Hand made mobile custom caricature cart for sale. Included are an umbrella, stools and a rain cover. Weighs around 100lbs, 36″ x 48″ approx. easel is BUILT IN with pencil tray, top space/table for holding mattes and matting drawings, cash box, etc… and storage area below it. Designed to hold display signs on sides and rear or from umbrella frame. For sale by owner/builder. $1000 OBO. May deliver within eastern US. (for additional cost of travel)
Feel free to contact with questions
HOW MY CAREER FOUND ME
So Oakland was a really fun little college town/borough in Pittsburgh and there were lots of parties and lots of pretty girls to chase around. I was a good kid for a good while but I was a young man and being good is pretty boring when the one you love is so far away… Wouldn’t you know it, it didn’t take long for me to screw up the whole long distance GF thing and we ended up breaking up not long after (although clearly the story continued…)
School was taking up more and more of my time and I had pretty good grades though I still spent a lot of my extra time drinking beer and going to parties. Even though most of the people I knew were lowlifes we somehow kept out of trouble, for the most part, and had some of the best times of my life that I won’t remember, lol!
A year went by, most of my savings was gone, I had a girl living with me and I was 21, which made drinking and partying only slightly less fun… I had a really fun job as a bike messenger in the summer but I had quit it to concentrate on my studies during my last quarter of school. Seeking out just about any opportunity to make some extra money during the rough months of January through March when bills are higher and income is lower, I went to see the freelance advisor to see what was new. I hadn’t been there for a while and had missed out on some pretty decent gigs apparently and there were a lot of new artists that had snatched them up. There wasn’t much of anything worth bidding on but there was this one gig that had apparently been offered to about 13 artists and every one of them passed on it. As the advisor told me about it, I started to kinda get excited because it actually kinda sounded like it might be fun!
A few streets away from the Birmingham bridge on the south side off of East Carson St, there was a “Speakeasy” that was rumored to be a common hangout of Al Capone. It was closed for a long time and somebody bought it (mafia) and wanted to re-open it. The grand re-opening was in a week or so and they wanted somebody to come in, walk around and draw the customers at the bar. They wanted the artist to be there from about 8PM to 12AM but he could stay later if he wished as it was an after hours joint.
I was intrigued! I didn’t know it but this was going to be the start of something special.
Copyright, Adam Pate 2013, all rights reserved.
Drawing a girl in under a minute. (that’s what I do.)
Drawing at the Kamm’s Corner’s Hooley tomorrow from 12-8. Come get a free sketch! Off next week. I’ll post more often now that things have slowed down some. I promise!
E’s first good drawing by daddy
Haven’t been able to post a lot lately because I’ve been traveling and working just about every day. If I’m not sitting on my butt drawing, I’m sitting on my but driving… Anyways, it makes it difficult to keep up with things but Ima try to put a few things up when I have the time, like now! Here’s a few drawings from recent gigs that I found a minute or two leeway to stop and snap a photo. Enjoy!
WALKING INTO THE BAR!
Note to reader: Here we are. Finally arriving at the first step of busking in bars. Starting out, you might want to start with a neighborhood type bar to cut your teeth. Regulars, cheap beer, people who aren’t expecting much. Fun, easy, no stress… Later on I will give you some pointers on how to make it into a major operation but you gotta start somewhere and it’s better to learn to swim in the shallow end instead of jumping head on into the deep end of the pool!
LOCATION
First- Ask for permission from the general management (GM) or owner if you will be on private property. (This includes asking the nearby shop owners if you will be on a sidewalk near the shop’s entrance.) It is (in my opinion anyways) important to be on everybody’s good side if it’s at all possible. It will make it much easier for you to be sure. This includes police and security guards if possible. Look at it this way, whether they give you their permission or not, they may be pleased you came in to ask and they will know who you are and what you are doing which goes a long way towards avoiding problems in the future. Give them a card if you have one. If not, make one. It is a little thing but a card shows that you take yourself seriously and that you are established enough to have one. You can get them as low as $50 for 500, so what is the deal with home printed/perforated edge ones? Get a real card if you are a for real business! This is TOTALLY something worth judging someone on. That is the point. Color copies are a good alternative if you want to keep it low cost and add a lot of info. You might consider making a lot of these to hand out to customers if you are in an area where you might get residual income gigs. TOTALLY worth it in my opinion. Don’t do the “make your own’ business card thing if you want to be taken seriously! If they give you permission, offer them a sketch. If they don’t want one, offer to draw somebody else for them. This allows them to see first hand what you’re doing and establishes a positive rapport.
When you get to an establishment ask a staff person their name tell them yours. Ask them how they are, be nice and try to get them to smile by smiling at them. The idea is that your pleasant attitude will rub off on them. Ask them if the GM or owner is around and make sure they are not busy. (Asking for permission at a busy time is almost certain to get you the brush off.) If they are busy, ask when a good time to catch them will be and then come back. If it is in the morning sometime during the week, come early because they usually leave early. If they tell you to come back later ask if you can leave a card and draw the staff member so that the GM can see what you do. This goes a long way toward making a good impression. Hopefully the pleasant attitude of the staff member will be noticed by the GM, they will enjoy your artwork and maybe they will even look forward to meeting you when you stop by later! – All because you made a good impression on the staff member who relayed the message. DO NOT HAVE THE STAFF MEMBER ASK THEM IF YOU CAN COME IN AND DRAW.
Make sure there is NO DRAMA in your first encounter with the GM. Please keep in mind that to most GM’s, what you will be doing is merely an afterthought. They will go with their impulses. If they sense the slightest hint of trouble, they will give you the thumbs downs indefinitely. If you have already gotten permission from other local establishments, let them know you will be going to those places as well when you introduce yourself. This will show that what you are doing has already been accepted by at least one of their peers, which may also make it easier for them to go along with it.
More on meeting with the staff and manager next post.
Copyright Adam Pate, 2013 All rights reserved.
iCaricatures from tonight at the Scene Magazine BOC party
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iadampate/
One of my favorites of the night…
The summer I met Stacie we had a lot of fun traveling around Northern Ohio with our respective talents. I went to gigs with her, she went to some of mine. Mostly I goofed around trying to work but mostly having fun. It was nice to have that kind of freedom back then… I had no expectations of making a lot of money, but keeping busy was a must. I set up on the street once in Ashland for an afternoon. I set up in front of the Chinese restaurant on Main Street near the antiques store and what used to be known as the Nook. I sat there on my milk crate, listening to the doors in the cold shade of the mostly empty downtown buildings and watched the traffic go by. This is shortly after my father, who worked for ODOT designed the 250 bypass so there was a lot less traffic downtown than there used to be. It was very boring, I only made $6 and I never did anything like it again, ever.
Even though I did not work at Camp Mowana, Stacie and I spent a lot of time there on the weekends when it was just counselors and former campers and I even spent the night out there in some friend’s cabins once or twice. (I would eventually propose to Stacie on the edge of Flemming Falls, so it has a lot of significance to the two of us)
Stacie went with me to an airshow at the Ashland County Airport once. ACA is so small, if you’re lucky, Tattoo will announce your arrival and Mr. Roarke will come greet you and ask you what your fantasy is! We hung out in a hanger with an old guy and his new wife. He was bottom heavy, balding and very hairy. Like a tall Danny Devito with pop bottle glasses. She was equally heavy, but more apple shaped with long, red/grey hair that she had put in a bun on top of her head. He was dressed in a wife beater with dress pants and she had on a pair of pink polyester pants with a sleeveless floral printed shirt that reminded me of every outfit my grandmother ever wore in the summer. (I must have a photographic memory because I remember details like this sometimes. Either that, or a good imagination!) They had been married only a few years and they were just over the moon for each other. Very cute. I don’t remember what they were doing or selling there but they liked our music. He had some jazz tapes and we took turns listening to the likes of Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington in fits between the Dead Milkmen, The Cure, Arrested Development, The Beastie Boys, NWA and Enya- Yes, it was an an afternoon for the eclectic. I drew a few people. Thinking back, I can only remember the jazz fans, but I’m sure I drew a few paying customers. I didn’t care though at the time I guess. I doubt if I made more than $35 but I was having fun and Stacie and I got to enjoy each other’s company all day. We got a free ride in a Cessna out of the deal and it was the first time either of us were in a plane. We were scared shitless! It was cool seeing the familiar countryside from such an unfamiliar point of view. We went to some other venues like this with the WNCO Car that summer too. Some I drew at, most I just stopped by to bring her a Snapple and a sandwich or something. (We were hooked on Kiwi Strawberry Snapple I tell ya!) I wish I could remember some of the stories… Between car lots, antique barns, restaurant openings, fairs, festivals, etc… I’m sure Stacie Thompson could tell you some stories too. I used to love to hear about the crazy fans who stalked her over that summer, lol. She had groupies, (swear to god!) and they were some characters to be sure!
Stacie also joined me at the Huron County fair where I was set up near one of the smelly animal barns and didn’t do very well. I think I only spent a few days out there because it was so far away and such a poor location. I remember Stacie being there and not even caring that I hadn’t made any money. I saw some people I remembered from the Ashland county fair and I think I had set up with them at another festival in the same space because I shared the price of the spot with them. Yes, it is frowned upon but it happens. I was a newbie, I was poor and I didn’t know any better at the time… Later in the summer my parents and I went to a festival about an hour away from home just to look around where I saw someone there doing caricatures. I introduced myself and asked her if she needed any help because I do caricatures too. LOL! I thought she was so rude for telling me off at the time. I didn’t understand how competitive festivals can be. Kind of funny actually. Sometimes I wonder if she’s still around. I bet she never forgot it.
I wasn’t around to do the Ashland County Fair, or the Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival that summer. I had gone to Pittsburgh with my parents to find some other living arrangements in Oakland borough, where there weren’t as many parties and I could have a real apartment of my own. Found a nice spot but the landlord wanted me to move in right away, so I was packed up shortly after and was back in PGH about 3 weeks earlier than anticipated but I was well settled when classes started.
At the end of the summer I had the sweetest girlfriend ever and had earned and saved enough money to buy a nice mountain bike and a little bit extra for my chinese food fund. I spent the next several weeks running up my phone bill talking to Stacie, making friends in Oakland and exploring Schenly park on my new bike.
All content is copyrighted by Adam Pate, 2013. All rights reserved.
STROLLING CARICATURES IN BARS… -THE SUBJECT AT HAND-. GETTING STARTED.
I WANT TO TEACH YOU ALL WHAT I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT STROLLING, aka, WALKAROUND BUSKING- the variety of venues available to do this in, tricks to help you improve your take once you have decided to give it a try, and the details of the successful methods that have worked with me and the artists that have worked with me in the past while doing this under my tutelage… SPECIFICALLY- busking creative performance entertainment (in my case caricatures) in bars.
Strolling busking is just what it sounds like and what I have described before, except you are roaming and barking at people and doing your thing without a net in large crowds of stupid people. It is “extreme busking”, “guerilla busking” or “Para-busking” because you are taking a huge risk doing it!! You are getting out there in front of God and everybody and having a blast, doing something fun and unique among other people who are having fun and still getting paid to do it! The “pitch” may be a bar, a restaurant, a mall, a cocktail party, a parking lot tailgate party, an outdoor concert, a street development promotion, a boardwalk, an intersection, a crowd of people, etc… mostly on private property, sometimes on public, most of the time when there is SOMETHING going on, but still totally fantastic… Strolling artists can go pretty much anywhere, any time and sometimes they get PAID FULL PRICE to work at a gig where they can also BUSK. Hows that for an incentive to do the best artwork you can??!!
Specifically this book is geared toward doing caricatures or quick sketch cartoons of people for tips but it may also be useful as a jumping off point for doing other novelty type “performances”, one on one, close up entertainment services where a creative souvenir is exchanged -including face/body painting, balloon twisting, hair wraps and henna tattoos (and FTR, I would love to hear what other types of performers it has successfully given aid to).
This manual may also be helpful to those full time gig entertainers who are already comfortable strolling in cafes and restaurants doing close up caricatures, magic, balloons, comedy, hypnosis, etc… to try to pick up extra gigs during the week. As is the case with most ingenious art forms, creativity breeds strange animals that are not easy to categorize. If this is the case of your particular act, let me say that this manual may be helpful if you A) have a minimum of props/tools that you need to perform your act and B) if your act is performed close up, one on one or smaller groups and C) you ask for an individual or group tip at the completion of the act and lastly D) if your act is appropriate and safe to perform in close quarters or large crowds of moving people on public or private property inside or out, day or night, adult or family friendly. Yup. This is a niche that covers a lot of territory, so put your thing down and give this opportunity a run for the money. I’ d love to hear how this info has been transformative to my readers. (and how it has effected your success in gathering loot)
There are definite tricks, hustles, dos and don’ts that are generally practiced by most buskers world wide. In this book I will describe in great detail how to maximize your freedom, income, time and fun while keeping safe and out of trouble in the USA! I hope you find it useful! Here goes!!
Caricature Guy Confessions 