Caricature – A Happy Gypsy: Pen and Ink Work.

When I am most anxious, I take refuge in drawing. It helps reduce anxiety, and to some extent, mental anguish and sadness too. However, the output of art created when you are anxious, comes out looking pretty random. Sometimes, I get a glimpse of hell in the soul of a sinner and I draw that; at other times, I see light at the end of the tunnel  and I draw a happy image.

The following pen and ink caricature of a happy gypsy man happened because I had to wait in an office. It helped me fill my empty minutes that could’ve come-together, gathered force, and spiraled into a twister capable of plunging me into an ocean of anxiety. Simply speaking, this gypsy guy’s laughter helped me stay happy.

Pen and Ink Caricature of a Gypsy man laughing.

Stay Happy!

I’ll publish the darker ones too…but only after I am sure that looking at them will not make me anxious…for now, it’s the gypsy guy.

And he reminds me of another gypsy…Sir Isaac Newton. More on that later.

Meanwhile, all iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners can become caricaturists by tapping/clicking here and downloading the Free Caricature Maker App Toonsie Roll on the App Store.

Icon Toonsie Roll - Caricature App for iPhone and iPad - create funny caricatures of everyone - Toon 'em all!

Toonsie Roll – Toon ’em All!

 

 

 

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Pencil Knight – An Addiction that doesn’t Kill…keeps the Caricaturist away.

The caricaturist was gone again.

She wasn’t thawing in a polar bear’s belly, nor was she whisked off to Atlantis; and no, she wasn’t invited by her double in the parallel dimension either.

She was with Pencil Knight.

I won’t say a lot more for the next 36 hours, but here’s a picture of the gentleman I am talking about.

Pencil Knight - a Tilting Finger Balancing Game for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

That look in his eyes…oooooh…
That smile on his lips…mmmmm…ah!

Now the question.

In 36 hours you’ll know the right answer. (Hint: All the analytical reader has to do to arrive at the right answer is, find the clues hidden in this post)  In any event, I’ll be posting again…tomorrow 🙂

Color Caricature/Cartoon – Keith Richards: Charged-up and Ready to Go!

Mr. Keith Richards (the guitar-strumming, auto-biography writing rock-star, who has inspired many caricaturists to push their wrinkle-painting abilities beyond safe-limits,) hypnotized this caricaturist and ensured that his was the first caricature I made. I just fell for his deep and mysterious wrinkles, his beautiful red bandana, his long silky tresses, his skull-ring, and… that cigarette swinging from his lips.I couldn’t have painted anyone else until I had painted him. His awesomeness consumed me…totally and completely.

(Statutory Warning: Cigarette-smoking is injurious to health. Viewing images of people smoking cigarettes could result in tertiary-smoking.  It’s recommended that you visualize a daisy hanging from Mr. Richards’ lips while viewing the following caricature.)

OK. So, here’s his caricature. This will tell you why I flipped.

Cartoon Caricature of Keith Richards - Guitarist of the Rolling Stones rock band - done for the American Spectator Magazine

About Keith Richards:

He’s considered to be one of the best (4th to be precise, according to this Wikipedia page on him,) guitarists of the world.  He is one of the founding members of the rock band The Rolling Stones (same band to which Mick Jagger belongs. Their lines look similar, don’t they?) Richards found his way into this article “Rock and Roll is (Mostly) Noise Pollution”  because he too wrote his Autobiography “Life“. (If you are wondering…the title of the article spoofs “Rock and Roll ain’t Noise Pollution” by AC/DC.)

What I loved Drawing?

Actually…everything! More specifically, his hair, his bandana, his face, his guitar, his cigarette…and my little mouse-friend. Did you notice him?

About the Colors?
When you paint rock-stars, you don’t have to worry a lot about colors 🙂 They supply the colors themselves.

NEWS!!! The Missing Caricaturist was found fighting an invisible mutant spider!

I know you don’t believe my luck. I mean how could someone as normal as this caricaturist end up fighting a mutant spider of the invisible type?! Such things happen only in movies – don’t they? Well…I feared your disapproval so I came prepared with some other options that might sound more normal to you.

You could select from:

  1. a deep sea dive that culminated in my getting stuck in an underwater crater, which connected to the super-duper city of Atlantis.
  2. my journey into and out of (yucks!) a polar bear’s belly (this one really happened. You could read the details here.)
  3. my being first selected and then being dumped…for running the race for the Republican Party Presidential  Primaries!
  4. one of my caricatures getting mad at me for drawing him with a bigger than normal nose and a smaller than normal mouth…(Shia Labeouf or Edward Norton? Don’t ask. I don’t want to take any names and get into more trouble.)
  5. I was shipped to Shutter Island where I met Leonardo DiCaprio and realized that I was merely a figment of his imagination.

So, which one did you pick as the most plausible explanation for my absence?

Anyway, the point is that I’ll shortly be back with more caricatures and…well more detailed caricatures…perhaps caricatures that have political stories to tell 🙂

Won’t make any promises as, so far, I haven’t been performing great on the promises front – not keeping too well – especially after that near-fatal battle with the oh-so-venomous spider – yet, watch this space for some cool new caricatures!

Caricature/Cartoon – John Lennon of The Beatles!

Presenting John Lennon‘s Caricature!

Caricature, Cartoon, Sketch, Portrait of John Lennon of the beatles, with his guitar

I wonder why I wrote and sang “Imagine No Possessions”?

John Lennon’s Biography (Shortest on the Web?):

John Lennon was born on October 09, 1940, in Liverpool, UK. About 3 years after John was born, his father Alfred Lennon went away, only to return an year later when his wife would reject his offer to help the family financially. At the tender age of five, young John was forced to choose between his parents, and he chose to stay with his father, but unfortunately he couldn’t stay with him. Eventually he was brought up in a family that was made up of his four aunts and his mother. He was taken care of by his mother’s elder sister and her husband; and it was his uncle who brought him a mouth-organ when John was very young. His mom would play him Elvis Presley’s music and taught him to play the banjo.

John Lennon was never a model student, rather he was far from being one. He drew cartoons in class, mimicked his teachers, and was considered a bad influnce on other kids. When he was 17, his mom bought him his first guitar – some time soon after she gave John this wonderful gift, she died in a car-accident.

The Formation of Beatles:

Lennon was one of the founding members of The Beatles. It was three months after he had started the Skiffle Group, that Paul McCartney joined the band. Lennon was always considered the leader of the band.

Of course a lot happened before Beatles became a rage in the mid-sixties. In the late sixties, The Beatles, specifically Mr. Lennon managed to hurt the religious sentiments of people, by commenting “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink…We’re more popular than Jesus now – I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity.” I’d call it a harmless self-glorifying sort of comment, which should be forgotten and forgiven (something that I am sure, almost all religions preach), but people began burning the Beatle records and Lennon was threatened too! This probably led Lennon into depression, who discovered LSD and then Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and both helped him in his introspection.

One thing led to another (must’ve, I am sure) and in 1969 he left the Beatles, and developed some degree of disenchantment with and also some animosity towards Paul McCartney.  For the next 10 years, Lennon went solo.

Read John Lennon’s  detailed biography here.

John Lennon’s Personal Life:

Lennon met his future wife Cynthia when he was 17, and they married 5 years later. However their marriage fell apart soon after when Cynthia realized that Lennon was in a relationship with Yoko Ono, the artist. They got married in 1969. Upon Ono’s insistence, somewhere around this time, his PA May Pang developed a physical relationship with John Lennon. Nevertheless, Sean Lennon was born to Ono after which John Lennon transformed himself into a house-husband.

John Lennon’s Other Talents:

Other than singing, John Lennon was also a proficient writer and painter, and other than the guitar, he could also play drums and  flute!

John Lennon’s Murder by Mark David Chapman:

Sometime in the October of 1980, forty-year-old John Lennon was shot dead by a psychopath (who refused to accept that he were one) called Mark David Chapman. Chapman claimed that he killed Lennon for his irreverence and also because of his double standards. According to Chapman, he was motivated by the book “The Catcher in the Rye” a novel by J. D. Salinger, and that he was sickened by Lennon’s song “Imagine no Possessions“.

Chapman said, “He told us to imagine no possessions, and there he was, with millions of dollars and yachts and farms and country estates, laughing at people like me who had believed the lies and bought the records and built a big part of their lives around his music.”

Chapman has still not been granted parole.

John Lennon’s Songs:

Find a list of his popular songs here

As always, thanks to the one and only Wikipedia!