Mailbag
March 4th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I’ve been tasked with creating a multiple page “comic” featuring a client, her family and pets. The project is a secret and it’s been difficult to acquire references of some of the subjects to draw in various poses and at various angles. I ended up gathering a lot of reference from their Instagram, printing it out, and also printing a mirror image. I think I’ll get by, but how do you approach clients about likeness references when bidding a job? A: I’m just very up front about the fact that how well the caricatures turn out is very much determined by how good the… READ MORE
February 25th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: In your book you are describing the sequence you are foll0wing doing life caricatures. Do you also have a sequence for the coloring with the airbrush, after the pencil drawing is finished (concerning areas and/or used colors)? Do you still stick to the sequence when doing digital life caricatures? A: I’ve actually been meaning to post a tutorial on live caricature airbrushing but have never gotten around to it. The following is something I put together years ago to show the basic process. I use a different process for digital color, though… this is just for airbrushing live caricatures. The colors are for a… READ MORE
February 18th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Will you please do one of your caricature workshops in my area/backyard? A: I get this one a lot… every time I announce a workshop in fact. The answer is probably not, but feel free to suggest a location. I choose where I am going to try and do a workshop based on a few factors. Population, obviously, is a major one. I am going to end up doing three workshops in the Los Angeles area this year. I did one in the New York City area last year and am doing another this year. I’ll have my second in London this summer and… READ MORE
February 4th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: I assume you knew from a pretty young age you wanted to pursue a career in art. Were your parents/family pretty supportive or did they try to steer you into a more traditional (i.e. “stable”) direction (“You can always fall back on teaching”)? A: I was fascinated with drawing and comics as long as I can remember, and was saying I wanted to be an artist since probably age 4. My parents were tremendously supportive of my creative career goals. In fact I cannot ever remember a time where either of them expressed any reservations about if I could make a living in art,… READ MORE
January 28th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: Any suggestions on staving off the frustration that comes from not being as good as you want when you first learn to draw. Every time I start practicing and realize it looks bad I get frustrated and stop. A: Actually I tell people that those kinds of feelings, as discouraging as they may seem, are a good thing. Drawing is as much, if not more, mental than it is physical. You need to develop great hand/eye coordination to become good at drawing, but it’s really your brain that draws as it needs to see and visualize what you want to create and then command… READ MORE
January 14th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: At a workshop you mentioned you use multiple photos for each caricature you develop. Can you explain how you analyze multiple photos and bring them together into one drawing? A: Not for each caricature, but for important ones, yes. Photos lie to you. They are only two dimensional and factors like lighting, focus, angles, and even odd expressions can give you the wrong information when trying to really capture a subject. You can’t really do a caricature from a single picture of someone you are not already familiar with. What you are really drawing is a caricature of a photo, not a person. You… READ MORE
January 7th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: It is often said that not only pupils learn from the teacher but also the teacher learns from the pupils. What did you learn in your caricature workshops? A: I absolutely learn and grow as an artist doing these workshops. I see things through fresh eyes looking at how the students interpret the subjects we draw, and find myself noticing things in new faces I am drawing later on that relate to what I saw in a workshop. I’ve also found that act of teaching forces the teacher to analyze what they do in order to explain it to others… doing this has caused… READ MORE
December 31st, 2017 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: As the owner of a business that does caricatures in various theme parks, do you have trouble finding people to work on holidays like today (New Year’s Eve)? What do you do if you can’t get anyone to work on these days? A: This: Christmas Eve, 2018… Thanks to R Griffin 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! READ MORE
