DRAWLLOWEEN 2017 – Day 1

Drawlloween 2017 – Day 1

RETURN FROM THE DEAD

Another year of DRAWLLOWEEN month is here! This time, I’m doing it all digital, instead of the inking in a sketchbook and scanning in to post method I did the previous two years. For that reason, I won’t be doubling this as also taking part in Inktober, but I won’t have to scan any more, or worry about ink from the previous day bleeding through the paper and having to work around it on the reverse page. Also, I now have an Apple Pencil and iPad Pro that makes sitting and drawing as easy and realistic as doing it on real paper with real tools. Another plus (or minus) is that I won’t be tempted to connect two days due to them being next to each other in a spread when the facing pages are open in the sketchbook. That was another challenge to deal with in an already challenging challenge, so now I can concentrate on other things.

So for day one’s “Return From the Dead” prompt last year, I honored two celebs who had sadly passed away during 2016 (David Bowie and Prince) and I wanted to do the same with this year’s same prompt. I decided on the two co-creators of my favorite macabre comic, “Swamp Thing”, writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson. For one thing, returning from the grave was a theme presented many times in their influential comic run in the 70s and seemed appropriate for this use. Secondly, Bernie’s masterful line work and moody inking is something that hit me right away when I saw it and I have loved it ever since, and this is a great reason to try to ape it in honor of both him and Len.

DRAWLLOWEEN Day One: RETURN FROM THE DEAD

 

Final Day (31) of Caricature Resolution

So here we are at the end times… I mean.. the final days.. I mean the last day of the “one caricature a day challenge” called Caricature Resolution 2017.

Anthony Hopkins was the designated subject and I worked on and then overworked this one of him in his current “Westworld” role as I seem to do too often. Once again, trying to exaggerate did not work for me. I tried making the eyes small, the forehead and nose large, and somehow, when the resemblance wasn’t there, kept changing things and proportions until I was practically back to the damned original proportions to being with, only I had still changed things enough that there was still no resemblance (I think this now looks more like BIlly Graham than Anthony Hopkins!!) but as a bonus there was also NO exaggeration! Double fail!!

At least this challenge has taught me that I have a long way to go if I want to move past “Party Caricature” type of barely-exaggerated styles and seeing all the entries from artist who do know how to do it is very helpful, if disheartening. Even seeing the few that were just awful and looked like third-grade children drew them were not helpful to my ego when they still got more of the precious “likes” that are the only payment we get for all this work than the consistently few I always got (from the kindhearted people who make sure to like ALL the entries just to be encouraging.)

So there you have it 31 caricatures of celebrities that I would otherwise never had done, some more successful than others. This is the reason I like these things. I also kept a disciplined daily routine of updating this blog, which also usually would never happen. Never mind the fact that it may as well just be a personal diary, seeing as how no one is reading or knows that it exists, at least introducing that kind of regimented daily productivity builds character, or so I’m told.

#caricatureresolution2017 Day 30: Whoopi Goldberg

Day 30 of Caricature Resolution and it looks like I’m going to make it!

Today (thanks to finally getting a subject with strong features to play around with) I think I actually managed to achieve both exaggeration and resemblance.

I tried uploading the time-lapse video that the Procreate app auto-saves for each illustration creation. Let’s see if this You Tube link works:

If not, here is the finished product (with and without glasses).

#caricatureresolution2017, Day 29: Elle Fanning

I’m not that familiar with Elle Fanning. Either her work or her face, but this was the third big-eyed ingenue actress that I was not that familiar with in a row, so just to mix things up, I had her fanning the fire on a flaming letter “L” or “L-Fanning”, do you get it???

Anyway, here is day 29:

Elle Fanning L Fanning.

#caricatureresolution2017, day 28: Cara Delevingne

The model/actress, Cara Del… uh something, is today’s required subject. With her heavy eyebrows, round face and pug nose with the required model cheekbones, she had a lot to work with. My ability to exaggerate and keep a resemblance, however, is still quite limited, apparently and so I ended up with yet another barely-distorted portrait. This time I kept with what I know best as far as style goes: comic book-like ink lines colored in with vivid colors. I also wanted to go comic book with her role as The Enchantress in the Suicide Squad movie, but also wanted to draw her normal face, so I did half and half. Then kept the whole normal face too, because that one looked more like her.

 

#caricatureresolution2017 Day 27: Amanda Seyfried

Yikes, another face with not much to grab hold of for caricature. Of course, I’ve said that before, and then I see other artists doing quite remarkable work out of what seemed an unremarkable face to me, so maybe I will see the same here.

For me though, I had to settle for just making her eyes kind of large, and maybe up the size of her lips. For an iconic role, I chose her character from Mean GIrls, Karen. No good reason for it, I’m just trying to make “Fetch” a thing.

#caricatureresolution2017 Day 26: Mark Wahlberg

Day 26 and I’m still keeping my resolution! With the day’s assignment of the unremarkably-featured (wow, this guy doesn’t give you much to work with in terms of facial features to grab onto and exaggerate) former Mark Mark, Mark Wahlberg.

Here he is on the beach, after skipping a lot of leg days:

Cartoon with background added.

Here is the first rough sketch. I couldn’t get much of a handle on his face. I decided to do him in the similarly cartoon style I did the previous two caricatures of this challenge, Vin Diesel and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Preliminary sketch of Wahlberg.

Final color cartoon.

Finally, since they are all similarly stylized and all muscle dudes, why not try to put them together for a new Cartoon Network super squad?

Collage of Diesel, Johnson and Wahlberg cartoons.

#caricatureresolution2017 day 24: Vin Diesel

I’m switching to a cartoon style for the next few, just to force myself to keep it simple, even if the exaggeration doesn’t go very far, face-wise, anyway.

I’ll combine them all in a group shot on day 26, but for now, here’s Vincent Diesel in front of some kind of action movie explosion that he is probably in front of in something.

#caricatureresolution2017 Day 23: John C. Reilly

Started out on an exaggerated pencil drawing of JCR as the odd host of a segment of the odd Adult Swim show, “Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show, Great Job!”, Dr. Steve Brule.

Ended up getting involved in the shading too much and made it too muddy and overworked, should have stopped at the outline, or just added some hatching, but I’ve never gotten the hang of cross hatching or hatching in general.

JCR as Steve Brule sketch

JCR as Steve Brule final