Sunday Mailbag- Improving Live Work?

Q: I’ve been drawing caricatures at events for 34 years.  Although I have seen improvement just from so much repetition and paying attention to certain things, I am sick and tired of my work.  It’s not bad work, per say, but I feel I have plateaued. My work fills the requirements of what I do pretty well and nothing more.  I dream of reinventing myself in terms of style. Sometimes I can push my work in the direction I want to go, which is more cartoonesque, and abstractly simple, but I never truly break out of my rut.  I envy artists who look at a person and see the caricature.  I think that I have the chops to draw it if I could see it. What can I do to improve?

A: What can you do? Exactly what you are doing–not being satisfied with where your work is at and seeking to improve. That sounds deceptively simple but at its core this is the mechanism that any artist or creative individual needs if they want to improve.

In order to grow an artist needs to have a healthy amount of insecurity in their work. An artist that thinks their work is without flaw is an artist that is done improving. The trick, at least if you are a working artist, is to not allow that insecurity to be debilitating. I always tell young artists that it’s good to be happy with the work you are doing today, but you should not be happy doing the same work tomorrow. It sounds like you have the right amount of insecurity, and that will fuel your desire to improve.

In practical terms, improving your live work is a matter of deciding what your goals are, identifying where your work is falling short of reaching those goals, and then attacking those weaknesses. You say you want to “reinvent yourself in terms of style”. I’m not sure what that means. Is your work more realistic and you want to become more cartoony? More exaggerated? More high energy? These are the goals you need to identify. Then you need to figure out how to reach them.

Live caricature work, at least for experienced artists who have an established skill set, can be particularly hard to improve on or alter the style of for several reasons. First, these are spontaneous drawings done at high speed, and you don’t have the time to spend being analytical or sketching around to achieve the desired result. Like the act of doing live work, you have to commit to the changes you seek as much as you commit to the lines you draw. If you chicken out and fall back on the “safe” work you know sells you will really struggle to change or grow. You have to keep those goals in mind with every single drawing, and concentrate on attacking those weaknesses you have identified with every face. Without taking that leap, any progress will be slow or non-existent.

The other big reason that it is so hard for experienced live caricaturists to improve is because you have nothing to look at to see your progress or to help identify your weaknesses. Every drawing you do walks away and you never see it again, while you move on to the next one. This is the reason many live caricaturists draw the same features and/or the same relationship of features on everyone. They don’t have prior drawings to compare to the one they are working. Repetition and muscle memory cause alive caricaturist to fall into ruts with their drawings, and they can’t see a problem without looking a a fuller body of work. If it’s not too intrusive, I’d suggest taking photos of your drawings as you do them, so you can look at and compare a series of drawings. This way you can better identify issues and see where you are improving.

The bottom line is you won’t improve or grow as a live caricaturist unless you really commit to making the changes you need, and pushing yourself to get out of your comfort zone and take some risks.

Thanks to Tracy Latham for the question. If you have a question you want answered about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!