Retiring folks

Studio business has been slow lately, but I've busy with a lot of live caricature gigs and would not have had much time to do large projects anyway.  Things are getting back to normal in September, however. I've been getting some order inquiries for some larger jobs, so I'm looking forward to hitting the drawing board (and digital tablet) here in the studio again soon.

Here are my three most recent commissions. All are for retirees, one in Oregon, and the other two in Ohio. The Oregonian is for a retiree from a company that comes to me for gift caricatures on a regular basis throughout the year. His hobbies are woodworking, gardening, grandkids and... glassblowing! I think that's a first for me...

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This second one was for an 80th birthday. This one was for a returning customer for whom I had done a drawing of this man's wife about 8-10 years ago. This one was done in watercolor, which is becoming more and more rare with each passing year. Seems most of my work is digital, so I enjoyed working in a tangible media once again!  I just wish that my scanner could truly capture the subtlety of watercolors better because these scans never look as good as the real thing. (for instance, the blues in the sky always get washed out)

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This one was for someone leaving Proctor & Gamble (that's their headquarters in the lower left).  He had designed the sleeping bunny on the Pampers packaging and the ZzzQuil bottles. The client designed this concept for me, so I just had to supply the drawing skills. 

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Thank you USY!

   I've had a regular client that has ordered a caricature from me annually for over a decade. Sadly she is moving, and I don't know if the youth group she directed will continue to place orders to honor their seniors. Maybe... but no guarantees. Either way, it's been a good run!  Thanks Shani!  You will be missed!

Here she is holding the final senior class of her USY group (which they call BuckUSY, short for Buckeye USY).

This year's drawing shows the three grads on the red carpet, stars in their own right, and draped with the names of the universities they will be attending in the fall.  Medium is watercolor, on 11"x14" bristol board.

April showers bring Mo' money!

Well, opening day for the Clippers was rained out... then the next night it was cold and there was hardly anyone there... then the next day was even colder so I didn't even bother going. But then we had two days of good weather before the game got rained out again!  That's the retail game for ya... but it was good to get the booth set up and ready for what I hope to be a great season.

While the team is out of town for a bit I've been trying to catch up on studio work. I get to be a homebody for awhile, which is nice, however, that will be short lived. This weekend is Wrestling Day (the Ohio Tournament of Champions) where I will work Friday night and almost all day Saturday doing retail for a youth wrestling tournament. Then Saturday night I am drawing at a bar mitzvah. That's 16 hours of work in the space of   28 hours. Ouch. The Clippers come back for a couple of days and then I have another week without nightly games to do studio work before I start a stretch where I'm working almost every day for two weeks straight and 15 out of 17 days!  That stretch culminates in a tripleheader day where I work 10-1 pm, 7:00-10:30 and 11:30-3:00 am! Whew! April 26-May 11th will be a real workout for my poor lil' ol' drawing hand!

Here are some of the drawings I've done in the last couple of weeks. More to come soon as I have orders in for groups of 6, 8 and 6 + a dog! (that's 21 if you're keeping score!)

For a bar mitzvah sign-in board 

(packaged with gig this weekend)

 

Watercolor for the United Way

 Digital drawing for website

 Digital painting for retiree.

Digital painting for retiree. 

(same company as above)

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.

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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.

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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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