Fun at Parties!

Click on Pics to enlarge!

The London Caricaturist Website Updates!

The website has been receiving a lick of cyberpaint and I’ve adorned it with a few bells and whistles to make it even more attractive to visitors. You can now sign up for a monthly e-newsletter which I will be sending out to a select list and you can also print off my famous Million Pound Notes for your own use! (Great fun handing it over in the supermarket to over-worked, harassed check out assistants!)

Here's an image grab of the website's front page

The whole website will soon be revamped and there will be competitions to win free caricatures!

Keep coming back and recommend it to your friends!

Sir Alan Sugar Caricatured by The London Caricaturist!

Amstrad boss and terrifying nemesis of many would-be entrepreneurs on TV show The Apprentice, Sir Alan Sugar celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary a few weeks ago.

His good friend and Aviation expert, George Galanopoulos sensibly commissioned a colour caricature of Sir Alan and his wife Lady Ann. My good friend and colleague, Steve Hearn was unable to complete this in time so he kindly put George (and his wife Amanda) in touch with me.

As they’re so much into flying and tennis, the following image was approved and the finished colour caricature was very well-received!

The Speech bubbles were not my idea – George commissioned those as well! Apparently the Sugars would find them very funny!

My WordPress Saviour

I’ve just had a lot of invaluable help from Jeff Houdyschell of WordPress Max whose mission in life is to make WordPress blogging easier for the rest of us by leaping in with expert rescue plans!

He provided the custom template and helped with the set up of Ha! Humorous Arts which is my site devoted to the, er, humorous arts. Well worth a look.

And this is how I rewarded him!

How to draw a complex group caricature

I had to delay the completion of this particular blog until after the finished framed caricature was delivered to the client, which I did last Tuesday – he was, of course, delighted. Now, I am happy to reveal the stage by stage method of creating a complex 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!

HeadCases: Brilliant new comedy show on ITV

I hope you’re all enjoying the excellent animated caricature/comedy show Headcases.

It’s the best thing under the heading ‘satire’ I’ve seen in ages. And a worthy successor
to Spitting Image.

Pictured here: Jordan and Peter Andre

You’ve got to split your sides at ‘Mohamed Al Fayed’s World of Conspiracies’ and Prince
Philip as Dick Dastardly out to ‘get Kate Middleton’.

Seems to be based on Mark Reeve’s drawings, but i didn’t recognise any of the voice
talents or production staff, so looks like a brand, spanking new product from a new team.

Makes a refreshing change.

That’s it.

Back to work!

Lots of NEWS coming soon!

As is often the case, I am taken away for days at a time by either work or travel and then it takes ages updating the blog!

When things settle down I will be able to entertain and delight you with NEWS of the Louviers Cartoon Festival, from which I have just returned, in France. I will also be able to announce MY NEW WEBSITE, launched today, and I will be able to continue the short series on how to draw a group caricature.

All that and more will appear within this blog. Do keep coming back!

Caricature Entertainment in Outer Space!

For the past three months I have been undergoing an extremely exciting experience.

Richard Branson’s venture into space flight is being preceded by his ‘Space Entertainment Agency’ with which he is supplying heavily sponsored artistes and entertainers to fly out to the International Space Station to help relieve the boredom of astronauts’ long haul missions.

Here he is with me at the SEA launch party:

Since November, I have been on weekly trips to US Air bases in the UK undergoing fitness and procedure training for my first assignment, in June. I have lost a stone in weight and regularly swim three miles a week. The weightlessness training started with underwater exercises in complete space suit:

There are many other entertainers on the SEA roster including magicians, hypnotists, tarot card readers, fire eaters and jugglers.

In June, a six man team will blaast off from Cape Canaverel to join the crew aboard the International Space Station to keep them entertained over a week long period.

I’m quite scared, but it should be the most fantastic experience of my life! I’ll keep you posted.

Richard Branson’s team are also looking for a Life Coach and a Motivational Speaker to join the team to boost the Space Station’s crew morale and positive thinking.

If you think you would like to have a go, contact me as soon as possible and I’ll point you to the relevant sites.

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!