New York? Apparently the story will come to a conclusion at the end of season 1. Can't wait to find out what happens!


Wide-jawed Nathan Petrelli - Fly man!

NCN Firing Squad

Here's a sketch of Tony 'Parsnips' Parsons, a fellow member of the National Caricaturist Network. You can see his caricature of me here.


Parsnips

Sketch of Hiro Nakamura from Heroes

Yata! Here's my favourite character from my new favourite TV show, Heroes - Hiro Nakamura, played by Masi Oka. As well as playing a loveable, time-and-space-bending superhero, Oka is also a digital effects artist, having worked on the Star Wars prequels and Hulk, among others. Oh and he also played the intern Franklin in Scrubs (I knew I'd seen him somewhere before). Hiro always keeps me laughing with his childlike optimism, and I cracked up when he phoned his company in Japan, and inadvertantly spoke to his past self. Fearing causing a rift in the space-time continuum, he slammed the phone down and came out with a very Japanese-sounding "Great Scott!" It's classic comedy moments like that, and a gripping storyline, which makes Heroes my favourite, over both Lost, which I still watch, but only because it's there, and 24, which has lost the suspense that made the second and third seasons so great. I can only hope Heroes doesn't go the same way. There are some great faces in the show too, I'll draw more when I can.

Hiro Nakamura- "Save the cheerleader, save the world."

Caricature of Court Jones

Another one from the NCN firing squad, the great Court Jones, master of all things anatomical, and all-round nice guy, he's been a source of much inspiration for me, so I thought it only fair to caricature him. I chose a tricky angle, but I think I pulled it off quite well, and I'm happy with the greater level of exaggeration than usual. Check out Court's website for some of his amazing work.


Caricature of Court Jones

Tags: Court Jones, Caricature, Illustration

Sketch of Faye Wong

I tried Faye a while back, but wasn't quite satisfied with the results. Here's another attempt, and I think it's a bit better. She's got such a unique face, it's pretty hard to capture a likeness. If I decide to colour this one I may have to play around with the features some more.


Caricature of Faye Wong

Gandhi's Fight Club

Here's a sketch I did of Mahatma Gandhi for a recent competition on the NCN forum. The competition was to draw an illustration for a made up magazine article entitled 'Secret History', which depicted a historical figure revealing a secret side of themselves. My idea was to show Gandhi participating in an underground fight club (much like the movie), in order to release some of the aggression he built up through a lifetime of non-violence. This sketch was just a facial likeness study. I intended to draw Gandhi in the ring, surrounded by spectators, with blood on his robes and an evil grin on his face, but unfortunately I don't have time to keep up with the competition deadlines, and to be honest, after watching the movie Gandhi, I'm going off the idea of drawing him in this way, it just seems wrong! Anyway, I may revisit it at a later date.

Another redesign

Well, so much for my caricature per week idea. I've been busily trying to finish a portrait commission for a friend, I'll definitely produce something new this weekend. As well as the portrait, I've been busy coming up with a new design for drawmyface . . . again! Yes, the site has seen several redesigns over the last couple of years, but this one is going to be better than before. Since getting into web design as a job, I've learned many things about what makes a good web site. I'm finally ditching the light on dark look, and going for a more readable white background with dark text. And more importantly, the site will finally be XHTML compliant, using CSS to style the page, rather than HTML tables (if you don't know what any of that means, you probably don't need or want to know). Suffice it to say, it will be nicer looking, cleaner, and easier to navigate than ever before. Here's a sneak preview of the initial concept, although it may take some time for me to actually implement the design.


New design for drawmyface.co.uk

In the meantime, check out Paul Moyse's great video of how to paint a caricature in Photoshop - amazing stuff. I hope to make some videos like this when I get a bit better at the digital stuff.

Tags: caricature, illustration, photoshop

Caricature of Fran Healy from Travis

My second attempt at digital caricature. I'm starting to get a feel for the Wacom tablet now, but I've still got a way to go. This is based on my previous Fran Healy drawing, but I wanted to move away from that small cartoony body thing I used to do, so I made his neck thicker, and his body bigger. Well, for my second try, I'm pretty happy with this, but I will continue to aim higher!


Fran Healy - Digital caricature

More caricatures of me!

Here are some more caricatures of me by some more of the lovely NCN members. It's recently come to my attention that I have a huge nose!

Oh well, it never gets boring seeing how other people see you, it's just hard finding the time to return the favour.


Dan by Parsnips


Dan by Jan Ibelings


Dan by Moyse

And here's one I did in return for Paul Moyse:

I've gone digital - Wacom has arrived!

After many months of marvelling at other artists' digital masterpieces, I've finally taken the plunge and bought myself a Wacom graphics tablet, so now I can draw directly onto my PC using the stylus. Well, it takes some getting used to, but it's great fun!

Here's my first digital effort, a colour version of the Tom Welling sketch I did a few weeks ago. I opened the sketch in Corel Painter, created a new layer, then painted over the top, using the sketch as a guide. As you can see, I need a lot of practice!



Anyway, I'm having great fun with the Wacom, hopefully I'll improve with a few more goes. I don't want this to put me off drawing and painting the traditional way, although it is a lot less hassle than setting up the easel, and washing all the paintbrushes afterwards!

In other news, I just noticed that I recently passed the 100 blog post mark. Congratulations to me!

Sketch of the day

Another NCN member, Kathryn Bailey:
I'm happy with the overall likeness and composition, but I thinnk I need to work on my shading, it can look a bit scribbly. Maybe I need to keep my pencil sharpened!

Tags: caricature

Caricatures of me

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