Caricatures- Cripple con 2! Chua/Philby & Chua/Kapnicky collabs! and a joker (JAN 2008)

last week I attended Cripple Con 2. the most fun 3 days of art and partying and debau geometry ever! (check the website link soon for I'm sure will be tons of pics and video) Some of the most talented and coolest peeps you will meet attended. I had a great time, prolly most fun I've had at a drawing party but once again, like the NCN con a couple months ago, I didn't really draw anything too cool and was kinda just blah. oh well, I had a great time though and did some fun collabs with some friends which was the highlight for me artistically.

1. Chris Singleton and Ryan Foerster. two really cool dudes from San Antonio, Texas.

2. Randy Delgado, another cool Texan.

3. Nolan and Mike. Nolan was the grand champion of this year's Cripple con ART FIGHT! I thought Mike looked like a snowman and of course someone's gotta be peeing in his mouth and Nolan would be the perfect candidate to take on that task, heh. a quick simple sloppy sketch, but I liked the idea of it.

4. ugh. this is suppose to be Jon Young. This is the worst thing I drew at the con AND should have been the best and only thing that needed to be good. Jon was looking forward to me drawing him and I was excited to draw him. I was sketching him for a long time and nothing was really clicking and time was running out. I think I was trying too hard to come up with something really crazy and unique and it ended up blah, then I tried covering it up/making it better by throwing blood splatter but even that didn't really save it. I'm going to work on a better one of him soon. at least he got an awesome caricature by Aaron Philby.

5. Jessica Bloom. this was the last sketch I drew at the last second, literally. I got the idea from something my buddy, Stacy Pierce, was talking about. I just threw in myself and all my mushroommates at the con (7 of us in 1 room!) for fun for no reason. from left to right: Alex Clare, me, Cat Hupp, Mike Dias, Matt Zitman, Stacy Pierce, Sean Favre. oh and Brian Oakes did a much better and awesome sketch of Jessica at the con. check it out! it was one of my favs from the con.

6. Ramon. cool dude from Texas. those Texan kids are a cool bunch with lots of talent. This was a collaboration between my pal, Aaron Philby and myself. Aaron is one of my favorite caricature artists and one of the best out there in my opinion. He also won the award for best overall at this Cripple con. He drew the left side then handed it off to me and I drew the right side, then we colored our respective halves. It was a ton of fun and I thought it came out pretty sweet.

7. here's the step-by-step process.

8. Carley! here's another collaboration between my buddy, Nate Kapnicky and myself. Nate is also one of my favorite caricature artists and one of the best out there, he really jacks people up. check out his work!

9. for this one, we each drew a few lines and passed it back to the other person. We didn't plan anything out beforehand or tell each other what we drew meant so it made it really interesting and challenging. what's awesome about this one is that at step 5. I meant for that line to be her neck because I felt that we needed something in that space to the left to balance the page. Nate didn't know what it was and thought it was her arm. at step 9. I meant for that bottom line to be her body and Nate turned it into her hand. awesome! also at step 7. I meant for that line below her chin to be the 3-d form of her chin, just like what I did to her ear and Nate amazingly turned that into her body at step 10! how friggin cool is that!

collabs are sooooo much fun and challenging, these two sketches were the best thing I drew at the con. what are you saying, chris chua, that the only good thing you drew was because you rode the coattails of 2 more talented and amazing caricature artists? is that it?!....yes. yes it is. that's what I'm saying. oh. ok, then. carry on. I think I feel more comfortable drawing on the same paper and using the same supplies I use while drawing in the park. everytime I go to a drawing party like this, I draw on smaller paper and use different materials and it usually comes out looking eh. I should prolly just draw on stuff I'm used to next time.

I'm planning on doing more collabos this coming season with Matt Zitman and Alex Clare....bwahahahahah.....:)

10. then I drew a Joker in my friend's sketchbook which is going to be filled with only Joker sketches. I just threw some swoopy lines down and kinda winged it from there.

oh and I'm listening to the new "The Bird and the Bee" album called "rayguns are not just the future" GREAT album. I dig it a lot, it's sorta like a mixture of Eisley, Blonde Redhead and Lily Allen with some cool electronica, piano, rock, orchestra, jazz and more.