Review: Tom Richmond Workshop
Article Description. Should include author, brief description, issue number and page number(s).
 Tom Richmond's illustration for his 2017 Long Island City class. | |
| Author | Chris Silvestre |
|---|---|
| Genre | |
| Published | EF Issue 2018.4 |
Publication date | Fall 2018.4 |
| Media type |
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| Pages | 27- |
| Website |
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Article Transcript
Last year, I attended Tom Richmond’s caricature workshop in Long Island City, NYC and it changed my perception of the world of caricature and taught me some unexpected things along the way. I am an animator/cartoonist. My first job out of Cartoon College was caricaturing for Kaman’s at Six Flags Great Adventure. Since then I have been a graphic designer, cartoon animator, illustrator, software developer, web designer, digital production manager and I’ve been casually drawing caricatures at parties for about 20 years. I never made caricaturing at parties my full-time professional focus, but I always used caricature to spice up my animations and illustration with celebrity cameos and spoofs. I like taking drawing and art workshops at least once a year, airbrush painting, sculpting with clay, acrylic painting, etc. Like all of us reading this, I am a Mad Magazine fan and a cartoonist, so when Mad artist Tom Richmond advertised on Facebook for his caricature workshop in nearby New York City, I jumped all over it.
Building up to the event, Tom kept in contact via email, sending us students a supply list, 3-day class syllabus and hotel info. He asked for photos of us so he could create a caricature of the class. He asked for eye color, front, 3-4, and side view photos, and because it was a group photo; height. When I read his description of what type of photo references to send, I realized it was perfect for when I worked with my own clients. At the time, Tom also offered a $100 discount if we had an $80 membership to ISCA, an organization I had never heard of (Currently, the discount is no longer being offered.) Signing up to ISCA was a no brainer. I signed up and then boom, I get my first issue of Exaggerated Features, I join the Facebook groups, I see everyone’s artwork from all over the world and I joined a society full of awesome caricature artists from all over the planet! That’s when it dawned on me how many people make a full-time living from caricature. Best $20 I ever didn’t spend.
Even though I’m 90 minutes away, I booked myself a room so I could completely immerse myself during the 3-day workshop. I would draw in my room before the workshop to loosen up. Luckily, all hotel windows in NYC face brick walls, so no one is distracted while drawing. The hotel was nice, but the workshop itself was in a super tiny room in the basement, but that’s New York for ya.
Tom has a couple of decades of professional caricature experience and the students all know him from his career, but he made everyone feel very at ease with his relatable teaching style. The sessions were very structured and nicely paced and focused on universal caricature principles as well as studio techniques and live techniques. The caricature principles can be used in many different mediums such as animation and more polished acrylic renderings. The studio style he teaches is exactly as you see in Mad Magazine and in his book The Mad Art of Caricature. His live techniques really focus you on capturing and exaggerating the likeness quickly.
Tom connected a Cintiq MobileStudio Pro to a projector so he could draw while we all watched. People would draw at tables leaning on art boards with markers, pencils, charcoal sticks and even water color. We each received a full color photo book filled with head shots to practice during class. Each day we would start out with 10-minute warm-up sketches of people from the photo book. Then, Tom would teach us different techniques and we would do more drawing exercises. He would walk around and critique each student personally and I noticed he would speak to them at their level of expertise. He would talk to the old pro about hair texturing and talk to the rookies about planning drawings with confidence. He pointed out to me that my eyes are frequently very different sizes, which I always keep in mind now. I remember going back to my room the second day and reviewing some of my morning hotel room sketches. They looked terrible compared to my workshop drawings.
Many of us work alone in our studios, but in those 3 days I made friends with caricature artists of all different skill levels and from all over North America: Steve Nyman, the pro from North Jersey, I reconnected with Robert from NYC, who I worked with years ago in animation, Kelly the Canadian artist, and the Milwaukee Mauler, the pro wrestler turned artist. We drew all day long while we would shout out questions to Tom about techniques and his career in cartooning, most of which was Mad gold! He gave us tips on developing our careers and what to submit to which publications/organizations. We also learned a lot from each other. Steve the NJ pro and I spoke about marketing, and me and the Milwaukee Mauler hit the gym a few times. I read The Mad Art of Caricature before attending the class and it really helped me in my craft but Tom Richmond is the book in real life and he gives each lesson a completely different weight. For example, I read about the T-Shape theory but once we talked about it as a class in real life, it gave me a new appreciation for the T-Shape’s power. He showed us how to understand proportion exaggeration and how to render the face’s features to convey the person’s likeness in cartoon illustration.
He walked us through his then current project, a Mad spoof of Stranger Things. We saw his thought process as he tried to get his Winona Ryder caricature just right. We went through much of his work and he would describe the different challenges of layout and working with writers and editors. He demonstrated how, when and where to use different drawing tools. Tom showed us his traditional process by drawing for us live using a quill pen while we looked on. He showed how various line illustration techniques create a more pleasing rendering. This greatly improved my drawings in the months following the workshop. Tom showed us his Photoshop coloring techniques by coloring an inked drawing of a bodybuilder.
On the final morning, we all drew each other live. Tom has his own chain of caricature booths so he was excellent at explaining his live caricature process. We didn’t have enough room in our tiny NYC closet to draw each other, so we snuck into a banquet room next door. We had a timed 5 minutes to draw each other and everyone drew everyone, including Tom. I’m not saying I was nervous drawing Tom Richmond— actually, I guess I am saying that. Some of us had never drawn live before, but from what I heard from them it was a great first time.
After the final class, Tom reviewed my caricature portfolio and even reviewed my recently finished kid’s book Picky Nicky: The Nutrition Decision. I showed him specific layouts I was working on and he talked me through solutions. Priceless.
Tom went above and beyond and gave us some signed swag like the workshop poster featuring all of the attendees, a Batman poster print, a signed Mad Art of Caricature Book (I already had this book so I requested his Goodnight Batcave book that had just come out. Tom obliged!). The projector screen Tom used for the NYC event was too much to ship back home so he offered it to me! I couldn’t take it on the train so we left it there in that tiny basement hovel. Oh well.
Since this workshop experience, I started promoting my own caricature business Party Cartoon and I’m seeing more party revenue each month. I’m becoming a better artist and I’ve started caricaturing live on the iPad. I refined my techniques for caricature in animation and landed some work on The Woody Show. I really love being a part of the caricature community that I found after signing up for this class. As artists we are always learning, even the old pros like Tom Richmond. He recently told me his workshop has evolved since last year. If you are on the fence, no matter your skill level, I would highly recommend the workshops. Hopefully you get a bigger room than we got.
Chris Silvestre is an animator and cartoonist and can be seen at www.silvestreart.com and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/silvestre.art
Party Cartoon is on the web at www.partycartoon.com and on Instagram www.instagram.com/partycartoon www.pickynickybook.com
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