Monday, November 17, 2008

The death of a sketchbook




I always start to get ancy when im nearing the end of a sketchbook. Mostly I'm just looking forward to starting a new one. It's really nice to look through a recently filled up sketchbook and see all the little experiments, and improvements in the sketches. Also a good chance to see areas that still need improving. They are just sketches, but I think they do hold a lot of value/merit in the growth of an artist. Anyway, here's two sketches from the last couple of pages. The first is of Sean Connery. For being a somewhat handsome guy, he's got an easy face to caricature. The same goes for the second drawing of John Trevolta. A couple of my fellow caricature artists that are now employed out in California have switched from coloring with an airbrush to Prismacolor color stix. Theyre pretty much giant colored pencils without the wood around em. I haven't had a chance to try them yet, but I did these with regular prismacolor pencils. I've never done much with colored pencils so I was trying to slow down a bit on these and nail down some of the flesh tones. I guess I'm more or less happy with them, but theres a lot of room for improvements.

4 comments:

jennieekstrand said...

do you plan to do caricatures as some kind of a career? Perhaps some kind of illustration or cartoon based work? This seems like what you are most interested in from reading your blog.

lordmarcus said...

Yep. I'm not sure what it is about drawing caricatures, but I just cant get enough of it. I'm working on starting up some freelance illustration mostly doing caricature and humorous. I've tried developing a more editorial/caricature/humorous style which is very much still a work in progress. A while back I noticed that I was using caricature as a crutch in any illustrations I was doing, and I'm starting to explore other ways to implement humor in a piece.(something so trivial as actual subject matter) I think I might have to do a post about some world renowned caricature artist who's work has been an inspiration to me.

jennieekstrand said...

Yes I think it is good for you to be aware of what it is doing to be using caricature in your artwork. It's hard to look past it as anything other than some kind of cartoon or some kind of consumer product. I suppose if your ultimate goal is to get into illustration then what you are doing will probably work well for you. Are you currently a studio art major at Stout?

lordmarcus said...

Yeah, I switched into studio art from Industrial design a couple semesters back. I'm aware of the consumer/cartoony quality of a lot of the stuff I've been drawing lately, and I'm okay with it. For the most part, I try to keep that work separate from the studio art class setting.