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?

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.

Every Spring just about the time when the students are ready to call it a year, I get out 25 masterpieces and teach art appreciation. Now to the groans and questions that arise from the students, I feel there are many qualities about learning from the Masters. They are called the masters for a reason. Inevitably there will be one student who will state the obvious question that I have head for eight years now, “Why do we have to know this?”

Well I could bore you with the scientific research that I used with formulating my theory on learning “stuff”, but I will not bore you with the minutiae of endless quizzes and test results. I will give you the top answers that I give my 5th through 8th grade classes, as they are the ones that have to do the art appreciation test.

1. History is important. No matter what you do in life, your past helps you along the way. If you burned your hand on the stove top when you were 3, you probably remember that very well. History or the past is the same way. It can help you solve life’s problems without the use of wars, deaths and even more worse things. The phrase “history repeats itself,” is so true. It is also true in art history. Trends tend to resurface and then fade away as the result of new advances. But without knowing the history of some of these trends, an artist, scholar, worker or even a layabout may stake their claim on a “new” idea and not realize that it really in effect is an old idea. Think about the paint by number craze in the 1950’s. People went nuts with that craze. But I bet you didn’t know that even in the middle ages, painters used numbers to classify colors so that the apprentices (young scholars that they are), could paint copies and/or the original masterpieces so that the “Master Painter” could do other things. Similar to the Thomas Kincade paintings that were so popular a few years ago.

2.Learning is good. Many times I have heard that art is someone’s favorite class. Why is that? Could it be that new ideas are formed or that talents somehow arise from deep within? Nope. It is because a few students think of it as “goof-off” time. Have you ever had 8th graders play with a pasta maker and Sculpty clay? Apparently they never had enough time with the Play-Doh Fun Factory. You can see how the materials an artist uses can be like toys, but there is a reasoning behind it. If you do something that you love, it can be fun. When you are doing things that are boring, well it is not so fun. We tend to put school and work as boring. Have you ever seen a teenager smile on Labor Day? It is like they were given a death sentence. Why did this come to be? By bringing back art appreciation I hope to bring back the fact that learning new ideas is fun. Learning about paintings and lives of artists and the styles they created or learned from is adventurous and entertaining and yes FUN!

We seem to forget that basic concept. We equate learning with work. That is the sad part of the education system as many teachers feel the same way. I like to think of learning new techniques and new artists like having a get-together or party and sharing a tub of popcorn and a few sodas too. They have stories to tell and experiences to share. Just because they are dead doesn’t mean that we forget about them and move on to 3rd period…We learn about these artists and paintings to help us grow and keep our minds sharp.

3. Every other class has a test or two, why not art? This is a weak example of why we have the art appreciation test. It goes the way that mother’s would say to their children, “If Johnny jumped off a bridge, would you?” But this is different then plunging to your death, hopefully.

To know if you are doing well in any class, a test is usually given. Math tests, English tests, Spelling tests, even the Presidential Physical fitness test are some of the tests that almost every American goes through. Now how do you know if you “get” art? You can do the projects and wade through the chatter and pretty soon, voila! You produced a diorama! Congratulations, you did your work and you seemed to understand the concept, but did you learn anything? Did you goof around most the class time and then take it home and have dear old Dad or helicopter Mom finish the project while you did more constructive things like Playstation or watch the Hills?

You see a test is not only what you study, but also entails how you study and perform in a certain time. Sounds familiar? Kind of like work performance, except you don’t get paid or fired, you get graded on what you know. Which leads me to the final answer to this test conundrum…..

4. We have forgotten how to memorize. I go through this lesson at least 3 weeks. I hand out booklets with copies of the paintings on the sheet. I go through each painting at least 3 times. We play a memory game to get the students up to speed. And do you want to know what the bit of advice I give to students before the test the next week is? Memorize it!

Parents are appalled at that. Why? Parents do not realize that we memorize pretty much everything in life and children try to avoid it as much as possible. Why? Because it’s not fun. Make it fun. Here is a clue to see if your kids can memorize. Have them read twenty things written on the board. Do it again. Do it again. Do it backwards. Do it again. Now erase the board. Do it good so that there are no ghost images. Now pick a student out at random and see if they can name all twenty things. Chances are they can not. I am not saying I can, but if I worked at it I could. That is why I suggest to students flash cards, study groups, talking to parents about the test and having the parents test the kids and vice versa. The more you get art information downloaded onto the brain the better chance that other things can be downloaded too.

By opening the mind to learning, we can do quite a lot. Just by learning a few artists and paintings and styles we get that brain into shape just like Rocky pummeling those frozen carcasses in Pauly’s meat locker. We prepare that brain for new challenges and answers that are set for the future.

It has been awhile since I finished up this topic. For those of you that need to catch up, I am at the point of how to make a golf ball roll on cardboard without seeming like a golf ball rolling on cardboard.

I did not want to change the materials to plywood panels as I did NOT want kids with power tools in my class. I trust them, but not much. I don’t even like power tools when I work with them as I get freaked out by saws and blades.

In fact plywood would not help solve the problem. We basically need grass or material that acts like grass, a buffer and a friction maker that a ball can roll on. That is when luck arrived on my side for once.

In Two Rivers, a department store was closing down. Evan’s department Store had everything. They even had a crafts department that I would use for years . I think half of my paper route money went toward crafts or items I had purchased at Evan’s. Now the Evanoff family was closing down their store.

Everything had to go. I assumed that there must be piles of felt squares in the craft section. Even a roll of felt would work, as long as it was green. As I walked over to the crafts section, everything was picked over! There were no felt squares or rolls of any material worthy to make our golf course. As I walked dejectedly out of Crafts, my mind raced to another type of carpeting. Maybe the local carpet dealer might have some extra remnants of green piled carpet squares? Maybe they might have some plastic shag “grass mats ? Hmmmm…that is similar to the stuff that you use to make model train sets…Trains!!!!!! To the toy section! I felt like I was in the swirl when Batman would tell Robin, “To the BatCave!”

I quickly ran downstairs to the toy department and moved through a few aisles to the train department. There were fake trees and mountains and things I could use after I found what I really wanted. And here it was! Rolls of green model train grass. Eureka! I found it! I bought a few rolls of it at 1/3 off. I then went back the following week to clean out the store’s supply of train grass when the sale went to 50% off.

Now I am in business!

To be continued…..