Here’s another stab at this video sketch thing, this time of Homeland‘s Morena Baccarin, actual drawing time 20 minutes. This time I did a lot more gray scale painting, obviously. Maybe next time I’ll do some color:

A few observations about Morena- she’s obviously a very beautiful woman, but she has plenty of things to exaggerate. Her eyes are very arresting, but they are slightly mismatched… one is flatter shaped than the other, and her pupil/iris is more covered up on that side. She has a wide face with very prominent cheekbones, and a wide nose bridge but a sharp and narrow end of the nose. She has a teeny, tiny mouth that has an interesting puckery look when she does that wry smile. Also, her neck is gigantic. Her trapezoids are very high up on a long neck, giving her a really odd, alien sort of neck/shoulder dynamic. No wonder she was so good in “V”.

One thing I hate about these video sketches—no original sketch. Where’s the fun in that?

And now for something completely different…

Reader Daniel Singley wrote me a week or so ago to ask if I was ever going to do a digital video “Sketch o’the Week” like I promised I would back in 2008. Well, here it is, with mixed results (actual drawing time 18 minutes):

So, there you have it, a video record of a caricature of Homeland star Claire Danes, finished result way up above. I included the reference pics I used in the video as well.

I am not overly fond of drawing on the computer screen. Even though I have a Cintiq, there is still a physical disconnect with me and computer drawing. I got frustrated towards the end of this one, and sort of quit. I’ll give it a better try sometime soon.

If you have ever run across some of the incredibly inane videos on YouTube offering “expert” advice on stuff like drawing caricatures, then you will be laughing until the tears are running down your cheeks over the video above.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many useful and good video tutorials and resources on YouTube and about the web, but so many of them are useless and contain no real information whatsoever. Witness these incredibly lame caricature instructional videos I blogged about some time ago from the so-called “Expert Village”. Not only does the lady doing the instruction not tell you a single piece of useful info, but the drawing she is “working” on was lifted from a caricaturist named Kirk Bjorndahl.

The above video was done by caricaturist Jeremy “Jert” Townsend and perfectly lampoons these types of no-info instructional videos. The only flaw to it is the length… most of the useless how-to videos only last 2 to 3 minutes total. Jert worked too hard on it! He should produce an entire series of “SuperExpertUSA” videos, they’d be a YouTube sensation.

This is it, the final segment of the demo video of some of my live caricature samples from the early 90′s. For those just tuning it, this was a time-lapse, looping demo of me doing a bunch of samples that played through a window in several of my indoor caricature stand locations.

It’s interesting to see the difference in my work when you compare this example with one I did last year:

If you’ve never watched any of cartoonist Tom Gammill‘s “How to Draw” video shorts, you are in for a treat. They are clever, funny and always entertaining. As of this writing there are two dozen installments… the video above is one my favorites. You can check them all out here.

While I’m somewhat incommunicado on the Persian Gulf USO tour here is another segment of the infamous 1993 live caricature demo video. This time the subject is Jaleel White, who is best known (okay… only known) for his nerdy character Steve Urkel from the TV Show “Family Matters”.

While I’m on my world cartooning tour there might be a few of these old videos from my 1993 live caricature demo reel posted here. Here’s one of SNL alumni Mike Myers and Dana Carvey from “Wayne’s Word”.

YES!

Yet another in a seemingly endless supply of time lapse videos from the infamous 1993 caricature demo reel that played in fine shopping mall caricatures locations the world over… um, in a few different states anyway.

This is an earlier caricature I did of Bill Cosby, which I replaced some years later with this much better one:

But… enjoy the video anyway. The guy who did the editing selected the music. Personally I would have gone with some generic jazz music with a Cosby drawing, but he went with the twanging country tune for the first bit. Go figure. The second tune selection is a bit better.

Yet another time lapse video from my old 1993 “demo reel” of live caricatures. This time the subject is Albert Einstein… a sample I actually still use at the parks but usually in black and white.

By the way I stole that T-shirt slogan gag from Steve Fasen in 1985.

Above is an hour long PBS video documentary about Los Angeles Times’ editorial cartoonist and terrific caricaturist Paul Conrad. Whether you are a fan of caricature, or of hard hitting and brutally honest editorial cartoons, it’s a great tribute to one of the giants of the cartooning world. You can watch it in a larger format here.

Thanks to The Daily Cartoonist for the heads up.