Boris Goodenough

I did a preliminary sketch that was all scratchy and some friends like the quality. I worked over the top a little and decided to leave it loose and that this was good enough.

(Caricature of Boris Karloff by Joel Brinkerhoff)

Unka Walt

This came out creepier than Walt ever was.

(digital caricature of Walt Disney by Joel Brinkerhoff)

Mellow Costello

Caricature of Elvis Costello

(digital painting started in Corel Painter and finished in Photoshop by Joel Brinkerhoff)

All You Need is Photoshop

Okay, I've played with Corel Painter and I'm having the same trouble blending as I do with ArtRage. It just seems to swirl the colors around in a very uncontrollable manner. I know many people doing great things with both programs so it must be me. I will need to pick their brains for the proper technique. For Now I will stick with Photoshop.

Digital painting of John Lennon by Joel Brinkerhoff (Click image to enlarge_

Time to look into Corel?

I did this caricature of Tom Waits in Photoshop which doesn't have the control I'm looking for in digital painting. I have ArtRage and have seen impressive work but I just can't use it for blending. I've known about Corel Painter for sometime but only now found I own a copy that came with my Wacom tablet! Time to start playing with Corel Painter.

(click image to enlarge)

Digital VS Old School

I've been exploring the paperless digital graphic art alternatives to old school methodology and am still on the fence about the whole phenomenon. The convenience and flexibility of digital graphics is something I greatly treasure and will probably always rely on for exploratory design work. The actual execution of finished art is something I'm wrestling with. I seem to spend more time digitally trying to mimic what is pretty easy with the old fashioned pen or brush.

The example illustrations shown here are how fluid and varied Jack Davis was able to get his lines simply using a brush. The other two color drawings are mine using a digital paint program and I am not at all satisfied with the line quality. I didn't care much because they were exploratory drawings but I could not let these go as finished art and would have spent a lot of time tweaking line thicknesses.

I work with incredibility talented illustrators and they seem to have adapted pretty well to the digital revolution. I do see them spending a great deal of time laying down and deleting a single stroke until there is something they like. Would it be more efficient working old school? We still need to get that image digitized to be usable today though, don't we?

Brush work by Jack Davis (click on image to enlarge)

Digital designs by Joel Brinkerhoff (click on image to enlarge)