– Peter Falk
Desperate to create something, but not sure what to sketch?
Are your friends tired of you drawing them as mildly offensive caricatures?
Did you announce to the world that you were going to draw something each day, and now you’re at day 26 strung out for sketchy ideas?
Perhaps you just want to look at famous faces on the internet, and pretend you’re sitting across from them in a coffee shop frantically trying to sketch them before they walk off into the sunset with Al Pacino. Unless you’re drawing Al Pacino, in which case … I suppose he just leaves.
Well, have I got a challenge for you!
In this post, I’ll break down the Sketching Challenge – “Famous Faces A to Z“.
If you know your alphabet, and have lived in the world for more than 6 years – you’ll be all set to draw an interpretation of your favourite star.
Together, we’ll look at some of my own wins and happy accidents from the challenge, discover why Harold from ‘Neighbours’ makes a cameo, and generally have fun wondering who is secretly a cyborg.
The one thing we can all take away from great artistic masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Frida Kahlo, and Neil Buchanan from ‘Art Attack‘ – is that art comes from the soul. And also supplies.
You can colour with a crayon, wow with watercolour, or finesse with fineliner. Perhaps you’re creative with charcoal, great with gouache, awesome with acrylic or just like playing with pastels. Is your preferred medium paper, plaster, porcelain or are you the medium? In which case your medium would be poltergeists.
The world is literally your artistic oyster.
Literally.
Some of my go-to favourite art supplies while working on this sketching challenge, have been:
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The above links are affiliate links. This means, if you click on the link and purchase the item from that link, I get a few dollars at no extra cost to you! This way we can both stock up on more art supplies! 😀
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First thing’s first, when partaking in the ‘Famous Actors A to Z’ challenge you’re going to need to know who you’re drawing.
I decided to choose my actor based on their first names when allocating them to a letter of the alphabet, rather than their last name – but you do you, friend. Whatever name order rings your boat, or floats your bell is fine with the challenge.
I also decided that if I was going to be creating weird duplicates of people, that I may as well lean all-in and choose actors that I had a passing connection with. Note that any connection I have with these people is a result of me obsessing over their TV/Movie personas and not as a result of any human interaction. Although, when they see their doppelgängers on this site I’m sure we’ll be best friends IRL.
Scrolling through my gallery below, you may also note that I kept my actor choices to the male persuasion this round. I will be doing a ‘Round 2’ with actresses in the near future – so stay tuned.
As you work through the challenge, don’t be disheartened if your Alan Alda looks too morose, or your Bill Murray appears to be two different people stitched together. Eventually all those months of watching back-to-back episodes of ‘Law and Order SVU’ will leave you with a passable impression of Christopher Meloni. You may despair a little when you sketch a square-headed David Tennant, but take heart – there are more happy accidents ahead.
Your friends may ask you why you’ve drawn a mouse in the likeness of Elijah Wood, but throw down some flash bulbs until they lose interest and move on to a ‘Stranger Things’ impression of Finn Wolfhard in the upside-down. Channel some pure imagination with William Wonka (thanks, Gene) and swing into ‘H’ with a very orange Harrison Ford. I can only imagine that the Lost Arc was filled with sherbert.
You might choose a brooding Ian McShane for your ‘I’ actor, posing as a Norse God to boost your fighting spirit for the rest of the challenge. Things may take a Fawlty turn with John Cleese, but brew yourself a fine cup of coffee and congratulate yourself with a Kyle MacLachlan. Is he wearing a mask? No. Or is he? No. Or is he? That show was weird, so anything goes. Isn’t that right, Leonard Nimoy – star of the small screen and various treks.
Mandy Patinkin is always willing to reprise his role as Inigo Montoya in ‘Princess Bride’ to help anyone through a sketching challenge – he’s even squared his chin especially for the occasion. Noel Fielding will help you find the humour in your art, which is timely for when you draw a cartoonish Orlando Bloom. Everyone can take a breath when Pedro joins the team, and doesn’t turn out as weird as we thought he was going to. Nice job, Pascal – now back to your mushroom zombies.
We’re starting to get into the pointy end of the alphabet when we hit Q – so give a quick thanks to Quentin Tarantino for giving us someone to draw. Rob Brydon loves a good impression, and won’t mind terribly if you tilt his head a little too far to the side. The legend that is Stephen Fry, goes a little cross-eyed as we edge our way to the end of the challenge, but that may just be because he’s spotted Tim Curry mid-Pennywise change. You made it weird, Tim – but we love you.
When you get to the letter ‘U’, you basically get a free pass on account of who’s name begins with U?? So for everyone’s sanity, Harold from ‘Neighbours’ joins us for a riff on his saxophone. I’ll be honest, its not a tune that anyone knows, but he’s playing with gusto and it seems to have lured a chicken and a rabbit onto the head and shoulders of the person who was initially supposed to be Vincent D’Onofrio, but didn’t turn out. Thanks, Harold. You might want to whip out a quick continuous line drawing of Willem Dafoe, so you can say his name a few times – it’s fun to say. Then ‘X’. Geez. Feel free to put in a little Professor Xavier from X-Men. It seems to fill the gap.
You may feel like the challenge has gone off-road when ‘Y’ becomes a little Hercule Poirot and ‘Z’ finishes the game with a frog on a flower. This is understandable, but we’re pretty sure the frog was in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ or made a cameo in ‘The Little Mermaid’. Don’t fact check that.
Give yourselves a pat on the back for making 26 pieces of art that never existed before! You’re basically Gandalf! Well done!
I encourage you to share your works of art with the world.
Put them on social media, sticky-tape them to the fridge (or I suppose you could use a magnet), post them to a friend from school you haven’t spoken to in 15 years, or email a scanned copy to an actor you’ve immortalised!
Release your creations into the world, and be proud that you’ve done a thing. Every piece of art is an expression of something – joy, frustration, the longing to develop a new skill, proof of your devotion to pop culture.
You are wonderful. You are learning. You have completed a random internet challenge – and I’d love to see your creations.
Let us all know how you went, in the comments below.
