Been busy this week with getting back to work and doing promised guest cartoons for George Ford and Aidan Casserly. Also had some paying commission work as well. Claude Rieth contacted me via Google Plus and was gracious enough to let me share my work with you.
Here was his original picture he sent.
I thought look at that hair, look at the expression. This one is going to be easy. Ok I was wrong. I have never done that expression so getting it to look like someone was twisting their face on purpose is actually very hard to do. So many attempts. When I do commission work I tend to send a draft to the client so they can either approve or not. If they feel I didn’t capture what they want in that draft I have no problem with them walking away and me not going any further. As I have said, there are some people who I can’t capture a likeness.
So this is what I sent to Claude.
Given his expression I was hoping he would be OK with the more cartoony look but wanted to give him options. Thankfully he was in agreement and with a little tweaking, you can see the final result. Thanks Claude for being a great subject that challenged me and a better client.
This is awesome, Bearman! He must have been very pleased, you you should be with your work!
Hugs xx
Thanks Deb.
Nice work, Bearman!
Thank you!
I think you did a fabulous job on this caricature. You can certainly tell they are one and the same person.
Have a terrific day. 🙂
Well you can tell…Myra couldn’t. haha
Great job on this one. I really love the bulging eyes
Me too. Liked that he was willing to let me go with it.
Claude’s photo was almost pure caricature to begin with so yes I thought it would be easy too. Guess you never can tell till you actually start to do it. I drew one the other day of Karen Krittle running in a skirt. No matter how many times I tried I just couldn’t get the legs right. Even though it’s coloured & ready to post I’m still not happy with the finished product.
If I waited till I was happy before I posted, I wouldn’t have a blog.
Hmm… you know bearman I usually think you do a great job catching a person’s likeness, even mine, unflattering as it was 😉 But this one doesn’t work so well. as you say, it’s a hard expression to capture
You are right. For this one rather than going for the likeness, I thought it was better to go for the essence of his expression and purposefully went even more cartoonish than I normally do. In the end, he loved it, his family loved it and his friends loved it so I guess that I was able to capture his personality more than his looks and it was a win.
looks good. Those four options – is that an hour’s work? or more?
Probably 30-40 minutes. There were 10 others that I didn’t send.
I think you did a great job on the expresion and you captured his likness quite well.
Thanks JB!
CooooL….. I like it! Nice seeing the transition too.
Thanks Lynn
Great! You nailed it.
Thank you sir!
Nice work!
BTW, you have two “Twitter-links” in your banner, where is those little picture links.. (RSS-Twitter-Facebook-StumbleUpon-Technorati) when you put mouse over, there is two Twitters 😉
Thanks for noticing. The link was correct but the title wasn’t. Fixed now!
Top-notch, Bearman! Claude-tastic, in fact.
(It was really cool seeing your thumbnails, too… I love the ‘behind the scens’ stuff – thanks for sharing those)!
🙂
Scenes it…done it.
Ha! It’s like visiting Toon Town every time here. cartoon on my friend.
Thanks MJ
Just today I was thinking about asking to see if you wanted to guest post with this very topic… never mind.
As always, good job 🙂
Well since I see you posted something that I was going to do we are even.
What in the world was it?
How men pee…but mine would be much better.
I like the way you handle this caricature.
Thanks Frank
Good one, Bearman! Looks like Tom Richmond’s book is really paying off (man, I forgot where I left my copy).
Keep on drawing!
Crap..where did I put mine.
It looks pretty darned good, Bearman. You’ll find that you get better at capturing the tiniest nuances the more you practice at it. Once you stop worrying about what the subject thinks of the piece and just convey what you see, flaws and all, and eventually you’ll be downright perfect at it. 🙂
Oh NO…showing flaws doesn’t work so well. I got in trouble for that one several times.
I suggest that you just find a picture of someone you don’t even know (use a Google pic or something form a magazine) and just make a caricature of that person. Pretend that the subject is never, ever gonna see your drawing.
That way you can relax and not worry about offending anyone. That would be practice for you in the long run.
Well that is kind of what I do for the most part in my google plus Muggings. I don’t let people give feedback during the process and the end result is the end result.
Of course, for paying customers, you draw them the way they think they look. You know no one really believes they have big ears and a turkey neck, so shy away from that. 🙂
I have big ears and a turkey neck…what are you saying?
Well at least he didn’t mention big ears or a furry face.
Got the furry face too.
Oh, he DID mention big ears!
Love it, Bearman! That process stuff gets me charged up, thanks for sharing.
Thanks Mark…pretty amazing to see something from sketch to final.
Um, what’s up with his eye?
Sheez, if he complained I would be quite happy have sent him Kim Jong Loon. 🙂 Oh wait, it’s framed and hanging on my wall !!!!!
That says more about you than me or him.
Is that his normal face, or that after he saw your bill?
I am reasonable(ly cheap)
Claude’s caricature looks like Mel Gibson’s caricature.