Just a quick update: The USO cartoonists tour arrived in Kuwait late Saturday night. We are staying in an undisclosed location… no sign of Dick Cheney. I’m too tired to blog and it’s an early morning and busy day tomorrow. More to follow.
Our band of ten National Cartoonist Society cartoonists were a little bleary eyed after an all night flight from Washington DC to Frankfurt, two 2 hour bus ride south to Landstuhl and then literally right to Ramstien Air Force Base and the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center to meet and draw for “wounded warriors” and the hard working staff of these facilities that take such good care of our injured troops.
We spent all day Friday at LRMC, making many stops in various areas to draw and chat with personnel. One stop was the DWMMC (Deployed Warrior Medical Management Center) where we drew soldiers waiting to get final word on when they were on their way either home or back into the theater. We also toured several wards meeting with injured soldiers right in their rooms, as well as drawing for staff in various conference and break rooms and other parts of the hospital. We wrapped up in the USO center on the premises and then headed back to our lodgings at Ramstien tired but fulfilled.
Today we set up at the USO center in one of the main air terminals at Ramstein and drew for soldiers and family members waiting to depart for various destinations. Thanks to printed advertisements about our visit there we had a nice crowd of military families and soldiers to draw for.
This afternoon we depart from Frankfurt for Kuwait, and the Mideast leg of our tour. I cannot be specific about our destinations, but will try and share what I can as time and internet access allow. Unfortunately I also cannot publish any photos until they are cleared by the USO.. top secret you understand. Mike Peters did some things that will have to remain classified indefinitely, but I think most of our trip will be okay to share with the rest of the world eventually. I will have much more comprehensive coverage of the trip after we get back. Here’s a small blurb about our trip in the Washington Post.
Our group spent a good part of yesterday drawing for and meeting wounded soldiers and medical staff at the Bathesda Naval Hospital and Walter Reed. We are now in Landstuhl, Germany and will spend today visiting Ramstien Air Force Base and the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. Then it’s on to the Middle East.
I have no idea what my Internet access will be on this trip. I am guessing spotty at best. I will try to blog when possible but can’t promise anything.
Here are some pics from Thursday in DC including the whole group at the Bathesda Naval Hospital.
While I’m on my world cartooning tour there might be a few of these old videos from my 1993 live caricature demo reel posted here. Here’s one of SNL alumni Mike Myers and Dana Carvey from “Wayne’s Word”.
Here is the official press release from the USO on our trip overseas. The exact places we are visiting in Kuwait and Iraq are classified… I’d tell you where they are but then I’d have to kill you.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 14, 2009 Contacts: Oname Thompson, (703) 908-6471
National Cartoonist Society to Draw Smiles on USO Entertainment Tour to Germany and Persian Gulf
ARLINGTON, Va. – The USO and the National Cartoonist Society (NCS) will soon deploy ten of today’s most recognized cartoonists and caricaturists on a week-long entertainment tour to visit troops stationed in Germany and the Persian Gulf. The group will visit wounded troops at the USO Warrior Center at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and more than a dozen military bases in the combat zone. Committed to showing their support to America’s Armed Forces, they will also make personalized sketches for troops. The tour will include:
Jeff Bacon of “Broadside” and “Greenside”
Chip Bok syndicated editorial cartoonist
Bruce Higdon of Army Times, Army Magazine, Soldiers Magazine, and Stars and Stripes
Jeff Keane of “The Family Circus”
Rick Kirkman of “Baby Blues”
Stephan Pastis of “Pearls Before Swine”
Mike Peters of “Mother Goose and Grimm”
Michael Ramirez of Investors Business Daily
Tom Richmond of MAD Magazine
Garry Trudeau of “Doonesbury”
The NCS traces its association with the USO to World War II, when professional cartoonists made repeated trips overseas to entertain troops. Whether visiting military hospitals, entertaining troops with chalk talks, or sharing words of encouragement, approximately one hundred professional cartoonists and caricaturists have participated in military-related trips. In 2008, the USO sponsored eight cartoonists to travel to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, National Naval Medical Center and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. A similar trip was organized earlier this year.
“I’m so proud of our men and women in uniform,” said Jeff Keane, President of the National Cartoonists Society. “They, much like my dad who served in the Army back in the mid-1940s, have worked so hard and sacrificed so much. I am honored to be part of this USO tour and I can’t thank our troops enough.”
In times of peace and war, the USO consistently delivers its special brand of entertainment and comfort to service members around the world. In 2008, celebrity entertainers traveled to 27 countries and 23 states, entertaining more than 236,000 troops and their families.
###
About the USO
The USO (United Service Organizations) lifts the spirits of America’s armed forces and their families. We provide a touch of home to troops wherever they serve through centers at airports and military bases around the world, top quality entertainment and innovative programs and services tailored to meet the needs of troops and their families. The USO is not a government agency and relies on the generosity of the American people. The USO is also supported by Worldwide Strategic Partners AT&T Inc., BAE Systems, The Boeing Company, Clear Channel Communications, The Coca-Cola Company, Gallery Furniture, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft Corporation, Northrop Grumman Corporation, S & K Sales Co. and TriWest Healthcare Alliance. Other corporate donors, including the United Way and Combined Federal Campaign (CFC-11381), have joined millions of individual donors to support the USO. For more information, please visit www.uso.org.
Again, how often I can blog will depend much on my internet access and scheduling when on the trip. There are also a whole lot of rules about what we can and can’t do via blogs and the internet… no Geraldo shenanigans.
Please forgive this reposting of an old sketch, but in light of events today I thought it appropriate.
I am headed out this morning to Washington DC to meet up with a group of cartoonists from the National Cartoonists Society, and then we are off on another USO tour to met and draw for US troops like we did last year at this time. The trip is a little different this year, because after stops to visit wounded soliders in DC and then Landstuhl, Germany, we are off to the Persian Gulf to spend several days doing the same with active servicemen in both Kuwait and Iraq. I will be back on Oct. 24th.
As of this writing the USO had still not issued the official press release for this trip, although it’s been mentioned on it’s official 2009 USO “Entertainment tour” scheduled as dates “TBD” for some time. Here’s the list of those going from that USO page:
Jeff Bacon (Broadside/Greenside)
Chip Bok (Editorial Cartoonist)
Bruce Higdon (Punderstatements)
Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues)
Jeff Keane (Family Circus)
Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine)
Mike Peters (Mother Goose and Grimm)
Michael Ramirez (editorial cartoonist for Investors Business Daily)
Tom Richmond (MAD Magazine)
Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury)
I have no idea how often or much I can blog during this trip, but I will attempt to update things as much as possible. Certainly upon my return I will have full details.
I’m very honored to have been invited to be one of the guest speakers at the 25th annual Australian Cartoonist’s Association Stanley Awards taking place in Sydney November 12-15th. The guy I’m desperately clinging to in the above program cover illustration is another guest speaker, the legendary editorial cartoonist Pat Oliphant. The art on that cover was done by last year’s ACA “Cartoonist of the Year”, David Rowe.
I’ll be doing a presentation as well as a workshop on caricature on Saturday the 14th. There will also be a book signing somewhere in the city at some point over the weekend.
To say I am looking forward to visiting Australia, a place I have always wanted to go, is an understatement. Besides getting to meet and enjoy the work of some incredibly talented cartoonists at the event, The Lovely Anna will be accompanying me and we will be staying on for a week after the Stanleys to see some sights.
The October issue of Penthouse should have the above spot illustration of mine in it somewhere. It’s just a silly little cartoon that is accompanies a short Halloween article about the scariest thing a college student still living at home can experience.
This job was one that somewhat approaches the line for me when considering work for a publication like Penthouse. I’ve done a few illustrations for them now and made it plain to the art director on the outset that I would not do any overtly pornographic images. I’m no prude and have zero problems with that type of illustration or with people who read magazines with those kinds of images in them, but I don’t want to do them myself. Partly because I just don’t want to do it, and partly because I work for several publications that are read by little kids, and it’s entirely possible the art directors who give me those jobs might have a problem with my byline under a cartoon of a graphically sexual nature. Plus it’s been my experience that when you walk down that road you tend to be forced to continue down that road because other roads are then closed to you… in other words it’s easy to get “typecast” as a “blue” cartoonist.
Penthouse is totally cool with that, and then have never asked me to do anything of that nature. They have plenty of artists who can do a better job of that than I anyway. This particular job certainly is a little on the racy side, but I felt the humor of it and the fact that I was allowed to be more suggestive than literal made it work for me. In fact it’s much funnier to have such a scene “off camera” and use the shadow on the wall to let the viewer know what the guy at the door is seeing than actually showing it would be. Your imagination comes into play, and that is almost always more effective that hitting someone over the head with an image.
Q: Have you ever had to caricature someone that was so incredibly dull , boring and completely void of any notable characteristics that you are at a loss? I have been stumped a couple times by some friends that literally had “NO” features what so ever! They were just so generic and plain! Have you ever turned customers away because of this?
A: This question is geared towards the live caricature angle, but the answer applies to caricature in general.
There is no such thing as an “uncaricaturable face”. There are faces that seem to be much easier to caricature than others, but none that are so “plain” as to be impossible. It’s all about perception and observation.
Some faces have features/feature relationships that jump out at you. The guy with the huge nose, the lady with the tiny, little pig eyes, the kid with the big buck teeth, etc. Those kinds of faces are the ones you stare at in the grocery store and instantly imagine the caricature you would draw. Those are the faces caricaturists love to draw. On the opposite end of the spectrum you have the generic, good looking 20 something with a “plain” face… they seemingly have nothing to grab hold of and exaggerate. Those faces are boring to draw.
You have to ask yourself, why are some faces easy and some hard? You might think it’s the features themselves, but really it’s your PERCEPTION of the features. The guy with the “giant” nose? How much bigger than a normal nose is that giant nose, really? Not much, if you measure it with a ruler. Millimeters. Everybody has the sames set of features and they all fall within a spectrum of a sizes and relationships that isn’t really that diverse. Not diverse enough in a physical sense of measurement that should make one face so much easier than the other. It would be impossible to, for example, use a computer program to precisely map out and measure all the features on a human face, compare them with what is “normal” and then produce a caricature based on those measurements. That’s because the exact same nose on two different people will elicit two different reactions based on perception. It’s all about how you perceive the features and their relationships.
No, the faces that are easy to draw are easy because you noticed something, and that is all about observation. Observation is what makes caricature work. You have to be able to objectively look at a face and observe what is important about that face. Some faces like the fore mentioned “guy with the giant nose” makes those observations easy, and some faces you have to look a little harder, but there is always something there. If there was not, you’d be looking at a face with no features… which of course would be something to caricature right there.
I know that “look harder” isn’t much of a useful answer… but that really is the truth. There is always something, even if it is not readily apparent. You just have to see it. One piece of advice: don’t rely on just the features for your source of caricature material. I’ve always felt it’s a common mistake for caricaturists to stop at the features themselves when searching for things to play with in their work. Physical features are only part of our perceptions of fellow humans. It’s quite possible, and indeed very effective, to caricature things like expression, posture and, indirectly, personality. Everybody has expression, and the crooked smile, the wide eyed stare, the squinty, crinkled eyes, the knitted brown and scowl… these are also “features” that can be exaggerated. Posture is another thing that is often overlooked by the caricaturist. How someone holds themselves is part of their overall look, and often a major part. Some people slump, while others look like they have a steel pole for a spine. People’s heads might tilt one way or the other, they might look up at you from a head tilted forward or down their nose at you from a head tilted back. It’s often apparent while drawing someone what kind of demeanor and personality they have. They might be quiet and mousy, or loud and brassy, or menacing, or flirtatious… these things can be conveyed in a drawing as well through expression and posture. Many times a caricaturist who observes and captures these “intangibles” will have the friends and family behind them swear that is the “look they always have” after the drawing is complete. It’s THEM. That is more than drawing features.
The good news about observation and perception is that those abilities develop the more you use them. Brand new caricaturists working at one of my theme park operations might only find 10% of faces that sit in front of them “easy”, and the rest they have to work at. Later in the summer that number of “easy” faces has climbed to 20 or 30% or higher. The more you develop that “caricature eye” the more faces will fall into that category, until virtually everyone has something you see and can grab on to without a lot of searching.
Of course, it’s important to make a distinction here between caricature and likeness. None of what I just talked about has anything to do with likeness. You achieve a likeness by drawing the features so they look like the features of the subject. You achieve a caricature by exaggerating the relationships of those features and things like I just discussed. Good caricature can reinforce or amplify a likeness, but it cannot create one. Either you have drawn the features well enough to create a likeness, or you have not.
Oh… and no, I have never turned away any live customer because they were too hard to draw. I love challenges!
Thanks toPat McMicheal for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!
I recently became hooked on Tall Tale Radio, a podcast show that focuses on the cartooning and comics industry, after my friend Stephen Pastis told me about it.
Tall Tale Radio is hosted by Tom Racine, who shows a great deal of knowledge about cartooning and clearly loves the art form. The show’s format is focused on interviews with cartoonists and industry experts, and features some pretty big names from various areas of cartooning like comic strips, web comics, comic books, graphic novels, animation… you name it. As of this writing Tom has 52 shows that “air” on Mondays and run about 25 minutes. Some of those interviewed include the afore mentioned Stephen Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), Jeff Keane (The Family Circus), John and Anne Hambrock (The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee), Mark Tatuli (Heart of the City, Lio), Dave Coverly (Speedbump) and lots of other cartoonists. There are also episodes that report from events like ComicCon, the Reuben awards, etc. and interviews with other cartooning industry folks like Andrew Farago of the San Fransisco Cartoon Art Museum, John Read of Stay Tooned magazine. In the archives you’ll find gems that discuss aspects, trends and concerns of the cartooning world like the plight of newspapers, the webcomics phenomenon and all sorts of other goodies. The shows are informative and entertaining, and have been a great contribution to the world of cartooning.
It just so happens that the Podcast Awards are accepting nominations for consideration for their annual awards, and folks like Alan Gardner at The Daily Cartoonist are rightfully suggesting that Tall Tale Radio is well deserving of such an award. If you’ve ever listened to any of TTR’s episodes, you know that is most definitely true, so go and nominate it (under “Cultural/Arts”). More importantly, if you have not heard any of Tom’s Tall Tall Radio podcasts… what are you waiting for?!
