Pop Caricature

I have been doing some oil painting but nothing to upload yet. So for now, I'll leave you with this digital caricature.

If you don't know who it is then either I've missed the mark or you're over 16.

(Pop caricature - digital. 800x870px. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

Still Life: Fallen Apples

Here's one I did a couple of weeks ago but never got around to posting until now.

Fallen Apples
20x24cm oil on panel. 
© 2010, Andy Dolphin
SOLD

Wilson Tuckey - Digital Caricature

This one was a lot of fun.

I'm messing with different styles as I do these. This method takes a little more work because it lacks the hard black outlines so details have to be "painted" in - but it does give a very nice result.

(Wilson Tuckey caricature - digital. 800x1000px. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

SEE ALSO:
Julia Gillard caricature
Tony Abbott caricature 

Kevin Rudd - Digital Caricature

And now for something completely different.

I used to do a little bit of caricature during my time as a commercial illustrator but nothing too fancy. I haven't done any for a very long time, until this week.

Last night I tried doing a self-portrait caricature, with mixed results (according to my family). So tonight I had a go at our Prime Minister (update: ex-Prime Minister), Kevin Rudd.

(Kevin Rudd caricature - digital. 800x1000px. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

This was done entirely in Photoshop. It's an interesting way to work and I might do a few more of these for fun. Maybe I'll work my way through parliament.

LATER...

I couldn't go to bed without doing a caricature of Rudd's parliamentary opponent so here's one of the Federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.

(Tony Abbott caricature - digital. 800x1000px. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

SEE ALSO:
Julia Gillard caricature

Preliminary sketch

I don't usually do preliminary colour sketches. I either work directly on site or from pencil sketches done from digital photos.

But I'm planning a large painting based on two paintings I did a couple of weeks ago near Princess Royal Harbour in Albany. The first painting was done en plein air and the second was a digital piece done using a photo of the scene, borrowing much of the colour scheme from my memory.

I want the large painting to have the flavour of the digital painting. I was concerned about getting the hues right since it is very warm with a pinkish sky and rich reddish-brown trees. The brightest highlights are yellow hues.

So before committing to the full sized painting I decided to test my colour mixes out on a small colour sketch.

(Evening at Princess Royal, 12x24cm oil on panel. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

With this piece as a reference I have a strong starting point for the larger work. I hope to do that one next week.

Still Life: Red & Blue 2

Following the success of Red & Blue #1, I used the same props and 4-colour limited palette to do a second still life.

Oddly, this one threw some unexpected challenges at me. I had essentially completed the painting but for some reason, I could not get the small vase to look right - despite painting it twice. Once again it was looking like I should take up golf instead (do all artists think like this?).

I knew the composition worked and I was happy with the overall colour concept but the vase had to go. So I grabbed a painting knife and scraped off the vase and background. I never used to do this with my disappointments - I just "added them to the pile" - but if the overall composition is working, scraping is a very useful technique.

A few swift scrapes across the surface with the long side of the knife leaves an impression of the image behind in the primed surface, even on a smooth panel like this one (primed MDF). The ghosted image acts as an underpainting so from this point all attention can be focussed on colour rather than layout.

I took a photo of the setup and did a 20 minute painting in Photoshop.

(Red & Blue #2 - digital. 720x520px. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

This was enough to convince me I did have some vague idea of what I was doing - I just had to make the paint do what I wanted it to do.

So the next day I took to the painting again and I think I got it right this time. Phew!

(Red & Blue #2, 20x24cm oil on panel. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

Golf can wait until another day.

Still Life: Red & Blue 1

After playing around with Photoshop and making a small still life digital painting of an apple last week, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and give real still life another go. It's been a long time since I've done it.

I had to search around for a working lamp and clear a corner to set up a basic shadow box (actually a towel draped over an old easel and a bunch of storage boxes stacked to make the table top with a piece of clear acrylic on top for a reflective surface).

Then I had to decide what I was going to paint. This is where I usually stop because nothing seems remotely interesting. I sorted through some junk I bought three years ago - for doing still lifes - and found a wonky ceramic vase. I snipped some bright red chrysanthemum flowers (lucky Mother's Day was last Sunday) and set them up under the lamp.

It didn't look too bad so I grabbed one of my primed 20x24cm canvas panels and began.

Here's the result after a couple of hours. Click for a bigger pic.

(Red & Blue #1, 20x24cm oil on canvas panel. © 2010, Andy Dolphin)

A few minor things bug me, mostly related to the process, but all in all I'm pretty pleased with it. With winter only a few weeks away, I think I'll be doing a bit more of this.

I used a limited palette of ultramarine, crimson and cad yellow light. This was fine until I came to put the bright red highlights on the outer florets. Mixing crimson and yellow just didn't cut it so I put some cad scarlet out and used that for the warmest reds. Still, four colours plus white is limited by most standards.