Better late than never today…

As promised, this sketch is a special one related to the trip to Colombia I have been describing this week.

I was honored to get to meet one of the best caricature illustrators working today while I was in Cali. His name is Jorge Restrepo, and his work belongs in the same league as illustrators like Ismeal Roldan, Jan Op de Beeck, Hermann Mejia and even Sebastian Krüger. Truly incredible caricature art. He was very gracious and gave me a fantastic signed copy of his book, which I have been studying intently. Restrepo (he goes by that name, rather than Jorge) walks the line between extreme exaggeration and extreme likeness, and while many other caricaturists fall off that line he balances on it beautifully. His caricature incorporate great exaggerations but his likenesses are very strong and accurate. He is one of the most recognizable commercial artists in South America… in fact on one of the days we went walking about the city Claudia spied his work on the cover of a magazine on a street news stand!

The young lady in the drawing with Restrepo is his charming girlfriend Margareth, who was also a delight to meet and who helped me out immensely with communicating while in Colombia. She spoke very good English, which she says she learned mostly from watching American movies with Spanish subtitles! She was a lot of fun to talk with and get to know. Unfortunately they were only at the CaliComix event the first evening and the end of the week events. I would have liked to have spent more time with them.

I drew basically all the cartoonists during the several times I was drawing live down there, but I refused to draw Restrepo and Margareth… much to their disappointment. While the live drawings turn out okay, I consider them throw away sketches and not something I would want to give to a master caricaturist like Restrepo. Besides, he did this great caricature of me:

Awesome!!

I had to return the favor. So I took some reference pictures of them (see below) and did the sketch at the top of this post. I will be mailing the original to him in Colombia. Muchas Gracias, Restrepo y Margareth!