I drew this caricature shortly after David Bowie passed away in early 2016. I had always thought that his differently colored eyes were the result of contact lenses, but they’re actually the consequences of a fistfight he was in as a teenager… as fistfight with a lifelong friend and collaborator.

I tend to play it safe in caricature, but at that time everybody at the stand was drawing David Bowie, so I had some competition. It was made more difficult by his decade-to-decade transition to different fashion choices.

Here’s a caricature from the 2016 presidential race, when Bernie Sanders was running against Hillary.

He was really pushing for that social democracy. You know, the one the kids just can’t get enough of. It seemed sometimes like he was running a bargain-basement markdown sale. Everything must go! College! Hospitals! Maternity leave! It’s all free! The rich 1% will foot the bill!

And it’s fun to draw politicians. They’re not the chisel-jawed handsome celebrities that caricature artists often attempt.

I’ve always regarded Jack Nicholson as an easy face to caricature.  But that’s because he’s mostly been caricatured as the Joker, or as a crazy-haired man in sunglasses.  This one turned out to be surprisingly difficult.  I wanted to capture that very specific dull-eyed stare combined with the sinister grin.  It was more trouble than just simply drawing the full-on “here’s Johnny!” face.

In warm ups for this caricature, I tried different sizes of grin, noticing that his mouth actually changed shape a lot.  You think of Jack Nicholson as having one crazy smile, but packs a whole arsenal of unsettling expressions.  What I went with here was a modified version of a grin that shows all the upper teeth, but only the middle few lowers.  It’s bigger for emphasis.

One of Jack’s eyes is usually open just a little wider than the other.  It’s not just Jack, actually, that’s common in most people.  But I wanted to emphasize that for the sake of making him look crazier, so I pointed the eyes in different directions as well.

Plan A was to find a movie still from As Good As It Gets and draw Nicholson’s grumpy writer character, Melvin Udall.  That movie must have been written just for Jack… he’s misogynistic, antagonistic, self-unaware, and an all-around fun bad guy overdue for redemption.  But he doesn’t have facial hair in that movie, and his hair is neat and tidy and short, and, I don’t know, I wanted and older, even crazier Jack.  Anger Management isn’t nearly as good of a movie, but Nicholson practically caricatures himself as Dr. Buddy Rydell, so I get to draw a caricature of Jack Nicholson playing a caricature of himself.

If you’ve never seen As Good As It Gets, check this out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided making some videos would be a good idea for our business. After having that idea, I gathered some cheap camcorders/cell phones that shoot video, bought an editing program, cleaned out the garage a little bit, cleaned it out again after it got trashed for an art project, cobbled together a kind of set, plugged in every spare light we had, shot some tests, and then one night after staying up way too late and drinking beer, shot this video where I draw a caricature of Clint Eastwood.

The things I did in the above paragraph took me about four years to complete. No joke.  A little fear, a lack of focus, some missing equipment, and a lack of know-how about the whole process kept things from moving forward for a long, long time.

I love The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  The way Sergio Leone handles tension is shockingly skillful.  You’re never in doubt as to why a character is doing what they’re doing (Or if you are, it’s a purposeful choice on Leone’s part), and you always know exactly where they are in relation to everyone else in the scene.  I’ve never seen a director so willing to put the camera right in the face of an ugly man under bright sunlight and leave it alone for thirty seconds or so.  Maybe it’s because I’m a caricature artist, but I find old, wrinkled, leathery faces fascinating, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly delivers in spades.

Just one more note for those who like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly but haven’t seen Leone’s last spaghetti western, Once Upon a Time in the West:  Go watch it right now, in the highest quality format you can.  In comparison it looks a little better, sounds a little worse, runs a little longer, feels a little sexier, and has Bronson instead of Eastwood.  It’s my favorite.  And in terms of one-liners:

Ugly has:
Tuco: [trying to read a note] “See you soon, id… idi… ”
Blondie: [taking the note] “Idiots”.
[He hand the note back]
Blondie: It’s for you.

But West has:
Morton:  Was it necessary that you kill all of them? I only told you to scare them.
Frank: People scare better when they’re dying.

and:
Frank: How can you trust a man that wears both a belt and suspenders? Man can’t even trust his own pants.

and:
Harmonica: The reward for this man is 5000 dollars, is that right?
Cheyenne: Judas was content for 4970 dollars less.
Harmonica: There were no dollars in them days.
Cheyenne: But sons of bitches… yeah.

 

 

This caricature of Daniel Craig as James Bond provides a pretty good example of Artstix for new caricature artists.  Prismacolor Artstix are what we, and many other caricature companies all across the world, use to color our drawings quickly and simply.  They’re simple, they’re fast, and they don’t make a huge mess like almost every other kind of coloring medium.

But they have one big problem:  Because they’re basically colored pencils, it’s difficult to make them create dark tones.  It’s not impossible… take a look at Chaka’s or Celeste’s gallery to see examples of really dense, dark colors.  But it takes time.  And for me, a person who thinks ten minutes is too long to spend on a caricature, it takes an unacceptable amount of time.  So what you see here is an example of the darkest tones I’ll ever create with these tools.  It doesn’t work that well… I was trying to make a Caravaggio, and ended up with a coloring book.

Still, what a great face Daniel Craig has, right?