Caricature: Johnny Depp as Tonto – Pen and Ink Drawing – Lock down Creativity.

At the outset, I’ve not watched The Lone Ranger and it’s not for want of trying. Honestly, it’s a tough movie to watch, so it doesn’t surprise me that it won the Golden Raspberry  Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel award and Johnny Depp was nominated for the worst actor award too.

I’ll begin with my expression of Tonto 🙂 (click the image for a bigger view.)

Pen and Ink Rendering of Tonto – Caricature Drawing – 9″x12″ Strathmore Acid Free Paper.

So who’s this Tonto?

In the movie The Lone Ranger, Tonto is the Lone Ranger’s companion and the story’s narrator. If you are interested in western movies and haven’t watched The Lone Ranger, which was a box-office flop, you can read the plot here.

Dead Birds as head-dresses have been around

Dead Birds as Head-dresses have been there in tribes around the world. In a tribe in Kenya, certain rituals require that dead-birds are strung to the head-dresses of the young boys who’ve killed them, in some American Indian tribes, dead birds (including crows and eagles) were worn on the head – and there was a spiritual significance of it.

Tonto’s look & the “I am Crow” painting

Tonto’s look is attributed to a painting “I am Crow” by Artist Kirby Sattler.  Please visit the link to view the painting – and you’ll simply love it. Honestly, I loved Kirby Sattler’s rendering a lot more than the look of Tonto, but then the character of Tonto isn’t that of a serious mature man – it is that of a follower and a slightly funny narrator.

About the dead bird being live in my caricature:

I love them alive. I like to believe that the subject of Kirby Sattler’s “I am crow” communicated with the birds at a spiritual level – and felt them to a point where he felt that he was one of them. When I had sketched Bette Midler as Winifred “Winnie” Sanderson, she too had a live crow on her head.

Caption in reference to her recent tweet (May 16, 2013) about the IRS Raid on the Tea Party office.

A diversion to Game of Thrones

Incidentally, I was also reminded of Bran Stark “is” a three-eyed raven – and who can fly about by transporting his spirit into the crow. Since I wasn’t too keen on Bran Stark (mostly because his face reminded me of a real-live witch,) so I drew someone else – a  Mr. Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister – my top fav among the GoT characters. Here’s he for you.

Knowledge and Cunning are my most lethal weapons!

Tonto and the live crow of my caricature

In my part-caricature of Tonto, Tonto is in disagreement with the bird. While the bird has seen more and traveled farther than Tonto, Tonto being human suffers from the I-know-best syndrome. Thus, the bird and Tonto are forever arguing.

Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow & Tonto obviously don’t see eye-to-eye.

Why?

Here’s the answer. Don’t you think Jack Sparrow looks rather peachy when compared to Tonto?

Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow – Actual Print Size of the Image: 12 inches x 12 inches at 300 dpi.

I hope you liked my rendering of Tonto and enjoyed this post.
More later 🙂

Advertisement

Half Million Views bring a Color Caricature of Captain Sparrow a.k.a Johnny Depp to this blog!

Sometime today, my blog shall cross the 500,000 views mark. I don’t think it has changed anything for me. I still got up the same side of bed, did the usual chores, had my usual breakfast…nothing really changed. Yet, in the cyber world it’s customary to celebrate such milestones. While I’m not a traditional person (if I were, I won’t be an artist, would I?) I don’t mind celebrating this specific event, especially because I have just the right caricature to celebrate it.

My first caricature on this blog was of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. It was a Black-and-White caricature (as most of my caricatures were in those days,) and I think that it got its share of attention. Fortunately for me, it was one of the caricatures that I painted for my recent assignment.

So here he is – Captain Sparrow and his two little mice – they look rather fetching in color, don’t they?

Actual Print Size of the Image: 12 inches x 12 inches at 300 dpi.

If you want to check out the black-and-white version, here it is:

Where is the cheese…Captain Sparrow?

Painting Johnny Depp’s Caricature – Deviations from the Earlier Drawing:

You go first 🙂 What are the differences?

Ok. I am naive. I don’t know how to create those polls. But the point is: I changed a lot of things as I painted Captain Sparrow’s Caricature.

The call-outs were thrown out because they would take the viewer’s attention away from his face, which I obviously wouldn’t like. I added some details to his lone earring, because it looked too plain, and I added that scar on his cheekbone because I had missed it earlier. I added those locks of hair on the left because I thought that the earlier caricature looked too symmetrical. Caricatures look funnier when they aren’t symmetrical. (Do you know that facial symmetry is one of the most important parameters of beauty in humans. According to Reader’s Digest, Denzel Washington is supposed to have the most symmetrical face among men, and he indeed is (was?) handsome.) Johnny Depp is another actor who whose face is considered to be extremely symmetrical.

Note the lock of the hair on the left balances his earring on the right, and yet, both help introduce funniness into the caricature. I kept the mice because they just blend into the character of Captain Sparrow. The butterfly ornament now has colored gemstones (they remind us of his gait and his feminine mannerisms.)

More in my next post 🙂