Friday, December 31, 2010

"Happy New Year, Pilgrim."



I did this caricature of John Wayne just recently so that I could give a print of it as a Christmas gift to my stepfather, as he's a huge fan of The Duke. Originally I was going to do it in my usual approach: inked line art, then coloured up in Photoshop. However, I was rather pleased with the way it looked in the pencil sketch (which I also rendered a bit more than usual), so I thought I'd treat the finished art as more painterly, still colouring it in Photoshop, yet with a looser treatment overall. Anyway, it was certainly a fun piece to work on. The film I viewed as reference to sketch from was Rio Bravo, in which John Wayne stars alongside Dean Martin and Angie Dickinson.

So, that's it for my posts of 2010 - See you all in the New Year!

9 comments:

  1. Happy New Year Pete !

    I saw this on John's blog.You did a great job blending the traditional and high-tech utensils. I also have enjoyed your rantings against generic "pretty boys" in animation and live-action. I think there are some great manly men working film today though who made it big in the past ten years. Gerard Butler, Hugh Jackman, and Daniel Craig who, thank god, beat a twenty-something "pretty boy" for the role of James Bond.

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  2. Thanks, Ricardo. Yeah, I get really tired of all the twentysomething actors today, with their tattoos, unkempt hair, several days worth of face fuzz, and unbuttoned shirts on top of untucked T-shirts. I prefer the real men from that Golden Age of Hollywood, resplendent in their suits and ties. Likewise, I wish that the male heroes of animated films were more rugged in their design too. Ahh, maybe I'm just getting old...

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  3. Your right pete. Hell, even Montgomery Clift looks butch compared to today's hollywood metrosexuals and punks.

    As for the animated heros, I also agree. Would it be such a terrible thing if an animated protagonist was modeled after Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, or, just for the sake of a fairly modern example, Timothy Dalton ?

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  4. Fuck the modern "stars!" Duke was the greatest that ever was and ever will be, and this drawing is terrific!

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  5. I saw it on John K's blog and you did a wonderful job for the digital colouring which looking very carefully. I'm in the middle of twenty and already hate the pretty boys of today. They have no substances, no guts to get out of their shell. We should create a pretty boy/man with the worst defaults for show how real mens like John Wayne, Cary Grant or Sean Connery suppose to be.

    Happy New Year!

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  6. Pete-

    Your inks are always great , but I have to say I'm glad you left this one a little sketchier . Your pencil line work is beautifully complemented by the color.

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  7. You really nailed photoshop.I thought the piece was coloured in pencil with inks (like dr.martins dyes-can you still get them?) or
    prismacolor markers and maybe enhanced in photoshop.How do your clients feel about this method as opposed to your normal inking practise and which do you perfer?

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  8. Awesome Stuff Pete, Hope you had a wonderful Holiday :)

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