Good Grief! "Peanut Catures!"

One of the things I love about caricature is that there are SO many ways you can approach a subject, so there are endless possiblilites to have fun. These two caricatures are of two NCN (National Caricaturists Network) members, Jan Baptist, and Paul Moyse. I was in a "peanuts " mood and wanted to see if I could depict them both as Peanuts characters. Jan's mass of white hair made him a shoe in for Schroder. instead of a toy piano, I have him drawing on a small toy french easel. Paul Moyse's gald head and baffled expression makes him an instant Charlie Brown. I even put the letter "M" on the trademark zig zag on the shirt.

Odé Manderson Poet, screen writer, caricature victim....

I metOdé Manderson recently at a gig I did in New Rochelle, NY recently, and was so intrigued by his face, that I took a snapshopt of him so that I could do more than the quick party sketch that he received at the party. Im not totally satisfied with tyhe result, but it came closest to the idea of his face that I had. Hope he likes it.
Theres a lot of strength in that face, it has great angles and in person, he just has this prescence that's undefinable but undeniable. Whatever Charisma "is" he's definitely got it. Theres a little bit of a young Mike Tyson in his face also. The little hand touching his goatee, is his beautiful little daughter. They both originally had their caricatures drawn together.

Steve Jobs

Did this pic of Steve Jobs of Apple Computer as part of a drawing contest/exercise Started by Jan Obdebeek at the NCN Forum. It took a lot of trying just to do this very simplified drawing.
I did a pencil memory sketch in between customers while drawing on the street. One admirer liked the picture, and when I asked him if he knew who it was, he recognized it immediately as Steve Jobs. that felt good.

feeling blue again....

Blue and Red

Ive been doing some more experiments with different colored paper on my subway caricatures and really liking the results. It makes the characters pop. I may even uyse this for my live gigs. I am also trying to go a little more "cartoon network " on some of these sketches, as well paying more attention to accessories like hats, earrings ipods and teeshirts.

BROTHER JOSCEPHUS of the LOVE REVIVAL REVOLUTION ORCHESTRA

Brother Jo is a client of mine who wanted a character design/caricature of himself to use in his promo advertizing of him and his group. I did the prelim sketches of him in Starbucks on Spring Street, and took the roughs home to clean up . Drawing Brother Jo was a treat, as his stage persona is already a caricature waiting to be drawn. He reminded me of a Parliament Funkadelic character from the 70's called, "Sir Nose Devoidafunk".

playing with the angles...

I did this subway sketch reallllll slow. Took my time to see how I could play with the various angles in this guys face. Im really pleased with how it turned out. Only thing I had to draw with was a mechanical pencil that kept breaking.

Street Caricature

He came all the way from Singapore just to get caricatured.
Shortly after this was drawn it started POURING down rain and ruined the rest of the money making day!

TOMOSAN!!!

This is a quik caricature of Japanese Caricature Artist, Tomo. You can see his fantastic work by clickig on the sidebar.

and yet ANOTHER self caricature

Caricaturing myself is an open ended ongoing project that I never seem to tire of. This is my latest rendition of myself. I drew this caricature with a....gasp...SHARPIE marker!!! no self respecting caricature artist does "decent" work with a shapie, but.... this came out surprisingly good. I even drew it on cheap drawing paper!

Color Subway Sketches

Today I pretended that I was drawing these people at a paying gig. I did them in color , some on colored cardstock and loved the results.

Famous Sidekicks, Barney Rubble, from the Flintstones

I'm one of the contributing artists on "ARTJUMBLE" (see the sidebar) where we are given a weekly challange to participate in. Last week, the assigment was to draw "famous sidekicks". Barney Rubble, Fred Flintstones pint sized, wise cracking neighbor, came to mind immediately. I didnt want to draw the character, of course in Hanna Barbara's style, and added my own flavor to it. The site is definitely worth checking out and JOINING. It will definitely keep you drawing.

Artist Spotlight Joe Stanton

Ask any caricature artist who there artistic influences are, and you';ll be likely to hear names like, Mort Drucker, Hirschfeld, Chuck Jones, Jack Kirby,or Hanna Barbara mentioed, and rightly so. Many of us were first introduced to art through Mad Magazine, Saturday morning cartoons, and marvel comics which we copied with an almost religious intensity.
Few people will admit that they were influeced by
Archie Commics.
Especially if you were a guy..... I mean GURLS read "archie"
I have to admit, that I shyed away from ADMITING that I read my sister's Archie comics but the truth is that I got some of my first drawig lessons from trying to draw the Riverdale gang.
But it still wasnt cool to admit this.

Fast forward to 2008, and the past Mocca Fest Comic Con. I was passing by Joe Stanton, an Archie Comics artist, who covinced me why I should be readig Archie comics.
"Jughead and the Archie gang have a new look" he said, and then he opened up his portfolio and my eyes popped.
I might just start readig Archie again.
Joe has updated their look to a more contemporary style, and Jughead is actually falling in LOVE!
Check out the seires I know I will be.

Draw 'em Pretty... or ELSE!

As any party or retail artist knows, we walk a tightrope between doing the caricature we WANT to draw, and doing the caricature we NEED to draw if we wat to bet paid.... here is a cartoon illustrating that which will be appearing in an upcoming Issues of Exaggerated Features Magazine.

Union Square Caricatures

Lots of fun today in the sun. Used a very simplified style and drew with a Fat Crayola Marker.

HOT Asian on the R Train

Hot as in, the weather! I aint taking about sex appeal here! Today was a very humid day in the city and the heat was wet and sticky. Even in an air conditioned train car it took more than a couple of moments to cool off and stop sweating. I spotted this hot asian man in the corner whose hair doo had completely gotten out of control due to the heat and had a look on his face that said, thank GOD for airconditioning!!
He easily was my funiest sketch of the day.

The gabby Subway Duo

These two guys boarded the A train this afternoon and literally didnt stop talking for the majority of the ride. It was hilarious to see how animated they both were. They were so into their conversation they didnt even notice me.

Finally some Subway sketches

Been a while since I uploaded some subway sketches. These are mostly me investigating line quality and sketching casually with the pencil. Not as intense as my usual modeled sketches but sometimes I like to take a break. These were found in one of my MANY sketch books I foud while doing some summer cleaning.