Finish on Hatebreed

This was fun. I kept the lesser important aspects simple and rough, such as the bodies. I feel it worked appropriately to the bands aggressive sound. Despite the roughness, there's enough sculptural detail in the faces to give the piece the solid look it needs. The T-shirt slogan Jasta wears was an idea I had joked about with writer Chris Mitchell. We later decided it would be fun to include it: While researching the band, the majority of online images featured the band in black shirts -- and some with similar verb-age. The type font on the slogan is called "bluecake," and was done using a Photoshop technique of a cloning stamp set to "lighten" at 100%. I had the type reversed out of a black box scaled to the desired size in Freehand. I then imported the box into the image over to the far right -- what would be considered "off the page." Then using the cloning stamp, I lightened the words into the t-shirt -- then simply cropped out the black box.
Enjoy!

Quick ruff for Hatebreed

Front man Jeremy Jasta will get the biggest head and after collaborating with writer Chris Mitchell, thought we should have a “colorful phrase” on his black shirt.
Note that I play up the size of heads to emphasize the faces and bodies are of much lesser importance. I’ll be doing the Oak Ridge Boys in a week or two and am considering rendering them with no bodies at all.
More to come later.

Hardcore Hatebreed a change of pace

This week’s Entertainment Tri-State section has a planned story with Connecticut-based hardcore punk band Hatebreed. The national act will be dipping down to Huntington in between dates in Cincinnati and Columbus.
We had planned to run the standard submitted publicity shot.
But being the kind of thrash metal group they are, they have an look inherent to their musical genre’. Aside from their look, they have really good faces that I can’t resist.
I hadn’t ever done a caricature of a group like this and welcome a change of pace from the numerous country music acts I’ve done this year. Needless to say, I’ll be listening to a lot of this group while I work on the piece — with headphones of course.

Stay tuned …

Finish on Carrie Underwood

A Question of Beauty

Here’s a question I’ve received from folks on several occasions:
“Which do you find more difficult to do — a caricature of an attractive person or a caricature of a “less-attractive” person?”

My answer is — they are equal in difficulty.
The key to doing caricature is not based in the degree of a pleasing countenance, but in the proportional relations between whatever facial features the subject is blessed with.
I seem to remember a quote that may have been attributed to Jimmy Durante: “It’s not the size of the nose, but rather how it’s arranged on the face.” (My Google search couldn’t shed any light on the author.)
So that being said, this week we’re doing the lovely Carrie Underwood who will be in concert this Father’s Day weekend.
Stay tuned to see what I do.