Michael Jackson Drawings

These are a couple MJ inspired drawings I did about a month ago. The first drawing is from my sketch book and the second was used as demonstration art for Kaman's Art Shoppes at Legoland, CA. 

Drawing Michael Jackson as a caricature is like shooting fish in a barrel... especially in his later years with all the plastic surgery. But that's not how I wanted to portray him. These drawings weren't  meant for ridicule, but to remember the king of pop... and for myself.

Live Caricature from Legoland

My friend told me I need to take more pictures of my caricatures from work. So here are a few of my favorites from last week and a few from a several months before. 

The top drawing of the boy as Wolverine is inspired by Sean "Cheeks" Galloway and the bottom drawing is inspired by Robert Risko. Both of these artists in my opinion have great sense of design and I like simplification in art. It's like the saying goes... sometimes more is less. So that's what I've been trying to do lately. Oh yea, I think the real motivation for me to simplify was because we lowered our caricature prices at the park, and so with that I'm trying not to do as much work as I normally would for full price.

Recent Commissions

These are a couple commission projects I've been working on lately. While going to school, drawing caricatures at Legoland, and moving out of my apartment, these were squeezed in some how. 

Comments and critiques are more than welcome, and appreciated! 

Portrait Studies

These aren't really new but it's been a while since I posted some art so here are some portrait studies from the beginning of the year. They were drawn from photographs with charcoal pencil on newsprint.

On a side note, I've been working on some more X-Men characters so those will be coming soon!

Live Caricatures from the land of Legos

We've been drawing a lot of people as Lego characters at the park. People love it and it's a great souvenir. I call em' "block heads." These are challenging sometimes because the features need to fit in a lego head... and legos don't have ears... so on kids especially it takes a little more thought to get a likeness.

These were from a couple months ago. I need to take more pictures of my work but sometimes you get caught in a rush of people that want a caricature and forget to. Business has been a little slow but I'm giving out deals and doing whatever I can to get people to sit down for a drawing. Even if I don't make a lot, at least I'm drawing a lot. 

Caricature Studies

My roommate Matt Hennen does these cool head studies on newsprint and it inspired me to do some too. I liked drawing these on the newsprint for two reasons. One, the ball point pen feels like it skates across the surface. And two, it's easy to render on with charcoal or graphite.

The first image is me exploring new head shapes and design ideas. It's funny how my own facial features seem to show up in these studies. The last image is about memory sketches of coworkers. These didn't turn out as well as I pictured them in my head but it's going to keep me observer that much closer at work now. Enjoy!

Circus Art Show

Recently some friends and I were in an art show in downtown San Diego. It was a circus theme. We met and saw some live painters at the show, had a couple free drinks and got to see some cool art. Good times!

Random/Recent

The top image is a portrait I drew of my grandma from her high school days. It was an exercise for me to see how close I could get a drawing to look like a photo. It's funny, I don't see  what's off in a drawing until I scan it and put it on the computer. For the most part I'm happy with how it turned out and look forward to doing some more drawings from photos.

The middle drawing is of the Disney Pixar character, Wall-E. I used colored pencil and marker for this peice. It's for a co-worker that's going to give it to her grandson for Christmas.

Finally, the last drawing is a mild caricature of another one of my co-workers. It was supposed to be a warm up drawing but I was having fun with it and took it a little further. 

Twilight Drawings

A couple weeks ago I went and saw Twilight on opening night at the theatre. My friend told me it was a movie about Vampires and love... so I'm thinking, "cool, I really liked the Underworld movies, this could be good." I didn't realize what I got myself into till seeing about 50 high school girls lined up waiting to see the movie. Anyways, I thought it was kind of funny that one of the vampires falls in love with a high school girl, considering he's lived to pass several generations. What a loser. 

Figure Studies

Pretty sure it was comic books that really got me inspired to draw more and the human figure has always been a favorite of mine. Especially, drawing Spider-Man and Venom. They're fun to draw doing these crazy acrobatic/dynamic moves, and Venom's just fun to draw as a bodybuilder on steroids that slobbers everywhere. 

These studies were to test my knowledge of anatomy and see where the week points are. I'm still learning about the lower torso so that's why there's a lack of construction there. The perspective in the ground plain is a little off too. All in all, these were fun mini puzzles to fit and piece together. 

Figure Study

In my quest to become a better quick sketch artist, I've started drawing figures from photographs. I'm also doing this to learn how to see value and render the figure. These are drawn with charcoal pencil on newsprint paper. Each figure took about 4-5 hours. 

For this caricature of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I used the same procedure from life drawing classes. It's kind of like a 1,2,3 step process that helps create a strong foundation for the drawing. I've learned this creative process while taking art classes at Studio 2nd Street

Hope you guys enjoy!

Tommy Lee Jones Caricature

My friend showed me this site called drawingboard.org. It's a giant forum and I checked out the caricature section. The artists were posting their versions of Tommy Lee Jones so I decided to take a crack at it.