Happy Birthday, James Garner!

Every year on this date I like to celebrate the birthday of my favourite actor, James Garner. Although I don't have a new caricature in full colour to put up this time, I do have this article I wrote for the "Exagerrated Features" magazine, the quarterly publication for all subscribing members of the ISCA. In it, I describe my own personal working method in creating one of my celebrity caricatures, and I use James Garner as the subject for this tutorial. The series of rough sketches at the top of this post I had done especially for the article, and they demonstrate how I sometimes will help familiarize myself with the subject before developing the final piece of art. I don't always take this step, but I do recommend it as a way of warming up and finding the "design" of the head and face, particularly when you may be struggling to get the likeness. I hope this tutorial will be of benefit to those of you who also enjoy drawing caricatures of celebrities:






Now that you've read all that, you may now relax and enjoy this clip from The Rockford Files to see Jim Garner's expressions for real:

More Caricaturama Pics!

Here are the latest entries I've done for Caricaturama Showdown 3000. Daniel Day-Lewis is this week's subject, so I decided to draw him in his role as film director, Guido Contini in Nine, one of my favourite films in recent years. I've long been planning to do a group shot featuring the whole cast of Nine, so hopefully this first one will give me the necessary boost I need to start drawing all those gorgeous gals like Marion Cotillard and Penelope Cruz!

The week before it was Sharon Stone in the spotlight, though to be honest, I felt I missed the mark a bit on her, as her likeness proved to be very elusive for me. I've drawn her of course from her big breakout role as Catherine Tramell, author of murder mysteries and suspected ice-pick killer in Basic Instinct. I hadn't watched the film since first seeing it in the theatre when it debuted, and I must say it's a better film than I gave it credit for. There's a very similar feel to Hitchcock's Vertigo, especially in the cool blonde look of Sharon Stone so reminiscent of Kim Novak, as well as the score that sounds very much like that of Bernard Herrmann. Anyway, it was good to see the film again after all these years.