Da Vinci Caricatured

Mine is the one on the right. Oil on panel board 10''x11''. Spent 4 hours on this last night. Going by other reference, this might not be accurate, but it was fun to do. My palette was burnt umber, yellow ochre, cadmium red, french ultramarine, titanium white and ivory black.

More sketchin'

Prince Harry

Over on the NCN forum, master caricaturist Jan Op De Beeck runs a monthly sketch competition. This month it's Prince Harry's turn to be lampooned. I decided he was eligible to join 'Dad's Army'. Not sure whether to paint this or not. Might be good in oils.

Sen. Charles Schumer

My latest work for the Weekly Standard. I really enjoyed this, partly because it had a slightly longer deadline (two days), but mostly because the brief included a lot of story background, on a subject I was unfamiliar with. So I felt like I was learning a bit more about American politics in the process. The nutshell of the story is that NY Senator Charles Schumer has been blocking a commemoration bill for the last six-seven years since 9/11, stopping the federal government awarding the passengers and crew of Flight 93 a congressional gold medal, apparently the highest honour the congress can give to a civilian. Many bills have been attempted, but all have failed, thanks to Mr Schumer.

I did the sketch in Photoshop, which was on top of a rough sent back and forth between myself and the AD. In total the actual painting probably took around 15 hours.

Work in progress...

This is a glimpse of a composition that started out as a doodle on a blank page, then took on a life of it's own. It's still growing at the moment, so give it some water and plenty of sunshine and it might blossom in time for spring!

Little Jimi

This is oil on board, size roughly 12''x14''. My aim is to start selling prints of this and a few others directly from the website. The image would be a professional scan rather than the one shown here.

Devon sketches

A couple of quick sketches from the weekend when I was down in Devon for a family birthday celebration. I wasn't drawing during the party, just before and after. These are from a magazine, James May and Hulk Hogan. They weren't at the party.

Figure sketching breakthrough

I'm posting these on here and the life sketching blog, because I feel like I've made a breakthrough with my approach. These are taken from a book called 'Anatomy For Fantasy Artists', by Glenn Fabry. I'm not planning on becoming a fantasy artist, but it's got some great figure reference photos with some interesting poses, and it's great practice. I started these very loose and sketchy, which was the main breakthrough for me. It helped me get accurate anatomy, before now I've always had some kind of proportion issues, or the pose hasn't been quite accurate. Starting as loose as possible gave me a clearer view of both these areas. I feel like a weight has been lifted.