Now, I'm not the kind of guy that sits back and lets that little green monster eat away at me forever but the things we covet most are usually the things we think we can never have for ourselves.
My first attempt at attaining greatness was learning a language. Through much of my youth I was the kid who never had to study. I always went to all of my classes, took good notes and soaked up the material but I never had to crack a book before a test. Then came 7th grade Spanish.
I had never come across a subject that I couldn't grasp but soon found out I had no talent for foreign languages. I didn't understand it and therefore had to memorize the material. Memorizing requires study, which wasn't in my playbook. So, I got my first and only F and somehow made it all the way through high school and college without ever taking another language class. Defeated.
Skip forward 25 years. I had just gotten divorced. I was pretty much starting over with nothing and was living in a little truck camper trying pay off bills and get back on my feet. No money to spend and lots of time on my hands. I desperately needed something to fill that time and give me something other than my lowly state to think about. The answer came in the form of that great American instrument, the 'ole "five string". As if i wasn't alone and unpopular enough at the time, I bought a discount model off the internet, squeezed on some fingerpicks and started to learn to play bluegrass banjo. As Steve Martin says "You can't play a sad song on the banjo." It did wonders for taking my mind off my troubles and soon became my obsession.
That was nine years ago. While I am nowhere near mastering music, I have become good enough at the banjo to play in a few little bands and have great fun jamming around campfires and at festivals. I have met a lot of people I never would have came across if not for my trusty 5 string and have made a quite a few lifelong friends. I am not exactly an extrovert and the banjo always makes for a good conversation starter.
Back to languages... last year, my wife and I were planning a trip to Italy. She has been there a million times, has even lived there, speaks the language and is a full-blooded 3rd generation American Italian. I had never been farther than Canada, knew nothing about any part of Europe and could barely pronounce "spaghetti". Time for another challenge!
I got Rosetta Stone Volumes I & II for Italian. Every day for 4 months I went through my lessons. I listened to greetings, picked the right pictures, repeated words and phrases back into the computer, yelled at it when I knew I said it right and it buzzed me wrong anyway, learned names for every animal and piece of furniture in Italian and even started throwing out little Italian phrases in general conversation with Wifey. I was actually getting the hang of it!
Then we cancelled the trip and I never studied another lesson. I have since forgotten everything I learned and am back to ground zero.
Language 2 - Mike 0.
On to my next challenge... Remember when I said I was the kid who never studied in school but showed up for every class and took good notes? Well, those good notes were also jam-packed with doodles and drawings. Every margin had some kind of sketch or cartoon. Art was my favorite class. It was easy for me. That is not to say I was/am an artist. I didn't try any harder than anybody else, i just had more talent than the average person with no talent and was able to skate through with little effort. Classic underachiever.
Nonetheless, artsy stuff has always found it's way into my everyday life. I do my own taxidermy. My Halloween costumes are the event of my year and I've been told some have even been movie-quality. I once made an award winning 4 foot x 3 foot gingerbread ski chalet.
Years and years ago while working at a rafting company, a guide once showed me his crappy brochure. I said I thought I could do better so got an old bootleg of Photoshop 2 for the Packard Bell and made him one. Then another guy came to me and then I decided there was something easier out there than building raft frames. I went to the newspaper and churned out about 5 million used car and grocery store ads Then I worked for a home improvement chain doing catalogs and magazine ads. Next was Art Director at a publishing company. Now I do freelance graphics, desktop publishing and websites.
I consider myself a decent production artist. I am fast, put out decent looking material and am good at figuring out what a client wants and producing it. That said, everything I do is on computer and I have barely picked up a pencil in 20 years. You'd be surprised at how rusty you can get. I tried writing a letter a few months ago on a camping trip and within two paragraphs my hand was so cramped I couldn't continue. What the hell? So much for technology.
Working in publishing has kept me around artists. I have known a few cartoonists and illustrators and they always amaze me with the stuff they can draw. I constantly think of the teeshirts and logos I would love to make if I could only draw like those guys. Then it came to me, maybe I can. Only one way to find out.
So, after 44 years, I am ready to take on the challenge. I ordered fellow Midwesterner Tom Richmond's book "The Mad Art of Caricature, A Serious Guide to Drawing Funny Faces" and am diving in with both feet. I know it will be a journey and there is no easy way to success. In the first few pages he says "I tell eager young caricaturists they have about 500 or so bad caricatures in them before they start noticing the subtle things that hide inside the ordinary face."
I find myself a little behind the 8 ball in that I first have to learn to DRAW before i can even worry about exaggerating features into caricature. Still, i think I have some buried talent and am eager to uncover it. When I told my wife of my plans, the first thing she said was "good, that will give you a good reason not to have to talk to people at dinner parties, you can just draw them" (did I mention i am an introvert?) and the second thing she said was "you should do a blog of this".
So this is my journey into caricature. Starting from scratch I am going to learn how to draw eyes, noses, mouths, ears and hair and then I am going to learn how to see features in the everyday face that can be exaggerated to create a recognizable and hopefully entertaining caricature.
I've got my sketchbook, I've got my pencil. Let's get started!
Join me on My Carica-Tour.
Mike
p.s. I am not giving up on the quantum physics thing either. I live in Pasadena, CA right between Cal-Tech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Think they offer a beginner's class?
1 comment:
Mike, this is a great piece of writing. Keep it up!
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