hey! lookit me!

our local newspaper has a smaller, fre version that goes out once a week to some of the suburb areas surrounding halifax (yes, halifax has suburbs. go figure). i was featured in the latest issue. on the front page even!

check it out:

People are drawn to him
Caricaturist Pinsent finds local market warming up to his art
By PAT LEE Staff Reporter
Sun. Dec 9 - 8:25 AM

EASTERN PASSAGE — When Don Pinsent whips up a caricature, there are no do-overs.

When the Eastern Passage artist hires himself out to parties or conventions, he will do the whimsical portraits in black marker, having long ago forced himself to learn the skill by adopting an almost artistic form of tough love.

"I first started just drawing in pencil so I could go back and erase when I made mistakes," he said recently from his home.

"But I decided the only way I was going to learn how to do it was to go straight to the marker. I couldn’t make any mistakes anymore."

Pinsent, an animator at Collideascope in Halifax, has been interested in caricatures since he was a teenager growing up in North Bay in Ontario and reading Mad Magazine, perhaps the bible of satirical drawings.

"I first started off trying to copy their style," he said.

Like Mad Magazine, Pinsent is also drawn to pop culture subjects, with his portfolio including the cast of Seinfeld, Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles and his best-selling take on the Rolling Stones, which he sells online or during the summer on the Halifax waterfront.

"I do them in coloured pencil — full portrait style but still with the exaggerated features," said Pinsent, a graduate of Sheridan College in Toronto.

"What I like doing best is celebrities or people I know personally because I’ve gotten to know their features better."

Pinsent also plies his trade by hiring himself out to parties or conventions, where he’ll whip off caricatures for guests in about five minutes.

He charges by the hour for the service and said it’s a fun way for guests to leave with a memento of the occasion.

"Once I’m there, people start lining up and usually it’s just bam, bam, bam."

People can also commission caricatures by sending him a selection of photographs to work from.

The father of three youngsters said he likes drawing caricatures because they call for a certain level of skill but also allow for some levity.

"I like the idea of exhibiting the skill it takes to do a realistic portrait, while at the same time adding on top of that the skill of stretching the features and having fun with it," he said.

"The reaction I always hope to get initially is a laugh, then in the next breath I hope that people will go, ‘But that’s really well done.’ "

Pinsent, who moved to Nova Scotia about six years ago with his wife Jodi, said he’s been trying to grow his caricature business because the animation industry is so cyclical, with television cartoons always coming and going.

He said his father-in-law, who lives in Bedford, has been a big help in spreading the word about his company Caricatures by Don ( www.caricaturesbydon.com).

"One of my problems is that I’m an artist, so I don’t necessarily have a businessman’s mind, although I’m trying to develop that."

Pinsent said lately all the hard work has started to pay off.

"For the first few years I lived in Halifax I had a really hard time getting it going and then all of the sudden, I don’t know what changed, but in the last year or so it’s taken off."

Caricaturist Don Pinsent works on a self-portrait at his home in Eastern Passage. (PAT LEE / Staff)

man alive, would ya look at the size o' that post!

my website, www.caricaturesbydon.com , hasn't been updated in a long time, due to reasons i won't go into here. but i did a lot of stuff in between the last time i updated it and the day i started this cartoonatorium. stuff that can't be seen anywhere on the intrawebs except various message boards i post on, and there, they're all scattered around and hard to find, should one happen to be looking for them. so i thought i'd post it all here in one big ol' post. this is mostly (all?) stuff i did between customers down at the waterfront during the summer of 2006. kick back and enjoy.

jack nicholson (one of my favourite things i've ever done).



eric clapton (not the guy from "house", thank you very much).



salvador dali.



john lennon.



david bowie (got into a kind of an experimental sort of a mood).



u2 (i'm not a u2, fan but this is also one of my favourite things i've ever done).



angelina jolie (mmmmmm.... angelina jolieeeeeee....).



the cast of seinfeld (yet another of my favourite things i've ever done. it was a good summer).



jimi hendrix (uhhh... yeah. jimi hendrix).



and the rolling stones ('cuz i hated my old rolling stones caricature more every time i looked at it).

alley-oop!

that "alley-oop" pun is hilarious. fact. why aren't you laughing?

i may be making some slight alterations to my keira knightley caricature. in the meantime, here's kirtsie alley.

wow, it hasn't been very long at all since the lsat time i posted.

here's a new one. it took me some time, and i think it's pretty good. i'm not 100% certain, though, because while i was working on it, people would keep looking at it, but not saying, "hey, that looks good."
i guess it's true what they (i) say: people are all jerks.

here's keira knightley.

trying to make up for my slacking

k, a few things today:

first, a sketch i'm not entirely 100% devoted to of reese witherspoon. it seems to me it's almost there, but something i can't quite place just isn't right...



secondly, i've done changes on both my white stripes (again) and my iggy pop. the change to jack white in the white stripes piece is pretty obvious, and on iggy i just made his forehead wider, as i started to feel that narrowing the forehead was unnecessary, and actually hurting the likeness. it's a small change, but i like it a lot more now.





and finally, the one i'm most excited about, my latest full-colour coloured pencil piece. now, last summer, i was at the halifax waterfront with my caricature stand set up just about every day, since i was in the middle of a layoff from my animation job at the time. and between customers, i was working on these coloured pencil works. well, this summer i was actually employed, so i didn't get down to the waterfront as often as i would have preferred. as a result, where last year i finished off some nine or ten new drawrings, this summer, i was only able to get one done. what a rip.

anyway, i like it, and i hope you do too.

indiana jones:

livvin' large

man, i can't believe it's been an entire month since i last posted a new sketch on here! i've been pretty busy. made some adjustments to my white stripes and my iggy pop, which i may post on here if i get around to it kinda thing....

and, i've completed my newest coloured pencil piece, which is indiana jones, which i will also post whenever i remember to scan it.

ennawaze, for now here's another sketchbook pro sketch.

liv tyler.

oh, my aiken ears!

man, i really have to get back to updating more often.

i'm taking a break for a while from the white stripes, which i'm [i]still[/i] not satisfied with. hopefully when i revisit it again, i'll be able to spot what i've been doing wrong.

in the meantime, here's a guy (?) who's pretty much the opposite of the white stripes.

clay aiken.

hey, look! i drew the white freakin' stripes!

next.

two posts in one day! i rock!

just a quick sketch. hoping to get some feedback, as this will eventually become my next full-colour coloured pencil piece. so i want to make sure it looks like him. so be honest. does it? does it? huh? huh? tell me!

it's indiana jones.

ugh.

okay, with things people pointed out to me and things i picked up on myself, i decided this drawring needed a whole lot of revision. o whole... lot... of revision.

i hope this is good now, because i feel like i've been working on this one drawring since God was a kid.

some stripes of the white variety.

wow, this took me a long time. i was never really sure until it was done just what kind of look i was aiming for. i think in the end, i made the right decisions. i like it. i suspect a lot of people will ask me why there's a bumblebee on it. the answer is, simply, i don't know. i felt like it needed some tiny element on it that was not black, white or red, and for some reason, kept feeling like it should be a bumblebee. man, artists are freaks.

anyway, here it is, my newest full-blown finished piece: the white stripes.

this guy should just start playing girls.

so, it's kinda been a while since i last posted anything, because i've been working on my next full-blown finished piece. i've hit a bit of a caricaturist's block with it. not really sure where i want to go with it from where i've got it now. we'll see.

in the meantime, here's another quick sketch.

orlando bloom.

someone should tell him the correct spelling of "william".

all right, enough of the beautiful people like tim curry, robin williams and phil collins! let's get back to drawring the uggers! how's this one: the only guy i've ever seen with eyes that are both sunken and bulging!

willem dafoe.

guy whose last name is also a kind of spice. (i'm a virtual treasure trove of fascinating trivia!)

just a quick sketch today, nothing fancy.

with this guy's talent, it's a shame he's best remembered for what i truly believe may be the worst piece-of-crap movie i've ever seen!

it's tim curry. (see, curry is a spice.)

i miss 21 jump street. don't you miss 21 jump street? i do.

okay, i've never seen 21 jump street. it's still an amusing reference.

k, so i drew johnny depp. i tried a colouring method different from the one i usually use, where i do a regular black and white shaded version first, then lay the colours over top of that.

















but, i'm not sure i like the effect. let's remove the colour layers.



















yeah, that's better. unfortunately, he still for some reason looks like an anime character, which he didn't in my initial sketch. i hate anime. okay, so let's go back to basics. the original sketch layer:



















yeah, that's it! tell me what you think.

that guy from "popeye"...

what? you've never seen "popeye"? okay... how about "moscow on the hudson"?
no? uhhh... "jakob the liar?"
that one either, huh?
oh, i know: "club paradise"!
"bicentennial man"?
"man of the year"?
"toys"?
"the survivors"?
"being human"?
"nine months"?
"jack"?
"rv"?
"the best of times"?
"the final cut"?

...awww, whatever.

here's robin williams.

million dollar teeth

again, here's someone who's made about to be a gorgeous vision of beauty in "the media", and.... i just don't see it. whatever.

hilary swank.

(man, i wish my last name was "swank".)

dicaprevisited

i finally got around to doing some touch-ups on my leonardo dicaprio caricature. i must say, i think there's a notable improvement in the likeness. in fact, comparing it to this new version, i now look at first one and can't see leo in it at all! hope you agree.

i believe it to be possible that they may be giants, though i will acknowledge the possibility that they may not be giants as well.

did the rough pencil sketch for this over two years ago. just finally finished it all up nice today.

it's very possible you've never heard of these guys. if you have, it's very possible you're not familiar with their music. if you are, it's still very possible you have no idea what they look like. personally, i'm a huge fan. and therefore a geek.

they might be giants, done in flash.

i got yer mcdreamy right here!

just another quick sketch this time.
patrick dempsey, of tv's increasingly stupid "grey's anatomy". a show on which none of the actors, with the exception of katherine heigl, and possibly isaiah washington, are nearly as attractive as they're made out to be. in my opinion. though my wife will disagree with me on this point. she thinks this dempsey individual is pretty darned hot. evidently, she's never seen "can't buy me love".

here he is. not so mcdreamy now, is he?

tobey man, tobey man... does whatever a topher can...

i don't give this post that title because tobey maguire and topher grace play enemies in the new (not very good, i'm afraid) spider-man movie, but rather because the two just kinda remind me of each other. okay, to be fair, i haven't actually seen much of either's work, but the whole time i was watching grace's movie "in good company", i kept getting the feeling that maybe the part had been written with maguire in mind, but he couldn't do it so they got that that 70's show guy instead.

anyway... nikki suggested i try drawring tobey maguire, so i gave it a shot. it's not really one of my favourites, not because i don't think it looks like him, but rather because it's not as exaggerated as i generally prefer. i just found it hard to pick out prominent features on the guy and stretch them to the point i wanted to. anyway, hope you like it just the same.

tobey maguire.

treasure troll

i was saying at lunch how i tend to steer away from drawring caricatures of celebrities who are really prominent in the news and stuff lately, just because i get so sick of hearing about them. somehow, that led to someone suggesting i draw phil collins. go figure.
so this is supposed to be phil collins. but i'm not entirely convinced it's not bob hoskins. but then, i'm not entirely convinced that phil collins is not bob hoskins.

meg ryan.

dang it, i just couldn't think of a clever, funny title for this post. what a rip.
so i said, "who shuld i draw today?"
and a girl i work with named nikki (http://noodworth.blogspot.com/ ) was all like, "oh, draw my favourite actress, meg ryan! i loooove meg ryan! she's so cute and perky and cute! i loooooooooove her! please, please draw my idol meg ryan!"


...or something like that.

so here's meg ryan.

sketchy sketchy

couple new sketches.
the first one i did on friday, and forgot to post it afterwards. maybe because i'm not totally thrilled with it. again, there's something i can't quite place that doesn't look right to me.
it's chuck norris (as walker, texas ranger, of course):


























the other one is one i've been working on for a while. just for fun, i decided to try colouring the whole thing using just sketchbook pro's pencil tool. i kinda like the look, for a sketch, but i don't think i'll be trying it too often. it takes so long! that's why i just finished it today, despite having started it some 27 years ago or something.

it's lucy liu:

another rough sketch

this is just another rough sketch (hence, the post title). there's something about it i'm not 100% pleased with, but i can't quite identify what it is. if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to post them. i won't be offended. though i may still be a boligerant jerk about it, just for fun.

so for now, i'll just call this a work-in-progress, despite the unlikelihood that i'll ever get around to doing anything more with it.

ladies and gentlemen, chris rock.

iggs.

k, so i haven't posted any sketches this week, but it's for a good reason: i did a really rough sketch of this guy's face, but then looking at his weird, deformed, lumpy body, i decided i had to go all out and make it my next full-blown, fully-realized caricature painting. i finished this in a total of maybe 7 or 8 hours, all in sketchbook pro.

let the ugly parade continue, with our grand master, iggy pop!

the (main) reference photo:


























and the painting:

marc anthony

here's the extent of what i know about this guy:
1. he's a singer.
2. some sort of latin descent.
3. married to jennifer lopez.
4. ugly.

that's it.
here he is:

the number one hairstyle in the world!

no time today to go all out on the colouring or shading or any of that, so this one will have to saty like this, at least for now.
i was studying pictures of this guy (not recommended) in preparation for drawring him, and the greatest challenge, i discovered, was in just trying to figure out how his hair works! i mean, i always knew trump had bad hair, everyone knows that, but... i couldn't even figure out where it started from, and where it went to! it's bizarre! even badly styled hair has to originate from some part of the scalp, and eventually end! i just couldn't figure it out!
anyway, i gotta go. here's donald trump.

a caricature almost two weeks in the making...

i started this some time ago. just got around to finishing it up today, since the rest of the lunchtime caricature club wasn't around today. guess they decided easter monday was a holiday or something...
this is ellen pompeo of tv's "grey's anatomy". for the record, she's nowhere near as attractive as the show makes her out to be.

creeeeeeeepyyyyyyyyyyyy...

this is that creeeeeeeeepyyyyyyyyyy michael emerson who plays that creeeeeeeeepyyyyyyy ben from "lost", one of the greatest tv shows ever conceived.i know it's a bit lacklustre in the shading department, but i'm trying to keep my time working on these down, so i can get some work done at my actual job.
so here it is, and it's creeeeeeeeepyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

a couple of new ones today...

man, you have no idea how many tries went into getting a leonardo dicaprio i liked!

tarantino, on the other hand, was like shooting fish in a barrel... with a cannon.... from 6 inches away... and the fish are wearing blindfolds.... and have targets painted on them....

world's ugliest man!

man, i hope he never sees this. then meets me. and confronts me about that "world's ugliest man" comment. that could get awkward. i'd be all, like, "uuuhhh... yeah. sorry. " and he'd be all, like, "well, okay, let's just forget---" and then i'd be all, like' "sorry you're so ugly, that is!" and then i'd be all laughing and stuff, and he'd be all fuming, and be all, like, "that's it. i was considering giving you some of the millions of dollars i've made by being so ugly, but i'm not gonna now." and then i'd be all, like, "no, really, i'm sorry i said that, about the ugly and stuff", but then it would be too late, and i'd just have to stand there watching the back of his ugly head as he walks away, with no ugly dollars to console me.

so i hope that never happens.

it's steve buscemi, by the way.

what's the deal with movie directors and big, thick-rimmed glasses?

i'm a big fan of this wackjob, and for some reason have never caricatured him before. i really enjoyed doing it, but again, spent far more time on it than i should have.

i'm gonna get fired.

here's tim burton.