Olde Tyme

hah these are great! :)love the expressions on them!

always love it when you post. I'm inspired.

Great stuff Marcelo. As always, you are an inspiration. I really enjoy your sketchbook posts.

-Henry

Beautiful characters. Blah blah blah blah.

Estan bien cool estos dibujos

Marcelo,these characters are great.Especially the guy in the bottom!

:oD Great drawings!I like your presentation.Did you draw the frame too?
And Bla Bla Bla :o)

awesome caricatured people!

I like the third blah the best, it reminds me of an uncle that always tried to give me beer when I was 12.

I wish you hadn't blahd so quickly over the book binding process, I really wanted to know more about that.

wonderful! very appealing characters. I love the lady's hair. these guys would make a great short.

Gabby, Tiffany, Henry -- thanks.

Ahaha!, blah-blah to you too Chris.

Thanks Peter, Omar, Chroma.

Andrei, unfortunately I didn't draw the boarder. I drew these sketches during a long meeting. I thought they had an old-time feel, so I used Photoshop to put them over a book scan, and a border.

Patrick, that's a hoot!

Sorry Ted, there's no book binding. But, I have bound some books in the past. I learned it from Hans Bacher.

Thanks Bob!

Vignali. Why is EVERYBODY trying to draw in this pseudo Ronald Searle style? No matter what other people say, I don't like it.

hahah you crack me up, these are fantastic. LOVE the fat guy. They look like they are about to pop off the page and start wittily bantering back and forth.

Oscar -- I disagree, but I doubt I can convince you otherwise. Nonetheless, thanks for stopping by and sharing your brutally honest opinion. Send me an email and I'll tell you what I'm trying to accomplish.

Kendra -- thanks.

I find terribly interesting what the great jazz musician Charlie Mingus said about saxophone player Charlie "Bird" Parker:

"The followers who supposed Charlie Parker's greatness lay in his melodic patterns copied them without realizing that if Parker played something as diatonic as a scale on his horn (do, re, me, fa, so, la, ti, do), he could play it millons of different ways with millions of different meanings.

These sham copies have distorted Bird's beauty and greatness. I wonder how he felt hearing copies of himself all over America? How would a great, original painter feel if he saw in every gallery copies of his paintings, copies that were being hailed as good along with his own. I think it would be difficult, if not impossible, to retain his sense of himself, and that such a situation can destroy a man's capacity to continue to create."

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Marcello can outdraw just about anyone I know, and I've known a lot of great artists in my long career. I only hope I'm half as versatile as he is in exploring different styles.

To quote my mother; "If you don't have anything good to say, don't say it at all."

In this tremendous pool of talent that is the blogsphere I'll say that definitely Marcelo has a gigantic capacity when it comes to creating art that, certainly, doesn't imitate others, as I've witnessed following both his thinking and executing process on the spot so many times.
The interesting thing about our online community is that it allows us to have a clear shot at who's doing what by seeing the extend of their creative process along a big stretch of time, definitely showing in Marcelo's case his confidence and extremely subtle personality, that reflects on his artwork in a way that is absolutely unique to him.
Anyhow ...good day to everybody, and good rest of the week.

Oscar,

I'm disappointed that you would prefer a public forum to give such a scathing and incorrect critique of my work. I don't mind if someone dislikes my work, but to falsely accuse me of something is quite different. Rather than use the blog as a forum to give a notes of encouragement to peers, you're attempting public humiliation -- what a petty thing to do.

(Actually, if you must know, the main influence in these sketches were the Muppets. Although I love what Searle does, I don't think it has a strong 3 dimensional shape simplicity that I'm currently looking for in my work. Searle was not the influence.)

Now the bigger question remains, why would a man, as accomplished as yourself, falsely accuse another artist of being a "sham," because you perceive an influence that wasn't there?

So I took the time to visit your blog and noted you've made your career imitating others. Is it any more "original" to imitate artists such as Andre Francois, Pierre Bonnard, Chaim Soutine and Pablo Picasso? Or, are your influences of Pablo Picasso more valid or respectable than my Muppet influence?

Another thing more distasteful than attempting to publicly humiliate someone is hypocrisy. Congratulations, you've managed both with relative ease.

hahahahahhahaaha. this is so much nice.

Oooh these characters are a lot of fun!! Love the design a lot!!

Marcelo, i LOVE these drawings!

thanks for sharing.
it really is appreciated :)