Quarehawk

Number of preliminary sketches : 4
Number of hours spent on drawing : 6
Number of black t-shirts owned by Simon Cowell : 714,856 *

* Source: The Guggenheim Museum

This is him in “Mr Bean” mode. What’s interesting though is that if you wanted to draw Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder, the face I have here wouldn’t work. That is, I couldn’t just stick a beard and an outfit on this pic and make it a Blackadder caricature. Even though it’s the same person.

For Blackadder you’d have to try to get his sly cunning into the drawing somehow. I don’t know if that’s a testament to the man’s character portrayal skills or what. He can give a radically different “vibe” depending on who he’s playing, using his physicality and expressions. Unlike so many of the talentless muppets appearing in every second Hollywood blockbuster, basically playing themselves over and over.

Although on the other hand, you could argue that Rowan Atkinson only ever plays one of two characters; a wibbly-faced weed or an evil scheming bastard. Whatever, I like his work.

A recurring problem with my caricatures is that I end up making people look younger than they are. I’m satisfied with the likeness I got here, but it looks like Tom Hanks from “Splash” rather than Tom Hanks from “The DaVinci Code”. And the references I worked from were all recent photos. I CANNOT figure out why this keeps happening. Too much smoothing of the skin?

Maybe it would help artistically if I got myself a beret (I don’t think I have the testosterone to grow a decent goatee).