Mailbag
March 11th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Have you or any caricature artists you know been sued by a celebrity for using their image in a caricature? A: The area of law you are referring to is called the “right of publicity”, and I have written a number of blog posts about this subject over the years. The short answer to your question is no, I have never been sued nor to my knowledge has any specific caricature artist been sued for a caricature of a celebrity. The closest I ever got was when Arnold Schwarzenegger walked by my caricature booth at the Mall of America years ago and saw his… READ MORE
March 4th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What was your very first paid professional freelance job? A: That depends on your definition of “professional freelance job”. If by that you mean the first time money was ever given to me in exchange for my artwork, that would have been in 10th grade in La Crescent, MN, when a fellow classmate named Lori paid me to paint my concept of a Van Halen album cover… not a copy of one of their album covers, but my idea of a new cover. I did their classic VH logo looking like it was rising out of a glowing, smoking crater. I did it using… READ MORE
February 26th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: How do I break into MAD? A: If you want to break into MAD, the easiest way is with a grappling hook, 50 feet of rope, a glass cutter and suction cups. You can bribe your way in on Wednesdays with home baked cookies offered to Dick DeBartolo. Seriously, getting into MAD is notoriously hard to do, but it isn’t quite the impenetrable fortress it was in the 70’s and 80’s. Back then MAD had their legendary freelancers in their prime, and there was frankly very little work they had in the magazine that one of their established and well known “Usual Gang of… READ MORE
February 19th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Regarding using DVDs or other video sources for finding reference for your caricatures: Ever since upgrading to MAC OS X Lion I’ve had a devil of a time finding a screen capture solution that allows me to grab a movie still from an iTunes movie or a DVD. I read on your blog that you recommended “CaptureIt!”,¬¨‚Ć but I downloaded and ran the trial version and it doesn’t work either. The images it captures are just the white-and-grey grid. Have you been able to find anything that actually works in Lion? A: This question came from fellow Minnesota illustrator Cedric Hohnstadt last week and… READ MORE
February 12th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Is your book The Mad Art of Caricature! ever going to be released as an eBook? If so, will it be available for the Kindle? A: I’d like it to eventually be available as an eBook for the iPad, Kindle and Nook, but making that happen is problematic. I have been researching ways to convert the book’s digital publication file to ePub (iPad) and PRC (Kindle/Nook) formats, and it’s not going to be an easy thing to do. There is no magic way to take the book’s Indesign master file and just convert it. That might work for a text-only book like a novel,… READ MORE
February 5th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: What are some of your favorite drawing tools (e.g. type of pencils, drawing software, etc.) you use? A: I get this question every so often so once I year (or so, actually it’s been since 2009) I do an updated answer. Here is 2012’s version: In the Studio For doing my publication work I use a lot of different tools and materials. While most of what I do these days is digital I do occasionally, when the job calls for it, pull out the old paints and such. Here are the tools I like to use in the studio: Paper and boards- Paper for… READ MORE
January 29th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I remember about a year ago you wrote a post about the decline in quality of Strathmore bristol boards, a brand you used with your work. Whatever happened with that? Did you find a suitable replacement? Have the Strathmore boards improved? A: Here is the post to which you refer: Strathless Bristol Bored. I contacted Strathmore about my concerns and found their customer service department very receptive to working with me. They were concerned and, while they didn’t come right out and say it, I got the feeling mine was not the first complaint they had received. They asked me to send them some… READ MORE
January 15th, 2012 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’m enthusiastically working through your book. Aside from enjoying the art and fantastic tips, I’m really interested what you said about it taking 500 faces to really get the nuances of caricature / portraiture. So to fully understand…. maybe naively so, I have set out to draw 500 faces. I really want to at least begin to recognize all the subtleties you mentioned… and to overcome some of the challenges I’ve faced while drawing portraits. A friend of mine said that it takes 1,000 attempts at a particular activity to beome an expert. My goals isn’t really to become an expert (a half expert… READ MORE
