Happy Valentine's Day 2014

My markers and pencils gave of themselves today in the making of this Valentine…which I presented to my favorite raunchy comedienne, Stacey Nightmare, on her Instagram. You can find her stuff on Vine where she presently has 61,744 other followers who love her, besides myself.

 Don't worry, my real-life crush got a Valentine too, but I am not going to show his here. ;-)

Covert sketching...waiting room edition

Yes, she was playing with her phone.

Character studies..at the beach

I don't ever go anywhere without a sketchbook.

The beach is one of the best places to people-watch...and draw:

The Other Half and I had a peaceful day to spend at the edge of the Atlantic. 

I put together a bunch of separate little sketches in Photoshop to make the composite above. You can spot three of my subjects in the photos below:

Dolphins! (not sharks ;-)

You can hear the soothing sounds of surf in this Vine clip:

If you're on an Ipad, here is a link to see the above clip:

http://seenive.com/v/978413810899906560

Alistair and Etta..

My contributions to Traditional Caricature Art Contest (most votes I have gotten in awhile!) this week:

Alistair Overeem

and Caricaturama Showdown:

Etta James

Both done with markers.

Abe Lincoln...facial analysis

The subject for Tradition Caricature Art contest this week was Abraham Lincoln. I used rather not-typical media...some old Eaton typing paper and a Papermate ballpoint pen for this little ( 5" square) sketch:

Lincoln's face is extraordinarily interesting to face-ophiles like myself:

The two sides of his face were asymmetrical which may have been due to disease or to having been kicked in the head by a horse as a young boy.

(Wikipeda also has an entry on his physical and mental health that makes for fascinating reading.)

He aged extremely rapidly while in office (understandable as he had the weight of the American Civil War on his shoulders) but there is speculation that this may have been due to a wasting disease. 

He had two life-casts done (NOT death casts) which offer an insight into the real dimensions of his features both before he took office and after. 

The face of the Lincoln Memorial sculpture, in Washington DC, must be lit in a certain way to do justice to the dignity of the statue.

It's gratifying that he happened to be President at the dawn of the photography age, so we have photos as well as artistic renderings of our greatest President. 

I drew him beardless a few years ago.

Hard to capture, let alone caricature...

... this woman was one of the most physically beautiful to ever walk the planet. I've tried to draw her before and never succeeded;  this is my first half-decent version of Vivien Leigh. Everyone knows her as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, but she followed up that role by playing a tragic heroine in the 1940 tearjerker, Waterloo Bridge. The B/W cinematography of this movie quite possibly captures even more of her beauty than the Technicolor GWTW.

This started out as a marker drawing which I then scanned and added some painting in Photoshop.

Sketches for Caricaturama, etc..

While I was out of the country, I didn't really keep up with the weekly online caricature competitions, but a few subjects were just too fun to resist....
Bruce Willis for the forum at caricature.org done in Mars Lumograph EEE pencil, which I am really liking:

Paris Hilton, (Mar Lumograph again) Adrien Brody ( Ebony pencil) and Marilyn Manson (Microns) for Caricaturama and/or Traditional Caricature Art Contest....

There was a recent heated discussion on Caricaturama pertaining to the "cheating" of some digital artists by using photo manipulation as a basis for their caricatures,  (that's a subject for another post, though!) which resulted in some calls for preliminary sketches to be shown before a final digital work. My works for these competitions usually never get past the sketch stage!

FB caricature pages

Weekly caricature competitions have sprung up on Facebook like weeds...and I haven't had time to participate in any of them for ages. There used to be only Caricaturama Showdown 3000, which I regularly entered in the past. My motives were A. practice and B. having samples for my portfolio. One colleague of mine, at the recent ISCA convention, entered the portfolio competition--- and his consisted only of pieces he'd done for Caricaturama.
So, now there is Bookface Caricature contest, Awkward Faces, Traditional Caricature Art contest, etc. etc. etc. Some pros around the world enter these with very elaborately rendered pieces, and I always wonder how they find the time...and there are also plenty of newbies trying out the artform and hoping to learn something.
Anyway, since my portfolio was nonexistent this year, it's back to doing small sketches for these competitions. I don't want to spend more than an hour on any of them. Here are a few recent ones.

Pencil sketch-Rosario Dawson

Marker sketch-Fred Astaire.

Another pencil drawing--Ella Fitzgerald. They are all going in the same sketchbook. 

Doodle of Paul...

My friend Rick messaged me that a FB caricature competition page, Bookface, was doing Sir Paul McCartney last week, so I threw in a quickly dashed-off marker drawing---of how he looked when I first discovered the Beatles (by watching a Hard Day's Night on TV in the late 70's...)

This was done in about an hour, using Faber Castell PITT pens (brush tips) in several shades of gray, some Microns,  a  veeeeeeerrrrry fine point Japanese brush pen, and a couple of Prismacolor markers (mauve and orange to be exact.) I'm really backed up on my blogging...lots to share when I get time.

Caricaturama: Frida Kahlo

I haven't submitted anything for Caricaturama 3000 in ages, partly due to time constraints and and also because Facebook changed the group format to one that's less intuitive (in my opinion anyway). However, this week's subject is the enigmatic Frida Kahlo, so I had to have a go at her and her famous eyebrows! This is a one-hour marker sketch, done with Pitt pens in various grays, a lone Markette and a red Sharpie.

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

...use them to draw Freddie Mercury!

Doodling in Bangkok #2

Another day in Bangkok, another sketchbook...this book fit in my (horrors!) fannypack...