Day 2

I spent my second and third days of work at Caricature Japan in Ikebukuro's Alta under ground shopping center. It was my first chance to work with Hironori Motohashi. He's also a really nice guy. I met him a few times during my training. you can see his work here.

http://h1r0-n0r1.blogspot.com/. As for my own work, I'm usually pretty pleased with it at the time, but always feel I could have done more when looking back on the photos I took.

Also, since I spend so much time on the train recently, I've been sketching the other passengers when I'm not trying to take a nap. Since they usually don't know I'm drawing them they don't sit still, and they occasionally get off the train before I get a chance to finish. It does help pass the time though!

My First Day

As of yesterday, I'm officially an employee of Caricature-Japan. You can now see me listed among the artists on their artist profile page. You can also see a few digital examples I did of Japanese celebrities last week. You can see that page here.

http://www.caricature-japan.com/artists/index.html

I spent my first day working with Ryuiji Imada. He's really talented. This year he won first place for his Black and White Techinique and placed 8th overall. You can check out his blog at http://imachan-newsoho.blogspot.com/

Here is a quick sketch I did of him before we got busy.

Over the course of the day I drew around 10 people. Mostly children or couples. Sadly, children don't have as interesting faces as adults do., but I really enjoyed myself yesterday and the customers seemed happy too. It's a little difficult to juggle speed and quality while tryinng to entertain the customers in a foriegn language. I'll do my best to learn what I can from my co-workers since they are really good.

Mr. Tabata

This is a drawing I did for fun of Tomokazu Tabata. He has an incredibly unique style. His homepage is http://www.tomotabata.com/index.html . I'm excited about checking out his gallery tomorrow in Tokyo. I'm hoping someday I can get my caricature done by him. I don't really know why I put his head on the body of a fish, but I do kinda like how it turned out.

The Wedding Board Blues

One of my students asked me for a welcome board for her upcoming wedding. I ended up doing it in Adobe Illustrator. It took a while but I was pretty happy in the end. Recently I've been trying to improve my ability to draw people in formal wear because its a pretty big part of the caricature business in Japan.

Recently I've been studying how to draw caricatures with Kage of Caricature-Japan. My homework has been to copy caricatures as perfectly as possible and to do my own caricatures as well. The picture above is a copy of a sketchTakayuki Watanabe of Caricature-Japan drew of me, and the pictures below are of a student, done as a live sketch. Then I get feedback from Kage or Watanabe. It's really tough for me to draw quicker than ever before, while drawing with a highter standard of quality than ever before, but I'm doing my best so, wish me luck.

Tokyo Game Show

This last weekend I went to the Tokyo Game Show, for the fourth year in a row. Its crazy trying to make your way through a sea of 80,000 video game fanatics crammed into a convention space. Good times.

Sketch of the Week

Ive been doing a lot of quick sketches lately, trying to get used art stix and copic markers.I drew the stars of "Peep Show" a British TV shows. Definately worth checking out.

Sketch of the Week

Here is a little something I whipped up in illustrator this week. He trains new artists for Caricature Japan. I love his work and thought I'd try drawing him. His smooth rounded head immediately made me think of Pac-man so I just went with it. Can't decide if this is better than the first version, I hope you like it.

Sketch of the Week

There is a populart Japanese TV show called Hana Yori Dango. I whipped up a digital caricature of the cast. Thought might be nice to start posting something every week as my Sketch of the week. Hopefully it'll show my work slowly getting better as I get more practice.

Dr Horrible

Last month I stumbled upon this 40 minute mad scientist musical, and I loved it. So, when I decided to start doing celebrity caricatures again, I thought I'd do a picture of Dr Horrible (Neal Patrick Harris), who you may remember from Doogie Howser or How I met your mother. Hope you like it.

Caricature Workshop

Last week I attended a caricature workshop with Kage.

He runs http://www.caricature-japan.com/.

It was a lot of fun to see artists of different styles and skill levels together in one place. Here you can see a caricature Kage Nakanishi drew of me and the wife about 3 years ago.

here is my caricature drawn by another artist, Takayuki Watanabe, also from Caricature-Japan

Summer English Program

I spent the last week helping Japanese high school students prepare to study abroad in Australia next year. We spent 9 to 5 from Monday to Thursday doing mostly listening and conversation activities. On Friday we played some games, and had a little party with lots of fun snacks. Starting tomorrow, I'll begin my own summer vacation. No big plans, just artwork and a little fun.

I'm Back

Hey everybody, I thought I should start a blog to share my art as I try to get back into doing caricatures. I've always enjoyed video games, so here's one of my pictures I drew of myself as Mario. I hope you enjoy and feel free to add a comment anytime!