PHROST (Jason Frost)

tells us about his artwork...

I’ve been into drawing since the first time I picked up a pencil and drew a stick figure. Since the early days of primary school, I created a reputation for myself as 'the drawing kid'.

I started off drawing dinosaurs, then developing my own cartoon style drawing dudes with massive eyes and small bodies. Then a couple of years ago I began doing pyrography (lol spell check came up with pornography) which is the art of wood burning. A very unique style which involves using an iron-core red hot pen burning into wood to draw whatever you want to your skill’s content.

Shortly after that I began sketching pictures of people and other creatures, including detail and shading to my drawings, and most of the time unconsciously creating a cartoon style caricature element to each piece. I have been enthusiastic about Hip Hop and the culture for a while now and decided to draw my favourite rappers…and now beatboxers.

I always start on the outline of the nose or eyes when I do a drawing of someone, and unlike most people (what I was taught at school), I usually start shading before I have completed the outline of everything. To create the effect I smudge with either one of my fingers or a tissue.

TyTe

I simply print-screened a shot of TyTe from one of his well-recognized video tutorials (the intro) and sketched it like that. I used a black pencil to create the darkness under the brim of his hat. A fair amount of improvisation was involved because of the poor quality from the print screen of the video. I’ll leave it to your imagination to what sound he’s making with his mouth.

yasSON

Here’s the great bearded YasSon looking psycho - but check his photo, he already looked psycho! JUST JOKES! Sorry yasSon. It’s more of a cartoony caricature I turned him into. I started shading on the nose right away, which explains its darkness in contrast to everything else.

For the Shiny parts on the teeth I used an eraser, also for the little shine on the nose. The hair was the most time consuming part, but I thought yasSon would like a really long beard, so I exaggerated that for him. Since I made it so long I decided to let things start growing inside of it.

Leejay

I found a cool photo of Leejay from his site (www.Leejaybeats.com) and decided to use that. I used black pencil for his eyebrows, hair and microphone. I stuffed up on his forehead though, because I tried to make it look shiny but did not accomplish it too well. I used an eraser for the shine down the middle of his nose, which turned out good. I gave his hair that spikey look, like in the photo, which was fair easy. Just quick 'hooky' strokes of the pencil.

Rahzel

My first drawing of a beatboxer. Hmm, I know I made him look a little Asian-oriented with the eyebrows and moustache, not sure how that happened… Not sure what else to say about it. Well, I had to draw the Godfather of Noise hehehe!

Colobus (Nic Arrighi)

tells us about his artwork...

Drawing has been a long time passion of mine and I’ve been at it for as long as I can remember. Through my schooling days I got a big reputation from my drawings and people would always be asking me for some, whether it be just something to collect or in other peoples cases they’d go hand them up to the teacher and try to get a high mark, but it never really worked because teachers easily recognized my drawings from the others. For most of my life I was only drawing cartoons but I soon started to draw more realistic things and eventually put the two together and discovered the art of caricatures, and when I did I to decided to draw some of my favourite rappers and beatboxers. On top of these types of drawings I also do a lot of fantasy type art and as well as drawing on paper I also paint on canvas with oil paint.

When I start drawing most of my caricatures I always do a rough outline with a light pencil, and when that’s done I’ll go over it again a bit darker but adding more detail and more shape into the face. Once the basics are done I’ll start shading in the areas that need shading getting all the tones right. Once that is done I’ll put my pencil down and get some toilet paper or tissue, whichever is the softest, and start smudging the areas that are needed, and after that I’ll touch up little details and use a black pencil to mark in the real dark areas - like the nostril.

Kenny Muhammad

Time to get sweaty with Kenny. I started off with the outline and then started the shading. I spent a long time getting him really smooth and shiny. Once that was complete I almost left the picture, but after watching the Columbia University video, and seeing how sweaty he was, I decided to put sweat on the picture. I made the sweat by using an eraser to make little droplets and then giving them small shadows with a pencil. I was very sweaty while drawing this picture.

Rahzel

Unlike the rest of my caricatures, I didn’t really use much smudging for it. I got this photo off of his website, but when I drew him I gave him some bigger lips and a weird egg shaped head. After shading him I was already pleased with how tight I did the pencil work, so I just filled in the dark parts and left him the way he is.

Hobbit

After Hobbit asked to be drawn I looked for a picture of him on the forums and found one. Originally I was going to exaggerate his pimples. I tried this but it looked too disturbing - lol - so I rubbed them out and only put on a few. Then I concentrated on the shininess and it was done.

Here you can see 3 stages of the picture.