Primitive Shapes

Aaaahhh, I'm so funny. Primitive shapes. Shapes wearing animal skins in a cave. This might be the lamest joke in the whole world. I'm so going to finish it, maybe make the cave a little more cave like. Definitely tone down that fire a smidge. Ok so once you've finished laughing and have stitched your sides back together, you will no doubt see the odd look face that's underneath it. Well that was the inspiration for the saddest visual gag in the history of time. I've been trying to take my caricatures back to structure. To the bare assed minimum. Basically exploring ideas using primitive shapes. Hard as all hell and I've been failing like you would not believe. I start off with a hiss and a roar but as soon as things start looking like they're coming together I start rendering. That and the primitive shapes just never seem to go the way I want them to. Until this one. I won't say who it is cos it bares no resemblance to him whatsoever but this is the first time I feel like I've accomplished my mandate of using primitive shapes to create a caricature. Not that I created this one very far. I got to this point and started giggling like there was no tomorrow. And then I thought I would post it and that of course led to the cave with the animal skin wearing cube and friends.
How about that fire though? Gotta love that glow brush huh?

James Hetfield

Not sure where this is going at all. I spent the day working on some other jazz in blender but I took a little break to try out some sketching techniques I was reading about. Something along the lines of getting a likeness using only primitive shapes. A very difficult task but something I'd like to continue on with. My problem is that I inevitably wind up sketching in details and values. Not really the purpose of the exercise but there you go. I'll give it another shot tomorrow. Even if I have to restrict myself to building some primitive geometry in blender and working on it that way, actually that's not such a bad idea.
I'm not feeling the likeness of this one at all. I think that the only tie between this painting and him is the goatee. Possibly if I get his pose correct when I move onto the body sketch that will help things along also but facially, at this point... Might just have to chalk this one up to experience. There is one thing to be said for this painting. It's not going to look like a caricature of Mick Jagger. A lot of my sketches had that Mick Jagger look to them.

Stairs

I find that there's something oddly thrilling about modeling interior environments. I would keep going with this but I've been awake since 5:30am and I'm pooped. Looking forward to continuing on with it in the morning though. Probably not at 5:30am again though. Bloody roosters. That's what you get for living on a farm. If I'm not being serenaded by a trio of cows or being bleated at by the worlds smallest herd of sheep then you can bet your eye teeth that the insomniac rooster is going to take the first opportunity to remind everyone that he's still kicking. Still all of these things are better than the rats scratching around in the ceiling or the winged vampire mosquitos that think my veins contain an infinite supply of A+ '77. The worst part is when you squish 'em good leaving a big red smear of your own blood on your arm.

Rough block ins

So these are the roughs from today. I'm happy with the way that James Hetfield is coming along. I scrubbed out his beard for the moment so that I could get his chin, t-shirt and general body pose sorted out and yes, I'm quite aware that something is a bit askew with his shoulders. That's what the block in phase is all about.
Same with lady day underneath. She started to come together but then the likeness vanished in a heartbeat and I was getting disgusted with myself and the whole process. So I decided to leave it for the time being and see if it looks any better after a few hours break and sure enough, it does. I mean I can see that the nostrils need some serious work but there's really nothing here that is cause to give up. A few structural issues here and there but I'll sort those out as I progress. As I said before, that's what the block in phase is all about.
I may re-sketch the James Hetfield body before I go to bed tonight. I'm really not hitting the mark for what I have in mind here. In fact if I'm honest, despite being happy with the facial likeness, the result I'm working towards isn't the result I had in mind. I may just re-sketch the whole thing and see if I can't get it closer to the, I won't say picture, impression of him that I have in my head.

Moe Yeah

This is Moe, the fully rigged animation character study that I bought from blender cookie. Well, they call theirs Baker but I changed mine up a big and gave him a mustache. Also I've been working on my character expressions and poses so he's kind of turned into my customizable emoticon for the moment.
Moe, Moe-stache, e-Moe-ticon, Moe-ment.
Anyway, he's doing the classic full bodied arm pump because I just got a message from Bob Parker, mayor of Christchurch and the recent focus one of my better paintings. He loved the painting and wants one all for his very own.
Oh yeah!

Mo Baker

He's my own personal emoticon. If he had hair, he'd be pulling it out right about now. I suppose he could be pulling on his mustache but to be honest, it's not a real mustache. Literally, it's drawn on. I wonder what he'd look like if it was a ginger mustache? Kind of like a reverse oompa loompa I suppose.

Typical

So a couple weeks ago I woke up and did some yoga, scratched out some terrible rubbish sketches and then pumped out something like six sketches that I managed to turn into paintings all in the same morning. The same thing goes here. For the past two days I have been stuck at the juncture between no talent and no hope wondering if I shouldn't stick to just driving trucks. Then tonight, almost as an afterthought, I drop four. Not the greatest sketches in all the world by any means, but there's enough in each to work with. The bruce campbell is probably the weakest but I really feel like there's something there in that sketch. So lets see, at the top is billie holiday, I watched a tutorial once where the guy sketching said that women sketches were tricky, one or two too many lines and a young face becomes aged very quickly. Well he was right. Um, under that is jimmi hendrix smoking... something. Then bruce campbell and finally james hetfield. I'm probably happiest with the last one. Even if it is a wee bit skew whiff. One day I'm going to compile all these crap sketches and post them with the finished product. Just for funsies.