Got any french fries? 'Cause I brought the catch-up!

My caricature-a-week resolution got derailed much faster than I would have expected! I got really busy over the last month and a half or so, to the point where I haven't really had any time for any just-for-fun drawing. But over the last couple of weeks, I've been doing a few sketches here and there to try to get caught up. These are obviously very quick, rough, line-only sketches, but... they're sketches. and they're done. And now I'm caught up.

SO... by way of introduction, here are:
Week 6- "C" female- Carol Burnett
Week 7- "D" male- Don Cheadle
Week 8- "D" female- Zooey Deschanel
Week 9- "E" male- Enrico Colantoni
Week 10- "E female- Ellen DeGeneres
Week 11- "F" male- Forest Whitaker.

(They won't necessarily appear in that order below, but you can probably figure out which is which.)

Robin Hood, Prince of Sweeping, Flowing Hairstyles

A to Zed 2014, Week 5: "C" male: Kevin Costner (as Robin Hood). Back when I first watched Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, I thought the only laughable thing about Costner as Robin Hood was his pathetic and eventually abandoned attempt at a British accent. Looking at the photos again now, I realize his hair was also hilarious.

I promise not all the women I draw for this project will be from that awful Mamma Mia movie.

I've been waiting to post this one because I thought I might have time to go a little further with it. But I guess not. I guess we're just getting a very simple pencil outline caricature this week.

Week 4: "B" female: Christine Baranski.

I think I just broke bad. Except I don't really know what that means.

A to Zed 2014, week 3: B male: Bryan Cranston. It seemed like just about every other caricaturist online had a caricature of this guy, so I thought I'd try him out too.

Her freakishly huge, wide-set eyes led me to believe she'd be easier to caricature!

A to Zed 2014, week 2: A female: Amanda Seyfried. I put a little more effort into the rendering on this one (though it's still far from what I would call a finished piece), but unfortunately, in all the fussing with it, I think I lost the likeness.

A to Zed 2: Zed Harder!

I don't think anyone ever comes looking around here anymore, but in case anyone happens to stumble across it, I'll post these here in addition to my Facebook page, my Twitter feed, my tumblr, E-Caricatures and wittygraphy.com.

Several years ago now (I forget just how many), I did a project I called A to Zed, which meant that each week for one year, I drew a new caricature of a famous person. The first week, it was a male, at least one of whose names started with A. The second week, it was a female starting with A. Then a B male, then a B female, etc. 26 letters in the alphabet time two equals 52 weeks in a year.

Well, one of my annoyances about 2013 was that I didn't spend nearly enough time drawing just for the fun of drawing. So to make sure that doesn't happen again in 2014, I've decided to do the A to Zed project again.

Week 1: A male: Alan Arkin.

she had me at "goodbye".

all right, here it is! the final post on the "a to zed" project:

one of my favourite kinds of caricatures to draw is celebrities who many people seem to find attractive, who, in my opinion, just aren't! this is one of those. i've never understood what any guy sees as attractive in her face, and this was my chance to show what i see when i look at her. a swollen-looking face and a constant squinty, puckery expression that somehow just annoys the heck out of me!

here's renee zellweger:



and i'm done!

thanx for all the comments and critiques and encouragement and stuff. without all that, i probably wouldn't have finished this project. now on to 2009...

great googily-moogily! i'm finally posting a "z"!

had a few minutes today to do up a very quick sketch for my "z" male. not much more time at the moment, so excuse the lack of rendering and the lazy hair work. this is another one i intend to revisit later in the year, and, like i said with my bjork caricature, i think the subject matter requires a more unconventional rendering.

frank zappa:

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...

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.

an injection of the diesel

"v" male. vin diesel.

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

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!