Art Commission Caricature - Maria Sullivan

This is a caricature of a dear friend Maria Sullivan (and one time neighbour when I lived in North Harrow) This was to be a 50th birthday surprise for Maria (though how it was a surprise, is beyond me as I had drawn both her sons, her daughter and grandad in the past!) as their hallway currently houses a collection of most of my early black and white cartoons. Probably the first gallery of my artwork, ever.

I received the initial request as a very rough PDF draft sketched by Maria's husband, Mark, although no great artist, it did show me all the main components he wanted in the finished artwork.

It was now my job to take this rough and draft out something I would be happy with in a final composition. So after a few attempts, I final settled on this draft, which seems to incorporate all the components John wanted.

Once I have finished the rough sketch, I then have to scan it into Adobe Photoshop, as the rough was A3 size and my Epson DX 4050 scanner is slighter more than A4 (I really need to get a bigger scanner) I have to scan two seperate sections (top and bottom) and knit the two halves together (fiddly, but do-able in Photoshop).

Once inside Photoshop and I placed this as the underlying background image with the opacity set to about 50%, I then created a new layer for each component in the caricature - the background, the main figure, skin, clothing, juggled objects and clothing (this makes it easier to concentrate on different areas of the artwork).

I manage to create the thick outline (well it is a caricature and I think that thick black outlines make it jump of the page) by using the drop shadow blendind properties in Photoshop and slightly off-setting it, and repeating the effect for the figure and juggled objects. I also copied the drop shadow effect for the main text title.

I was extremely happy with the overall finish and most important, the Sullivans loved it and it now hangs pride in place in my personal gallery in their hallway!