Another Old Dude

Ambrose E. Burnside was a General in the Union Army, which he relunctantly accepted, and suffered a crushing defeat at The Battle of Fredericksburg. After another failed attempt at fighting the Confederate Army he requested President Lincoln accept his resignation. He may not go down in history as the greatest General but he may have paved the way for a revolution in facial hair.

Ben

My friends and I love watching Drunk History on www.funnyordie.com and in case you're wondering what that is, I'll fill you in. The premise is pretty simple: people get ridiculously drunk and then tell stories from American history. The stories are usually pretty hilarious due to how drunk the person telling the story is and also the absurdity of the story. There's a couple episodes on Benjamin Franklin, who is played by Jack Black. I decided to draw Ben for my friend because he always toasts Ben Franklin, which is in reference to one of the stories, and I wanted him to have some kind of picture on his wall to toast. I am starting to attempt to incorporate type into my drawings but I think it'll be some time until I'm happy with it.

Return of The Scraps

Woody Allen

After some other bigger illustrations I had more scrap paper laying around again, so I've just decided that all scrap paper from now on will be used for these little head studies. I like doing them and it's fun to sort of experiment here and there with them and see how it affects my other work. Who knows how long it'll continue but it'd be cool to have a gigantic stack of them years from now, and plus it's a good way to use the extra paper instead of throwing it out.

Rudyard Kipling

Introducing, Matty P

This is my friend Matt. Months ago he asked me to do a drawing of him and at first it was going to be a simple sketch but I turned it into this mess of a picture. I wanted to incorporate a lot of things/events from his life into it, so all the little bits and pieces in this picture have been his job locations, skateboard poses, traveled roads, childhood stomping grounds, and actual clothes. He's a character for sure.

2000 and Shine

Well, 2009 is kicking off on a good note. I just found out this guy was accepted into the Society of Illustrators Los Angeles 47 show and catalog. I had done this piece as part of a final project series for a class last Spring.

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.