TheChairman at 06:27, 5 August 2020

2020-08-05T06:27:41Z

TheChairman: Created page with "==Article Transcript== Without a doubt, there are a great number of ways the members of ISCA have become active caricaturists. Each individual has had unique experiences and h..."

2020-08-05T06:25:28Z

Created page with "==Article Transcript== Without a doubt, there are a great number of ways the members of ISCA have become active caricaturists. Each individual has had unique experiences and h..."

New page

==Article Transcript==
Without a doubt, there are a great number
of ways the members of ISCA have
become active caricaturists. Each individual
has had unique experiences and has been
given opportunities that may be somewhat similar
to those of others in the organization. When I look
back at the events that brought me into this business,
first I see smiling housewives standing in the
backyards of their homes while delicious odors
fill the air. These ladies are enjoying the sight of
two small boys, about 8 years of age, pulling a toy
wagon up the driveway toward their kitchen doors.
On the wagon they have placed a cardboard box
and a folder in which they have inserted a pack
of pages carefully detached from a coloring book
and decorated with wax crayons, colored pencils,
and watercolor pens. Some of the women are willing
to make a trade—two homemade cookies for
three colorful papers. Others tell the boys to be on
their way, but the “sales” they achieve keep them
going door-to-door, excitedly putting cookies of
various flavors: peanut butter, coconut, chocolate
chip and some popular specialties — like cookies
with bright red maraschino cherries — into the box
on their wagon.

Add a couple years to the lifetimes of these
enterprising schoolboys. Now I see a smiling
sixth-grade teacher. She teaches Social Studies,
which in the past had been known as History and
Geography, with a dash of Civics tossed into the
mix. She hands the older boy a reference book;
he pages through it until he reaches the chapter
dealing with the American Civil War. He selects
a photograph of Abraham Lincoln seated on an
impressive White House chair. For the next two
weeks, he stays after school every day to work
on a drawing that fills a 3-foot-by-3-foot chalkboard
panel located in the rear of the sixth-grade
classroom. The Social Studies teacher makes a
point of asking fellow instructors to take a look at
the chalk drawing. Their complimentary remarks
encourage the young artist to take on more and
bigger projects.

An older sister completes her high school
requirements at the age of 16 and heads for
Chicago, where she enrolls in a teachers college.
Mom likes to keep in touch with her daughter,
and suggests that some cartoons be drawn and
put in the mail. Within a week or so, the family
receives a letter from Chicago. The girls in the
dorm are quite impressed with the comical drawing,
and several request drawings they can place
on the walls of their rooms. The budding artist
creates more cartoons and honors every request
from his sister’s fellow students. His drawing
skills continue to improve.

The years roll on. High school activities, football
and basketball games, dances, dating, fill the
young artist’s schedule. The faculty adviser for
the yearbook appoints him to the position of
Official Yearbook Cartoonist. Several fellows join
his committee, and they all have a good time
creating single-panel gag cartoons that have high
school themes. Our hero can’t resist the urge
to place images of classmates and members of
the high school faculty and administration in the
cartoons. A new word is added to his vocabulary:
CARICATURE.

And so it was that the experiences and influences
that led me along the way to becoming
a caricature artist started very early in my life.
Those housewives who got such a kick out of our
coloring book pages being “sold” for home-made
cookies had no idea that they were putting my
pal Bob and me on paths heading for a satisfying
and fully enjoyable business. Now it is my
turn to be the instigator of events and situations
that will open opportunities for some other future
caricaturist.

About 10 years ago, Shirley, the grandmother
of my friend Justin and a fellow member of our
church, suggested that we go out to the edge
of town to take a look at a full-size highway
billboard that carried a large reproduction of an
anti-smoking message that Justin had created.
He was the winner of a poster contest conducted
by STATS, a nonprofit organization sponsored
by Mercy General Hospital and its services
committee. Justin was 13 years old and had
just finished eighth grade at Orchard View High
School. A woman representing the STATS organization
had visited his classroom earlier in the
year, calling on the students to enter the contest.
Designs were evaluated by panels of middle
school students and Community Foundation
staff. We did as Shirley recommended, and were
impressed with Justin’s artwork. A few weeks
later, Shirley and her husband brought Justin
and his mother, Maureen, to our home for a visit.
Justin and I got acquainted and spent some time
sketching in my basement studio and looking at
drawings I had done throughout the years at art
fairs and other events.

My next contact with Justin took place after he
had a summer job drawing caricatures at the
amusement park north of Muskegon, a resort
called “Michigan’s Adventure” operated by the
company that runs Cedar Point in Ohio. Although
he was just a sophomore in high school, he had
been hired to join a team of experienced artists,
drawing caricatures regularly at the park. Generally, young artists were given some training
by the park’s personnel, but Justin was hired
at the last minute when the park was opening
for the season and so was put to work immediately
without prior orientation. In the fall of
that year, Justin and his grandparents came
to our home again. It was great fun to hear
Justin telling of his adventures at Michigan’s
Adventure. I asked him to demonstrate the
method he used, and I videotaped his step-bystep
way of creating black-and-white pen-andink
caricatures and recorded his comments
on a VHS cassette.

Early last year, Justin came to my rescue
when I found myself unable to keep a drawing
commitment. I had agreed to do four pen-andink
“heads only” caricatures. The client had
provided good, sharp photos of four young
men who were to be participants in a wedding
ceremony. The date when these drawings
had to be ready was fast approaching. I completed
one of the four faces, but before I could
get a second drawing under way, my plans
were interrupted by an emergency surgery
for a hernia, making the project impossible for
me to handle. Believe it or not, I had drawn
a 32"x40" pastel chalk poster of the surgeon
who was doing the repair, his wife and two
daughters, more than twenty-five years
before, when this doctor was welcomed to
Muskegon by his associates. I’m glad I had
this operation after all those years, because
by now the doctor surely had enough experience
that I could feel confident that he would
do the job right, and he could use up-to-date
techniques. He did not sew me back together,
nor use staples; he closed me up using glue!
My wife contacted Justin, and he went to
work on the three remaining drawings. He
finished the project in a timely fashion, and
when he received the payment for the work,
he handed me one-fourth of the fee. I should
have insisted that he keep that portion of the
money, too, as a reward for taking over so
readily, but, “Ve gets too soon old and too
late schmart.”

Shirley and John are very proud of their
grandson’s achievements. They told me that
Justin was planning to attend college to study
art. He first went to Muskegon Community
College, where he took classes in art history,
painting and drawing. He then transferred
to Kendall College of Art and Design in
Grand Rapids, where he is working toward a
bachelor’s degree in illustration. After taking
time off working at a video rental store to build
up his funds, he is ready to return to Kendall
to continue his education.

Justin has been visiting with me quite
regularly, and, with the cooperation of ISCA
officials, I’ve given him a number of copies
of back issues of our EF magazine. We’ve
sat down together to view DVDs and VHS
tapes showing activities at NCN and ISCA
conventions, and caricature artists at work in
locations such as Busch Gardens in Florida
using videotapes supplied by fellow ISCA
member Jorge Lassus. I gave him a good
supply of pastel chalks and a stack of drawing
paper, my “Trojan Horse” drawing bench, and
my “art on the go” fold-up easel, similar to
the item described in the summer 2011 EF
article written by Sean Gardner (pages 10-15).
These supplies, tools and pieces of equipment
have been very useful to me, but I can
no longer handle them. I’m very pleased that
I can put them into the capable hands of my
friend Justin.

We caricaturists are a very special bunch of
people. We gladly share friendly relations with
each other, demonstrate our techniques and
help each other improve our skills, and enjoy
the creativity that goes into our work. We
simply cannot keep these positive qualities
to ourselves, as though they were the private
property of individual artists. I urge the members
of ISCA to seek ways to build a continually
improving trade association, and be sure
to provide encouragement to young artists
who will join us in the joys of caricaturing.

''NOTE: My pal, Bob, lived just a few houses down the street from my parents’ home. His folks went all out to encourage not only their son but me as well to create art. His mom did not mind cleaning up after us when we got a little wild with our finger painting projects and spattered her kitchen with paint. Bob’s parents decorated the walls of their house with Bob’s artwork. When we were in our teens, they paid the costly tuition price so Bob could attend art school at the Albright- Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y. After his military service in Vietnam, Bob settled in Texas where he painted large canvases depicting the beauty of the American Southwest.''

← Older revision		Revision as of 06:27, 5 August 2020
Line 212:		Line 212:

	''NOTE: My pal, Bob, lived just a few houses down the street from my parents’ home. His folks went all out to encourage not only their son but me as well to create art. His mom did not mind cleaning up after us when we got a little wild with our finger painting projects and spattered her kitchen with paint. Bob’s parents decorated the walls of their house with Bob’s artwork. When we were in our teens, they paid the costly tuition price so Bob could attend art school at the Albright- Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y. After his military service in Vietnam, Bob settled in Texas where he painted large canvases depicting the beauty of the American Southwest.''		''NOTE: My pal, Bob, lived just a few houses down the street from my parents’ home. His folks went all out to encourage not only their son but me as well to create art. His mom did not mind cleaning up after us when we got a little wild with our finger painting projects and spattered her kitchen with paint. Bob’s parents decorated the walls of their house with Bob’s artwork. When we were in our teens, they paid the costly tuition price so Bob could attend art school at the Albright- Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y. After his military service in Vietnam, Bob settled in Texas where he painted large canvases depicting the beauty of the American Southwest.''
		+
		+	{{2013.3Navbox}}

Moving on... Getting into the Business - Revision history

TheChairman at 06:27, 5 August 2020

TheChairman: Created page with "==Article Transcript== Without a doubt, there are a great number of ways the members of ISCA have become active caricaturists. Each individual has had unique experiences and h..."