Q: When you teach new artists your techniques for drawing caricatures in a theme park, what are some common problems you see?

A: Everybody is different, of course, but there are some issues that in the 20 plus years I have been training theme park artists I have noticed seem to be typical of many beginning live caricaturists.

Fear of line- This is very typical and to be expected. Live caricature is an exercise in fearlessness and audacity, where you make bold, confident lines on the paper like you have been doing it for years. New artists almost always lack this fearlessness and confidence, and their lines are timid, sketchy, and lack the spontaneity and strength that is so important to live caricature. Fortunately this is a cosmetic issue, and easily overcome once the artist decides to trust their lines and commit to them. At first this kind of going-for-broke linework results in a number of bad, disjointed drawings, but very quickly the artist’s lines start clicking and then the difference in the results is remarkable.

Small Cranial Mass Syndrome- Many beginning artists seem to struggle with giving their subjects too small of a top of a head (the cranial mass/hair area). I am not sure why, but I have seen it enough to know it is definitely a common issue. My theory is that the artists are so concerned with the features of the lower face (eyes, nose, mouth) that they unconsciously make this area more prevalent and therefore bigger, while making the top of the head smaller. I correct this by explaining how, in traditional portraiture, the head mass is equal above and below the horizontal center of the head, which is the line of the eyes. Giving someone a small cranial mass and a big lower face/jaw is a great head shape exaggeration . . . if the subject’s face is deserving of it. It might not be, however, and applying an exaggeration arbitrarily to any face is distortion, not exaggeration. I tell them they they should stick to the equal mass rule unless they want to consciously change it for exaggeration purposes. I remind them that they will draw as many people who need to be exaggerated with a big top of a head and a small lower face, than they will the other way around.

Asymmetry- This is a byproduct of the “no sketching” method of quick-draw caricature and the sequencing technique we use, but many artists struggle with their faces being a little lopsided or otherwise asymmetrical. This is just a matter of being conscious of the issue and making sure when you start to draw each feature you are aware of its relative position to the other features and the rest of the face, so you don’t draw one eye too low of make one side of the face father from the center line than the other. No face is truly symmetrical, but most people perceive them as such, and to me badly off is very noticeable.

Those are just a few of the more common problems. Everyone has their own, unique hang-ups and strengths.

Thanks to Ryan Roe 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’ve read on your blog that you have several caricature booth stands in a few different amusement parks around the country. How did you get into that and how can someone apply for a job drawing caricatures?

A: My first real “art” job, outside of a few commissions for friends and others, was drawing caricatures at Six Flags Great America theme park in Gurnee, IL just north of Chicago. I got the job by answering a flyer ad with the headline “Can You Draw?” that was hanging in the studio arts building at the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis while I was attending college there. It turned out to be from a company called Fasen Arts, which did caricatures and airbrush T-Shirts at various theme parks. That was the summer of 1985, and I worked with Fasen Arts for four years at Great America while I put myself through college. After I graduated in 1989 The Lovely Anna and I, newly married, moved down to Atlanta to manage a new location for them at Six Flags Atlanta. While there I opened my own operation at the grand opening of a newly remodeled shopping/entertainment property called Underground Atlanta. I closed that booth in 2008 after 19 years in operation. In the meantime we moved back to Minnesota and I opened up a location at Valleyfair, the local theme park, in 1991. I have since expanded into other venues like Six Flags St. Louis and Six Flags New England near Springfield, MA as well as Nickelodeon Universe here in Minnesota. We also do airbrush t-shirts and airbrush tattoos in some of the locations.

Getting a job doing caricatures is simple. You just have to demonstrate to me that you have the drawing skills and natural eye to do good caricature art, and show me you can be the type of person who I can rely on to do their job and the little things like show up on time, work hard and be dedicated to improving your craft. Most artists that come to work with us don’t have a lot of experience doing live caricatures, but they have the necessary talent and learn our techniques along the way. I always have a few positions open every season, so interested artists can e-mail me about any of the above locations.

Thanks to Grant Jonen 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 your questions and I’ll try and answer them here!

The Huffington Post has an article/slideshow posted on their website called Street Portraits Gone Wrong: The Funniest Caricature Drawings Ever featuring thirteen different examples they found of caricatures that the artist “got wrong”. I know many of the artists who did these drawings. Here are some samples:

This one is a Joe Bluhm

This is by Dorney Park, PA artist Chris Chua

This one is by Chris Rommel

See all thirteen and vote on the one with the most “WTF?” on the Huntington Post website.

Poor Chris has four different samples in that slideshow.

The funny thing is that several of these are terrific caricatures, proving the author of the piece is clueless… although a few of them are pretty bad. They didn’t look too hard, obviously… there are some truly hideous caricature examples out there where the recognizably of the subjects as human is a stretch.

I drew live caricatures at my Valleyfair theme park operation the last few days, but forgot my camera. I took one picture with my iPhone which turned out halfway decent:

I also did a new park sample based on a past “sketch o’the week”:

Next time I will try and remember the camera.

Q: Would you know or could you give the history of the pencil, airbrush caricature like you do in the parks? Was it the Fasen’s that put it together and brought it to the amusement parks?

A: Great question, one I happen to know the definitive answer to as I was there when the live airbrush caricature was “invented” and know the whole sorted story.

Live airbrush caricatures are seen in theme parks, fairs, festivals, malls, tourist centers and many other places where crowds of people gather to spend money. The technique has been adopted by many artists as it is quick, efficient and very impressive when done right. The color magically appears on the paper, and an artist with good airbrush skills can really make their caricatures pop with the color technique.

The airbrush technique was brought into popular use by the Fasen brothers, Steve and Gary, and Fasen Arts, a company that owns caricature art concessions in a number of different theme parks and venues today. However the first time airbrush and live caricature were paired up was not by the Fasens, but by two of their artists who set up on their own in the winter of 1985 in Las Vegas at a casino off Fremont Street.

The two artists were caricaturist Dave Kamish and airbrush T-shirt artist Doug Mahnke. Dave and Doug worked at Six Flags Great America for the Fasens in the summer of 1985, which was also the year and place of my first summer of drawing caricatures. At the time we did them only in black and white using a soft graphite pencil and blending stomp on 12″ x 16″ paper. There was a lot of talk that summer about trying to figure out a good way to color the caricatures, which the Fasens felt would allow us to charge more for the drawing and therefore raise sales. The trick was to come up with a quick, clean and efficient way to color them so the extra revenues from the higher price was not eaten up by the artist spending too much time applying the color. Things like pastels and a palette of crushed chalks with dedicated blending stomps for each color were tried and discarded.

Dave and Doug went to Las Vegas after the summer was over to try and make some money in the off-season. Since Doug’s airbrush T-shirts was too unwieldy to try and set up in a casino, they came up with the idea of having Doug airbrush Dave’s caricatures, and thus tag team to create a color caricature they could charge more for than a black and white. Their foray into Vegas (which at the time was mostly devoid of caricature artists, unlike later years) was not too successful and they moved back to Minnesota… we were all from the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. However they learned a few things about applying freehand airbrush to a black and white caricature and they got together with Gary in his home studio to share their experience. Gary, Steve, Doug, Dave, myself and some of the other artists brainstormed and experimented in Gary’s basement with using the airbrush to color our caricatures. Eventually a workable technique using a single brush and multiple bottles with a set color palette was established.

The summer of 1986 saw the Fasen’s convert their airbrush T-shirt booth at Six Flags Great America into a combo T-shirts and caricatures, and this location became the experimental “Color Caricatures” booth whereas the other existing locations remained black and white only. Only Gary, myself and two artists named Chuck Senties and Mark Sanislo were airbrush adept enough to work the color booth, so we were the guinea pigs.

The technique proved immensely popular and with further refinement very quick and efficient. The next summer all three booths were converted to airbrush color and all the artists used the airbrush. Once customers saw the airbrushed caricatures, we would not sell more than one or two black and white drawings for the rest of the day… everybody wanted color.

Almost every single one of the many airbrush caricature artists you see out in theme parks or other places today can be traced back to that original Fasen theme park operation. They will have either worked directly with Fasen Arts, Kamish’s, myself or another artist who worked with us at some point. I am sure a few artists have seen an airbrush caricaturist work and have then emulated the technique, but most will have been a part of an original or offshoot operation at some time.

Of course there are many ways to color a caricature, and pencil/airbrush is only one. I’m not saying it’s better than another technique, just that it’s a darn good one. I’m also unable to claim with impunity that Fasen’s artists were the first to EVER airbrush a live caricature, because for all I know some caricaturist drawing at the Boiled Potato Days festival in Podunk, Idaho tried doing it in the 1970′s completely independent of Fasen’s group. I can say, however, that the proliferation of the technique in theme parks and venues all over the United States is definitely the result of those cold winter days in Gary Fasen’s basement experimenting with the airbrush.

Incidentally, what ever happened to those two original artists who went to Las Vegas and combined caricature and the airbrush? Dave Kamish and his brothers owned and operated theme park caricature concessions in various locations including Sea World in San Diego for years (they are mostly out of the business now), and Dave has done animation for studios including Warner Brothers, freelance illustration work and authored children’s books. Doug Mahnke is now one of the most popular and respected comic book artists in the profession, which credits too long to mentioned here but including the biggest titles like Superman, Batman, Justice League and many others.

So, there you have the history of live airbrushed caricatures. As always, please do not use this knowledge for evil.

Thanks to Michael 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!

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…

I spent a rare day yesterday drawing live caricatures at my Valleyfair concessions. Here’s some pictures of our three locations at the park and some of the live ones I did.

A few Sundays ago I worked at my Nickelodeon Universe location with fellow illustrator James Hungaski, which is something I haven’t done much of for a long time but likely will be doing a lot more often… especially this summer. I was going to bring a camera and snap pics of some of the lives ones I did but I just didn’t have the energy.

I did do this one from a couple of pictures in between customers, which I mailed out to the subjects (a couple of friends from Nevada). They wanted a Batman/Catwoman theme. Not much too it… I was plenty rusty Sunday. Still I thought since its Valentines day and all…

Still really under the gun… I won’t be coming up for air until Monday. I ended up working at Valleyfair on Labor Day and remembered to bring my camera, so here is a sampling of some of the live caricatures I did that day:

Here are a few of the ones I did working at the theme park on Monday. My camera ran out of battery after just a few.

You have to love this next one:

Grandma rolls this napping baby up in a stroller and insists I draw a caricature of her. I explained I’ll have to draw her sleeping, and he replies “That’s what I want.” <groan>. Ooooookay. The customer is always right! So I did the one above in about 6 minutes. Then I signed it “Steckley”, so just in case it ever gets seen by anyone I know they’ll blame my buddy Ed Steckley and not me. I’ve got a lot of “Steckley” drawings floating around!