Holiday work

I've just returned from a week's holiday where I'd spent time drawing people I wanted to draw for a change! This is a caricature of a certain General Mario Mendez who was the Military Govenor during the Argentine occupation of the Falklands. It was taken from a photograph in a magazine where he was talking about the situation he found himself in back then and there seemed to be a lot of sorrow in his face.



This is a drawing of two members of Snow Patrol - vocalist Gary Lightbody and bassist Paul Wilson. This again was taken from an article where they were discussing why Lightbody didn't have a girlfriend. Can't understand it myself...

Commission

Occasionally you get a request to quote for some artwork or other and the other day a request came in from a manufacturer who required approximately 160 individual pieces of artwork which were to be completed in 8 weeks. The images were to be of either London landmark buildings (drawn in a cartoon style) OR caricatures of famous Londoners or Olympians. For you non-mathematicians out there it's a matter of producing three images per day, 7 days a week! This isn't allowing for amends or re-draws of course! So, I decided to have a go at drawing two such London buildings (from photographs unfortunately) to see just how long it would take me.

The first was the London Gherkin:



This took about an hour. The second was St Pauls Cathedral:



Which took a couple of hours at least.
I sent the client a quote (substantial) and suggested a turnaround time of at least 12 - 16 weeks. I heard nothing back......

Robert Pattinson Actor

This is a quick caricature of the actor Robert Pattinson (Twilight) while watching the box in the corner of the room.

More photos

I thought I'd share some photos taken of my recent work - they're of various guests at weddings or dinners etc proudly holding up their caricatures for the camera. I hope you can make out the caricatures:














Some people tell me it's very intimidating having me look (stare!) at them as I draw their caricature but I thought I'd share this last photo with you showing how intimidating it can be for the caricaturist!

Wedding caricatures but not as we know them....

I was recently commissioned by a bride to be to draw a caricature of both the bestman and usher (from photographs) which is not very usual as I normally draw them AT the wedding itself! Anyway, I'd been working on a new technique (for me anyway) where I don't draw any prelimenary pencil lines but put the black ink down straight away and if it works i.e. I think it looks like them, I put the watercolour wash on. The results are below and yes, they only wanted black & white images rather than full colour:


This was the bestman



and this was the usher.....

I've been trawling through the teapot temple images again and I came across this one:


You'll notice that there's been a bit of damage to this teapot between the junction of the spout and the main body which has obviously been very badly repaired. That'll greatly reduce the re-sale value.....

Live v studio work

When you work as a live caricaturist you're expected to draw as many caricatures as possible in the alloted time and so, over the years, I havel become faster at drawing caricatures. All this means is that those watching me draw see me produce a finished caricature in about 3 - 4 minutes. The idea then sometimes pops into their heads that I can do the same if they show me a photograph of someone. "Can you do one from this photo on my mobile phone it'll only take you a couple of minutes?" They sometimes get very irrate when I say I can't because it's not the same thing at all. What people don't realise is that a photograph is only a two dimensional image while a real face in front of you is obviously three dimensional. What people don't realise is that it can sometimes take a couple of hours to draw a really good caricature from a number of photographs (please note not just one!). So that you can see what I mean I've posted below a photo of a man I was recently sent with the words "Please draw a caricature of this chap and if it's any good we'll book you for an event".



Not quite the same thing at all but anyway you can immediately see that the image is not terribly good i.e. not very good resolution and looks quite blurred. Anyway, I realised that there was no point trying to produce a typical studio caricature and, since they were considering using me as a live caricaturist, I thought I'd have a go at doing it in my 'live' style. It took a number of attempts and took considerably more than the 'live' time of three to four minutes!



I don't know from the photo whether he has red hair or not but I added that after sending it off to the client. Did I get the gig? I'll let you know.....

Riverboat event

This was a photograph taken at a recent works event held on a riverboat in the Midlands which was actaully great fun. It's always great working with another entertainer at an event and this time it was a young magician called Ben Hanlin. I was booked to work for three hours but since the boat trip was for a total of four hours it was difficult to get a break. I eventually had to take a 'comfort break' and was just washing my hands in the lavatory when one of the (female) guests spotted me and shouted to her friends "This is where he is - he's in here.......!" Her friends did work out (eventually) that it was not the done thing to crowd into the gents so stood outside the door waiting for me to emerge.........that's popularity for you that is.....