Back in late ’00s and early ’10s I used to make some caricatures mostly inspired by political situations, especially here in Greece. Some of them were used to illustrate animated works (such as Los Socialistas or Take them down) while others were standalone sketches.
Recently I started again making some works that could be described as caricatures only this time my inspiration came by other fields like literature and art. As I want to continue with this activity (at least as long as I have spare time between my comic works) I decided to create a separate section to present all these works together.
In almost all of them I followed the same course of action. First a realistic drawing of the face, then several tests modifying various features, finally ending up with a cartoon drawing. Then using this as a guide I usually end up with two versions of a color image, one focusing on the face and the other on some action that fits the person.
The authors I have chosen (the choice was made out of love for their work) are J.R.R. Tolkien, Umberto Eco, Jacques Tardi, Dashiell Hammett, Nanni Balestrini, Federico Garcia Lorca, Italo Calvino, Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Jorge Luis Borges. For each of them I tried to create an image that is connected to one of their works (or their lives).
So, for example, Umberto Eco was linked to a medieval manuscript inspired by his profession and his literay works such as The Name of the Rose, Nanni Balestrini to an image from my comic on his book “We Want Everything“, Jacques Tardi to the trenches of World War I (and an image influenced by his comic “It Was the War of the Trenches”), Dashiell Hammett to a noir detective’s office and Italo Calvino was depicted on a tree like his hero in the book The Baron in the Trees and so on.
For Lorca in particular, I relied on the fact that he was executed by Franco’s fascists. I copied/modified an execution image drawn/painted by Goya and for the third illustration I used an image from my comic book Windy Nights (The Rider’s Song).
Caricatures -Authors
Borges, Lorca, Eco, Tolkien,…
Around the same time I decided to make some images where I would combine a caricature of a person with a quote from that person, which seemed interesting to me. The faces I chose belonged to the world of music (quoting lyrics from their songs) and sport : Diego Armando Maradona, Bruce Springsteen, Shane MacGowan (of the Pogues), Mike Dirnt and Billie Joe Armstrong (of Green Day) and Johnny Rotten (Sex Pistols).
quotes
The last gallery consists of the cartoon illustrations of the song Take them down (by Dropkick Murphys). The politicians/journalists depicted are figures who dominated political discourse at the time (2011-12): Obama, Lagarde, Venizelos (politician), Merkel, Sarcozy, Olli Rehn, Papadimos (banker-prime minister of Greece without being elected), Papadimitriou (so called journalist and news anchor but more like a representative of the bourgeoisie), Pretenteris (so called journalist and news anchor but more like a spokesman of the government), Samaras (Prime Minister of Greece), W. Schäuble.
take them down
