Here’s a shot from a biglive gig I did yesterday morning. All of the artists work for my wife and I at our retail locations. A great group of talented folks.
Gigs like this are a lot of fun. It was perhaps our biggest ever…20 artists! I really enjoyed the meal at the Golden Corral buffet afterwards, as well. About 13 of us went to that. We talked, ate, and sketched.
Anyway, it was like a mini caricature convention or something. Good times, good times.
Well, this one takes the cake. I’ve had guests tell me they saw my caricatures on display on other artists’ stands, I’ve seen photos of my oldest daughter, from my how to draw caricatures book, on other artists’ displays, and good buddy Tom Richmond even saw a pic OF me by the legendary Belgian caricaturist Jan Opdebeeck on a display up in NYC. Yeah, you read that right…it was MY face on the display.
Then there was the time that a fellow NCN (National Caricaturists Network) member copied all of the “keywords” on my homepage and put them on his homepage (even right down to my company name, and the name of my wife and daughter).
BUT, awhile back I got an email from someone in Russia, who informed me of perhaps the weirdest ripoff of my stuff yet. Look at this site:
Then, go to my company site:
See any similarities? Yep, ripped off the ENTIRE look of my site. The colors, the buttons, up till recently, he even had the cartoon version of my wife on the “contact us” link. All the art elsewhere is his (please don’t think it’s mine!), at least.
But isn’t that just wierd? I did send him and the “designers” of his site an email asking them to come up with an original idea of their own, not just rip off mine, but alas, I never got a reply. They did recently take down the cartoon I did of my wife for the “contact us” button (and whatever that translates to in Russian), though.
Well, our annual trip to our timeshare in Cocoa Beach is now over. Back home, settling into the daily grind again. Which, when you draw for a living, ain’t too bad. Matter of fact, since this was the first year we had two kids (baby Kaley is ten months old), Barbie and I are in dire need of a vacation now, after our so called vacation. Cocoa is only an hour away, so we come home in the middle of the week every year to catch up on biz, and then go back down for the rest of the week.
So, really, it ain’t much in the way of a vacation. But, it does allow us to recharge our batteries a little bit. Usually. This year there was lots of artist “emergencies” at our retail stands, and, of course, dealing with the aforementioned baby factor.
Anyway, I know some artists who are adamant about NOT drawing when they travel. They figure they do it all the time, so they want to take a vacation from that as well. I can understand that, but I personally feel that a “vacation” is the only time when I can draw what I want to draw. I spend everyday drawing what other people want me to draw, so when I’m traveling I draw ONLY what I want. I didn’t get much drawn this year, but I did do a few. Here’s one. I saw a kid like this on the beach, and then my friend Steve Silver’s trick of “frankenstein-ing” him with some other people I saw. The shorts came from someone, the boogieboard is actually mine, etc., etc. So, it’s kind of “lifedrawing”, kind of not. I liked how it turned out for a quickie.
It’s finally here…the new design of my webpage. I needed a place I could send people to see my personal work, away from Caricature Connection, the type of character design and illustration stuff I’ve been doing for clients and magazines for the past two years or so, and the kind I want to do more and more of. Thomas Florimonte, a great friend of mine and one of the founders of www.ka-blam.com , is the amazing webdesigner who’s services I hired to do all of this over the past few months. He, and the site, far exceeded my expectations. Browse around!
This weekend is the National Cartoonists Society annual bash. This year it’s at the Ritz Carlton here in Orlando. The NCS is an elite society of cartoonists, membership by invitation only, (I feel really blessed to be in it), and our bashes are quite the swanky affair. Not exactly like the Polynesian shirts and flip flops attire of the NCN, which I am more familiar with. This is Tuxes and gowns only. This year I broke down and bought a tux..not sure how often I’ll get to wear it, so we’ll have to see how good an investment it turns out to be. Anyway…. here I am in my monkeysuit, with my always gorgeous wife, Barbie. The crazy guy between us is Sam Viviano, art director of MAD magazine. We’ve had a lot of fun this weekend hanging out with him and our good friends the Richmonds, the Steckleys, and the Silvers. We’ve also met a lot of other great cartoonists whose strips I’ve always admired, and some I’ve never heard of before, that I’m now fans of.
The second pic here is of me and Steve Silver at the opening party Friday night (thanks to Tom Richmond for the photo). No, we didn’t coordinate our oufits, black shirt and khakis, ahead of time. Demented minds think alike, I guess…
My buddy Tom Richmond was up for a couple of Reuben awards (the NCS’ version of the Oscars), and won one of them, for Advertising Illustration. The third pic’s of me and Ed Steckley with Tom after his win. Ed and I figured it was the closest we’d be to a Reuben for awhile….
Congrats, Tom! You deserve it , man!
More character design work. They wanted a drunken stork, and they wanting him to be reclining back a bit, so he could be leaning on something. Man, I love doing this kind of stuff!
The really interesting thing here is that I did a lot of the research, mental work, and sketching on this guy probably two years ago, for another client. How so? Well, that client wanted me to update a badly drawn character he had, named “Storko”, for a line of baby’s clothes, I believe. Yeah, I know, real creative name. Unfortunately, I underquoted the job a bit, because at the time I was wanting more character design work, and it seemed like a quick, easy one to do.
Long story short, the guy turned out to be rude, hard to work with, and kept wanting knitpicky revisions on the sketches. He landed up trying to “renegotiate” on the fee we’d already agreed to (which was, again, lower than it should’ve been). I always get a credit card upfront, but since we were only in the sketch stage, I didn’t even charge him. Frankly, I didn’t care. I was just ready to be done with him! I’ve never done this before and wouldn’t again. I’d charge his card regardless.
Fast forward to now, (when I do much more of this character design stuff) and THIS job comes in. I quickly resurrected my “Storko” sketches and my reference photos from google, and took off. This guy came out perfect the first time I drew him. The client loved him, paid well, and everyone’s happy.
The moral? Keep those old sketches, people! You never know when you’ll get to use them. Sometimes old jobs aren’t really dead- they can come back to life in another form!
The other moral? Don’t work for anyone who wants you to redesign their “Storko” character.
Yep, still slammed around here. Thought I’d share the latest piece for a client. This is for a landscaping company. They’re gonna put it on their trucks, shirts, etc., etc. Was a lot of fun to do. Particularly like the crazy monkey on the far right of the piece.
I love drawing monkeys.
Here’s another new client. Has a biz selling yellowpage ads to people. Wanted his head on a phonebook.
Here’s some recent live work again. I have done quite a few tradeshows lately. Clients have been great (two of them tipped me really good), people have loved the drawings. When I have an empty chair for a few moments, though, I have been sketching people at a distance, or at other booths, unbeknowst to them. Then, I’ll go over and give them their pic that they haven’t even known they were posing for! I call them “Hit and runs”. It’s a lot of fun for them and me. Plus, the client loves it! I figure I’m being paid to draw, I tell them, so that’s what I’m going to do … no matter what!
“Hit and runs”, though, are pretty difficult. For one thing, you have to be fast. People are NOT posing! Also, you get interesting views, gestures, and expressions. As an artist, you get out of your “comfort zone” really quickly doing this. You have to draw people in profile, facing the “wrong” way, in motion, in complicated poses, etc, etc. They really force you to build up your visual library. Here’s a few “Hit and Runs” from the past few days…
This is for a great new client of mine. She has a company that empowers women to purchase their own cars. She wanted something cute, sexy, with a sassy look. I drew her completely on the Wacom (the car was still on paper and scanned in, though). Yep, starting to get more comfortable with that. I hope to soon be paperless all the time!
Keelan Parham.com 