Bill Nighy

Here's a recent caricature of the actor Bill Nighy - he can be a suprisingly dark actor sometimes.

Judi Dench caricature

Have you noticed these days that on the radio every actor or actress is described as "Britain's Best Loved Actor"? Well they can't ALL be the best - they can certainly be ONE of Britain's Best Loved Actors etc etc. Anyway, enough I hear you say, below is a caricature of one such "Best Loved" i.e. Dame Judi Dench

Harry Hill caricature

This is a very quick caricature of the comedian Harry Hill in pen and ink with watercolour. I wasn't sure when I drew it whether it actually looked like him but the more I look at it again, with fresh eyes, I think there is something there....
I'm trying to move away from the highly polished (overworked) studio caricature and I'm trying to get more 'life' into the line and keep everything fresh. Ah well..

Mark Gatiss

Here's a quick caricature of the actor/comedian/writer Mark Gatiss.

Old Sketch book

I discovered an old sketch book the other day and so I thought I'd show a few images here. The first one is of a statue of some French general - can't for the life of me remember where it was but I was rather struck by the stance etc and so had to draw it.



The next one I remember I drew on a tram which resulted in the very shaky lines but quite pleasing all the same!



This final one was of a row of beach houses on Camber Sands. We stayed in one of these houses for a week's holiday and one morning I wondered down onto the beach and just stood and drew the view. The hoilday was ruined for me because, although the house was delightful, the burgar alarm kept going off on the first night and so I didn't sleep at all. Not a good start to the holiday.....

Welsh Rugby

I've been an avid follower of the current World Cup in New Zealand and have been very impressed with the new players in the Wales squad. The captain, number 8 Sam Warburton, has been immense in this tournament and he and the whole squad have won a lot of respect from the Rugby-wise New Zealenders (not known for being easily impressed!). There's not a lot further to be said about Warburton's sending off in the semi-final and subsequent three week ban. Anyway, here's a quick caricature of him...



I couldn't resist having a crack at a caricature of the Wales defence coach and ex Rugby League supremo, Shaun Edwards, who seems to have instilled a tough defensive attitude amongst the squad. When asked if his attitude was too tough and that surely he wouldn't expect his boys to carry on if they were seriously injured he replied something along the lines of "Well, no, if they had a broken leg or something obvioulsy.....but I'd still expect them to get up and make the tackle!" That's the mind-set he's given them.....

Live stuff

I've been very busy lately and I actually remembered to take my camera to some daytime events and take some photos. Taking photos of these caricatures is quite a good way of seeing how good (or not) the caricatures are - you can't tell at the time so it's useful to look at the photos a few days later....

Exhibition

I've just got back from spending a few days in Aberdeen working at a huge Oil and Gas Industry exhibiton drawing digital caricatures. It's a slower process than working with the old pen and paper method as you have to add colour (slow) and then add the body (even slower) and so I thought I'd show some of the results here:



















I should have taken some photographs of these happy people holding their caricatures so that you could compare their faces to the caricatures but time was at such a premium I didn't manage to take any!!

Charles Robinson RI

While on holiday recently I found myself rummaging around in a second-hand bookshop and came across a book on the work of William Heath Robinson but as we were running late I bought the book quickly and left. However, when I finally had time to look at it more closely, I realised that the book showed the work of the THREE Heath Robinson brothers, Thomas, Charles and William. I hadn't realised that there were three of them and that they were all successful illustrators!
The first image in the book that took my breath away was a watercolour portrait of someone called George Parlby produced by Charles Robinson (he seems to be the only brother not to use the 'Heath' in his surname for some reason) which was a study piece he produced to become an RI. You don't see watercolour portraits so much these days and so I thought I'd have a go at producing a copy to understand (as best you can from a printed page) the way he would have layered the watercolour etc. It took me most of yesterday to paint but very enjoyable none the less. I hope Charles will forgive me for plagurising his excellent work......

The Now Show

I like listening to the Now Show (Radio 4, Friday night) mainly because of the humour of Hugh Dennis and Steve Punt. Below are recent quick caricatures I did of them both:

Hugh Dennis



Steve Punt

I wonder why we don't see that much of Mr Punt on the telly?

Foghorn cover

This is the cover I drew for the latest issue of Foghorn. My attempt at getting back at those neer-do-wells in ThatLondon..

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Visualisation

I was recently asked by a Management Training organisation to spend a day with a group of Interantional HR Managers who they had spent the last 9 months working with as a group on various HR projects. I was asked to join them to help visualise their conclusions to enable them to present these to various invited colleagues later in the day.
In the morning I spent about 20 minutes listening to one group and started jotting images down in a small sketchbook (which I gave them at the end of the day). Here are a few of my scribbles:





These images (not all those I drew during this period are shown) won't mean much to you but it does show my 'quick' style.

I was then asked to help the various groups produce images to assist them in their presentations (rather than use PowerPoint) which I don't have copies of to show you here. What I then did, during the group's presentation, was to take 'visual notes' i.e. I drew images that just 'poppeded-up' into my head while they were talking which recorded the various points. Below is a (rather poor) photo, taken using my phone, of the end result which took about and hour and a half (?) :

Holiday (brielfly)

Liz and I spent a few days at a Landmark Trust property (Wilmington Priory) with some friends last week and so I took my sketchbook along as usual and tried to do a few drawings in the time available.
The first is of our bedroom - well, a view from our bed, which I didn't have time to add colour to..



The Priory had very nice shutters on the windows and so one afternoon I thought I'd draw them.



I then decided to go outside and have a go at drawing the old Priory....




It was good to spend some time with old friends and catch up with what's happening. Our friend's daughter is one of the fine ladies of the Puppini Sisters - Kate and her boyfriend are just such good company and they joined us for a few days. She'd only just flown back from LA after spending a few days at a recording studio over there. Ooooh the people I move and groove with daaahling.....