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: Have you ever been asked to do a job that you weren’t comfortable with for philosophical or ethical reasons? How did you handle it?

A: Yes, I have had a few occasions where I have been approached to do some job that I was not comfortable doing. I handled it by politely turning it down.

What kind of jobs? Well, I am a pretty open-minded sort of guy, so there isn’t a whole lot of things that would bother me to the point of refusing to do work associated with it. There are shades of definition in everything, but in simplest terms I won’t do work that conclude the following:

• Pornography
• Promoting drug/alcohol use to kids
• Blatant and/or malicious racism, sexism or any other type of hate or discrimination directed at a person or group of people

A lot of what I feel falls into those categories is open to debate over definitions. Nudity is not pornography in my book, as long as it is done tastefully and is important to the context of the illustration and whatever story it is illustrating. I do work for Penthouse, and the first thing I told them when they called me was I would not do any real pornography, to which they said they would only consider me for work I was comfortable doing. Some of it has involved nudity, but I was allowed to present it in the way I wanted, and have been very happy with the work I have done for them over the years. I have not crossed my idea of “the line”, and they have not asked me to. I have been asked several times to do work for porno publications and websites, to which I have said a polite, “No thanks”.

As far as drugs and alcohol, I’d be reluctant to do any job that truly glorified the use of drugs in general, but if it is aimed at kids then that is out of the question. That includes cigarettes. I have done plenty of jobs that depicted drinking alcohol, usually in humorous ways, and some that treated drugs in the same way, but again that is not quite what I mean by “promoting drugs or alcohol”. Mostly it would come down to if I thought the article in question was promoting the use to kids, or presenting the use of really bad drugs as being acceptable at any age… I’m talking heroin, crack or the like.

As far as the discrimination thing goes, there is a difference between un-PC level humor and real, intentional hate speech. Those jobs must past the “sniff test”—if they smell bad they are bad, and I pass. Some people may disagree that something I thought was just an off-color or somewhat insensitive joke to be a horribly hateful, racist thing, but there are plenty of people in the world who are way too sensitive about that kind of thing, and everyone has their own ideas about that. If I feel what I am doing is not meant to be hateful, I am content with that decision.

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 and I’ll try and answer it here!

Q:  I have been looking to your drawings for inspiration, and I have realized that they look very clean and flawless. So my question is do you find yourself making a lot of mistakes when drawing or even sketching? How often do you erase, if at all? What is your tool of choice for erasing? (because I can seriously never tell so it must be damn good).

A: Of course I make a lot of mistakes when I sketch, and I do plenty of erasing. The sketches I post for the “Sketch o’the Week” are usually ones I have “tightened up” a bit, meaning I erase some of the stray lines and use some bolder, stronger lines to make it more defined and less “sketchy”. Also, when I scan them in I play with the values in PhotoShop to strength the lines. That doesn’t mean I don’t have many stray lines or don’t do any erasing. That’s what a sketch is all about… exploring and experimenting.

Here are a couple of raw sketches and studies I did recently for my “Secret Agent Man” print:

As you can see, plenty sketchy and loose. These studies were redrawn as more involved sketches, then transferred to bristol board for final artwork.

As for erasers, I like to use kneadable erasers and occasionally white, plastic ones. I hate pink pearls and gum erasers.

Thanks to Rachel Rivera 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 noticed, when trying to re-learn cartooning, that daily and Sunday strips seem to not always have backgrounds. But comic books and MAD mags usually always have some kind of back ground in each frame. Sometimes I find doing backgrounds tedious or even distracting, but I feel I am cheating myself by avoiding them.  I also noticed a similar effect with daily/Sunday’s showing most or all of the shots from the same perspective. Whereas, comic books/MAD see to redraw each from a different angle. Are there reasons why daily/Sunday strips skimp or cheat as opposed to comic books and MAD?

A: What you are really talking about here is the difference between cartooning/illustration done for different purposes and mediums, and not just backgrounds specifically. The approach to graphic storytelling changes depending on factors like the intended print/reader presentation, the kind of story being told, the style of the artist and what is or is not necessary visually to tell the story. However backgrounds are a good example of one of the differences between types of storytelling, so we’ll stick to that specifically.

One of the reasons most comic strips today contain minimal backgrounds is for purely technically reasons. Today’s strips print so small in newspapers that detailed backgrounds or art are lost and become muddy and unreadable. There was a time when strips printed very large and cartoonists doing dailies drew them 15″ wide or larger. With all that room and legibility they had the option of doing more detailed or elaborate backgrounds and art because it could be seen and enjoyed by the viewer. Today’s strips print so small, any detailed backgrounds would become mush, and even detailed character work would get lost… especially on newsprint. Due to those limitations, comic strip artists have been forced to simplify their artwork to tell their stories and gags effectively. Some specific styles are simple anyway, and work well for that reason. Most strips are telling short stories/gags meant for quick reading and consumption, so detailed backgrounds seldom serve much of a functional purpose. As far as changing perspective, some strips do or did do that a lot—Rose is Rose still does and Calvin and Hobbes did it frequently. There are many other examples. That is more of a choice with the artist, their style and the story they are trying to impart visually. Some cartoonists keep it simple and stick with the single frame angle with just the characters changing as they interact. A cartoonist could certainly incorporate “camera-angle” changes into a strip and make it work, even with the shrunken sizes of today’s strips. Likewise some backgrounds can and are drawn into dailies, but they need to be able to hold up to the small print size and the newsprint printing. Comic strips done for viewing on the web or via an electronic device have none of these limitations.

Comic books and features in MAD have physically larger print sizes and better paper, so the technical limitations of the newspaper comic strip are not an issue with them. Utilizing detailed backgrounds becomes a function of the storytelling here, and are used when environments and such are key parts of what the artist is trying to describe. Usually cartoons drawn for this format involve longer narratives and therefore demand more detailed descriptions of the scene(s). That said, detailed backgrounds are not always appropriate or desirable. To saturate every panel of one of my MAD parodies with elaborate backgrounds would not only be overkill, but actually would detract from the storytelling. The eye has no chance to rest as it moves along the story, and is bombarded to the point of over-saturation. The pages as a whole become too busy and dense. I will spend some time on detailed backgrounds in a few panels on a given page, where the scene needs establishing or the action needs to be described in a context, but I also will do limited detail or leave out backgrounds entirely in some panels to keep the story flowing. I’m not being lazy, I’m doing that with the effectiveness of the whole in mind.

So, do not feel you are “cheating yourself” by not doing super-elaborate backgrounds in your strip or cartoons. Ask yourself if they are needed for a reason, if the artwork is more effective with them, and if the final output of the work will support detailed background work. Spend time on them if they will make your work better… that is not always the case.

Thanks to Jim Jackle 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 know you have already covered the basics of exaggerating but I’d really love to pick your brain a bit more about seeing your subject; what to exaggerate and emphasise and what to play down. For example drawing familiar faces, friends or relatives or even celebrities you’ve ‘known’ for years. Or drawing characters like Lemmy Kilmister, who looks like a caricature already. It seems really hard to analyze someone’s face that far without over-analyzing and losing the big picture.

A: Well, that’s the trick to caricature. It’s exactly those decisions, what to exaggerate and what not to, that dictate the success of a caricature and places the artist’s personal stamp on the art.

There is no single right or wrong way to draw and exaggerate a given face. Different artists can make different choices and still create a successful caricature. My choices on what to exaggerate might not be the same as your choices. How far you push the exaggeration might not match how far (or little) I push mine. While there are many “wrong” decisions that can ruin a caricature (drawing someone with small, beady eyes and giving them big, gigantic eyes would be a wrong decision), there are also several “right” ones that can apply. Caricature is rooted in personal vision and observation, and the decisions that stem from a given artist will reflect those unique perceptions. You can take a single subject around the country getting a thousand different caricatures drawn of he or she, and no two will be exactly alike. Some will be unsuccessful, but many will be great, dead-on caricatures yet differ wildly. That’s one of the most exciting things about the art of caricature.

I tell the artists that work with my theme park operations that great caricatures are made up of 25% drawing and 75% seeing. Having strong drawing skills is a must, but it’s the ability to see the unique relationships in the face and then make good choices on exaggerating them that is the bulk of the success of a caricature. Even an artist that can draw incredibly well can’t do good caricatures if they can’t see what to exaggerate—the most accurate shooter in the NBA can’t score if they can’t find the basket.

Learning to “see” is a lifelong process and involves developing your ability, not learning it. Yes, there are many techniques and concepts that can help an artist develop that ability, but ultimately only thousands of drawings and hours of time and effort will cause that “caricature eye” to open wider.

Thanks to Tomi Lepistö from Sipoo, Finland 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: How has technology changed how you work?

A: It has revolutionized every aspect of it, from how I get work to how I communicate with clients during the process to how I deliver the art.

I became a professional illustrator in 1990, right as the personal computer was starting to take hold in the world of publication and print. “Desktop publishing” was just starting to get serious, having been mainly a curiosity in the late 80′s and not used by professional publishers. That all changed as the years went by and the software became more powerful and easier to use. Keylining, layouts, paste-up, half-toning, stat cameras and drum scanning became things of the past. The internet also became a giant game changer for other aspects of freelancing.

Getting Work- Time was when you either physically brought in or shipped your portfolio out to a client who was interested in your work. Portfolios are things of the past now, replaced by websites which contain unlimited images and are instantly accessible 24/7. Marketing yourself has swung to using a strong web presence/virtual portfolio as a base, driving client traffic to it via a combination of the old method (direct mail, illustration sourcebooks, etc) and web-based methods (internet search engines and online “sourcebooks” like the iSpot). The versatility, unlimited volume and instantaneous/anytime access to your online portfolio makes a website the perfect showcase for an illustrator’s work.

Doing the Work- Communicating with clients during the job is faster and more efficient than ever before. Only the advent of the consumer fax machine had a bigger impact on this aspect of freelance illustration than when the internet came around. Imagine, before the fax machine, the simple step of sending the client sketches for review and direction took days of shipping back and forth, unless you lived in the same area. The fax and then the internet made it possible to live in Timbuktu, LA and be able to do a job as efficiently and timely for a client in New York City as an illustrator in Brooklyn could do. E-mailing scans, getting direction back, emailing revised sketches, etc., has become a process measure in hours no matter the distance apart. A huge difference.

You would think doing the work digitally wold be the biggest revolution that the advances in technology have afforded, but that is probably the least important. Yes, it’s easier to do certain things digitally than in traditional media, but art is still art and artists make tools conform to their demands not the other way around. There has been no increase in the skill or talent of illustrators because many use a stylus and digital tablet instead of a paintbrush and canvas. The biggest revolution here is that the end results can be revised and reworked much more easily, and if it is already in digital format even the simple process of having it scanned is eliminated.

Delivering the Work- Digital delivery of artwork has replaced the old method of delivering/shipping physical artwork that then needed to be color separated before being stripped into the final print. That saves days of time at the back end, extends deadlines and makes corrections easy and nearly instantaneous. I not upload a CMYK TIFF file of my artwork to some FTP site and the clients retrieves it, plops it into their layout in Quark or InDesign, and it’s off to the races.

More than anything, at least for me, the advances in technology means I can live here in the suburbs of Minneapolis, MN and do work for clients on either coast or anywhere in the world without compromise.

Thanks to Adam Nuñez 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!

Uh oh… looks like the mailbag is empty!

Well, it’s not really completely empty, but the only ones I’ve got right now are of the “can you teach me how to cross-hatch?” or “how do you exaggerate people in caricature?” which aren’t really questions so much as they are requests for long and involved tutorials, and are needing a lot more time than I can give for this weekly feature. A good Sunday Mailbag question can certainly involve an image or two and a somewhat long answer, but anything like a tutorial is a different matter.

So, if you have questions concerning cartooning, illustration, freelancing, MAD Magazine or other similar subjects I’ll be happy to answer them as best I can. E-mail me your questions and I’ll try and answer them here!

Q: In the illustrations requiring text, such as background signs, posters and the like, do you illustrate them free-hand or use the computer?

A: That depends on what feel or context I am looking for. In cartooning, no matter how “hand drawn” a particular computer font might look, it still lacks the warmth and truly hand-drawn charm of lettering done by the artist. If I want that sort of feel, I will do the lettering by hand. For example, I do basically all the “sound effects” lettering in my MAD jobs by hand:

A panel from MAD #492′s Ironic Man parody with hand lettering

More hand lettering from “Yell’s Kitchen”, MAD #470

In the case of lettering or text that are supposed to represent professional signage or printed matter within an illustration, I would use the computer to create precise lettering, but would then try and make it blend into the image by fading or “distressing” it so it wasn’t an obviously pasted-in element:

A recent poster illustration

Close up showing doctored text

another example of an inserted computer font

I am a pretty lousy hand-letterer, so I will use computer fonts when and where I feel I can get away with it and don’t need the hand-lettered feel.

Thanks to Ken Best 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: Here’s an obscure question about your history with MAD Magazine: What was your longest run of appearing in consecutive issues?

A. I had to look that one up. I am terrible at remembering things like issue numbers or what I did for what issue. To combat this, I keep a list that I simply add to the bottom of with each new MAD job.

Prior to the magazine going quarterly, the longest number of issues I had consecutive appearances in was 11, starting with “MAD‘s Exclusive Backstage Tour of The Family Guy” in MAD # 458 (Oct. 2005), and ending with “Stuporman Reruns!” in MAD #468, (Aug 2006). That was the longest run of consecutive months I ever did. That said, I am currently on a run of 15 consecutive issues, starting with “The Dork Knight” in MAD #495 (Nov. 2008) through “Muddled Family” in the current issue, MAD #509 (June 2011), but with the reduction in number of issues a year that started with issue #500, there were sometimes three months between some of those issues.

I also happen to know I will have a movie parody in MAD #510, due out in June, which will bring me up to 16 issues in a row. How do I know I’m in #510?—because I am busy drawing the ferslugginer thing right now. That means I only have 391 more consecutive issues to go before I tie Dick DeBartolo‘s record 406 issue streak. At the current rate of publication, I’ll do my 407th consecutive issue in April, 2076. I’ll be 109 years old, which is just a little younger than Al Jaffee is now.

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!

Q: I see whenever you mention working digitally, you cite “PhotoShop” as the software you use. Why PhotoShop? Painter seems to be more of an artist-orientated program with a lot more choices for emulating natural media. Why don’t you use Painter?

A: I have also heard that Painter, and least compared to previous versions of PhotoShop, was a much more artistically versatile program. I dabbled in it once and found there was a dizzying number of choices as to drawing and painting media, paper and canvas textures and ways to mimic natural media down to applying watercolor “wet” and then “drying” the watercolor whenever you wished before moving on. Amazing stuff… but for me it was overkill.

I taught myself how to color and paint in PhotoShop, and so that program is the easiest and fastest for me to accomplish what I want to accomplish. I don’t use many filters or tricks, but really just paint using the opacity and size control of a pressure sensitive pen and table (actually the Wacom Cintiq) to get the look I want. Probably there are a lot of easier ways to accomplish the same look, but it works for me. Therefore, I go by the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

No doubt if I had taught myself on Painter I’d be using Painter and not PhotoShop, but I didn’t. Painter offered too many choices and the learning curve was too steep compared to the relative simplicity of PhotoShop, so I went that route.

It looks to me that PhotoShop is closing the gap with respect to natural media emulation. I have CS5 but find myself still working in CS4 because some of the new features are a pain.

Thanks to Terry J. 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!