I thought this was the woman in that movie Madame X Vs. Sever. I was wrong.

The theme for this month's E-Caricatures caricature contest is figures from famous portraits. I did this one of John Singer Sargent's Madame X:



I'm thinking it would be cool to start up a series of these.

GO THERE NOW!!!! NOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!

For those of you are caricaturists, the November caricature contest at E-Caricatures just went up, with a very intriguing theme, and, for the first time ever, AN ACTUAL PRIZE!!! Click the link for the details!

E-Caricatures - November 2011 Contest- WITH ACTUAL PRIZE!!!!

ecaricatures.proboards.com

Best remembered, of course, for her star turn in "Fair Game"...

Here's my caricature sketch of obscure, little-known fashion model Cindy Crawford. Done for the current contest at Wittygraphy.com.

La la la la, laughter. (Yes? No?)

Jim Henson, for this month's E-Caricatures contest. I knew a lot of people were going to (and already had) included references to Kermit the Frog, he being the first Muppet and the one Henson was always best known for. But I wanted mine to pay tribute to a Muppet to whom I had always been a little more partial.

Light the Night Walk 2011

K, so this is not caricature related, but I want to get this out there any way I can: My family and I are doing this walk on the Halifax Commons for Cancer Research Fundraising, on October 22nd. We're doing it in loving memory of my father-in-law, who died of cancer almost two years ago. He was one of the best men I've ever known, but cancer doesn't care.

Anyway, you can help us out by clicking the link and donating. Any amount will help. I know (Believe me, I know!) not everyone can afford a $100 or $50 or $25 donation, but if you can afford $5 or $10, it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

Light the Night Walk 2011

Her Latfiahness, the Queen.

I totally forgot to post this here! It was my entry in the E-Caricatures September challenge, Queen Latifah.

Don't try calling these guys when your house is being broken into. They don't think it's funny. Trust me.

I finally finished my next full-fledged piece. It's the Police.

Click the image to see it larger.

Still me, but a bit older.

So, my birthday just passed. This is the AWESOME print my wife got dry-mounted for me as a birthday present. Now I have to figure out where in our house it will "work".

PAAAARTYYYY!!!!! WOOOOO!!!!YEAH!!! MORE SPECIFICALLY, WEDDING PAAAARTYYYYY!!!!! WOOOO-HOOOO!!!

I don't often post my commission work, but this was a project I was particularly happy with, and it was mostly because the client was a dram to work with. He commissioned caricatures, from photos, of his wedding party o give them as gifts. He never once haggled over price; he sent at least 5 photos of each person to be drawn, all taken from different angles; he made no unreasonable demands; and he had no problem with me exaggerating people's features. In fact, the more i exaggerated them, the more he seemed to love the results. With the exception of the first one, that is. That was the only one on which he asked me to tone down the exaggerations, and personally, I feel like that hurt the likeness somewhat, but he was happy with it, so fair enough.

Feedback is welcome.

Sketchy types

Here are a few pencil sketches I did up for some of the contests on the various online caricature communities I'm a member of...

Liam Neeson, for Facebooks' Caricaturama Showdown 3000:



Shakira, for Wittygraphy:



and Antonio Banderas, for E-Caricatures:

Haha! Look! His eye's all funny!

Wow, been a while since I've posted here. Even longer since I've posted artwork. I just haven't had time to do much leisure drawing lately. How is it that I have a harder time finding free time when I'm unemployed than I do when I have a job?

Anyway, I'm now spending my (good-weather) days at the Halifax waterfront, and am able to work on some stuff between customers (which sometimes means quite long periods of time). Here's my latest:

Pablo Picasso, expanded from the sketch I did some time last year, which you can see here.

This version is coloured pencil on paper, 11" x 14".

Dontest

The first official Caricatures by Don Facebook Page contest is currently underway, if you don't already know. It's pretty easy, and there's even a prize involved! Get your caricature drawn by Don FOR FREE!!!! He doesn't go around doing that very often.

You have to be a "liker" of Caricatures by Don to participate, though, so if you're not already, and you want to join in the contest, go here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Caricatures-by-Don/209798192393308 first, click "Like", and you're in!

Thanks!

Update on the LOST prints

So, if anyone's interested, it looks like I'll be selling the 18" x 24" prints for $30 each, plus $20 shipping. At least until I find out shipping costs me a lot more than that and I'm forced to charge more and lose everyone's interest. Haha. The smaller, 11" x 14" prints are $15 plus $5 shipping. But I honestly think the larger size will be worth the extra money if you're a fan of the show, so you can get a better appreciation for the small details. Each one, in either size, will come with a legend for identifying each of the characters. So order now! E-mail me (don@caricaturesbydon.com) if you want one.

Thanks!

A Janer Way

This month's E-Caricatures contest has a theme of Star Trek captains. I went for Captain Janeway from Star Trek Voyager, just because she seemed to me to be the one everyone else would be least likely to try.

My obsession comes to fruition.

Well, it's finally DONE! Just a couple of days short of the one-year anniversary of the airing of the series finale, My LOST caricatures, all composed into one big... thing. Click on the thumbnail here to see it larger.

I'm looking into how much it might cost me to get full-sized (that's 18" x 24") prints, and how much I'd have to charge for them to make any kind of profit. In case anyone's interested, I'll let you know what I find out. I also plan to do prints the same size as all my other full-colour celebrity caricatures (11" x 14"), but I think you need to see it full size to really appreciate it.

Hope you like it. I mean, I really, really hope you like it.

I can hardly even believe I'm doing this, but...

Okay, so... I've been working up the final composition. It's pretty close to done now, which I'm excited about. I've also been re-watching the entire series on the DVD set. Those tow things together ended up leading me to the conclusion that, for somewhat varying reasons, there were still five more characters I had to add. But this time, I SWEAR this is it! I am done coming up with new LOST characters to draw!

The first one seems kind of obvious to LOST fans, I'm sure: Aaron. I had always planned to include Aaron in the final composition, but I was originally going to draw him as just a quick, cartoony, generic baby. In the process of composing the final image, though, I decided that that was going to just stick out too much. So I looked up some photos of the actual babies who played him and drew an actual caricature:



While re-watching, I realized that Michael Bowen as Danny Pickett had more screen time than some of the other minor characters I had included, so I decided I'd better add him too:



Same with Brad William Henke as Bram:



Once I had composed all the caricatures I had together the way I wanted them, I had an empty space in the middle of all the Freighter People that I couldn't seem to eliminate by just moving characters around, so I decided to draw Marc Vann as Ray the Ship Doctor to fill it in:



And finally, even though he had very little screen time, Sean Whalen as Neil ("Frogurt") was just an entertaining character and I decided to add him too, for that reason alone:



Okay, NOW I'm done with them, and as soon as I'm done the big picture, I'll post it.

Do we have time for this one, Paul?

Here's my David Letterman sketch I did for the latest Wittygraphy contest. It was my suggestion, so I thought I ought to participate. Unfortunately, I really didn't have time to do as much with it as I would have liked. But at least I got one done.

LOOK AT ME! SOMEBODY LOOK AT ME! PAY ME SOME ATTENTION!

So, now that I finally have my new website all up and running, I can start doing a bunch of things I've been wanting to do for a while to help promote it. Th two big things I did today were to create a Facebook Caricatures by Don page and join (shudder) Twitter.

The Facebook Page is, of course, primarily there to promote my business. But I din't expect people to "Like" it just to help me with that. I wanted them to have a reason to want to "Like" it. So I'll be holding caricature-themed contests there from time to time, just for "Like"rs of Caricatures by Don. While they will be caricature-themed, they won't require you to be a caricaturist to enter them. And they'll have actual PRIZES! Woo-hoo! Also, People on the "Like" list of my Caricatures by Don Facebook page will be entitled to discounts on purchases made from my website! Awrsome!

As for Twitter-- Yeah, that's pretty much just gonna be for announcements about updates to my website, this not-blog, the Facebook Page, etc. But "Follow" me anyway! It would just be a nice thing to do for me.

NEW WEBSITE!!!!!!! WOOOOO-HOOOOOOO!!!!!

If you know me personally, you may be aware that I've been hating my website www.caricaturesbydon.com for many years (which is admittedly a little odd considering how shamelessly I go around plugging it). I don't like the bland look of it, the artwork hasn't been updated for six years or so because I just didn't know how, there were a few pieces of inaccurate information on it, and it didn't list all the services I offer. Well, no more!

FINALLY, thanks to wix.com (and thanks to my friends Tara and Ron, who told me about wix.com), I was able to put together a whole new flash-based site, and replace my old one with it! It's not exactly everything I wanted it to be--yet-- but it's miles and miles ahead of my old site! If you, by chance, have been following my not-blog, Chumpmonkey's Electronic Carttonatorium ( www.donpinsent.blogspot.com ), there won't be much, if any, new artwork for you to look at, but if all you've seen is my old website, you're in for a treat!

I'd love for all of you to check it out and let me know what you think. Also, let me know if you discover any problems like spelling errors, broken links, etc.

the web address is still the same: www.caricaturesbydon.com.

And here's a little promotional video I put together to help promote the NEW WEBSITE!!!!!!!! WOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

It's a Bald-winner!... Bald-winner? Winner?... No?... Okay.

I've been working ridiculous hours on a full-time freelance animation job, so I haven't had much time to do caricatures. And most of the extra time I have had has been spent working on a big project assembling all my LOST caricatures into one big composition. So... look forward to that. In the meantime, I was able to put together this fairly quick entry for E-Caricatures' April contest. It's Alec Baldwin, but with only a couple of minor alterations, it could also serve as a Daniel Baldwin. Or, lighten the hair a bit, and it's Stephen! But then... why would you want Daniel or Stephen when you could have Alec?

The weirdest thing about drawring this one was that whenever I tried to push the exaggerations a little more, I would end up with a dead-on caricature of Steven Seagal.

Would you just get LOST with these already!

Okay, so... sorry for the anticlimax, but I decided to add one more character...

Fredric Lehne as Marshall Edward Mars:



Also, I've done all my re-drawing. So I'll post the ones with significant enough changes to bother showing...

First, the ones I completely re-drew, starting with Jack. A number of people said they didn't see much likeness in the first one I posted of him, and I know at the time I said I thought it was good, but those critiques stuck with me, and over time I began to see less and less likeness. So finally, I decided to completely re-draw him:



Charlie:



and I FINALLY got one I like of Jacob:



Next, there were a few of the early ones that didn't quite match the shading style I kind of gradually morphed into as I went along. Since my ultimate plan is to put all of these together into one piece, I wanted the style to be consistent, so I went back and touched up these ones...

Kate:



Sawyer:



and Hurley ( I also altered his facial expression a little to make him look less angry):



And the rest of these are just ones that had structural problems that were bothering me. If you're interested enough to go back and compare them with my original sketches, I think you'll see the changes I made...

Sayid:



Daniel (After posting it, I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed that I'd put his far ear waaaaayyy too low!):



Eko:



Eloise:



Karl (Mostly I just un-crossed his eyes):



The Man in Black:



Miles:



Phil:



Roger:



and Walt:



There were a few others I altered too, but the changes were so minor I didn't think them worth posting.

Anyway, all there is left to do now is to assemble them all into one big poster. I look forward to it, but I make no guarantees about how long it will take me to get that done.

Thanks for looking! Comments and critiques welcome.

Sometimes, even I get busy.

Wow, has it really been almost two months since I've posted here? And to make it worse, I'm afraid I don't even have much caricature work to show for it!

I did, however, finish this one recently. It's my entry for the Bob Dylan contest at Wittygraphy. I thought I was just doing another quiick (relatively speaking) digital sketch, no differenter or specialer than my usual stuff, but several people have now praised it as being one of my best works ever. Makes me wish I'd done it in higher resolution than 100dpi.



Oh, and I also did this one of Karl Malden for Wittygraphy last month:



And, in case anyone's interested to know, I won the Glenn Close contest (see previous post), which was unexpected. So... Yeah, that was all cool and stuff.

Gettin' all contest-participatey!

J.K. Rowling, for this month's E-Caricatures contest:



And Glenn Close, for Wittygraphy: