Thursday, Feb. 24, 2005 | 8:18 a.m.
They're unleashed. Free. Jammed together with easels before them, their heads lift from their drawing pads, then glance back downward.
With faces projected onto a large screen for 10 minutes at a time, the caricaturists vigorously sketch and detail. Only the scratching of pencils is audible.
Resulting distortions are as wild as the sea.
"Time's up," the monitor calls out, and a murmur of voices is punctuated by the tearing of sheets from drawing pads.
Volunteers hang the finished work. For each projected image there are more than 150 renditions P a field of oversized foreheads, thin foreheads, narrow chins, monstrous ears, curvy faces and angular eyes.
"It kills me how different we are," Nancy Freer, aka Nancy Kartoon, said later in reference to the drawings and what is known as the "likeness competition."
To the woman posing before her, she said: "I'm going to have my way with you."
And this is what it's all about. This is why they are here at the National Caricaturist Network Convention, which ends today at Palace Station.
Here, artists are not tethered to the limitations of flattery that makes for a sure sale at amusement parks.
They're breaking out. Noses are longer, more bulbous or completely absent. Eyes are lopsided. Ears are elongated. On paper, ordinary men become Cyranos.
"There's no holds on us," said Keelan Parham, artist and president of the NCN. "The more grotesque, the better. I like pretty girls. But give me a man with three chins, a handlebar mustache and receding hairline. That's a caricaturist's dream." At retail stands, parties and events, Parham said, "You hear, 'You made my nose too big and gave me a double chin.' If someone sits down and says, 'Oh, don't draw my teeth like this,' well, it's going to be a tough customer."
For this artistic freedom, artists have flown in from all over the world. They are professionals and amateurs. They network, share and steal ideas and attend seminars led by experts in the field. They talk about Al Hirschfeld, technique, marketing and extreme exaggeration.
There are all-night sketch fetes where artists cluster and draw each other, move along to another face, draw, then move on. Portfolios are on display.
There is a speed competition where artists compete in heats to draw as many portraits as possible. Some, such as Parham, have drawn as many as 30 in five minutes.
The week's best artist, known as caricaturist of the year, goes home with the Golden Nosey award, a statue.
Artists abound
In all, there are 170 competing artists this year. Roughly 20 are from Japan. Five are from the United Kingdom. There's a professional calligrapher from Los Angeles County. There are cartoonists, illustrators and caricaturists from Sea World, Six Flags and other amusement parks.
"I personally come because it's good for my career," said Michael White, an illustrator from Sarasota, Fla. "It pays for itself. The connections, the interactions. I begged my friend from back home to come because he needs rejuvenation in his work.
"There are so many different styles. The Japanese artists come from the other side of the world and they bring new stuff. Coming to these conventions opened up my eyes to all the possibilities. We let our hair down and we do what we want. We go places (with our art) we don't get to go during the year."
Leading a slide-show lecture, illustrator and caricaturist David Cowles discussed his career, his creativity, his breakout moments, what he's learned along the way and how there needn't be two eyes. One is enough. Or none.
On the screen are his renditions of Penelope Cruz and Benicio Del Toro drawn for Spanish People magazine, Alicia Keys drawn for Entertainment Weekly and other commissioned works: Bob Hope, Steve Jobs, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Tom Cruise.
Cowles' work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Time and Newsweek. He has a regular section in the New Republic.
Using minimalist facial features, he creates chunks of flat color and textures from alternative materials to portray celebrities and politicians. Mostly abstract, his work hints at cubism.
"A lot of my technique or breakthroughs are strictly from boredom," Cowles said. "There was a period for Entertainment Weekly where I think I had to draw Sharon Stone five times during a six-week period when I said, 'Ya know, I think I've said enough.' "
Regarding caricature, Cowles said, "I want to exaggerate as much as I can. I want to get it as simple as possible, but capture the likeness, the bare essence. There was a point in my caricature career where I realized I didn't have to draw the mouth on the face."
Like other artists in the field, Cowles grew up a fan of Mad magazine. He learned to draw while working on the arts staff at his local newspaper.
"I sort of fell into the guy who could do caricatures," Cowles said. "You get to the point where, well, I wanted to meet girls so I stopped doing the caricatures."
Illustrating became a career. Portraying celebrities that he's familiar with gives him, he said, freedom to get extreme and have fun with his drawings that can range from Prince to conservative Newsweek columnist George Will.
"A lot of people do have this misconception, they think I'm trying to hurt someone's feelings," Cowles said. "But I'm just trying to get the essence of the person. I try to be evenhanded with everybody, as nice and as mean equally."
Pointing to his illustration of Martin Luther King Jr., he said, "You want to show some respect for him, but you don't want to neuter your illustration, either."
Of Jay Leno, who Cowles refers to as "God's caricature," Cowles says, "As much as I try to exaggerate him I think that's about how he looks."
Sketching for dollars
In addition to Cowles, noted freelance illustrator Tom Richmond (Mad magazine), caricaturist Zach Trenholm (Entertainment Weekly and Salon.com) and Jan Op De Beeck, a top artist from Belgium, were milling about.
Tomoko Ogawara, an illustrator, well-known Japanese artist and caricaturist who has written how-to-draw books and teaches on Japanese television, was also there.
Inspired by Paul Klee, Ogawara said of caricature, "I love smiling faces. It's very happy. Good relationships make a good caricature."
Parham said that even those who don't break away from pure caricature work can have a lucrative career. At parties or other events, a caricaturist could be paid anywhere from $75 to $125 an hour.
"It depends on which area of the country you're in and how you market yourself," he explained. "Starving artists -- they're not willing to beat the pavement and treat it like a real job. Too many people want to be handed the world because they've got some talent. But a lot of people have talent.
"There are a lot of us who started out doing this to make money. Some people use it as a springboard to something else. Some people stay with it because it's their love."
A Florida resident, Parham supplies caricature artists to different theme parks and events. The warmer climate promises year-round work. Las Vegas and Southern California are fertile environs for artists, he said.
From the studio
Elaine Mills, a longtime caricaturist from Stonington, Conn., who has been working in the industry for 35 years, started at age 16 when she was one of few women in the industry.
A studio artist who also works in fine art, Mills' illustrations appear in Cosmopolitan, the Village Voice, Boston Globe and Washington Post.
Still, she said, "I love live work, having people sit, one after another, drawing 30 people in one night. I like to see the people. Talk to the people, see how they change. That's why I talk to them so they become who they are."
Richmond says that he sees the world from a fun house mirror perspective.
"Everything always looks warped to me," Richmond said. "Sometimes I bust out laughing while at a movie or in a grocery store. Or I get caught staring at someone for a long period of time."
A Minnesota resident, he has a studio in Burnsville where he does illustrations, including work for magazines and the Twins baseball team. He's also worked live at Valley Fair and Camp Snoopy in the Mall of America.
Fully illustrated cartoons from Mad magazine are among favorites in his portfolio.
Richmond is Antwan Ramar's idol.
"You see these people on the Internet. They're like celebrities in the caricature world," said Ramar, a 16-year-old from Plains, Wis., who started drawing less than two years ago after he had been drawn at a county fair.
This is his first NCN convention.
"Just watching other people can really kick me forward," Ramar said. "I take what I like from everybody's style."
He draws at kids' parties, for friends, does CD covers and plans to pursue caricaturism as a career. No one here would discourage him. Ramar is nearly the age of most working adults at the convention whose resume began with theme-park jobs.
"It's a career, but it's fun," White, from Sarasota, said. "You're making money. It's interactive. A lot of the artists aren't just cartoonists, caricaturists, they're talented in many ways.
"I went to Bellagio for the Monet show. One of the first pieces they show is from his childhood when he did caricatures. That was some of his first art. That got him recognized."
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