Tag Archives: art

News Release From DelMarVa Today OCMD Via ACLU

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I thought I had lost this. Posting it now, since I found it.

“Ocean City lifts unconstitutional ban on strolling caricature artist from performing on the Boardwalk

MEDIA RELEASE:
June 2, 2005

CONTACT:
Deborah A. Jeon, Managing Attorney 410-889-8550 ext. 120
Rick Griffiths, Attorney (410) 889-8550 ext. 134

Caricature artist Adam Pate will be allowed to do his lightning fast portraits of passersby on Ocean City’s Boardwalk this summer, after a letter from the ACLU of Maryland spurred the City to reverse its initial rejection of his application under an ordinance that imposes unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. Mr. Pate was told by City Solicitor Guy R. Ayers III that he was forbidden from performing on the Boardwalk because he accepts tips for the caricatures he draws. But when the issue of free speech on the Boardwalk last arose, back in 1995, a federal judge ruled that it was unconstitutional to discriminate against speech that contains commercial content. ACLU managing attorney Deborah A. Jeon, who filed the 1995 case, threatened a return to court if the City did not lift the restrictions on Mr. Pate.

Ten years ago, the court ruled that there exists no real substitute for the Boardwalk as a forum for artists, said ACLU attorney Rick Griffiths, who co-drafted the letter. The First Amendment clearly protects the type of expression Mr. Pate wishes to engage in. It was in the public interest of all who visit and enjoy Ocean City’s premier venue to remove this unnecessary and unconstitutional restriction.

The current Peddlers and Solicitors ordinance of Ocean City’s Town Code imposes a year-round ban on soliciting donations on the Boardwalk. But because the Boardwalk is a traditional public forum, it should only be subject to reasonable and content-neutral time, place and manner restrictions when there is a substantial government interest in regulating protected speech. Mr. Pate performs his drawings rapidly and with creative spontaneity, which people find entertaining and educational. That he solicits tips with a notice on his drawing board does not affect the sincerity of his artistic expression. The ACLU could see no justification under the First Amendment to exclude Mr. Pate from this traditional public forum.

People around the country love my quick caricatures, and they have recommended that I go to Ocean City’s great Boardwalk, said Mr. Pate. This is the first time I’ve ever had any trouble doing my pictures in public places. I have a right to perform, and now Maryland beachgoers can have fun watching me this summer.

The current ordinance is very similar to an Ocean City ordinance ruled unconstitutional in the ACLU of Maryland’s 1995 case, Markowitz v. Mayor and City Council of Ocean City. In his ringing defense of free speech rights in that case, U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Garbis called the ordinance vastly overbroad and said courts have allowed government to restrict free speech only when necessary to protect the public safety of health. The ACLU had brought suit on behalf of a member of the Libertarian Party who wanted to collect signatures on the Boardwalk, along with a puppeteer and a juggler who regularly performed on the Boardwalk.

City Solicitor Ayres confirmed in a May 26 letter to the ACLU of Maryland that Mr. Pate will be allowed to perform on the Boardwalk, saying that his proposed activity was not prohibited by the City ordinance after all.”

Epic Caricature FAIL.

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Lesson in ethnicity (PLEASE REMEMBER THIS WAS 1991 WHEN I WAS JUST STARTING TO LEARN HOW TO DRAW CARICATURES!)

From ISCA Group on FB: “I think one of the things that might make my stories interesting to this group is that I taught myself. I had NEVER actually paid attention to how anyone drew caricatures of anyone before so every challenge I came across was handled in the best way I knew how, -and clearly sometimes they were handled badly, lol. But what’s interesting to me is that the outcome of my decision might be completely different than what most ‘taught’ caricature artists would come up with after learning a style and having support from, say Kaman’s, Fasen or Richmond’s concessions. I really enjoy seeing the way some self taught artists handle different challenges because they are usually pretty unique.” Case in point:

The Ashland County fair went on and I drew lots of people. The drawings were so bad that when somebody shows me a drawing I did from back then I don’t know wether to be amazed, embarrassed or feel sorry for them. All yellowed and crinkly and crappy lookin’. I had no idea what “archival quality paper” meant… Unfortunately, the sharpie lines do hold up well, even if you have no concept of line quality… To that I will attest. Every now and then I see one and the image creates a sudden, depressing panic in me. Like when you were little and you peed in a dream and then woke up and find out that you had actually peed your bed, AT CAMP. If anyone reading this happens to have one from back then, please burn it! Lol! Please. I will draw a fresh one for you for free if you prove that you burned it! 🙂

I worked at a few more local events before I went away to school. Most memorably, I did the Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival where I charged $2 and was so busy I never got to even look around and eat a forced meat sandwich. (I did get a sweet festival t-shirt with silk screened lederhosen on it though!) My parents went with me and they were amazed at how long the line I had was and at the end of the night when I counted up my loot, I had collected $350! People will buy anything for $2 I guess.

After the fair, I went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh for my first quarter of classes. I enjoyed school. I had lots of fun partying, making new friends and finding my way around the BIG CITY of Pittsburgh. It was the first metropolitan area I had ever been in really. The school was right down town and I lived only a 5 minutes away. I felt like Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat up in the air! I was on top of the world!

There were a couple of festivals in Pittsburgh near downtown and since there is a big art school there, several of the festivals are art centric and caricatures are very popular at such events. My first year in Pittsburgh I went to the Three Rivers Arts Festival to check it out and see what all the hub bub was about. I saw some caricature artists there and thought “I can do that too!”. I wanted to sit there and do them but I was too late to get in on the action. I could have busked in the park there, but was told I’d get into trouble. So I went down to Point Park and sat under the bridge so as to be more inconspicuous. (Totally illegal by the way. The festival has a special permit to use the park for the concert venue every year. What is normally public property was being used privately per special license, therefore it was at this time private property and I needed permission to set up there. Didn’t know that then… Luckily nobody hassled me.)

2 milk crates a ‘jam box’, a sketch pad and a few markers is all I had. I think I may have taped a cardboard sign to a wall on the bridge that led into the park.. Only in the big city for a month and I was already ghetto as fuck!

I was asking for $2 a drawing or tips or something like that. My drawings were terrible at the time, but then again, they were only $2! I was still very green and hadn’t really had any experience or education on the matter to speak of. I drew a few people’s kids here and there and made a few bucks. Well, along came these 4 black kids who were going down to the festival in Point Park. They asked for a drawing and I realized with horror that this was the first time I had ever been asked to draw black people and I had no idea how to do it. It was not going to be pretty.

Clearly this is not something appropriate to be horrified by to most people’s standards, however, growing up in rural Ohio, in the middle of nowhere, I had only seen a few black folks in my life, and had never even SEEN a drawing of one that I could think of (that wasn’t intended to be blatently racist). Let alone one done in black Sharpie on bright white paper… My dorm room mate was a black guy but that doesn’t mean I drew him! I really had no idea where to even start! Being self taught, I knew I had to make some mistakes to learn the correct way to do things. This was one of those mistakes. It certainly was… I did some stupid things, but this probably gets the prize for the stupidest.

Folks… I really do apologize if this sounds crude, or racist or whatever. It’s not intended to be. Part of what I learned on this day is that you just have to be brutally honest sometimes and go with your gut, ya know? These kids were very dark skinned. Not ‘latte’, ‘mocha’ or ‘cappuccino’. more like full blown ‘espresso’. I thought back through all of my schooling and all of the ways I could think of to suggest different tones in black and white artwork. What came to mind was…

Slowly I began drawing the features of the first boy’s face. When I got most of the way done with the line drawing, I started putting darker lines around the lines I had just drawn. That didn’t quite do it. DUDE WAS DARK. Sitting in the shadows around the bridge I thought about the lighter shades I could see and I decided to draw him as dark as possible and add highlights. Maybe show that contrast… Yes. About 5 minutes into the drawing I had decided to draw his face entirely black and add the highlights around the lines I had just drawn.

I colored in most of his face black with a dumb ass, faded, sharpie marker before I realized I could not pull off what I intended to do. At all. It looked horrible and the other kids actually said something. I was starting to sweat and the old, chewed up marker I was using ran out and I had to start in with another one that was fresher and go back over some parts of it again. I was no where near being capable of the artistic craftsmanship it would take to pull off a stunt like this, let alone the flaccid and feeble attempt of a drawing of this child that I had ruined this shitty, cheap piece of paper with. I don’t remember exactly what they said. I know their mouths were hanging open and their lower lips dangled in disbelief, but I was kinda too embarrassed to look at them. Guessing, I would say they were all between 10 and 13. Luckily, their parents weren’t there to witness it… After about 5 more excruciatingly awkward minutes of trying to color in the blackness to a somewhat uniform tone, I gave up when the second marker ran out -And all of those young kids just about crapped their pants they were laughing so hard.

The kid I was drawing looked at it for a second, said something cruelly appropriate, crumpled it up got on his bike and rode away without paying. I was a little bit surprised I didn’t get decked, but one of the other kids watching wanted one now. Obviously because I must be a clown and they wanted to laugh at me some more.

Laughing, I told him I just didn’t know how to draw black people as it was my first time, and I had never tried to draw a black person before in ink. There was no middle tone. Just black and white. I did mention that they were so dark too, hoping to get the sympathy vote from him and the other 2. It actually worked! They were cool about it, and they even acknowledged that they were hella dark too and that they might be hard to draw because of that. They told me that basically just give them big lips and noses and stuff. I said I didn’t know many black people, but I was pretty sure they didn’t like being drawn with large, stereotypical features and I didn’t want to offend them by drawing them that way and they laughed again. “Duh, we got big lips and noses and stuff though!” is what he said. I asked them if they had ever seen another artist draw a black person and they all said no, so I started again from scratch.

This time I thought instead of going all ‘contrasty’, maybe I would use some cross hatching… Holy shit. Yes. I. did. If you thought I was embarrassed when they laughed at me for trying to draw the one kid entirely black, imagine how stupid I felt drawing straight black sharpie lines clean across the other kid’s face -for like 8 minutes. TOTAL FAILURE. LOL! THESE KIDS WERE LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY AT ME NOW!

The other kid’s mouths just hung open and when I handed it to him he said that doing that was probably NOT the right thing to do to it either and laughed at it/me. He was pretty cool about it though, considering. They all were. I was lucky. My stupidity didn’t seem offend them much, if at all. I wasn’t trying to be offensive in the least. I just had no effing clue what I was doing!

In hindsight, I’m really glad it was those kids and not somebody who would have taken greater offense. It could have went very badly for me! After that drawing they suggested again that maybe I try to draw them with big lips and noses and concentrate on the size and shape of the features instead of the tone of their skin. I thought about it, and decided to try that next time. Not surprisingly, neither of the other two wanted one. Lol! I discovered that not only was my mistake trying a drawing style that I was clearly incapable of pulling off, but I was drawing them with caucasian features and thought that merely changing the tone of their faces would make them look like black people. Their features were completely different than caucasian features, and after all, it was them who had pointed out that they HAD big lips and big noses so it must be something they’re comfortable with and I figured whatever I drew probably wouldn’t be as offensive as drawing them all in black or cross hatching over their faces!!

I didn’t immediately follow their advice unfortunately and did some other stupid mistakes but quickly got the hang of it. It took me years to finally let go and learn that emphasizing the most stereotypical features on ethnic people is the best (and funniest) outcome in this situation. Afterall, a humorously exaggerated likeness IS the point of a caricature.

A good way to practice drawing caricatures is to draw yourself in a mirror. (a better way is to draw some one else from a still on a DVD- but I’m getting ahead of myself) Many newbie caricature artists use this practice as a crutch. They learn how to draw THEIR nose satisfactorily, and don’t realize that they unsatisfactorily draw their nose on every person’s face that they draw from then on. Everybody does it. You can tell the care an artist puts into his craftsmanship by the different ways he can draw other people’s features. (but again, I get ahead…) In short, it takes some skill and time to discover a repertoire of different and acceptable ways to draw different people’s features and then use those standards relative to each individual.

We’re allowed to make mistakes. We all do it. It’s part of learning how to do something the right way. Understanding, identifying and learning the proper ways to communicate a person’s ethnicity (or any other defining feature) visually and aesthetically (and yes, in fact, exaggerating some stereotypical features) is very important in communicating a good likeness no matter what the ethnicity of the person you’re drawing. Political correctness has no place in the caricature world. That said, personality stereotypes are stupid. Just as important in my opinion is learning not to judge people based on personality stereotypes. Each person is an individual and if you look objectively at each person as such, and treat them like you want to be treated you can do no wrong. I don’t tolerate hateful intolerance and I don’t tolerate mistaking sincere objectivity for hatred.

All rights reserved on all content. Copyright, Adam Pate 2013

Ashland County Fair- Day 2

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The second day of the ACF was Seniors day (1991- fresh outta high school). As I said, there were old people everywhere in their walkers and rascal scooters. Hanging out talking and just doing their old people thing. An old lady happened to come up to me, sit down and talk for a while. Ya know, like they do… I’m a nice kid so I let her sit there and talk. She told me all about her grand kids, her bridge partners and how she had just lost her husband, etc… We probably talked for 15 minutes or more before she asked for a caricature.

She had asked me if I ever had a hard time drawing wrinkles and I told her I didn’t know because this was the first time I had really done them for money, and I’d never had to draw them before. I drew lots of wrinkles on her picture while I talked to her. She was such a nice lady and we were just talk, talk, talking away and I was just draw, draw, drawing them wrinkles… In jaggy, black, inky, sharpie marker lines. Tons of em. I wanted to get them just right! After I was finished, I gave her her drawing and she handed me $5 and said thank you. She looked at it for about a full minute without saying a thing. Then walked away silently and as she turned the corner to go behind one of the craft barns, I saw her wrinkle up her face and wipe some tears away. I felt horrible and vowed to be much much more careful the next time I had to draw some wrinkles, despite my lack of skill. That one probably left a bruise… Later on a friend of hers came over and chewed me out for drawing a bad picture of her.

The next wrinkly person I drew probably looked like they were 25.

All rights reserved on all content. Copyright, Adam Pate 2013

A Guy Walks Into a Bar- (Continued…)

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(Walk By Busking Continued)
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT OPERATIONAL SECURITY

There are several other things to be considered when setting up your novelty entertainment busking set up in the street to attract walk by business… The street is less than ideal in the vulnerability department. You will want to set up near someplace that has a street, shop or ATM camera and logistically makes sense for your needs. (i.e. Restroom, water, food, parking, security, phone, loading-unloading, making a quick exit, visibility, clear view of your surroundings, etc…) If you have a tip bucket or some kind of contraption to collect money, it will likely get pilfered or stolen outright at some point. Kids and thugs have many, many ways to get your goodies if they want them. (More on this later) For a number of reasons, I prefer to open my hand to collect tips and put the money directly into my pocket. (I have a VERY DEEP pocket I have sewn into my pants to prevent pickpocketing- which I will also go over later…) Keep in mind that you will also be encumbered by your props, easel, signs, jacket, book bag, dog, etc… Whatever you have with you. Should you have to get up to use the restroom, get a drink or whathaveyou you will need to bring all of your things along with you, lock them up, stash them somewhere, have somebody else watch them for you or test your faith in humanity by leaving it alone for a few minutes. This is something to consider if you are vacillating about whether to work on public or private property.

Physical abuse may also be something to seriously give consideration to if you are a woman or are a man of slight build. (or even if you are a giant stud muffin like myself, who might be hassled because they are big and might pose a challenge to a punk kid looking to start a fight with somebody- yes, it happens.) I suggest ANYONE who busks in a walk by environment to carry pepper spray at the very least. A whistle and/or a knife are good too. A flashlight or a small stick is also an excellent idea for protection and do not draw attention Learn how to use these tools for defense along with basic moves to throw off the hands of an attacker in close quarters, you’ll be amazed at what you can do with a small stick, marker, pencil, keychain, etc… I wouldn’t bring a gun with me but that is just me. Personally, if I thought I would need a gun where I was going, I might reconsider my priorities.

You might consider having a few cache spots too. Someplace you can keep money or bring periodic drops to that is secure so you don’t have to walk around with a lot of money in your pocket all day. That way if you DO get robbed, you won’t be out everything you made the entire day. If you work long days and have a lot of $1 bills taking up room in your pocket, you can free up some space by ditching the wad and be more comfortable too. The first cache spot to consider is where you first put the money when it is given to you. Your POCKET.

You might keep a dummy pocket so if you are asked to give an assailant your money you can pull out everything from a partially full pocket, meanwhile you have several other partially full pockets that they don’t know about, or maybe stash your larger bills ($20, $50, $100’s) in a pocket you don’t use very often. When you have a lot of money in a wad in your pocket, you would be surprised how easy it is to accidentally pull out more money than you intended and accidentally drop it. Keep your bigger bills in a pocket (sock, shoe, bra, etc…) you are not likely to use. Better you drop a $1 looking for change than a $50. You’ll find that shallow, wide pockets easily bunch up on you and it is easy for that bunching movement to push some bills up and out also. I like to use only pockets on one side of my body to store cash. I am very comfortable with people watching me work from over my shoulder or standing on one side of me but if someone is standing on the side I put my money into I am very aware of them being there. I jiggle around subtly so that if they have slipped a hand into my pocket they cannot rely on getting it back out without being noticed. Still it is best to keep honest people honest and try to put yourself in a position within your environment where there is a wall, a table, a chair, etc… something on that side so you don’t have to worry about anyone being over there to begin with. Be weary of people bumping into you also. Classic pickpocket trick… The special pocket I have sewn into my work pants is a tube that goes down to my knee and I can push money way, way down there and make a big fat wad and nobody can see it! it is wide at the bottom and very narrow at the top so that it is very difficult to get a hand in there and even harder to get it out. Yes it is harder to get the money out to stash it but I would generally do that somewhere private.

Something to consider is that a mugger or a pickpocket will stealthily check you out for a while before making a move and you WILL NOT know they’re there. While you are busy working and doing your thing all of the people you see and meet will become a blur, but you will stick out like a sore thumb to them. If there is a thief around they WILL notice you and all of the loot you’re putting into your pocket. The best defense against them is to simply go on about your business being aware of your surroundings and making it hard for them to find a vulnerable point at which to take advantage of you. They will be watching you yes, but they will also be noticing the steps you are taking to protect yourself, that you are conscious of your surroundings and see that you smarter than the average bear. By simply taking the simple precautions mentioned above, (that will quickly become second nature for you) they will most likely determine that their chances of success is so low that it will not be worth it to attempt anything and they will likely just move on leaving you none the wiser.

(FYI- This might be a good time to point out that I THINK I have been pick pocketed twice and I have never been robbed or beat up in the 20 years I have been busking. (knock on wood!))

A cache/hiding spot in your car is a wise idea too, maybe a small, secret spot behind a rock in a parking garage? An excellent suggestion if it’s possible is to make a friend nearby. A friendly business owner or employee who you can visit to deter a creeper for instance, if there is somebody who makes you nervous. This last bit is a great idea as that person can keep an eye on you, scout the creeper for you over your shoulder while you talk, call the cops if needed and may even let you leave your cache with them. You can keep a weapon of some sort in your cache spots too. A stick in your pocket for instance… or some mace.

One of the prerequisites of busking almost unanimously in any environment is that you can’t have anything permanently set up and must move somewhere else if asked to by a nearby shopkeeper or cop. Especially if you are blocking traffic on the sidewalk, street or business front where you are set up. This means you have to load all of your stuff in to begin and out at the end of the day which can also be a pain but a lot of vendors do this. There is no end to the creativity used to solve the problem of moving props here and there! (Again, I will describe my cart in a later chapter.)

Another problem to inspire creativity is called “dipping”. Dipping is when it LOOKS like somebody is putting their hand in to give you a tip but sneaks something out instead. Any number of ingenius contraptions can be invented to ensure that earnings go in and not out of your bucket, bottle, jar or whatever. It is a fact that you will be more likely to be targeted for a crime since you (more than likely would be alone,) would be in the same general place at the same times and even park your car in the same place every day. Buskers are unfortunately easy prey for muggers… That’s not to say that they often get mugged… Good old fashioned street smarts and following your gut is extremely underrated.

Yes, the walk by method definitely has it’s disadvantages and leaves you vulnerable if you are on public property, but not just to muggers. You may be hassled by homeless people, panhandlers, drunks, cops, mother nature, parking restrictions, lighting problems and just general harassment from passers by and business owners. Not to mention the hood rats that may come talk your ear off because there’s nothing better to do than to watch you work. (They’re cute at first but they will turn on you as soon as you stop paying attention to them then they can become troublesome…) Now that you’re all scared…

Next up… Circle Busking.

(All content belongs to Adam Pate. Copyright 2013)

Straight Outta High School!

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ASHLAND COUNTY FAIR

During my last year of HS, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh sent some people to our HS to recruit. I visited their campus in the summer at an overnight orientation, met some cool kids (and perdy girls…) and had a blast. Since I really wasn’t prepared for doing the SAT’s or ACT’s and was accepted, I took the bait and went to AIP after the summer of 1991. Which I spent working at Camp Mowana in Mansfield (One of my favorite jobs to this day but I’m skipping over it since it had nearly nothing to do with caricatures.)

The AIP semester started late in the fall so I was around when Ashland High School started up again. It felt weird to be out wandering around aimlessly some days when I had always been in school at this time of year and many of my friends still had to go to class. I had money from graduation and my summer job but I currently had no job, no classes, no worries- and my whole life ahead of me! Life was good and it seemed like I must have been experiencing the meaning of the word FREEDOM!

About a month after Mowana closed and schools were back in session, the Ashland County Fair happened. It was only about 60 degrees at the coldest but little did I know you could actually get hypothermia at that temperature because sitting in one place makes you very, very cold! I found myself shivering every night of it and on the last night I damn near shook my chair apart while I sat there in the buzzing mercury lights under a blanket!

I had bought a lightweight French easel from Jerry’s Artorama that pretty much fell apart right away. The fair board put me on a corner with lots of traffic and I did pretty well considering I was selling my drawings for only $2. I made my first signs with cardboard and the sharpie markers I drew with back then. I learned the hard way how to write “CARICATURES” so that it all fit on a sign correctly. This is harder than it seems and I must have ruined 4 sheets of posterboard trying to get it right that first day. I duct taped the sign to my rickety easel. Then I re-taped it. Then I taped the easel together by using the sign. Then I taped it again when it fell apart again. Then I had to make a new sign because the other one blew off and ripped… Next thing you know the whole contraption looked like a total catastrophe! What a piece of crap!

My mother had talked me into drawing at the fair and I was pretty nervous. She had even given me the money to pay the vendor fee at the fair. It sure beat my first job working at Hawkins Market as a bagger that’s for sure!

Charlie Daniels played the Ashland County Fair that year. Anything by Garth Brooks, Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart” and Alabama’s “Mountain Music” were really big too. I was not a fan of country music back then but I had to listen to it day in and day out and actually started to like it a little. (Shhhh, don’t tell anybody!!!) There was a pavilion across the walkway from me where they had country bands, banjo music and barbershop quartets. When it rained, it would be packed full of people (and myself- I didn’t have a tent!) It was loud and the music sucked, but I saw how folks doing a similar thing to what I was doing made their living entertaining people at fairs and afterwards a few of them would come over and get a caricature from me and talk a little shop and tell me about how they do things at other fairs and festivals and some of the cool things they’ve seen.

The weirdest thing to me was being at the fair early and having lots of cash to buy anything I wanted! I hadn’t gotten there that early or been there all day and actually gotten to see the agricultural stuff since I was a kid and went there with the pre school group. I still had a twinge of guilt for not being in school, so it was quite an awakening to see how the ‘Carnys’ lived, and to realize I WAS ONE OF THEM, HA HA!!

I got into the fair for free and could go anywhere I wanted. I had donuts for breakfast, I had coffee every morning, and as many hot dogs or whatever I wanted for lunch and French fries for dinner! I saw sheep being sheered, cows being exercised, pigs running around in their racing stables, no lines for games or rides and I saw the “dumb kids” from school working at them. I made friends with them and some of the other vendors and we bartered for goodies. I saw old people speed-walking around the grounds, I saw fat people on Rascal Scooters going into the pole barns early to collect bucketfuls of free stuff, I saw old people who have a special day where they can go and walk really slow and know everybody and sit and talk all day without all the noisy, annoying kids there to bug them, I saw days where little kids came and took over the place like a rowdy gang of kittens, I saw days when all the 4H kids took over and it was very business like and serious (and surprisingly interesting) I saw days when the displays changed in the craft barns, all the old ladies would come put their best baked goods out, their best knitting up and their finest garden treasures out for everyone in the county to see. I saw some quite fascinating displays from the Ag kids at the HS. One of them was a dissected cow eyeball. (I saw a kid get in the way of a wayward fishhook and it got stuck in his eyeball when I was a kid. Gahhhhbrrrrrelcht!!! ….AH!!!!! Never have gotten rid of that image in my head, even after all these years…) When the days were over I saw dirty, creepy carny ride people drinking beer and making out with sluts from my HS behind the animal barns. I saw hard working, rough looking gypsy people go to their trailers for the night and I saw things the health department would probably frown upon -in just about every direction.

I have seen the Ashland County Fairgrounds almost completely empty. It was sad but it felt kinda cool at the same time. It was like peeking behind the curtain and seeing that the wizard is just some little dork like me. I was officially a carny and it was kinda awesome.

Middle/high school art class

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By the time I hit Jr. High School, I had made up my mind to try to be the class clown, so I spent a lot of time down at the principals office. If I was going to get in trouble for disrupting the class anyways, I figured I might as well disrupt the class!

One of the few classes I was not disruptive in was art class of course. I loved art class. It was nice to have a time each day to do art as opposed to once a week like in elementary school. I learned how to do scale drawings, mix and use different kinds of paint, sculpt with clay, shade and smudge with pencils and a little bit about perspective. The basics… I got along well with the art teacher, was recognized for my talents on occasion and was confident enough to help some of the other students to figure out the lessons when asked. I learned how to draw from photos in magazines and spent much of my free time drawing.

I drew so often in classes that the teachers sometimes would come see what I was drawing and usually complimented me on whatever it was. I found ways to go out of my way to draw. Study hall for instance. I would draw for the entire period. Cartoons, pretty ladies, cowboys, motorcycles, hot rods, space ships, ninjas, super heroes, etc… The fact that middle/high school has more students and different teachers each period didn’t seem like a big deal at the time but thinking back on it, having that opportunity to blend in with the other students and escape a domineering teacher that you have one period for a friendly teacher you had in another period really helps a kid’s development and self confidence a lot. Especially when they have been conditioned to feel like an outsider.

When I went up to the high school I was a much calmer in my classes and still drew a lot. I became interested in being a good student again but sometimes I just couldn’t help myself though and had to cut up a little in class. There was one teacher in particular that the students used to have quite a bit of sport with. We did awful, awful things to this poor teacher, and I feel bad about it now, but I drew some horrible caricatures of her. Terrible!!! The other students liked it though and they would pass the drawing around the class. Of course the teacher found it and sent me to the principal, Mr. Dorr’s office.

I spent a lot of time in Mr. Dorr’s office… He as a pretty nice guy as far as principals go. He always asked to see what I was drawing when I came in to his office. He saw the picture of the teacher (giggled) and asked me if I had ever thought about doing caricatures for a job after high school (presumably at Cedar Point) We talked a little bit about that. He asked me to draw him. I did. He liked it and asked the other principal to come in and get drawn. I did. Then the secretary, some girls who worked in the office, etc… By the end of the class I had drawn everyone in his office. He told me that he would get me some work drawing stuff around the school and he did. I drew decorations for Christmas time of the principals with santa hats on and stuff like that. I drew backgrounds for the proms and homecoming dances, etc…

I had loved my art teachers and got along really well with most of the people in my art classes. We were a fun group. We saw each other in a lot of the same classes each year. I took some other ‘liberal arts’ type classes and some of us even went on field trips to the Pittsburgh Art Museums and other out of town shenanigans. Among the new art classes was painting, sculpting, dying, drawing, printmaking, etc… I learned all sorts of cool techniques and the teachers often challenged me to come up with something more creative than whatever it was I was working on or offered an extra credit project if I got done with my project and still wanted something to work on in class. I was a skateboarder and I drew a sweet 3-5′ pastel painting of Tony Hawk grinding a jersey barrier that won me an award in the Ohio Governor’s Youth Art Exhibition. I had participated and gone to the show several times, but as a junior, I was honored to be chosen to attend an award ceremony in Columbus with a few other classmates. Our artwork traveled the state and was hung in the Governor’s mansion for a while. On the last day of my Junior year, me and a couple of the other boys got a little too rowdy with our goofing around and Mrs. Schuman, -one of the art teachers- told me that because I was being a dork, I couldn’t participate in the Advanced Placement art class as a senior, which broke my heart. I kept hoping over the summer that she was just kidding but when I got my classes senior year… no AP ART.

Senior year I actually made the honor roll more often than not. Mom and dad and I had the talk about school after the Art Institute of Pittsburgh people came around and I was thinking seriously about going to college after high school. They were a bit surprised I guess! As for art classes, I think there was only one other art class other than AP I could take, so I did. I think the teacher felt bad she kept me out of AP Art, but what’s done was done. Since I did a lot of extra credit artwork my senior year, I was given a special display space in the hallway for the spring art show as a senior since I couldn’t participate in the AP show (which was very nice) and I was asked to do live caricatures at the show. It was my first time ever, I didn’t want to do it and I was terrified! There was one other student there doing them and he was better at them than I was. He told me that he watched them doing them at Cedar Point before and so I took a few pointers from him the second day.

The first one I ever did, I did in pencil first, then inked it, then had to go back and erase the pencil lines. It took 20 minutes, was terrible and I made a quarter on it! I might have done about 12 more that day. All horrible! Ha ha ha!! People told me they were nice though and paid their quarter. The other boy told me that if I stopped using the pencil it might speed up my drawings and it really wouldn’t be so bad if I made a mistake. I could probably correct it with the marker and he was right. I was a perfectionist when I drew my artwork. Often drawing the same line over and over again till it was just right. Shading something, erasing it and then shading it all over again till it was perfect… All that went out the window the second day I did caricatures at the high school. I had to let go and trust in my ability to not screw it up! I did probably 20 of them that day. All in Sharpie marker. I made money for the art club. …And that’s how I officially started my professional caricature career!

(Copyright Adam Pate, 2013)

Observations of a young caricature artist…

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When I was in grade school I was always drawing pictures of people, houses, pets, race cars, guns, motorcycles, vans, spaceships, dinosaurs, dragons, skulls, super heroes, ninjas,  etc… You name it! Nothing escaped my pencil. I used to carve things out of wood and build models out of paper. I had lots of ideas and inventions I was always drawing, building or writing about something. In class, I often got in trouble for drawing even though the teacher luckily encouraged me by telling me they liked it. It was something I loved to do and even better PEOPLE TOLD ME I WAS GOOD AT IT. In my opinion, people in general, teachers and parents specifically- seriously underestimate the power of positive reinforcement. (as well as the power of negative reinforcement…)

Early on they wanted to put me in LD classes because I had a hard time keeping still and paying attention in class. That lasted for about a week until my mother got wind of it. Luckily she asked them to put me in a regular classroom again. I suppose it was because I was disruptive somehow because of my attention disorder. They said I had a mild chemical imbalance. Knowing what I know now, I figure I could have maybe been slightly autistic or have had mild Asburgers too. I do not think this is uncommon at all. I think a lot of that went undiagnosed, especially back in the 70’s. It is difficult to say even now as it is still difficult to diagnose.

The reason I bring this up is because like many people with autism or asburgers, I was very interested in anomalies I would find in every day life and I saw relationships in things that other’s missed or were simply uninterested in. I was very observant, even as a kid, often to a fault. I wanted to see and touch things that I shouldn’t. My mom used to have to tell me to stop staring at people when I was very little and I often asked very personal questions that put people and my parents on the spot. I was unintentionally inclusive and socially awkward. I didn’t have many close friends growing up in the country in rural Ohio, but I wanted to socialize. It was hard because I grew up where I did and the things I noticed and asked about sometimes made people feel uncomfortable and as a consequence, I was sometimes treated differently or even cruelly. I was very competitive, was super strong and was interested in sports but knew nothing of the rules so I tended to avoid group games because I didn’t know how to play them and I would just seem clumsy, accidentally hurt someone or get in the way of the other kids.

Although squirmy and odd, I was a sweet kid who used to draw flowers and animals for my teachers, got decent grades and was a pretty good student for the most part- right up till the 4th grade. In 4th grade, my ADD or whatever made the teacher so uncomfortable that she put me in a corner and had a refrigerator box put around my desk so that I would not distract the rest of the class. She called it my office. This was a horrible thing to do to a child for many reasons, but at the time I didn’t think it was so bad sometimes. It gave me my own space to think and draw and get lost in my imagination. If I got bored in class I had the opportunity to look out the window or zone out on some project or another on my own and this kept me quiet and content for the most part for the rest of the school year. I had to see a school psychiatrist and I remember it being a very long, sad year for me. The box wasn’t helpful to me socially at all and I lost all interest in trying to be a good student.

I realize that (besides the “office”) most of this seems pretty common. It is. For me at the time it wasn’t of course. This was my perspective at the time. I thought I was different. People of influence encouraged my intellectual abilities, but I learned to keep those talents hidden as they were not helpful socially. This inclusiveness gave me the ability to see things objectively. I was an outsider, an observer. So I learned to enjoy playing quietly by myself and letting my imagination be my best friend, reading picture books to myself, learning about nature, observing and contemplating things in their natural state, noticing forms, textures, anatomy, positive and negative space, tangents, the color of lighting and the tones and shapes that shadows make at different times of the day, where they fall and how colors complimented one another. This further reinforced my relationship with my observational skills, imagination and creative abilities and has had an absolutely positive influence on the creative person I am today. These were the unintentional every day thoughts and influences on me as a young artist. …I think being hired to draw funny pictures of strangers at parties is about the most natural thing I could possibly do for a living!

Copyright Adam Pate, 2013

Nolan Harris iPad/ProCreate tutorial with Ron Kantrowitz

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Nolan Harris, of Over the Line Productions in Seattle, WA (http://www.facebook.com/overthelineart) does a tutorial using Procreate on the iPad. This video is a drawing he did of my friend Ron Kantrowitz of Pittsburgh, whom I have worked with for almost 20 years.