Caricature Express

Then I came home and started watching The Hulk.

This is a picture of a guy who comes into Bruce Banner’s college lab
and threatens him with a ‘hostile take-over’.

To Hire this Artist:
(516) 579-4706
optidust@gmail.com

I was on a long line in the store.
Had no paper with me.
Had to draw with a marker on little snips of paper:

And here - another frustration.
Great Caricature - everybody thrilled.
But my best photo is too fuzzy:

Ahhh, might as well relax.
Fuzzy is soft, lovely, dreamy.

“Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream ~~
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream”

To Hire this Artist:
(516) 579-4706
optidust@gmail.com

I’ve been trying to photograph all my Caricatures at some of my recent events.
But it’s so frustrating that I still can’t see most of them. Sometimes because
of lighting, but usually because I don’t keep the camera still. And because
there’s no Zoom on my camera.

This batch for instance. They were taken at a High School Prom. I literally
counted 55 Caricatures from the photos that I remembered to take
during the 4-hour event. But most of the photographs are useless.
Foggy things. Flashy lights. That sort of stuff.

I can’t take more time to photograph more carefully because that would
interfere with my drawing-zone. So I just point the camera in the general
direction, and shoot.

I’ll show you what I mean by including 2 of the least-foggy unusable photos
near the end of this post and
2 of the wild unusable photos that I like to look at anyway:

To Hire this Artist:
(516) 579-4706
optidust@gmail.com

This picture cracked me up.
Of course you can’t see it in the photo,
but while the girl was being drawn,
she kept pulling down her upper lip
(like a cartoon stereotype of a traditional ‘librarian’).
It caused her nose to get long and oval.
And her picture ended up looking like this -
so different from the face she’d see in the mirror.
So different from the face she thought was always there.

The Caricature came out so funny because I have to
keep moving at an event. I don’t really Know the people
who sit in front of me. I have to draw whatever happens
in the moment that I’m drawing each part. If the nose
is pulled long, it gets drawn long.

It amused me because I know that
this is just as much the likeness of this lovely girl
as the smiling pose in the photo is the likeness of this girl.
People might want to close their eyes
and think they’re only seeing the face that’s ’shown’ to the
world. But it’s all really there. Everything we do
is really us.

Reminds me of a story I had been told many years ago.
It described a young man named Leroy. Apparently,
Leroy had held up a liquor store at night. Even though
he was so thoughtful during the daytime. He had showered
and washed the dishes. Ran an errand for a sick friend.
Sent charity to a worthwhile organization. Yet the person
in the liquor store who faced the gun - that person knew
that Leroy was a criminal. And the person who owned the
liquor store - that person knew that Leroy was a thief.
Because Leroy was a criminal. Leroy was a thief.

In other words, just because a person does some things
that are good, it doesn’t mean she’s not a thief if she
also steals. And if a person looks calmly into the mirror
while she’s dressing, it doesn’t mean that she looks
the same way when she gets fidgety.

But it’s all okay. I like to think that I Face-Reality.
That I draw Face-Reality. That I can accept that
we all (certainly myself included) look funny.
Even when we think we’re looking glamorous.
Ever see a skull? What we all have inside?
Do we not see the shape of a table under a tablecloth?
Do we not see the skull under our muscles and makeup?

To Hire this Artist:
(516) 579-4706
optidust@gmail.com