"300 heads" sketchbook update

Five pages from my "300 heads" sketchbook:

Steve Jobs, Stephen Colbert, Mark Kelly

John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman

Robert Iger, George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy

Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr.

Nothing all that pretty, but at least I'm keeping myself busy.

300 sketchbook update

Five new pages for the "300 heads" sketchbook:

The three richest people in the world: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison

The three tenors: Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Jose Carreras

Soldiers: Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, Specialist Pat Tillman, Sgt. 1st class Leroy Petry

Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Pattie Boyd

Malala Yousafari, Neda Agha-Soltan, and Marie Colvin

More will come soon.

Mark 7

Original post on the Miracle Mile Marksmen blog

This week was tough because we decided on the mark literally as she was walking past our group of tables and it was hard to absorb all the details in that short amount of time. I'm not even sure that she had an orange bag with a yellow jacket--it could have been the opposite. I guess I still have a long way to go in training my short term memory.

Detail maybe no one else noticed: the horizontal stripes on her boots.

Mark 6

original post on the Miracle Mile Marksmen blog

This guy was definitely exuding a sense of "please look at me," and I find it funny that he has no idea that six people were observing him to sketch an impression later. Although the color palette of his clothes wasn't more than a few brown tones, he had a lot of details to capture.

Detail maybe no one else caught: the white threads at the end of his scarf & the unbuttoned shirt cuffs.

New Sketch Blog: The Miracle Mile Marksmen

Some other Los Angeles animation professionals and I have started a "sketch club" in the Miracle Mile area. We've been picking random people on the street to all draw from memory and posting the results here:

MIRACLE MILE MARKSMEN

Subscribe, comment, and enjoy!

I've been doing mine by sketching the person loosely once I get back from lunch and then fleshing out the illustration on my Cintiq at home in my spare time. It's been a great way to stay sharp and a good outlet for trying out new styles.

Hat tip to Marcelo and the rest of the Sketch Club in Culver City for showing their support.

February Art Update

Lots of new things in development this month, including an upcoming mini series of prints that I'm working on with The 8 Bit Cubist. Those who love video games will get a big kick out of them. On top of that, I also signed up for a class on making a mini-comic at Meltdown Comics. I've been developing several story ideas for what feels like ages, so I chose one of the shorter ones for the ten-page comic I'll be creating. My goal is to have it be a level of quality worthy of being on shelves of Los Angeles bookstores and beyond.

As for my ongoing "300 heads" sketchbook, I'm maybe 40% through at this point. Here's a scan of a page I did last week, with a spot of digital color. Strangely, my wife and I watched Love Actually yesterday and it turns out all these actors are in that movie. Weird...

Alan Rickman, Colin Firth, and Hugh Grant. No more than 15 mins on each head.

Last weekend I also watched the Lemmy documentary about the Motorhead frontman, and drew a cartoon of the subject while it was on. Oddly enough, there's an annoying DJ in Love Actually who wears a Motorhead shirt.:

Mr. Ace of Spades.

And lastly, some silly cartoons done while watching a spot of TV. This is in the second sketchbook I'm filling up, which has one single rule: "nothing based on reference." It's nothing spectacular, but I want to post this as something to compare later on when I'm hopefully much more skilled at drawing from scratch.

NFL 2011 Faces

Here's a selection of Superbowl-themed faces from my "300" sketchbook that I'm filling up these days. I put more time into shading the heads on this page, so I figured I'd throw it on this blog.:

QBs Aaron Rodgers, Ben Roethlisberger, and Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin.

Time for bed.

New "The 300" Sketchbook

I've started a new 100-page sketchbook that I'm filling with just portraits. Specifically, 3 portraits per page, totaling 300 when I'm completely finished. It's mainly for keeping sharp with my draftsmanship skills, so I'm trying to keep each head to around 20 minutes. The early ones used a lot of shading, but I'm now standardizing the style to be more line-based, with a head-on perspective.

28 pages into my "300 Heads" portrait sketchbook.

11/12/12 Update: I've started using #300Heads as the hashtag for my Twitter updates regarding the new portraits.

Sketchbook: Caricatures

Eminem and Dr. Dre sketches, scanned and colored in Photoshop. A bit "meh" and needing of some more love, but I've been busy these days with other things and unfortunately I can't spend as much time on each face as I'd like:

And finally, animators Shawn Kelly and Carlos Baena, from a picture taken at Siggraph. After scanning in the drawings, I pushed the proportions with the smudge tool to the point where the hatchmarks are nearly invisible. I went for a loose, distorted look, which was a lot of fun. I think I might be onto something with this style, specifically with how nicely the colors get formed by drawing color out from the variety of values found on a drawing that has a color layer on multiply above it in Photoshop:

The photo:

More Sketchbook Excerpts from ComiCon

Sat through more panels today, including:

Hawaii Five-0 & The Walking Dead TV series. They're going to be taking their time on each episode for TWD, and Kirkman and Frank Darabont said that they wanted to throw surprises the viewer's way, even if they'd read the comic books before. There was a scene with Grimes hiding in a tank in downtown Atlanta that wasn't in the books, so I'm curious to see what else they'll put in.

I also attended the one for "Neighbors From Hell," which Patton Oswalt was a part of. I introduced myself to him after it ended and he was very nice, saying he liked my caricature of him, which he had seen from the Facebook post I sent him. We took a picture together, but the angle is looking straight up my nose.

Next were Jill Thompson's watercolor class and Scott McCloud/James Sturm's panel which discussed comic book theory and educating people on how to create cartoons.

Then there was the Drew Struzan panel, which I was really looking forward to. He was joined by two filmmakers that are putting together a documentary about him, 20 minutes of which they screened for the crowd. Frank Darabont, who was interviewed in the documentary, was also in attendance. Struzan seemed very surprised at the standing ovation and overall attention he received, mentioning a few times that most of his life was spent alone in his studio and he doesn't get much contact with his fans. He looks like he could be the kinder, artsy brother of Clint Eastwood:

Then came the Archer panel, which was hysterical, and not just because they showed the next full episode. The cast were all there (including Aisha Tyler, but I wasn't able to get a good angle on her, so I didn't get a drawing in): 

Struzan and Archer panel members:

After the Con my wife and I went to see Patton Oswalt's show at the House of Blues, which featured Brian Posehn, Paul Scheer/Scott Aukerman, and was hosted/opened by Kyle Kinane. After the show I bumped into Kinane and James Adomian of Last Comic Standing fame (whom I also did a little caricature of recently) and took a picture, this time far away from my nose: