Tales from the Theme Park
December 11th, 2014 | Posted in Tales from the Theme Park
This one is the story of the closest I ever got to getting beat up for a caricature I drew. This happened in the summer of 1989 or 1990 while I was managing a concession for Fasen Arts at Six Flags Atlanta. It’s sad that I was in a position of authority and still pulled this stunt… I apologize to Steve Fasen for my actions a quarter of a century ago. It was a typical day doing theme park caricatures at Six Flags. I was working at our busiest booth located in the center area of the park when I started drawing a group of… READ MORE
August 7th, 2014 | Posted in Tales from the Theme Park
“The Drawing Muscle” This isn’t much of a story but it is something I used to freak my fellow caricaturists out with all the time. The technique I learned to draw live caricatures invoked using a lead holder and a 4B or 6B 3mm graphite lead. Many live caricaturists use a marker for their lines, which is wonderful and can be used to great effect. I learned with graphite, and the principal reason for this was we used an airbrush to add the color. With the airbrush it was better to use graphite as it was not as intensely black as the lines from a… READ MORE
March 6th, 2014 | Posted in Tales from the Theme Park
This story actually comes not from drawing at a theme park but from doing a state fair. I didn’t do many of those but for a couple of years in the early 90’s I would pack up my gear and a 10×10 tent and drive to Oklahoma to do a state fair. The fair lasted for 17 days, during which I became an honorary carnie… except I had all my teeth. To be fair, most carnies also have all their teeth, but they keep them in a jar on their dashboard whereas all of mine are still in my mouth… but I digress. Doing fairs… READ MORE
February 6th, 2014 | Posted in Tales from the Theme Park
The Craziest Theme Request Ever… When you do live caricature, especially in a theme park or retail setting where speed is not as important as it is when doing parties or events, you get a lot of people asking to be drawn doing this or that. There are many standards like “as a baseball player” or “singing karaoke” or “riding a motorcycle”. I encourage my artists to charge a few bucks extra when the theme being requested is something that will take more than a minute of extra time… they are paid on commission after all. Now, these are caricatures and supposed to be funny,… READ MORE
December 26th, 2013 | Posted in Tales from the Theme Park
Technically this isn’t from a theme park experience but it’s close enough‚ and it’s got a Christmas connection. Back when I was going to art school in St. Paul, MN, circa 1986-1989, I did caricatures at bars and nightclubs on evenings and weekends to make some extra money. For a few years during the Christmas season I set up a booth at an event called “A Victorian Christmas”. This took place on evenings, weekends, and full time between Christmas and New Years, at an upscale shopping center called Riverplace. Riverplace was located on the Mississippi overlooking downtown Minneapolis and its existence as a retail center… READ MORE
December 12th, 2013 | Posted in Tales from the Theme Park
This tale took place in my first year of drawing caricatures at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee, IL, in the summer of 1985. Disclaimer: This was before I’d met my future wife, The Lovely Anna. This was only the second year that the company I worked with, Fasen Arts, had the concession at this park, which was one of the biggest in the Six Flags family at the time. Fasens originally were from Minnesota and had an operation at Valleyfair outside Minneapolis, so their venture into the Chicago area park was staffed with nothing but artists from Minnesota. They transplanted us down there for… READ MORE
November 21st, 2013 | Posted in Tales from the Theme Park
I know I just told this story last year here at some point, but it’s a good one and I wanted it part of the series. This one happened about 20 years ago when I had a run in with a theme park manager . . . I was working at one of my theme park concessions in 1992 when one of the newer members of the park’s “management team” came up to the booth and asked if I was the owner. “Yes,” I told her. She pointed at one of the many examples up on the wall, one I had done, and told me… READ MORE
October 25th, 2013 | Posted in Tales from the Theme Park
Time for another thrilling tale of yesteryear from my days as a theme park caricature artist! I know… you are overwhelmed with anticipation. Try to stay calm. When you draw caricatures from live models for enough years, you are bound to have some moments where you do something dumb and embarrassing with the drawing because you just weren’t paying attention. Those types of things can happen on really busy days when you are going at high speed and are distracted by your environment‚ or just plain not being attentive. There is a certain subset of these instances that I like the call “missing missing limb”… READ MORE
