ISCA Talk and Seminar in Phoenix

Back in 1998 I became a member of a national organization of professional caricaturists called the National Caricaturists Network (NCN). I attended many of their annual convention and competitions, was honored with a couple of awards, and served as president of that organization in 2000 and 2001. Over the years other facets of life and work curbed my participation with that group, which has since evolved into the International Society of Caricaturists (ISCA) and gotten much bigger. However I have remained a member.

I am going to be one of several speakers at this year’s ISCA Convention and Competition, taking place in Phoenix, AZ, November 13th-18th. In fact, I’ll be both doing a talk and conducting a separate 3 hour workshop. The talk will be about doing caricatures for illustration and particularly for MAD, and the workshop will go through the process of doing a spot illustration job featuring a caricature (duh). Students will all work on the same project from concepts, roughs, pencils and inks. I will demo my digital color technique and we will start with the color process as well, those with digital equipment with them can try my techniques or those others participating can color their illustration with traditional media. The talk is free to attending members, and the workshop costs some extra $$, all of which goes to the ISCA to help fund their convention.

The bad news is only members of ISCA can attend the convention, no public allowed. There is a convention fee, and it includes all the speakers (I’m just one of the non-headliners doing talks and seminars), the awards banquet, and lots of other stuff. If you do caricatures for a living, or even as a side thing, you should be a member of ISCA. Go to their website and find out about joining.

If you’ve never been to one of their conventions, I can tell you few caricaturists attend without it being a life changing experience. Imagine a giant ballroom with 200+ caricaturists drawing each other for four days in every imaginable media and style… hyper exaggeration to cartoony portraits, abstract design to 3D sculptures. All the work is hung in individual wall sections and then voted on for multiple award categories.

Sadly I’ll only be there for the first three days… but it should be fun.