Asian Guy

He looks just like this too.

Caravaggio - An Exercise in Fanciness

Caravaggio is by far my painter who ever walked the face of the Earth. This is one of his early paintings (before he started doing his bleak church-commissioned paintings) call the musicians. The man peering over his shoulder looking right at you is the painter himself. A lot of painters at this time didn't do many self portraits but they would sneak themselves in their paintings some way or another. 

So here it is, my amateurish attempt of replicating masterpiece artwork. I do say that even though I do like copying from cartoons, copying renaissance period paintings is far more stimulating. There are lots of subtleties to look out for.

At first, i was having difficulty with the lips of the lute player, here's a page of the lips. I found the lips on all of the subjects to be very difficult to capture. Once i got it I made sure to make lots of notes so I wouldn't forget.

I didn't work much on Cupid. He really isn't the most interesting part of the painting just a device to suggest that the musicians are singing love songs. I worked on the body's a little, I have a horrible habit of only focusing on the heads. 

At this point the features are being played around a little more. 

Problems lay with the nose and mouth the bigger the mouth was the smaller the nose got. Also, for some reason or another the nose went from slightly bulbous to flat. 

Fairly proud of my Caravaggio render here. Below are the placements of the head. 

Didn't have an easy time caricaturing Caravaggio but these are first attempts and i haven't gotten much further than this. The most intriguing part of this gentlemen in the background is the neck, it's very graceful and swan-like, beautiful s-curve in the front. 

I know these aren't incredible renders, but I haven't posted in a while. Not only that, but there's lots to learn from these painters because they were excellent draftsmen and they use lots of forms and shapes which can be applied to my own work. 

DODDLE DUMP!

Not too many drawings this past couple of weeks, I've been busy reading about drawing. I got a copy of "The Practice & Science of Drawing" by Harold Speed, so far so good. The first 80 pages is about what art is and talks about the differences between academic and real world drawings/paintings, and once you get past that he doesn't even dispense techniques on drawing. Rather, he explains the ideas and thought-process behind them. It's good so far, I'm about halfway through it.

Here's another J.S. Copley study, this one is more caricatured.

These are the practice sketches leading up to what you see above. This is from the painting "The Sitwell Children"

Some girl I saw walking around one of the college campus'. I have a lot more drawings but they are all scribbly gestures that no one will ever want to see. I've been caricaturing the gestures to see if I can use them for future reference to apply to drawings like the one below. One thing that I notice is that girls legs tend to be longer then men who have shorter stubbier legs. It doesn't apply to everyone but it sure is interesting to think about!

Caricatures at a bar.

More bar caricature, when the girl on the top of the page saw her drawing she was very upset. However, to my surprise she didn't know that caricature is making fun at the models features.

These were done today. These are just weird looking kids I found in a magazine.

more sketches!

People in Elle magazine

Taylor Swift is all the way on the right

     Recently I've discovered two websites, one from Kristen McCabe called They Fight Crime. TFC generates a hilarious Duo of oddball characters that fight crime together. The other I found is called Fellow Humans and has pictures of many many people from different locations, this is great for caricature. I've only done two, the other caricatures was in a diner.

     

      Waffle Woman however is my own creation, yet it wasn't till 2 days after creating her that she was very reminisant of Powdered Toast Man, except she's a vigilante spy but she's inspired by an Abbott & Costello joke and TFC.

This page just has some random stuff, Ruby Poolcue is of course the symbol
of affection from Lou Costello, and Leslie Beanbag is his shrewd neighbor.
I got some Bavarian architecture, and the first drawing of Waffel-woman and Pizza-face!

All of these are based of TFC, the top two I adjusted for my own tastes, an opera singer that becomes obese and a black woman from the 1970s with her Disco Fortune Ball.

Sketches of Marc Anthony from Chuck Jones' "Feed The Kitty"

Strangers with Candy bit players and Shawn White caricatures

more to come!

New Drawings! Caricature Studies.

My deepest apologies to those who follow the blog for not uploading very much. But not to worry, i have many, many drawings ideas, and sources of inspiration to upload that i will try and do more often (how many times have i said that one?). In the mean time here are some sketches to hold you off.

Caricatures from watching Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" 1980

try and see how many times Milton appears.

Yearbook photo page 1

Caricature studies of Brenan

Yearbook photos page 2

Caricature study of Kelsey, gouache on paper.

Character study, application of features from selected caricature of lovely French film actress'

doodles meet watercolor

i've been using watercolor a lot more often. Partially because I try my best to sketch everyday, when I don't feel like drawing i just color in ones that have been previously done.

Blind gesture drawings I think look fantastic colored in! I think i'm going to do more in future.

Watercolor kind of crinkles the paper of course, but it's alright i think it makes the sketches look more completed and makes em' more interesting to look at.

Also tomorrow i'll scan in the first couple pages of Stanchfield's "Drawn To Life" it's got lots of goodies in it.

Working on It - Reading List

I wish i uploaded more regularly, I'll try my best but I have been pretty busy, now i have a job,and i've been reading a lot more, mostly on drawing and animation.

I just got "Drawn to Life: The Walt Stanchfeild Lectures" it has some helpful tips and tricks as well as many illustrated references. I might scan some pages in, the only problem i have with the book is for me there's a lot unnecessary text, so much so that I've taken a highlighter to it's pages (something i normally don't do with books) and adding sticky notes to summarize certain pages.

The book has an extreme emphasis on gesture drawing and caricature. Other things he wants artists to hone down is avoiding tangents, thinking in three dimensions, simplifying your drawings, and stretch & squash. The book is 400 pages and as of now I'm only on page 83, and this is just one of a two volume set (yeesh!).

Also on my reading list i got "The Natural Way to Draw" by Nicolaides also with lots of gesture emphasis, and "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" which needs to introduction, however skimming threw it Dr. Edwards seems to be more interested in contour gesture, but still had many useful-looking exercises, my older sister has read it and she says that it gets you used to drawing what you see and to feel your way around a drawing as opposed to what many people do which is draw "symbols" of things.

Anyway, I'm sure your very tired of me talking about books here are some overdue doodles.

Tina Fey's is soooo hot. i usually have crushes on the bookish types.

Billions and Billions pt 2

Sagan plants a loving gaze on a bust of Da Vinci.

you might recognize them from yesterday, these were the first i did.

i did a couple extra this time from different points of view, and understanding how the head is built. You'll see a list of features which could be exaggerated.

here, i'm starting to play with the features and trying to figure out where and how to size and place and build.

The last stage i get closer, polishing the overall caricature.

completed version!

Ren

Got a Ren & Stimpy DVD from Netflix! It contains one of my favorite episodes, Sven Hoek! I got to snag some stills for references some of the expressions are just brilliant. Also mixed in there are expressions from the pilot "Big House Blues" there's a bizarre scene after Ren yells in Stimpy's ear about the big sleep where they're just sitting making the weirdest faces for about 20 seconds, I don't know what it has to do with anything but it's my favorite part!

i did these (above) first. not very good, i haven't drawn other people's drawings in a while

These are much better, i guess the first three are just warm ups.

Here are a couple others i snagged. These are just fantastic! Kudos to whoever animated Ren threatening Sven and Stimpy the quality was impeccable I couldn't believe it was for TV.