David Hasselhoff

I took my little boy to see the movie Hop this weekend and it was completely horrible. It did contain an extended cameo from The Hoff, and as I watched him on the giant screen I started to formulate how I would do his caricature. Here's the result.

Guy Fieri Sketch

Doing some sketching in Photoshop. This is celebrity chef and TV host Guy Fieri. About 90 minutes in Photoshop.

Bardot

Here's what I'm thinking will be my final submission for the Caricaturama contest. I'm tempted to tweak it a bit more here and there, but I've got other projects in the pipeline I have to get to.

Bob Redux

 A couple things were bugging me about the likeness. I tweaked the nose and chin and I think it improves the likeness overall. 

Keith Richards

 

I'm not sure anyone should attempt to paint Keith Richards other than Sebastian Kreuger, but I tried anyway.

Clint

Finished this up tonight. I'm putting together a tutorial on how I painted this one. I'll post the how-to soon.

Clint Eastwood - WIP

Working on a Clint Eastwood painting for a tutorial I'm putting together.

Me and Stan Lee

 

Anyone who follows my work knows I paint a lot of famous people. This is the first time I ever was able to give one of my paintings directly to the person. What made today especially gratifying is that the person I painted just happened to be Stan "The Man" Lee, creator of Spider-Man, The Hulk, Iron Man and the vast majority of my childhood heroes. Today at the Detroit FanFare show I was honored to be able to present one of my signed prints to Stan Lee. Even better: he seemed pretty blown away by my work ("Brilliant," was the exact word he used). Today was a really good day.

ImagineFX

 

Another one of my illustrations is in the new issue of ImagineFX Magazine (issue #62, for those keeping score). A few months ago IFX announced they were having a zombie themed issue with a contest that involved painting their Editor-In-Chief Claire Howlett as one of the walking dead. I didn't win the contest, but I was among the four runners-up, which meant I got my illustration printed in the book. It's an honor being recognized, especially considering how fantastic so many of the entries were. And yes, if you look close you may notice for some reason they cut half of my last name off and printed it as Mark Hammer. Oh well, you win some...

Nosferatu - Final

I tweaked a few more details, sharpened up some lines and added a few color tweaks. Here's the final. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. I think I might try another monster or two in this style.

Nosferatu WIP

I wanted to do at least one monster before Halloween. I'm still working on it, but here's still one of the coolest makeup jobs in film history, Nosferatu.

Ms. Marvel

After painting Stan Lee, I got on a bit of a comic book kick. Here's Marvel superheroine Ms. Marvel. This took about six hours in Photoshop.

Nashville City Paper

I had the opportunity to illustrate the cover of this week's Nashville City Paper. The article deals with Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and his choice to govern by surrounding himself with a series of "Task Forces" that consult on everything from public safety to the water department (read it here, if you're interested). City Paper Art Director Bret Pelizzari had a very clear vision of what he wanted to see. BTW, the model for the shadowy figures in the back are all me. I had my wife shoot a whole lot of reference photos of me trying to look tough. This is painted in Photoshop over a pencil sketch.

I'm in ImagineFX!

I had a nice little surprise today. I picked up the October issue of ImagineFX and what you know, one of my paintings is in it. I did this about a year ago for a contest the magazine was running to paint the cover for the issue. I didn't win the contest and, truth be told, when I look back at my entry I can see about a million things I wish I'd done differently and/or better. But when I checked out the magazine I was pleasantly surprised to see my painting ended up among the runners-up. This is pretty gratifying considering they apparently received over 300 entries. It's an honor just to be part of such an amazing group of artists. BTW, this was done by flip-flopping between Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter.

Stan Lee

I finished my painting of Stan Lee. I wanted to add a few ironic touches to the painting, so I put the Marvel Comics legend into a classic Superman pose, showing off one of his famous catch phrases. I also wanted to make sure I gave it a bit of a Jack Kirby flourish, so I added some Kirby-style crackles to the background. I painted this jumping back and forth between Photoshop and Corel Painter (with just a bit of Adobe Illustrator for the background).

Tilda Swinton

Here's the final. I always thought Tilda Swinton has kind of an outdoorsy, natural look to her, so I decided to place her outside in a field. The lighting just kind of followed naturally.

Tilda Swinton WIP

I started this one as a personal challenge. Tilda Swinton has quite unique features, but she's definitely proven to be one of the trickier caricatures I've done. After sketching her over and over again numerous, I finally like where this one is going thus far.

Eminem Final

 

Here's where all this has led to.

Zombie Claire

Over on ImagineFX.com, they're having a contest to paint their editor Claire Howlett as a zombie for a future issue of the magazine. Here's what I've done so far. I think I'm mostly done, but I'll probably give it another day and check it with fresh eyes tomorrow to see if it needs any tweaks.

Inception

Here's the final. I wanted to create an off-kilter color scheme that had the dual purpose of implying a dreamlike atmosphere, as well as allowing me to put some additional focus on the top, which, if you've seen the movie,  you will understand is very important to the story.