May 31, 2011

Tim Burton ~ Retrospective


Tonight I have a manipulated caricature of film director, producer, writer and artist Tim Burton. The image I used was from an actual exhibit of Burton's art ... (slow loading but worth it), at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The exhibit spanned his entire life and included artwork he did as a teen. I've posted the source image below as well as video interview of Burton behind the scenes at the MOMA exhibit in 2009. I would like to do this one again after my wacom comes in so I can play with the hair a bit more. I'm tired of trying to paint hair with a mouse.
Source Image:




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May 29, 2011

Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones


Tonight I have a photo-manipulated caricature of Mick Jagger from The Rolling Stones. The Stones are one of the most important bands in the history of music and some of the most well known faces. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards especially have great character in their faces, perfect for caricatures. I want to do Keith Richards in the near future. These guys have been around for a long time and are still making music. I've posted the source picture below as well as a great video of one of their classics, "Angie". So, here's to one of the greatest bands in the history of music.

Mick Jagger Singing "Angie" from 1973


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May 24, 2011

Ozzy Osbourne II ~ "Life Won't Wait"

I seldom revisit a manipulation but I was looking to change my Facebook profile image and I like Ozzy, so I decided to tweak him a bit and add glasses. My version of Ozzy seems to be pretty popular on Facebook so a slight makeover was in order. There's also a little something below for your entertainment.





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May 23, 2011

Sarah Palin ~ Not So Conservative...


Tonight I'm posting the finished caricatured manipulation of Sarah Palin that I started earlier today. This one was by request from a good Facebook friend. I ended up putting a lot more time into it that I had intended to but it just seemed plain so I decided to spice it up a bit. I had this old caricatures study of Obama looking like he was asleep, so I put it to use and did another super quick caricature of Palin. It's late...actually it's so late it's early. I'm off to bed. Goodnight!










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May 22, 2011

Sarah Palin WIP ~ Sneak Peek at My Work Process


I started this caricature of Sarah Palin this afternoon and I'm about at the halfway point. I just wanted to make a quick post and give you an idea of my work process. This is a flattened image of the PSD I'm working on right now which is in a very rough state. I always start right on top of my source image and work up from there. The three images are there for a reason. I first do a very quick 2 minute liquify sketch just to get an idea of the direction I want to head in and I put a small version on the left of my canvas for reference. I also place a small image of the source picture on the right side of the canvas and of course the working caricature is in the middle. I do this so I can see my sketch so I know what I'm exaggerating and at the same time I can see the source image so I don't lose likeness. This is about 40-50% complete. I have not even done anything in Liquify at this point. Everything has been manipulated with the warp tool. I'm just getting features in the correct place right now. I will take it into liquify from here to tweak some things and do some reshaping. After that I will do the detail work, textures, hair, levels, saturation, background, repairs, over-painting, etc. Well, that the main process I use to do my work. I will have this finished and posted this evening.




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May 21, 2011

Clean Compact New Web Site at "about.me"

Click here to check out my new site!
Click the image to vist my site

Tonight I launched a new web site at about.me. It's a great little site and provides everything you need to introduce yourself to the reader on just one page. First impressions are everything so this is a neat little package. Mine didn't quite all fit without scrolling, but that's because I have a ridiculous number of links. I tried to narrow it down to the important ones. The site is free to join with no strings attached and it only takes a few minutes to fill out the profile and fully customize your site. Here is a Site.Gallery to get an idea of how diverse yet simplistic it is. The horizontal buttons display a box, which shows your feeds from the sites all on the same page, unless you choose to visit the site and it will open in a new window. The vertical links are direct links and also open in a new window, so it looks like they thought of everything. I'm using it for my email tag now. It's great for that first impression and gives a good general overview of what you do and where you can be found. Lots of other cool features. Check it out!

I'm still working on my movie. It's taking an enormous amount of time but I hope it's worth it. I will put it aside for a while to get some caricatures done this week though.

 


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May 19, 2011

General Funkwood ~ The Real Story


This is a manipulated caricature created for a Freak Show Photoshop contest entry at FreakingNews featuring a friend and fine artist who goes by the name "Funkwood". He also has a Facebook page but I'm not sure if he wants his name released. This has kind of become a tradition at FN, "chopping" other "choppers". Funkwood was a big inspiration to me in my early days at FN and a good friend, often critiquing my work and helping me when I was just getting started. He is one of many friends I've made along the way and contributors to getting me jumpstarted. He helped me turn many average manipulations into gold winners in FN Photoshop contests. Funkwood is ranked number 3 at FN along with the king of FN, AZRainman who is ranked number 1 and will never be caught...NEVER! This one is dedicated to FreakingNews.com, "Newsy", "Funkwood", "AZRainman" and all the other great artists who make up FN and whose beginnings came from that great organization, thanks to Vlad, AKA Newsy. Long live the Clan of FN Choppers!
My chop, "General Funkwood" was payback for Funkwood's own chop of me posted below:
rwpike by Funkwood



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May 17, 2011

Random Dude Gone Goth


The other day I was practicing doing some quick Liquify sketches of random people. I literally just Googled the word face and practiced on the images that popped up. The sketch of this kid was kind of interesting, so I decided to finish it tonight. He sort of had that Goth look, so I played on that with my exaggeration, the pasty white skin and jewelry. I could have taken it farther but I sometimes end up overworking an image if I try to put too much into it. I've posted the "Random Dude" original source image below.

Random Dude:



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May 16, 2011

Glenn Beck ~ Cry Baby

This was a photo-manipulted caricature illustration created for a Freak Show entry at FreakingNews.com featuring Glenn Beck. I kind of went nuts with this one but it was a lot of fun. I just couldn't resist that face. It took gold in the contest. I'm going to try and do more complete manipulated caricature illustrations like this in the future. I'm getting close to finishing up on my video so it should be up in a few days. I hope it's worth the time I'm spending on it.


Check out some other faces of Glenn Beck below:












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May 15, 2011

Desecration - Facebook Censorship of Fine Art

Tonight I'm posting a straightforward photo-manipulation, no caricature this time. I did this manipulation to illustrate how I feel about Facebook's censorship of images and censorship in general. I think this is a serious subject and I just wanted to express my feelings about unfair and thoughtless censorship all around us. It's not just people doing the censoring, in fact that's the problem, algorithmic censorship is controlling what we see or don't see on the web, not people. I'll let Eli explain the algorithm bit below. I can understand protecting young children from graphic images, but to mutilate a work of art, even a Master's work is wrong. There must be another way. Take DeviantArt.com for instance. They actually have adult content on their site and to protect minors from such content, they have taken measures to mask and password block any nudity or violence so only responsible adults can see it, and it gives the viewer a choice with a warning of the content. Facebook deletes any image flagged by anyone and refuses to give a reason why it was deleted or even bother to notify you. It's just wrong. Dali is going to turn over in his grave after seeing what I did to his painting of his dear wife, but it was for a cause and I think he would agree about the mindless censorship going on. I myself have had two Dali paintings deleted from my Facebook album among several other works. Just thought I would put my two cents in. Listen to what Eli has to say about it. Crazy stuff!


I'm no expert on algorithmic censorship but I do know this; you can't program an algorithm to have common sense.








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May 09, 2011

Ron Howard ~ Opie's all grown up

Tonight I have a manipulated caricature of actor director, Ron Howard. He's changed just a bit over the years as you can see by the short video of his child acting days in The Andy Griffith Show. Few of you are old enough to remember, I'm sure. Today Ron is a very successful director for films such as The Da Vinci Code and A Beautiful Mind. He's come a long way since his Opie days. I've posted the source image below.
 
Source image:



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May 08, 2011

El caballero con el pulgar en el culo ~ El Greco


Tonight I'm posting the completed manipulation of Bill Murray in a painting by El Greco. The original painting is called "El caballero con la mano en el pecho" which in English means "The Knight with His Hand on His Breast". I changed the name just a bit to "El caballero con el pulgar en el culo" which means "The Knight with His Thumb in His Butt". I'm sure those Spanish speaking readers already got the punch line. If you're a Bill Murray fan as I am and you remember the late 70s and 80s, you'll understand the Brooch on his chest. For those of you who don't, the brooch pays tribute to SNL Star Gilda Radner or as seen as her alter ego, Rosana Rosanadana. Hope the spelling is correct. I'm sure that's clear as mud for those of you who don't remember her. Anyhow back to the manipulation. If you view it in full size you will see the texture work I'm kind of experimenting with. I'm trying to produce convincing paint crackles, scuffs and scratches. I'm not there yet but I'm getting closer. Source painting below:

El caballero con la mano en el pecho by El Greco




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May 07, 2011

Bill Murray Painting Manipulation WIP


Tonight I'm posting a work in progress of Bill Murray. I have chosen a painting to use this caricature in and will post it next time. This was a mild caricature as Bill was already showing off one of his signature expressions. Tonight I'm showing the process I go through when using a manipulated caricature on a piece of art. They're always a lot of fun. I'm just showing some very basic steps I go through to prepare an image to be used in a painting. There is still more work to be done to this image after it's applied to the painting. Further texture refining and applying a crackle effect I've been experimenting with which are often seen on the old Masters' paintings. Everything I'm showing you here is my own experimental process. I have so much to learn. I do things different every time I sit at my computer. One day I'm going to figure this stuff out.

Original source image:



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May 04, 2011

Bill Murray ~ A Caricature Study

Tonight I wanted t get something posted so I did a very quick caricature study of Bill Murray. I was not at all concerned with likeness. I was more concerned with the overall feel, so don't ask me why the likeness is not there. It was an experiment. I think that the fact that I did it so quickly may have helped actually because I kept it loose. I didn't get hung up on the details, which usually tighten me up, and the image ends up looking stiff of forced. I only spent about an hour and a half from the quick liquify sketch to the final caricature manipulation. I've posted the source image below as well as a short video clip from Caddyshack from about 1980, which is the Bill Murray I grew up with. That and SNL.
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May 03, 2011

Featured Artist ~ Jeremy Lipking

Jeremy Lipking enjoys the process of wandering. As he journeys through life and explores different paths, his watchful eye continually searches for the subject of his next painting. Sometimes he’s captivated by a sight he’s never seen before. Other times, he paints an object from his everyday life, fascinated by how the light touches it at that very moment. By striving to capture the “here and now” in his paintings, Lipking injects into his classic and romantic images an ethereal, almost mysterious quality – something that many other artists have attempted to copy, but have not been able to replicated.

Born in Santa Monica , California in 1975, Lipking is a fourth-generation California artist and the son of Ronald Lipking, an advertising designer, children’s book illustrator and landscape painter. His early exposure to art – the constant presence of paints and brushes in his childhood home and frequent trips to local museums and galleries with his father – provided the younger Lipking with a strong foundation of the basics of design and drawing.

But it was the years he spent from 1996 to 1999 at the California Art Institute, which enabled him to make a tremendous leap as an artist. His instructors taught him to look at the world differently – to not, for example, look at the eyes and nose as distinct elements of the face, but to detect the shapes created by lights and darks and the subtleties of color. Following his studies at the institute, he embarked on an intensive self-directed effort to improve his paintings, closely examining the works of artists he most admired: John Singer Sargent, Spanish plein-air painter Joaquin Sorolla, and Swedish artist Anders Zorn, among others.

In 2001, at the age of 25, Lipking began attracting attention of the international art community. He received both the Gold Medal and the Museum Director’s Award at the California Art Club’s 91st Annual Gold Medal Juried Exhibition, one of the country’s most prestigious exhibitions of contemporary-traditional fine art. A year later, at the 92nd Annual Gold Medal Exhibition, he received the Museum Purchase Award. Lipking has had four solo exhibitions and has participated in many gallery and museum exhibitions. In 2003 he was asked to participate in the Arnot Museum ’s exhibition Re-presenting Representation, in New York . Magazines ranging from Art and Antiques and Art News to Art-Talk and Southwest Art began reporting on his meteoric career and the enigmatic quality of his work that appeals to a growing list of collectors.

Today, while Lipking feels especially compelled to paint the most classical of artistic subjects, the human figure, his body of work also includes landscapes and still lifes – whatever subjects manage to capture his interest as he continually searches the world around him for reasons to put his brush to canvas.
 
 
 
 
 
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May 01, 2011

Morph Movie / My Caricature Process Peek

I've spent a lot of time making this new morph movie. The first one I did was pretty bad. Well, this time I'm learning the software and this one will have really clean transitions. It's also being created at 1024x768 and all images were reworked to expand the backgrounds to the same aspect ratio. Below is a crude animation of one of the many transitions (its jumpy and poor image quality. I chopped it into 15 frames and made the gif.) Below that is an image showing the software interface and what that particular sequence looks like in progress and at exactly 50% on the transition. This project is taking me far longer that I thought it would but I keep going back and improving things as I learn new tricks. Hopefully it will be worth the time spent when it's done. This is a very rough example but if you look at details like the eyes tracking, you can see that I'm being much more precise on this one.

Everyone keeps asking me to tell my secrets about my manipulated caricatures. Well, I really don't have any secrets I'm hiding but I thought I would give you a small sampling of part of my caricature process and practice method. Below is a 2-3 minute very quick, what I call a manipulated caricature sketch. I do dozens of these in a day for practice at times and I almost always make a 2 minute liquify sketch prior to doing a caricature to try and capture the basic morph that I want, keeping it very loose. When working on a caricature in Photoshop, I always have on my canvas, a small sketch which hopefully captured the essence of the person, a small version of the original image and the image I'm working on, all together so I don't lose track of the direction I'm going, likeness, proportions, etc. I am reducing my reliance on and use of liquify, but when I do use it, I bring all three images in together so I can see the whole picture.

Now, let me make a couple of things clear. I am not yet what I consider to be a caricature artist. I have no formal training. I don't claim to be an expert or in any way qualified to teach caricature. These are my methods (if you want to call it that), not necessarily the correct ones. If you want to learn the art of caricature, take lessons from a Master. Jason seiler offers lessons online and as soon as I have the money, my wacom and my Mac, I'm taking lessons from him. Can't wait!! Ok, that's a little peek into how I do what I do. I will release more information on my personal techniques along the way. Don't ask me when. Goodnight!




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