The Caricaturist’s New Year Resolutions for 2021 – and the sharing caring mouse.

… to keep or not to keep them is the Question!

But hey, I read somewhere that only about 8% of those who make New Year Resolutions keep them, while almost 50% of world makes them.

So… to flow with the current, to be fashionable, to go along, to be a spoke in the wheel, and to blend in, I can belong to either camp, but then if I did end up keeping them, I’d be a black sheep, an oddball, a misfit, a crackpot!

So, I’ve decided to do it 50-50…because I really want to fit in. I’ve been a shoe that doesn’t fit, a quirky fun-poking trouble-making caricaturist for what…around 12 years now? Now I want to become the snug and comfy grandma’s slippers.

I seriously want to go for a makeover – like some girls I know would, when they get married. The infinite string of boyfriends, the home-breaker routines they pulled on other women, the marijuana puffs, the cigarette-butts, will all be dumped in a memory-closet, as each morning they would cover their heads and touch the feet of their elders to seek their blessings.

Oh wow!

An entirely new life…is what I’ll be looking at with my new year resolutions!

So, here’s your crazy caricaturist going for her crazy makeover.

In the year 2021,

1. I’ll stop doing caricatures instead I’ll paint sad-looking, pining-for-their-partner women, sitting under a dusty, orphan little shrub growing on the side of our city roads.
2. I’ll always have a sweet but sad smile pasted on my face; I’ll stop looking people in the eye, and play with my hair while talking to men – so that I appear mysterious and confuse the hell out of them.
3. I’ll talk with an affected lilt and I’ll twirl and swirl (which I obvious can’t do in a pair of jeans – so I’ll find a broomstick skirt with sufficient flare to twirl.)
4. …

You don’t like it, do you?

But hey, I was only making resolutions. Remember, to disappear in the crowd, I must not keep them!

Ouch!

Here’s your caricaturist, doing the right thing. Making caricatures and cartoons – and professing that sharing is caring.

If you have a mouse in your house, dear reader, it is your responsibility to provide the little mite free boarding and lodging…preferably someone on your person. Be as Ron Weasley is to Scabbers. (This, however, isn’t Ron Weasley.)

Happy New Year – 2021 – Card by Shafali – Sharing is Caring

 

Have a Beautiful and Safe New Year!

Caricature/Cartoon of Ajit Ninan – The Great Indian Cartoonist.

——————–Reposting from 2011———————-

(The Original Post with its Comments can be read here.)

Presenting Ajit Ninan, the Indian Cartoonist who breaks all established standards of quality in cartooning.

I foraged the web to ferret out some information on Ajit Ninan, but returned empty-handed. I don’t know when he celebrates his birthday, I don’t really know a lot about his early life, and except for a few details, I know nothing about his professional life.

So what does the Caricaturist do when faced with a blank page?

She closes her eyes and lets her thoughts travel into the past, where she sees a young boy with a dimpled smile, who would become the Ajit Ninan whose drawings tell her that there are people who refuse to kill their skill – come what may.

Here’s the story of this little boy, who became one of the two Indian Cartoonists who’ve made me experience both pride and joy in equal measures.

The Caricaturist concocts a story:

Leave the Roses and Embrace the Thorns

He loved the afternoons. Hyderabadi afternoons were scathingly hot during this time of the year but the heat didn’t deter him from enjoying them. He’d walk back from school with his friends, feeling under the hot glare of the Sun on his brow, his arms, and his spindly legs only half covered by the shorts of his school uniform; but he always looked forward to the afternoons. They were his to do whatever his heart desired. Deep inside he felt that whatever he might end up doing all his life – these afternoons would remain etched in his memories forever.

This was one of those unforgettable afternoons. Ajit had returned from school, and after a quick snack of Idiyappam that his mother had made for him, he was now lying on his stomach, with his feet up in the air – letting the coolness of the marble floor seep into his body. His sketchbook lay open in front of him and propped upon his left elbow, he drew in it feverishly. He had wanted to finish the drawing of that toy car before his father arrived home from work. He looked over his shoulder to check the clock in the living room. It was past four already!

He returned to his drawing, and then drew away to look at the whole picture. What should he do with wheel? Should it be a little bigger? Would it look funnier if he made it bigger…a lot bigger than the other one?

Thoughts swirled about in his mind, blocking everything else…reducing the sounds around him to an unrecognizable medley – the slight hum of his mother’s voice in the kitchen, the distant din of the vendors in the street, even the creaking sound of the door opening…

So when he heard his name being called in his father’s loud but stern voice, Ajit almost jumped out of his skin. The drawing pencil shot out of his hand and landed under his table that was set near the window, and his sketchbook lay open on the floor – the proof of his being a wayward son.

“What are you doing?”
“Nothing, Father.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing to me,” his father took a step forward. Ajit shrunk away. He wished he had listened to his intuition, but then his father never came home early. What was different today? And then it clicked. His parents had to attend a wedding today! While Ajit’s revved-up mind was busy figuring out all this, his father had picked up the sketchbook.

Ajit held the edge of the table to steady himself. This was going to be one of those days.

“You made all these?” His father asked.
Isn’t it obvious? It’s my sketchbook, isn’t it? Ajit thought.
“Yes, Father,” he said.
“You think that these scribblings would get you a job?”
“…“
“You think that I am spending on your education, so that you could become a painter?”
“…“
“How many marks did you get in Math last year?”
“…“
“How many? I am asking you a question. Answer it.”
“45,” quaked Ajit.
“45. 45 out of 100! How you’ll ever make it into Engineering is beyond me.”
…
“Tell me. How will you ever become an engineer, if you go on neglecting Math for these…these…” his father struggled to find the right word.
“Drawings?” Ajit couldn’t stop himself from supplying the word, but regretting it immediately after.
“Drawings. Yes. You are good at making these – and this skill will help you a lot when you study engineering. These tractors, these jeeps, these pumps…” he continued as he flipped through Ajit’s sketchbook, while Ajit waited for the tirade to end.

It ended, as always, when his mother intervened. Oh, how he loved her. She was the only one in the whole family, who truly supported his love for drawing – but even she fretted about his future. If only he could prove them wrong.

Later that evening, as Ajit sat at his table near the window, absently trying to resolve those improper fractions into proper fractions, random pieces of conversation floated in from his parents’ bedroom.

“He takes after you…all these feminine habits.”
“He takes after both of us.”
“I never got 45 in Math.”
“But he’s as stubborn as you are.”
“I am telling you…he’s got this stupid thing for drawing! I am telling you, I don’t want him writing letters to the black sheep of our family.”
“I don’t think he writes to him.”
“I don’t know. Who knows anything about what that boy does? You have to ask him.”

Ajit turned his attention to his notebook. Those fractions kept changing into cartoon characters. Why? Didn’t 2 look almost like a serpent and the number 8…he found himself doodling two meshing gears into the 8! The “black sheep” of the family. That had to be his uncle Abu Abraham. He worked for this American Publication called the Guardian, but he was shortly returning to India. Abu’s atheism and the way he thumbed his nose at traditions had ensured his symbolic ouster from the family.

His whole body tensed up in anticipation as he waited for them to leave. Ajit’s parents were going out for a Punjabi wedding, which meant that they’d not return until late in night. He could now look forward to many hours of unadulterated drawing pleasure.

Ajit Ninan’s Nonexistent Biography

I couldn’t find his biography, so I tried to glean whatever information I could from a variety of sources, especially from this post by Abhijit Bhaduri.

Here’s the sum total of my learning.

Ajit Ninan was born in Hyderabad in 1955. His parents were from Kerala though. Ajit studied at Hyderabad Public School where he manipulated his way into the library, so that he could go through the Cartoons in magazines. When he was young, he prefered to draw mechanical drawings, which I presume, must’ve made his father believe that his son wanted to become and engineer when he grew up. Fortunately Ninan wasn’t good at Math (I say fortunately, because had he been good at it, he’d have ended up becoming an engineer; which would mean that India would’ve lost one of its few great cartoonists,)so he studied political science, and became a political cartoonist.

Ninan published in first cartoon in Shankar’s Weekly, a magazine that his equally illustrious uncle Abu Abraham also drew for.

Ninan’s Inspirations include Mario Miranda, James Thurber, and Arnold Roth (he used to spend his precious out-of-class-in-the-library hours poring over the drawings of JT and AR.) Ajit Ninan worked with India Today as a Cartoonist and an Illustrator. He then moved to The Indian Express. He currently works with The Times of India as their Group Art Consultant.

Here are some interesting links for you to follow.

• Ninan’s Fan Club at Orkut
• Detective Moochwala, Ajit Ninan’s Creation for the Children’s Magazine “Target.”
• Ninan’s Cartoons through Google Search
• Ajit Ninan’s Caricature Album at Indian Caricature Site.
• Ajit Ninan received the Lifetime Achievement Award from President Kalam.
• Ninan at work (September 9, 2009) – Ajit Bhaduri’s Flickr Stream.

What this caricaturist has in common with the Great Ninan?

Believe it or not, I have the exact same lamp on my table that Ninan has on his. I had bought it 15 years ago. I wanted to buy another of the same kind, but failed 😦

Toonsie Roll – The Intuitive Caricature Maker App for Everyone’s iPhone and iPad…

is now on the App Store. Download it at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/toonsie-roll-make-caricatures/id921958679?ls=1&mt=8

Toonsie Roll – Toon ’em All!

Now you can caricature everyone in a nice, easy, and fun way! All the caricatures that you see in the following image have been created from scratch to finish in Toonsie Roll…just using observation, intuition, and tapping! If you like the app, leave a rating…and tell me if you’d like a FB page for Toonsie Roll to share your creations.

 

And to discover how easy it is to caricature using Toonsie Roll, check out my previous post “How to Create Cool Caricatures using the Toonsie Roll App.”

Now I should get back to sculpting some caricatures in a mountain…more on Toonsie Roll later.

 

A Toonsie Roll Caricature of Hrithik Roshan…

…Who Goes Bang Bang this Thursday, Despite his Health Problems!

This post is the result of Hrithik’s interview that was published in today’s TOI. At the onset, I must tell you that I am not a fan of Hrithik the Bollywood Actor. In fact, I’ve seen just one movie of his (one of the Krishh’s, and I’ve forgotten which one.) And yet, now I have become one of the biggest fans of Hrithik the person behind the actor. I like brave people, and I think that bravery is an attribute of the human mind. It doesn’t depend upon anything external to a person – neither their station in life, nor their physical strength. Some people are brave, others just aren’t; they whine and cry and want the whole world to understand their problems, without ever taking the first important step, which is realizing that they are the only ones who can solve their problems and all that whining actually drives the right kind people away from them.

( Note: The above caricature was done using Toonsie Roll – A Caricaturing/Caricature-making iPhone/iPad app.)

In my estimate, Hrithik Roshan is one of the bravest celebs that clutter our waking moments. He is someone who is an inspiration to many who battle chronic illnesses and debilitating pain. Almost all his life, he has lived with excruciating pain and with bones that broke on the slightest pretext. He has been suffering from arthritis from a very young age, and when he was a teenager, his doctors had told him that he had the skeleton of an old man. He was advised against becoming an actor. In Bollywood, you can’t be a star if you don’t dance (yes, pelting your pelvis as far as you can in all directions and gyrating on the beats of a raunchy number – stuff that is really really bad for your back); or  if you don’t do stunts (toss yourself up in the air with your limbs flailing and hitting ten goons at once)! So Hrithik, the boy with a spine that was proclaimed geriatric by the medicos shouldn’t have done any of what he did. Instead, he should’ve stayed home, watched dvds, ate potato-chips, grown corpulent, started a blog, and talked about how unfair life was.

But Hrithik did something different. He looked at the hand of cards that fate had dealt to him, figured out a strategy to beat the odds, and stayed in the game. Yes, he came from a fairly affluent family. Yes, he could get a doctor’s attention whenever he needed it. But nothing could’ve made him the star that he is today – nothing except his own determination to beat the odds.

So far, this year has been terrible for Hrithik. When he was shooting for Bang Bang, he got ill because there were blood-clots in his brain and he had to undergo a brain-surgery. His backache, his companion of 27 years, has been troubling him so much that he travels in a convoy of three cars, because he can’t sit in one position for more than 30 minutes. On the personal front, he has filed for a divorce from his wife, who he confirms, has not asked for an alimony of 400 Crs. (The amount sounded ridiculous any way,) and when the divorce is through he may lose the custody of his two sons to his wife. That’s a lot for anyone to handle – and yet he handles it all so well. The boy whose was advised not to be an actor, is the one who has made Roshans a recognized name in the Indian Film Industry.  He’s an excellent dancer, he looks muscular in his movies, he does all those stunts that movies require him to do – and I think he is able to do it because he has a beautiful mind.

He says that he always tried being a nice person, but it didn’t work, because when you try to be nice to everyone and not hurt anyone, you try to achieve the impossible and end up hurting yourself; so you must try to be a good person instead. A good person does good whenever he or she can, but doesn’t try to please everyone. I agree – totally.

So that’s that about Hrithik. I wish him the best and I hope that he continues to win the battle that he is fighting with his illnesses. Another braveheart that I want to mention here is Shubhpreet Kaur Ghumman. This post isn’t about this one-legged brave beauty, but here’s the link to her Facebook page.

I’ll be writing a set of tutorials on How to Create Caricatures with Toonsie Roll, so do return.

 

Hacked Nude Celebrity Photos are more Viral than Ebola says CBS.

There’s no denying that Ebola‘s accelerating spread is a huge concern for humanity, and yet, there’s another virus in the air, one that’s been multiplying at a rate that is exponentially greater than that of Ebola. It’s called the Celebrity Nudes Virus (CNV).

According to CBS*,

The Celebrity Nudes Virus has by now spread to all the countries of the world, and the number of people infected by this virus doubles every hour. Accordingly to statistics that have been laboriously collected, classified and sifted, every man infected by this virus can potentially infect 6 others, in a matter of seconds. It has also been reported that 5 out of 6 people who get infected, are males.

Symptoms of the Celebrity Nudes Viral (CNV) Infection include:

1. Lolling tongues and galloping heartbeats.
2. A strong tendency to find isolated spots.
3. A strong tendency to look over the shoulder while checking emails.
4. Heightened creativity resulting in Celebrity Nudes Search words.
5. Shortened attention-spans.
6. A heartfelt feeling of gratitude for the man who started it all, affectionately called the hacker.

The man who unleashed this virus on the Internet claims that he did it for money. And yet, the poor devil, the man with a zillion dreams of a billion dollars got a measly $120 for his labors…and if we should believe him…for his investment.

This man, who CBS* has nicknamed “Father of the Celeb-nude Virus” has hacked into the iCloud accounts of 100 celebrities, including Rihanna, Kristen Dunst, and Selena Gomez, and despite the financial setback, he has no intentions of stopping. “The FBI,” he says, “is a minor inconvenience.”

Search Strings that are being used to find those Hacked Celebrity Nudes.

Following are some of the search-strings that the infected group of people have so creatively come up with.

• where are the hacked nude pictures on the web
• icloud nude celeb images posted
• stolen nude celebrity pics
• view stolen celebrity icloud photos online
• nude celebrity photos stolen online
• posted stolen celeb photos
• hacked nude celebrity pictures
• hacked cloud accounts nude pictures
• i want to see icloud hacked nude pic 2014
• leaked 100 celebrities nude  images on internet
• and so on…
• and so forth!

Search terms such as these abound, despite the celebrities issuing statements on moral grounds. They’ve been condemning people who view these leaked pictures as participating thieves, because they are viewing stolen goods. CBS* spokeswoman Shafali says:

“I understand their concern. Hacking nude celebrity pictures is akin to plagiarism in the art/literary circles. The person who created the content must be fairly compensated for its use. Now that those nudes are already out there, nobody is going to want to pay to view them – so what could’ve been on the front-page of Rolling Stone or GQ and would’ve justly made the celebs and their retinues some moolah, has now resulted in $1.20 per celeb for the hacker. It’s terribly unfair to the celebrities, I suppose; but what hurts me more, is the erosion of  the value of those pictures, which in fact, is also an insult to the celebrities in question.”

Most celebrities aren’t ticked off because their nudes went online – they’d love to have those pictures on the covers or the center-spreads of magazines. Just click the following link to view some nude celebrity pictures that have been shared with totally value-driven willingness, and hence puts the viewer on the right side of the ethics debate. In fact, the latest celeb to go nude for GQ is Kim Kardashian!

Miley Cyrus on Rolling Stones, Jake and Anne on Entertainment Weekly,Katy Perry on Esquire, Kim Kardashian on W, Johnny Depp on GQ (well, not exactly, but the link has him on.

The Online Media Chooses: Celebrity Nudes Virus vs. Ebola – A Google Search Infographic.

(No prizes for guessing the right answer.)

The Celebrity Nudes Virus is indubitably more contagious of the two viruses. Even Google works faster to find Celeb Nude Photos than it does to find pages that talk about Ebola. Please check the encircled statistics.

I rest my case.

In another, unrelated, unsourced news byte, CBS* has come under heavy criticism for attempting to milk the celebrity nudes scandal for their blog. The CBS spokeswoman made the following statement:

“We are in the business of creating caricatures and exaggerating deviations. We believe that the ridiculousness of the celebrity nude pictures hacking scandal has to be recorded for posterity. We are just a tiny spoke, a small blog in the scandal-mongering hinterlands of the World Wide Web. We believe that we are doing the right thing.”

CBS*: Caricatures by Shafali

5 Professions that Gandalf could’ve followed in the Modern Real World: A Caricature of Gandalf the Grey.

Here’s a grey caricature of Gandalf the Grey that I did a couple of weeks ago. Just some sketching in Photoshop. As I said earlier, I don’t do a lot of digital sketching…but every once in a while, when I want to take a short break, digital sketching comes in handy.

Gandalf the Grey – Without his hat, because he’s unable to decide which grey hat goes with his new grey robe.

Gandalf is a wizard of the Middle Earth. We first see him in The Hobbit (well, the chronology of the movies in which Gandalf’s character is played by Ian Mckellen, is different from the fictional chronology of the Lord of the Rings saga.) In fact, we see him almost right at the beginning of the book – when he meets Bilbo Baggins the short-statured but totally lovable hobbit, who is persuaded by Gandalf to join a group of dwarves who desperately needed his help to open a door guarded by the dragon.

Among all the characters that populate this famous trilogy (which gets rather verbose and on-the-verge-of-tears boring, at times,) I like Gandalf the best. He is multi-skilled and his personality multi-faceted.

In fact, if he was a real person instead, he could have chosen any of the following five highly remunerative and rewarding professions.

1. Gandalf the CEO of a Megabucks Corporation:

The guy is smart and sensible; on the inside he’s quite like the CEOs of today who specialize in getting others to do things that themselves couldn’t accomplish in ten lifetimes. Here’s an example.

He tries to recruit Bilbo for the team; when he doesn’t succeed, he sends the dwarves to Bilbo’s hole, and then attempts to get him onboard. Later, when he’s sure that Bilbo is sub-consciously sold on the idea, Gandalf leaves with the dwarves. When Bilbo joins them later, he thinks of it as his own decision. That’s exactly what CEOs do. They make us believe that we are the ones making our choices, when actually, they’ve already made the choice for us. Trust the judgment of a cynical caricaturist: a highly successful CEO of today lurks behind that grey beard and grayer robe.

2. Gandalf the Politician:

In today’s world, Gandalf would be a politician par-excellence. He understands the need to create a persona…thus the hat (not seen in this caricature, though), the robe, the muffler, and the gnarled stick. He is a slick talker and has the knack to disappear from the scene just when things begin to heat up. Remember the time when the dwarves and Bilbo meet those three trolls who’d have enjoyed a dwarves-roast, had Bilbo the blundering underdog of the story not blathered to save them? Where was Gandalf then? Guess what – He was away…working, sweating, finding information – for them…not for himself. Gandalf doesn’t do anything for himself does he? It’s all for the people he represents. And we are always expected to take his word for it.

While I don’t see his robe sweeping across the Eagle Rug in the Oval Office, I think he could’ve mentored Mitt Romney and Barack Obama and helped them burnish their political acumen.

If you don’t remember Mitt Romney, here’s the gentleman doing just the thing that Gandalf would’ve advised him against.

3. Gandalf the Consultant:

Gandalf would’ve really made his parents proud, had he chosen to work as a consultant. He comes across as an extremely risk-averse guy. You never see him putting a single penny of his into the adventures. He just rides along. He guides the adventurers with his knowledge and uses his contacts to ferret out useful information, but do you see him creating or manufacturing anything?

For a moment, assume that those adventurers didn’t have Gandalf to consult with; then what? Would they not reach their goal at all? Would they all sit like morons and do nothing. I don’t think so. In the good old times that existed before the now-ubiquitous-consultants arrived on the scene, the world was doing well. In fact, consultants are needed only when people and organizations get into businesses that they know nothing about, so thinks the caricaturist.

4. Gandalf the Shrink:

In this world of ours, Gandalf could’ve been a psychologist with a roaring practice. The LoR trilogy presents ample examples where Gandalf attempts to soothe crushed egos and bleeding hearts. (OK, not just a shrink, an agony aunt too.) He understands how the human mind works. In fact, he also understands how elves, dwarves, trolls, orcs, dragons and all the other creatures of the middle earth think. In fact, if he were real and he lived today, Sigmund Freud might’ve been his disciple – after all Freud could only claim that he knew about the machinations of the human mind, and especially how every mundane human act was powered by sexual desires.

I request those with a keen sense of observation, to compare the expressions of Sigmund Freud below to those of Gandalf’s above. You’ll see what I mean when I say that Gandalf could’ve been the coolest shrink ever.

I know what you are thinking.

5. Gandalf the Internet:

And yet, we couldn’t have an LoR without him, because he’s the guy who knows – and in the days of the yore, in the times of the middle earth, a man with knowledge was indeed handy. He was the middle earth counterpart of the Internet. The adventurers of the LoR trilogy had to just spit out a search-string and Gandalfoogle would whirr into action – spitting out results.

 

Caricature/Portrait of Selena Gomez – The Poster: Come and Get it while the Stars Dance.

This caricature of Selena Gomez is one of my recent creations. It’s part of a poster collection that I am working on.

Selena Gomez’s Caricature:

Actual Size: 12 inches by 18 inches.

 

5 Steps to Painting Caricatures and Portraits:

Digital painting is quite like oil-painting or color-pencil painting (an odd term to use but when you look at the stuff artists create with color-pencils, painting is the only term that really does justice to the magnificent works they produce.)

So what do I mean when I say Digital Painting is like any other painting?

Simply speaking…

1. Begin with a rough sketch that gives you the outlines.
2. Block in the basic colors-shades – the darks and the lights, paint in the background to get your edges clean and sharp.
3. Mix the colors so that you don’t see them as patches.
4. Detail the features (in the case of portrait/caricature painting.)
5. Finish by adding the highlights.

There was a time when I fretted about brushes – which to use for which purpose; but then decided that it was too confusing and so I now paint the whole image with one brush – it’s a natural brush that ships with Photoshop – and I just change the brush-sizes, which is pretty easy to do if you paint in Photoshop. If you use a tablet, program your strip to “[” for reducing the size and “]” for increasing it; or just push the corresponding keys on the keyboard.

Selena’s Caricature – A Recap of the Process:

Here are three important stages of Selena’s Caricature.

The Sketch:

I begin with a sketch. I always do; and that’s how I think it should be done – mainly because a sketch allows you to fix the important mistakes before you carry them over in the final work. It’s about risking 15 minutes of work vis-a-vis risking a couple of days worth of effort, so the decision is actually a no-brainer.

The sketch stage is where I stretch and squeeze her features to make her face look funny. I am not a distortionist, which means I exaggerate only to increase the funniness quotient of the image. In my opinion, a caricaturist must not just exaggerate certain features of a face, but to also exaggerate the main element of the subject’s personality. A strong man should look stronger, a haughty person, haughtier; a shabby person should look shabbier, and a cute woman, cuter. The last bit applies to Selena’s caricature. (“Evolution of a Caricaturist – How to Draw Caricatures” explains how a person’s features impact the overall impression cast by the person. The book also discusses Neoteny (that specific quality of the facial features that helps them make a face look child-like,) and describes how a feature must be exaggerated to enhance/reduce neoteny.)

Her hair, especially her ponytail in this image, makes her look cuter…or in other words, younger and childlike. Caricaturing her ponytail made sense to me, as she’s an icon for kids. Her eyes are rather small. Small eyes aren’t considered beautiful on a grownup woman’s face, but they do their part in making her look younger. When I did this caricature-portrait, I was asked why I didn’t caricature her frontal assets more. It’s almost a habit among caricaturists to make their women subjects look exceptionally well-endowed – frontally as well as dorsally. (I plead guilty of doing it once – but the subject was Pamela Anderson, whose silicon-enhanced, almost spherical assets have been the subject of much speculation and mirth. I only did it because it was Ms. Pamela Anderson, and her Pancho and Lefty really deserved to be noted.) In the case of Selena, such exaggeration would destroy the young and innocent look that I was trying to achieve.

As you can see, the sketch is fairly basic. In fact, it was done right there in Photoshop…and it didn’t take a lot of time. Until a couple of years ago, I used to sketch on paper, then scan the sketch and import it into Photoshop. I did this for years…but in the recent years, I’ve found myself doing a lot of my base-sketches (that I use as a base for painting) in Photoshop. It’s cleaner and quicker (changes can be made easily and you don’t need to waste your time scanning the sketches in)…so while I still draw a lot on paper, especially when the final artwork has to be done by hand; for my digital paintings, I now prefer a digital sketch.

The Intermediate:

The intermediate image that you see here, presents the color-coding. I’ve added the colors to the image and have tried to ensure that the light and dark colors are put where they belong. At this point, I am still focused on the face (neck-below it’s still an almost solid expanse.) The brush size is rather large and you can see the paint-strokes clearly. The eyes are almost done (I always sketch and paint the eyes first.) I chose a light background (specifically the sky/emerald blue combination) because it further reinforces the child/girl factor in the artwork. The sequined dress that she would wear in the final image, can merely be seen as a shadow in this image. At this point, I was struggling with the idea of leaving the dress out – too much of work, I thought. But then I caved in to the desire of making her look like a princess.

The Final:

The final image was the result of a lot of work and ended with my right wrist refusing to bend – it had been in the same position for almost the entire duration of the painting process – poised on the keyboard, helping me use the shortcuts. I am sure that art-schools have a special class on how to avoid the carpal tunnel syndrome.

I really don’t have a lot to say for the final look – except that the hair took a lot of time, so did the dress (on a different note – why women wear terrible dresses with bells and shells sewn on them?) I added finishing touches to the eyes, the nose, the teeth, the neck too…but that was the easier part. As you can see…the sketch makes her look a lot younger, but after I watched her recent video, I thought that it would be a good idea to introduce a little maturity to the face (slight squaring of the jaw-line and the slightly naughty look in her eyes.) Finally, my reviewer OKed it and signed the proverbial release form.

Here’s a closeup of the eyes:

About Selena Gomez – The Actor/Singer who’s won the hearts of millions:

Here’s a shorter version of an already short biography of a very young Selena Gomez.

The actor-singer was born in 1992 in Texas, and she did her first role in Barney and Friends, a television serial, when she was just ten. Her first film was Spy Kids 3D: Gameover in which she did a cameo. She also appeared as Mikayla in three episodes of Disney’s serial Hannah Montana, but her real success came from her role in Wizards of Waverly Place, after which she was also compared with the now incomparable Miley Cyrus.

Somewhere around 2009, Gomez began focusing on music in which she got her first major success in 2010 with the song “Tell me Something I don’t know.” The last four years have been a very busy time for Selena.

On the Personal Front:
Selena Gomez’s dad was a Mexican. While the details of her arrival in the US evade me, she has herself confessed of her fears and wondered what would’ve become of her, if she had remained in Mexico. (It made me wonder too…) Her dad had left her mom and her mom struggled to meet the expenses of the household. (I’ve repeated this story so often that I now wonder if there are many in Hollywood who come from a two-parent family.)

Random Bits:

• Selena considers Bruno Mars as her idol.
• In 2008, she was named the UNICEF’s spokesperson for a UNICEF campaign for kids.
• She is in a relationship with Justin Bieber…but then what does that red rose from Tommy Chiabra signify?

Currently…
Her Solo Debut Album “Stars Dance” has been doing well. Her single “Come and Get it,” became a top 10 hit and this is why I thought that the poster must mention it.

Caricature – President Obama Crowns himself King on Cover of The American Spectator.

Folks,

This month, I had the opportunity to work on a very interesting assignment – President Obama Crowning himself King 🙂  My regular visitors know that I’ve done at least three Obama Caricatures in black and white (you can find them in the Gallery here,) but honestly, none drip humor the way this does.

Let me start by presenting the artwork.

Cover Art – The American Spectator – April 2014 Issue

If you are a conservative and you don’t subscribe to The American Spectator, you can explore it here.

Now the story behind the creation 🙂

Drawing and Painting President Obama’s Caricature

The Assignment Brief

The Assignment Brief was very clear – Barack Obama crowning himself King, wearing a robe, and could be shown admiring himself in mirror – perhaps a half-figure drawing, and on a solid color background.

When you illustrate for magazines, you walk the tight-rope between design and art. The constraints are important because they set the boundaries for your artwork. So you always begin with the constraints – unlike in Fine Art, where you begin with a concept and allow your artwork to evolve and define its own boundaries.

So the first thing to do was, visualize Obama on the cover – with a solid color background. The solid background made it essential that I visualized the entire color palette within the main figure.

Balancing the Colors

Check out the play of primary colors. The wine-red velvet of the robe and the crown; the golden-yellow of the mirror, the crown, and the tooth – were two warm colors (Red/Magenta, and Yellow)- To neutralize the heat of these two colors, I needed the third primary (Cyan/blue,) and so I decided on a blue tie and offered to paint the Eagle rug from the oval office, under his feet.

That’s how the colors played out, the black/gray/white – the neutrals notwithstanding 🙂

The Head/Body Ratio

Also note the head/body ratio. In this particular caricature, the expression of glee on the president’s face was the most important element of humor. The body was unimportant – purely a hygiene factor, necessary to define the composition. This is why I went  for a very high head/body ratio – but I kept the hands big – they had to be, to hold such a huge crown.

Face-Details/Closeup

Here’s a close-up of the Caricature of President Obama.

President Obama crowns himself King – Closeup – The American Spectator Magazine – April 2014.

A Few things to note:

As you can see, I added a few ideas to the original brief. It helps to discuss your ideas with the client. Sometimes, your ideas may be tossed out of the window, because they were too “morbid,” or they needed to be “watered down.” Here are a few things that I added – the diamond stud, the gold tooth, the eagle rug, the flag, and if you can find him – a tiny but smooth operator.

The diamond stud in Obama’s ear and the gold-tooth, both are affectations of the rich and they help strengthen the “King” in him. I worked with Obama’s younger and more enthusiastic look – not the older, grayer one…reverse aging is impossible, but in its impossibility it exaggerates the impact of the caricature. I had to do some research on his hands. The color, the veins, and also his wedding band (couldn’t have missed that.) I thought that a crown with a flag would look good too.

If you’d like to learn how to draw caricatures in a methodical way – check out “Evolution of a Caricaturist – How to Draw Caricatures” on Amazon.  

Among all kinds of illustrations, caricatures evoke the highest response from the audience. A caricature achieves this by weaving the spell of humorous likeness around its subject.

This book establishes a logical method to harness the creative madness that results in caricatures. The author calls it the “Feature Frame Method” and illustrates how this method can be used to selectively exaggerate every facial feature.

Evolution of a Caricaturist helps you master the art of caricature drawing by presenting around 75 artworks and technical drawings, and then analyzing the features of more than 30 celebrity faces.

Caricature/Cartoon – Tyrion Lannister of Game of Thrones with his battle axe!

Presenting the Caricature of Tyrion Lannister of  Game of Thrones.  Peter Dinklage who played the role of the dwarf in Game of Thrones, won the Emmy and the Golden Globe award in 2011 for his role of Tyrion Lannister, and emerged a giant among actors.

This caricature just happened. The Bookface Caricature Contest on Facebook was on and for some strange reason this generally contest-averse artist felt like drawing him, but not before I had procrastinated enough to have missed the deadline. So this caricature didn’t make it to the contest and I have a feeling that among all those beautifully colored renditions, this wouldn’t have turned any heads so whatever happened, happened for the good.

Knowledge and Cunning are my most lethal weapons!

Tyrion Lannister is one of the important characters in Game of Thrones.  In fact, among the three siblings, he is the most intelligent and also the most cunning, but his family (father Tywin, sister Cersei, and  brother Jaime) don’t like him a lot. The reason can be found in Tyrion’s knowledge of things best kept hidden under a shroud of mystery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrion_Lannister_(A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire)

About Game of Thrones:

Game of Thrones is a serial drama aired on HBO. It is based on a series of Fantasy novels written by R. R. Martin. The fourth Season of Game of Thrones is scheduled to air on April 6th, 2014. I’ve watched the severely censored version of the first two seasons, but not the third. In my opinion, the censored version loses a lot of its charm because the censoring makes many events appear totally disjointed. Yet, every important character leaves an indelible mark on the audience, and I think that’s what makes an epic. I cannot ever forget Cersei’s single-minded devotion to her son, Khaleesi’s evolution as the leader of her husband’s tribe, or Tyrion’s cunning maneuvering combined with his self-deprecating witticisms.

Find tons of information on it here and here.

How to Draw the Caricature of Tyrion Lannister:

Tyrion Lannister is different from other characters. He is a dwarf who has been derided for his looks all his childhood. Even his father doesn’t think a lot of him. His sister favors her twin and his older brother Jaime over Tyrion, and in fact takes Jaime as her lover. Tyrion Lannister, however, is also a very intelligent man who has the ability to think ahead and plan, something that both Cersei and Jaime lack. A lot more humane than his siblings, Tyrion is also a philosopher of sorts.

Caricaturing such a multi-faceted character is an uphill task. While his face has certain characteristic features (his small nose with flared nostrils, his heavy brow ridge etc.,) I didn’t want to exaggerate the features so much that they interfered with the intelligence and cunning that shines in his eyes. The posture in the caricature is imaginary. It shows him just before he makes his final move. The tension in his arms, his stance, and the look on his face – all work together.

As the readers of Evolution will be able to judge, I used the Feature Frame Method to exaggerate the shape of his face, his brow-ridge, and his lips, but I limited the exaggeration to contain the personality of the subject.

A Nuance:

Note that I’ve added the battle-axe (his favorite weapon) in his right hand. Being a south-paw, he would hold the weapon in his right hand only while he is thinking. Just before he strikes, he’d transfer it to his left hand.

Thank You 🙂

I’d also like to add a quick Thank You Note for everyone who has bought and/or recommended Evolution of a Caricaturist – How to Draw Caricatures. Evolution has been growing slowly but steadily – just the way a book should. As I’ve mentioned in the Feb Issue of Draw to Smile, I believe that if you find the book useful, you’ll tell your friends about it – and this is exactly how I’d like this book to grow – in your hearts and with your love. Thank you, my dear readers.

Caricature/Cartoon – Jay Leno of The Tonight Show on NBC Retires.

Believe it or not, until the time of creating this caricature, I was completely oblivious of the fact that much before Jay Leno‘s magnificent chin was seen and admired on The Tonight Show, it was seen in Hollywood movies. Recently, a friend spoke about his impending retirement and I thought that I must caricature him, chin and all, to bid him farewell. It was then that in order to present you with his power-packed nano-biography that I went web-scavenging for information and came back leno-wiser.

Here’s Jay Leno, as seen by this caricaturist.

Handing over…reluctantly?

Jay Leno’s Nano Biography

Here’s his anti-leno-chin biography for my esteemed reader.

He was born in 1950 (April 28, if you want to send him a Birthday card,) in New York. His parents’ parents had immigrated to the US from Scotland (his mom) and Italy (his dad.) His first brush with the stage happened in 1973, when he started a comedy club in his college. However, Leno’s big break came with his appearance on The Tonight Show that at the time was hosted by Johnny Carson (started 1962 – ended 1992). What I didn’t know and many non-American readers may not know, is that Jay Leno worked in some movies too. However, most of Leno’s earnings come from his Standup comedy shows, especially in Vegas.

About The Tonight Show

1987 onwards, Jay Leno started stepping into the shoes of Carson and then five long years later, he replaced him. Many expected the honor to go to David Letterman. It’s widely speculated that this didn’t happen by chance, and a journalist Mr. Carter wrote a book “The Late Shift” (which eventually became a movie,) on this specific incident. If you go by the plot of the novel/movie, Leno’s success should be attributed to her manager Helen Kushnick.

About The Jay Leno Show

For a very long time, things were hunky-dory but then about four years ago Leno’s contract with NBC ended  and another gentleman Conan O’Brien took over The Tonight Show show from him. Leno remained with NBC and started a new show called The Jay Leno show. However, unlike what happened with Two-and-a-Half Men, where Charlie Sheen’s departure and Ashton Kutcher’s arrival worked well for the show, both The Tonight Show and The Jay Leno Show didn’t do well. In a year, Leno was back on the show and O’Brien was given a huge payout ($33 Million, which some say is Leno’s yearly package) to leave the Tonight Show. This however, didn’t help The Tonight Show re-attain its previous glory.

About Jay Leno’s Retirement

Leno’s retirement is imminent and he will be replaced by Jimmy Fallon, yet everyone doesn’t believe that the transition would be smooth.

Read more about Jay Leno’s retirement here.

Interesting Facts about Jay Leno

• Jay Leno’s got a massive chin, which is known as the Habsburg Jaw as it was first seen as a recurring theme in the portraits of the Habsburg royal family. The Habsburg jaw was considered common in the European royal families. You can read more about it here.
• Leno was never a good student. His best grades were a “C”.
• Leno does 1 standup comedy act every two days (in addition to The Tonight Show.)
• Leno’s pictures suggest that he is left-handed. He doesn’t drink or smoke.
• He has 190 (!) vehicles!
• Leno is married and the couple has decided not to have children. (Other notable celebrities who’ve decided not to have kids are: George Clooney, Cameron Diaz, and others. Check out this link.

Art Note for Artists/Readers of Evolution of a Caricaturist:

Notice the following in Jay Leno’s caricature above.

Jay Leno’s chin juts out and drops down. It isn’t just a long and heavy chin that dips down vertically, it’s a chin that projects out (quite like the slide on which children play,) and unlike most other long chins, the elongation starts at his lower lip. He has a good head of hair and his hair falls over his forehead. I was looking for a shape in his face, and the shape that I found did justice to his profile, was of a crescent moon. Note that I have exaggerated nothing else. If you refer to the book, you’ll see that I’ve applied the rule of exaggerating only those features that are characteristic (the hair and the chin) and that deviate from the standard. Here’s a FREE pdf outlining what “Evolution of a Caricaturist – How to Draw Caricatures” contains.

“Evolution of a Caricaturist – How to Draw Caricatures”…almost there :)

“Evolution of a Caricaturist” will become available on the Kindle eBook Store sometime this week.

This book has evolved considerably since its advent on the Knol Platform about two years ago. The number of illustrations/artworks/method-drawings have more than doubled. I’ve revised the book to ensure that its examples are more effective. I have also included analyses of the facial features of about three-dozen celebrities. The book bears my brand of humor, so if you enjoy my verbal caricatures, there’s a good chance that you’ll find that the book not only helps you learn how to caricature, but also entertains you.

“Evolution of a Caricaturist” is organized into 14 chapters. It begins by establishing the basic concepts of caricature-drawing and then introduces and explains the Feature Frame Method for caricaturing the different facial features. Chapters 5 to 11 in the book discuss the different facial features and illustrate how they may be caricatured using the Feature Frame Method. The last three chapters help you complete the picture and present a story through your caricatures 🙂

COMING TO THE KINDLE STORE THIS WEEK 🙂

I want to thank everyone who has signed up for the announcement. All of you’ve been a great source of constant motivation to me. Over the course of last three months, some of you have subscribed more than once – Thank you for that. You’ve inspired me to put in my most constructive thoughts in this book.

If you haven’t signed up for the announcement, and would like me to inform you about its arrival on the Kindle Store, please visit the   the web-page of the book “Evolution of a Caricaturist – How to Draw Caricatures” to sign-up. You can also sign-up using the form given in the sidebar.

If you download Kindle books regularly, you probably own a Kindle device or have a Kindle Reader installed in your touch device/computer.  However, I have collected the following links to help those who don’t read Kindle eBooks but would like to make a beginning with my book  🙂 The Kindle Reader is a FREE download.

1. The Universal Kindle App for iPad and iPhone
2. Kindle App for reading “Evolution of a Caricaturist” on Mac
3. Kindle App for Android Tablets and Smartphones on Google Play (the Android Store)
4. Kindle App for reading “Evolution of a Caricaturist” Windows 8 Smartphones
5. Kindle App for Personal Computers running Windows 7, Vista, XP
6. Kindle App for BlackBerry: Please visit amazon.com/kindlebb in your BlackBerry browser to download.

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas with the Colorful Artworks of “Bigsaw Xmas”

My Dear Visitors,

Let me share with you my favorite Art Assignment ever 🙂

It’s Bigsaw Xmas! It’s got Santa, Santa’s elves, Snowman, Snowmom, Reindeers (Rudolph too,) Snow, Pets, Holly, Mistletoe, and everything else that just builds the festive mood.

If you like picture-puzzles don’t think twice – just go to the App Store, find Bigsaw Xmas and download it into your iPad…and the biggest news ever? You don’t have to pay to play…rather you can play to pay and open all the puzzles in the game!

BIGSAW is perhaps one of the most exciting picture puzzle ever – and if you haven’t already discovered it, here’s the link for you to download it FREE for your iPad on the Apple App Store.

FREE Download

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bigsaw-xmas-go-beyond-jigsaw/id769951884?mt=8

Here’s a Screenshot from my iPad…

I’d like to thank everyone who motivated me to create these illustrations. I think they are some of my favorite artworks. Oh, and if you liked these, you can find more colorful illustrations for kids in Bigsaw Classic and Bigsaw Designer.

Bigsaw Classic – Download Free on your iPad – Play and Open all Pictures!

Bigsaw Designer – Create and Manage up to 100 Bigsaw Albums with up to 10,000 custom picture puzzles!

While Bigsaw Classic offers you 64 picture-puzzles that you can open by playing and earning Bigsaw Coins, Bigsaw Designer doesn’t just offer 100 pictures in 10 Bigsaw Albums (one of them is for kids and another comprises caricatures) it gives you awe-inspiring ability to create and manage 100 custom albums that can contain 10,000 images of your own!

If you are a Photographer, I heartily recommend Bigsaw Designer to you. Make your photographs/artworks interactive and play with them.

Wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year!

Caricatures of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity for the American Spectator Magazine.

A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to caricature two most talked about talk-show hosts of America: Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Most of my readers are aware of the pains I take to hide my ability to travel through time. But as they say, it’s impossible for talent to stay hidden for long. Someone must’ve blabbed about my ability to time-travel, to the American Spectator Magazine. They hired me and my time-machine to transport Limbaugh and Hannity into the past, dress them up as the nobility of those times, and transform them into pamphleteers!

While I usually don’t like to take passengers on my trips into the past, I couldn’t refuse this particular offer. After all, these two distinguished gentlemen have been striving hard to make America see the pluses of Conservative thought. I also knew that they’ve each got about 15 million viewers of their talk-shows, and if only 1% of their viewers thought that they looked awesome in their retro-gear, and decided to hire me as their fashion-designer, I’d be famous too.

So this caricaturist hauled up this precious cargo to the past, dressed ’em up in wigs’n frills, made ’em stand in front of a printing press, handed ’em those pamphlets to pose with – and shot this picture. Then she got ’em back, took out her wand and used the obliviate spell to wipe their memories of this event. (This is why they’d deny ever accompanying me on this trip!)

Here’s a snapshot of the magazine on my desk 🙂

Click for Larger View.

I know that you’d like to see the details of their dresses (especially, if you were to hire me as your fashion-designer,) so here’s the closeup.

Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity

Both these gentlemen have their websites too. Check them out at:

• Rush Limbaugh
• Sean Hannity

I’ll return with more next week, when Bigsaw Classic arrives on the App Store 🙂 In the meantime, download and play with Bigsaw Designer – a custom picture puzzle-making machine for your iPad.

Color Caricature of Tom Hanks – as Captain Phillips becomes a box-office hero!

Tom Hanks is one of the finest actors of Hollywood and when the caricaturist heard about his fabulous performance in the movie Captain Phillips, she just had to paint him.

It’s true that I didn’t like him as Robert Langdon in Angels and Demons, and it’s also true that he looks a lot older than the actual Captain Phillips; but we can’t fault him with that, can we? He doesn’t get his wrinkles pulled and pushed, and he looks his age, which is just fine. He isn’t a woman who is compelled to look ten years younger all her life. He is a man, and men have the right to look their age.

With that, I put a lid on this discussion that reeks of gender-bias; and btw, gender-bias has nothing to do with Captain Phillips, Alabama (the Maersk ship – the location where the hijacking drama played out,) or the Pirates of Somalia. (Come to think of it – neither the crew nor the pirates had women among them!)

Here’s a slightly younger Tom Hanks looking somewhat professorial and Langdonish.

Tom Hanks, Robert Langdon, Captain Phillips…all in one!

I’ll keep this post short and not burden you with the details of how I painted this caricature. I’m going to be slightly busy the coming week (Yes, I’ve been invited to Atlantis once again! Don’t let jealousy tear you apart, my friend. I AM the chosen one.)

If you want to see how Tom Hanks looks in black and white, check out this link.

Caricature – Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp…in Color!

Friends,

I’ve been a busy bee this whole month. Other than working on certain graphic design assignments I was coloring seven of my black and white caricatures. One of these was a caricature of Charlie Chaplin as the tramp, which I did two years ago. Here is the color painting that I did recently.

 

Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp – Color Caricature – Digital Painting in Photoshop CS6. Print Size of the image: 12 inches x 12 inches at 300 dpi.

I know that you don’t remember the original black and white caricature…so I’m reproducing it here.

Charlie Chaplin as The Tramp.

The Process of Painting Charlie Chaplin:

While there isn’t a long how-to for this, I can quickly summarize the painting process for those interested.

I worked with a scan of the drawing in the background, because I didn’t want to lose the story nor work on the overall proportions once again. There was a time when I used to paint the character first and then move on to painting the background. I don’t know when and how I moved to working on the basic hues of the background first, but I did and it really made the process faster and the artworks more interesting. When I paint the backgrounds, I try to bring different and often unexpected colors together and then blend them in to represent something that connects with the subject of the caricature.  In my opinion, a caricature shouldn’t replicate anything exactly… it should always attempt to exaggerate and surprise – and you can surprise by any departure from the expected – including the colors that you use in your caricatures.

I must confess that I was running against a deadline and I was hit by this evil idea of removing the flute-playing mouse and the rose from the caricature to save time, but I just couldn’t bring myself to destroy the spirit of the artwork, so I went ahead and painted them in 🙂

Painting the Expression of Charlie Chaplin’s Face:

You must’ve noted the slight change in the expression. I first went with the earlier expression of hopelessness and acceptance, but I then had this urge to change it into an expression that shows him dazed and slightly disgusted with what he was…a tramp! To achieve this, I pushed the brows higher and painted his lips in way that they appeared pursed.  In the color image given above, I’ve cut out some of the background details from the actual picture (see the picture below for details.)

About the cracks in the wall, the bricks, and the graffiti:

Most of it is self-explanatory. Where do you find a tramp? On a pavement, against a wall that’s peeling off. The oranges and the reds symbolize the rage within. The rage of being trapped into the persona of a tramp. If I were Charlie Chaplin, I’d not want to be remembered not only as the character I played, but also as the person I was. In his case, the success of his character “the tramp” overshadowed everything else for him.

details of 12″x12″ square.

I guess that’s all I have on Charlie Chaplin.

Now, it’s time for a break so…

If you own an iPad, check out Triangle Tap on the App Store. Triangle Tap is a Shape building Puzzle game in which you use triangles to build the shapes in the puzzles.  If you like Tangram puzzles but are looking for something new, here’s the icon to help you recognize the game on the App Store.

Click to Download Triangle Tap on your iPad.

Brad Pitt’s Color Portrait

Presenting the portrait of Brad Pitt, the guy who once made women swoon as Achilles in “Troy“, who made death appear deliciously attractive in “Meet Joe Black“, and who mystified us as a reverse-aging human in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

This portrait however, is of the Brad Pitt of today and it catches him looking older and a lot more distinguished. I was commissioned to do this portrait by a Brad Pitt Fan, and I didn’t have a choice in the matter of selecting the look, or I’d have picked Joe Black or Achilles. The requirement clearly stated that it should be a portrait of Brad Pitt of recent- and not yester-years.

About this Portrait:

This portrait has been painted in Photoshop. The actual size of the painting is 16.5 Inches x 25 Inches (Poster-size).

Here’s a close-up of the face.

A Portrait?!

Before this caricaturist was a caricaturist, for many long years, she was a portrait artist. Actually, any caricaturist worth his salt should be a good portrait artist too, because if you didn’t know the rules of facial/physical proportions, you wouldn’t know how to break them – and you can’t be a caricaturist without knowing which rules to break. In fact, most artists of all kinds begin their journey by drawing what they see around them, and only later they begin to experiment.

More later,

PS: View the caricature of Brad Pitt as Achilles here.

Caricature/Cartoon – The Witch, the Oracle, the Fortune-teller – they color our world.

This is…well, a sort of fan-toon art. Though I wasn’t consciously aiming to draw anyone when I drew her, I had just finished reading “Johnny & Marian” by B. G. Hope, and I think on a sub-conscious level, I was influenced by the characters in the book. You see, in this book there’s this witch, Samantha. She isn’t outright evil, but she enjoys casting her magical spells on unsuspecting men and women, making them exchange their bodies. While B.G. Hope’s novellas “Johnny & Marian” and “Ciaran and Harith” tell the story of Samantha’s victims and not of Samantha (a story that I wish would one day be told,) it’s Samantha who caught my imagination and made me draw this caricature. I won’t be surprised if I was under a spell the whole time I was drawing.

Ladies and Gentleman,
I present the caricature of the Witch, the Oracle, the Fortune-teller – inspired by Samantha the Witch, who actually is a lot more modern than this lady here – so in the spirit of “Mind your Language”…”a thousand apologies.”

They’ll get what they want…and deserve!
(Actual Size: 7″x9″)

If you are interested in unconventional urban fantasy please visit the following two links and find the novellas on Smashwords.

• Johnny & Marian
• Ciaran and Harith

The author B. G. Hope doesn’t blog, but she sometimes writes on her friend BarbWire’s blog here.

 

Cartoon of a Delhi Girl… all buttoned up!

I always thought that my fashion sense left a lot to be desired, but then this lady who entertained the whole male and the cartoonist female population of the Delhi Metro about a week ago, gave me a superiority complex.

Now anyone who knows anything about EZs (erogenous zones) would not have designed those trousers, unless they were meant to do a specific job, which is flag down people looking for a specific kind of…should we say, gratification? While a tiny pattern on the fly would be a subtle use of EZs, those three huge Mother-of-Pearl buttons glowed like a neon signboard that screamed for attention. “Look here. NOW!”

Here’s the lady whose buttons forced me to draw her. Note that the exaggerations are minimal.

All Buttoned up!

The story of these EZ-flaunting dresses begins with those aesthetics-challenged dress-designers who bunked their fashion design classes, and who let their erogenous designs loose on Janpath (the fashion-mecca for exploding lower middle class of Delhi.) These EZ-highlighting designs are then picked up by the young girls who’ve just arrived in the city of their dreams, and who want to get that hep Delhi Girl look asap.

This lady, however, has only worn a pair of trousers that would make men get fixated on her…well, buttons. I’d put it only a notch above tight belly button displaying tank-tops, or the low-rise, edge-of-panty on display, denims. In fact, I found myself appreciating this lady’s no-nonsense, direct, and to-the-point approach of directing the viewer’s attention to stuff that really matters.

Another lady whose cartoon will not be published here (because this is a family blog,) would win the “Accident-Causers of Delhi crown” without batting an eyelash. She too made me think better of myself. You see, I am very, very, very absent-minded – but I’ve never gone shopping without wearing a lower garment!

50 pairs of eyes that were anchored to their delectable target, had helped me spot this lady in one of the busiest markets in Delhi. Men of all ages and callings had their eyes fixed on the rump of a young woman wearing a canary yellow shirt that barely covered her posterior assets. As she swung her hips, a flash of black confirmed that she had her panties on (I confess, I had my doubts.)

I saw people slowing down their bikes and cars to get a better look; I saw even women doing a double-take because they couldn’t believe their eyes, and to put the icing on the cake, I also saw the happy-as-a-pup-with-an-icecream-tub guard who had the opportunity to get a close-up view because the absent-minded lady who had forgotten her lower garment home, decided to go into a shop that was on the first floor. May God bless that yellow canary whose bottom brought so much happiness to everyone in that market.

But then there’s an underside to everything – a dark cloud with every silver lining. That day, people did bump into one another and I suppose some bikers did too. I’m sure that if our canary had displayed her assets on a busy road, she’d have dispatched a few to their permanent abodes in heaven.

Delhi indeed is a dangerous city!

– Reporting from Delhi,

The Caricaturist.

Caricature/Cartoon – Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter – the Perfect Cannibal.

Cannibalism evokes in us a morbid curiosity about what could make a person eat another. It throws us into the dark alleys of a pervert’s mind, a strange and mysterious place that we don’t understand, and that makes us feel ashamed of not wanting to leave. We are drawn in – enthralled in the sticky tentacles and the poisonous fangs of a mysterious evil.

Hannibal Lecter – the Cannibal who riveted us through his checkered personality in The Silence of the Lambs has always given me a slip, until now. I would still say that Anthony Hopkins cannot be caricatured to look ridiculous. You can caricature him to look scary and even evil, but making him look ridiculous, is almost impossible. I prefer my caricatures to bring mirth through mild ridicule – I don’t like to make them ugly, gory, dark, or evil. While I try to stay true to the basic premise of caricaturing, which is – exaggerate the prominent…I’d rather not exaggerate moles and black-heads, or stained teeth, or even the evil, blood-curdling look that turns the suave Anthony Hopkins into a slick and nasty Cannibal called Hannibal.

Ladies and Gentlemen, with all humility, I present Anthony Hopkins in his most memorable role of Hannibal Lecter, feasting upon a freshly fried brain.

 

I think there’s a bit of superimposition of personalities in the caption – I’d like to believe that the right-brained are more interesting than the left-brained and so Mr. Lecter must find the brain of the right-brainers tastier. Something that only he can confirm, and I have a feeling that he doesn’t read my blog.

About Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins

He was born on the New Year’s Eve of 1938, in Wales. Baby Hopkins wasn’t really the brightest kid in the class (the traditional education system doesn’t love the right-brained.) The boy preferred to draw and play music, which obviously aren’t traits that mark the bright kids of the world. He discovered his love for acting when he was a teenager and promptly decided to do the right thing, which is enroll himself at a college of Dance and Drama. Hopkins is a believer and he denounces atheism. He won his Oscar for his role of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.

About Hannibal Lecter

Hannibal Lecter was first unleashed on the world in 1981, when Thomas Harris wrote his novel “Red Dragon”. The four novel series, “Red Dragon,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “Hannibal,” and “Hannibal Rising” has been made into the film-series that we know so well.

The gist of it is that Hannibal had a terrible childhood and his sister was hacked, boiled, and eaten – this left an indelible impression on young Hannibal’s mind – one thing led to another and Hannibal became a Cannibal.

• Here’s an excellent recap of Hannibal’s life and a psychological analysis of his personality.
• Another more clinical viewpoint can be read here.

What sets the Great Anthony Hopkins Apart from other Hollywood stars?

Anthony Hopkins is different from all other Hollywood Actors because he pursues perfection in his chosen profession. He prepares for his roles beforehand. He memorizes his lines and then delivers them first-time-right. He doesn’t believe in rehearsing his act. And… listen in, he keeps his memory in shape by memorizing poetry and plays.

That’s all for now – until I return with some more caricatures 🙂

A Funny Man with a Funny Nose…

… who doesn’t care what the world thinks about him and his nose?

An Awesome nose on an awesome face…tra…la…la…

What’s his story?

Who is he?

1. An IT entrepreneur?
2. A PE Teacher in a school?
3. A standup comic?
4. A plastic surgeon?
5. A pizza-delivery guy?
6. A terrorist behind a mask of amiability?
7. An adult-movie star?
8. A budding politician?
9. A pedophile?
10. ???