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| Drawing As Gaming/Puzzle-Solving Some people like solving puzzles, like crossword, sudoku, jigsaw, etc. Others like playing games like football, scrabble, quake, etc. For me caricature is one of the ultimate games/puzzles to be played/solved. I never get tired of it. People would ask me "Do you ever get tired of drawing?" And I remember my usual answer was "No, I get tired of NOT drawing!" It really is an addiction like a drug or fitness habit. Working "in the chair" for 10 hours a day 7 days a week is exhilarating. But those busy weeks are far too few in a season. They are heavily outweighed by the days sitting at home wishing I were drawing. |
 Stephen Colbert |
 Andrea Mitchell |
 Carson Daly |
 David Steinberg |
 Suze Orman |
| Drawing From Television If nothing else, drawing while watching TV is a worthwhile hedge against boredom. Long before I tried caricature I used to love to try sketching faces/forms of actors in those old black-and-white classics when "SuperStation TBS" was the only channel that showed them regularly. The lighting and cinematography were visually captivating, and there were no pause buttons so you had to work fast. I still have most of those drawings, charcoal or pencil on newsprint or manila paper, so they are not well-preserved. To this day I still draw a lot while watching TV. Though I confess I do use the pause button now from time to time, I still prefer working in real time, "see-as-you-go." I guess that is what I consider to be the real challenge, not working from the luxury of a paused or still photo. To capture life in real time, that is what challenges me most. I have a very long way to go before I can say I have mastered that skill. On Learning the Craft Caricature is low-tech. Pen, pencil, paper, eraser - these tools are all you really need to get started. The real skill comes not from the hand but from the eye. Although it is possible to draw a good caricature occaisionally when you first begin, it is unlikely that the skill will just magically happen overnight. It will most likely evolve over time, as your seeing and drawing skills converge as a result of constant practice. |
 John Hodgman |
 Condi Rice |
 Howard Stern |
 Ludacris |
| Tips For The Beginner "Aim for high-mileage." Draw, draw, draw. Go through as many pens, pencils, markers, pastels and so on, as you can. Save all the empty pens and markers and pencil stubs in a special container. They are the dues that you have paid. The more you have, the better you will draw. Aim for quantity, not quality at first. Save every drawing. Go through them often and critique your own work. Read every book that you can find on the subject of drawing, especially those about drawing faces and human forms. Do the exercises put forth in the books. Make a collection of these books and re-read them often. Never allow that knowledge to become stale within you. Accumulate every new tool related to drawing and image editing that you can. Manipulate your drawings in every conceivable way. Make photocopies, reduced and enlarged. Scan them into a PC and use an image editing program to experiment with them - color, resize, distort, rotate, flip, etc. Never allow yourself to become bored or complacent. When you need a break from drawing, use the time to study other people's drawings, paintings, cartoons, and visual expressions of all kinds. "...But I CAN'T DRAW." Three little words - more powerful than any other when it comes to drawing. The reason that most people cannot draw is because they BELIEVE they cannot. Most of us determine at a very early age that we "can't draw," and we stick with that for the rest of our lives. And whenever the subject comes up, we constantly reinforce that conclusion by saying things like "I can't even draw a straight line," or "I can't even draw stick figures." We do this because it makes us feel more comfortable and prevents the discomfort of trying and failing. Artists, however, don't see it like that. They cannot fail. They keep on trying without feeling discouraged, without rushing to judgement. They continue to draw long after the average guy has given up. The initial learning curve may be considered among the most painful stages in learning to draw. We collect a large amount of failed drawings which are painful to look at, let alone fix or do over. We keep trying and failing. Without proper guidance and/or motivation, it is quite easy to give up during this stage. But even an old cliché like 'the darkest hour is before the dawn' seems true if you just keep at it without allowing yourself to become discouraged. Now get serious, get busy and have some fun! - Ed |
 Katie Couric |
 Ted Danson |
 Nora O'Donnell |
 Tim Russert |
 Joe Biden |
| On Making Websites Having struggled to self-learn HTML, and now ASP or maybe PHP, one thing has been a constant truth throughout the entire process: I remain solidly and permanently behind the curve. At this writing it sure seems like Google offers people THE definitive tools for managing and monitoring websites. Though if you really delve into their AdWords program, it is EXTREMELY complicated. What it boils down to is: "How much are you willing to pay PER CLICK for people who are reading Google search results or other relevant pages on the ad you placed on that page, to land on your website?" That being the challenge, it forces you to focus on that particular moment in cyberspace and how it can be manipulated to the fullest possible effect. Then you see the options you have to sort through, especially if you have more than one website and/or web idea(s). So you end up taking a stab, attempting to give it your best shot, which may be little more than a shot in the dark actually. Actually, the idea of simply paying for visitors to come your website at the precise moment they are searching for your category makes perfect sense. It appears that Google has it nail ed. Through it all, I have never wavered from the overall goal I had since at least 1998 or 1999 which was to take the web by storm and create the next eBay or Yahoo or at least JibJab or some site that entitles me to my 15 or more minutes of fame. And now that it has just turned 2008 I can honestly say that nothing seems further from the realm of possibility. From day one I have been obsessed with the notion of finding the right NAME for my business and still have that feeling that it's still out there somewhere, untaken, unnoticed and waiting for me (or some other lucky shmuck who beats me to it). When I discovered that you could register a domain name for around 10 bucks a year, I quickly sank in way over my head in a race to find the next million dollar idea. I believed that I could secretly create the next big thing on the web by simply naming it, then grabbing that domain and sitting on it for the short period before someone offers me a few hundred grand for it. Oh well, see how thats working out for me. Here's a list of the .com domain names I had and held and have since let go: treasurebook, cafeu, magicexperience, drawingcrowds, idrawu, artnique, artofwords, artofcomedy, thankyall, and many others I can't even remember at this moment. At least I can say none of them has since skyrocketed to the top since I let them go. Maybe soon I can create a database of all the names I have searched and found of which I kept fairly meticulous records. (Some are hand-written in notebooks and others are in files on the PC.) Back when HTML was a brand new thing, I remember spending hundreds of hours a week, on average, searching and reading tutorials, making and remaking pages and uploading files, and in the meantime there was also a chat room at GeoCities where you could go and get help with webpage related issues. Last time I looked they had discontinued that room, but back in the late 90's and early 00's it really served its purpose. It was totally unregulated chat. Aside from the creeps and jerks who sometimes lurked there, it was usually a civil and responsible group of like-minded creative people wishing to help others or get help. Sometimes empty at odd hours, there were times you could just show up and wait for a few minutes and there would be another person show up who might be able to answer your particular question. At times during peak hours, the room had a feel of comeraderie and lighthearted social and academic/professional interaction, even being just people having fun chatting. I miss that. Some of the other chatters I remember were: Mr_Adobe, wise_old_man_from_geo, miznelliebellie, and onMouseOut. I wonder whatever happened to all them peoples. Confessions of a Carnival Worker Drawing on the beach was probably some of the most fun I've ever had in recent years. I never had a day I didn't enjoy. The money was pretty good too. I wish it would have lasted all year long, instead of those too-short summer seasons: maybe 10 good weeks if you're lucky, surrounded by a handful of Spring and Autumn weekends with hit-or-miss crowds. Still, even when it was slow, I could sit and draw and paint and usually there would be onlookers, some becoming customers. Even the slow days were still a day at the beach. The very best days were the ones when the management forgot to turn on the background music and left it off all day. Some Thoughts On Background Music Why is it that most public places insist on assaulting us with vile music? Especially amusement parks. At Six Flags Over Georgia, the background music was designed by people who were either morally challenged or who were deliberately bent on insulting the ears and brains of all the guests every minute of every hour of their entire visit. It was beyond annoying. Even the world's most beautiful music would be painful to you if someone followed you around all day with it blasting on a cheap boom box right over your head. Surely part of the subliminal purpose for this is the park management's desire to keep you and your family from ever getting too comfortable there. Which may be somewhat understandable for the guests, but insufferable if you had to work there. For what it's worth, I'd like to issue an open plea to owners of amusement parks all over the world: "Enough With The Crappy Music!!!" What Motivates Me All my life I had one basic criteria for choosing what I would do for a living: it had to be exciting. When I became unexcited by it, I moved on. First there was Theater, then Comedy, and now Caricature. And coming up on the 10 year anniversary of my decision to become a caricaturist, I can honestly say I am still excited by it, though still just this side of "making a living." |
A b o u t . . . |
Ed Abernathy began drawing caricatures in the spring of 1998. Working at Six Flags Over Georgia, he continued to draw and paint caricatures of guests at the Atlanta theme park for 5 more years. He's also worked at Visionland, Underground Atlanta, and the Myrtle Beach Pavilion in South Carolina. "It's some of the most fun I've ever had and still gotten paid for it! It's the only job I've had where I ALWAYS look forward to going in to work. And I have never called in sick!" Ed can be reached at ed@vicaricature.com. |
 Joan Rivers |
 Ahmadinejad |
 Barry Scheck |
 Tiger Woods |
 Dustin Hoffman |
 Joel Osteen |
 Neil Patrick Harris |
 Rod Blagojevich |
 Sarah Palin |
 Jay Leno |
© 2010 Ed Abernathy |