Well, another MSCA Monthly Dinner at Garibaldi’s Pizza is in the books…sketchbooks that is!
At this month’s dinner we had MSCA/NCS member Greg Cravens share his secrets for turning caricatures into cash, and how to have fun while doing it.
Greg’s a professional cartoonists who is syndicated and does a ton of advertising cartooning. If you’ve seen a cartoon in The Memphis Flyer or on its cover there’s a good chance it was a Greg cartoon.
Greg was born to draw funny and has been drawing caricatures since he was young enough to get in trouble for it way back in high school. He started make money off of drawing funny at 14, and honed his caricature skills at Opryland in Nashville back in the early ’80s – along with former MSCA member Bob Kimball and WB Animation’s James Tucker.
He’s drawn caricatures of MSCA memberrs over the years at various dinner meetings and events. He’s looking for folks who are interested in taking over some of the numerous caricature gigs for events that he’s offered. He just can’t do them all, and there’s a real shortage of caricaturists in our area.
Greg broke down the basics of caricaturing and even brought along some books to show examples of various caricature artists and syles of caricatures. He drew a sample of a “party” caricature, and explained how it’s not that far from drawing a “smiley face”, once you’ve learned the steps and have done some practicing.
We had a great turnout for the event, and Greg asked for victums, uh- volunteers to come up frint and sit down in the hot seat to have their caricature drawn.
Greg also asked for a volunteer to come up and try their hand at caricaturing. Devin Hodges took the challenge, and in his case he tried his left hand at a party caricature. Greg critiqued his work, gave some advice on how to improve, as well as some advice on what to say (or not say) to caricature customers. Apparently never ask people, “How do you like it..?” when showing them the finished drawing.
He then wanted to show an example of a “mean” caricature. I sat down in the chair for that one.
After Greg’s demonstration was finished he turned the group loose to draw caricatures of each other.
It’s not as easy as Greg makes it look, but many members really took to it.
Thanks to Greg for sharing his cartooning knowledge with our group. He’s looking to teach more cartooning classes in the future- stay “tooned”..!
Our next dinner will be on March 5th, the first Tuesday of the month.
If you’d like to teach or do a demo like Greg and Anotonio Johnson have, let us know!
BTW- Greg is the current President of the Southeast Chapter of the National Cartoonists Society and Membership Chairman for the National Cartoonists Society, and a former president of the Mid-South Cartoonsists Association.
He, along with some of us MSCA’ers will be in Atlanta next month for the SEC-NCS annual meeting at the Center For Puppetry Arts.
If you’re interested in attending or joining the NCS contact Greg at GregCartoon(at)gmail(dot)com.
