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: I live in St. Louis and I used to frequent Union Station quite a bit. I would always make a point to stop at your caricature stand and watch the artist. I was wondering if you may go over the types of materials that you use at your stands?

A: For those readers who may not know I own several caricature concession operations in a few different states including at Six Flags St. Louis in Eureka, MO. I used to own a stand at St. Louis Union Station in downtown St. Louis but sold the business to my manager at the end of 2009. Likewise I used to have operations at Underground Atlanta in Atlanta, GA and briefly at Riverwalk in New Orleans, LA, but both those operations are closed.I also own operations at Six Flags New England in Agawam, MA, Valleyfair theme park in Shakopee, MN and Nickelodeon Universe in the Mall of America, Bloomington, MN.

Here are the materials we use to do live caricatures in the theme parks/retail centers:

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 takling 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 Chris 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!

Images courtesy Jeff Mandell

Last Saturday I traveled to the lovely town of Storm Lake, Iowa and drew caricatures at a rare gig with Florida based caricaturist and illustrator Jeff “Talltoon” Mandell. Jeff is enormously talented and a true visionary in the field of caricature and marketing… he had the foresight back in the infancy of the internet to register the URL www.caricature.com, and has been a pioneer in the world of live digital caricatures as well as the traditional method (i.e. drawing on dead trees) which is what we practiced at Buena Vista University. Jeff draws at corporate events, trade shows, colleges and functions all over the U.S.

It was fun hanging out with him and drawing at this event. I don’t come out of “gig retirement” too often, and it takes a good friend and caricaturist I admire greatly to talk me into it. Jeff is both.

Q: Norman Rockwell writes in his book Norman Rockwell, artist and illustrator )by Norman Rockwell & Thomas S. Buechner) how people would constantly write in to the Saturday Evening Post about the mistakes he made in his references. Do you get any of that kind of feedback? If so what is the biggest mistake you have made, if any?

A: I believe you are talking about “bloopers” like drawing six fingers on a hand or something similar, as opposed to mistakes in perspective or similar mechanical flaws… because if it’s the latter this will be a very long post.

Oh, I’ve made my share of dumb mistakes in some of my illustrations. In 99% of the cases it’s just being in too big a hurry and making quick changes without thinking things completely through. I’ve posted a few of them here in the past, and here are two of the ones that come to mind right away:

In the baseball scene above, I was supposed to draw two guys colliding in the outfield while the ball drops to the ground. In my haste to finish the piece I was thinking more about the interest of the colors than I was about the scene itself. The mistake? Two guys on the SAME TEAM would be wearing the SAME UNIFORM! D’oh! The client also did not catch it so it went to print as is.

In the scene above, I did a bunch of changes from the original sketch where I pasted in elements from one sketch to a second. During that process I switched the business woman’s legs around so her right knee was forward rather than her left as in the original sketch. The mistake? I didn’t change her left foot into a left foot, so she has TWO RIGHT FEET. D’oh! Client didn’t catch that one either, but one of my blog readers did, and the art got fixed in time for the printing!:

I’m sure there have been others but I’m not coming up with any right now from “professional” illustration work.

There have been a few doozies I’ve done when doing live caricature, though.

One of the drawings I often do with young teenage boys is the simple “showing off the bicep” pose where the kid holds up one arm to show a well defined but roughly walnut sized bicep muscle flexed. I drew one kid once in this pose who had come in and sat down while I was turned around giving change to my last customers. He was sitting in front of me when I turned about, and he was kind of short so I couldn’t see much past his neck due to the angle of my drawing board.  I did this pose on him, with his right arm flexed. His buddies behind me started laughing and told me to look closer. I rose up in my chair… the kid had NO RIGHT ARM. Missing from the deltoid down. Ooops.

Another time I was drawing a twelve year-old who had these lush, dark eyelashes, full red lips and thick, curly hair. The mom asked if I’d do a drawing with a tennis theme. I drew the subject in a cute tennis skirt delivering a backhand smash. I finished the drawing in color and handed it over, got paid and went on with the day. Later the mom came up and told me she just wanted to know how upset her SON was that I drew him in a skirt. Ooops. After that I would ask the kid’s name before committing to a specific sex in the drawing… of course whenever I was in doubt the name was always “Chris/Kris”, “Pat” or “Sean/Shaun”.

A few years ago at Valleyfair I was drawing a couple towards the end of a busy day, and I did one of the quickest and easiest of poses… the guy with his arm around the girl and giving the “thumbs up” as he looks at her. The couple and their friends watching were Hispanic and speaking Spanish so I had no idea what they were saying. As I got through drawing the bodies and started adding the color, the friends started laughing and saying all sorts of stuff to the guy. He starts laughing and then raises his hand up to show me… NO THUMB. Ooops.

That doesn’t even take into account the times I’ve mistakenly thought a dad and his adult daughter were a couple, that a woman was pregnant when she wasn’t (those are never pretty) or that what I thought were freckles were really zits.

Thanks to Micheal Garisek 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: As a live caricaturist, I’ve noticed that some days, things flow quite naturally.  I can observe what I see and properly draw it on the page with a little exaggeration here and there.  But on occasion, I have “one of those days”.   These are the days that I find it extremely difficult to get the result I want – likeness, line quality, and so forth are a struggle to achieve, and simply “trying harder” doesn’t seem to get me too far.  You have been doing this a long time, and I wonder if you had any insight into how to deal with one of the dreaded “Bad Drawing Days” when they come.

A: I always preach abject professionalism and a certain amount of professional “detachment” from the artwork done for any paying job, be it for an art director, client or in a live caricature setting. However the truth is that as artists we cannot completely emotionally detach ourselves from the work not pretend what we do is not a product of our creative side. We don’t work with absolutes doing math calculations for a living. We create art, and sometimes the creative parts of the brain just aren’t firing. It’s like “writer’s block” is for an author. Sometimes it comes easy and sometimes it comes hard.

In the studio, the solution is simple. I get up and walk away from the drawing board. Music, reading, writing or watching a movie will remove my mind for whatever visual image it’s struggling with and allow it to walk about different paths. When I come back to my board it’s usually with a different point of view, and more often than not I find whatever barriers were frustrating me knocked away.

Live caricature is a different story, however. Usually you do not have the luxury of just getting up and going to watch a movie or listen to you ipod of an hour or two. You have to work through the artist’s block. I’ve found two methods that seem to help a lot when this problem arises.

Just Let Go- I know you said “trying harder” doesn’t help, and you are right. You need instead to stop overthinking, loosen up and just let your instincts take over. I struggle the most working live when I am trying too hard to exaggerate or force something that isn’t coming. You need to just react to the face and take what it will give you. Just draw it as naturally as you can without analyzing things. Usually that results in a sharpening of the likeness and a downplaying of the exaggerations, but it also act as a “reset” button of sorts and from that base starting point you often find your eyes start seeing and your head starts observing better. It’s a matter of approaching the face with no agenda, and letting it show you what it wants to show you instead of you looking for what might not be there. Sounds very zen, I know, but it often works.

Change Your Approach- This is less of a metaphysical and more of a mechanical remedy, but I find that changing my approach to the drawings can break me out of a mental rut and get me seeing things better. There are lots of different ways to change your way of drawing, but my favorite is to switch to a very fast “eyes/nose/mouth” drawing as a way to start the caricature. Ordinarily I start with the eyes and then do the nose, make connections, add some detail, move the the mouth, make connections, some detail, etc. In my new approach, I do a very fast simple eye shape, bottom of nose shape, mouth shape with no connections or detail at all. As simple and fast as I can do it. Then I go back and add the connections and flesh out the features before moving on to the rest of the face. There is an extreme spontaneity with that method that eliminates any analysis and forces you to work on pure instinct. Often after doing that method for an hour or two you can revert back to a more comfortable approach with a fresh eye.

When all else fails I just put my head down and race of the finish line (i.e. the end of the day). We aren’t machines and sometimes it’s just not clicking.

Thanks to Bill Breneisen 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: When drawing live caricatures (theme park) how do you decide whether to have a couple or just a single person be drawn in the 3/4 view or frontal? If it’s a couple do you draw the woman first, or does is not matter? Also, do you have or can you put up a video of you doing a live theme park caricature to show us how your technique is done?

Since it’s officially the theme park caricature season I thought these might be some good mailbag questions today.

When drawing live caricatures (theme park) how do you decide whether to have a couple or just a single person be drawn in the 3/4 view or frontal?

When working live I almost never draw a subject at a true frontal or a true 3/4 angle. The 100% frontal angle is boring and makes the nose very difficult to draw convincingly because it is protruding at the viewer and it lacks hard edges to define its form. A true 3/4 angle only works for a single person, or for one out of a couple. Both subjects in a two person drawing at the same 3/4 angle looks like a police line up. I cheat the face angle to a slight 3/4 one way or the other in most cases. The only time I draw a true frontal is with people who have very round faces (no cheekbones to define the face contours) and small features. That type of face demands a Dick Tracy “Littleface” treatment that is emphasized by the frontal angle. I will do a true 3/4 angle on some faces if they have the nose for it. Very interesting noses work great for 3/4 views, because the nose is very much the focus of a 3/4 drawing, given that the contours of the face are no longer as relevant.

If it’s a couple do you draw the woman first, or does is not matter?

It does not matter in terms of sex. I always draw left to right, so the subject on the left is always first. I just draw them as they are naturally seated, because in my opinion couples sit down in whatever order they are used to sitting, and it’s better to draw them in that order. However, it’s easier to draw the shorter of the two first because I always put that person in the foreground with the taller behind them. That would usually means drawing the woman first, but not always. Personally I think it’s more important to draw the natural way they have seated themselves as opposed to always drawing the woman (or shortest person as the case may be) on the left. It drives me crazy when a live caricaturist draws the person sitting on the right in front of them on the left of their paper… it certainly confuses the people watching until the drawing progresses far enough they realize the switch. Likewise it drives me crazy when an artist tells their models to switch places after they have seated themselves so he/she can have whoever they prefer on the left. The late, great Gary Fasen used to do that all the time. There’s nothing wrong with it, I guess, but it is just a pet peeve of mine.

Also, do you have or can you put up a video of you doing a live theme park caricature to show us how your technique is done?

Probably not, as that would necessitate setting up a camera at the theme park, getting the customers to agree to let me do it, and a lot of other hassles. Also, it would be tough to get it to show up properly on a video. I’d like to do it and many people have asked about it, so I will try to figure it out one of these days. Come to think of it, I have an older video showing me doing a number of celebrity sample caricatures we used to use as a sales tool at some of my indoor locations. That was done using some time-lapse fades so it’s not really a start to finish video, but maybe I can find it and transfer it to YouTube if people would be interested in seeing it.

Thanks to Anthony Pagano 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!