FB fan page contest winner...

Over on my fan page, I ran a little contest yesterday asking if anyone could tell whose panel was whose in my joint comic with artist Celestia Ward. I say little because the second entrant, fellow Philly caricaturist John Sprague, won---the prize was a BW marker/artstix caricature! John asked me to draw his cat, and so I did:

I scanned my marker drawing, then played with it a bit in Photoshop. White whiskers are much more suited to rendering digitally! :-)

Triple Pet Portrait

Those dog portraits I posted the other day reminded me of how much I used to enjoy drawing animal likenesses, and now I want to pursue doing that again. After all, pets are like people in that they have a huge range of appearances and personalities! The best caricature/portraiture catches that psychological essence in the physical form, and that's my goal no matter what media I use. This colored-pencil piece (Prismacolors on blue Canson paper) was done several years ago from three separate photos... The client was quite pleased with it; she hung it over her piano in her living room.

Pen & Ink portraits of dogs...

Next month, I will be attending another NCN convention, a mini-con in the Midwest this time. One of the seminars will be "Inking Caricatures" with Tom Richmond. Tom is an award-winning artist known for his humorous illustrations--which appear in magazines and advertising--but his big claim to fame is being one of the 'Usual Gang of Idiots' in MAD magazine. I've had the pleasure of meeting Tom on several occasions, and his blog is in my links list. What does this have to do with dog portraits?

Well, back in the mid-nineties, before caricatures were a gleam in my eye, I did pen and ink pet portraits. They were time-consumimng, but I enjoyed bringing pets to life. These three were my favorites. The top one, a friend's cantankerous mutt, actually won a prize in a juried art contest. The second one was a commission from the mother of a college freshman, who missed his pets dreadfully. The third was a portrait of a friend's beloved Rottweiler, now in doggie heaven.

I just may be inspired to get back to pen and inking!

Doggy-catures...

Here's a piece I just did for a repeat client:

Three cute little furry friends...people sure do love their pets!