the screechin' banshee who broke up the beatles. yeah, that's right! i said it! she broke up the beatles!

a lot of spare time this week. here's "y" female (another very quick sketch): yoko ono.



and, with that, i am officially CAUGHT UP!

woo-hoo! i didn't think that would happen before the end of the year! mind you, i'm not sure how much time i can expect to have over the next two weeks, and i may still not get done by year's end, but at least i'm a lot closer than i thought i'd be.

DUDE! THIS CARICATURE IS SOOOOO AWESOME!!!! IT RULES!!! YEEEEAAAAHHHH!!!! WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

one thing i haven't done as much of on this a to zed project as, in retrospect, i wish i had, was caricaturing people with whom i'm not familiar, for the practice of working with faces i've never or seldom seen. so when a friend of mine suggested yngwie malmsteen be my "y" male, i said, "sure, y not?"

it seems this guy is some kinda famous guitarist. apparently quite a good one, if you go in for that searing, shredding guitar style that prioritizes playing lots of notes really fast over following any sort of discernible melody.

here is what i learned about yngwie in my search for reference photos of him:

1. you can tell just by looking at pictures of the guy that he clearly thinks very highly of himself. every posed photo has this pouty facial expression that's consciously designed to make huge-haired women weak with desire, and all guys think "man, that guy is so cool!"

2. he has the single awrsomest album cover in the history of the music industry. check it out, dude! it totally rocks!!!http://www.galeon.com/allmusic/caratulas/yy/Yngwie_Malmsteen_-_Trilogy-front.jpg

here's yngwie malmsteen:

of all the women i could have drawn with names starting with "x"...

some of you may recall (and some of you may not, and that's okay too) that waaaaay back when i started all this, i gave myself the rule that it was okay to use character names as well as real names when choosing a subject. well, here i am all the way to the exes, finally taking advantage of that rule for the first time. that's all right, though, as the letter "x" was precisely the reason i made that rule.

so here's my "x" female: xena mctavish.

i'm just kidding. it's just xena. does she even have a last name? i don't know. fan art this is not!

i realize the cleanup on this is kinda sloppy and amateurish. i was going for a classic comic book look without actually knowing much "theory" about how those artists approached shading and colouring. also, for that look, i should have done this in flash instead of sketchbook. it would have created a much tighter look.

anyway, enough rambling. here's xena:

so.... i'm posting something here.... uh... yeah, i got nothin'.

had more time today than expected, so i did a bit more work on this:

"x" is for "xylophone". because "x" is always for "xylophone".

here's an alternate version of my winona ryder. the excellent chris wahl suggested maybe i'd made her too angular and, as he put it, "harsh". so i made some changes. i like both versions. if anyone has any opinions as to which looks more like her, i'll take them.




also, here's my "x" male: malcolm x. i really wanted to go a little further with this one, and add some airbrush shading, but i just didn't have time. maybe one day...

try pronouncing her name phonetically! it's fun!

here's my rough sketch for this month's caricature jam over at drawingboard.org . it's bjork. i'm no fan of her freakin' weird music, but i always thought she'd make a good caricature, so i'm glad to participate.

when (read:"if") i get around to doing a finished version of this, i feel like the freakin'weird subject matter kinda demands a less conventional approach to the rendering, so at that time, you can expect to see a very different sort of style from my usual. so... you've got that to look forward to, if nothing else. but if that is the biggest thing you have to look forward to, i'd suggest getting away from your computer for a while and... doing stuff.

anyway, here's bjork:

i guess you could say she "stole" my heart, a-ha-ha.

"w" female: winona ryder. okay, i may be pushing it calling her famous these days, but dangit, i've been kinda in love with her ever since beetlejuice!

wwwwwwwwwowwwwwwww! that's a lot of doubleyous!

i just couldn't decide on one "w" male. there were too many i really wanted to do. i managed to narrow it down to four. it's been a busy couple of lunch hours these last few days.

first, you probably won't be able to comment on likeness on this one unless you have small children, or possibly, if you're just australian (elliot? do you still show your face around here these days?)

it's the wiggles:


second, one of my all-time favourite comedians, steven wright. i'm not quite sure what his look is these days, so i just went with his classic appearance:



third (i think my favourite of the bunch), eagles guitarist and seriously underappreciated solo artist, joe walsh:



and finally, because my friend ian practically begged me, down on bended knee and with tears brimming in his eyes, in a pretty pathetic display of emotion and desperation (read: "casually suggested it"), tom waits (though i'm afraid i don't feel i really brought much to this one that you've never seen in any other tom waits caricature) :


all comments welcome.

i don't normally do caricatures of space aliens, but...

decided to slap a quick (very quick) colour job on this one, since i haven't done colour on any of these in a long time.

i know a lot of guys think she's pretty hot, but i see that glassy stare, and i'm just creeped out more than anything else.

victoria beckham: