Caricatures at Valleyfair
In October of 1990 The Lovley Anna and our baby girl Elizabeth moved back home to the Twin Cities in Minnesota from Atlanta, where I had been managing a caricature operation for Fasen Arts at Six Flags Atlanta. The next summer I opened up my own caricature concession operation at Valleyfair, a local theme park southwest of Minneapolis. This summer will be our 17th season at Valleyfair. The booth above was built in 1993 as our third location in the park. I worked there yesterday on an unseasonably sweltering day. Here are a few of the live ones I did. They aren’t really very good… my live style has changed a lot in the last 5 years as a result of disuse and a drop in a need to find artistic satisfaction in these quick sketches. I have some fun with them, but mostly I just like to bang them out in very simplified, cartoony form. I certainly don’t do any pre-sketching and just let the lines fall where they may, which results in asymmetry and some awkwardness.
Comments
Tom's Newsletter!
Sign up for Tom's FREE newsletter:
Claptrap Ad
GICLEES
Workshop Ad
007 ad
Catwoman ad
Dracula ad
Doctor Who ad
Superman ad
NCS
Categories
- Classic Rock Sketch Series (60)
- Daily Coronacature (146)
- Freelancing (173)
- General (1,652)
- Illustration Throwback Thursday (107)
- It's All Geek to Me! (53)
- Just Because… (1)
- MAD Magazine (916)
- Mailbag (691)
- Monday MADness (452)
- News (1,044)
- On the Drawing Board (160)
- Presidential Caricatures (47)
- Sketch O'The Week (835)
- Stuff from my Studio (21)
- Surf's Up Dept. (29)
- Tales from the Theme Park (17)
- Tom's MADness! (147)
- Tutorials (18)
- Wall of Shame (17)
good memories 🙂
These are great, I don’t care what you say! Man, I wish I would’ve approached your stand back when I was a young’un in the Summer of 2000 – I was working at Valleyfair as a ‘regular ‘Merch’ guy at the time. I guess I was just too much of a pansy back then!
Fun! I’ve been secretly wanting to see something like this; your live work beside your subjects. I especially enjoyed how Tom Green managed to appear in every photo eating mice!
Great Work. I enjoy seeing the work you post. I also used your inking and coloring tutorials to get the hang of using photoshop to illustrate.
I’m a graphic design student at Truman State University in Kirksville, MO and have a summer job doing illustrations for a grade school math curriculum. I use a Wacom Tablet and Photoshop CS2 on a PC… similar to you I think. Most of my work is on my blog (under the LABEL of Illustration).. I also have a design portfolio at http://www.stephenemlund.com . I’m an avid reader, but decided to finally comment.
Cool to see you back in the chair! Now I don’t feel so bad about missin’ ’em out here at Universal.
Cheers,
Meeeeesimo