Last night, my boredom drove me to upload a picture of me into Adobe Photoshop to aid me in the exaggerations of my caricatures. By using the smear tool, I started dragging attributes of my face to increase or decrease them in size. I thought this would help me get a better idea of how to exaggerate without losing likeness, but it didn't work out so well. Somehow I started thinking about the artist Shepard Fairey and his iconic artwork entitled " The Barack Obama Hope Poster". I thought that it would be funny to create the same poster, in the same style but of The Pope. It sucks that I just decided this two years late because someone had already created it as you can see here. This wasn't surprising though.

Instead, I found the original image that Fairey used to create The Obama Hope Poster and I tried to create my propaganda using it also. I used Fairey's image to retrieve the color palette he used, but I did not reference his photo for my work. I wanted to see what I could come up just by finding similar colors within the face, pointing and clicking the mouse (yeah.. no tablet) on different tones with the correct color, and filling each accordingly. I started using the gradient tool by filling in all the midtones, shades, and highlights with the four color palette needed to render a similar image. After pathing all the different colored shapes with the pen tool, (magic wand is for sissies), I cleaned the edges with the gradient and the brush tools by selecting and inverting specific areas.

After I finished this long process,I had to figure out what else could rhyme with the slogan HOPE that would be funny or witty like the Pope idea. I came up with "SOAP." I know, I know.. It's no Pope, but someone had already used "DOPE" ,on President Bush, and there aren't many words that rhyme with hope. Most of them have already been used: NOPE, MOPE, POPE.. but not SOAP..or COPE to my surprise. I went with soap first. For some reason, the only word that was synonymous with the word soap to me, at the time, was Mr. Clean. I decided to change Obama into Mr. Clean. I changed his eye brows white, removed his hair line to indicate that he was completely bald like the beloved spokes person, but I still couldn't tell who he was. I needed to bring in the BIG guns... literally!

My Obama wasn't Mr. Clean. I thought to myself, what makes Mr. Clean, Mr. Clean? His arms!!! His earring!! I inserted a picture I downloaded of the real Mr. Clean. I removed his arm from the photo and implanted it onto Obama. At this point, I returned to my mundane process of pointing and clicking on different tones to create areas of color that unify the composition and the values we see on Obama's face. I cleaned the edges of the arm, positioned it on my Obama, and proceeded to write the word "SOAP" at the bottom. To finish it off, I used the marquee tool to create his earring and pathed out a highlight it look round.

After reviewing the OBEY artist's Obama, I realized that my method is very close to the process that Fairey used to create this image. We almost created the same color layers in the same exact sections. Well I'm sure you have seen his Obama a million times everywhere. You might find mine in my bathroom, cleaning the toilet.. 'Mr. Obama, Mr. Obama!'

I haven't been working much since Thanksgiving due to this crappy economy and how slow my job has becomes in the off season, but I've kept busy. As you can imagine, I was pretty psyched to work yesterday and today though. Well guess what? Thanks to the rain, I didn't do either. I was itching to draw some caricatures this week so I decided hook up a few while I was stuck in the house.

My buddy Taylor Smith, who is an excellent artist and designer, has drawn me and my girlfriend several times. My favorite being this digital image from last year when Natalie and I both had hair:



(We're not bald but we did get cuts) Anyway, he's so awesome! I decided to return the favor and draw him from a picture I had on my phone from last year. I hope you look the same Mr. Smith.. Mr. Smith just gave me an idea. I am totally drawing you as Agent Smith from the Matrix next time.



I also did a caricature of Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow which I actually didn't finish yet. I just wanted to post it before I ruined it with the crappy necks I draw.. Or maybe I'll do a whole body because it's been a while since I've done one of those.



This last one is of me. I tried to destroy my face which caricature artists I've met out here in San Diego like to call "beasting." I'm not very good at this yet but it's starting to come along. It's weird that the more I draw someone, the more I can beast them.. I guess I draw myself a lot.



It's definitely not something I can do in the park because I like money more than funny, but it does happen from time to time. Some people's faces seem like they were made for caricatures and it would be a crime to draw them otherwise. Other than those people, it's hard to beast when you only draw little kids all day; where parents expect a cute-iture. The place I work doesn't serve alcohol, and to top it all off, eighty percent of the caricatures we draw there are "Legoheads." It's a lot more fun to beast adults because their features are usually more pronounced than children's attributes. More importantly adults understand what a caricature is and propbably won't cry if it isn't an exact representation of them. Either way, these guys got it made! Plus they are REALLY awesome at beasting so they deserve the cameo.

I just finished this one for Natalie's parents. The likeness is there but I'm not a big fan of it for some reason. I think it's the hair. Maybe I'll redo it and replace this one later.

I can see it now. A cheesy infomerical with some no named loud mouth preaching about how awesome your animal's caricature could be. "Do you want your pet drawn!? Here at D.Lyons Art, we specialize in drawing dogicatures and dogtraits but we're positive that Dan can do a drawing of your best friend no matter what he or she is! Do you own a fox, rabbit, or Bearded Dragon!? Well no problem at all!!! We can draw them all!!!"

That was a joke for the humor-impaired but seriously.. I really never would have thought that drawing one holiday card with dogs on it would get me so much attention and so many more animal commissions., but it did. And here's another one.

I'd like to introduce everyone to my friend Sandy. Sandy.. this is the WWW. Jaret must have seen my infomercial because he wanted to get one done of this sweet little gal as soon as Medeski stepped off stage. Holy crap, I sound crazy right now.. And what is holy crap? Was it blessed?.. Apparently it's this. Here's Sandy though.

A friend of mine, who also received The Moskowitz Family Holiday Card, wanted me to draw his dog Medeski as a caricature. I did my usual thang and started with a very quick drawing of the pouch, and as usual, it turned out to be more of a doggie portrait. I decided to take this guy a little further for the final drawing because Josh told me that he wanted caricature, so a caricature is what he'll get. After the outline, I was sceptical of the final result and wondered if I would be wasting my time. It looked pretty strange and my girlfriend Natalie seemed to agree. She asked me to color in the eyes and that's when I took a picture of it. I had nothing better to do, so I pushed on and came up with the picture of Medeski below.























The background planning took a long time just because I really liked the way Medeski turned out and I didn't want to ruin it with a flat monochromatic background like I did wit the practice sketch. I wanted the dog to be pushed off the paper just like his snout, so I decided to make it funky. This design should compliment the super bright green walls where Josh has chosen to hang it. I just hope he likes it enough to do so.

The Moskowitz Holiday Card I've been hearing about came in the mail today! I didn't really think they were going to use the image I made for them, but they did and it looks pretty awesome! The drawing you see here is from my previous post entitled "Random Everything," and the wonderful card design was created by the pros at Sign Masters Inc. My friend Josh received one of these cards and sent me a message about it yesterday. He praised the picture and is now interested in having his dog Medeski drawn so you'll probably see that pretty soon. :)

And thank you to Mike and Roxanne for being such nice, wonderful people. You guys really are the best!

Happy Holidays everyone!!

Hey there followers, new comers, and hopefully sneaker heads! About two years ago, I decided to buy a decent amount of Angelus Leather Acrylic Paints off this website http://turtlefeathers.net/text/angelus/paint.html?gclid=CP6WsoPh4qUCFQUSbAodcEd_1A so I could start painting sneakers. Although it is a lot of work, I was so into painting sneakers at the time that I was doing them for free. Actually, the only pair that I did get paid for was the white Globes below.

My girlfriend Natalie inspired me yesterday when she decided to do a value drawing of me in graphite pencils. After watching her draw me, I realized that I hadn't drawn with pencils since I started doing caricatures with Kaman's Art Shoppes almost two years ago. When I was in high school I was all about value sketches. Graphite was my bread and butter then. Even through my first and second semester at Brookdale Community College in NJ, I rocked the H through 8B hard. Anyway, seeing my girlfriend draw suddenly gave me the urge to draw and the only thing I had handy was the image of my friend's parents' dogs from my previous post. This is another drawing of Diesel but instead of a caricature, it's more of a doggy portrait on 7" x 10" recycled paper drawing paper.

Last week I received a message on Facebook from my friend's mother who is an avid art collector. Her house has some pretty awesome paintings and prints done by very famous artists such as Keith Harring, Roy Leinchestien, and Jerry Garcia just to name a few. She asked if she could buy something I have done and I was honored. I told her to go through some of my pictures and pick out something she likes. The funny thing is, she decided to buy a caricature I did of myself when I decided to quit smoking, which, oddly enough, depicts me shirtless and scantly clad in an ashtray, completely immersed in cigarette butts. The picture is supposed to represent a jacuzzi and how relaxingly gross cigarettes can be. How bad they make everything you own smell.. How you would do anything to get them.. How you would buy them before food or clothes.. Just thinking about them makes me sick.

To finish this story, after receiving a check for the artwork I also randomly received a call from her son a few hours later. I hadn't spoken to him for more than six months and he had no idea that his mother had purchased some artwork from me. It was pretty random like I said. Its good that I did see him though because his mother had commissioned me another drawing in the letter that she sent that I overlooked. She sent me a picture of her dogs and wanted a "cartoony" drawing of them. Planning it took long but the finished piece only took an hour or so. Thanks for the pointers Marco Darko.

Mark McGuire

Barry Bonds