Sunday Mailbag: Names on Caricatures?

Q: I love your work but I really wish you would attach a name to your caricatures, they look so sweet but I’m not sure who some of your caricatures are depicting.

I usually do identify who my caricatures are depicting when I post them online either in the post title or in the description copy. However I almost never write the name of the person being caricatured as part of the actual artwork. I figure if the viewer can’t figure it out then A) they are not familiar with the subject or B) it’s a bad caricature. Either way writing the name of the subject on the art is a bad look, IMO. It implies the artist thinks the viewer needs the prompt to identify the subject. Lord knows I am fully capable of doing a bad caricature, but I’d rather it fail spectacularly than with an apologetic title next to it. Even when I did theme park caricatures I never wrote the name of the person in cartoon letters in the corner, unless the customer insisted on it. I think it looks schmaltzy and amateurish.

All that said I do add the names as a title when I do my Sketch o’the Week book collections. For some reason a book format needs it, and it’s actually a handy design element to balance out negative space on the pages.

Thanks to S Kato 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!