Weekend Caricature Collection

I had two different interviews this past week for a job as a park caricature artist, so in preparation I drew over 100 caricatures. Here are some of my favorite selections:

Jonathan Banks

Peter Capaldi

Anne Hathaway

Jennifer Lawrence

Michael Keaton

Lupita Nyong'o

Christoph Waltz

JK Simmons

Sketch you later!

Sketchbook Sharing: Oscar-icatures!

Earlier this week, a friend asked if I would come to a party to do some caricatures. Since I haven't done anything like that in years, I decided to try and practice by sketching some of this year's Oscar contenders. (See the portmanteau there? Oscar-icatures, its Oscar + Caricatures.)

Joaquin Phoenix in Her

Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips

 

Christian Bale and Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle

This was a considerable challenge for me. After spending years being taught how to draw faces in proper proportion, it was exceptionally difficult to break from those rules. I actually did a lot more of the nominees, but these are the ones that I think turned out the best. 

I don't want to make it sound like I'm giving up after trying something new, but this really felt more like a chore than something fun, so I think I'll stick to my strengths with drawing portraits for the foreseeable future.

Also, I learned that its easier to edit your weekly blog post when you stick to drawing a single theme during that week, so I think I can still mark this experience in the win column. 

Sketchbook Sharing: Warm Hugs with Jennifer Lawrence

I thought I'd take advantage of the new year to start developing some new habits. I thought I'd start out by putting up at least a  post of week, just to share the kinds of things that I'm working on in between the big stuff.  

Something I've been tinkering with since the start of the month has been this piece of fan art inspired by Disney's animated feature "Frozen". 

In that film Olaf the Snowman's catchphrase is "Hi, I'm Olaf and I like warm hugs!" and Elsa the Snow Queen is unable to touch anyone without risk of giving Party B a pretty severe case of frostbite. I thought that there would be some bonding time between these two, since Olaf couldn't be hurt by her powers and she could finally open up to someone. Thats not what happened in the movie, which is fine, but I don't think Olaf actually gets a warm hug from anybody by the end, which left me... a little cold. 

While this got off to a promising start, the challenge arose when it came to drawing Elsa on model with her long limbs and thin torso, especially when she's already in this usual "sit-kneel" position. After that it got kind of frustrating to continue to push this project so that it I could put something finished online and garner a great deal of attention from the film's fandom while it was still at the peak of its popularity, so I think I may give this one a rest for the time being.

Meanwhile, I've also gotten into the habit of daily warm-up sketches to help stay in practice and help generate inspiration. Here are some of the highlights from this past week: 

There was a lot of buzz about about Jennifer Lawrence being the year's most bankable star and I thought it might be interesting to draw an actor when they aren't being "a character". Although I did feel a bit of my soul wither away and die after using TMZ photos as references.