Dots and Lines

This week we're looking at two class projects.

This first one is an illustration involving the use of "stippling" i.e. lots and lots of tiny dots when properly put together create an image. My instructor told that me when she was in art school she had a teacher who was very strict about stippling technique. She warned me that if I chose to go the stippling route for my illustration that she was going to be very picky.....and she was. I remember attempting this illustration at least five times, making improvements and understand the concept better as I went along. I ended up using 5 different pen tip sizes to create the effect. What started out as a tedious and somewhat stressful task, by the final version had become meditative and relaxing.

 

What we have next is a project where we took an ordinary house hold object, in this case my pocket knife, and were required to render it in four different ways: Realistic, High Contrast, Silhouette, and my personal favorite, Gestural. These are all pretty self-explanatory with the exception of the Gestural. The Gestural is done very quickly (under 15 seconds) with the idea being to capture the essentials of a given object using the least amount of lines. The Silhouette was made with cut paper.

 

                                                             My favorite pocket knife.

    Realistic

High Contrast

 

Silhouette

                                                                         Gestural

Flawed Thinking

To paraphrase a popular series of TV commercials, "I don't often create political cartoons; but when I do I make sure they are of the timeless variety".

 

This toon originally saw the light of day back in the Spring of 1993 immediately following the Branch Davidian Cult/ATF debacle in Waco, Texas. It has been tweaked a little, but remains in it's original glorious black & white.

 

BuckToonz has moved it's posting day from Mondays to Thursdays, so please adjust your lives accordingly.  

Caricatures Part 2

 

Mr. Spock is one of my favorite caricatures and my best seller by a wide margin.

 

 

 

Pope John Paul II

 

 

When Sting was fronting The Police back in the day, he had a very distingtive look.

 

 

The BuckToonz online store will be up and running by year's end. These caricatures and others will be made available for purchase. More details soon.

Caricatures Part 1

Many moons ago, back in the misty sands of time (the late 1980's), there was a young man with ambitions of becoming a cartoonist. He knew that people liked caricatures and saw them as a way to make some money, and perhaps get some attention locally. He began in earnest to teach himself the art of caricature, but with a desire to do something different. All of the caricatures he had seen so far  looked as if they had been drawn by the same artist; or that many artists had read the same "How To" book. Over time he studied the faces of famous people, and distilled their features down to a minimum. Without knowing it he was abstracting. Soon, a style began to emerge.

More time passed, and some of his work was sold in local art fairs, at comic book conventions, and once even in a (very) small gallery. At a comic book convention a passerby remarked to the artist that his work reminded him some what of Al Hirschfeld's. Not knowing who that was, the artist did some research He was thrilled at what he discovered but a little dismayed that all the hard work of establishing a personal style had resulted in something in a similar vein to the greatest caricaturist of all time. There were some concerns about being labeled a copy cat, but he decided to stay with his own style for it had evolved naturally and independently.

Then the artist was asked to work a few parties where people would sit for a custom caricature. However, the artist quickly realized that these parties were not a comfortable situation, and it cramped his creative style. His preferred working method involved studying multiple photos of the subject and "living with it" for a period of time. An intuitive process resulted in the artist feeling that he knew something about the person and was able to incorporate that into the illustration. Such things as posture, left or right handed-ness, gestures, attitude, and little quirks not visually apparent in the photos. His commission clients were impressed. There were a few commissions that even involved making caricatures of a client's dog or cat!



Gene Kelly- was the first caricature I ever attempted. I was inspired after having just watched "An American in Paris" on TV. I'm a big fan. Here was a guy who made dancing look cool.

Buster Keaton- the world's greatest stunt man, who often times wore the most woeful expression. It seemed the weight of the world was always on his shoulders.

Abbot and Costello- hands were required here as Lou Costello often spoke with his hands.

Next post:

Caricatures Part 2 - Mr. Spock, Pope John Paul, and Sting!