A sweet little girl's 1st birthday party

My second party of the day was for an adorable little girl's first birthday. Her mother just started making fancy cakes using fondant--look at this masterpiece!

I actually used to work alongside her in my past life as a teacher's aide--she is an art teacher, so I really appreciate her enthusiasm for my work!

Here are some of the kids I drew:

This youngster was shy about being photographed, and her mom had wandered off, so I just took a picture of the caricature. 

Below are the birthday girl and her two older brothers--whom I drew separately at various times, as the boys had a bounce house to jump in and all kinds of better things to do than sit for a caricature. ;-)

At the end of the night, I drew the birthday girl's color caricature. And she was still awake and in a happy mood as you can see!

Thank so much Joy and Alex, for having me!!

A cute little boy's 1st birthday party

Yesterday was a busy one for me, I had three gigs in one day.  :-)
And two of them were were first birthday parties! My earlier one, in the afternoon, was for a little guy---I'd drawn at his big sister's first birthday party two years ago (it's in the frame on the floor in this photo).

Here are some of them, the hostess hung them on her mantel while the party was in progress. I actually did remember some of the guests' faces when they sat in front of me again!
Of course, the birthday boy got a color one:

So did his sister, with her BFF Jessie:

This lovely lady, the children's great-grandmother, told me she had six children, twenty-three grandchildren, forty-seven great grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren!!! WOW!

A few more fun faces--

 I had a blast as usual, thank you for having me once again!:-)

Elvis sideburns won the day!

The "Pick a new look for Don" caricatures went over well--here is the final result!

This is what my client had to say:

Elvis it was!

It was actually a tie between Johnny Depp and Elvis at the end of the second day, and so we took ballots to the reception that night and Elvis surfaced as the winner. So I arrived at the booth the next morning supporting the Elvis “chops.” 

The results (in order of rank) were: 1. Elvis 2. Johnny Depp 3. Hulk Hogan 4. Evil Spock 5. Charlie Sheen 6. Normal Self 7. Howie Mandell 8. Tom Selleck (I guess the “stach” just doesn’t cut it anymore!) 9. Several custom drawings.

Thanks so much for this. It created quite a buzz at the conference. The end result (maybe not the look, but client contact) was exactly what I was looking for!

Thank YOU, Don!

And, can't forget the BEFORE photo:

I think the Elvis look suits you! :-)

WIP for this week's Caricaturama

My friend Court Jones won last week's CS3K with his Daniel Day Lewis, so he got to choose this week's subject, Norman Rockwell, whom I've long admired. I've spent about two hours so far sketching and painting this WIP:

I hope I'll have to time to finish it, busy gig weekend on the horizon! 

Last fall, in Washington DC, I visited a large exhibition of Rockwell paintings and sketches owned by Mssrs. Lucas and Spielberg. Seeing them up close was amazing. They are on a grand scale, but still feel cozy and intimate; his vision of Americana is still cherished by many. I certainly can see the appeal of that, but for me the attraction is that he was a figurative painter. Some of his faces border on caricature, of a very gentle sort, which is where (IMHO) my work leans on the scale of exaggeration.

"Choose Don's facial hair!"

It was recently my pleasure to do a very cool commission for a company executive. He wanted to use caricatures of himself to stimulate interaction at a trade show booth, and also to help Japan's relief effort in the process. Check this out my caricatures of him on this sign:

The color one shows his current appearance. People will choose which look they want Don to adopt...each one is modeled on a particular celebrity's facial hair. Personally, my favorite is the evil Mr. Spock goatee!

The ballots also have the caricatures printed on them (along with a 'draw your own' option, hee hee):

The trade show is going on this week, I can't wait to hear the outcome! :-)

O's Opening Day 2011

Major-league baseball in Baltimore had the most picture-perfect day yesterday for an opener. Hopes are running high for this season's team as there's a new manager in town. The first home game was a sell-out, and they have won four games in a row already.
But enough about baseball...look at THIS  FACE!!

Adding beer to the equation makes for either super-fun caricature experiences or disgusting ones. I had both yesterday: this guy was the super-fun, friendly one.  He and his buddy were delightfully buzzed before the game and having a great time:

The disgusting experience (no picture though) was with a not-so-delightful intoxicated guy and his friend--he wanted to dictate to me exactly how the friend was to be drawn as a wrestler, and how skimpy his wrestling attire should be. I declined to draw them and they went on to my long-suffering colleague next door, who did--enduring both their drunken banter AND the spilling of almost an entire beer on the caricature stand. Afterwards, we found out that my above-mentioned nice subject and his less-than-fun ones both gave us sizable tips---but he had to work alot harder for his!

Of course, there's more to baseball fandom than alcohol, here's proof of that:

Below, I drew a scenario that was a new one to me. 

"Can you make my son batting, and me yelling at him? I'm a Little League coach." 

There were plenty of uber-fan outfits floating around yesterday, but the only photo I caught was this one:

Nice to see a full stadium!

Enjoy a couple of video snippets from my afternoon:

Finally, here is a link to Rick's blog, for another caricaturist's perspective from Camden Yards!

Caricaturama SD 300- Daniel Day-Lewis

This weeks's CS3K subject is known for his more recent cinematic endeavors in There Will be Blood and Gangs of New York, but I chose to illustrate how he appeared in one of his early performances. He and Helena Bonham Carter both played in the Edwardian period piece "A Room with a View" in  1985, a movie I remember enjoying very much.

This is a limited-palette digital pen & ink piece. Below is the bare-bones sketch and first layer of color:

Drawing caricatures with gloves on...

...was how I spent my day yesterday, the building was rather chilly:

A parade of elegant young figure skaters sat for me!

My colleague Rick, whom I was representing, had provided some pre-printed skater paper. So these two girls are body-by-Rick, head-by-Emily creations. 

Of course, I customized their dresses. That was fun!

Eventually, I ran out of Rick's paper and (gasp) had to draw the bodies myself!

Not everybody was a figure skater:

And not everybody was even a kid!

Some of the skaters' cheering sections had a go at a being caricatured--above is someone's

 sweet, bus-driver grandmother. 

Below's drawing pulled the biggest guffaws of the day. 

Wonder what his skater daughter thought when she saw this!

It was also funny to me because this guy's pals all said "You need a caricature," as they walked by, which usually does NOT result in said guy's sitting for one. This time it did!

 I finally saw some skating towards the end:

CocoMoCA--the Museum of Conan Art--has quite the collection...

My pencil drawing of late-night talk show funnyman Conan O'Brien is currently #1 among the Top Ten illustrations on his official website! Thank you!!

You can vote for it by "Liking" it if you are on Facebook.

He's part of my blog header too. Here he is in his full high-haired glory:

Everybody needs a Victorian angel portrait...

I've decided I'm a little bored with caricature---and I'm thinking about specializing in customized Victorian angels from now on. Whaddaya think?

This is a Prismacolor-pencil-on-gray-Canson-paper piece, she's about six inches tall, and I drew her way back in 1995 (before I had any inkling how much the art of caricature would dominate my life later on). The gilded frame and delicate lace were digitally added just now, in a flash of heavenly inspiration...


















APRIL FOOL'S! Now who wants a caricature??