Today is the birthday of one of my favorite actors, and probably my favorite caricature subject. I try to capture how he can look both scary and funny at the same time. Walken became well-known, early in his career for playing bad guys or mentally unhinged types. But he has done a lot more light-hearted and comedic roles in recent years. Some of my favorite Saturday Night Live moments are from his sketches: The Continental, Colonel Angus, and Shinshi-Shinshi to name a few.

Thank you, Mr. Walken, for the years of entertainment! Also, I painted this for an upcoming art show. More on that in a couple weeks...

Oil on gessoed panel, 12 x 16 inches

Last week I was able to take advantage of the lingering snow in our local mountains, by driving about one hour to the East and finding some nice places to paint near Lake Cuyamaca along Highway 79. I only did one small study, and then used my camera everywhere else that I could stop along the road.





And here's my final head study from the last painting class at the Atelier last semester.

I've been in a head painting class at the Watts Atelier taught by Stan Prokopenko and have a few oil studies to share. They are on either gessoed panel or a linen panel. Each one was done from a 3 hour sitting.

It's that time of year again where critics and publications are making their predictions for the Academy Awards. So the San Diego Union-Tribune once again asked me to do an Oscar-themed illustration for the cover of the Night and Day Weekend section. The composition was left up entirely to me. But unlike last year's illustration, which only showed the critic's choice for the best actor and actress, I wanted to include all of the major contenders for the Best Picture Oscar itself. And with the limited time I had to work on it, I needed a way to represent the films as a whole, in a simple way, and not make it look like I was focusing on just the actors.

In order to avoid having to draw and paint full bodies or complicated backgrounds, I came up with the picture frame idea, with Oscar himself playing the role of the critical viewer in a gallery or museum who is contemplating his choices. And each gold frame has elements which reference each nominated film in some small way. I kept the frame for "The Help" simple because it seemed appropriate that a movie about domestic workers have a less fancy frame. Still though, this illustration ended up being quite an exercise in rendering shiny gold surfaces.

And I'm so happy I finally got a chance to caricature Owen Wilson. What a weird schnoz!

This was done entirely in Photoshop.




And here's a larger version, without the copy.

I finally am back in a head painting class at the Watts Atelier. It's good to be painting from a live model again. Quick studies like this help loosen me up and keep me focused on economizing each brush stroke.



And this is a small 8 x 10 inch study of a crow from a photo I found somewhere