#caricatureresolution2017 Day 13: Chris Hemsworth

Posted on January 13, 2017 by bre bro

Chris Hemsworth as Thor was a given. I decided to draw him as Thor from the comics, since that costume works better in this style.

Chris Hemsworth final caricature

#caricatureresolution2017 day 12: RDJ

Posted on January 12, 2017 by bre bro

Day 12 calls for Robert Downey Jr. Of course, everyone is going to do him as Iron Man now (although I considered his role in Weird Science) and I’m not different in this case.

Since I’m doing most of these in the iPad app, Procreate, I have the option of uploading the “video” of the screen capture that the program automatically makes. I did that in this case, so you can see the process of the sketch, but spared you the much longer video that shows the whole thing from the sketch to the ink to the color.

Procreate sketching process (Click to see the video, it’s only 41 seconds!)

RDJ as Tony Stark ink

RDJ as Tony Stark color

#caricatureresolution2017 Day 11: Paul Rudd

Posted on January 11, 2017 by bre bro

The celebrity subjects of this challenge were intentionally picked because most all of them relate to the one that precedes and follows them. In Paul Rudd’s case, he was in Anchorman with yesterday’s subject, Steve Carell and I have chosen to keep the Anchorman theme by portraying Rudd (an unusually difficult subject to caricature, as has been agreed upon by the challenge participants) in this more painterly caricature, in his role as Brian Fantana. Here he is shown applying his noxious and notorious cologne, “Sex Panther”. (I know, the sketch looks more like Geraldo Rivera than Rudd or Fantana, but I hopefully, got closer to a resemblance in the final, colored version.)

Brian Fantana sketch

Brian Fantana/Paul Rudd final

Caricature Resolution day 10: Steve Carell

Posted on January 10, 2017 by bre bro

I drew Mr. Carell in his role of Brick Tamland, from the movie, Anchorman with his much-remembered movie quote above. Here are the sketch rough and finished color versions. Created in Procreate on my 12.9″ iPad Pro.

Steve Carell sketch

Steve Carell final

Caricature Resolution 2017 Day 9: Rainn Wilson

Posted on January 9, 2017 by bre bro

Rainn Wilson as rain.

Another sketchbook caricature. Everyone seemed to be drawing actor Rainn Wilson as his most famous role of Dwight Schrute and I wanted to do something different, so I did a lame, literal representation of him made of rain to varying degrees of success.

This will probably be the last one I draw in pencil in the sketchbook, as I just finally got a new iPad Pro and Apple pencil and will be trying them out for future caricature illustrations.

Caricature Resolution Days 7-8

Posted on January 8, 2017 by bre bro

Okay, so I waited a day to start every day doing this. I needed to do another combo of celebrity prompts and putting Liv Tyler and Elijah Wood together as Arwen and Frodo from Lord of the Rings seemed logical and expedient.

Here’s another sketchbook scan of them sketching in with a #2 pencil. I’m not that happy with the Liv Tyler resemblance, or lack thereof, but will have to accept it and move on. I will really, really start doing one each day, starting…… tomorrow!

Liv Tyler and Elijah Wood as Arwen and Frodo.

Caricature Resolution 2017

Posted on January 6, 2017 by bre bro

Even though I hate to add yet another nagging, daily chore to my routine, I can’t help but appreciate the results of joining a daily exercise regimen (for both body and portfolio) such as the “Drawlloween” art challenges I have done the past two years.

Now (a week late) I find out there is a similar challenge just for caricature artists, called Caricature Resolution. I will let the text from the group Facebook page explain it:

January 2017: one caricature a day!! Caricature artist Patrick Martinez was really inspired during #Inktober with the concept of doing a drawing a day for a whole month. It got him thinking why not do it with caricature? So here it is #Caricatureresolution2017

In the month of January we will attempt to draw a caricature a day! We encourage others to join and participate at your own risk! Patrick had a lot of fun making this list, each actor was in a movie with the previous listed (except for the last three).

As I said, I was a week late hearing about, and deciding to join the challenge, so I had to do some catching up and decided the best way was to use the same sketchbook I use for Drawlloween. Since the listed celebrities had movie roles in common, I put all the Batman villains on one side and all the Pulp Fiction actors on the other (though Uma could fit into either one.)

Tomorrow I will start on the daily caricatures. I could use the practice, because my normal “party” caricature style is purposely not very exaggerated or mean (for obvious reason, if I want to get paid) but this is an opportunity to not only practice better caricatures in terms of exaggeration (which, really, a “caricature” should be, not just a cartoon portrait, but also in terms of keeping the resemblance, something harder to do, the more exaggeration you put in. At least, it’s seems harder to me.

days 1-3

Days 4-6

So let the month of caricatures (a week late) begin!

Happy New Year 2017

Posted on January 1, 2017 by bre bro

2016 got such a bad rap that it was a popular joke to cheer its demise. I used that prevalent sentiment when commissioned by the Asheville Mountain Xpress to come up with a new year’s issue cover illustration.

Here is the original, finished cover art, before the text was added:

Here is the rough sketch I submitted to the paper, to show my idea:

Happy Veteran’s Day

Posted on November 11, 2016 by bre bro

Here is an art/military connected post. My two designs for a commemorative T-shirt for the class at Navy “A” school for the HM (Hospital Corpsmen) rating (job). It was at Naval Hospital Corps School in Great Lakes, IL (NCHS) in 1987.

I don’t remember exactly how we ended up with two of them, I think I did one and it was put on a sweatshirt, but I don’t know why that happened either, since it was summer the whole three months we were there after boot camp. The second design, we put on a black T-shirt, so I think we just had enough interest in chipping in for the printing to do a second one.

In any case, I got them out of storage and since they were barely ever worn, they still look pretty good for nearly three decades in age:

Now that the Navy is doing away with ratings, I suppose this will be a relic even more than it’s 29 years makes it already,

2016 Mountain Xpress Halloween Cover

Posted on October 26, 2016 by bre bro

For the third year (not in a row) I’ve been commissioned to come up with a Halloween themed cover design for the local Asheville alt weekly paper, The Mountain Xpress.

2016 Halloween cover for Mountain Xpress by Brent Brown

This year I was asked to do something with local architectural elements, such as the winged lions (I’ve been told they are not griffins, as they do not have the head of an eagle, just the body of a lion, with wings, but then again, I’ve read they could be either) at the Grove Arcade building. I toyed with a few ideas and we narrowed it down to just the lion statues at the Grove Arcade.

I thought that was a cool thing to play with, so I looked the historic structure up on Google Street View to get a straight-ahead view of it, then took it into a vector program and made a simple vector-art version of it that I could then distort into an extreme, bug’s-eye view perspective to add some dramatic flair to it. I then used the handy 3-D artist’s model bodies in Manga Studio (now called Clip Studio Paint for some reason) to get the correct perspective and anatomy for the hipster-clown the animated architectural animals would be attacking on All Hallow’s Eve.

The gryphons/lions I had to just create from a reference photo and so their perspective is not as extreme, since I wanted to keep them recognizable in their newly-animated, attack versions and I also had to kind of figure out their perspective on my own.

Then, it was just a matter of drawing the correct details on the reference model, arranging it with the lions I drew, rendering out lighting and shade and details on the Arcade and generally improving the whole composition, while leaving space for the heads and subheads that were to come in later.

The previous covers combined Halloween with the election, since they fell so close to the same time that year. That was fun, but also hard to come up with anything new that hasn’t already been done before since the last day in October and the first Tuesday in November are always in close approximation each year and it’s a visually and satirically temptation to want to somehow link the two. I was glad I didn’t have to do that this year, as I had already used up all my ideas previously.