John Hiatt Caricature

My wife got me into John Hiatt music a few years ago.  While listening to "The Tiki Bar is Open" recently I was inspired to create a caricature.  I'm very happy with the way it turned out especially considering that I've been wanting to be able to pull off this style for a long time now.  I drew and shaded a black-and-white verion in pencil first, scanned it, then colored it in Photoshop.  (Without a cintiq, I have found that this pencil-first method is the most efficient for now.)

Enjoy!

And the pencil version:

Some Tiny Orcs

This is the beginning of what I hope ends up being a larger series.  I started it for the Tiny Pleasures competition over at theartorder.com.  Each painting is acrylic on a 3"x3" stretched canvas.  I'm having a lot of fun with them and learning a lot about value and hue (as well as how to use acrylics).  The biggest thing I've discovered is that the portrait can be pretty much done, but if the background color isn't right (with these, a heavy contrast with a desaturated complimentary color) the portrait doesn't look three-dimensional.  Once the background color is right the face really "pops."

I've also discovered (once again) how difficult it is to take a picture/scan a painting so that on the screen they look like they do on my desk.  So far I've had the most luck by taking a hi-res photo and adjusting the contrast and playing with some light filters in photoshop.  When I scan them, the scanning light reflects off of every bump of paint, whereas I can use indirect light when I'm taking a photo so that the painting isn't covered by hundreds of tiny points of light.