At the Caricature Convention!

This is going to be a rushed blog entry, as I am ticking it out on my phone between seminars and tropical drinks at the International Society of Caricature Artists 22nd (or 23rd?) annual convention! About 200 funny picture drawers have convened in St. Pete's Beach in Florida to talk shop, make fun of each other, and enjoy the bizarre, unique, and very strong comraderie that exists in this field. 

It's only the second day, so expect a more thorough rundown next week. The opening night icebreaker featured a recently added but already traditional event, the ART FIGHTS, organized by Nolan Harris and Matt Zitman. It's a wild draw-off pitting artists against one another in rapidfire heats of two-minute gag drawings judged by applause. 

That's me on the left drawing the topic "How Lorin got such a long neck" . . . I managed to win that round with a poorly drawn rendition of Lorin peeping over a nudist camp fence, and I also eeked out a victory against the talented Beejay Hawn in the semi-semi-finals, but was eliminated in the round after that (though I did get several compliments on the drawing of my opponent as an ice cream cone--his sketch of me as a plate of spaghetti was just better!)

The final winner, after many heats and many creative topics, was Tom Faraci. Along the way, he beat ISCA legend Lar deSouza in a very challenging round where they drew each other using their non-dominant hand! Fun fun stuff. I regret that in the excitement of it, and from my vantage point, I did not get any good pics of the drawings. But take my word for it, they were scribbly, crude, and made everyone laugh. 

Here's a barefoot Tom showing off his ArtFights championship belt later the next night. Though I really think it would have looked better on me, Tom did a fantastic job and folks will be gunning for him next year!