Portrait of Young Michael Caine

I remember watching Michael Caine movies when I was very young. It may be that these souvenirs of youth made me want to draw a portrait of this well-known actor. Or may be I was charmed with the fact that Michael Caine will be 80 years old in 2013 and he still looks good and active.

Young Michael Caine wearing his signature hipster glasses

He still acts in many films. Michael Caine’s face looks rather attractive from artist’s perspective. Although he was born in a poor family, he has that peculiar British nobility in his appearance. Michael has a beautiful family and despite his solid age he even mastered Twitter. This active gentleman seems to have that irresistible aura that has inspired me to draw his portrait. So I found a picture of young Michael Caine that had been taken a year before my birthday and I used it as a reference for the portrait. Furthermore, this picture shows Michael wearing his famous hipster glasses; therefore I wanted to include this cool accessory into the portrait. I also learned from the Internet that one of Michael Caine’s favorite songs was “My Way” by Frank Sinatra. That’s why I decided that this great piece of music should be the soundtrack for my video showing the portrait creation process. I believe this song indeed perfectly fits a mature man who lived a long life of success. I hope Michael Caine himself will find this portrait and share his thoughts about it in the comment section below (well, I know it sounds almost impossible, but it doesn't hurt to dream).

Watch this video on Youtube

P.S. many people ask me what kind of pen I use for my artworks. For this portrait of Michael Caine I utilized one of my most appreciated drawing tools – a Pilot Birdie fountain pen.

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Expanding My Team to Create Professional Vector Art

I started my career as a graphic artist with illustrations for archaeological digs in Crimea. I have been creating freehand artworks for a significant part of my life and even today, when artist’s business requires mastering graphic editing software such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, I still gravitate to old school hand-made drawing. The majority of people start learning to draw or paint in a traditional way using conventional art tools such as paper and brushes or pencils. Doing so is natural. That’s why lots of old-schoolers proved to be unprepared for the digital era when all kinds of artworks can and sometimes must be created with the aid of special software and hardware like graphic tablets. I was lucky enough to have had the opportunity to learn how to utilize Adobe Photoshop to edit, outline or color my freehand sketches in order to turn them into digital pictures as well as how to work with Adobe Illustrator to create infinitely scalable vector images that are indispensable for many purposes dictated by technology advances of the twenty-first century.

In this blog you can find a few articles about projects which suggested applying my modest skills of creating vector images, for example, posts about the motocross vector illustrations, the panda mascot, and the posters for a chiropractor. However, when it comes to large projects involving vector graphics, I feel that my vector art skills are not strong enough for me to be able to offer my clients fast delivery and top-notch quality of images compared to artists whose major specialty is vector graphics. Therefore I decided to ask my former colleague to join me and become my associate in creating vector art for my customers who approach me with their big vector art projects. Her name is Natalia Busayeva. We used to work together for a web design and development agency, but today we both are freelance artists living in the same city. Natalia has acquired solid Adobe Illustrator skills which is exactly what I need to compensate for my lack of experience with vector graphics and meet my customers’ most challenging demands.

Our First Project Together: Vector Images Related to Sports and Hobbies

The first project Natalia worked on under the brand of Igor Lukyanov’s Artistic Studio was a series of vector pictures related to sports and hobbies. They were created for Split P Studio, LLC (owner of the "FunnyLuggageTags" trade mark) – my old client for whom I created custom drawings for the vintage-fashion-inspired luggage tags. These images were also purposed for a collection of luggage tags. As you can see from images below, vector art created by Natalia has a professional flair, even though I showed them in low resolution and they look not at their best here.

Male mountain biking

Female mountain biking

Fly fishing

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