Big gig

Here's a shot from a biglive gig I did yesterday morning. All of the artists work for my wife and I at our retail locations. A great group of talented folks.

Gigs like this are a lot of fun. It was perhaps our biggest ever...20 artists! I really enjoyed the meal at the Golden Corral buffet afterwards, as well. About 13 of us went to that. We talked, ate, and sketched.

Anyway, it was like a mini caricature convention or something. Good times, good times.

Ripped Off

Well, this one takes the cake. I've had guests tell me they saw my caricatures on display on other artists' stands, I've seen photos of my oldest daughter, from my how to draw caricatures book, on other artists' displays, and good buddy Tom Richmond even saw a pic OF me by the legendary Belgian caricaturist Jan Opdebeeck on a display up in NYC. Yeah, you read that right...it was MY face on the display.

Then there was the time that a fellow NCN (National Caricaturists Network) member copied all of the "keywords" on my homepage and put them on his homepage (even right down to my company name, and the name of my wife and daughter).

BUT, awhile back I got an email from someone in Russia, who informed me of perhaps the weirdest ripoff of my stuff yet. Look at this site:

http://art-vip.ru/

Then, go to my company site:

www.caricatureconnection.com

See any similarities? Yep, ripped off the ENTIRE look of my site. The colors, the buttons, up till recently, he even had the cartoon version of my wife on the "contact us" link. All the art elsewhere is his (please don't think it's mine!), at least.

But isn't that just wierd? I did send him and the "designers" of his site an email asking them to come up with an original idea of their own, not just rip off mine, but alas, I never got a reply. They did recently take down the cartoon I did of my wife for the "contact us" button (and whatever that translates to in Russian), though.

Travel Sketches

Well, our annual trip to our timeshare in Cocoa Beach is now over. Back home, settling into the daily grind again. Which, when you draw for a living, ain't too bad. Matter of fact, since this was the first year we had two kids (baby Kaley is ten months old), Barbie and I are in dire need of a vacation now, after our so called vacation. Cocoa is only an hour away, so we come home in the middle of the week every year to catch up on biz, and then go back down for the rest of the week.
So, really, it ain't much in the way of a vacation. But, it does allow us to recharge our batteries a little bit. Usually. This year there was lots of artist "emergencies" at our retail stands, and, of course, dealing with the aforementioned baby factor.

Anyway, I know some artists who are adamant about NOT drawing when they travel. They figure they do it all the time, so they want to take a vacation from that as well. I can understand that, but I personally feel that a "vacation" is the only time when I can draw what I want to draw. I spend everyday drawing what other people want me to draw, so when I'm traveling I draw ONLY what I want. I didn't get much drawn this year, but I did do a few. Here's one. I saw a kid like this on the beach, and then my friend Steve Silver's trick of "frankenstein-ing" him with some other people I saw. The shorts came from someone, the boogieboard is actually mine, etc., etc. So, it's kind of "lifedrawing", kind of not. I liked how it turned out for a quickie.

New website design!

It's finally here...the new design of my webpage. I needed a place I could send people to see my personal work, away from Caricature Connection, the type of character design and illustration stuff I've been doing for clients and magazines for the past two years or so, and the kind I want to do more and more of. Thomas Florimonte, a great friend of mine and one of the founders of www.ka-blam.com , is the amazing webdesigner who's services I hired to do all of this over the past few months. He, and the site, far exceeded my expectations. Browse around!