PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT ... SENSE!

A PASSER-BY IN WASCANA PARK

It’s summertime and I am all agog to go busking! For me, busking has primarily meant slingin’ and strummin’ my twelve string and blowin’ my blues harp on a variety of street corners, hoping the passers-by will toss loads of coin and bills into my open guitar case. This summer, though, shall be different. This summer I’ll be drawing quick caricatures for those passers-by who are willing to stop and pose for five minutes, then pay me ten bucks for doing so.

I have, in the past, occasionally exchanged my guitar and harp for a pencil and sketchpad, then drew pencil portraits rather than strum and blow original songs. But this summer, regarding busking, I plan to park my guitar and pencil, pick up a Sharpie, then offer five-minute monochrome marker caricatures rather than twenty-minute pencil portraits.

For July, I’ve already booked two gigs as a caricaturist. This coming Saturday, June 28^th, I’ll be drawing at the MANITOU BEACH BUSKING FESTIVAL in Watrous, Saskatchewan, and after that, drawing caricatures at the OLD WIVES LAKE FESTIVAL, July 19^th, in Mossbank, Saskatchewan!

And how did I get from being a pencil portrait busker to a quick-draw caricaturist? Both the long and short answer is simply through practice, practice, practice, and more practice! Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week are those who graciously volunteered to be my models my practicing five-minute caricatures:

ANOTHER PASSER-BY IN WASCANA PARK

Here are some staff from my favorite guitar shop, B-SHARP in REGINA, SK.

CRAIG (OWNER)

TYSON

JORDAN

MY BEST FRIEND LOOKS 20 YEARS YOUNGER!

MY COLLEAGUE

IN HER NEW HOUSE!

IN HIS NEW HOUSE!

Here is my first pet five-minute caricature.

"GEORGE" AT WORK

Here is my first photo five-minute caricature.

MY CALGARIAN ACADEMIC FRIEND

MY CALGARIAN FRIEND, AGAIN!

My second photo five-minute caricature:

MY DRIVE-THRU FRIEND

TAKEN AT THE DRIVE-THRU

Accustomed to the peripatetic nature of my traveling light and stealth as a guitar busker, I shall carry these same traits into my caricature busking. For my caricature buskspot, I will simply scatter on the ground around me, a few laminated pictures of some of those (above) who marched in my Chaucerian Parade.

For my caricature debut this Saturday at MANITOU BEACH, I am planning on some basic creature comfort and convenience for my buskspot. I will pack along a couple of lightweight canvas lawn chairs, where my consumers and I shall sit knee-to-knee while I sketch their visages. 

In the meanwhile ... I’ll just PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

 

 

CARICATURES: MY SHARPIE ALWAYS LIES!

 

SELF-PORTRAIT

Full of bluster, I fancy myself to be a planetary busker having the creds of busking with either my guitar or my pencil on streets in Ireland, The Netherlands, Morocco, and of course, Canada. In a line, I am accustomed to the bustle of streets, both foreign and domestic.

Coming into summertime, I’ve now decided to trade my pencil for a Sharpie, and foray into the art of caricature. Yes, I am a tyro, but I can draw faces. No arms, no trunk, no legs, no accessories. Just faces.

FACTOID: This seems apropos because I believe I’ve a good enough eye and the hand skills and to make the switch from portrait to caricature busking. I may be delusional, and I know the switch will not be with facile. However, with just a week of practicing drawing caricatures taking each between three to five minutes, I just recently attached a few of my practice pictures to my application for drawing caricatures at the OLD WIVES LAKE SUMMER FESTIVAL this July. Two days later, my application was accepted!

The OLD WIVES LAKE SUMMER FESTIVAL is scheduled for JULY 19^TH. Up and until the day of the festival, I will PRACTICE PRACTIC PRACTICE, in my effort to draw caricatures in under five minutes. (This I know from experience: The longer I take to draw someone, the more my drawing is expected to look like a photograph.)

Admittedly, I shall be sacrificing quality for speed. But this is a good thing because there is no artistry in perfection. Factoid: Imperfections create style.

The art of caricature relies on an exaggeration of distinct facial features. I have read that to be a successful caricaturist, not every detail on the customer’s face needs to be exaggerated. Rather, a caricaturist needs only to highlight or alter the proportion of the one feature that truly defines that person in the caricaturist’s eye. It could be the nose, it could be the ears, it could be the mouth. But really, no matter whose face I draw, I doubt I’ll have the heart to make fun of the person. Hmmm. But if I ever do, it will only be just the one feature on my customer’s face that I personally deem significant.

Factoid: Over the years of busking with my pencil, I have always bragged that “My pencil never lies.” Now that I will be busking with my Sharpie, I will confess that “My Sharpie always lies.”

I have decided, at least for now, that my caricatures will be non-exaggerated monochromes, drawn with a Sharpie black marker. And my measure for knowing whether the faces that I draw are good or not?

If I am pleased with the picture, most likely my customer, too, will be pleased with the picture.

I know from personal experience, that attempting to eke out a living as a guitar busker can be very tough. I am thinking caricaturists have more opportunities, permanent jobs in theme parks, loads of freelance opportunities for corporate gigs, big weddings, birthday parties, and such.

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week are those who posed for my ambitions of becoming a nobby and planetary caricaturist:

MY COLLEAGUE

MY COLLEAGUE

MY NEIGHBOUR

MY NEIGHBOUR

OWNER OF MY FAVOURITE SCUBA SHOP

MY KEN FOR DRAWING CARICATURES SHALL BE A BAPTISM BY FIRE AT THE OLD WIVES LAKE SUMMER FESTIVAL THIS JULY 19^TH.

MY THREE-MINUTE SELF-PORTRAIT

 

 

MY PENCIL NEVER LIES: FROM PORTRAITURE TO CARICATURE

 

SELF-PORTRAIT

For these soon-to-be summer days of street busking, I have decided to draw caricatures rather than draw my traditional “my-pencil-never-lies” portraits. Typically, my pencil-never-lies portraits take me 15 to 20 minutes to draw, whereas my caricatures just three to five minutes. This translates to four pencil portraits per hour versus ten caricatures per hour, at ten dollars a pop. (Hmm. $40 per hour compared to $100 per hour.) CHA-CHING!

And what are the differences between my pencil portraits and my caricatures? In a line, caricatures are my pencil portraits jacked on steroids. Note, that most caricaturists exaggerate the most noticeable facial features when drawing their subjects, whereas I tend to draw more realistic than an exaggerated cartoony fashion. My notion of caricature is to make my clients smile, not make them cry. Even though people with naturally exaggerated features are much easier to draw than those having the look of the boy or girl next door, so far, I have not exaggerated anyone’s nose or chin or whatever. So far …

For drawing caricatures I use a marker, and for drawing portraits I use a pencil. In this short period of transition from one to the another, I have discovered that drawing with a marker leaves little or no room for error. A marker stroke is permanent; an errant pencil stroke can easily be erased. Even so, drawing with markers is much quicker and much cleaner than drawing with pencils. 

Here is an example of my my typical pencil-never-lies portrait drawing.

Now this next picture is my very first attempt at drawing a caricature live:

MY CO-WORKER, BRIAN

Here is another attempt at a live caricature:

MY FRIEND, LORRAINE

And yet another attempt:

TOO MUCH LIPSTICK MAYBE?!

Walking through Prince’s Island Park in Calgary, Alberta, by happenchance I bumped into a professional caricaturist.

ROB MILTON - CARICATURIST

And Rob Milton drew me:

And then I drew Rob Milton:

“There is a resemblance,” he stated. YIKES! (I thought I did a great job!)

From long ago I have learned to realize that people do not know what they look like. And after drawing literally hundreds of my-pencil-never-lies portraits, the longer it takes me to draw people, the more they expect it to look like a photograph.

Drawing clients live on the street can be, both literally and metaphorically, a hair-raising experience. Years ago, at the Farmers’ Market in my home city, a woman screamed at me that I did not capture the essence of her daughter in my pencil portrait. Another time in Marrakech, a ten-year old threw quite the tantrum when he looked at his likeness that I had drawn. (His dad was totally on my side and brought three more of his children over for me to draw!)

In moments of bluster, I love referring to myself as a “Planetary Busker.” I say this only because I have drawn pencil-portraits of people on the streets in Canada, Ireland, The Netherlands, and Morocco. I really am a planetary busker! (More bluster.)

Of course, I would be remiss not to mention, that my busking is a mercenary enterprise. I sling both my guitar and my pencil on the street for the money. And this is why I have decided that being a caricaturist is the way to go, and like I alluded to earlier in this essay, TIME IS MONEY!

Here are a few caricatures I drew a few years ago, back in 2020 when I was considering adverting to caricatures, but never did. These were drawn from pictures (obviously), which I consider to be rather meh when compared to the never-ending kinetic excitement when drawing live on the streets.

Yep. Caricatures shall be my defining zeitgeist from this day forward! Here is hoping the quality of my caricature drawing improves before my next blog post. And I do know the only way to become a successful and sought after caricaturist is to PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!

And here is my last practice caricature for today:

 THREE MINUTES!

 

DOGGONE IT!

It was windy and cool, not really the perfect day for busking, but still a perfect day in the park for trees to bud, the geese to gather, and people to walk their dogs. Just ten minutes into my thrumming and harping inside the Queen Elizabeth II Gardens, in the riparian zone close to where Her Majesty is always riding to nowhere while seated high upon her horse, a rather ragged looking gentleman, very tall and wearing very loud red and yellow blowing-in-the-wind sailing clothes, stopped walking his dog to have a chat with me.

Fittingly and amusingly, he introduced himself as “Barber.” My inner self chuckled as his foot-long unkempt and scruffy beard was quite the distraction to anything he was attempting to communicate to me. He was mumbling something about the election (we had just gone to the polls the day before, the politer still on front lawns and park billboards), but I was not listening. The distraction of his unsightly and knotty beard was quickly eclipsed by his dog defecating on my buskspot. With nary a look nor a word regarding this action of his pooch, Barber simply bid goodbye and walked away leaving the poop at my feet. 

Rather roiled, I wasn’t sure what to do. Just leave it and change buskspots? Confront Barber?  Bag it and deposit into the nearest trash can? With my iPhone, take a picture of Barber and his Fido and show it to the nearest park sheriff? Or bag it, and follow Barber to his residence and deposit it there?

For me to just leave it and move on would have been the simplest action, whereas confronting Barber was a bit more complicated. Here is what I know about confronting someone over anything. Anyone you decide to confront is always a wild card. Confronting Barber could predictively lead to a shouting match or even fisticuffs. 

But for me to bag it and deposit it into a park garbage can, yuk. Not my dog’s poop – I do not own a dog for this very reason. I’ve no quarrel with people and their pets, but having a pet is just not for me. Too much maintenance for my already imaginary busy schedule. Besides, I do not need a dog for an excuse to go for a walk in the park. This I do daily, without a dog, and with or without my guitar.

For me to bag it and follow Barber to his place and dump it there, though sinister in nature, would certainly be the most delicious poetic justice. Hmmm. But I would have to take time out of my busy busking schedule and in a most aggressive way, take a chance of confronting the wildcard.

After the fact, I googled the appropriate by law. According to my city Good Neighbor Guide:

“Picking up after your dog, be this on private property or public property, is part of responsible pet ownership. On public property, immediately dispose of your dog’s waste. Dog poop poses environmental risks health hazards, carrying diseases and parasites harmful to humans and other animals. Noncompliance of this can result in fines ranging from $100 to $300.”

Hmmm. Reading all this is good to know but to point out and preach about this to a dog walker who is guilty of not picking up after their pooch is a risky business, and such confrontation could potentially lead to a disastrous outcome.

I googled the breed of Barber’s Rover. It was a Newfoundland, and this Newfoundland left quite a load of poop.

Call me a coward – I left it and moved on. 

Doggone it! 

Doggy do does take the fun out of busking!

MY DOPPELGANGER ?!

DOPPELGANGER, was first coined by German author, Jean Paul, in 1796, and translates into English as “double walker” and/or “double goer.” When I first heard the term, I was listening to Canadian writer, Eli Mandel, as he was doing a poetry reading at Balfour Collegiate, Regina, SK in the ‘70s. At that reading, Eli expressed that he saw his doppelganger while on a walk one day, strolling through a city park, and walking near a footbridge. There, Eli noticed his doppelganger leaning over the guard rail and looking straight at him. Eli stated that that was a moment that stopped him. They waved to one another, and then each went along his way. 

“Meeting one’s doppelganger meant imminent death according to my Jewish mythos,” Eli said to us. However, this proved to be not true, at least not for Eli, who passed away in 1992, more than 20 years after a brush with his “double walker.” (Whether it proved true or not for his doppelganger, we will never know.}

Not-so-strangely, as I have just finished watching the series, “1883,” I cannot help but notice one of the main actors, ISABEL MAY,

ISABEL MAY ("1883")

looks a lot like JENNIFER LAWRENCE of “Hunger Games” fame.

JENNIFER LAWRENCE ("HUNGER GAMES")

ISABEL & JENNIFER? JENNIFER & ISABEL?

But lots of people look alike. Unrelated people can share uncanny resemblances, and according to science, people who look similar are also similar genetically. If this is true, then lots of celebrities share lots of genes, especially those that are responsible for facial features.

WILL FERRELL & CHAD SMITH

LINDA EVANELISTA & MILLA JOVOVICH

MATT DAMON & JESSE PLEMONS

A YOUNG BRAD PITT 

A YOUNG ROBERT REDFORD

But Eli Mandel was correct. Not just Jewish folklore presents doppelganger encounters as being menacing and creepy. Gothic horror novels with a doppelganger theme have been around for some time. The American writer, Edgar Allen Poe, wrote about doppelgangers in his William Wilson novel in 1839. In 1846 the Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, The Double, a horror novel having a doppelganger theme. Another American, Mark Twain, wrote about doppelgangers in The Prince and the Pauper in 1881. And, Despair, another doppelganger story, was written by the Russian American, Vladimir Nabokov in 1934.

In movies, too, there have been doppelgangers. I will just mention five, that I found to be the best: “Dead Ringers” (1988), “The Dark Half” (1993), “Enemy” (2013), “Double” (2013), and “Us” (2019). 

ENEMY

THE DOUBLE

Apparently, the odds of encountering one’s doppelganger are extremely low, with seven billion people on the planet, there is a one in 135 chance that a single pair of doppelgangers exist. 

Dear reader, please take another look at the picture atop this blog post. This is not me. This guy looks like me, but he’s not me. Just by happenchance, this picture jumped out at me while I was scrolling through my Instagram. If looks could kill, this guy is my doppelganger. He looks to be a dead ringer, does he not? Everyone that I have shown this picture to says that I look exactly like that guy on the right, and the younger version of that guy on the left looks exactly like my youngest son! The caption reads that the first picture was taken in Woodstock, and the second picture taken 50 years later. Had I gone to Woodstock in 1969, I might have met him and might have died shortly after!  But I did not go to Woodstock and …

For me, “doppelganger” need not be a pejorative term. Should I ever meet this doppelganger of mine, I really doubt there would be any danger, drama maybe, but not danger.

Now for my public appeal:

If anyone knows or recognizes my doppelganger whose picture appears in this blog post, please have him contact me. Not pretending to be a private investigator on this matter, but rather sideloading this burden onto my readers who are willing to do some Facebook friend farming for me, we can dangerously assume just two facts: 

My doppelganger is an American and my doppelganger went to Woodstock August 15th, or 16th, or 17th, or 18th in 1969. 

And that’s all I’ve got, folks!

IN MY FAVORITE GUITAR SHOPPE