Welcome 2014! Adele, etc.

2014 has arrived and with it, a perpetual resolution (amongst several): to remember to sign my artworks with the correct year!

I've finished several caricature commissions already since New Year's, but can't share them yet, so this is a look at a current little project of mine: 

Bodacious torch singer Adele is the face of the week on Caricaturama Showdown 3000. This FB page is one I used to frequently post on, back when it first started several years ago, but haven't done so for quiiiiiiite awhile. Why not? Well, each artist is free to use whatever media they like, whether it be traditional or digital. I like to use both, but digital became CS3K's predominant mode (and one of my friends referred to it as "a rendering contest"). Some of the digital caricatures entered, frankly, looked like nothing more than photo-manipulated…photos. There was much controversy, on and off, as artists accused other artists (justly so, IMHO, in some cases) of painting on top of stretched photos, after using the "liquify" tool in Photoshop. Well, contention between artists is sad, so I lost interest in going there. When I did have time to do extracurricular art, I posted in Traditional Caricature Art Contest, where digital is an absolute no-no.

When I saw Adele was the current face on CS3K, though, I decided to see how things were going there. She's a fun one to caricature (this was done last year and ended up in my portfolio) so I opted to have another go.

First, I did a pencil sketch and posted that, (89 (!) "likes" at the moment, which is astonishing to me) then continued on to paint her using Procreate on my iPad, thus making it digital. Truth be told, I am a rather bigger fan of traditional media than digital. I nearly always sketch in pencil first and scan it before completing a digital commission, and I still have not joined the 'live-digital-caricature' movement. I need to remedy that. :-) There's no organic original with digital, but of course it is far better suited for the fast pace of today's illustration needs. So call me a fence-sitter! 

My friend Celestia Ward, who isn't afraid of public speaking, just did a talk on using social-media-as-an-artist to a group in Las Vegas. My Adele made it into one of her talking points. :-)

Now I just have to finish her, among all the other January-type things I'd like to do...studio-sorting, website-revamping, and general catch-up stuff. My last two Januarys were spent in Thailand, so it's way overdue.