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This week’s sneak peek is the opening splash of Chapter Eight: Caricature in Illustration. In this chapter, I discuss doing caricatures for illustration jobs for publications and other kinds of clients. I go over how “narrative” is a crucial part of successful illustration work, the differences between doing caricature for caricature’s sake and doing it for illustration work, the influence of style and some of the challenges live caricaturists face in taking what they do in a live setting and applying it to publication work. This chapter is 10 pages long and contains 17 illustrations, all of which are examples of some of my illustration work.

Book delivery update: The main book shipment arrived in the U.S. last week on the 21st at the docks in Long Beach, California. Bizarrely, the shippers are estimating a delivery to me here in Minnesota on Oct. 11th. That means it took 10 days to travel all the way across the Pacific ocean from Korea to California, and it will take 20 days to get from California to Minnesota??!? Wow. Frustrating. Hopefully it will come in earlier.

As always you can place a Pre-Order here.

See other chapter sneak peeks here.

This week’s sneak peek is the opening splash of Chapter Seven: Drawing Live Caricatures. In this chapter, I go over the challenges of doing quick-draw style caricatures from a live model(s), discussing techniques on approaching and executing the drawings, a complete step-by-step of the process, plenty of tips and things to consider like line weights, common problems and pitfalls to avoid, and finally ending with several sample drawings from photos. This chapter is 20 pages long and contains over 55 illustrations.

Book delivery update: As I wrote earlier in the week, I have received a couple of advanced copied of the actual bound book off the presses, and the rest of the books are currently somewhere on the Pacific steaming their way to Long Beach, California. Once they arrive in the US and go through customs they will begin the overland trek to me here in Minnesota. We are still on track for arrival and the subsequent shipping of pre-ordered copies sometime the second week of October. As always you can place a Pre-Order here.

See other chapter sneak peeks here.

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This week’s sneak peek is the opening splash of Chapter Six: Beyond the Face. In this chapter, I discuss how other aspects of a person’s figure, physicality, and “presence”, contribute to their caricature. I go over drawing and caricaturing the shoulders and neck in detail, talk about posture, have an expanded “drawing hands” section, and examine the differences in how you treat men and women in caricature, complete with drawing tips and examples. This chapter is 20 pages long and contains over 60 illustrations.

Book delivery update: The book printing is complete and finished copies are now in the shipping process from Korea to the U.S., scheduled to leave port from Pusan on Monday. It’s just a matter of time now! We are still on track for arrival and the subsequent shipping of pre-ordered copies sometime the first week of October. As always you can place a Pre-Order here.

See other chapter sneak peeks here.

One other thing: Of the 106 pieces of original caricature art sketches from the book that are part of the “Original Art” option on the order page, I now have exactly 20 left. So, If that is something you are thinking about ordering, it might be wise to do so soon.

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This week’s book sneak peek is the opening spread of Chapter Five: “Caricaturing the Rest of the Head”. This chapter contains 25 pages and over 70 illustrations. It deals with drawing and caricaturing the other features of the face past the eyes, nose, and mouth that were covered in the previous chapter. Split into two parts, “The Lower Face” discusses the jaw, chin, cheekbones and ears, while “The Upper Head” covers eyebrows, forehead, hair (the much asked about subject), and the general mass of the top half of the head.

Book delivery update- Some bad news… the books will now not arrive until the second week of October.

The delay due to color matching issues was finally rectified earlier this week, and the book is approved for printing after a delay of about 9 days. Unfortunately, that caused us to miss our scheduled print window for the printing company, and they are trying to squeeze us in earlier but it might be another two weeks before we actually go to press. To top it off, the printer’s estimates of time for shipping have mysteriously changed since the job was bid, adding over 10 days to the shipping time estimate. Altogether that has put us about a month back from the original ETA of mid-September. That puts the bound books on my doorstep at sometime in mid October.

I have sent this info out in an email to all those who have placed a pre-order. Thanks very much to all those who replied to say “no problem” and expressed support for the book. That means a lot. Thank you.

I apologize to everyone who was expecting a September ship date, but these issues are out of my control. The delay will only be about 2 weeks from the end of September, so I am asking for just a little more patience. On the plus side, the corrected proof looks great, and the printed book should look terrific.

If anyone who placed a pre-order does not want to wait any longer for their copy, please e-mail me at once with your name and PayPal order number, and I will immediately issue you a full refund.

Thanks again to everyone who placed a pre-order, and for your patient wait.

See other chapter sneak peeks here.

Click for a closer look…

This Friday’s sneak peek of my upcoming book The Mad Art of Caricature! is the beginning of Chapter 4: Drawing and Caricaturing the Features. This chapter details how to draw and caricatures the main facial features: the eyes, the nose, and the mouth. While it incorporates much of the information found in my online tutorials, this chapter goes into much more detail and includes dozens of additional illustrations . The chapter contains 33 pages and over 90 illustrations! You can preview other chapters here.

The book is currently under production in Korea, and will shortly be shipping to my doorstep—immediately after which all pre-orders will be filled and shipped. If you want to get a jump on the getting the book, you can pre-order it today!

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Each Friday for the next several weeks I will post the opening pages to a chapter of my book, The Mad Art of Caricature!, along with a description of the chapter’s contents. Since I’ve already done this for chapters one , two, and nine, that leaves five more chapters after this week, which should be about right for the arrival of the printed books on my doorstep.

Chapter Three is about head shapes, which I consider to be the most important aspect of doing caricature. In it I discuss why they are so important, techniques to “see” them and to simplify them so they are easier to draw and exaggerate, the important parts of the anatomy of the skull and musculature that pertain to caricaturing and several concepts for exaggerating the head shape. As with the rest of the book, the chapter is illustrated with dozens of black and white and full color illustrations. The chapter consists of 14 pages and contains over 25 illustrations.

You can pre-order The Mad Art of Caricature! here. Shipping to commence immediately after printed books arrive in late September.

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Here’s another sneak peek at the inside of my upcoming book The MAD Art of Caricature!, which is shipping next month. Chapter 2- Basic Caricature Theory explains several of the basic theories behind caricature, exaggeration, likeness—how to see it and how to draw it. This chapter consists of 14 pages and contains over 35 illustrations.

I’ve gotten a number of inquiries asking if the book is just a paper version of my on-line tutorials. The answer is NO. The information in the tutorials is incorporated into the book, but they are expanded upon and many more concepts and techniques are introduced and discussed. People familiar with the tutorials will recognize some of the text and some of the images, but at over 170 pages of content, there is many times more information in the book, with pages and pages of new text and hundreds of new illustrations. Plus it will have that freshly printed new book smell!

You can pre-order The Mad Art of Caricature! today. All copies ordered directly from me are signed, but you can also choose options for either a sketch of Alfred E. Newman or a random piece of original art from the book (like the sketch of Brad Pitt on page 14 above… that option is limited and running out fast).

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Here’s another peek at part of my upcoming book The Mad Art of Caricature!. This is the opening two pages of the last chapter, “Caricatures and MAD“, where I go into detail about how caricature specifically applies to MAD parodies, some of the unique challenges the magazine demands and a run-through of a MAD job from script to finished art complete with notes on the thought processes and concerns at each stage. DC Entertainment gave me permission to reproduce the MAD artwork, BTW.

Update on the book schedule: Good news and bad news. The good news is I am still planning on debuting ordering the book at Comic-Con as well as web orders next week on July 21st. The bad news is that this will considered a pre-order at this time, because the actual book shipping date has been pushed back until September. I will still have about 40 pages of the book to place illustrations in, write captions for, and get that new content copy-edited, before it can go to press. That will all be done after I get back from San Diego, and the book will then go to press. I am THAT close.

There will be four different ordering options:

• Signed book: $24.95
• Signed book plus sketch of Alfred: $39.95
• Signed book plus random original caricature art from the book: $49.95
• Signed book plus sketch of Alfred and random original caricature art: $59.95

Shipping & handling will be $5.00 in the U.S., $10.00 for Canada and $15 for any other country via US Postal International Flat Rate.

The Alfred sketch is similar to what I did in the Bo book, only bigger. The “random piece of original caricature art” would be one of about 100 or so celebrity caricatures from the book. Mostly they are pencil drawings. A few are inked and other media. They range from 5 x 5 inches to 11 x 14, and some are oddly shaped due to being cut out of my sketchbook. Many are from my “Sketch o’the Week” feature here on the Blog, which I scanned in, cleaned up a bit and then added digital gray washes to for publication. The drawings will be the original sketches… no washes.

Those who order at my Comic-Con booth will be getting a special Comic-Con deal: their choice of free domestic shipping or a free signed-and-numbered print I will be selling for $25.00 otherwise.

Right now shipping looks to happen in mid to late September, which is when the printed books should arrive.

You can pre-order The Mad Art of Caricature! here. Shipping to commence immediately after printed books arrive.

Click for a closer look…

In the next few weeks I’ll be posting a few sneak peeks at some of the pages in my upcoming book The Mad Art of Caricature!, ordering of which will debut at Comic Con in less than two weeks! Here is the opening of chapter one. The chapter consists of 12 pages and contains over 25 illustrations.

Chapter one includes my definition of caricature, what I think a good caricature needs to accomplish to be successful, what makes a bad caricature and how to avoid it, and the process of developing your “eye” for caricature.

You can pre-order The Mad Art of Caricature! here. Shipping to commence immediately after printed books arrive in late September.