101 Uses For Your Vuvuzela — Mel Gibson, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

David Germond of The Win Win Group emailed me a challenge… To come up with alternative uses for your vuvuzela now that the World Cup is over.

His email was simple. It said: ‘This is what Zapiro did…‘

So here’s my stab at it.

I took a good hour to do a Google search for a suitable Mel Gibson picture. I was hunting for one where he spews vitriol, something to match the sound of his voice on the leaked recordings of his verbal abuse of his wife.

It seems his public relations handlers are on full red alert doing urgent fire-fighting. There are only a very few unsavoury pics of the man. And those are tame.

Anyway. I found this one. It suits my purpose. It’s from ContactMusic.

I originally intended making a caricature of him. But when I was dummying up the composition, I liked the juxtaposition of the photo with the drawing. So that’s what I stuck with.

This picture was made entirely in ArtRage 3 (with the exception of the photo of Mel Gibson, which is used without permission). No vuvuzelas were abused in the making of this muzzle. Mind the drool.

By the way, you have 13 days left to take advantage of my half-price offer. Book and pay for my services as a visual facilitator before Friday 30 July, and you get me for a massive 50% saving. Email Jennifer for details: bookings@royblumenthal.com

Blumenthal’s ‘Back From Berlin Bash’ — Visual Facilitation at half-price for two weeks, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

Just returned from Berlin. A top multinational pharmaceutical company made use of my services as a visual facilitator.

To give YOU the chance to experience what Europe’s corporate top brass experienced, I’m BASHING my prices for just two weeks.

If you book and pay for a visual facilitation session with me in the next two weeks, you’ll get me FOR HALF PRICE.

We’re accepting bookings at half price until Friday 30 July. This offer is valid for events up to 31 December 2010. All you have to do is book and pay before 30 July, and you get a MASSIVE DISCOUNT. HALF OFF!

So while I’m cooling off from the 40 degree temperatures of Berlin, you can heat up your boardroom by having me make live pictures of your event.

UPDATE: Thanks to Nelson Mandela Day on 18 July, I’ve added a bonus to this promotion… Take advantage of my special, and I’ll throw in a FREE half-day visual facilitation for a Gauteng-based NGO of your choice. You get to give back. I get to give back. The NGO gets to experience visual facilitation. It’s a win-win-win! So what are you waiting for? BOOK ME TODAY!

Book me NOW by emailing Jennifer on bookings@royblumenthal.com. Act now. The half-price window closes on Friday 30 July.

This picture was created live during a ‘best practice sharing’ convention held in Berlin.

John vd Ruit, world best-selling author of the hit series of SPUD novels, popped his voice into my cellphone a while back. I made this video out of it.

I drew three ink-on-paper sketches of John in my Moleskine. I scanned them, then tidied them up and coloured them in Photoshop CS3. I hauled them into CrazyTalk 6 and animated the pics.

Finally, I composited everything together in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3.

All audio editing was done in Audacity.

The music is a Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ licensed track I found on Jamendo. It’s called ColdRain by Silent Assassin.

This video is released under a Creative Commons ‘Attribution, Share-Alike’ license. Which means you can remix it, and do whatever you like with it. As long as you credit me as the originator, and that you release it under a similar license.

Graeme Sacks (@AfricanABC) popped into Mugg & Bean in Killarney. He took this pic of me demonstrating ArtRage to an interested-party.

I’ve been uploading pics I made live on-air this morning at eNEWS CHANNEL. They had a special to celebrate 100 Days To The World Cup, and I was invited to do on-the-spot visual facilitation of the event.

These are the pics I made:

Seth Godin is one of the sanest marketers in the world today.

David Garland scooped an interview with Seth for his blog, THE RISE TO THE TOP.

In the chat, Seth shares his views on how to make a difference in the world.

This is my ultra-compressed summary of the interview.

This pic was painted in ArtRage 3.06 on my Rectron-sponsored Asus R1E tablet pc while watching the interview. Feel free to laugh at my rendition of Seth.

And here’s the interview itself, embedded from THE RISE TO THE TOP post (please be patient while the Shockwave/Flash movie loads):

Standard Bank held a three-day conference. I was the caricaturist for the Group Corporate Affairs division.

These three pics are from a caricaturing/visual facilitation gig I did for Standard Bank through the WinWin Group. It was a three-day job, and involved a looooooooot of caricaturing. I made about 78 pictures during the convention.

One of 78 caricatures I made in three days. This is Pam.

Photographer Craig Owen was taking pictures of the various people and stands at the convention. And he took some candid shots of me at work.

ArtRage 3.05 on my Asus R1E tablet pc.

My subject in these pics takes care of aspects of Standard Bank’s employee health. She tested my blood pressure (perfect), my blood sugar (not too bad, but not ideal), and my cholestrol (terrible).

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Caricaturing is a really enjoyable art for me. It’s really cool taking the time to hear about the sitter. The process takes about ten to thirty minutes, depending on how many people are in the queue lining up for their pic to be done.

And it’s really quite an intimate process. Many people have never sat for a portrait ever in their lives. So they feel vulnerable and exposed. I do my very best to set them at ease. We joke. We laugh. I ask them about their favourite things in life. When the pic’s finished, I hope that I’ve captured some of their personality in the painting, the line, the composition.

A pic from my BMW conference on Mon 25 Jan 2010 — Karen Valle from Mini, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

This is a pic I made live at the BMW conference. All of the BMW and MINI dealers from around the country gathered to put their ducks in a row for 2010. The WinWin Group put the event together.

My work was showing on two big plasma screens on either side of the main projection screen. Delegates were able to see me capturing the key messages of each speaker as they delivered their talks.

I’m not allowed to be specific about stuff I’ve heard.

But I *can* tell you two things…

Karen Valle, GM of Mini South Africa, told us some mouthwatering news. There’s a new Mini coming to South Africa that’s going to cause a major stir in the market. The R60 is an offroad 4×4x4×4 — four-wheel drive, four doors (plus the back hatch makes five), four metres long, and four seats (plus a fifth little one). It’s the first Mini I absolutely YEARN for. It has boot space! You can have four people in it AND go on holiday. Or to the shops. (I’m open to correction on this, cos I didn’t see the actual car.)

The other thing I can tell you is that the new BMW X1 is one of the nicest Beemers I’ve seen in a while. Not HOTTEST, mind you. Nicest. It’s good to look at. It’s compact. It’s luxurious. It’s a performer. And it’s going to smack the SUV market in the teeth.

This pic (and many more that I can’t show) was created live on my Rectron-sponsored Asus R1E tabletpc. I was running a beta version of ArtRage 3.06, which stood up to some very hard testing on my part. Congrats to Matt and the Ambient team. Awesome!

Take a look at Roy’s online portfolio at royblumenthal.com. And if you’d like to book him to make your next event more memorable, email him at roy@royblumenthal.com. Book him now!

Happy 2010! (Jennifer in Bed, with Cat), originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

The new year is upon us.

I’m looking forward to a year of prosperity, abundance, and living my art.

It’s going to be a year of release from old patterns and grimy people.

A year of openness to good.

May your year also be filled with learning, loving, and laughing.

This pic was sketched into my Moleskine using my trusty disposable Bic Intensity gel pen. I took a snapshot of the open book using my Nokia E71, then contrast- and colour-enhanced it using Resco Photo Viewer. Uploaded using Nokia’s ‘Share Online’. Shared on Twitter using SnapTweet.

Pate de foie Manto, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

Liver as a main course. With a whole bunch of stuff to make a collapsed liver even worse. And some stuff to kill a nation.

A fifth of all South Africans have HIV or AIDS right now. And that’s just the cases that are known about.

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and her AIDS denialism are responsible for South Africa having such a big problem.

Now she’s dead. Can our country recover?

Made in ArtRage 3 on my Rectron-sponsored Asus R1E tablet pc.

If you’d like to use this pic for any reason whatsoever, go for it. It’s released under a Creative Commons ‘Attribution, Share-Alike’ license.

Manto Tshabalala-Msimang Dead Dead Dead, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

She’s dead and gone now.

Maybe it means South Africa has a chance to recover from the mistakes she made botching our ability to solve the AIDS crisis this country is sinking under.

Verbose? Hey. Not as verbose as Manto. The alcoholic, thieving, incompetent buffoon.

One liver transplant wasn’t good enough for her. She had to continue drinking. Just had to do it.

And the first liver transplant was a stolen liver. She jumped the queue.

And the second liver that was scheduled to be given to her? Stolen too. Another jumped queue.

Am I sad that she’s gone? Nah.

Am I worried that people will think ill of me for saying bad things about the dead? Nah.

Am I happy that the country might be able to get back on track? I truly don’t know. I think there’s a lot of evil going on in this place. Our politicians are as corrupt as it’s possible to be. I think we’re screwed, actually. But hey.

This pic was made in ArtRage 3 on my Rectron-sponsored Asus R1E tablet pc.

If you want to use this pic for any reason whatsoever, please go ahead. It’s released under a Creative Commons ‘Share-Alike, Attribution’ license.