what is it exactly i been thinkin about? a way of framing it might be what exactly to make of the massive tsunami of favor for what caricaturists (but I’m using the term “caricaturists” colloquially because as you will soon see, in this writing I’m dealing with the caricaturist as a kind of archetype) would call “cuticatures.” before i wrote about the “pop portrait” concept. I’m not sure if I called it that, I’ll have to go back and look at what ive posted, but ive thought about caricatures being like the fuel for portraits, as in the caricaturists get in there and get dirty because it's who they are and it's what they gotta do and they cant handle the golf clap reactions and the portrait artists are the diplomats because that's who they are and what they do and they use the parts forged by the caricaturist and harmonize them. 
     but recently i've been thinking about this. it sprung forth from this kernel of imagining that portrait artists inhabit the space of their artform as residents but caricaturists come to it temporarily like little wild electrons drawn in by the gravity of there being something really interesting going on, and then they draw their caricatures and they are gone. they are passing through. i felt that picture of it. I’m able to see myself as the caricaturist, and I’m also able to see myself as the portrait artist. This isn’t about classifying people. It’s about trying to think about and talk about caricatures and portraits as honestly as i can from my little window. I’m interested in how it connects to everything else. As I’m writing now I’m starting to feel a little guarded. I’m not sure if that’s for better or worse, but most of what I’ve posted on my blog has been written before hand without consideration as to whether I would post it, but now that I’ve posted some I’m beginning to feel the pull toward that diplomatic showmanship mentality. 
     But truth be told any time I’ve written anything there’s always been some feeling of it being for something besides my own personal record, so i anticipate the mistake of over correcting too far in the opposite direction and i avoid it. 

 Maybe we can see four archetypes: The caricaturist, the portraitist, the caricature customer, and the portrait customer. And caricaturists and their customers are fearless and they’re right up in each others faces and then the portrait artists and their similarly guarded and cautious customers have the caricaturist and the caricaturist’s customer between them as a buffer. 

portraits and caricatures are made up of all these parts, parts that i will call shapes. but the shapes aren’t necessarily divided up in the way that most people divide faces up because we’re not dealing with the typical biological sense functions of features. We’re talking about the function of likeness which acts as kind of a key. And that’s the function, and that’s what the artist is sensitive to. But shapes are traditionally thought of as these linear figures. something akin to geometric shapes, a line that goes for a little trip and eventually ends up back at the point from where it started. Or something along those lines, pun intended. I suppose that old traditional concept of shape is tied in with writing and linear thinking. And it’s a matter of everyone being on the same page pun intended. but now there’re all kinds of icons out there now. and it’s all part of a visual language. and the color carries meaning and the texture carries meaning. Shape, as far as likeness is concerned is synonymous with “aspect.”