Tag Archives: drawing

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.

Howdy…

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I’m Adam Pate. Drawing caricatures for tips in bars in college is what first motivated me to draw quickly. It didn’t take long to discover that drawing faster meant I could draw more people and more drawings of course, meant -MORE TIPS! Being a poor, starving artist, I needed money and stuff, so I decided to concentrate on trying to draw as fast as I possibly could. Improved speed meant more practice, which naturally led to better drawings. It meant I had more opportunities to challenge myself, improve my skills as an artist, invent new ways to draw the features of the people sitting for their caricatures and try new things. -and better drawings also meant BIGGER TIPS!- So there you go!! I’ve been constantly, decidedly, motivated to draw as fast and as well as I can for about 20 years. I do this while strolling through rowdy crowds of people in low lighting conditions. The kind of environment that most caricature artists have nightmares about… I am now proud to say that I am widely considered the fastest, friendliest and most versatile caricature artist in the world by my peers in the international caricature community. (Yes, there is one! We even have CONVENTIONS!!) That’s what I do, I’m good at it and for better or for worse, that’s who I am… I tell you this so you have a background to relate to the rest of this post.

They say every single person in the world knows at least 3 things that you’d like to know… This does not occur to most people. To most people I’m just some 40-something-artist-guy, but from time to time it occurs to me that one or two people might actually be interested in what I know and how I know it. In this blog, I will relate some helpful and educational tips for artists who want to improve their speed, skill (and income), some worthwhile news, and some fun and noteworthy war stories from clubs, gigs and other experiences I have had related to caricature art. I realize that the life and interests of the average caricature artist might sound dull to pretty much everybody on earth… But, I’m here to tell you people… – WE HAVE STORIES. Oh yes we do. We are a fun, spontaneous, surly, goofy, hedonistic, intense bunch of hustlers, characters and visionaries and we certainly see life a little differently than most people!

So, my CHALLENGE is to offer you -the reader- the kind of entertaining, educational and engaging content that will make you go “Hmmm”, occasionally cause your thoughts wander off dreamily, and might make you stay up at night insecurely obsessing  about the secret lives of us caricature artists… (and maybe even want to grow up to be one! Mwah ha ha ha!)

I’m hoping this blog will push me to write down and record the stories I have been collecting and telling people over the years and hopefully one day compile them into a book or two or three…