Q: I have a question about Caricatures, especially doing live caricature work.  I have watched videos on YouTube and have seen different artists using different tools.  I don’t know if this subject has came up before or not, but I was wondering if you could tell me anything about what kind of markers, brushes, etc. are used in live caricature work?

A: Yes, this question does come up often—so I post the answer every year or so for the benefit of new readers.

There is no “standard” drawing and coloring tools used by live caricaturists. Many use markers for the linework, for which the Dixon Markette is currently the standard. The Design Marker 229-LF used to be the overwhelmingly dominate marker here in the U.S., but the manufacturer discontinued them years ago and the Markette seems to be is the closet thing still available. I’ve also seen artists draw with Sharpies, Crayola markers and Copic brush pens. Then there are non-marker solutions like china markers, charcoal, colored pencil and many more.

For color I’ve seen everything from the “chalk and glove” technique to prismacolor stix to watercolor and paintbrush and many more.

I have always used a combination of a soft graphite and the airbrush. Specifically:

Drawing

I use two different kinds of pencils. Both are “clutch” type leadholders, meaning that they have a claw-like end that grasps the lead. The main one is the Caran D’Ache Fixpencil 3, which is a 3mm leadholder. Most leadholders are 2mm, and the thicker lead is a must for bold lines. These were discontinued for a while but now they seem to be back in production. I use a 6B 3mm lead in it which is also made by Caran D’ache. The other pencil is a Creatacolor 5mm leadholder, which I use with either 4B or 6B leads for big, thick lines in the hair, outside of the face, body, etc. There are a few different body types for that pencil, but all work well.

We also wrap our pencils in something called pre-wrap, or sports wrap. It’s the foam wrap you use for wrapping an ankle or similar prior to taping it up in athletics. You can get it at most drugstores. It’s great for cushioning your hand and wicking moisture away from it when drawing. Prevents callouses and blisters as well.

We use a No. 8 blending stomp for shading, and sand one end down to make it a bigger surface area. It helps to soak the stomp in water for 20 minutes or so and allow it to dry for a few days in the sun to loosen up the binding glue and make it softer.

Color

The airbrush we use is either an Iwata HP-SBS (eclipse) or an Iwata HP-SB Plus. Both are good all purpose brushes with a side feed for easy bottle exchange. The latter is a little finer but also more temperamental. I recommend the HP-SBS for beginners.

We use a set of 13 side-feed airbrush bottles, each with a different color. Iwata makes their own side feed bottles which are usable but not ideal. I have custom hardware specially made by a precision machinist and make my own 1 oz. bottles for my operations. No, I won’t sell any to anyone who does not work with us, sorry. They are expensive to make and I have to spend a lot getting them machined, so I don’t want to run out of them too quickly.

Obviously you need an airsource, so a compressor or tank is necessary. There are a lot of choices depending on if you need it to be silent, have a power source, etc. At the parks it’s noisy already and we have sound boxes or separate rooms from which we run air hoses, so a sturdy tool compressor from Home Depot works great for just a couple of hundred dollars. In the malls we need quiet, and we have a permanent power source so I use silent compressors. Jun-Air is by far the best but they are immensely expensive. If you have no power and need silence, a compressed air tank is the way to go. I’ve never used one but a good airbrush retailer can set you up. Coast Airbrush or Bear Air are a good places on-line to find supplies.

For paint we use Media Com-Art paints, both opaque and transparent colors. They are water based and non-toxic. There is a wide selection of colors, but our palette includes Iron Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Toludene Red, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Black, Lime Green, Hansa Yellow, Transparent Ultramarine Blue, Transparent Violet and Transparent Royal Blue.

Paper

Finally for paper we use a 67lb vellum bristol in bright white, 12 x 16 inches. We specially order the paper and have it cut to that size. Paper Plus carries similar stock and there are a lot of those about.

Thanks to G. Cook 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!

Well… LOST is over and it will be a day or two before I will blog about my thoughts on the wrap-up of the show. Overall I will say I was satisfied, but I am a little sad the journey is over.

On a purely crass and commercial front, I am now auctioning off most of the sketches (the good ones, anyway) I did over the last two months for in honor of the end of the series. each of the sketches below is up for auction on eBay, all ending on Sunday, May 30th. If you are interested in bidding and directly participating in the college education of my kids (or at least a hamburger and fries for lunch when we move the first one in this fall) then click on any of the images below to go to the auction page!

Bid on Matthew Fox as Dr. Jack Shepard

Bid on Evangeline Lilly as Kate Austen

Bid on Terry O’Quinn as John Locke/The Smoke Monster

Bid on Naveen Andrews as Sayid Jarrah

Bid on Ken Leung as Miles Straume

Bid on Henry Ian Cusick as Desmond Hume

Bid on Josh Holloway as James “Sawyer” Ford

Bid on Yunjin Kim as Sun-Hwa Kwon

Bid on Daniel Dae Kim as Jin Kwon

I am on my way today to the bustling town of Agawam, Massachusetts to help set up and draw at my theme park caricature operation there at Six Flags New England. Yes, I will actually be drawing in the park on opening day (tomorrow), so come on by and get a caricature done!

I learned a lot of stuff about Australia while visiting Sydney and the Hunter Valley this past week for the 25th annual ACA Stanley Awards. Here are some highlights:

1. Koalas may look cuddly but they have big F%$#% claws and will scalp you if you bother them.
2. What in the U.S. is the turn signal lever in the steering column of cars is instead the windshield wiper control in Australia.
3. Cars driving down the road on a dry, sunny day with their windshield wipers going are being driven by American/European tourists.
4. Australia is brimming with fantastic caricature artists.

I was honored to be the presenter of the 2009 Stan Cross award for “Best Caricaturist” at the Stanleys. I can tell you in must have been a tough choice for the members, because every one of the nominees was outstanding and I saw many other terrific caricaturists that didn’t even get nominated.

Many cartoonists here that do publication work also do live caricatures, so there was plenty of live drawing going on. In fact, they had a little contest during the Stanley Award dinner for “Best Caricature of the Night” where yours truly was the subject, and the winner was the 2009 ACA Cartoonist of the Year Peter Broelman. Sadly I only got a handful of the drawings of me done for that to bring home. Here are two I managed to grab:

Me by Luke Watson

Me by Paul “Harv” Harvey

Here are just a few of the tremendous caricature artist talents I saw and met here in Oz:

• Peter Broelman- Gold Stanley winner and one of those guys who can do it all.
• Grant Brown- Fellow ISCA member
• Jason Chatfield- Another super talent who can do seemingly everything.
• Steve (Zeg) Gunnell- Editorial cartoonist and caricaturist
• Paul Harvey- Terrific watercolorist, book illustrator, live caricaturist
• Judy Nadin- Incredibly talented painter and a lovely person as well!
• Steve Panozzo- Live and publication in equal measures
• David Rowe- Multi-award winning illustrator of the Stanley Cover above. No website
• Luke Watson- Amazing caricature illustrator.
• Brad Wightman- Another fellow ISCA member

Many other terrific artists either didn’t have websites to link to or I didn’t really get to meet them or see much work outside the ones in the “yearbook”, so this list is VERY incomplete.

I also got the opportunity to meet a true legend in the caricature world: Tony Rafty.

Me and the legendary Tony Rafty

Tony started drawing caricatures while working as a caddy during the Great Depression. In World War II he was a war artist/journalist for the Australian Army. He became known for his sports caricatures (although he does politicians, celebrities, etc. as well) , having drawn virtually every major pro athlete (especially golfers) in the 20th century and working at every Olympic games from 1948 in London to 1996 in Atlanta (where I coincidentally was doing live caricatures at my booth at Underground Atlanta at the same time). His work has been exhibited worldwide and he has had over 15,000 caricatures published in newspapers and magazines. It was a true honor to get to meet him.

The most impressive thing about Tony? After my little caricature workshop we walked out on to Darling Harbor and drew in the hot sun, and this 94 year old man stood there IN A SUIT AND TIE and drew one after the other.

Unbelievable. What a treasure he is.

Here’s the quick one he did of me in Darling Harbour:

If I can draw half that well standing out in the summer sun holding a pad of paper and a pen in under 10 minutes at age 94 then that would be saying something. Go read this great article on this caricature legend.

Wow.

The power of the internet is an amazing thing.

Yesterday I posted a little rant here on The MAD Blog about Apple’s head-scratching rejection of Bobble Rep, an application conceived and developed by film director Ray Griggs for which I was commissioned to draw a caricature of each of all 540 members of the 111th United States congress. As usual I just wrote off the top of my head, grammar errors and somewhat acerbic tone included.

24 hours later my blog was twice crashed by overwhelming traffic coming from links on virtually every major independent Apple blog/website including TUAW, 9to5 Mac and Macworld, from Twitter links via the New York Times David Pogue, CNN/Fotune and many others.

Thanks for the suggestions and support. Ray and his programmer guru Stevo Brock are looking into other options including porting the app to other platforms. For those asking about seeing all 540 caricatures, I will make sure that they are published here on my website if the app never sees the light of day or other venues such as a flash-based website are not developed.

Thanks again for all the interest in this little tale. No word yet from Apple, but I can almost guarantee you that few people going to work in Cupertino today have not heard about this story thanks to all of you.

As long as we are talking a lot this week about theme park caricatures, display samples, etc., here are three new samples I drew and painted while working at Valleyfair last week. Frequent readers of The MAD Blog will recognize these as past drawings from the “Sketch o’the Week”:

Could not resist adding the lollypop…

Q: This is a simple question that I started wondering about when I saw your photos of your operations in St Louis. I see you have examples of caricatures in your various shops. Are these examples of your work or the work of the artists that work in your shops? If these are the hired artist’s own examples then my question is mute. I ask this only because I remember you telling of other artists being caught using your work as their examples. This would seem to be the same thing except that you are granting permission for the usage of the drawings. The drawings are not “stolen” but still not legit examples. Just wondering about your thoughts on this.

A: Actually I get this question every once and awhile, usually from other live caricaturists that think having my caricature samples up at a caricature booths where I very seldom work constitutes false advertising… that customers are being led to believe they are getting a drawing done by me when instead some other artist is going to draw them.

Considering I often voice my displeasure about street caricaturists who print off sample caricatures of mine and of other caricaturists and try to pass them off as their own, I have to admit that is a legitimate question. Aren’t I sanctioning the same thing in hanging my samples in all my theme park operations?

No. That is a different animal, and here is why;

Firstly, my caricature booths are not staffed by only one artist. We have large crews of as many as 16 different artists who work various locations all summer long in any given theme park. Samples from multiple artists, clearly signed by different people, are on display in every location. Some are mine, but most are done by the artists from that specific park. In other words, my samples are just some of the samples that are hanging up. I encourage everyone to have at least one sample up in each location. We are clearly not trying to pass off all the drawings on display in a location as that of the artist(s) who happens to be sitting there that day, unlike the afore mentioned street artists. Besides, although I do not draw in any of my locations regularly I DO draw in them occasionally… at least once a season and usually more, so it’s only fair I have some samples up.

Secondly, although individual drawing styles differ somewhat all the caricaturists working with my operations work in the same techniques, and the samples are meant to be representative not of specific artist’s work but of those techniques. Either I or one of my managers teaches these techniques to our artists, and it’s not much of a stretch to have the guy who’s work everyone’s training is based on have his samples on display even if I am not drawing there regularly.

Finally, and this might be the most definitive reason, these are my booths and my operations, and if I want to hang up my own samples then I get to do so. I built the buildings, bought the frames the samples are placed in, the paper, paint and pencil lead they’re drawn with and the screws that affix them to the wall and pay the rent to keep it all there so as far as I’m concerned, that buys me the right to display what I want to display. In other words, it’s my playground so I get to pick the game.

Sorry if that sounds a little defensive, but whenever I get this question that is my natural reaction.

I think there is a big difference between having the owner of a caricature stand displaying some of his or her own work (along with the work of the artists to regularly work there) and some street artist stealing the work off the internet and either redrawing it, signing their names to a print or otherwise passing the work off as their own. I have always took great pains to make sure we operate in an ethical and honest manner. The artists that work at my locations are instructed not to claim any work on the walls is theirs if it is not if they are asked. They are encouraged to do their own samples so they have something to point out if asked which of the drawings on the wall are theirs. I even make sure that the vast majority of the samples on display are true examples of what a live drawing ends up looking like, and not some elaborate illustration that would be impossible (or at least very difficult) to duplicate in a reasonable time drawing live. I do allow a certain number of “WOW” sort of samples with some more detailed background or scene, but even those use no tools or techniques that we do not employ in our live work, and our price signs do clearly state that “full bodies and theme may be extra”.

As far as I’m concerned, our policies on caricature samples on display are perfectly fair and ethical. I do understand where the question was coming from, however. Thanks for asking.

Thanks to Marv Sohlo from Woodbury, MN 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!

One of our caricature locations at Six Flags New England

I’m traveling back from visiting my operation at Six Flags New England today. We’ve got a great group of artists there this summer doing airbrush t-shirts, airbrush tattoos and of course caricatures. The park is located between Springfield, MA and Hartford, CT in a small Massachusetts town called Agawam. If you happen to visit the park this summer stop in and say hello to the artists.

EDIT- I should mention I also have caricature operations at Valleyfair in Shakopee MN, Six Flags St. Louis in Eureka, MO, Sy. Louis Union Station in St. Louis, MO and caricature and airnrush tattoos at Nickelodeon Universe in the Mall of America, Bloomington, MN. Stop by any of these and check out the artists this summer. I visit each location several times a summer (usually).

I’ve got a killer MAD job on the board right now with a brutal deadline, so posts this next week may be a bit abbreviated. Here’s my latest newspaper political caricature for the column “Good Old Boys Gone Bad” in North Carolina’s The Independent print and on-line newspaper.

Q: When you work from reference materials, the facial expressions of the people are rarely (never) what you need to incorporate into your drawings. Are there any principles you can give for altering facial expressions to comic proportions and situations while still retaining a good likeness?

A: It’s very true that if I were to need to rely on finding the exact angle and facial expression of a given actor in order to pull off a recognizable caricature of them for a given panel in a MAD parody, I’d never get anything done. Instead I gather up multiple references of an actor from various angles, assemble them into a single page and use them as a basis for all my caricature… but not necessarily as exact reference. I have a technique I use for the MAD “continuity” work that I have already imparted here on The MAD Blog, but it’s been a while so here it is again for those who didn’t catch it the first time:

References used for caricatures or any illustration job are meant to be an assistance, not a crutch. If I cannot create an illustration of something without a photograph showing me the exact image, angle and lighting I am looking for my effectiveness as an illustrator would certainly be compromised. I use references just to see how things work, to pick up details and aspects I might not otherwise realize existed and to help me make my drawing more convincing, not as the entire basis for everything I draw. It’s a little like a writer using a dictionary or thesaurus to find a word for use in his story, or reading articles or books to learn about facts or details of the subjects he is writing about. The story he writes is his creation, but he might do some research to write more convincingly about a given topic. If I need to draw a building, I might refer to some pictures of buildings to see how the windows, trim, stonework and such might work and be added to my drawing to make it look more like the kind of building I am trying to draw, but I don’t need to find the exact angle and view of every building I want to draw in order to make it work. In fact I will often change things even from a direct photo reference for reasons of composition or effectiveness in what I am trying to achieve with the illustration.

The same goes for caricatures. If I have several pictures of a subject from several different angles, I can draw their face multiple times at different angles than those shown me in the pictures by using what I have learned of their face from the existing references. When it comes to expressions, faces all have the same basic muscles and tend to have the same reactions with respect to emotions and expression, so by combining those elements I can draw the same face with different expressions and still maintain a cohesive likeness.

With respect to a MAD parody, the trick to doing this is twofold. First, I need to find several important features that are “keys” to the specific face I am doing multiple drawings of, and carry them through each different caricature even as I take liberties with the expressions. It might be heavy eyebrows, the squareness of a chin, the head shape (usually an important one) or any one of many such things that make the particular face unique. These become linchpins that make the viewer believe they are looking at the same character in each panel. Usually the crazier the expression I am drawing, the more I have to rely on these “keys” to keep the cohesion.

The second part of the equation is what I call the “keystone” technique. Basically what this means is that, at several points through the parody, I incorporate a caricature of a subject drawn from specific photo reference. These caricatures are always more detailed and have the strongest likenesses of the lot. These are always found on the splash page (those being the “intro” keystones) and then here and there throughout the rest of the parody. They act as “keystones” or “cornerstones” that bridge the gap between the ones where I am faking it with expressions and angles I don’t have specific references for. They keep up the viewer’s perception that the same character is being seen throughout. Jack Davis used to use this technique all the time with his MAD parodies, except he’d often just do the one keystone caricature on the splash and then do a cartoon representation of the character for the rest of the parody. I’m not Jack Davis, so I do more than one keystone caricature.

As far as expression goes, you can exaggerate and impose almost any expression on a caricatured face and maintain a passable likeness as long as you keep those keystone elements strong and easily readable. I have a small mirror in front of my drawing table and will sometimes make faces in it to get an idea of what happens to the basic muscles and features for a given expression. I can transfer what I have observed onto the existing caricature structure. Another great resource for that is to find the same actor in a previous movie on DVD. Looking at them move and speak gives you a lot more understanding of their mannerisms and facial expressions than static photos do… and maybe even a glimpse at a few extreme expressions.

Thanks to Daniel Moir 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!