I've been really busy lately, currently working on a few illustrations for KING magazine as well as some other paintings . . . on top of that I critique students work every week for Schoolism. It might be a bit before I can share some of that work here on my blog and I haven't had much time for extra sketching . . . so I decided to share a bit about my beginnings.
I have two daughters, Isabeau who is five and Ava who is nearly two. Before Isabeau was born, I was working as an illustrator but not really sure how to get where I wanted to go. I was always going into book stores and finding caricature and illustration work in magazines that I really liked and telling myself I'm going to need to compete with these people if I ever want to make it. I knew that the one thing these artists could do and I couldn't, was paint. I had always been afraid, I think I thought I would be horrible and just wouldn't get it . . . painting is something I still work hard at, and something that I now understand will be an area that I can always improve in. My Dad once told me that you need to do a few hundred bad paintings to begin to get it, or to do one good one. That may be a bit extreme, but it is true that in order to become better you must get the "bad ones" out of the way.
Anyways, to explain this Owen Wilson painting . . . .
I was interviewed recently by the ISCA for winning The Gold Nosey and the story of my Owen Wilson painting came up. I thought it would be a good thing to share here.
Five years ago, the night my wife Kat went into labor I did my first "real" painting. Up until that point, I had only messed around with paints, but mostly did pen and ink with watercolor washes, tried out some airbrushing, and did a lot of color pencil work. To make a long story short, my wife started to have contractions and was in a seperate room with her friend going over the breathing and all that "fun" stuff. I was in another room and I began to panic. All of a sudden it was really happening, this was for real. There's really a baby coming! And I FREAKED! I started worrying about anything and everything you can imagine . . . will I be a good father, do I know anything at all? What do I know, what can I tell this kid . . . etc . . . Then I started to freak out about my art, and started to think about all these other artists out there who inspire me, thinking about how all of them can paint and I can't. Then I realized, I'm never going to make it as an artist if I can't paint . . . I'm going to be a father, and I can't even PAINT!
So with my wife huffing and puffing away with her friend, I grabbed some watercolors and did my first real painting, no other mediums to cover up my mistakes, just raw and honest watercolor. And that's what this Owen Wilson painting is, my first "real" painting. And I haven't stopped ever since. My wife's contractions died down just as I was finishing this painting . . . an hour or so later it happened for real, and the next morning my beautiful girl Isabeau was born!
This Nelly painting was done a bit after the Owen Painting, you see, I had to build up enough courage to work with acrylics. With this painting I watered down the acrylics until they felt like watercolors . . . from there I built everything up until it was opaque.
So there you have it, my first paintings, or "real" paintings, as in I was trying to "really" paint!
I'm going to get better at drawing.
I've been doing a lot of animal portraits in graphite lately. Christmas presents and all that. And I've really been wanting to get a few animal caricatures done. This is the first. I sketched this onto a box for my girlfriend for christmas. I'm raging against the combine by not buying wrapping paper this year. Or ever again!!!!! I renounce consumerism!!!!!!! No more will I be a slave to the wrapping paper merchants who seek to disenfranchise the little guy by charging $6 for a roll of cheap toilet paper trussed up to look festive!!!! I can draw a damn snowflake!!!! And an owl. It even looks like an owl. Sort of. At a pinch. In a bad light. Maybe. If you'd never seen an owl before. Which I haven't. We don't have owls here. But I have seen winnie the pooh and there was an owl in that I'm pretty sure. And that thing in the muppets that was blue and birdlike. He was an owl right? 
Ever since seeing Seiler's animals on his blog I've been wanting to try caricaturing one. I love dogs so I thought I would start with one. I told a friend of mine that I would do his. This is Sage. She doesn't look that exaggerated but I really increased the size of her eye and made her shoulders a lot smaller. I wanted to give her a look of skepticism. She is one of the most frightened dogs I know until she gets to know you.
I had to post this after seeing Richard's Lincoln. Nice one by the way Richard. It's Thomas Jefferson. My brother and I have been doing some sketches of past presidents and I liked this one the best. It's taken from Rembrandt's painting of Jefferson.
This one took a long time because I couldn't get his right eye (left to the viewer) right. I eventually posted it along with his picture on a forum and I got some helpful advice.
I wanted to post here at least once, so here it is. Think of it as an early Inauguration piece rather than a late Election Day piece. I also want to thank Jason Seiler for making caricatures fun for me again and offer a belated congrats on The Nosey Awards!
Did this a while ago as a follow up to a similar sketch of Jemaine. I do like drawing on cardboard.
This is Pat and Ian. Pat is a master yarn spinner who has been kind enough to teach my girlfriend how to spin. Ian is a farmer from way back in the day who has been kind enough to do fix it jobs on my girlfriends spinning wheel whenever it has been needed. These two are directly responsible for me being up to my eyeballs in fleece. So as a thank you I sketched these. they're a little on the soft side but these are traditional farming people who aren't expecting this so I wasn't about to try and push the features. Just kept it nice and cartoony. I do need to buy some different colour pencils though. Blue is the new Red according to Wall E.
I've just spent the morning doing a greyscale picture -need to lie down now for a bit!
I have been guilty of slipping back into my old painting habits, so I revisited the course videos which (thanks to Schoolism) are still viewable and realised how much I had forgotten or not taken in properly first time around. I'm setting myself a project to do following Jason's techniques more closely than I had before. I've done several caricatures with preliminary thumbnails and worked up into final sketches. I thought I'd post this one as being quite topical right now!
