Here is a quick blog about little known facts about artists from any era. I hope you enjoy it and entertained at the same time…

Norman Rockwell never smiled because he had no teeth. They were replaced with a composite of peanut shells and high sucrose gum.

Leonardo da Vinci is from the town of Vinci, Italy. His middle name is not Da.

Andy Warhol, ironically never liked Campbell’s Soup, he preferred Progresso.

Claude Monet and Eduard Manet were the same person.

Pablo Picasso actually had an astigmatism in his eye that caused him to see things like his cubist paintings. He just painted what he saw.

Mary Cassatt really wanted to be a go-go dancer instead of an artist, except for the fact that go-go dancing was not around in the early 1900’s.

Georges Seurat thought he was two persons, hence his first name.

Edward Hopper, ironically could not balance on one foot and move around.

Georgia O’Keeffe was a groupie for the Rolling Stones in her youth after she left art school.

Eduard Manet despised mayonnaise although it was invented by him in a freak accident involving paint gesso, bread and luncheon meats.

Pablo Picasso always wore a white short sleeved shirt with thin, horizontal red lines.

Vincent Van Gogh, was a great pinball player.

Roy Lichtenstein, ironically hated the comics page of the newspaper as it always made his fingers dirty.

The tallest artist was Edward Hopper at 7 feet 7” and shortest was Henri de’ Toulouse Lautrec at a little under 6-8 inches tall in his stocking feet.

Georgia O’Keeffe was born in Wisconsin but had never eaten a brat.

Hokusai has a cool name.

Paul Gauguin gave up his tranquil life in Tahiti to become a professional bowler.

Jacob Lawrence invented the “electric slide” and the “hustle”.

Wait…I think I am wrong on that…..yep, I checked my facts…..it was actually Georgia O’Keeffe who invented those dances. Man, she really did stuff!

Albrecht Durer liked to be called Fat Albrecht due to the fact that he would enter a room in Germany saying, “Ja! Ja! Ja! Was ist going on now, huh?”

John Singer Sargent was neither an accompanist to a band nor in the military.

Georgia O’Keeffe was the inspiration to Ray Charles’ song “Georgia” due to the fact that he really liked her paintings of Southwestern scenes.

Claude Monet actually wrote a rock and roll hit. Ironically it was not “Monet, Monet” but rather “Billy, Don’t be a Hero.”

A little known fact, Georgia O’Keeffe was the heavyweight champion of the world in 1953 and the Playmate of the Year at the same time.

And finally….

Dean Konop made up most of the information you see here to humanize these great artists. If you are offended please note that it was all in fun and that they are all deceased and note that none of these facts are true….except for a few of them…..guess which ones?

Yesterday was the first official snow day of the 2009-2010 school year. It is extra special as I was supposed to teach that day. No school though, so that meant no art class. Kind of a ying to the yang thing, something good but then something bad at the same time. But that is what happens in Wisconsin during the winter months.

I can remember the snow days from the time I was a student. The worst kind of snow days were those half days off. The snow could be removed by the noon hour, so you were still expected to get to school. Or you would have a two hour delay, which means that you still had to get ready for school and your whole day was condensed in shorter time periods. You would have math class during lunch and science class right next to gym. It would have been easier to just cancel the whole day and start over the next day, but apparently that matrix equation and cosine could not wait.

So what do kids do on a snow day? Well, some find time to play in the snow and build forts and for the most part, kids sleep in a bit more. Usually the older students do this and some art teachers too. It is a great feeling to know that basically you are not expected to actually show up and been seen at school. For the most part, with weather-predicting equipment and forecasts so up-to-date, teachers know for sure if the schools would be closed the day before. Then they really can sleep in! For the poor part-time teacher (and I make an emphasis on POOR) that type of teacher has to watch the new crawl of closings on the local tv morning shows or listen to the radio. Either option is not the highlight of the morning ritual for the very poor part-time teacher. (Did I mention that I meant poor, as in not financially abundant and not weak in skills…just needed to make note of that)

Getting back to watching morning tv and listening to the radio, I really can’t stand either. Take for instance yesterday: I hate the morning radio as there is a broadcaster on the air that thinks he is the next coming of Walter Winchell. I hat this guy. He is a blowhard and a bully and leans so much to the right that I am amazed he does not fall off his chair. So I totally do not listen to the radio. The television…no better. They crawl the canceled schools on the bottom of the screen and because my school could go by two names… St. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Grade School or Two Rivers Public and Private schools, two names that are waaaaaaayyyyyyy in the back of the alphabet. So you are not only seeking intensely to find those schools listed on the crawl, but you get a little upset when you see all the schools from Appleton and Beaver Dam hog all the time allotted.

To really make matters worse, if the broadcast goes into commercial, the crawl stops and starts over again FROM THE BEGINNING!!!!! Argggggghhhhhh! By this this you can’t get back to sleep. You might as well get ready for school and hope that the principal acts like the death row warden and gives you a last minute reprieve
. This is what happened yesterday, I was watching the ABC morning show. I do not want or care to give the name of the program because it stinks. That is not fair, let me iterate….it really blows. I do not watch it often or at all, but Diane Sawyer is on the screen and is talking to a doctor about the very importance of a vitamins to young women a very important issue as both of them are sitting on stuffed chairs and drinking liquid in a hot cup. I do not give a crap about that at the time. I want to know if the crawl will say “ST. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Grade School——canceled”. They are almost ready to get to the S’s of the list of schools that are canceled and the whole screen pops up to show this doctor’s name. What the heck?!!!! ARRRRGGGHGHHHHHHHH!!!!

To make matters worse they keep his name on the screen for the rest of the interview and all the names on the crawl are blocked because of it. Diane and the young doctor are having such a good time meanwhile I am pulling clumps of hair out of my head as this is the tenth time I have missed my school’s name. There is no time for me to get a few more z’s. I have to be at school and get supplies ready for the few kids that will show up. I want to curse Diane the Cougar and her boy-toy doctor.

Quickly the email rings and I am notified that school is canceled. What a relief. I put down my notepad of which I was writing a letter to the ABC affiliate, and went back to sleep…..only to be awakened by the call to get out of bed and start shoveling.

I have drawn my fair share of people and made them look better then what they actually look like. The reason? Long story short, the customer is the main person who is paying you. If you want to be paid, draw a presentable caricature.

There have been instances that I have had to just bite my tongue and not “report” the actually “truth”. I have had people say to me to knock a few pounds off or make them younger or with more hair. In most cases that is just a way to bring a little levity to the situation. But in all honesty, that is what I am trying to do anyway.

My first caricature experience, I had to draw for a Wedding Party in Green Bay. I was called up by “my manager”. I did not know I had a manager. Apparently some guy heard about me and wanted to run an entertaining agency and needed caricaturists. Plus he had a gig for me and it paid $120.So I said sure. I did not know at the time that I had to owe this guy 35% of my cut. That sucked. Especially after I got to the gig.

I did not know exactly how to work it so I had a make-shift easel and a few matte boards and some drawing utensils such as sharpie markers, pencils, erasers and colored markers too. I was getting paid as a total sum so anyone who wanted a caricature, just had to step right up. I was scheduled to draw for 2 hours and I stayed 2 hours longer. First lesson: Only stay as long as you are scheduled. If you bend this rule a bit, you will still be drawing hours after you are supposed to be home. In this first time out drawing as a “professional” caricaturist, I so wanted to please everyone that was there.

Getting back to drawing at this event. There happened to be a mother of 3 children. The oldest happened to have a smile with a gap. After drawing babies and children (or so it seemed) I was thrilled to try to break the monotony of the perfect smiles. Before I even picked up the pencil, this young girl said something to the effect, “Don’t put the gap in my teeth!”

What was I supposed to do? This little detail made the whole portrait look like the subject. I had the partially-closed eyes, the long black hair, the freckles (which she said not to add, after I drew them). Without the gap this picture would not look like her at all. What to do?

In a quick instant, I decided not to draw in the teeth. It basically looked like a white strip in her mouth. A perfect white strip. From that decision, I have decided not to draw in the teeth. For the most part, people do not smile so much that you need to show all the teeth. This is what I figured out in my head and this is why to this day, I do not draw lines where the teeth are. When you add lines, you create a space and it just does not jibe with what I do.

Getting back to the first gig, the mother of this girl was so pleased with the caricature that she wanted one with her daughter. Another thing I have learned, trying to draw the same person twice in a row is kind of difficult and somehow does not work out for me. I can do it, but do not expect a carbon copy of the same caricature in different sizes. I am not a xerox machine. I do not make perfect copies. It is the artist in me that likes to change things up, otherwise I would be a professional counterfeiter, and that’s not right. This seemed to baffle the mom and she basically was adament about drawing her with her daughter. So I did.

It turned out alright. Granted I decided to put away my markers and just focus on the black and white images. That way it gave me more time and more people to draw, the main purpose of why I am getting paid. I was sent there not to be a personal caricaturist to a few, but to a many people.

After drawing Gappy and Mom, I thought I was through with the two. No, not quite. Mom came up and wanted to be drawn by herself with a martini. Okay, I can do that. I drew this woman with clearer eyes and not so jacked-up. Then she wanted her son drawn with her. She was so pleased with that caricature, that she wanted to have another one drawn of her and her TWIN sister. TWIN SISTER! This kind of irked me. To monopolize me to draw this woman’s family when many others want to get drawn is downright rude and out of line. Now if you paid for it, yes that would be acceptable. But this was technically a free event as I was paid for the full time ahead.

So I started on the twins. They both looked the same. They wanted to draw themselves sipping martinis with their arms crossed. I just wanted to draw them and get it over with. After gritting my teeth and finishing it up, the two were so baked, that they were hugging each other and having a grand old time. I gave them the envelope, which I supplied and thanked them. Before they took it, they said the dreaded words any caricaturist hates to hear (or at least me)....“Now who will keep it?”

Don’t tell me I have to make another copy of these two! It is the same freakin’ person in the last 4 pictures!

Now to be honest, I should have done some things to avoid this mess. One, have a limit on the free caricatures. One per person. If they are paying for it, fine, but remind them that the artist (you) has limited time to draw and that he/she is scheduled to draw as many DIFFERENT people as possible, otherwise the artist will not get paid. Basically if you are not paying for it, you only get one.

Now technically, the lady that I had to draw 4 times, was not that difficult to draw but rather to handle. Similar to any customer, try to talk to them in a calm manner and explain the process to them. I think if I would have said this earlier, I would not be in the jam I was in.

By the way, the lady wanted another caricature of herself, her twin sister, her daughter, Gappy, her son and her husband and the other twin’s husband and two kids. Not all together but separate. She told me that she was from Indiana and had never had the experience of being drawn. Plus she wanted all the people that she was with to have a copy of the caricature. At that time of the conversation, I looked up and saw that I was 10 minutes over my deadline and I was ready to go home. I also decided that from now on, I will make the decision of when and where I will draw caricatures. Not some guy that called up and was one caricaturist short in his agency.

I know what you are thinking. Why would I write about this? Why would you want to read about this? Well it is what I have been doing for the last couple of weeks and I am totally done with the project.

It started for me when I spotted a poster to hang up at the library. I am the poster person at the library. No poster is put up without my approval. Many a time has happened when a poster is placed quickly on the bulletin board by using some other poster’s library approved push pins. There is also the occasional rummage sale sign tacked up with staples! The horror!

But anyway, there is a poster about a local event to raise money for scholarships in the area. People or artists need to decorate a plain chair and donate it to this auction and then they will be displayed at the Rahr-West Art Museum in Manitowoc. A very neat idea and if you like that kind of art or just want to be inspired from it, come on over to Manitowoc around November 1st. But check the date for sure.

I asked my sister to see if she had an old chair I could use. Sometimes a chair can be found in the garbage or wherever and Jerry, her husband, may pick it up as that is part of his job. Anyway, she did have a chair and it was similar to a Captain’s Chair. It was shiny, with polyurethane and shellack and it had a few drips of paint on it already. Debbie was using it as a paint chair.

Now in the old days, I would have spent weeks getting that stain off the chair. Acrylic paint will not stay on a oil-stained surface. In high school I did the same project and used a heat gun to scrap off the used paint. It is messy and dangerous and did I mention messy and dangerous? To give a 16 year old a gun that shoots heat waves onto a wooden chair is not a great idea much less a WHOLE classroom of teenagers that have to do the same thing. But that was how you got paint off of stuff back them without chipping of grinding off old toxic paints into the atmosphere.

But here we are in a new era. There is a product out on the market that you paint directly onto any surface, and it makes a very good surface sealer. I am not so sure of the product’s name but it is called something to the effect 1-2-3. You paint it, you let it dry, you can paint another coat, and then you are ready for the main business of creating a painted chair. A lot safer and easier then holding onto a flamethrower and a chisel at the same time.

Now this paint is stinky and will get onto anything. It is water soluble and can clean up in a sink. But always wear old clothes. No matter what you paint, even if it is water soluble, paint can stain and discolor things you don’t want to stain or discolor intentionally.

After the second coat was applied I was narrowing down the choices of the theme I wanted to create for the chair. I kept thinking penguins but then I would have to glue a penguin on the chair or more of them and who wants that in their study? Plus the penguins take up precious sitting area, so that idea kind of fell flat.

I finally asked my dad if he had an idea as we were watching football on Sunday afternoon. A commercial came on about island resorts and my dad said “How about Hawaii?” How about Hawaii…yeah it just might work out.

You see, it is a straight sit down chair without arms. The legs and the crossbeams could be an ocean or coral reef. The seat area is the beach or island and the back with it’s spindles could be palm trees. The top of the chair are the branches in the sky. All items are painted and in detail. Plus it will make my mom happy that I added flowers as that was her idea.

I began designing it and looking up palm trees and thinking that a TiKi statue might make it more Hawaiian looked up as many photos as I could google. It took about 4 weeks to complete, but I am happy with the final product. I even added a few beachcombers and tanners and a very attractive blond in a bikini walking near the surf.

I finished the final seal of the protective coat today and added some felt pads onto the bottom and it is all set for the BIG Show. Hopefully I can find a way to put a picture of it on the website or the blog for all to see.

People ask me all the time on how I get my caricatures signed. The easy way out of it is just me shrugging my shoulders and saying “Idontknow.” That does not fly about 100% of the time.

I guess the real answer to to snag some autographs is just meeting the celebrity. On occasion I have caught a few stars performing at the local theater. The majority in my collection have been just writing to Mr. or Ms. Star. That would mean the celebrity not an actual person with the last name Star. Although Bart Starr is on my “caricature to be signed list”, but that is another story…

The real way of getting the autographs I need is fairly obvious. I subscribe to StarTiger.com. It used to be called Star Archive, but the guy who runs it thought changing the name would be a better way to differentiate it from other sites. I would have to say that 90% of my collection is from this site. But that is only part of the way I get my signatures.

You see, it is not only the writing of the celeb you have to do, but making your requests stand out. I have read about people sending in custom made baseball cards, or photos they Pro-Painted on their computer at home. For me it has always been the caricature. I draw all the details and basics by hand. I color and paint the whole picture by hand. I airbrush the background, by hand…and an airbrush. It is about 4 hours of work to get one painting done. But that is not the whole process.

I guess you can call me a show-off. I want the celebrity to sign the original painting and get more of a reaction then just a signature. So I make plenty of room for a comment or salutation from him or her. Now in the autograph business, that is looked down on. You never want any personalization on the item. It ruins the resale. You know what? I don’t care. I am not in the market to see my caricatures that are signed. I like to keep them. The celebrity took the time to read my letter and look at my painting, they can sign their name and add a comment too. I even tell them too if they want. I have no qualms about a returned painting with a personalization. To me that is a bonus and an honor to have.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a complete narcissist. I include a copied print of the painting for the celeb to keep. Sometimes they like it so much they sign that one instead of the original. Or they might send them both back signed. Or they never send anything back.

Now lately I have been in the convention market. I send my caricatures to appearances at conventions and whatnot. So far, not that good. Most of the stars are there and you know where and when they will appear. You also know how much they charge. That is the kicker. By writing through the mail, it is essentially free. (Except for the fact that you are paying postage twice, one going out and another hoping to come back. Don’t get me started on the numerous paintings I had lost due the fact that the celebrity holds on to it forever. Or chucks it)

Getting back to the convention scene, I have done this 3 times and I am not totally sold on it. By being in the StarTiger.com community, you know who will be at certain conventions and who will go. I have mailed my caricatures to these nice people and for a minimum price they will bring my caricature to get signed. They do their job, don’t get me wrong. They truly helped me out.

BUT….

The old expression “If you want the job done right, do it yourself,” definitely is true. No offense but the Star Trek universe people must have warped into a different dimension. My Spock, who I paid a pretty penny for is useless. I specifically painted an area for Leonard Nimoy to sign and he goes ahead and signs his oil-based pencil colored uniform. With a big space to his right totally devoid of a signature; it’s open. I also had a Star Trek character sign the detailed hands I had worked on meticulously. Why? I guess they decided that man has gone nowhere before in signing caricatures, so an oil-based rendering of furry hands is the optimum space to sign a very well used sharpie marker on essentially colored oil. Yeah that works out real well.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the help that my fellow collectors have given me. It just is a big letdown seeing a half-done signature on a caricature that I really researched and took time to do, compared to just buying a photo off the web.

One last experience: I was going to send a caricature to a professional purveyor of sports signatures. I won’t mention names but it is close to what Germans drink beer out of. Anyway, they had Hank Aaron, the Home Run King and former Milwaukee Brave/Brewer icon signing items. I thought great! I will draw Hammerin’ Hank and send it in with my check. Granted it was much more then I expected to spend but Hank was worth it.

I drew a young Hank ready to hit a homer out of Old County Stadium in Milwaukee. I researched his uniform to the pinstripes and brave patch on his shoulder. Drew him up, colored him, and added a neat background. All ready to send. I looked back at the website and the German beer drinking device name, doubled the price. You got to be kidding.

Needless to say, I won’t be able to send my Hank to meet the real one. Too bad as I was ready to take down my Ron Dayne to show off Mr. 755. But like the title of this blog states, sometimes it is all about luck and that also includes bad luck.