Happy 67th birthday, Freddie Mercury...

Freddie Mercury of Queen would have been 67 today. He is still missed by many, including me.

Two weeks ago, he was the subject for Traditional Caricature Art Contest on Facebook. The only rule is that artists may not use digital media.  It was the week I was drawing on the boardwalk, so on one early afternoon before it got busy, I did a little marker drawing with the implements shown. My entry got a healthy number of likes, but the one I was really enthralled with belonged to an artist from Spain, Joaquin Aldeguer. It' s a little gem. Most artists chose to depict Freddie in the mustache phase of his career (early to mid 80's), but Joaquin nailed his mid 70's glam image. 

In my humble opinion, even though Freddie seems like he should be easy to caricature, what with the crooked teeth/overbite, iconic mustache, aquiline nose, exotic eyes, and interesting head shape, he really is not. The main problem I saw was that so many entries went overboard on beefing him up, because he was such a compelling presence on stage. Very few entries (again, IMHO) caught his essence...that of a campy yet elegant, slender, charismatic powerhouse of a singer. (those links go to other drawings I found amazing :-)

I really like drawing him because his face is so intriguing. Here are a few of my not-always-caricature (and not-always-successful) attempts:

Above: This was the start of my ink sketch. you can still see the pencil lines.

Below: If you check out my Vines, there are several starring Freddie.

Using the Vine app...

If you have a smartphone or an iPad, chances are you've heard of the Vine app... 

it's a 6-second video-loop camera (overseen by Twitter) that you can use all in one fell swoop, or chopped up into stop-motion animation. Creatives of all types from comedians to cartoonists (often they are the SAME person, as you'll see when I give some recommendations at the end of this post) have discovered its uses. I've been using it mainly for caricature reactions. 

Here's a link to Seenive, a web viewer for Vines---click to see all my Vines.

When I have some free time, though, one of my favorite things to do is make little rock-star homages:

When you download the app, you can see who follows who, but here are links to the outstanding Vines of two of my friends: Marlo Meekins and Celestia Ward.  

How to use up mostly dead Sharpies and Chartpaks...

...use them to draw Freddie Mercury!

Freddie Mercury--digital pen and ink study.

Not a caricature, but more of a stylized portrait, this man's features (and voice, and songwriting) have always intrigued me, and maybe that's why I find him difficult to caricature. His teeth are an obvious target for many caricaturists, but there are so many other things that make him worth a second look.

Part of the reason his looks seemed so exotic, and wasn't really widely known until after his death, was that Freddie Mercury was a member of a tiny ethnic minority, the Parsis, based in India, but which originally came from Persia (modern-day Iran). His birth name was Farrokh Bulsara, and he attended an English boarding school in Mumbai for most of his childhood. The Parsis, who follow the extremely ancient Zoroastrian religion, have intermarried among themselves for generations; as a result, they have a characteristic look and Freddie was a good example. Even his famous teeth were due to a common genetic mutation in Parsis--he and his mother had extra molars which pushed out the front incisors. There are only an estimated 100,000 Parsis left throughout the world today.

Freddie downplayed his background during his lifetime and instead embraced the British rockstar lifestyle. In this wonderfully done caricature (which I have not been able to find any information on...I'd love to know who the artist is/was, and the circumstances of its creation) which graced the sleeve of the 'Somebody to Love' single in 1976, it's obvious that Freddie and the rest of Queen had an affinity for our artform!

Yet another reason I find him so interesting: he was an accomplished artist! He didn't call himself one, in the 'painterly' sense of the word, but Queen's logo and their visual sensibility were all Freddie's. And you can't look at this pencil sketch of Paul McCartney, done while Freddie was a college student (he had a degree in graphic design) and not be impressed by its likeness and sensitivity.

I find it amazing that Freddie drew one of his musical idols while in college and ended up singing onstage with him at Live Aid twenty years later!


And now it's been almost twenty years since Freddie's untimely death and his talents are still missed by many.

Digital 70's Freddie Mercury...

I am still learning the ways of Mac and Photoshop, and the combination is a wonderful one. This piece wasn't done for any particular reason except that I wanted to...Thanks to Nick Cross for helping me get my Wacom Intuos working perfectly with my Mac (the driver that came with my tablet was out of date and prevented it from opening the application if I shut down the computer).