A speeded-up video (I minute) showing the process for a party invite I designed last year. Drawn digitally then printed onto Glossy Postcard Paper.
The First Caricature Commission I ever did (in 2008)
Years ago I used to have an old website to put my random sketches on, and then one evening in July 2008 I got an email
Hi Brendan,
I was just looking at your drawings on your website, and I was wondering would you be able to do a caricature of myself and the missus? If you can do it I will send you pics of the two of us and an outline of the style we would like it. It will be us with hurleys about to clash them,in our wedding outfits.
regards,
Paul
And so I ended up drawing this cartoon.
It doesn’t really look much like my current work. I’ve learned a lot since then. But I still think it stands up as a good wedding caricature.
Afterwards I received a note
Bob Geldof Oil Painting Caricature
This was my first and only attempt at painting with oils. I never finished it. I got as far as the underpainting part, based on a digital sketch I had done. Browns and greys used to put in the basic shapes and the darks and lights.
The next step was supposed to be building up the skin tones etc. But to be honest - oils were a pain in the neck. Loads of cleaning up, took weeks to dry, and the turpentine stunk up the apartment.
So the project was abandoned in defeat until I could afford to live in a mansion with a separate airy studio for painting, at least 100 yards away from my bedroom.
(I definitely got a likeness though! I can see Bob Geldof in this)
Old Pencil Drawings
Back in the day I used to do the odd pencil drawing, mostly for friends. The church ones were for the cover of mass booklets
I also did a few random celebrities. The Ray D’arcy one has been on his Wikipedia page for at least 10 years and is still there as of today (Sat Nov 09th 2019)
George Hook liked his one when he saw it on Twitter so I posted it to him.
I put the Ray D’arcy drawing into an exhibition here in Athy when I heard he was going to be speaking at the opening. Here we both are admiring it.
Cocktail Menus Designs
A change of pace from drawing faces. These are cocktail and shot menus I did for Clancy’s bar here in Athy. This is a pub I go to, so it was nice to see my own work on the tables.
Old Caricatures IV
The Freddy Mercury one and the Laurel & Hardy are hung up at home. Favourite is the Dita von Teese one because I was able to get a likeness using hardly any lines.
Old Caricatures III
The first digital caricature I ever did was the Woody Allen one. I used to have these on an old site called Quarehawk.com. Someone offered to give me €20 to use the Simon Cowell one in an iPhone app they were planning. And someone stole the Mr Bean one to advertise their own shady “Caricature” business.
Anything good you put online will get stolen. If you can face the harsh truth about your work then start a blog. You will quickly see if the content you are making is valued, ie worth stealing. Eg nobody ever stole my David Mitchell cartoon.
Old Caricatures II
Most of these are from from 2008, when we all had that Leona Lewis Song “Bleeding Love” stuck in our heads and then Barack Obama got elected. These are my main memories. Other stuff probably happened that year as well.
Favourite: The Daniel Craig one
Old Caricatures
A few from 2008 - 2010. Just putting them up here to give them a home. Varying quality. The Tiger Woods & Noel Gallagher ones are pretty good though I think.
And I would imagine I am the first person ever to draw a caricature of Paddy Casey or Jack L.
The Paddy Casey one looks like an illustration from a childrens storybook about a sad teenager
Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie Caricatures
Photo from 2013. Caricatures Done digitally then put onto canvas by The Canvas Works in Kinsale.
I could still fit into those jeans if I had them.
Fry & Laurie Caricatures by Brendan O’Rourke
ISL Festival Athy 2019 Promotional Video
A video I made for Athy Sing & Sign Club to promote their Irish Sign Language Festival 2019. Featuring a speeded-up video of a caricature I drew of one of the organizers.
Caricature Poster For 50th Birthday
I did this invite and poster for a 50th Birthday party here in Athy.
Russell Brand Caricature
I drew this in around 2010. It’s just ordinary pencil on paper.
A few years later I saw some guy had printed it off from the website, brought it to a Russell Brand gig to get it autographed, and then sold the signed print on eBay.
Part of me had to admire this.
I could start doing it myself. Buy a ticket. Draw the performer. Get the drawing signed and re-coup the cost of the ticket.
Russell Brand Caricature by Brendan O’Rourke
Roger Federer Caricature
Speeded-up video of my drawing of Roger Federer. It’s a bit unpolished but I was happy with the likeness.
Ryan Tubridy Caricature
A landmark day in the life of an Irish person is the day you become the same age as the presenter of the Late Late Show. This happened to me in 2009 and I’m still not over it.
I had recently started drawing caricatures so a few months later I drew this.
It’s one of the few drawings from those early days that I still think is good.
And then shortly after I put that online The Sun newspaper got a few more pics from my old site and did this …
“Wacky Artist” indeed.
Learning To Draw Live Caricatures
My way of practising this is to go to the Facebook pages of local pubs where they put up loads of photos from the previous night, and try to draw the faces.
I’m improving slowly.
I can’t post the reference photos obviously but take my word for it these are all the SPITTING IMAGE!
I’m doing the shading with a pencil at the moment. I’m sure there are better ways. I’ll be looking into it when I think I am ready to try doing these live.
How To Make a Stewie Griffin Costume For Halloween
This is the time when I decided, at the age of 42, to dress up as a one year old.
This costume turned out to be a big hit, and was actually very easy to make. Also it was my first attempt at making any costume ever, so you can learn from my mistakes here and do this even better. I’ve listed the mistakes at the end.
At the time of writing (Sep 2019) I googled and didn’t see any versions of this costume that I honestly thought were better than mine.
So anyway, Stewie Griffin. The 95th Greatest Villain of all time according to Wizard Magazine, is 50% head. The entire thing is based on the head. If you are feeling lazy you could just make the head and wear a normal shirt and jeans and it would still work as a Stewie costume.
I made the head from papier mache. Not from any fancy mixture - just flour and water and newspapers.
STEP 1. The Head Mold
To make the head you need something for the shape. Something to stick the papier mache on.
I got one of those inflatable rugby balls, the 120cm one.
You can get them on Amazon.
I wanted an Ireland Rugby ball that I could maybe get some further use out of, but they don’t seem to make those, so I got the England one. The main thing is to get the 120cm.
You want to make as big a head as possible, but not so big that you can’t balance it on your own head. How to get it to sit securely on your head it is explained further down.
One of these
STEP 2. Coat the ball in tin foil. Stick the foil on it with masking tape.
My thinking here was that I didn’t want the papier mache to stick to the rugby ball, as I was planning to extract the ball after the mask had hardened. In the end I didn’t do that but found an even better approach which I will reveal later in this article …
(This is an example of a literary device known as “foreshadowing”, often used to great effect by writers such as William Shakespeare and me)
You can see at the bottom I’ve put an empty biscuit tin underneath. This was to make the hole to put my own head through.
Paper Mache mix - get a basin, then put in 1 part flour/1 part water.
There are more complicated recipes online but this worked for me.
And here the first area where you can improve on my costume. The flour/water mix means that you eventually end up with something akin to stale bread. Which will grow mould after a few weeks. You could feed it to birds I suppose. A ghastly effigy in your back garden, slowly begin eaten.
Or put it on a scarecrow. But if you make your papier mache with something like wallpaper paste the head will last longer and you could even sell it on eBay the next year, netting yourself a cool €10.
I wore this to a party over in Westport and had the hilarious idea to maybe just chuck the head off a bridge into the Shannon on the way home. I assume it’s biodegradable? And then wait for someone to take a pic and have it turn up on some site like broadsheet.ie. But I didn’t do that as I ended up giving it to my cousin’s kid for trick-or-treating.
Here I am outside the Hotel Westport
I want this photo displayed at my funeral
Tear the newspapers up into strips and start sticking the strips on.
I did this over the course of about 3 nights. You need to wait for the top to dry a bit before flipping it upside down to do the underside. I did this in the bath as you can see.
Leave the air nozzle at the side uncovered.
Make two separate little nuggets of Papier mache to stick on as the ears.
I sent this photo to my mate Gus without explanation. He wrote back “Looks like alien egg?”.
STEP 3. Paint it
About a week later when you are sure everything is dry you will need to paint it. There are plenty of shades of yellow that would work, the shade I got was called “Buttermilk”.
STEP 4. Stewie’s Facial Features
There are various eye and eyebrow shapes you can choose from. Maybe “Angry Stewie” might be a good one. The only feature you are stuck with is the open mouth. Because you need to have the mouth open so you will be able to see out through it.
I am confident enough with drawing so I called up a picture of Stewie on my phone and just copied this mouth. If you aren’t confident you could try
- getting help from an artistic friend
- using a wipe away marker to do it roughly until you are happy, and then write over it with a permanent marker.
For the eyes I just got a saucer of approximately the right size and traced around it.
Stewie Griffin has 10 hairs on his head but I misjudged it and ended up having to do 11. Text from my friend Anna “Throw it away. It’s ruined now”
White paint for the eyes.
Cut the mouth shape out with a carpet knife.
Now. This is the surprise part - open the nozzle of the rugby ball and deflate the head about half way.
You can now balance the whole thing on your own head quite comfortably! This crude diagram explains it. You will be surprised how well this works. Other people at the party wore the head on the dance floor and it worked fine for them as well.
Starting to take shape
This might have seemed odd to my neighbour across the street if he happened to be looking
STEP 5. The Trousers
Stewie wears red dungarees with yellow buttons. And a yellow shirt. As I said, this part hardly matters. But maybe you are trying to win a prize.
You don’t need these dungarees to fit well. In fact I’d say it’s better if they are baggy. You are trying to look like a baby. So buy a red bed sheet and cut it into the shape of dungarees and sew the two sides together. Cut out two plastic circles and wrap them in yellow material from an old t-shirt.
For the yellow shirt I just put on a yellowish shirt I already had.
This would work for a Mario costume the next year
Here’s a few pics of me at the party. A lot of people came up and asked to get a photo with me so I’m calling the costume a success.
How to improve on my version of the Stewie Griffin Halloween Costume
- Add Rupert. Any brown teddy bear would work, but a floppy one would be perfect.
- Better Papier mache mix. Make something that will last.
- Before painting, smooth the finished head down with sandpaper or a sander if you have one. The surface of my mask was quite rough when you looked at it up close.
- Have an opening at the back of your trousers and a false bum sticking out.
- The smaller the person the better. This would work great on a 6 year old.
- Put something over the inside of the mouth hole. Maybe cut out a bit from a pair of dark tights? Or thin black paper. You need something you can see through. The reason I recommend this is because otherwise whenever you are directly facing a camera flash this happens …
Your Big Stupid Face will distract from the costume
So that’s it
This same basic method should also work pretty well if you want to make South Park characters. Just use a round beach ball for the head. Start in August and make yourself a shed full of Southpark characters and sell them all on done deal the week before Halloween.
Or if you are part of a couple you could make TWO of these heads - and the other one can be that half-brother guy that fights Stewie. Bertram. Just stick bit of red hair on top.
Thanks for reading