Caricature – Bert Monroy
Posted June 25th, 2010 by Patrick LaMontagne with 6 Comments
If you travel in digital painting, Photoshop, or illustration circles, Bert Monroy should need no introduction. For everybody else, he’s one of (if not THE) original pioneers of digital painting and photo realistic illustration. This guy literally wrote the book (more than a few) on digital painting. I would encourage you to visit his website, read his bio, and take a look through his incredible portfolio. The work that went into his Damen painting speaks volumes about his attention to detail and his skill as a digital painter.
I’ve had the pleasure of learning from Bert for many years, either through his books, DVD’s, tutorials, or classes. At Photoshop World, I was fortunate to have a one on one portfolio review with Bert and while I was prepared to have a pretty frank and honest critique, he was quite complimentary and had only a few notes of places I could improve a few images. It was a real privilege and I look forward to taking more of his classes at Photoshop World this year.
I took a candid photo of Bert at Photoshop World last year and that was my main reference for this one. Fortunately I surprised him and got a big smile, but it was with a little point and shoot camera and the quality left a LOT to be desired. Even the Genuine Fractals 6 plug-in didn’t help as much as I needed it to, although I highly recommend it for enlarging images. Fortunately, the folks at NAPP came through for me and sent me a high-res version of Bert’s promo photo. While the expression wasn’t good for a caricature, the detail was great, so it helped a lot. Thanks, Larry and Felix!
As in most of my paintings, I got to a point where I was painting in details that nobody is ever going to see, and while I could have worked on this for another week or two, I’m sure, I don’t think it would have made a difference. I also have other images I’d like to work on, and ending this on a Friday seems appropriate.
It’s intimidating to do a digital painting of someone who has far superior skills, but I wanted to do the piece anyway, and I’m happy with how it turned out. As always, I’m sure I will look at this six months from now and see room for improvement, but I imagine that will be true for every image I ever do, so no sense dwelling on it.
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Written by Patrick LaMontagne
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Paul McCall says:
What version of Photoshop are you using Patrick?
Patrick LaMontagne says:
Photoshop CS4, Paul, although I plan to upgrade to CS5 soon.
ian says:
Great work! I"m sure he'd be pleased to see it!
Kathleen Dougherty says:
Hi, Patrick,
Snowing heavily here in upstate NY, so I have some time off from my Graphic Design Classes, and through Wacom, I found your site – I am quite impressed with your work. As a naturalist, ecologist, artist and now graphic artist (learning, learning, learning!) I admire work like yours.
Knowing you use Wacom products, I thought you'd be the best person to ask this question of: I have an intuos3, 9X12 Special Edition tablet, that I have just begun to get deep into, and am interested in the inkpen capabilities – I do a lot of painting in Painter, work in CS5Design Premium, and hand work in oils, graphite and inks. Would the intuos inkpen be helpful to me, do you think? I have the ArtPen, grip pen and the other regular one, but thought I might get more line control with the inkpen.
Thanks for a great viewing experience!
Kathleeen
artdough@mac.com
Patrick LaMontagne says:
Hi Kathleen:
Thanks for the compliments on my work. I'm fortunate that I enjoy what I do for a living.
As for the Wacom pens, I only use the default pen that it comes with. When I first started out using a tablet around ten or so years ago, I did have a Wacom airbrush. It was a good tool, and I used it a lot, but then my style changed so I don't have an airbrush look anymore. When I replaced my tablet, I didn't bother buying any of the extra pens and I don't feel I miss them. Aside from sketching with pencil and paper, I've never been a traditional artist. All of my painting is done with a tablet. So I'd be the wrong person to ask about the benefit of an inking pen since I have no idea how to use a real one.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help, but good luck in your search for advice on this.
Cheers,
Patrick
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June 25, 2010 at 11:30 am
Great work Monty! I am sure Bert will be pleased when he sees it.