Adam Pate 60 Second Caricature from 2-20-13

Photo of subject not so good for likeness (a bit dark…) but the drawing is my favorite in a while! It’s quite funny, looked just like the guy and got a lot of laughs from the people watching when I drew it so it was definitely successful in my opinion. Somebody asked me yesterday if people in general like being made fun of by us caricature artists. I get asked this question a lot actually and I’ve thought about it quite a bit. It’s a good question to think on if you do what I do and us caricature artists have some pretty good discussions about it too sometimes.

The way I see it is, I feel strongly that the experience of watching other people being drawn by me is more entertaining than getting one yourself. The idea is that if you enjoyed watching me make your friends look goofy, it’s only fair that you let the people behind you in line enjoy me drawing you goofily. If someone has really big chops I will give them the option of getting a “pretty” one or letting me “tear them up”. 9-10 they wanna be torn up. I don’t pick on people. It’s no fun to be mean, IMO. I do expect that they can laugh at themselves however, or else they wouldn’t be sitting in front of me. Every now and then you can tell someone is self conscious and I do take it easy on them. Fact is, it’s more judgey for me to try to “fix” people than it is for me to just draw what I see and make it funny.

(Copyright Adam Pate, 2013)