Hourly Comic Day 2021

 Right before Groundhog Day but after the January caricature resolution caricature there is a marathon comic challenge called Hourly Comic Day (not to be confused with 24 hour comics day).

The idea on HCD (1st Feb) is to draw a comic for every hour you're awake (Sarah McIntyre explains it well here).

The novelty of having to turn out a comic every hour usually fades when you're a few hours into it and you realise your family and employer probably wants you to actually achieve something other than drawing comics that day.  So my technique is usually to not attempt it every hour but every second hour.

The 2021 twist is everyone is mainly indoors looking at screens so the visual variety is less than previous years (in 2019 just before the pandemic I went into town and visited a bookshop and a cafe - unbelievable!).

So here is this year's 9 part comic documenting a day under lockdown.

Caricature Resolution 2021

 One of my resolutions for 2021 is to blog (a bit more) about what I’m up to art wise because even though I’m daily updating social media it is still nice to have some long form content that doesn’t get washed away in the endless trending streams of tweets and grams.

So a few days into January I discovered on the Instagram hashtag #caricatureresolution2021 run by ISCA the International Society of Caricature Artists. Like many other monthly challenges there is a prompt of a person to draw every day.

I like caricature but it isn't the same as drawing portraits and although I have drawn a few one I quite like some of the artists on this hashtag were doing amazing work so there is clearly room for improvement.  So where time allowed I vowed to try and caricature whoever came up that day.

I didn’t quite manage every day but I did do about half of them and here are my favourites.

This is Carol Channing from the last day prompt 31 by which time I was starting to get a feel for it so I might as well start with a more polished example.

Here’s Daveed Davis in his Hamilton role (how I miss live theatre or any sort of cultural event).

Frances McDormand from her Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri role.

Finally Martin Luther  King Jnr from the 15th using a slightly more painterly approach.

Do browse the Instagram hashtag if you want to see all the amazing caricatures done by artists across the world.