Pages From the Book of Sketch

I've always liked it when other people share some of their sketchbook doodles, so I've decided to do the same. It's interesting to see if people's personal sketches are stylistically different or similar to their finished work. I figure this will probably be the last post for 2008 so I wanted to share some of the last few pages of this year.

Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr.

Seventh President of the United States: Andrew Jackson

Hometown coffee shop

A Scene From The City

I saw this one day in Manhattan and I could not get it out of my head for days. When I passed this guy I laughed to myself but it wasn't a laugh meant to mock him, but more out of fear or how depressing of a scene it was. His job is to sit, cramped in a little space, all day and sell magazines of beautiful people enjoying life, cameras to help us remember all the fun things we did that day, candy that we love to eat, gum to make our breath smell better, and everything else for us to enjoy while we roam around the city. It made me think of the scene in Good Will Hunting when Matt Damon talks about the honor in having to work a job where you tend to people and their needs all day and then Robin Williams calls him out on all his bullshit.

Adrian Shine

I saw this guy on a documentary I watched about Loch Ness on the Travel channel and I knew I had to draw him. Check out all that hair! Problem was I didn't know his name, so I figured it was hopeless that I'd find any photos of him or any info on him. Well, by some strange stroke of luck I found out what his name was and what he did; Adrian Shine is a researcher at the Loch and has written over a dozen books about the environment/life of the area. He was initially drawn to the lake because of Nessie but after years of research believes it was either a hoax or is dead. He uses the creature as a jump off point for getting people to understand the region and how the lake affects the surrounding area. I think I remember reading he built his own submarine years ago to do underwater research!

Pooooost.

It's been a whee bit since I've posted anything and I had this sketch from a couple weeks ago that I must have forgot about.


I don't imagine many people will be drawing this guy too much anymore. After I had the likeness down I felt like I turned him into some sort of lizard or dinosaur and it just seemed fitting to have some tar, possibly from the La Brea Tar Pits, oozing down his throat. Fact just learned while posting this: Brea is spanish for "tar". That means "The La Brea Tar Pits" is redundant and it's translation is "The The Tar Tar Pits". Cha-ching!

The Last of the Scraps

Welp, these two pieces mark the last of my leftover RISD scrap paper that I had been using to do these caricature studies with.


Maybe it's because Freud is so recognizable as an old bald man with a big white beard, but while I was working on this I kept thinking about the images of people we retain and how we choose to remember them. These iconic images of them are burned into our brains and it seems to get harder and harder to recognize them any other way. Also, if you take the name away from a person you realize how much you really rely on it for help in recognizing them. I don't know where I was going with that.

This drawing of Janis Joplin was pretty fun. I don't usually use very bright colors but I had laid down a bright pink ground, that I chose to leave untouched for her glasses, and I think it helped give the drawing a lot of punch that compliments the personality she had. For now I think I'll continue to work with softer, washed out colors but maybe I'll come back to this kind of palette again.

Changes Around Here

If you are one of the few people, or maybe the only person, to come to my blog and have noticed that everything is posted in September now, when the posts used to be from July, August and September, it's because some of the pictures weren't enlarging when you clicked on them. I'm slowly learning the blogger tricks. Click away and enjoy pictures being even larger than before, all for your viewing pleasure.

Somewhat of an Odd Couple

The father of that incubus in the White House:



I feel like it's sort of a requirement or an obligation to draw certain people when you are interested in caricature. Politicians just seem like a must for some reason, but I still haven't done Nixon. I wonder if they were ever sorted, if there are more George W. Bush caricatures/illustrations over Nixon, or vice versa, and which president has had the most scathing drawings done of themselves.


Christopher Hitchens:


I love how Christopher Hitchens looks absolutely wrecked sometimes during interviews. I also love his brutally honest attitude, especially when he has been on Fox News speaking about Mother Teresa and the Reverend Jerry Falwell and others.

New(ish) Drawings

You can't go wrong with drawing wrinkles, scraggly hair, and sagging faces: especially when it's Gene Wilder. Him and Eric Idle have started to look like eachother now that they have aged considerably. I thought that could be a fun thing to read in case you might be wondering if Gene Wilder or Eric Idle resemble another actor now. Or maybe it wasn't that fun.


Good ol' Stephen King. Not even getting struck by a van can slow him down. It just sped him up.

Breakin' the Rhythm

Some illustrations from my spring classes:



The point of this piece of the skeleton sandblasting his own head down was to make a band poster but we had to also incorporate a childhood memory, which was one heck of a sure fire zinger. I narrowed it down to Tom Waits and my fondness for those balsa wood dinosaur skeletons. They always seemed to break or split apart when you were putting them together. Wood glue should have been an accessory with the purchase.


I had put this piece on the duckbangstudio blog but I figured I'd put something somewhat new on here besides caricature sketches. I was picking articles on my own to illustrate for a portfolio class. I think this piece came from a Newsweek article about stories in the news that are exaggerated and sensationalized but have no substance or reliable answers.

Mick Jones

I chose to just go with black ink for the drawing on this one. On a lot of the other studies I've been adding acrylic or watercolor paint to beef up the drawing a little bit more so I wanted to keep this one simple and quick. When I was doing this study I realized how much fun it is to draw people playing instruments, for me at least, and how much I suck at drawing the actual instrument. Good thing the focus is Mick and not the neck of the guitar.

Two Dudes

Francis Bacon:

This one was sort of a happy accident but I wasn't paying attention to how big I was drawing his head and how small the sheet of paper was so there's an awkward cropping to it. Oh, well.

Orson Welles:

I still haven't seen Citizen Kane. It seems like it's a movie everyone must see or pretend to have seen but I don't have any desire to see it.

Aliens Took Over The Daily Show

I always laugh when I think about that movie The Faculty, the one where aliens invade a high school by taking over the teachers and then gradually, the students. Jon Stewart was one of the alien teachers. He eventually gets his fingers sliced off by a paper cutter and then recieves a syringe to the eye. The syringe is filled with some home brewed powder that is getting the students high, but also conveniently kills the aliens. This ends his 5 minutes of glory in The Faculty. I wonder if he looks back on that moment of his life and shudders or gets a good laugh from it.

I Watch Stupid Movies

Did some more quick caricatures/portraits.


While I was working at this one of John McCain I was subconciously turning him into a C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller). Imdb that for further clarification. He sometimes does look like some deformed mutation that could have been spawned in a NYC sewer.

Aldous Huxley, much better than a C.H.U.D.

Some Smiling Faces

Lately I've been going through my scrap paper left over from spring semester and just throwing down different color grounds and inks. It's been a fun way to help me loosen up the way I draw and try new techniques. Here are a few faces I drew lately:




Tiny Tim was one crazy looking guy and I don't think I had to do much stretching in the drawing. He was the kind of person that's a living caricature so any exaggeration doesn't seem far from reality.

I just drew Ron Perlman because I see Hellboy 2 commercials all day, every day.