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:

an injection of the diesel

"v" male. vin diesel.

aaaaaannnnd... that's all i've got to say about that.

no, really! i swear i'm not starting a new style where i draw everyone with their noses down over their top lips! it's just a coincidence!

kid rock, for the november contest over at e-caricatures.

that is one dirty, greasy-lookin' redneck.

no, i'm not starting a new style where i draw everyone with their noses down over their top lips.

"u" female: uma thurman.

i imagine this one will get mixed reactions, but i like it.

"u" is for, "uuuuuummmmmm.... whose name starts with "u"?"

the lack of famous people (at least, ones i could think of) with names beginning with "u" has forced me once again to step outside my comfort area and draw someone in whom i have zero interest.

it's usher.

"baby mama" notwithstanding...

i just think tina fey is one of the funniest people in the business these days, and so when a friend of mine suggested i draw her as my "t" female, i jumped on the idea.

"t", take two.

my new and improved tommy lee jones! now with 75% less walter matthau!

from such fine films as "under siege"...

okay, "t" male. tommy lee jones. it's just possible i may take this one a little further later on, but in case i don't get the chance to, here's my initial rough sketch.

two more esses here, but just the one person.

sarah silverman. contrary to a lot of the jokes she makes about herself, this girl is not easy.

heh heh. i made a little double entendre joke there. heh heh.

this is the title of this post.

"s" male.

two guys, each with one name starting with an "s".

i had in mind a composition quite similar to this (albeit with colbert on our left), then discovered, while searching for photo references, that rolling stone magazine had beaten me to it. so i just copied theirs.

jon stewart and stephen colbert:

if you use the word "tribute", no one can say it's in bad taste!

over at thedrawingboard.org, in the caricature section, they have a paul newman jam going as a tribute to the man. i did this one up quickly (about ten minutes) last night. on paper! with a real (red) pencil! don't often do many of those anymore.

hmmm... not doing a great job on this "catching up" idea...

i had a hard time thinking of an "r" female that really inspired me. and i still haven't. my muse rachael ray is not. but out of desperation i finally settled on her. i'm not sure i really got this one right, either. the head tilt really messed me up. i did a lot of erasing and re-drawring, and i'm still not sure it's dead-on. but i'm giving up and posting it. so there.

rachael ray:

caricatures "r" us.

i was wanting to try another cartoonishly rendered flash drawring again, and this guy seemed like a good subject for it. rainn wilson, as dwight schrute from the (slightly inferior) american version of "the office".

queens like big hats, is the conclusion i've come to here.

ummm... yeah... nothin' to say here.

here's queen eblivableff.

a couple o' quaids

wow, that's a long time to let pass. this is supposed to be "s" male week, and i'm just finally getting around to posting a "q" male.frankly, i'll be surprised if i'm able to get caught up before the end of the year. but we'll see. the next several will probably be just quick sketches, or very little more.

for the "q" male, i chose the quaid brothers, randy and dennis. hey, are these guys on the outs with each other or something? you never see them together. wanna start up one of them crazy hollywood rumours? who's gonna throw out the first suggestion?

good golly, miss dolly!

another quick sketch this week. for my "p" female, my goal was to sell it based on an actual facial likeness, rather than on what she's better known for. hopefully, i was successful in this.

dolly parton:

"p", uh... male?

here's another one i'm surprised i've never drawrn before. i'm not 100% convinced he qualifies as "p" male, partly because i'm never sure whether his name still starts with "p" these days, and partly because his status as a "male" remains questionable.

and incidentally, i've never been sure why this guy seems to get so much respect in the music business, like he's some kind of music god who can do no wrong, and with whose presence we are all fortunate to be blessed. he's pretentious and annoying, and his music is... pretentious and annoying.

in any case, i'm using him anyway.

here's prince:

she's got bette davis eyes... not by coincidence.

i did this for the monthly caricature contest at e-caricatures. this month's subject is bette davis. i remember when i was a kid, hearing the song "bette davis eyes" (who ever told jennifer warnes she had a good singing voice anyway?), long before i'd ever seen pictures or anything of ms. davis herself. when i finally saw what she looked like, i thought, "really? so... is 'you've got bette davis eyes' supposed to be a compliment? because if i were to tell someone that, i would mean, 'your eyes are kinda creepy-looking and you scare me'."

but maybe that's just me.

bette davis:

oh man! it's my "o" woman!

my "o" female is someone i felt just wasn't getting enough exposure and media attention, so i thought i'd throw her a bone, as it were, give her a leg up, as it also were, and give her a little mention here on the ol' cartoonatorium.

her name is oprah winfrey. remember that name. she's gonna be pretty famous one day.

the only thing worse than having an unflattering caricature done of oneself is not having an unflattering caricature done of oneself.

with this one being my official catch-up piece (yaaayyy!), i figured it was about time i went back to putting a little more effort into some of these. here's my "o" male (on the actual "o" male week!), oscar wilde:

crap, now i've got that stupid "i'm like a bird" song stuck in my head!

another quick sketch here for the "n" female, simply because it's someone about whom i'm pretty indifferent. i know a lot of guys think nelly furtado's pretty hot, but i do not. in addition, i'm annoyed by her music as well as her personality (or at least her public persona). the only reason i chose her was because i was having a hard time thinking of an "n" female, and someone i work with suggested her. so go ahead and suggest things i could have done differently if you want, as long as you accept the fact that i'm not re-doing it any time soon.



the biggest challenge i faced on this one was having to make a conscious effort not to just directly copy jan op de beeck's nelly furtado caricature, which is one of my favourite caricatures i've ever seen, of anyone, anywhere, ever!

hey, hey, ralphie boy!

oops. different ed norton. sorry.

i attempted to draw this guy five or six times. this was the least bad.

my "n" male, edward norton:

the divine ms. m.

no, not that ms. m. the one who really is divine, instead of an annoying loudmouth.

this is sarah mclachlan, and i swear it looked more like her before i added the shading.

what a rip.

and now for something... well, pretty much the same, really. you know, more caricatures.

in the circumstances (i.e. i've been insanely busy these last few weeks; i'm trying to get caught up to where i should be on this project; i stupidly chose a group of six guys to do for this one), please understand my posting such a quick-looking, rough sketch. i know the composition is less than perfect, and if i'd thought about that before i just started drawing individual faces, i'd have had eric idle facing the other way. if i ever get around to making a nice, finished version of this (i would like to), i'll change that, or maybe the way the faces are arranged or something....

anyway, here's the "m" male, monty python:

you'd never know i thought she was hot!

yes! two in one week! now i'll only be one week behind!

there are only a few letters of the alphabet for which i've known since beginning of this project whom i was going to draw. this was one of them. "l"female was always going to be sophia loren. i was planning on putting some shading on this, but then i ended up spending so much time on the hair that i just couldn't rationalize spending the time, with work piling up as it is.

so here's the pencil sketch (well, digital pencil) of sphia loren:

search this caricature for hidden evidence that i am the descendant of jesus's cousin steve.

just a quick digital sketch for now, but sometime this summer, i want to turn this into a finished work, on real, live paper!

"l" male: leonardo da vinci.

did it just get cold in here, or did nicole just enter the cartoonatorium?

my hope now is to at least be caught up by the end of june, so that halfway through the year, i'll be halfway through the alphabet. crossing my fingers.

here's the "k" female, nicole kidman. i've seen a lot of caricatures of her that i didn't think looked like her. is this another one?

I HAVE A DREAM... that someone might care what i post here.

guh. the last two weeks have been ridiculously, annoyingly busy, and i haven't had any time at all to do anything i wanted to do. now i'm two weeks behind. hopefully, this week will be a little less stupid.

here he is, my "k" male, martin luther king, jr. :

from jack, john's son, to scarlett, johans's son.

all right, "j" female. still one week behind. and it's not looking too likely at this point that i'll have time to get a "k" male in this week either. next week, hopefully, i'll have time to do two and once again get caught up.

in the meantime, here's scarlett johansson:

the thread with no title (except this one).

i dedicate my "j" male to my friend, caroline, because she's all in luuuuuuuv with this guy.

jack johnson.

man, this guy makes me mad. as if just being a famous musician wouldn't get him enough chicks, he's gotta go bein' all good-lookin' too! well, look what i discovered here, ladies! jack johnson's got slightly bad teeth! ha! take that, jack johnson!

pff. jack johnson. more like "jerk johnson"!

heh heh, "jerk johnson". that's funny.

what? another old-timey motion picture lady? that's , like, TWO now!

nice work, don. one week after getting caught up, i get a week behind again.

here's what should have been last week's caricature (we got dumped with a particularly difficult episode of the show we're working on), the "i" female: ingrid bergman. now, i didn't really want to do this so soon after audrey hepburn, but i chose ingrid as my "i" female for one reason: i couldn't think of any other famous women with names starting with "i".

i don't even know much about her, so, while i think i got a decent likeness here, i'd probably cede pretty quickly to the opposing opinion of anyone more familiar with her.

anyway, enough talk. here's ingrid bergman:

a short break from all that alphabetical ridiculousness.

this dude is the subject of this month's caricature challenge at the caricature message board known as e-caricatures.
it's a pretty quick sketch, with a very quick shading job.

luciano pavarotti:

he's named after a block of frozen water!

every now and then, i get the urge to break out of my "comfort zone" (to use a worn-out phrase) by trying to caricature a celebrity of whom i'm not particularly a fan, and therefore am not that familiar with. this was the motivation behind my choice of "i" male-- rapper ice cube (i really, really hate rap!). the reason for the red is just experimentation. i wanted to try something monochromatic in some other sahde than my usual black, and for some reason (or perhaps for no reason at all), red was just the colour that called out to me.

so, here he is. ice cube:



oh, and, congratulate me on finally being officially caught up! woo-hooooooo!

... until next time i fall behind.

don't say she looks like an alien. just don't.

okay, here's my "h" female. i was going to rush out a quick sketch of this one and post it on friday, which would have gotten me caught up to where i should have been. however, once the basic line sketch was done, i somehow felt that this had to be my next official finished work. so i put some more time into it. hope you like it, and hopefully i'll be able to get an "i" male sketch done this week as well, and then be caught up.

audrey hepburn:

DUDE! BONUS, DUDE! WOO-HOO! AWESOME! YEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

so, i was watching "dexter" the other night (the watered down, network tv version), and i thought, "man, that guy who plays dexter is a caricature waiting to happen." so, not to let him down, i made it happen. on paper! with a pencil! then after the show was over. i looked him up on imdb to find out his name, and it turns out his last name starts with an "h". so here, ladies and gentlemen, is a bonus "h" male, michael c. hall.

(sorry about the lines down the image. my scanner has just suddenly started putting those there. gotta look into that.)

famous american dramatic actor, hugh laurie!

i've been going through a bit of a bad run lately, missing likenesses on a lot of my recent posts. some by a little, some by a lot. i would like to go back and touch up the last few caricatures i've posted here (gwyneth, clooney, frida, the guy on the right from flight of the conchords...), correcting likenesses as well as i can, but in the meantime, i've moved on to the "h" male. "h" can be for "hugh" or "house", whichever you prefer. hopefully, i haven't completely missed the mark on this one.

"g" is for "getting caught up".

this officially puts me only two weeks behind, if i'm not mistaken.

"g", as it happens, is also for "gwyneth"

george clooney is george clooney, playing george clooney in "the story of george clooney: the george clooney story".

not exactly breaking new ground here for my "g" male. i've seen a lot of caricatures of this guy. some have worked for me, some haven't... so i thought i'd give it a try. it's a pretty quick one.

george clooney.