So I just bought my own Cintiq today, which I am VERY happy about. Sketching digitally is so much more natural with it. Although I will need to spend some more time fiddling with the brightness, contrast and color settings, because when I import Cintiq sketches onto my desktop or to print, there's quite a big difference. I had to adjust the Levels in Photoshop to make this sketch look like I intended.

A quick sketch for Halloween.

This Jack Black was a really fun piece to design and paint. It was done for a Facebook weekly competition called "Caricaturama Showdown 3000." I have been a huge Tenacious D fan for years (despite their small body of work). This was done in oils on a stretched linen canvas, 24 x 30 inches. Because of his rock persona, which is essentially parody of classic rock and hard metal gods, I chose to create something like you might have seen on a vintage metal album cover, ripe with demonic sexuality and a few phallic symbols here and there.

I haven't done a lot of story-based caricature illustrations. My portfolio is full of mostly portrait style head-shots. So I would love to devote more time to stuff like this, with more background and narrative involved.




And a few details...

Here are a couple new caricature charcoal/conte studies on toned paper. I'm trying out some paper for the upcoming ISCA Convention in Las Vegas. The Darwin sketch was done on Canson smooth paper, and the Poe was done on handmade rag paper I found at one of the local art stores. I liked the irregular surface, but it was difficult to work on.





I'll probably just stick with pen and ink/watercolor and oil painting for the con though. Dry mediums like this are great. But , depending on the surface, it can feel like you're fighting with the paper to get a tone to stick to it. Painting is much easier on the hands.

So here finally is my very own blog. I'll try to keep you up to date on what I'm doing, share stories, post tutorials and of course artwork.

Enjoy!