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Ricci Martin

A few weeks ago I put up a few pics taken on my vacation in Las Vegas with my Mom. We saw three shows while we were there, but only one of them I quite liked, the other two I found a bit disappointing. These were smaller shows, not featuring the big name headliners. Although in my opinion, Vegas headliners sure aren't what they used to be, as I really had no great inclination to see any of the name performers who are currently playing there. I sure do wish I'd seen Vegas back in the day when Frank, Dean, Sammy and all of their contemporaries held court. I reckon I was born too late.

Ironically, though, just several days after returning home from vacation, Mom and I went to see an entertainer at Mississauga's Stage West dinner theatre that would be a terrific choice to see headlining a show in Vegas. Ricci Martin is the son of Dean Martin, and for a few years now he has been doing a really lovely tribute to his famous Dad on stage, singing many of Dean's big hits accompanied by a small band. Don't misunderstand, though, as he's not attempting to impersonate his Dad in any way, like you see in those Rat Pack tribute shows. Ricci is blessed with a fine singing voice that is uniquely his own, and so his interpretations of Dean's songs are not trying to compete with his memory.

This was the third time that Ricci had performed here, and so I've also gotten to know Tony Busseri of ARB Productions who is the fellow who has brought in not only Ricci Martin, but other terrific performers I've gotten to see like Bobby Rydell and the legendary Al Martino. Thanks to the generosity of Tony and his business partner Stan, I was able to go backstage after the show to present Ricci with the caricature I did last year of his Dad. I know Ricci was quite thrilled with the gift and was kind enough to pose with me for a photo. We were able to chat for awhile about Dean, Frank and that Golden Age of entertainment that I love so well. I really hope Ricci will come back to perform for us again here in Mississauga, and I heartily recommend his show if he plays in your area too!

Happy Birthday, Genevieve Bujold!

Today is the birthday of Genevieve Bujold, one of Canada's most celebrated actresses from Montreal, Quebec. Genevieve first gained great acclaim portraying Anne Boleyn in the 1969 film, Anne of the Thousand Days, opposite Richard Burton as King Henry VIII. I drew this caricature for the ISCA forum where members draw the celebrity of the day as determined by their birthday. As it happens, July 1st is also Canada Day (AKA Victoria Day), so it seemed rather appropriate to acknowledge our national holiday with this pic of lovely, dark eyed Genevieve.

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Birthday, Al Hirschfeld!

If Al Hirschfeld, the celebrated caricaturist were still around today, he would have been hitting his 107th birthday. As it is, however, the old boy passed away back in January 2003, just a few months shy of turning 100! Still, he had an amazing career drawing for many venues over his many decades, and was primarily associated with creating linear depictions of the Broadway shows for his regular stint with The New York Times.

Oddly, though, my first introduction to Hirschfeld's art was through one of the full colour covers he'd illustrated for TV Guide, which depicted the popular variety series, The Sonny and Cher Show, of which I was a big fan in my early teen years. I was entranced with the illustration, as it showed me a very different approach to caricature than what I had been then enjoying in MAD Magazine by the likes of Mort Drucker and Jack Davis. Whereas the two MAD artists drew more of what I call "distorted portrait" caricatures, exaggerating the features, yet still maintaining a sense of anatomical structure ( albeit Davis doing it looser and more cartoony than Drucker), Al Hirschfeld had a more stylistic and playful approach, abstracting the form into simple shapes and flowing lines. I cut out and saved that TV Guide cover and still have it today, as shown here.

I was a pretty bold little guy back then, and I was determined to get a fan letter to Al Hirschfeld, so I wrote to him care of TV Guide, being oblivious at the time to his more famous career illustrating for the Arts section of The New York Times. Well, the good folks at TV Guide actually forwarded my letter to Al, and it wasn't too long before I received a very nice response back from him. I ended up corresponding with him several more times over the next few years and I'll post several of these letters here for all to enjoy:





Some years later I ended up going to New York to freelance for Disney's Character Merchandise art department, the tale of which I'll save for another post. Prior to going there, I was determined to look up Al Hirschfeld when I was in town, and I took down one of my books of his art in the hopes of getting it autographed. After working in the Disney office the first week, I decided to try getting in touch with Al early on the weekend. Sure enough, he was listed in the NYC phone directory, so I gave him a call. Much to my excitement, he answered the phone and, when I explained that I used to correspond with him a few years earlier, he remembered me and told me I should come down to visit him that afternoon in his home studio!

I can still recall my excitement and nervous apprehension as I boarded the transit bus that would let me off within an easy walk of the old brownstone that he lived in. Once there, I rang the bell and was met at the door by Al's sweet wife, Dolly. She said Al was expecting me and that I could just make my way up the two flights of stairs to where he was working in his studio on his latest piece for The NY Times. One thing I recall was all of the framed originals that lined the stairway, including that painted cover featuring Sonny and Cher. So, as excited as I was to get upstairs to meet Al, I was also trying to take in all of the glorious original art I was passing on the way up!

When I got to the top of the stairs, I remember they ended facing into his studio, and there silhouetted by the light of a picture window, sitting in his antique barber's chair at his antique drafting table, was the great man himself, Al Hirschfeld! Though Al tended to have a somewhat stern, no nonsense appearance, he was actually a very warm and generous man, and I think he took a certain delight in showing off a lot of his original art to this young fan. I remember him showing me the piece he was currently working on (a Broadway show featuring Ellen Burstyn, as I recall) and I was struck by the size that he worked at. It seems to me that the illustration board was about 24 x 36, and Al showed me how he built up the thick and thin lines through multiple strokes of the tiny Gillott Crow Quill pen nibs he favoured. He said that the nibs were relatively fragile, and that he might go though nearly a dozen on such a large illustration. Of course, he always finished up a drawing by hiding a few NINA's throughout, as that was the name of his only daughter whose birth he'd celebrated with that novelty, and had continued it on ever since.


He then took a break from what he was working on and proceeded to pull out a bunch of his recent originals from a big steel flat file cabinet. One thing I remember well was when he showed me his annual piece for The NY Times where he would depict notable personalities from different fields, such as movies, literature, science, dance, etc. in a beautifully composed montage of figures. I had a chuckle when he started pointing to the actors depicted, saying "That's whatsisname from that movie, whatchamacallit...", as I suspect that his inability to recall their names was mostly due to his not being particularly impressed with that generation of film stars. After all, I had remembered him stating in one of his books that he always favoured movie stars that were larger than life personalities like W.C Fields and Zero Mostel, and that he found contemporary actors too ordinary and mundane with their more realistic acting styles.

After a while, Dolly called up to Al to let him know it was tea time, a ritual she had retained from her native Germany and that Al was happy to share with her. They insisted I join them for tea and cake and I remember just thinking what a lovely couple they were and how gracious they were to me. Unfortunately, the visit had to end soon after, as Al had to get back to finishing his drawing before sunset, as he always preferred to work by natural daylight rather than incandescent bulbs. Al happily signed my book and he and Dolly bid me adieu.

That afternoon spent with Al and Dolly Hirschfeld will always remain one of the happiest memories of my artistic career. Obviously, Al Hirschfeld's own stylistic approach has heavily influenced my own - I don't deny it. Still, I've tried to learn what I could through studying and analyzing his work, yet applying the approach of forming a "visual impression" of the subject, then abstracting the physical design and inner personality in my own way as much as I can. But he will always be my artistic mentor, his spirit and playfulness of line always helping to guide me in my own work. The caricature that heads up this post was one I drew of him sometime after having visited him. I sent him the original as a thank you gift, and asked if he could send me back the copy with his autograph. As you can see, he also added a NINA in the hair!

Please check out more of Hirschfeld's great caricatures at the website of his official representative, The Margo Feiden Galleries.

Happy Birthday, Nancy Sinatra!

Today the gal with the boots celebrates her birthday. Nancy Sinatra was the first born of Frank's three kids and was very much Daddy's little girl. Though she may not have had the vocal range of her Dad, nor his singing career longevity, Nancy Sinatra was a hugely popular and iconic singer of the swingin' 60's. Interestingly, though she was ostensibly of the rock 'n' roll generation of that era, her singing style still owed a lot to the more traditional crooning style of her father and his contemporaries. She had a string of hits as both a solo artist as well as a number of great duets alongside Lee Hazlewood, the singer/record producer who also wrote most of her songs, including her famous, These Boots Are Made For Walkin'.

I really like Nancy Sinatra's singing style. Although her vocal range was somewhat limited, there was always a warmth and sincerity in her delivery. Nancy had a bit of a revival a few years ago when her rendition of Bang Bang (previously a hit for Cher) was picked up to be used in the opening titles of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume One, setting the melancholy tone for the bride left for dead played by Uma Thurman. Here is Nancy singing Bang Bang when she guested on her Dad's 1966 TV special, Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music - Part II. I watched this appearance to draw the crazy frilled dress, though my sketch of her face was done from her own 1967 TV special, Movin' With Nancy, which is also available on DVD. The second YouTube clip is a segment from that special, featuring Nancy and Lee Hazlewood singing Jackson, a song made popular by Johnny Cash and June Carter.

It's Quiz Time!!

I've been a member of the International Society of Caricature Artists (ISCA, formerly NCN) for a couple years now. One of my favourite of their online forums is the "Let's Draw" section, where we're now into a second year of celebrating famous birthdays by inviting ISCA members to post their caricature sketches of the chosen notable personality of the day. Some of the ones I've drawn have also been posted here on my blog on their actual birthday, but some others have slipped through the cracks since I had drawn them sometime after the fact. Rather than let these particular samples go unseen, I've decided to post a bunch of them here as a fun little quiz for you. They are indeed a motley crew that comprises personalities of both the present and past, some from the entertainment industry, others not - some maybe a bit obscure! So let's see how many of them you folks can recognize. No, there's no prize, but the first one to correctly identify all eight in the comments section gets bragging rights. (ISCA members are not eligible, so sit on your hands and let the others play!) Ready, set, go...

Here's To Jessica Borutski!

This is my caricature of Jessica Borutski, a supremely talented young cartoonist whose work I have admired for several years now. Coincidentally, Jessica resides in Ottawa, Ontario, which also happens to be my old hometown. I first discovered Jessica's work on a cute animated film she created called I Like Pandas. In fact, I have shown samples of Jessica's art in my class on Character Design as examples of great visual appeal, like this one:



Recently however, poor Jessica has found herself caught in the crossfire amid the latest controversy over at Cartoon Brew, this time regarding this image from a new incarnation of the Looney Tunes characters set to debut on TV. Predictably, there were numerous claims that it was "bad design" or "terrible drawing", etc. by all of the usual suspects. Animation fans are a cranky and critical lot to be sure, and I include myself in that description by the way, yet in this case I believe a distinction has to be made. So I'm going to offer up some thoughts from my perspective on the situation.

First of all, even before it came out in the comments, I was pretty certain that I recognized these new designs of Bugs and Daffy as being by Jessica, as the image of Bugs put me in mind of her own cartoons of rabbits and other toothy creatures. Sure enough, it turns out that Jessica was the freelance designer selected by the powers-that-be at Cartoon Network to redesign the classic Looney Tunes characters to meet more contemporary sensibilities. Thus, she has given them a more angular design over all, obviously dictated by her client to be more in keeping with that less rounded, more graphic style that is so prevalent in today's TV cartoons. This approach is also due to the practicality of how these characters are now animated with computer software such as Flash or, in this case I believe, ToonBoom. Instead of full hand drawn animation like that in the classic cartoons, shortcuts are now employed today with characters being created as essentially "cutouts" with replaceable parts to create the animated movement. As I've stated before, I'm personally not an admirer of this approach, yet I'll admit that I have seen some better work created lately through ToonBoom which seems to be a hybrid of both "cutout" (or "symbol") style combined with more traditional inbetweening as is desirable for a somewhat more fluid end result. I'm assuming that this is the approach that is being taken on these new TV cartoons.


Regarding these new designs by Jessica, I'm admittedly of two minds about them. If these designs were of brand new characters with no previous history in cartoons, I believe that these images would be embraced by the majority of animation fans and recognized for how appealing they are in terms of graphic design and feeling of inner life and personality. The problem of course is that these are the Looney Tunes characters, with a long illustrious past in fully animated theatrical shorts that are beloved by all of us who have grown up with them through the many decades since their creation. Most of us would rather that they not be messed with, even though it has to be acknowledged that these characters have all evolved through various permutations before achieving that look from the 1950's that many recognize as the "official" versions. As for this latest artistic makeover to their design, it wouldn't matter who was responsible for it, nor how talented they may be, as longtime Looney Tunes fans are dead set against any changes. And yes, I must include myself in that camp too. Here is a news item that appeared on CBC today that sums up the situation quite well. (Click on the link on the right side of the page to watch the video). Of course, it doesn't help that the reporter starts out by describing the original cartoons as "so 1950's".

So Jessica Borutski just happened to get caught in the critical crossfire, being the one who was commissioned to involve herself and her formidable talent in this no-win situation. Personally, my feeling is this: If it was inevitable that these characters were to be revised to some extent for this new TV show, then I would rather that a terrific cartoonist like Jessica be the one to do it, as the results could have been disastrous in less capable hands, as the ill-fated Loonatics cartoon from several years ago proved. As it is, the new designs are appealing enough on their own merit, and may even succeed in acting as a stepping stone to introduce a new generation of kids to the classic theatrical shorts, many of which are available today on DVD in those great boxed sets that many of us have added to our home video library.

One last point I'd like to make. I wish that the same people who selected Jessica Borutski to redesign Bugs and Friends would now hire her to create original new properties wholly of her own design. For example, here is a very charming series concept that was created and pitched by Jessica and her colleague Chris Dainty called The Constellations. I continue to be amazed by the huge visual appeal of Jessica's work, yet I am frustrated by the entertainment industry's aversion to take a chance on anything new. As an instructor in the Sheridan Animation program, I see so much great talent pass through our doors that will likely never be given the opportunity to reach its full potential. Young, enthusiastic talents like Jessica should be encouraged to create work like this. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday, Trini Lopez!

As should be quite apparent here by now, The Cartoon Cave is mostly about nostalgia: my personal recollections of a better era of entertainment. Back in the 1960s, Trini Lopez was one of the entertainers that helped define that era for me. Although my Dad was the one who usually had the records spinning on the family hi-fi, once in awhile my Mom would take control of it and play some of her favourites. I guess she may have liked the latin sound, as she liked to play Trini Lopez and also Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Anyway, I grew up enjoying that sound too, and I've since acquired those old LPs that I wouldn't let her toss out a few years ago. Mom's happy with CDs and doesn't share my sentimental value of dusty old records!

Trini Lopez had a fun, joyous sound to his music. Sometimes it was uptempo like his rendition of "If I Had a Hammer" or "Lemon Tree". But he could also sing slower tender ballads as well. He recorded on the Reprise Records label created by Frank Sinatra in the 60s. In addition to his singing career, Trini did a bit of acting here and there, including an appearance as himself performing onstage at a nightclub in the Sinatra film, Marriage on the Rocks.

Anyway, over on the ISCA (International Society of Caricature Artists), they're continuing with a forum celebrating a different notable personality's birthday each day. I wish I could keep up with it more regularly than I do, but I decided to do one of Trini, since the mention of his name conjured up such warm feelings of nostalgia of my childhood years. I sketched his face from an old episode of the cop show, Adam-12, in which he had guest-starred. Then I looked at a video posted on YouTube to see him in concert mode to draw his shirt and jacket.

While perusing YouTube, I also came across this neat clip where Trini Lopez appears in a duet with one of my favourite girl singers, warm and lovely Vikki Carr (who I am determined to draw some time for my blog!) I hope this brings back some happy memories for you readers out there of my generation!

Sheridan College Open House 2010 (Part 3)

Here is the third and final batch of caricatures I drew during Sheridan's Open House a couple weeks ago. These first two ladies pictured are Sheridan office staff, Susan Anderson-Wilcox and Paulette Geffros:









These last three are Sheridan students, Leisha-Marie Riddel, Omar Noori, and Hai Wei Hou:

Sheridan College Open House 2010 (Part 2)

Here are another bunch of caricatures from the Sheridan Open House held a couple weeks ago. Mostly young kids in this batch, including these first two little cuties who are the daughters of one of the Sheridan staff. I've still got more to post but I'll do them later.

Gordon Brown For PM!!

Yeah, I know that the Brits have already been to the polls to vote, but it turns out there's still no clear winner. Conservative David Cameron may have had the most votes, but not enough to make a clean sweep of it, so sitting PM Gordon Brown still has a chance at keeping his job. Well I say good on Gordo! If it was up to me, I think the Brits should keep him in power. Despite this dour Scot looking like the human equivalent of Eeyore the donkey, I think Gordon Brown is an intelligent and articulate guy who has well proven himself. But more importantly, Gordon Brown has a face that is a gift to all caricaturists!!

I mean, just look at this line-up of the three candidates. David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat opponent, Nick Clegg, are both a couple of blandly handsome young fellows who are virtually indistinguishable from each other! What self-respecting cartoonist would want to draw either one of their generic mugs?

Gordon Brown stands out like a sore thumb next to these two "Ken dolls". And a sore thumb of a face is far more interesting, in my opinion. Look - the bags under his eyes even have bags of their own! (Damn, how'd I miss that in my caricature?)

I mean, really?! Cameron, Clegg? Clegg, Cameron? Your guess is as good as mine!!