CARICATURIST ADMITS MISTAKE.

The Process (Political) Caricature.
 
I was asked to create a political cartoon recently. It involved a caricature, but surprisingly I didn’t know it. Every message cartoon does not use caricature. Messages are not inherent in caricature. However exaggerated drawings of particular public figures are often shown in situations meant to sway opinion. Caricatures of regular folks, ordered online for gifts is my usual work. Lawyer Randall Carrreira had an opinion and asked me to represent it visually for publication. My job was to draw a wide mouthed person shouting, “We don’t need no stinking supreme court.” His clever caption was, “The mouth that roared”. I remembered the Peter Sellers cold war film, “ The Mouse that Roared”. His rough sketch was primitive but informative.[fig 1]. I did six rough sketches with various options. [fig 2].  He picked the sketch on the top right.  I did a better preliminary sketch. [fig 3] I did the final line work [fig 4], since time was of the essence, and I guessed that that it would be approved. Ooops. It seems that I had overlooked his note that AOC would be the highlight. He said; “ I thought it would look like AC.” I said; “what’s AOC? A person?” “It stands for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
“, he said. I pay no attention to the news, so I didn’t know that. To re-do the artwork, I referenced the photo he sent with open mouth, but combined it with a ¾ view showing hair. [fig 5]. I thought I’d just re-draw the head, but the new one came out bigger, so I re-drew the podium.  I didn’t re-draw the microphone stand, but patched it on, knowing that it would work with the new scan. A clean original was not important, since the scan for print was all that was needed. I added the type in a graphic arrangement. Voila. [fig 6] I emailed it to the client. He was pleased. I also made a Photoshop variation, omitting the request Red Chinese flag, in case he decided to do that. Three previous ones were published in the Waterbury newspaper.