With a terrific skill for caricature, a flair for whimsy and superb draftsmanship and technique, C.F. Payne has long been recognized as one of America’s foremost contemporary illustrators.
His clients include Time, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, Esquire, National Geographic, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic Monthly and a wonderful series of covers for Mad magazine.
Since I last wrote a brief post about him back in 2005, Payne now has his own website and a Behance portfolio and is well presented on the site of Richard Solomon Artist’s Representative.
Payne has an amazing ability to combine cartoon-like sensibilities with an underlying solidity of drawing and refined, richly textured rendering that give his illustrations an exceptional punch. His likenesses are simultaneously entertaining and revealing, making fun while exploring the essence of the figure’s personality.
Payne has recently collaborated with Astronaut Mike Kelly on the upcoming children’s book Mousetronaut: A Partially True Story (Amazon link here) that is due out in October of 2012.
His Behance portfolio has the largest reproductions of his work I can find, but the selection on the Richard Solomon site is much more extensive. Both have an example step through of his working process.
There is a 10 minute portrait demo video of Payne working and explaining his process on Vimeo.