philip seymour hoffman

So this is my first time posting on the caricature blog. I took Jason's course a few months ago and have just been working on trying to implement and manipulate what we were taught into a caricature worth showing. This is the first thingn I've drawn since then that I'm pretty happy with. I plan on painting it up all nice and pretty, so if that works out the way I'm hoping, maybe I'll go ahead and post the colour version too.

Kevin Smith Caricature

Been wanting to do this one for a LONG time, and finally got around to it over the holidays. I left it black and white due to his first movie, Clerks. Based it on a scene from one of his 'An Evening With Kevin Smith' DVD's where he's eating Timbits (an Canadian donut delicacy) and cursing them.

Happy New Year!

General Maximus Decimus Minimus

I did this Russell Crowe picture using Jasons' 'second' method i.e. painting direct rather than over a greyscale picture.

Successful New Year to all.

New Year's Resolution '09

I'm going to get better at drawing.
I took a class about a year ago where my painting instructor said "Why draw it when you're just going to spend double the time painting over it?" I did this for a while and couldn't understand why I wasn't happy with the results of my work. After taking Seiler's class I have a greater appreciation for drawing in general and working out my problems with a point rather than a brush in particular.
I got a copy of Sketchbook Pro for Christmas and this is my first drawing with it. I love it so far. I've worked in Painter and Photoshop since I started this and I like them both. I don't think you can get any better than Painter with the feel of pushing paint and, for some reason, I still take my paintings to Photoshop and paint a little in there. But for drawing, there's another level of "feel" with Sketchbook Pro. There's actually a setting for lightly pressing the tablet and another for when you press hard. Where Photoshop and Painter are pressure sensitive, Sketchbook Pro is multi-pressure sensitive. It's hard to explain but I like it. It's only $100 from the Autodesk website.

Andy Bernard Sketch!

This is Ed Helms as Andy Bernard from the show "The Office".

The other night I received and email from Ed, it was a really cool surprise! This is what he wrote.


"This is Ed Helms. I was alerted to your recent blog posting featuring a very fat-necked version of me. Part of me thinks I should be mad at you, but I'm too busy laughing. The fact is, I am completely enamored with your caricature of me!! It is absolutely hilarious and I'm flattered to be one of your subjects. As narcissistic as it may be, I'd love to get a version to frame in my office. Even just a copy. Is that possible?
Meanwhile have a great holiday!
A new fan -
Ed"

Christmas Owl

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? 

Have a good christmas everyone. 

Private Commission Caricatures

Been awhile since I've posted anything on here, as I've been busy with editorial cartoons. What with the Canadian and U.S. federal elections, I've been hopping. Now that things are slowing down a little in that department, I'll be trying to get back to doing as many caricatures as I can for my portfolio. Here are a couple of private commissions I was hired to do recently. Clients were happy, and I had fun with them. Should have a new celebrity one (sort of) done by next week. With no real plans for the holidays, I intend to just keep working.

But Happy Holidays, anyway.

Painting Bruce Willis

Hi all, I am from the current batch of Jason's students. While painting Bruce Willis for Assignment 5, I took snapshot after every 1 - 2 hour's of work. Thought it's interesting to see the transformation, so I made them into an animated gif to share it here as my first post. Hope you enjoy.

Bill Murray...

I tried to keep this one fairly loose and painterly - had some fun with the oil brushes in Painter!

Recent stuff

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.

Abraham Lincoln

I'm probably breaking some federal law here by reproducing a banknote ; well they'll have to catch me first!

Toby Flenderson Sketch

If you look up the word "gross" on Wikipedia you'll find some words that have to do with the "Economy" . . . boring right, who needs to know anything about that? But more importantly for our topic, you'll find this descrtiption . . . .

"Gross", a slang term meaning "disgusting" or "grotesque" EXAMPLE of GROSS - The actor, "Paul Lieberstein" better known as "Toby Flenderson" from "The Office".

Need I say more?




Quick sketch while sitting at Starbucks.




A very quick gesture sketch, again while at a Starbucks.

The birth . . . my first paintings.

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!

Andrew Marr...

Drawing & quick value study of British TV presenter Andrew Marr...

Phyllis Lapin

Her name really is Phyllis, and I have the feeling she's not an actor . . . just being herself. The Office is such a great show!

Jeb Bush for The Weekly Standard

This was a one day turn around for The Weekly Standard. I started with sketches around 8:00 a.m. Friday morning and finished with the painting around 8:00 p.m. that night. With a quick job like this, I have to pace myself . . . I need to spend a certain amount of time on each part of the painting, face, hands etc . . . if I don't do this, I end up spending too much time in one area and not enough in other areas.

I find that hands take me just as long to draw and paint as the face, hands are just as important as the face to get right. So for this piece I wish had more time to spend on the hands but because of the tight turnaround I decided to focus more on Jeb's face . . . once I got it to a certain point I began to loosen up towards the edges of his face and continued with this throughout the rest of the body.

For the background I would have rather had a lighter and brighter blue sky, but because of type reading well against the background, I had to paint the sky much darker. Because of this, the background ended up a bit gloomy compared to what my first intentions had been for the piece.

Overall it was a fun piece to work on, Jeb's has an interesting face. It's similar to his older brother yet has its own interesting qualities, somewhat like a heavier George Bush.





Quick sketch . . . working out an idea for the body type.






Starting to block in the idea given to my by the a.d.




Making adjustments to the tree line and composition . . .

Keith Richards...

Jim Halpert

Last night I watched some more episodes of "The Office" with my wife and did this sketch of Jim.

Another friend of mine...

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.