A tiny meeting point between caricature and cartooning

Hirschfeld of course
And Ronald Searle

  I just thought the similarity of expression was interesting for some reason. It's not uncanny, but it's interesting to me— seeing a little overlap between two artists at the top of their respective fields.

It's All About March/Here's Some Decent Folks

  Welp, I still don't have Photoshop, but I did figure out how to adjust photos in iphoto, so I guess I got no excuses. I'm gonna start posting more frequently now, scouts honor. All through the month of March, I plan on posting a cool painting experiment thing I'm excited about, so there you go. 

  Here's a park sketch. These were ideal customers. Say what you will about prejudging people, but can't you just tell some people are gonna be decent folks just by lookin at um? Can't you?!

...What with the economy and all...

  Um, I'm confused. Why does the media keep hyping up the recession, because the more they make people nervous the worse it is for the economy. My goodness it's not funny. It's really bad. It's like a self fulfilling prophecy. Somebody needs to say, everybody keep spending and work extra hard, America. The only thing to fear is fear itself. That's absolutely true. When somebody warns somebody about something, the point isn't to be right and say "I told you so." The point is to prevent the thing from occurring, and that ain't the way it works when it comes to forecasting the economy. You tell everybody, "be careful. the economy's gonna go downhill," and what's gonna happen? I'm not sure how the media can benefit from a recession, but maybe everybody will be at home watching tv instead of working, but then advertisers might not pay as much cuz the demographics don't got the same kind of cash as before, so I don't know. I guess the answer for us little people is to stay optimistic and not talk the economy down any further and work twice as hard. Come on America! We're tough.

Here. I just invented a new cartoon character for the twenty first century. I think I'm gonna call him Bugs Bunny. Whataya think?

No More Free Internet. Fooey!

  Apologies to my faithful and occasional visitors. I don't have Internet anymore, so right now I'm sending this as I sit typing in a coffee shop. Our oh so generous neighbor has moved so if we want an Internet connection now we have to pay for it, and I don't wanna. I'll try to keep updating lots, but another hitch has interrupted my endeavour and that is Photoshop says my time is up for my trial period. I'll see what I can do about that. 

 

  Until then yall are gonna have to go back to reading books and watching television.

Another Ben

  I think I like the first one I did of him better, but you can decide for yourself. It's here.

Happy Birthday, Mama!

  cleaned up and finished and the color wasn't toned down. it's just the difference in the photo.

David Hernandez

  Fellow disgruntled caricature artist, Dave Hernandez. He's known far and wide for his use of numerous chairs and his sale of numerous cylinders.

Tea N More

  This is a place I go to sometimes called Tea N More. Actually it's always called Tea N More, come to think of it. That was a little joke, but Tea N More's no joke. It's a spot where the kids come to socialize and play cards or board games.

  Tea N More has lots of fun and tasty beverages. My favorite is the milk tea -- and when I say "fun," I mean they can put boba in anything you get. This is basically jumbo size tapioca balls. Sounds weird, but it's not. It's fun, like I said already. You drink a boba drink with a big fat straw so that the boba can slide through with the greatest of ease.

  There're lots of tea shops out here in California like this. I think its a Korean thing. Oh yeah. They also have food at Tea N More. That's the "More" part. I'm not big on the food. I had it a couple times and I definitely prefer Chinese, but maybe this is better for you. I don't know.  

  This here is my good buddy, Watana. He teaches at the Art Institute and comes to Tea and More to draw too, sometimes. He's very good, and you all ought to have a look at his blog if you haven't yet. That's about all I got to say for now. Y'all have a good day, and drive safe.

Some British Fella

Book book book

  Hello internet friends. I grew a beard, and it was a book! Just kidding, but I did make a book. This is the second printing of "You Don't Want Me. I'm Trouble." It's new and improved with more cartoons and a sturdy binding. The best part of all is that you don't have to send me money in the mail or promise to pay me later like the old fashioned way. Just click on some buttons, and do the paypal thing, and it comes right to ya. So, unless you can convince your grand dad to grow it out of his pores, hop on over to Launch Syndicate and buy my book. It's really good. But wait, that's not all! For a limited time, just say, Launch Syndicate makes Art Squared look like the lunch lady's medicated skin pad, and we'll throw in a free bookmark!

Victory!

  If there is anyone out there who still doubts that San Diego Beastheads jack faces and beast it, who still wonders if the dream of the founding father is alive in our time, who still questions the skill of the Sea World caricature staff, tonight is your answer.

  It's an answer told by Brian Oakes taking the Bronze Nosey, by Andy winning Outstanding Cartoon Style and Retail and somethin' else, by Nate Kapnicky getting the Best Exaggerated Style award with the most twisted, craziest stuff the NCN has ever seen, but most importantly by Sea World guests laughing, many for the first time in their lives, because they got a caricature, believing that this artist must be different, and his keen observation and imagination could be that difference.

  It is an answer spoken by fat and thin, tall and short, young and old, Japanese, British, Mexican, Irish, cute and nasty-lookin. Artists who sent a message to the NCN board members that we have never been just a bunch of hacks who wanted to work in California or a collection of wannabe animators and wannabe illustrators.

  We are, and always will be, the United Beastheads of San Diego, of America!

Check Out Sebastian Kruger's Blog

  I'm gonna have to tell everybody to go check out Kruger's blog because he's doing a series of portraits of blues musicians and it's pretty astonishing.

Barack Obama!

Camo Cap

  I'm real happy with the way I made her body look, but her face feels a little generic. I really wish I could have gotten those wild front teeth in the drawing, but I didn't see them till it was too late. She wanted to be dancing. Usually it's little girls who ask for that and I just draw um freakin out and throw a boom box and some music notes in there, but if they're a little older you get to draw them in a pulsating dance club, throw in some silhouettes which are fun, cuz each little one happens fast and it could turn out good or bad or in between. Most of the silhouettes in this one turned out bad, but I kind of like the one on our far left, just cuz the legs though.  

One of them "Guess Who"s

Celebrity Actor

Run Cycle

  This is dumb, but I like how his head nods and the voice syncs up pretty good in a couple spots.

More Coffee Shop What-have-you

This One Made Me a Little Nervous

  I made her ugly and stuff, and I thought they were gonna hate it, but they didn't! My least favorite part of the drawing is her feet.

  Daniel Craig was on the tonight show and I did a quick little sketch of him using tracing paper.

Commission

  I got an email from an artist named Dylan. He commissioned me to do a drawing of him. He just wanted black and white. Here it is.

Here's a photo of him

  Here's a color one I just had to do for my own enjoyment. I added the color to the drawing that occurred before the final take.

  My commission prices are as follows incase anybody wonders. $25 per face black and white. $50 per face color. Here's the other two commissions I've done for old time sakes. 

Jeff and Ariel

Chris Chua and Erica 

Video

Learning to Walk

  Flip-books are fun. I've been fiddling about with animation and found that making somebody walk is much more difficult than it looks. Finally, I got me a little post-it pad and decided to focus on that one problem alone. Nate said I needed to add an expression on the ball so I went through and did that too, as an afterthought.

A Fun Little Game Called Police Sketch Artist

  I use to play this with my brother and sisters sometimes. What you do is sit in some kind of circle, and you go around the room. The first person describes the first feature. It can be any feature they choose. Maybe they'll say long, thin, dreamy eyes. Then everybody will draw that feature however they interpret it. Then it's the next person's turn to describe a feature. You go around the circle thusly, until someone decides that the character is complete. Then, everybody shows everybody their drawings. You can't let anyone see it till the end.

  I played this game with Sam Gorrie at a coffee shop when she was in town. Here are the two people I invented. The first turned out to be a weird looking, whistling, break dancing girl. The second, a smelly, star-struck girl. I included the bottom portion of the first sketchbook page because it's a drawing of Patrick that turned out fairly well, and also there's some type doodling. 

Ok Here's One I'm Really Happy With

  I was drawin by Nate, Andy, and Katie on this particular day, and there was this huge group of people really enjoying a crazy Nate drawing. A couple out of the group decided they were ready to get drawn, and they had awesome faces, and they didn't tell me how to draw. So everything was set up just perfect for me, and I feel like I lived up to the situation. The likeness are good. The Animals are wacky. The girl's body isn't too dolled up. And I get bonus points for selling a sketch in which a female underbite is evident. Hip hip hooray!

  These were a couple of really good-natured gentlemen. The sketch turned out pretty fun, but a little left of center and the shaping's a little unintentionally wonky.

JOKES TO TELL YOUR BEST FRIENDS FOREVER

Q:  What's the best thing to wear on your feet when you're skydiving?

A:  A Pairashoes.

Q:  Why did the gardner wear red suspenders?

A:  To keep his plants up.

Are My Paragraphs all Jumbled Lookin?

I just received word from, my friend, Kevin Jackson that ever since I enlarged the type on my blog it's been all jumbled. I need to know if anybody else is seeing this and what I can do about it--aside from shrinking all the type back to fortune cookie size. Thanks, world.

Farewell to Jared

  Jared Lipscomb is no longer with us. He's workin for Fed-Ex, and there's a rumor circulating that he got a job up in LA. But I know what really happened. The government finally took him down for makin Square Badgez. To see other sketches I did of this buffalo head, you may click 

here  

here or

here for a photo

Derivative

I think there's like three ways to draw caricatures. One extreme is not allowing yourself to see any drawing done of a person and then, observing the guy or gal, draw the best caricature you can. This is the way it goes for in-park caricatures usually, just cuz these are usually complete strangers coming up to us. I'm not one of those guys who doesn't want to see the caricatures done of somebody to keep it "pure" or whatever. I don't mind seeing other drawings even really good ones, because I know that I can come up with something original and interesting in a different way and hopefully make some good discoveries.

Which is the second way. Being educated about what things have been done with a person's face and going from there. I like this way. I'm pretty sure this is how a lot of editorial illustrators work. Maybe not all of um, but certainly political cartoonists. You can't avoid seeing a caricature of George Bush no matter how shut off you may be.

The third way is kind of lame. It's how I drew this Nate, and that's copy all the decisions Joe Bluhm made and try to get a sweet likeness without actually looking at Nate. I messed up on the eyelids a little bit, but it turned out alright and was a good warm up for the day. If you wanna see other sketches of Nate I did in the past and the future, you may click

here

here

here

here

here
here
here

here

or here

This One Was Pretty Ambitious

  I managed to leave out a woman's eyes and still sell a frame. It might have been because they could tell I was trying really hard and taking too long. I wish I would have drawn his mouth a bit lower and made his head a little more narrow on top. 

Good Monday Working With Andy

  This is a real nice girl who came by with her friend. I also drew them together, playing poker. In this drawing I'm particularly happy with the atmosphere and her body. I kind of like her hands, but that one that's in the air didn't turn out quite like I wanted. It's spose to look like shes about to poink a key. It might be confusing though.