Working Out, part 4

Finally, the last post on this subject. Where was I in the story? Oh yeah...

After being inspired by my buddy Tom Richmond's metamorphosis in the gym, I finally got back into the gym myself two years ago, just in time for my 20 year (!) high school reunion. I found you have to take it a little slower, and train smarter than when you're twenty ( a stint in rehab for 3-4 months for a torn lower back muscle taught me that), but it can be done. And it should be done. I feel younger and stronger than I did five years ago. Somedays, ten years ago. Do I look like the bodybuilding legend I dreamed of being when I was a teenager? Heck, no, as this picture from last month shows! (Notice the strategically placed baby, right over where abs USED to be). But, I'm doing okay for my age, and I intend to keep hitting the weights. The second pic is of my recently completed home gym, which should help me in these goals. No more waiting in line for sweaty benches! Woo Hoo!

In conclusion, let me state my real reasons for getting back into shape. Sure, like a lot of people, I'm fighting Father Time. And I LIKE being in better shape. But, there's so much more to it than that. I've got a beautiful wife, and two beautiful daughters who I want to be here, and be healthy, for. I like being able to bring in the groceries, put stuff in the attic, and move furniture around and around the rooms for my wife until she decides where she likes it. I do all of these everyday, normal, things and more SO much easier than I did before I got back into shape.

Also, I gotta be honest. Iif my daughters take after my wife, which I'm sure they will, they're gonna be real "lookers". Have you seen the size of teenage boys these days? I've gotta keep working out, just so I can intimidate them when they come over for dates!

I'm really not kidding.


Brady's almost nine. I only have a few more years.


Gotta go hit the iron....

Working Out, part 3

Well, our Myrtle Beach trip is winding down, and when I get back I'll have to really bust my hump getting some work done. So I figured while I had a sec, I'd better finish up the work out post I started. Being here all week with the Parham side of the family has brought a lot of this stuff back to my memory. The twin uncles who first inspired me to work out have been here (I don't think they're in any of the photos I've posted, though), and my aunt Arlene (whose pic I DID post), who later inspired me to get into modeling, has been here as well. Yep, modeling. That's what REALLY derailed my bodybuilding plans. I met a girl when I was a freshman in college, an upperclassman, who told me I should get into modeling/acting. To impress her, I decided I'd try it. My aunt had been a model, and a beauty pageant queen, so she set me up with her agency. Over the next six or so years, modeling and lifeguarding (notice this shot was taken in a pool...those are swim lanes behind me) were what I did the most. Oh I still worked out, but my metabolism was so quick, like I said, that it didn't matter for a few years.

When I transferred to art school, I really hit the gym hard. My partner was a competitive bodybuilder (regional contests), and helped me gain a bit of size finally. Then he started taking steroids, "to go to the next level", and urged me to do the same. That's when we parted ways, and the bodybuilding urge really began to leave me. By this time, quite a few big modeling agencies were interested in me, but I was too big for their clothes. So, I had to drop weight like crazy. And basically starve myself. It worked...I did pretty well for awhile as a model. But that's a different, complicated story all it's own.

Suffice it to say, with all of this up and down, gaining muscle, having to lose it, eating like crazy to gain size, then starving myself, I developed a pretty bad diet, and, of course, as I got older, my metabolism slowed. I had still built a good foundation early on that has somewhat stayed with me, thank God, but I've often thought that modeling destroyed my build to a degree, and have resented that. As crazy as that sounds. But, it was while in that field that I met my beautiful wife, Barbie, so I know that God led me down the right paths, ultimately. Not that there weren't a few unpleasant detours along the way...

Weird Myrtle Beach....

I grew up in South Carolina, but in Greenville, which is in the northwestern corner of the state, basically. Myrtle Beach, and where our condo is in Cherry Grove, is four or more hours away, in what we always called "The Lowcountry".
Some things here remind me of my hometown, like the polite residents, and the fact that you can get a "meat and three" at lots of restaurants . But there's always been this kind of weirdness about this area of the state to me. They play by their own, different rules, it seems.

Take the first photo here for example. Where else could you find a place named "Tar Baby's"? The sign on the door even said "De Tar Baby say "Come on in, ya'll!". When I first saw the sign, my mouth just dropped open. It's sad that racist images like this still exist. Their sweet tea was good, but I felt , I don't know, a little "dirty" eating there. The whole theme kinda gave me a queasy feeling.

The next example is the KNIFE CASE from the old boardwalk arcade. Yes, you can redeem your tickets from skee ball and the like and "win" one of these many knives.

Only in Myrtle Beach, folks.


Finally, here's a little statue I found for sale in the wonderful Gay Dolphin. There was so much weirdness in this store, that it was hard to pick just one thing to show you. But, I think that this is a fairly good example of the sheer insanity on display there. Yes, it's a little gnome. Leaning on a... FLASHLIGHT???? I have no idea why. And it's not a lampstand or anything. There's NO REASON for him to be beside a flashlight that I can tell. The sheer randomness of this really struck me. It was so cool, I almost purchased it.

Brady having fun

Here's a pic from this week here in Myrtle Beach that I didn't get to post yet. Brady with our bud, Jeremy. We've spent nearly as much time with him and his crew, as you can tell, as we have our family. Heck, they practically ARE family at this point. They've hung out at the beach with the Parhams, shopped with the Parhams, ate with the Parhams....I think we're going to adopt them.

Me and the Grandparents, etc

Probably the biggest reason we wanted to come to the Beach is to see my grandparents. "Nonnie" will be eighty next month (she's still beautiful), and "Papa" will be 81 in September. We don't really know how much more time we'll have with them (Papa's really been declining lately), so this was an important trip for us.

The final pic is of Brady as a dog. We buried her in the sand, and let her pick what she wanted to be. She's dog crazy, so.....

Parhams (and Friends) at the Beach

Here's some beach pix from this week....

More Toxic...

Here's some more pix of the Toxic concert we all attended. Most of these are afterward, when we were hanging out with them. The really fuzzy one, though, is a shot of, yes, my grandmother, ON STAGE, as Jeremy and Paulie gyrated, Chippendales-like, around her. Rene of the group has his head on her lap. I was videotaping, and laughing so hard that I was crying.

More Gay, etc.

Here's a couple more pics of the Gay Dolphin, and one of the bicycle plate wall. This was really special to me as a kid. They supposedly had every name there is on the wall on one of these plates. But IF they DIDN'T, you got a FREE trip to the top of the Gay Dolphin's tower (probably a whole 75 feet up). Of course, with my name, I ALWAYS got a free trip. It was one of the only times as a kid that my name paid off for me.

We also got to go to the old arcade that still exists down on the Boardwalk here yesterday. Some of the machines in there are from the 1930s, at least. Here's a pic of Brady, Barbie, Jeremy, and his kids playing the games. Also, we went to Mad Myrtle's for ice cream. You can see all the smiling faces.

Afterward, me and my girls went to "Family Kingdom", a small amusement park. I watched them ride. And I sweated.

It means Happy...honestly

We had the chance yesterday to "make the hang" in downtown Myrtle Beach with some of our best buds in the world, the James', (Jeremy, Shalisa, Julian, and Jason) of Toxic Audio. We went to all of the old spots I remember from summers here as a kid. At least the ones that still exist (sniff sniff). I was just glad that the world's tackiest gift shop, The Gay Dolphin, was still here. Here's me and Jeremy in front of it...

The Parhams go Toxic!

Let's take a few days off of the working out posts, okay? We'll get back to that in a few days. Right now, Barbie, Brady, and I are in Myrtle Beach, SC on a vacation with my family from upstate SC. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc., are all here from the Parham side of the family. They come every year, but I haven't been with them on this trip in oh, twenty five years or so.
Mom and Dad couldn't come up with us, so a big reason I'm posting these images is to catch them up on what's going on. Hey, guys! Miss you!

What's really cool is that this week coincided with our good friends and acapella stars Toxic Audio's (www.toxicaudio.com) run at the Myrtle Beach House of Blues. So, we got a lot of the family to go with us to one of their concerts. It was a great time, and they even pulled my grandmother on stage during one of the numbers. Here's a few pix from the night. The top is the whole gang with toxic, the middle one is me and my aunt (can you believe she's 50???), and the bottom one is Brady with her playmates, Jason and Julian James. We're having a blast.....

Working Out, Part3

Oh man, now THIS first picture is embarrassing. I must be about 17 here. Yikes. Look at that hair. This is back when people used to tell me I had "David Hasseloff hair". It was a "body wave", aka perm, that I got back in my senior year of high school. As if I wasn't enough of an outcast, having transferred to public school the year before, and quickly gaining a reputation as a complete non-partying teetotaler, the perm solution BURNT my skin, and left a huge, gaping, oozing sore on my forehead. Of course, all of the oh-so-understanding teenagers I went to school with said it was a "runaway zit". It seemed to last forever, but I guess it really didn't. There are no photos of me with it (thank God), only my scarred memories. I'm sure those must be Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, or something cheesey like that. Dig that 27 inch waist...I'd kill for that again! I have no idea what that "look" is on my face. Classic deer in the headlights, I think. Oh, yeah, you gotta love that wallpaper...

Anyway, it was about this time that I got out of my basement and started going other places to work out. One place was at my high school, in the football team's weight room. I was the only non football player who worked out there. We had a pretty scrawny team, so I was really one of the strongest guys there. Believe it or not.

I also started working out at a "real gym". The Greenville Athletic Club, it was called. It was dingy, smelly, and had lots of iron. No chromeplated machines, and very few women. All of the "cool guys" from my high school worked out there, so it kind of made me cool too, since I worked out with them. But not too cool. I was still the art guy who didn't party. But I did get some notoriety around the gym. Some older guys (at least 25 ...they were ancient!) even told me a few times what potential I had in bodybuilding. That just encouraged me more. I was sure I'd be Mr. Olympia in a few years. This was also the time when I first heard about steroids. I never knew they existed until then. I asked my uncles about this one guy who'd come into the gym (in striped spandex bike shorts...I still remember them!), and just go around posing in the mirrors, and talking to the few women who dared work out in the gym. He never worked out, it seemed, but he was HUGE! Plus, his skin was really, really red all of the time, and he had huge zits all over his back. All signs of steroid use, I learned from them. I promised myself right then that I'd never use them. Stay tuned, because this subject comes up again!

The second photo here was taken just yesterday. It's a photo of two of my most prized possessions, actually. These muscle mags are some of the only things my Dad has from when he was a kid (along with the 45s I mentioned yesterday)! He gave them to me when I started getting interested in working out. I was about the same age then that he was when he bought them. I've had them longer now than he did! They were a part of the "Joe Weider Muscle Building Club", where you got a membership card, etc. Unfortunately, he lost the card long ago.
I'd love to have it.

Working Out, part 2

Yep, I found the earliest photo I have of me from my beginning work out days. Don't laugh! Obviously, Schwarzenegger or Reeves I was NOT! This polaroid was in an old album that's taken me a few days to find. Took a lot of clean up in Photoshop to make the image even show up. It's really cool that I still have it, though.

Now where was I? Oh yeah, it's about 1981, and I'm fourteen years old. Like I said, I was getting Muscle and Fitness in the mail now. Funny, I just had a flashback to about that time... I still remember reading my uncles' copy of Schwarzenegger's autobiography, "Education of a Bodybuilder", while we were over at my Grandparents' home one Sunday afternoon after church. I was in the kitchen. Weird how you remember certain things, where you were, what you were doing....

Anyway, I somehow talked my parents into getting me a weight set. A Joe Weider bench, with the old cement filled weights. The only place I could fit the gym set was outside on the deck. I'd work out there, then cover it up with an old blue tarp when I was done. That's when this pic was taken. In the original photo, before I zoomed in to get this image, the tarp is visible, off to the right. I grew up in Greenville, SC, in the northwestern tip of that state. Asheville, NC, and the beginning of the what would lead into the Great Smokey Mountains, was less than an hour away. So, we did get mildly cold weather in the Fall and Winter, and even a few snow days most years (usually on my birthday). Mostly, it was kind of cold, gray, and rainy for most of the Winter.
So, the Weider set on the deck inevitably began to rust in a very short period of time. I moved it inside for a few months, into a corner of my bedroom. I'd lock the door and turn up the stereo as I worked out. I "rocked out" to Christian rock band PETRA, the American Graffiti soundtrack (50s Doo Wop), and to my Dad and Mom's old 45s of Elvis, Ricky Nelson, and early Beatles. I was a weird kid, I know. Remember, I was working out alone. No spot. That spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E when you're working out with free weights only, and don't know what you're doing. That's why, one night, I dropped 175 pounds on my nose while I was bench pressing. That was my max at the time, and after I did it once, the bar started coming down on me. I screamed for help, but with the blaring stereo, no one could hear me. I should've just tipped the bar to one side, but instead has the bright idea to let it fall BEHIND me. It's hard to think clearly in those situations. Well, the bar came down ON me...right on the bridge of my nose. I rolled it down, where it busted my lip, and then the adrenaline kicked in...I literally THREW it six or eight feet away, where it bounced off my bed.

That's when I graduated to the DP 1000, as I believe it was called. Sold by SEARS, it was a cable and weight stack based system. I didn't need a spotter. We assembled it in the moldy, partially finished basement. Actually, it was just a cement slab in the basement, surrounded by dirt. I only once remember an animal, a rat or something, being in there when I was. Well, maybe twice. I got to my "gym", rain or shine, by running outside and down the hill to the side of the house, since there was no inside entrance to the basement. Once there, I worked out by the single naked lightbulb that hung from the ceiling. I remember playing Rocky III's soundtrack ("Eye of the Tiger"), as I worked out and dreamed of being a pro bodybuilder....


To be continued...

Working out...

"The Path not taken". Man, I've had a lot of those in my forty years. Everyone has, I guess. Being artistic, and nonconformist, mine were always just a little bit "off the beaten path", I guess you could say. Model, actor, comic book artist, Elvis impersonator, I did them all. Did pretty well at them too, or at least showed some potential to do well. Then I finally settled on caricature artist. I've been very blessed with that. Now as I keep that going, I am transitioning more and more into "just a cartoonist". Everything I've done is just part of my lifelong goal to never have a "real job". Probably goes back to that Tshirt I had printed up back in the early '80s in Myrtle Beach, SC that said "Why Be Normal?".

But, about the above photo. It is my goofy attempt to put my head on, to those who recognize the photo, the body of the incomparable Steve Reeves. If you read the comments so far, my buddy Tom picked it out right away. Reeves played "Hercules" in all of the most famous sword and sandals epics of the early to late 50s. He was the most famous bodybuilder ever until Schwarzenegger, and, for a time, the biggest box office draw in the world. Even in these days of the HGH and anabolic steroid freaks that populate professional bodybuilding, to most purists of
the sport, Reeves is still one of the legends.

Which gets me back to the other path not taken. The one I haven't told you about yet. Yep, I wanted to be a professional bodybuilder. For those of you who've known me int he past ten, relatively couch potato years , as my wife and I have grown our business and our family, this may seem hard to believe. Almost as hard to believe as the Elvis impersonator thing. But, once upon a time, I was convinced I would be Mr. Olympia one day.

Don't laugh.


It all started with my uncles, I believe. Manuel and Daniel were and are my twin uncles, and they're only about six years older than me (Yeah, if you say them in the proper Southern drawl, their names rhyme. Cute.) They were kind of like my cooler, older brothers more than anything else. I idolized them, to a degree. When they started bodybuilding in the late 70's, I remember reading their Muscle and Fitness mags. Arnold was still competing. Manuel even went on and competed in a local contest. I know he didn't win, but I can't remember how he placed. About this time, they met a fellow young upstart who was also starting competitions...a man named Lee Haney, who eventually broke Arnold's Mr. Olympia titles.

Anyway, I subscribed to Muscle and Fitness myself at the age of fourteen, and started working out in our basement. This was the time of Mohammed Makkaway, Samir Bannout, and Bob Paris. Frank Zane was still winning, and Boyer Coe was still competing. It was a great time for bodybuilding. The last years before the freaks took over.


To be continued....

Cocoa Travel Sketches, part2

Here's another sketch from our beach trip last week. I had a lot of fun drawing this "beach beauty" as she walked briskly down the beach. I like sketching quickly, trying to catch the person's essence as they go by. The lines I could do, the weight of the figure (literally) I could play around with, made this one fun. I also LOVE gray chartpaks and black prismacolor, and used them on all of my beach sketches.

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!

NCS!

This weekend is the National Cartoonists Society annual bash. This year it's at the Ritz Carlton here in Orlando. The NCS is an elite society of cartoonists, membership by invitation only, (I feel really blessed to be in it), and our bashes are quite the swanky affair. Not exactly like the Polynesian shirts and flip flops attire of the NCN, which I am more familiar with. This is Tuxes and gowns only. This year I broke down and bought a tux..not sure how often I'll get to wear it, so we'll have to see how good an investment it turns out to be. Anyway.... here I am in my monkeysuit, with my always gorgeous wife, Barbie. The crazy guy between us is Sam Viviano, art director of MAD magazine. We've had a lot of fun this weekend hanging out with him and our good friends the Richmonds, the Steckleys, and the Silvers. We've also met a lot of other great cartoonists whose strips I've always admired, and some I've never heard of before, that I'm now fans of.

The second pic here is of me and Steve Silver at the opening party Friday night (thanks to Tom Richmond for the photo). No, we didn't coordinate our oufits, black shirt and khakis, ahead of time. Demented minds think alike, I guess...

My buddy Tom Richmond was up for a couple of Reuben awards (the NCS' version of the Oscars), and won one of them, for Advertising Illustration. The third pic's of me and Ed Steckley with Tom after his win. Ed and I figured it was the closest we'd be to a Reuben for awhile....

Congrats, Tom! You deserve it , man!

Storked!

More character design work. They wanted a drunken stork, and they wanting him to be reclining back a bit, so he could be leaning on something. Man, I love doing this kind of stuff!

The really interesting thing here is that I did a lot of the research, mental work, and sketching on this guy probably two years ago, for another client. How so? Well, that client wanted me to update a badly drawn character he had, named "Storko", for a line of baby's clothes, I believe. Yeah, I know, real creative name. Unfortunately, I underquoted the job a bit, because at the time I was wanting more character design work, and it seemed like a quick, easy one to do.

Long story short, the guy turned out to be rude, hard to work with, and kept wanting knitpicky revisions on the sketches. He landed up trying to "renegotiate" on the fee we'd already agreed to (which was, again, lower than it should've been). I always get a credit card upfront, but since we were only in the sketch stage, I didn't even charge him. Frankly, I didn't care. I was just ready to be done with him! I've never done this before and wouldn't again. I'd charge his card regardless.

Fast forward to now, (when I do much more of this character design stuff) and THIS job comes in. I quickly resurrected my "Storko" sketches and my reference photos from google, and took off. This guy came out perfect the first time I drew him. The client loved him, paid well, and everyone's happy.

The moral? Keep those old sketches, people! You never know when you'll get to use them. Sometimes old jobs aren't really dead- they can come back to life in another form!

The other moral? Don't work for anyone who wants you to redesign their "Storko" character.

Hey hey, we're the.....

Yep, still slammed around here. Thought I'd share the latest piece for a client. This is for a landscaping company. They're gonna put it on their trucks, shirts, etc., etc. Was a lot of fun to do. Particularly like the crazy monkey on the far right of the piece.

I love drawing monkeys.

Yellow Page Guy!

Here's another new client. Has a biz selling yellowpage ads to people. Wanted his head on a phonebook.

LiveDraws- Hit and Runs

Here's some recent live work again. I have done quite a few tradeshows lately. Clients have been great (two of them tipped me really good), people have loved the drawings. When I have an empty chair for a few moments, though, I have been sketching people at a distance, or at other booths, unbeknowst to them. Then, I'll go over and give them their pic that they haven't even known they were posing for! I call them "Hit and runs". It's a lot of fun for them and me. Plus, the client loves it! I figure I'm being paid to draw, I tell them, so that's what I'm going to do ... no matter what!

"Hit and runs", though, are pretty difficult. For one thing, you have to be fast. People are NOT posing! Also, you get interesting views, gestures, and expressions. As an artist, you get out of your "comfort zone" really quickly doing this. You have to draw people in profile, facing the "wrong" way, in motion, in complicated poses, etc, etc. They really force you to build up your visual library. Here's a few "Hit and Runs" from the past few days...

New Client

This is for a great new client of mine. She has a company that empowers women to purchase their own cars. She wanted something cute, sexy, with a sassy look. I drew her completely on the Wacom (the car was still on paper and scanned in, though). Yep, starting to get more comfortable with that. I hope to soon be paperless all the time!