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I never had much use for this low brow art form … partially because it is hard to do and puts your work up to the scrutiny of everyone who looks at it. “that doesn’t look like him!” “I look like that?” “my nose isn’t that big” etc…
but I inherited this task from Fedi the previous staff illustrator. Part of being creative is allowing yourself the space to fail. This is vital to the creative process. When ever you are doing something new you can’t predict if you will get it right the first time, so you need a space to fail. So if you do fail you can try again, and again until you do it right.
Sudsy Malones was a bar/laundrymat in clifton a suburb of ohio. Basically they would book anyone. If you showed up on any given night you and your buddys could play there. Every band started there. We would get up there, to play on a tuesday night for a few drunks and people doing laundry and knock over cymbols, fall over the drum set, break strings, while trying to play our songs we just wrote. I remember playing the opening chords to a song I wrote then forgeting the first line and just staring out at the few people with blank in my head …
but eventually you learn from your mistakes and build up your skills, better then you ever could in a practice space. It was a reality check, but not a complete death if you failed. This space is hard to find at times. Mostly you have to create it in your head.
This is where I was when I started the caricature deal. I had never done one before, but can draw so I just needed to apply my skills to this. I take longer then the people who do this everyday at kings island, but I also ad color and have more specific props … anyway
sometimes you need a little positive re-enforcement. That is why I like fun art vs. adventure art. Something goofy or colorful can help my mood lean towards the better than an angry dwarf battling a dragon. Right now a movement is in full swing. I guess it has been around awhile since the 60′s with Creepy and other horror magazines. The Dwarf aspect though seemed to really take hold in the 1970′s. Dungens and Dragons was one of the first role playing games I can remember. Led Zepplin is the sound track of fairies and middle earth. I grew up being exposed to this type of stuff, but could never really understand why people got into it…. escape ism?
real life is not really that bad to me, I just want to be happy more often, so non traditional clowns and comedy is always welcome. It is hard to quantify though. Comedy is based on timing, so a movie by Charlie Chaplin in the 1920′s was probably hilarious to people of that time, today it is hard to laugh out loud to one of his movies. I find movies I thought were hilarious at the age of ten, have no comedy value today. Go bad and watch meatballs, Bill Murray is funny, but not nearly as funny as he was back then…
I have always tried to crack the comedy code, to create a funny joke, but a joke is funny only in a specific time period… it is like milk… it is only good fresh.
Monty Python is still funny though after 40 yrs but it is also starting to sour, and it only appeals to a certain type of person, people who don’t like monty python, will never like monty python, and those who do etc…
this drawing was done in marker, then scanned in and processed in Illustrator, then custom colored. to look soft
