I'll be drawing at a 50th Birthday Party tonight. At a local pub. Client requested Black/White Caricatures.

So I'm thinking - Perhaps I'd like to make them simple. Direct. Clean. To keep the Party moving - which is probably why they specified Black/White Caricatures.

Here are a few practices. This is fun. The pictures just roll right out of the marker. Not as wild as my usually Exaggerated Color Caricatures, but so much easier to make. And I think they look great in a little frame by the door. in the den. in the kitchen......

BTW, I timed myself drawing these simple Caricatures. Each one was done in 2 - 3 minutes. That's about 25 pictures per hour - much more than the 10 per hour that I usually recommend planning for. I'm sure it would take longer at an event than from photos - guests are human beings - but I'd still be confident of making more pictures this way.

I am a fully evolved Artist! I am fine just the way I am. I am me - Who else Could I be? I am not Al Hirschfeld. Or Alex Gard. Or any other Caricaturists whose work hangs in Sardi's. (Where I have, by the way, worked plenty of times - regular parties. my own artwork.) Those people, now gone, might have been asked to draw like Rembrandt or something while they were alive!

Not to say that it doesn't help my development to study the Artists of yesterday. Now, most of the published Al Hirschfeld pictures were drawn and redrawn before they became the pictures we know and love. And they were, of course, not drawn by Me. They were drawn by Al Hirschfeld.

I recently had a request to draw 'Hirschfeld-style' at a Party. I like to accommodate my clients. And it's healthy for my growth to do something different once in a while. So I quickly drew up this sample - the way I might do a 'Hirschfeld-style' in 5 minutes at a Party. I used blue color stick instead of black marker for the large area because it takes a lot less time to draw it that way - and my client is hoping to get a lot of pictures per hour.

I'm actually excited about the job. It will force me to study Hirschfeld. But, I'm writing that I exist too. I am an Artist. I live now. Plenty of people are glad to have a 'Gelbman picture'. Plenty of people like me.

Working in the industry, you can imagine that I go to a lot of Parties. Including a lot of Surprise Parties. But this one was a First. I was amazed. THE GUEST OF HONOR WAS IN THE HOUSE WHEN THE GUESTS AND I ARRIVED. HE WAS UPSTAIRS SLEEPING - BECAUSE HE HAD WORKED A LONG DAY. That simple. No need to take him out while we set up. Nothing like that. I think his kids had told him to come downstairs, or something like that. He just walked down the stairs of his own house and was surprised to see a houseful of Guests and Party Set-Up. I never saw anything like it.

It was a fun night. I was set up real comfortably in the Living Room. Plenty of Light. Such wonderful, happy people.....

Here are photos of some of the Caricatures that I drew:

I've arrived. First, fulfilling my childhood dream of making Coloring Books. Then, working for the Agent that seemed unattainable the first time I asked a Disney-Park Artist how she got her position. And now - Here's a picture with an interesting story. I was drawing a Caricature. Sam Viviano, an editor of

MAD MAGAZINE!

walked by - He stopped in his tracks - "I like that", he said. My heart aflutter - this time I remembered to, as silly as it is, but I swallowed my arrogance and asked him to write that onto my picture.

He did that. I, happily unfocused, then started Coloring the picture that he had just signed. Who would've thought I would have ruined it Then? But, distracted, excited, I totally Wrecked the picture that actually Had his approval written on it. An excellent picture when he saw it (line-work), I don't believe he would have wanted his approval on the finished picture after I messed it up with the Colors. Yeow - what a weird situation:

Well, I went on and redrew the guy. What could I do?: