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| "I once drew a nose THIS BIG!" |
. . .
Two artists were approached by a nervous mother and her 9-year-old son, who happened to have quite a substantial pair of ears. She instructed the artist to NOT DRAW HIS EARS SO BIG in the picture, PLEASE, as he was very sensitive about them and she didn't want him to be upset by the drawing. The artist nodded and said of course, that would be no problem. He then whispered something to his coworker and began the drawing. The boy sat nervously as the artist sketched out his face, and, cleverly, the artist chose to make his head so large on the paper that there simply was no room for ears. The paper was filled, temple to temple, with the boy's face, so there wasn't even a hint of ears. The mom stood by, watching. Then the reveal . . . he turned the paper around and said "TA-DAAAAAH,"showing the boy his enlarged face. The kid smiled meekly. Then his coworker, who had been busily scribbling away on something under the table, swooped in behind the first artist and held up TWO sheets of paper, on either side of the boy's caricature. Each one contained a large ear, almost filling up the page. He said "TA-DAAAAH!" and, in front of the surprised mother, the boy erupted into laughter and absolutely loved the gag. She happily bought all three pictures and three frames to put them in.
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| My old Quickdraw shirt, with Irv Finifter as drawn by fellow coworker Gary Smith. |
The legendary Irv "Quickdraw" Finifter, who drew caricatures in the Mid-Atlantic region for decades and operated the Face Place in Ocean City Maryland, was my first boss. He gave many artists their start and was the source of many fun stories. It was said that he worked Moses's Bar Mitzvah. Back in the late 1970s he was drawing at yet another Bar Mitzvah, and it just so happened one of his cartooning protégés was among the kids who were attending. This youngster was a very talented kid of 14 or 15 who had been working with Irv and trying to get a summer job doing caricature. As Irv drew guest after guest, he got those same questions every party artist hears a dozen times a gig: "Wow, how did you learn this?" or "Do you have to be born talented to draw so well?" Not one to ever miss an opportunity for a good gag, Irv said, "Why no, you just have to know the secret! This is a very simple technique that I could teach anyone in this room. You there, son, come here a moment!" The young undercover artist approached, and Irv appeared to whisper instructions to him, then handed him the marker and stepped back. The young man then proceeded to very successfully caricature the next few people in line as the crowd looked on in utter amazement.
We all have had lousy days, but one fellow I know had the worst day imaginable. He suffered through FOUR rejects in one day at a Vegas resort location. The last one was extra memorable because it was a drawing he'd done of a tough-guy cop and the cop's girlfriend. The guy had paid at first, then ripped up the drawing and threw it in a trash can, then came back and wanted his money refunded. Some tense back-and-forth ensued and the artist just gave the guy his money back even though the product was not exactly in refundable condition. Then the angry customer hung around, and floated back now and then to glare angrily at the artist and even level some threats, saying "You ruined my special day" and implying some ass would be getting kicked. This poor artist ended up calling security and was pretty stressed out, needless to say. He finally figured he'd better call it a day and headed outside, where he decided to just lay down on a nice patch of grass by the resort. The moment he closed his eyes on the soft grass, sprinklers came on.
For a while, Quickdraw Caricatures had a "downstairs" location at a Baltimore mall, which was a lonely little easel with a small sign at the bottom of a stairwell. At the top of the stairwell there was a new vendor who was charging to let people take photos with his parrots. So if you were the one stuck in that easel, you just heard squawking all day from above and usually had a lousy total. One evening I was startled out of my boredom by an explosion of feathers hitting my easel. One of the parrots had gone rogue, or lost its balance, and ended up flopping right onto the back of my easel (maybe it had been trying to glide to freedom, but, alas, those show birds all had their wings clipped). It seemed stunned but uninjured, and I just had an instinct to pick the poor thing up off my easel. As the parrot handler raced down the stairs, his bird was already perching on my arm and seemed no worse for wear. But it quickly scooted up my arm and ended up hell-bent on getting up to my head. I just kind of stood there, not sure what to do, as the handler tried to retrieve it. The parrot decided it wanted nothing to do with its handler and stood firm, squawking and flapping and gripping my hair with its talons, as the guy tried to pry it off me. He finally got it under control and apologized profusely, then took his disobedient bird back upstairs. I sat there with parrot-hair the rest of the night, feeling stupid for extending a helping hand to that feathered menace.
In Vegas, one of the resort booths I used to work at was located near the buffet. A mother sat her green-gilled kid down in front of me and asked for a color picture. The kid was maybe 9 or 10, and was doing his best to pose but was clearly not feeling well. His mom had even given him one of the big plastic change buckets to hold onto, just in case (those buckets were all over casinos before the printed-ticket payout machines were invented). Sure enough, mid-drawing, the kid vomits into the bucket. "You just eat at the buffet?" I asked. The kid says "Yeah . . . how did you know?"
One coworker in Baltimore had a bad experience due to a horrendous name choice. At that location we typically threw names on the top of the drawing to "finish out" the caricature. Big, cartoon bubble letters were the standard, and people certainly came to expect it. This fellow was drawing on a night where we had a lot of inner-city visitors. Sometimes the names you had to write on the caricature got a little creative. He recounted to me with horror that he drew this adorable little girl with pigtails and barrettes, then he asked her mother what her name was so he could write it down and the woman said "Va-geeena." He said he PRAYED silently that it was spelled differently than what he feared. Nope, she told him it was V-little-A, then a space, then G-I-N-A. He looked pained as he recounted the tale, saying, "The mother didn't seem to see anything wrong with the fact that I was writing VAGINA in big bubble letters over her daughter's head. It was so awful, so awful. That poor girl."
One artist at a beach boardwalk location was approached by a teenager asking "Do you guys draw these FREEHAND?" as teens often do. The artists said, very calmly, "No, of course not. We do it by tinfoil relief." The kid looked confused. The artist explained, "We have sheets of tinfoil, and when someone sits down, we take the tinfoil and press it against their face, creating a relief sculpture of their features. Then we put that tinfoil relief against the paper and trace from it. The kid looked smug and said "Aaaaah, I KNEW it!" and ran off to tell his friends.
Rejects happen. But every reject is different. One night in Baltimore I drew a teenaged boy as his parents looked on, with disdain. They eventually rejected the drawing, rather rudely, but then wanted me to draw their other child, a young girl. I explained that if they didn't like what I did the first time, they were not likely to want my second attempt, so they should try the other artist on duty. They insisted. I insisted back, saying that I was the exact same person, I had not been to art school in the past thirty seconds, so the work would be the same. I told them to try the artist upstairs, as we had two booths in the mall and it was just a short walk. "LET'S GO, Brittany!" the mother blurted, "THIS WOMAN doesn't have any faith in her abilities!" and they turned heel. The guy on duty upstairs was a seasoned artist and also a tough cookie, so I was confident that he could handle them. About twenty minutes later the family came back and, to my astonishment, the mother apologized to me and said she had been rude. Little had I known that, earlier, the upstairs artist had been watching from a short distance away as they rejected my drawing and acted like jerks. Apparently, when they headed up there he had flat-out refused to draw the little girl. "But we promised her!" the parents insisted as the little girl pouted. The artist said "So what? I didn't promise her anything." He said the only way he would draw their kid was if they marched back downstairs and apologized to the artist there. They then told him they would pay him double. He said "There is not enough money in the world to make me draw your kid without that apology." Lo and behold, they put their kid's caricature before their pride and did exactly as he instructed. Then he drew the little girl and off they went, perhaps a little humbled by the experience.
That's about all I have time for now. But if you have any, feel free to share below. I love a good caricature tale. See you next Tuesday!
. . .
We all have had lousy days, but one fellow I know had the worst day imaginable. He suffered through FOUR rejects in one day at a Vegas resort location. The last one was extra memorable because it was a drawing he'd done of a tough-guy cop and the cop's girlfriend. The guy had paid at first, then ripped up the drawing and threw it in a trash can, then came back and wanted his money refunded. Some tense back-and-forth ensued and the artist just gave the guy his money back even though the product was not exactly in refundable condition. Then the angry customer hung around, and floated back now and then to glare angrily at the artist and even level some threats, saying "You ruined my special day" and implying some ass would be getting kicked. This poor artist ended up calling security and was pretty stressed out, needless to say. He finally figured he'd better call it a day and headed outside, where he decided to just lay down on a nice patch of grass by the resort. The moment he closed his eyes on the soft grass, sprinklers came on.
. . .
For a while, Quickdraw Caricatures had a "downstairs" location at a Baltimore mall, which was a lonely little easel with a small sign at the bottom of a stairwell. At the top of the stairwell there was a new vendor who was charging to let people take photos with his parrots. So if you were the one stuck in that easel, you just heard squawking all day from above and usually had a lousy total. One evening I was startled out of my boredom by an explosion of feathers hitting my easel. One of the parrots had gone rogue, or lost its balance, and ended up flopping right onto the back of my easel (maybe it had been trying to glide to freedom, but, alas, those show birds all had their wings clipped). It seemed stunned but uninjured, and I just had an instinct to pick the poor thing up off my easel. As the parrot handler raced down the stairs, his bird was already perching on my arm and seemed no worse for wear. But it quickly scooted up my arm and ended up hell-bent on getting up to my head. I just kind of stood there, not sure what to do, as the handler tried to retrieve it. The parrot decided it wanted nothing to do with its handler and stood firm, squawking and flapping and gripping my hair with its talons, as the guy tried to pry it off me. He finally got it under control and apologized profusely, then took his disobedient bird back upstairs. I sat there with parrot-hair the rest of the night, feeling stupid for extending a helping hand to that feathered menace.
. . .
In Vegas, one of the resort booths I used to work at was located near the buffet. A mother sat her green-gilled kid down in front of me and asked for a color picture. The kid was maybe 9 or 10, and was doing his best to pose but was clearly not feeling well. His mom had even given him one of the big plastic change buckets to hold onto, just in case (those buckets were all over casinos before the printed-ticket payout machines were invented). Sure enough, mid-drawing, the kid vomits into the bucket. "You just eat at the buffet?" I asked. The kid says "Yeah . . . how did you know?"
. . .
One coworker in Baltimore had a bad experience due to a horrendous name choice. At that location we typically threw names on the top of the drawing to "finish out" the caricature. Big, cartoon bubble letters were the standard, and people certainly came to expect it. This fellow was drawing on a night where we had a lot of inner-city visitors. Sometimes the names you had to write on the caricature got a little creative. He recounted to me with horror that he drew this adorable little girl with pigtails and barrettes, then he asked her mother what her name was so he could write it down and the woman said "Va-geeena." He said he PRAYED silently that it was spelled differently than what he feared. Nope, she told him it was V-little-A, then a space, then G-I-N-A. He looked pained as he recounted the tale, saying, "The mother didn't seem to see anything wrong with the fact that I was writing VAGINA in big bubble letters over her daughter's head. It was so awful, so awful. That poor girl."
. . .
. . .
Rejects happen. But every reject is different. One night in Baltimore I drew a teenaged boy as his parents looked on, with disdain. They eventually rejected the drawing, rather rudely, but then wanted me to draw their other child, a young girl. I explained that if they didn't like what I did the first time, they were not likely to want my second attempt, so they should try the other artist on duty. They insisted. I insisted back, saying that I was the exact same person, I had not been to art school in the past thirty seconds, so the work would be the same. I told them to try the artist upstairs, as we had two booths in the mall and it was just a short walk. "LET'S GO, Brittany!" the mother blurted, "THIS WOMAN doesn't have any faith in her abilities!" and they turned heel. The guy on duty upstairs was a seasoned artist and also a tough cookie, so I was confident that he could handle them. About twenty minutes later the family came back and, to my astonishment, the mother apologized to me and said she had been rude. Little had I known that, earlier, the upstairs artist had been watching from a short distance away as they rejected my drawing and acted like jerks. Apparently, when they headed up there he had flat-out refused to draw the little girl. "But we promised her!" the parents insisted as the little girl pouted. The artist said "So what? I didn't promise her anything." He said the only way he would draw their kid was if they marched back downstairs and apologized to the artist there. They then told him they would pay him double. He said "There is not enough money in the world to make me draw your kid without that apology." Lo and behold, they put their kid's caricature before their pride and did exactly as he instructed. Then he drew the little girl and off they went, perhaps a little humbled by the experience.
. . .
That's about all I have time for now. But if you have any, feel free to share below. I love a good caricature tale. See you next Tuesday!
Love the stories, Celestia. 1, 2, 7, and 8 especially.
ReplyDeleteJust stumbled in here Celestia, after Googling for more info on Irv Finifter (it's debatable what i like doing most, researching old time caricature & caricaturists or actually doing 'em ;-)) What an enjoyable read! Will have to check out your other posts....
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