Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Valentine's Sale!

To celebrate a new decade, to spur an ecomonic recovery, and just in time for Valentine's Day, prices for all media for both caricatures and portraits have been dropped to the minimum price each category. For instance, I offer four different b/w media to choose from, but they are now all on sale for the price of the least expensive medium. Prices for additional people have also been slashed!

Now is the best time of the year to order a gift for someone special, so forget the melty, fattening chocolates and quickly wilting flowers, show them that you care with a gift that will last forever (and save some well-earned dough!). Tell your friends and neighbors, too!

Just go to FunFaces.com and select either the Custom Caricatures page or Portraits page to view the samples and place an order. Wait times are currently about a week or so, but the schedule can fill up fast! Sale ends 2/28/2010, so hurry on over and save!

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Happy New Year! (Christmas 2009)

The last time I blogged, the work I was doing was for Christmas gifts, so I couldn't post them for fear the recipients might see their gift in advance (yeah, unlikely, but still didn't want to risk it). Work was kinda slow this year (I hear it was for just about everyone), but here is the artwork that I did in the months of November and December of '09.

This one was for the head honcho at the local CBS affiliate, WBNS-10. The client gave me pretty good reference on this one, and other than having to do some tight turns with the pen to do the logos and type so small, it was a fun one to do.

(Click for enlarged view)




Earlier in the year I did a pencil drawing of this subject (a company owner's farm house) that was used for company t-shirts for their annual picnic (held at the same place). For Christmas I was asked to recreate the drawing in watercolor to give as a gift. I rarely do realistic trees and grass (most of my "landscapes" are part of a cartoony background in a caricature!), but this was fun to do because I got to tap into my "inner-impressionist".

The hardest part of this one was doing the railings because with a watercolor, dark colors are painted around lighter ones, so if you are painting a very thing light colored thing, you have to be very careful painting around it so as not to obliterate the light color you're trying to preserve. Some artists use a masking fluid to cover over parts they don't want to accidentally paint over, but I just go with the "hold your breath and pray" method.

(Click for enlarged view)



This one is done in "ink wash" (or b/w watercolor). I've included the pencil sketch version as well to show how I first provide a detailed pencil sketch for the client and then use that sketch to do the final artwork. This one was for someone retiring to a life of yachting and golfing. Sounds good!

(Click for enlarged view)




This one was done as a gift from her to him. This scan is a bit dark and the colors a bit more bold than the actual painting, but I didn't know that until now because I just replaced my monitor yesterday and am discovering that old one was going bad quite awhile before it finally gave up the ghost two days ago. That said, orange is a tough color to work with because it is so bright and hard to create from color mixing. Fortunately I've done annual soccer team caricatures for a high school whose team colors feature orange as the main color, so I had a bottle of liquid orange watercolor paint that I bought for that project that I used for this one.

(Click for enlarged view)



That's all for now. More to come soon!
Happy New Year!
--Steve

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