portrait Archives - Page 2 of 18

Jay Z – 2018

Oct 12, 2018

Rapper Jay Z

Shawn Corey Carter, known professionally as JAY-Z, is an American rapper and businessman. He is one of the best-selling musicians of all time, having sold more than 100 million records, while receiving 21 Grammy Awards for his music. The man with the million dollar lips. This image was a poster commission from a while back. I have many of these in my store and have had some requests to add a little flare to some of them so I reworked this one and several others. All are available in my store now and several more on the way. I’ll be posting more tomorrow.

Interview with Jay-Z
Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Rapper 50 Cent

Dec 13, 2017

Rapper 50 Cent

Tonight I have a manipulated caricature of rapper 50 Cent which I’ve reworked from an older caricature. As I said previously, this is good practice for me and it’s not super labor intensive while my back heals from surgery. Coming along great by the way! The guy gas brutal features, so there were a few different ways I could have taken this one. I came very close to scrapping this one. Nothing seemed to be going right, then I zoomed back to a small thumbnail and I saw what my problem was and was able to correct it. So there’s a lesson there. Don’t get caught up in the details in the early stages. Take a step back and look at the whole thing. There’s plenty of time for details in the end. Not to say this is a flawless caricature. It’s far from it and I learned a lot from this one so I’m sure I could do a much better job the second time around. Well, it is what it is. I’ve posted the original source images below for comparison. I kind of blended the two.

Curtis James Jackson III (born July 6, 1975), known professionally as 50 Cent, is an American rapper, actor, businessman, and investor. Born in the South Jamaica neighborhood of the borough of Queens, Jackson began selling drugs at age twelve during the 1980s crack epidemic. He later began pursuing a musical career and in 2000 he produced Power of the Dollar for Columbia Records, but days before the planned release he was shot nine times and the album was never released. In 2002, after Jackson released the compilation album Guess Who’s Back?, he was discovered by Eminem and signed by Shady Records, Aftermath Entertainment and Interscope Records.

I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Firoze Shakir – Artist Feature

Dec 6, 2017

Firoze Shakir – Artist Feature

Todays post serves two purposes, one to show you my latest caricature but more importantly I would like to introduce to you a dear artist friend of mine, Firoze Shakir. We first crossed paths on Google+ and soon after connected on other social media platforms. Firoze first captured my attention with his sometimes humorous and sometimes very thoughtful poetry that he used to comment on my images. The comments were always welcome and entertaining, from simple rhymes to complex pieces of poetry. I soon learned just what kind of man this was commenting on all of my posts. This is one of the most humble men I know. So humble in fact that I couldn’t get him to write a bio so I’m taking a jab at it. Firoze is a very talented street photographer, photojournalist and street poet in Mumbai, India. Firoze is a man of peace, promoting all religions and faiths. Though we live worlds apart, he has become a very close friend of mine always cheering me on and complimenting on my work. He sees through all religious, racial and geographic barriers. He is a man of true character and I’m glad to call him my friend.

He dedicates his life to shooting street photography but not like you might think. No pretty cityscapes or flowery vacation brochure type images. His subjects are the poor, the hungry, the sick and the lost. It’s his daily ritual to walk around different neighborhoods of Mubai and around India to capture life as it happens. He presents the raw realities of living in the slums of India like no other. You won’t find any touristy pictures on his site, only the forgotten people of India and their everyday struggle to survive. Having overcome many hurdles of his own, he uses his photography and art as medicine for the soul. His camera of choice is Cannon.

Obviously the image above is my friend Firoze Shakir. Below, you’ll find the source image and some samples of his work but I want to provide you with links to his work, blog and social media. Be sure and check out these links. Don’t forget to stop by my store on your way out.

Firoze Shakir Links:

Flickr Photostream
Official Blog
Twitter Page
About Me Page

Source Image:

Firoze Shakir Links:

Flickr Photostream
Official Blog
Twitter Page
About Me Page

I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Caricature of Baron Colossal Schnoz

Dec 1, 2017

Caricature of Baron Colossal Schnoz

Todays post is a study on caricature exaggeration, namely a big nose. I wasn’t sure what to call this one so I came up with Baron Colossal Schnoz which I thought was original. By chance, I decided to Google search the term and it led me to the Wikipedia page of American singer, pianist, comedian, and actor Jimmy Durante who was famous for his big nose among many other things, so I guess it was appropriate. I started off with this British figure who had an arrogant look about him and wanted to push the exaggeration of the face. My original intent for this piece was to exaggerate the nose to an extent that it would make up 50% of the mass of the entire head. I fell short of my goal but I think I hit a good 30% of the mass of the head. This is no small feat. I do know a caricature artist who came pretty darn close in a caricature of Fidel Castro. This great artist is Sebastián Cast and is incredibly talented. You need to check out the amazing work from this young artist. I’ll add his Castro image at the end of this post. As I was saying about the exaggeration, I was going for several things here. The exaggeration of the face with the huge nose, the color scheme which is something I’ve been working on lately as well as the arrogant nature of the subject. I hope I got close in at least one of those areas.

Below is a brilliant caricature of Fidel Castro by the great Sebastián Cast. Click on the image to see a recent artist feature I did on Cast after I received the painted portrait of me. What an honor to be in his portfolio.

Fidel Castro by Sebastián Cast

I hope you enjoyed. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Lil Wayne Toasted

Nov 25, 2017

Lil Wayne Toasted

This image of Rapper Lil Wayne (Official Wiki Page), was originally a commissioned piece for FHM magazine several years back and as many of the images I did for the magazine, it was a bit reserved. I’m not entirely sure why everything I did for them has to be so subdued. I assume so nobody got offended. Well, we all know Lil Wayne wouldn’t be Lil Wayne unless he was toasted so I spiced this one up a bit for my image archives and added the marijuana theme. I also used this one a while back for marijuana.com but the images were web based and very low resolution, so I just tweaked the old one a bit for that commission. One thing that was good with that client was that pretty much anything goes so no worries with offending anyone. I’ll be posting several of these tweaked old images in part to update my product portfolio and because they are only updates to the originals, they’re good for this time I’m still slightly out of commission with my back. I can do these fairly quickly so it works out good for now. I have many in the making though that are much more complex experimenting with color, saturation, texture and the use of patterns in the backgrounds. I’ll also be pushing the exaggeration a bit more in many of the upcoming caricature illustrations so stay tuned. If your interested in any of these images, you can check out my store or simply click the images for more details. As always if you have any commission inquiries, please feel free to email me at rodneywpike@gmail.com or fill out my contact form at the link provided. I have a few of these finished so check back tomorrow for more like this.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Jay Z – 2018

Rapper Jay Z

Rapper 50 Cent

Rapper 50 Cent

Firoze Shakir – Artist Feature

Firoze Shakir – Artist Feature

Firoze Shakir Links:

Firoze Shakir Links:

Caricature of Baron Colossal Schnoz

Caricature of Baron Colossal Schnoz

Lil Wayne Toasted

Lil Wayne Toasted

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Jay Z – 2018

Rapper Jay Z

Rapper 50 Cent

Rapper 50 Cent

Firoze Shakir – Artist Feature

Firoze Shakir – Artist Feature

Firoze Shakir Links:

Firoze Shakir Links:

Caricature of Baron Colossal Schnoz

Caricature of Baron Colossal Schnoz

Lil Wayne Toasted

Lil Wayne Toasted

Subscribe to my blog

Search my Site

Recent Posts

Portfolio Samples

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