Here’s some more recent live drawings from gigs. I’m really studying Hank Ketcham (Dennis the Menace) lately, adding him to my usual studies of Hirschfeld and the like. Really studying postures, and clothing folds, etc.

A few weeks ago, I got an email from a really nice lady. Seems she and her kids had been drawn a few weeks ago at a gig at Disney, but her husband didn’t sit for his caricature and later decided he wished he had. I was the only artist at the event (like usual). So, the next day, they went to MGM and got him drawn at the retail stands. They hated it!

Well, when they got back home, they somehow tracked me down. They’ve now commissioned me to do a caricature of the husband/Dad. At first I thought Disney had just given her my business email (www.caricatureconnection.com). Then I realized she had written me at my PERSONAL email. Curious, I asked her how she’d found me. Seems she’d read my signature on the pics I’d done for her and the kids, and GOOGLED my name. She’d shot photos of me drawing the kids, so that also helped her, since I seem to pop up on GOOGLE an annoying amount of times. What’s really amazing here is that I usually have REALLY crappy handwriting. Just ask my eight year old, who’s always buggin me about it. But, I guess I’ve learned my lesson. I never would’ve gotten this job if she hadn’t been able to read my signature.
Thank God this night I wrote legibly. Good, clear handwriting can be a real sales tool in and of it’s own. Particularly when you have a weird name like mine.

Here’s the photos she sent of that gig:

Months ago, me and my honey went to one of these charity benefit dinners we try to go to a couple of times per year, and we bid on a few things in the silent auction. Barbie begged me to let her bid on the “Shark Dive” package from Sea World, knowing that I would be reluctant to go with her, since I’m a big wuss. She assured me “We probably won’t win, and besides, it’s for charity…”.

Yeah, well, we WON.

Figures.

Anyway, yesterday was the day. I tried not to think about it (remember, I’m a wuss), and just accepted my fate. I’m glad I did. We had an amazing time. Toured through the park, Barbie rode The Kraken (again… Me=Wuss), and even saw a couple of caricaturist friends (hi, Maria!).

The Shark Dive, by the way, was WAY cool, but the time with “my girl” was WAY cooler. Thirteen and a half years, and going stronger than ever. God is good.

Man, I know the photos of these bite, coming from my digital cam, but I adjusted the levels as much as I possibly could. Plus, added those nifty color backgrounds on a few, to try and help make up for the fuzziness.

Hope ya see something ya like…

I’ve been working a lot of gigs lately, so here’s some pics from them that I liked. Sorry about the weird colors…my light on my easel casts a yellow tint to everything, and then I have to try to color correct it all in photoshop when I download from the camera. I don’t draw on blue or gray paper or anything…but I DO shade in with gray markers. Interesting, as I post these, I notice they’re in three distinctly different styles, yet were all done the same week. The guy sitting, and the coffee guy were from the same gig, even. I tend to do that…switching styles rapidly, depending on the face. It’s something my buddy, Joe Bluhm, and I used to do when we worked gigs together back in the good old days..whatever style we thought we could best “capture” the person in, that’s the style we used. Really kept us on our toes, so we didn’t fall into “generics”….

Yeah, yeah, I know most of the US would LOVE to have 51 degrees and sunshine in the afternoon right now, but to us Floridians, it’s FREAKIN’ COLD!!!! So, in honor of that, I went and found this piece I did for a client back in December. Wanted to post it then, but was too slammed at the time (that’s also why there were few if any updates here for a few months!). Anyway, here’s “Old MAn Winter”…..

Once upon a time, my wife and I, and good buddy Ted Tucker, self published a comic book named “Lunar Donut”. We learned a lot on that book, and were doing pretty well with it, getting fairly well known in the small press comics industry. As “known” as you could back then, in that industry, anyway. Life and the caricature business got too busy to continue publishing it, though. My how to draw Caricatures book is published through the Lunar Donut Press imprint so it’s not really dead, after all, I guess. We might even resurrect the comics someday again, you never know.

Anyway, while Barbie and I were going through photo albums last night, we found this old publicity shot for Lunar Donut, that we used to run in the inside cover of the issues. This was about eleven years ago, to my reckoning. We thought you all might want to see it:

Another one from a recent live event. This guy was a lot of fun to draw and talk with. He got drawn by all three artists at the event, I believe. We call that being a “collector”.

I like drawing stripes and patterns. Now, I personally, don’t wear HORIZONTAL stripes…..

Well, we all knew it was going to happen. Just HOW SOON we didn’t know! The other night at my 40th birthday get together, we mentioned to my eight year old daughter Brady how, since there were no other kids, she coudl set up and draw caricatures if she wanted…even put out a tip jar! Her eyes got big as saucers, and she ran over to the easel we had set up. She didnt’ stop for hours! Here’s a shot of her at work.

Oh yeah…the tips? She made $70!!!!

Yeah, I changed the name of my blog. So?

I figured I’d try this one out for awhile….

That’s an artist for ya, always changin’ stuff, never satisfied…