Illustration Friday: Idle

The previous title for this blog post was, "One More Caricature." When I saw that today's Illustration Friday topic was "idle," I thought this illustration somewhat fit the description. However, this happens to be a rare moment of relative inactivity for this happy couple. They are avid travelers, which I've implied using just a few flags from the many countries they've visited on their glob-trotting adventures. Every great adventurer is entitled to rest every once and a while and enjoy their favorite beverage. Cheers!

I was commissioned by a friend to create this caricature of her parents as a gift for their wedding anniversary. My friend was enthusiastic about it and seemed to think it resembled her parents. I'll find out soon if her parents agree that it looks like them. Hopefully they'll also appreciate being immortalized as cartoon versions of themselves.

Exaggerating a person's features while still retaining a likeness is always a challenge (at least it is for me.) I'm an illustrator who dabbles in caricaturing; not a professional caricaturist such as the wizards who crank 'em out at Universal Studios or other theme parks day after day. I do caricatures a few times a year at parties. Those take me about 10 minutes and are much looser. They don't tend to resemble the people as much because I'm under pressure to get them done quickly and often I'm practically working in the dark! You can view some of these quickie caricatures in the post below this one.

This caricature took several hours, plus I had the benefit of working from a photograph and using an eraser (often!) I think it's one of the better caricatures I've done. Perhaps after I've completed another hundred or so I'll have achieved "wizard status" and I can get a gig at Universal Studios...where the weather is almost always warm. Oh to dream.