SAN DIEGO CAR SHOW

WE ARE GETTING READY FOR THE LAS VEGAS SUPER SHOW... AND ITS DOWN TO THE WIRE AS ALWAYS. HERE ARE A COUPLE IMAGES OF THE SAN DIEGO CAR SHOW THAT JUST PASSED. IF YOU MAKE IT TO VEGAS LOOK OUT FOR THE NEW CHANGES I MADE TO MY 62 RAG.

GOLDEN STATE!

YOU ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR FIRST...

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER: JULES JORDAN

UNDEFEATED

Heavy Weight Boxer Chris Arreola came thru and got a portrait of his Homie that passed away..

Working Out The Likeness

A comment by Denise Letter on my previous post:
"Hello Peter, good drawings! Could you put some of the photos of these people up to compare and learn?"

A very good idea, Denise! First of all though, I must give the following disclaimer:

The fact is, working from still photos is not my preferred method for drawing caricatures. When I draw caricatures of celebrities I never use photos if I can avoid it, as I much prefer to sketch them from watching video. By seeing my subject in motion, I find that I get a better feel for their simple visual design without getting bogged down with extraneous details. Also, I am equally as interested in capturing their distinctive personality in addition to their physical likeness and this too is more easily achieved by seeing my subject in action. For me, video is my favourite medium to work from, even better than real life, as it is totally controllable in my ability to play over or pause on a single frame for studying something in depth. When I work from still photos, I must admit I can't guarantee a great likeness of the subject, as the best I can hope for is that the interpretation results in something fairly close to the reference photos provided. So, having said that, I now present for you the way I work when limited to still photo reference alone.

When I sketch my fellow NCN members, the resulting caricature is very much dependent on what sort of photo reference that member has provided. To be perfectly blunt, there are some members who I am unlikely to even attempt to draw because they have only posted a single photo to work from. I never draw from a single image, as it too limiting in its visual information. So the members I like to draw are the ones who have provided a variety of pics, showing different angles and some variation in natural expression. (I say "natural" because I don't like made up funny expressions, like tongues poking out, crossed eyes, etc.)

My first step is to download as many of the pics as I think may be helpful to draw from by placing them in a file folder. At this point I then open them all up on my computer desktop and just look at them for awhile, glancing from one pose to another in order to try and see the underlying "design" of the face. So now I'll use these three examples to attempt to explain my thought process in working out the caricatured likeness.

This "Wolverine" lookalike is Adam Pate. As I study the selection of photos Adam has provided, I first try to see the overall shape of his head and face. Adam has a very wide, blocky jaw structure and a sturdy neck. His head shape seems to taper in narrower at the top. I keep everything loose at this stage of my drawing, as I may need to go back and fine tune things as my drawing progresses. Next it's onto the facial features themselves.

The facial features should be analyzed in three different ways: 1) Their relative spacing and placement on the facial plane, 2) their relative size to each other, and 3) their distinctive shape.

My visual impression of Adam's face is that his features are close set along the vertical centre line of his face with plenty of open space for the wide jaw and chin. Size-wise, he seems to have a large nose, small eyes and narrow mouth in its relaxed state. When I study the shapes, his eyes are slanted up and narrow with small light coloured irises. His nose flares out at the bottom with prominent nostrils. The mouth is always the most flexible feature, so I based its shape specifically on his expression in the 4th photo. I like the way his eyebrows arch upward in some expressions, so I portrayed them that way. In fact, Adam's face is very much based on a series of angular, alternating 'V' shapes. Sometimes I like to mentally compare a subject's face to a famous celebrity I've drawn before, and in Adam's case I thought there were some similarities to Kevin Kline and also, strangely enough, the young Peter Ustinov!

My next subject is Ken Coogan, or "Coogy" as he goes by professionally. Coogy's got a long narrow head shape that is swept back in a convex facial plane as can be clearly determined from the profile in the 5th photo. Because of this, my impression is that his features are stretched along this vertical space with a small chin that is close set to a long thin neck. His longish nose keeps the eyes and mouth separated some distance from each other. His eyes are squinty and heavy-lidded when he smiles and he has prominent lips. The shapes of his eyes and mouth are based on more curving 'U' shapes that head in opposite directions from each other. There is a droopiness to his features. Again, like in Adam's face, I chose to portray Coogy's raised eyebrows that I see in some of his expressions. As I drew Coogy, I couldn't help but think that he has similar features to that of comedian Garry Shandling.

Finally we come to Angie Jordan. Some aspiring caricaturists are somewhat unsure of how to approach drawing the face of an attractive woman, yet one should not shy away from the challenge. Overall, Angie strikes me as having a very angular head and features, which are in great contrast to the softer, curvier features that are seen on Alison Gelbman at the top right corner of my previous montage. In determining Angie's head shape, I am more inclined to draw her in a 3/4 view so that I can play up her high cheekbones and angular jutting chin. Her nose also juts out from the facial plane, so I see the overall design of her face as being made up of "arrows" thrusting forward and slightly downward at a 45 degree angle, with bridge of nose, mouth and jawline all parallel to each other. I like the expressiveness of her eyes in the 3rd photo, so I play up that wide-eyed look, giving her a lot of white space around her irises. Her mouth stretches wide back to her cheeks when she smiles, with all of her flesh taut to the bone. With females, it's also fun to study how the hairstyle works with the design and framing of the face. Angie's hair is long and straight with an interesting tuft in front that hangs down towards her eyes.

Again, I must confess that I have no idea how much these caricatures may or may not capture the subjects, as I have never met my NCN colleagues in person to have formed a visual impression of them. If I had good video reference of these folks to sketch from, I would likely end up with somewhat different results. By the way, my Sheridan students will recall that I distinctly have instructed them to draw people for their sketchbook assignment either from life or from video, and NOT from still photos. Until you have experienced drawing people in a caricatured fashion from life, you will not be able to draw them from still photos with the necessary skill set required to make informed artistic choices. Believe me, even I feel hindered when drawing from photos and would far rather draw my NCN friends from real life in order to get a more accurate feel for what they're all about.

YAHOO NEWS

LOS ANGELES - He is the Michelangelo of the hip-hop world, the acclaimed tattoo artist to practically every rap star seeking an elaborate, perfectly lettered, black-and-white body drawing that comes complete with an instant dose of street cred.
More recently, though, Mr. Cartoon’s work has been showing up everywhere. You’ll find it on lithographs, on hot-selling Joker brand T-shirts, on high-end Nike shoes. That’s not to mention the framed paintings that cover an entire wall of his studio, which is buried deep in an anonymous section of warehouses on the edge of gritty Skid Row.


“That will be later in my life when that stuff kicks in,” the 39-year-old artist says as he gestures to the works and briefly ruminates about someday spending more time creating fine art. Already, he says, some of his works have been hung in galleries in Paris, London and Amsterdam.

But for now he keeps coming back to the genre in which he first made his mark — tattoos.

“Nothing like skin,” he says as he pauses the whirling needle that sounds like a quieter version of a dentist’s drill to look up briefly from the arm of a customer he’s spent the last several minutes inking.

“The only canvas that bleeds,” he says with a smile. “The only canvas that moves. Where the art directs you.”

With tattoos covering almost every exposed part of his body, from the back of his shaved head to his ankles, Mr. Cartoon is not only an artist but a living billboard for his art.

Short and stocky, and dressed in baggy shorts and a T-shirt, he’s sometimes been described as looking like the central casting version of a street gang member. But his friendly demeanor and penchant for waxing nostalgic about his childhood (”My first computer,” he says pointing to an old manual typewriter) quickly dispel that image.

Skin, meanwhile, is the canvas that made him an L.A. underground legend, ever since he put an elaborate drawing of an urban street scene onto one of Eminem’s arms.

Soon after, just about everyone else in the hip-hop world was beating a path to his door. And they had to — because he wasn’t going to them. Mr. Cartoon doesn’t accept walk-in customers, won’t list his phone number in the book and, until recently, wouldn’t even say where his studio was.

Still, high-profile customers managed to find him.

“Done Eminem and 50 Cent. Missy Elliott, Keyshia Cole, Usher, Pepe Aguilar, Cypress Hill,” he says, not bothering to look up at the celebrity photos on another wall.

But most of his business is provided by “blue-collar guys who want to save their money and come get a nice tattoo.”

They are guys like Bobby Flores of Los Angeles, who met him years ago at a lowrider car show, when Cartoon was a kid hawking airbrushed T-shirts. Since then, the artist has etched an entire mural of Los Angeles on Flores’ back.

He uses a Sharpie marker to draw about 90 percent of his tattoos and then he inks them. There’s no pattern.

“It’s not cheap,” Flores says of the cartoonist’s work. “But he’s the best. He’s the world famous Mr. Cartoon. I wouldn’t let anybody else touch me.”

The artist won’t say what he charges, adding that every circumstance is different. The result: rumors have circulated on the Internet that a Mr. Cartoon tattoo can fetch anywhere from $100 to $20,000 depending on how well-heeled you are and how elaborate a one-of-a-kind drawing you want.

As for price: “I just say if you’re asking about price you’re at the wrong spot,” he says. “Focus on the quality. Focus on the style you want. Find the artist and then negotiate.”

There was a time, he acknowledges, when he’d do them for free. That was before he was very good.

“You’ve just got to practice,” he says of learning the art. “Your friends don’t have any money, you don’t have any experience. Perfect situation.”

He was Mark Machado back then, although his friends were already calling him Cartoon. He threw the Mister in front to dress it up a little. These days it annoys him if someone tries to address him as Mark.

“The only ones who call me by my Christian name,” he says, “are my mother and my wife. And my wife only if she’s angry at me.”

As Mr. Cartoon, he drifted into tattooing after trying his hand at numerous other art forms, including graffiti, airbrushing, etching and an ill-fated nine months at a trade school trying to learn sign-painting.

“They gave me the boot,” chuckles the ordinarily laconic Cartoon. “The teacher told me, ‘Man, you’re a great artist, maybe the best in the class. But you’ve got to go. You don’t turn nothin’ in.’”

Things began to look up after he was busted for spraying graffiti on a building and ordered to pay $800 in restitution. He had no idea where the money would come from until he landed a job painting a mural on the wall of a gymnasium.

“They went, ‘How much to do the mural?’ And I went, “Eight hundred dollars, sir.’ And I kind of never looked back.”

If he hasn’t gone mainstream in the years since, Cartoon has slowly begun to go more public. His main studio is still more or less a secret hideout but he recently opened a more public one. Called Skid Row Tattoos, it is located in a rapidly gentrifying section of the hardscrabble neighborhood, an area Cartoon says he wants to give something back to.

Although his name isn’t on the sign out front, anyone familiar with his work will recognize the place immediately from the beautiful airbrushed lowrider motorcycle on display in the front window. If that isn’t enough, the boutique next door carries Joker brand clothes and Cartoon’s line of Nike shoes.

Back in the day, he used to live at the main studio a mile or so away. He would throw big parties there that helped spread his reputation.

These days he says he leads a slightly more sedate life, with a wife and four kids and a house in the suburbs.

“I’m a white-picket-fence man now,” he says with a laugh as he walks into the main studio.

Moments before, as he was maneuvering his tricked-out pickup truck through downtown traffic, he had reflected on growing older but not losing his connection to the rough-and-tumble side of L.A. that inspired so much of his art. As he spoke, menacing looking clown faces (a Mr. Cartoon trademark) stared up from the vehicle’s floor mats.

“Hopefully you grow up and you have a family and you change,” he mused at one point. “Some guys never change. But the majority of us get older, we start clothing companies, we start design centers, graphic design houses. And we go for broke.”