Q:  What advice would you have for someone thinking about getting into live caricature? I’ve been doing them for about 3 years now but still have much to learn. It started out as something I did for fun/practice and lately I have been selling them. The thing is I’m used to having a lot of time, often times days to find a person’s likeness, color, etc, drawing and redrawing until I’m satisfied. Usually in illustrator/photoshop but also paper on occasion.  How do I know when I’m ready to go live? Is there a way to get my feet wet first before diving in head first?

A: Unfortunately the only way to learn to do live caricatures is to do it. No amount of reading or practicing from photos will really prepare you for drawing live. It’s a catch 22 because you can’t get the hang of live work without drawing live, and you can’t (or rather shouldn’t) start drawing live as a professional until you get the hang of it. It’s something you have to develop an eye and instinct for, and no amount of studying will accomplish that.

With new artists that work with us at our theme park operations, I or one of my artist/managers spend about two days working with them, teaching them theory, techniques and that kind of thing. They get to draw the other new artists for practice and to try out the things they have learned. Then they spend the next week or so doing practice live drawings from volunteer theme park visitors who are willing to sit for 10 minutes or so knowing the drawing is just for practice (they don’t get to keep the drawing unless they want to pay for it, however). I estimate they have to do about 100 live caricatures over 4-5 days before their lines and the confidence in them gets to the point where they are doing a “sellable” drawing. Then they can start doing them for money and continue to develop their abilities as they move forward.

It’s easy at the theme park, because there are always people coming by who are willing to be a guinea pig for a rookie caricaturist, so there is a constant flow of volunteers for practice. On your own it’s not so easy. My suggestion is to volunteer to draw at charity events about town, at local schools at their homecoming or other events, or just set up in conjunction with some festival or fair… anywhere there is going to be a crowd of people. Even at the local park or mall will work, but it’s best to align yourself with some specific event or charity so you have an excuse for giving them away. Then get as many drawings under your belt as you can, drawing them in the way you want to do your live work. After half a dozen of these events, you will get comfortable and confident, and your instincts and eye will begin to develop.

If you want to know the absolutely best way to learn to do live caricatures, get a summer job at the nearest theme park caricature operation. As long as the owner actually spends time preparing you to draw live, you’ll have a chance to learn a few things and then 3 months of boot camp-like constant drawing develops your skills like no other experience does. By the end of a summer of theme park caricatures, your drawings will be light-years ahead of where they were at the beginning. Not everyone can just drop their lives and do something like that, but it is an ideal way to do it.

Thanks to Kyle Maloney 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!

Q: Thanks for your blog and especially the tutorials. I refer to your blog weekly for inspiration and tips. While you mention your preferences for inking and drawing surfaces, I was wondering what types of pencil leads, holders, and paper you use for the “sketch of the week”?

A: Thanks for the kind words about the blog. I’m very glad you enjoy it.

As for the materials I use for the “Sketch o’the Week”- while I do occasionally experiment with things like inks, washes, etc., 95% of the sketches I post for SOTW are done in a basic Strathmore (or similar) sketchbook with a number 2 lead pencil… you know, the kind with the eraser on the end. I use all sorts of different kinds but my favorites are the unpainted, smooth type from OfficeMax. They are cheap and the leads have a nice feel to them. Plus, the have a white rubber eraser on the end as opposed to the “pink pearl” type which often gets hard and streaks pink color on the paper. Of course, they need sharpening all the time but I have an electric sharpener close at hand and feed it regularly. I also like the Mirado Black Warrior 2 HB pencils (Office Depot), also cheap but I hate the erasers on those.

For example, right now I am drawing in a Strathmore 400 series premium recycled 11″ x 14″ pad with 60lb weight paper and I am mostly drawing with the OfficeMax specials. Not sexy, I know, but they work.

Actually I really need to break out of that routine and use some different materials for SOTW. I’ll try to do that in the new year. Thanks for the inspiration!

Thanks to Eileen McCoy 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 know I promised an artcentric review of the iPad a long time ago, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test out very many drawing and painting applications on it so far… I’m also wating deleivery of one of those silly marshmallow tipped “stylus’s”.

I did run across this intriguing video recently, showing that someone is working on one of the two biggest limitations to drawing on the iPad… the lack of pressure sensitivity. At first I thought the case the iPad on the video is in might be the source of the pressure sensitivity, but from reading the brief description at tenonedesign.com it seems to be a pure software solution. The pressure sensitivity would be something any drawing app could incorporate into their programs.

Don’t get too excited. According to the developer the software uses a “private function call” to work and Apple of course refuses to allow developers to use private APIs, so right now this functional software is not allowed on the iPad.

Oh, and in case you are curious, the other major limitation to drawing on the iPad: the lack of a precise stylus.

Q: During the last 15 years what caricature or drawing skill have you developed the most?

A: All of them.

I debated whether to use this question, as that is really the only answer. I don’t know what else to tell you. As an artist, unless you completely focus on only one thing to the exclusion of all else (faces for example), you are going to improve your overall drawing skills with constant work and practice. It’s gratifying to be able to look at work I did 15, 10, 5 or even just a few years ago and see glaring faults that today would never have gone unnoticed and uncorrected. Growth as an artist is the most exciting thing to see. It makes all the hard work put in to achieve that growth worthwhile.

Want to see an example? Here is a page from an issue of NOW comic’s Married… with Children featuring Christina Applegate from 1992, so this is 17 years old:

Ugh.

Now here’s a page from my parody of two years ago of “Samantha Who?” from MAD, also featuring Christina Applegate… so this is 15 years of improvement under my belt:

Not the best example but I can certainly see a huge difference in virtually every aspect of the work… caricatures, expression, visual energy, composition and layout, storytelling, perspective… just plain ol’ better drawing.

The best part? Even after just two years I see lots of things in this more recent piece that I’d have changed or made different if I were doing it today. Christina’s face in panel one is awkward, and her hand is gigantic. The expression and head angle is also too similar to the one in panel two, and I should have changed one or the other. The standard “pointy finger” pose is something I used to screw up a lot by making the index finger too big for the rest of the hand, as in panels one and five. The window/floor position in panel five is confusing. Etc.

I’ve always said if you look at something you did five years ago and are not dissatisfied with it, or better yet downright embarrassed by it,  you aren’t trying hard enough.

Thanks to Robert Sharp 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!

Q: Upon viewing the Phelps drawing it prompts the question, how much of your style is based on comic book drawing?  I kind of get the impression that what sets your work apart from others is that you draw caricatures the way a Marvel or DC artist would.

A: In my opinion not much of my style of drawing or caricature is based on comic book work, and none of it is intentionally.

My main style of caricature was developed from doing live caricature work at theme parks, and my experience with comic book style illustration is rather limited. It’s hard to pin down where a style comes from. You see influences in it, but essentially anyone’s style is just an extension of how they think, see and interpret their environment. I think your observations may be coming from my treatment of the figure… particularly the athlete or muscular type forms. “Comic book anatomy” has a certain look to it. In exaggerating the human form it often looks comic bookish, as comics artists also exaggerate to give their more-than-human characters greater dynamics and visual energy. Certainly I exaggerate the figure as much as the faces when I can… the Phelps drawing is a perfect example of that.

I never did comic book work in the “cape-and-tights” pure sense. The “Married… with Children” and “Coneheads” issues I did were much more MAD Magazine than mainstream comic-like. Of course there is a large amount of crossover there, particularly in the storytelling and layout end of things. Humorous comics may not be given the same kind of attention that superhero comics get, but they have always been a part of the comics world, and often a large part of it. Some of the greatest comic book artists were equally as adept at drawing funny as they were are drawing dramatic.

When I was a kid I drew my own comics during every spare minute I could find. I had hundreds of pages of superhero and sci-fi stories I’d written and drawn on everything from notebooks to old mimeograph paper to computer print log sheets. I devoured comics like Batman, Star Wars, The Hulk, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel… you name it. You can certainly trace whatever storytelling/layout skills I have back to a love of comic books. Perhaps you see that glimmering through somehow.

Thanks to Mark Grant 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’m running low!

Our usual smörgåsbord of cartoon, caricature and MAD related website, links, news articles and announcements!

I Like Both Kinds of Music: Country AND Western Dept.-

MAD artist Grey Blackwell and MAD scribe David Shayne collaborated with David’s brother Jon on this animated music video where “Merle Hazard” laments losing his girl for someone who is more “environmentally sensitive” and trys going green to lure her back.

I’m Smarter than This 5th Grader Dept.-

Smithson with the offensive drawing…

10 year old 5th grader Cullen Smithson got into a little hot water recently when his teacher, Karen Boudreau, 44, filed criminal charges against him over a drawing he did of her at school. That instantly caused a number of flashbacks for me concerning drawings I did of my teachers in school… but I was a little smarter than this kid. I didn’t draw them lying dead with a bullet hole in their head and me holding a smoking gun. I was more subtle.

Cullen’s drawing depicts Mulcahey Middle School teacher Boudreau and a girl named “Kailey” both with marks labeled “bullet wholes” (guess spelling isn’t Cullen’s strong suit) in them with him standing there (labeled “me”) next to a gun. There is also a large “HA HA” in the mix. Those goofy kids!

The story mentions a suspension but no details about it. It’s centered over the criminal charges the teacher filed and the boy’s mother’s outrage over it. Of course she immediately ran to the American Civil Liberties Union to enlist them to fight the charges. She is quoted in the story as saying: “he shouldn’t be treated like a criminal. He did not threaten. He was making a picture for himself. He wasn’t showing anyone. He didn’t go up to the teacher and give it to her. There were no threats.” I wonder if this lady reads the papers, or has ever heard of Columbine, Red Lake, Pine Middle School or about a dozen other incidents in the last 10 years where some kid takes a gun to school and starts shooting? I’d agree filing criminal charges is a bit over the top, but for all we know she demanded the kid get serious psychological counseling and his mom refused to do it, and the only recourse was getting the courts involved.

I’ll tell you what, I got sick of being dragged into the principal’s office everytime a drawing of a teacher surfaced around school. I endlessly expained to the principal that I only did the really funny ones, and I was insulted to be accused of the crappy ones.

MAD on the Move Dept.-

Someone on YouTube uploaded the first five plus minutes of the 1974 MAD television special which includes the opening sequence and the first segment “the automobile manufacturer of the year”. It looks to me like Angelo Torres did the art that was the basis for the “automobile” skit, but the animators obviously had to adjust things for the animation to work. Actually the animation itself is a lot more involved than you might think it would be.

Q: Do you have any tips and tricks on drawing figures or composing a scene with multiple figures in it? I’ve tried practicing by drawing from life, but I feel like the “from life” experience I get is sometimes stilted by the fact that many people don’t want to be drawn while sitting on the train, etc (and I don’t want to be caught staring!). At the same time, I can really see the interaction when someone if right in front of me. Are there other methods that have helped you?

A: Learning to draw the human figure is arguably the most important thing any artist can do to improve their skills. No matter what kind of art you do or style you work in, the challenge and rigors involved in drawing the human form will help your abilities to grow. It develops your eye and observation skills, your ability to translate these observations to the paper and most importantly your instincts for capturing life in your art… which is primarily what all art is about: the description of the world around us through the artist’s eyes.

There are lost of books and such out there on life drawing and drawing the figure, but there is no substitute for drawing from life. The best thing of course if to work from a model by attending a class or some kind of artist co-op where a few bucks in the coffee can gets you a place in the studio, some coffee and pays for the model. Lots of art schools and adult eduction centers offer either reasonably priced classes or just group drawing sessions with a model. Some artists get together and do it themselves by hiring a model and finding some space to set up in. It’s beneficial to have other artists drawing with you as it gives you a chance for both feedback on your work and to see the work of others for influence and inspiration.

If that is not an option, there’s always the ‘stealth drawing’ method you eluded to like when you are on the train. I know many artists who spend significant amounts of time at coffee shops or riding the subway drawing random people. I understand your concern about people getting nervous when you do that, but once you get good at it you are able to do it without being obvious. Really this becomes as much an exercise in quick observation and memory as it is in drawing. You can’t stare at the model, you must take peeks and then draw your impressions. (more…)

Q: I know there is no substitute for actual art instruction. Books have often help me though. I was wondering if there are any books that you recommend on cartooning in general? What books do you recommend for caricaturing? Most of books are geared toward kids or just seem to scratch the surface but don’t give the tools needed to make the connection between what makes a cartoon a caricature.

A: There is no definitive book on how to draw caricatures. There are a number of them out there, but each has it’s own focus (i.e. live caricature, general caricature, cutsey cartoon caricature) so you need to identify what your goals are before deciding on which one works good for you.

There are a ton of cartooning books out there, and while each has it’s own unique approach they again vary wildly with respect to style and technique.

I recommend a number of books on caricature and cartooning, but also on general drawing as well. I think that last category of books helps the cartoonist more than the more specific cartooning books do. Learning to draw is a general thing that can be learned and applied to your specific style of drawing, but cartooning is a very style-orientated and personal way of looking at and simplifying the universe… I am not sure how much good it does the cartoonist to try and learn “how to cartoon” from another cartoonist. The author will invariably be presenting their personal style as the ‘correct way’ to cartoon since that is what they know. It’s hard to separate the style from the substance.

With all that said, here is a list of books I recommend for cartooning, caricature and drawing in general, as well as some MAD books. There are many others, but these are ones that get the most thumbing through in my own bookcase.

Thanks to Joel from Vancouver, WA 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!