Final syndicate cartoon of the week

While watching the Republican nominee speeches, I couldn't help but think that McCain's age and experience offsets Palin's lack of, and that Palin's youth and beauty offsets McCain's lack of. Here's what I came up with. I'm still working on my Palin caricature, but it's getting a little easier the more I draw her. McCain's caricature has become pretty much second nature now. After a rough start drawing him, I can pretty much create a silly likeness without any reference.

Happy weekend!

-Ed

Sarah Palin Caricature Development

One of the ways that I work up a caricature is to first try to capture the person in portrait form. This is more of a straight drawing style, until I start to understand the various technicalities of the face & which features I can exaggerate. So far, with Sarah Palin, those features seem to be her hair, her glasses, and her eyes. She's quite an attractive woman, and her inner strength also shows in her face. I was drawing her last night as she gave her speech, and I liked the second sketch so much, I decided to work up a more finished portrait in Photoshop (see below).

I've posted the entire process from the initial rough sketches, to inking, and on to the final application of color, so you can see how I worked it out. She'd be fun to draw for four years, and make up for that bland, old, white-guy she's currently propping up in the polls. Enjoy.

Oh, one more thing...she may have Ronald Reagan sensibilities, but she's also got George Bush ears.

Sunday Figure Sketch Class

This past Sunday we had Jake as our model. It's very important to understand both the male and female structure, so it's a good thing that they mix it up. This guy can hold a pose too - the sign of a really good model. Anyway, same drill as usual - we started with a few quick gestures, then a couple of 25 minute drawings, and finished with a long pose. I took advantage of the reclining pose to challenge myself from a lower perspective. I sat on the floor to draw it, and I think it turned out pretty good.

I wanted to put a couple of notes in here about process. In some of these drawings you can see tiny horizontal and vertical "tick" marks that I use for reference as I'm mapping out the pose and the figurative elements across the picture plane. It's important to have these reference points to constantly refer back to so you don't lose your way in the drawing - literally, it's like leaving a trail of bread crumbs as you draw - and it helps A LOT.

Biden my time...

I'm taking my time with my Joe Biden caricature. When I first heard he was the Veep pick, my first thought was "Oh great, another white-haired, white-bread, white guy to struggle with." But as I started to draw him (as usual) I started to find things in his face that I liked, and began to discover a road map across the contours that told a story. A cartoonist I know once gave me some very sage advice in terms of caricature. He said, "You'll know you've got it when the caricature starts to talk back to you." That probably sounds weird, but it's true. Here are my first, and latest attempts at Biden. I told myself that I was going to post every sketch, no matter how lame. So here they are - warts and all. I'm not there yet, but I think a couple of these are starting to talk to me.

I've made some notes to myself in the margins. This helps me to go back and reference thoughts I have about his face as I'm drawing him. I also need to draw him while he's talking on TV. This helps to get a more "full" or 3-D vision of his head shape and mannerisms.

All smiles...

Here's a generic Back To School cartoon I did for one of my local papers. I thought the idea was a slightly different take on a subject I've probably broached a hundred times in my career.

Hope it makes you smile. LOL

-Ed

Sunday Sketch Class

Well, we made it through the storms without any major damage to ourselves or our home, and Sunday actually turned out to be a really sunny day. We had our regularly scheduled sketch class with one of our favorite models. This model is quite shapely, with a classic Rubenesque figure. This makes seeing the structure a little more difficult and challenging, but when it comes to drawing, a challenge is what I always like. I'm beginning to use more compressed charcoal now for the various skin tones; pushing the values, and trying to show the figure more within it's value space.

As usual, we started with several quick gesture drawings, moved into a few 25 minute poses, and finished with a long 45 minute reclining pose. Now that I've posted these, I think my favorite is the reclining pose. It's very difficult to get the tone of dark skin with charcoal, but I think I may have nailed it in this drawing. All in all, a good day of drawing. Enjoy, and let me hear from you! Cheers - Ed

Storm sketches

Well, the power went out for a couple of hours during Tropical Storm Fay, and instead of sitting on the couch staring at a blank TV screen, I decided to sketch. It also took my mind off of the 50mph+ winds whipping around outside.

As an aside, I'm gonna stand behind my pre-Fay cartoon (see August 20 - Sky Is Falling post). I STILL think the local media tries to whip us all into a lather, and I hate it.

Anyway, I just started drawing the first things that popped into my head. Just random doodles of various characters, martian women, and super hero stances. They're probably only interesting to me, but I thought I'd post 'em anyway. I went back into a few of them in Photoshop to add some color & punch. I always wondered why "The Hulk" wasn't red, so I decided to see how that would look.

We've got figure drawing class on Sunday with another one of my favorite models, so look for a post from that on Monday. Happy Weekend!

-Ed

More skeletal proportion studies

Man, I'm posting a lot today. That's a good thing - "idle mind" and all that jazz. Anyhoo, whenever I find an interesting article in one of my design periodicals, I try to recreate the exercise in my sketchbook to strengthen my figure drawing skills. Lately I've been doing these directly on the Wacom tablet in Photoshop. It cuts out the step of having to scan and I can just upload these directly to the blog. This drawing illustrates a few more of the proportional relationships that exist across the skeleton. As I've said here before, if you can draw the skeleton, you can draw the figure. It's a vessel, and the scaffolding that everything hangs on and sits in. It certainly doesn't hurt that I have a life-sized one right next to me in my studio.

THE SKY IS FALLING!

Our local news media seems to revel in freaking out our seasoned citizens (and Northern transplants). I've had several that I know already calling me up, asking me what to do. "Should we board up?" "Should we leave town?" "The news guy said it was coming RIGHT FOR US!!!" A hurricane could be in the Pacific, and there is this one local meteorologist that will show it eventually making landfall in Jacksonville. It makes me sick. And you know that those "field reporters" are just chasing death. They want to record destruction. Anything less would mean the viewer clicked over to the competition. It makes me sick - did I mention that already??

Anyway, here's my take on all of that. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go return 60 cans of beans, and 10 packs of double AA batteries.

Local cartoon

There is a proposed ordinance out at the beach that would restrict boats from being parked in residential neighborhood yards. I, for one, think that this is a great idea. As someone who has had their view of the street blocked by a 50 foot offshore rig with dual Mercury outboards, I can totally relate. If you make the commitment to own such a large vessel, you should be prepared to dock or store it elsewhere.

This one might get letters.

Thumbnail for yesterday's cartoon

Typically, I won't do any thumbnail sketches in preparation for a full-sized cartoon. But yesterday, I wanted to be sure of the positioning of the figures within the composition, so I did a few. As you can see, by studying the one I decided to go with, it didn't change very much from the original thumbnail. Once I have a picture in my mind as to how I want the elements arranged within the picture plane, I usually don't stray from it too much. Thumbnailing is a great way to weed out all of the bad decisions you don't want to be making as you ink.