The Group Caricature Continued – Drawing Faces!

Once all the photos have been correctly labelled and collated, the first thing I want from a client is agreement that the caricatures are accurate likenesses of each person in the group caricature.

Working on A4 sheets folded in half, I draw rough pencilled versions of each face in the A5 areas.

These are then scanned in (two per page makes for much less scanning) and saved at low resolution for emailing back to the client for approval.

I have found that one in every ten rough caricatures needs a small amendment (which isn’t a bad percentage if I say so myself!). This is usually because of the photos not really looking like the person. I can only draw caricatures from the photos supplied.

When you have a group caricature of up to 60 people, you can begin to understand why it is so labour intensive and the price charged must bear this in mind. There are people out there who cannot understand the difference between a drawing of one person and that of a large group. And they will shop around until they find the cheapest, but not necessarily best quality, solution to their problem. However, I shall leave my customer-haranguing diatribe to a later date! I have plenty of material!

So, once the rough faces have been sent off and all has been approved, what’s the next stage?

Watch this space – it’s composition time!

The First Stage of Drawing a Group Caricature

The client contacts me and eventually sends me what seems to be hundreds of photos of all the people involved in the caricature.

I like to streamline the process, so rather than print out each photo individually, I use Photoshop to crop them all down to the margins of the face and lay them all out together on sheets of A4. This produces ‘contact sheets’ of all the faces I am going to have to draw.

I make sure I don’t forget who’s who by typesetting names in as I go.

Then the client sends me a list of each person with details of what they should be doing in the caricature. They often send me their own thumbnail sketch which is always a very handy starting point for any artist.

Next: to start drawing all those faces!

Cartoons For Presentations

I have recently been working on a series of cartoons for Marketing Mentor, Nigel Temple, to illustrate his talk about how to make customers come to you.

These are fun to do as I am simply given the title of the section and allowed to to interpret it as I wish.

Here are the cartoons I came up with. Click on each image to enlarge.

You can decide what they mean!

You can see how using cartoons during talks can bring the whole experience alive. Many concepts will be instantly memorable and the picture paints a thousand words.

David Beckham Site Ready to Launch!

Amongst my many studio jobs that I have been juggling recently, some of you may remember that I have been commissioned to draw cartoons and caricatures for The Unofficial Website of David Beckham.

This is a humorous website based on the spoof interviews with Becks on Los Angeles radio station K-Earth 101. Here’s the front page.

I drew a series of cartoons for various parts of the website which will be launched very soon as The Beckham Diaries.

Here’s a selection of the cartoons which you can enlarge by clicking on them.

   

Caricature for The Vita Group

This is the latest caricature commission off the drawing board.

It’s a Black and White A3 caricature which I draw from photos submitted by email. The client supplies all the additional information, hence the kilt, cigarette, Diet Cokes, Choccy Bics and Blackberry.

As an ex-newspaper cartoonist, I ‘m quite keen on the traditional ‘newspaper style’ of cross-hatching. This is the method by which it is possible to suggest depth and form and is totally engrossing.

Now, I have to get back to the final two cartoons for the Beckham Project! More on that later!

Short Poem

Short Poem
Napoleon Bonaparte, Queen Victoria,
Ronnie Corbett, Frankie Dettori,
Mohamed Al Fayed, Carla from Cheers,
Angus Deayton, Ben Elton,
Michael J Fox, Red Skelton
Red Buttons, Dustin Hoffman,
And in built-up shoes,
Tom Cruise.
Lester Piggott, Mickey Rooney,
Ian Hislop, Rosemary Clooney
Lulu, Robin Cook, Dudley Moore,
Jimmy Clitheroe, Danny DeVito,
Lou Costello, Robert DeNiro
Al Pacino, Quentin Tarantino,
And in built-up shoes,
Tom Cruise.

Burger King Innuendo – Cartoon Poem

Burger King Innuendo – The Aubergine Version

I was tired,
I was starving
I came upon a Burger King

I was served
quite ungaily
by the undelightful Hayley.

Her pale face
strangely had all
the charm of a whitewashed wall.
She was up
to her armpits
in french fries and greasy bits.
Her trousers
were far from clean,
being the colour of an aubergine.

‘A Veggie
Whopper meal, please.
And could you leave out the cheese?’
‘Would you like
to go large on that?’
she said in a voice dull and flat.

I thought of
my burger in her buns,
remembering what they say about the quiet ones.
I’m married,
happy with my station.

I had to ignore this blatant flirtation.

I ate my meal,
not another word spoken
and left Hayley – probably heartbroken.

The London Caricaturist tackles French Politics! (or How To Draw a Political Cartoon)

Every year I try to attend the wonderful Cartoon Festival in Louviers, France. This is a very well-attended celebration of the art of cartoon and caricature. The festival atmosphere is intoxicating as is the wine, food and considerable bonhomie afforded us by the international gathering of up to 50 cartoonists, their friends, relatives and the organisers.

Back in 2006 I was lucky enough to win a prize for a cartoon which made a political comment about the European Union, so I thought I’d have another go this year.

The 2006 cartoon was one which I had actually produced on-the-spot under the glare of TV cameras for BBC News 24, which explains its hasty look and roughness:

This year, the obvious target is President Nicolas Sarkozy and his typical Gallic philandering ways.

So, I started off by roughly sketching the face:

Then I put the face on a body and gradually built a setting around him;

I have already been thinking about the caption which you can see lightly written in along the bottom. Although my French is passable, I am careful to check this for accuracy with a couple of French friends.

It seems to me that the picture needs more detail, to put it in context, so I reduce the rough down slightly and add the other side to the story which helps the caption to make more sense.

You can see how the original drawing is becoming tighter and more refined while the new elements (the men) are still quite rough.

Once inked in, with a few minor changes, the finished cartoon looks like this:

I’ve added newspaper headlines to emphasize the state France is in while Sarkozy pursues more pressing matters!

This was really enjoyable in that indefinable way that most self-imposed projects are – when you are purely working for yourself. I’ll report back from the festival (in April) to let you know if I won!

The London Caricaturist does Poetry!

The Queue

How sad to see the line of lonely
people in the queue for ‘one basket only’
buying Pot Noodles and Heinz Baked Beans,
Boil-In-The-Bag Rice and tinned sardines.

The student full of spots and specs
Cursed by the hex of solo sex
wonders if his love life will
be improved by Clearasil.

The singleton with her Tampax,
racked with nerves and panic attacks,
tries to focus on her career
whenever there’s a pushchair near.

The accountant on his lunchbreak,
takes a sandwich to the lake;
a tiny retreat from his boring life
of dead ambition and nagging wife.

The widow demands all the latest goss:
as much as poss to forget her loss.
She hasn’t noticed as others do:
that she’s still buying meals for two.

The swinger with his hair greased back,
in faded slacks and anorak,
buys condoms for his bed-hopping
nights of drugs and wife-swapping.

The strange lady who’s not quite right
in night attire and tights too bright
lives in a schizophrenic haze
of tobacco-stained and gin-soaked days

The old man on his final length
with his six-pack Tennent’s Extra Strength:
meeting oblivion is his mission
in front of daytime television.

‘One basket only’, ”Six items or less’
witnesses failure more than success.
But cruel life tries to make this true:
we’re bound to end up in the same queue.

The London Caricaturist – New Website Progress

The development of my new website is all very exciting. Here’s a sneak preview of the front page below:

The clean design with plenty of use of white space is going to make it a very pleasurable visitor experience.

There will be a photo-upload feature so that customers can send me the pics they want caricatures drawn from. And payment will be made a lot easier with single click Paypal buttons and enquiry forms.

This is all being done by the wonderful Victor Taylor. The website should be complete and fully launched by March,  but I’m in no hurry as long as it is perfect, which I’m sure it will be!