Random Faces

Some sketches of random citizens for practice. Picture references provided by Jason Seiler for his caricature course on schoolism.com Thanks for stopping by.

Monochromatic Study

This is another assignment from Jason Seiler's Caricature course on Schoolism. This time a Monochrome painting study of a model the Jason provided. I guess this guys name is Lupe. At least that's what the file was named. There were other pics, but I just loved this guys face. Great shapes and details to play off of. Below is the sketch done with red prismacolor col-erase pencil and then scanned in a painted in Photoshop. Thanks for stopping by, enjoy!!!!

Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, and Lil Wayne

Here are a couple sketches of rap stars Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, and lil' Wayne. I just sketched these out to stay loose, then I decided to do a tonal value painting over The Kanye sketch. One of the assignments in the Jason Seiler caricature course at schoolism was to take one of Jason's sketches and do a tonal painting over his pencils. I thought it would benefit me more to practice over my own sketches though. here they are, enjoy!!!

Tom Hanks and some ball point doodles

Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks is known for his roles in Apollo 13, That Thing You Do!, The Green Mile, You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, Charlie Wilson's War, Catch Me If You Can, A League of Their Own, The Da Vinci Code, and as the voice of Woody in the Toy Story movie franchise. He has earned and been nominated for numerous awards during his career, including winning a Golden Globe for Best Actor and an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Philadelphia and a Golden Globe, an Academy Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a People's Choice Award for Best Actor for his role in Forrest Gump, and earning the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film from the BAFTAs in 2004. Hanks is also known for his collaboration with film director Steven Spielberg on Saving Private Ryan and the mini-series Band of Brothers, which launched Hanks also as a successful director, producer and writer. As of 2012, Hanks films have grossed over $4.2 billion at the United States box office alone, and over $8.5 billion worldwide making him the highest all time box office star. Here is my finished rendering of Tom Hanks, originally a sketch done for Jason Seiler's schoolism course, followed by some quick ball point pen sketches of random citizen pics provided by Jason as well. Thanks for checking it out.

Forest Whitaker

From wikipedia: Forest Steven Whitaker (born July 15, 1961) is an African-American actor, producer, and director. He has earned a reputation for intensive character study work for films such as Bird and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and for his recurring role as ex-LAPD Lieutenant Jon Kavanaugh on the gritty, award-winning television series, The Shield. Whitaker won an Academy Award for his performance as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland. Whitaker has also won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. This caricature was done after watching Jason Sieler's lecture on coloring a portrait using a split - complimentary color pallet. I been wanting to paint this mug for awhile now. Done mostly in Corel Painter 12 as an excuse to experiment further with the new real bristle brushes. I also posted the ref pic:) Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!

Jason Seiler's Caricature Course

So as I mentioned in the last post, I started Jason Seiler's 9 week caricature course at the schoolism site. You can check it out here: http://schoolism.com/?share=r0qv2 I'm having a great time already. If you have been to my site or this blog in the past , then you know I have a passion for drawing caricatures of celebrities. I have been wanting to take Jason's course for awhile now, and since I just wrapped up Anthony Jones's creature design course, I thought now is as good a time as any, plus they are currently having a fall sale on classes, which is a plus. In my opinion, Jason is one of the best in the business when it comes to this topic and I am super excited to learn his techniques. These are a few of sketches I did for the first assignment. Jason supplied a few pics of citizens for you to sketch and a couple of pics of actor Tom Hanks. So for the first assignment, I did a few rough sketches of the citizens and a slightly tighter sketch of Tom Hanks. Then for fun I decided to do a quick color block in of Tom Hanks that I may use as a guide for a finished piece. Tom Hanks is one of my wife's favorite actors, so I may just go ahead and finish that up soon for my portfolio. Thanks for stopping by and enjoy!!!

Prince and Aliens?

So as the title says, Prince and Aliens, or An Alien. What do they have in common?, well for now, only the fact that they both got painted by yours truly:) First is my caricature of Prince, who in my opinion is a musical genius. From wikipedia: Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson; June 7, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. He has produced ten platinum albums and thirty Top 40 singles during his career. He established his own recording studio and label; writing, self-producing and playing most, or all, of the instruments on his recordings. In addition, he has been a "talent promoter" for the careers of Sheila E., Carmen Electra, The Time and Vanity 6, and his songs have been recorded by these artists and others (including Chaka Khan, The Bangles, Sinéad O'Connor, and even Kim Basinger). I have just started a new caricature course at the Schoolism website with instructor Jason Seiler. Jason is an amazing painter, and I am excited to learn under him and improve my caricatures and portraits. This Prince caricature was done before I started the class, but I'll be sure and blog about my experience with the course as I finish the assignments throughout the next couple of weeks. Next up is an Aquatic Alien concept design that started out as a z-brush sculpture than refined in Photoshop. I did this one shortly after watching a few demonstrations by Artist Eric Ryan. I just watched his workshop at the CGMA online workshops site (Computer Graphics Masters Academy) in which he shows his process of character creation. For the workshop he created a Boar/ humanoid creature. I also purchased Ryan's Gnomon Workshops dvd, in it he takes you through a similar process, but this time re-imagining film creature, The Fly. So keeping his techniques in mind I set out to re-imagine The creature from the black Lagoon, but as I started sculpting I started to go in another direction and came up with this guy. Definitely check out Eric Ryan's workshops and downloads, you won't be disappointed. Thanks for stopping by, Enjoy!!!

caricature sketching

Here's some caricature sketches done directly in Photoshop with no real sketch lines as a start.  Instead I sketched with tonal values, concentrating on the shapes and forms of the face and it's features.  This is a technique I learned from watching artist like Joe Bluhm and Jason Seiler work.  These are not meant to be finished by any means, they are just sketches, so they are full of mistakes, but it's fun and a great learning process to work this way.  If I wanted to refine these, it would not be difficult to do from this stage.