Tuesday 20th June
It's 1.30 in the morning and I'm wide awake and unfortunately on a creative roll. I find I'm at my most productive between 6pm and 3am but usually I have to cook dinner and collect Helen from the train station and do grown up middle class things so I tend to miss the best bit of my day. Office hours? - forget it. I've just emailed a client asking for confirmation of details. I didn't worry about the time it was sent because I guessed they would pick it up in the morning and nobody ever looks at the time on an email. I got an immediate reply of 'Tony. Details attached. Now go to bed!'
It became apparent at the start of the year that I was going to be booked for every weekend for the entire year so we decided to have a couple of weekends just for us - We've had a great weekend in Wales and our first holiday with Layla - we also dicovered she could swim!
I've been wrestling with a particularly challenging caricature for a clients fathers birthday present. the face (generally the hard bit) was approved without a hitch but the lady specified she wanted the body playing a golf shot which I drew at the end of a classic driver swing. The lady wrote back saying she wanted the ball traveling in the other direction so I selected the whole body and flipped the image as though it was viewed in a mirror. She wrote back on seeing this to complain that her father was not left handed to which I pointed out that in order to draw that pose with the ball traveling in the direction she wanted He would have to have his back to the viewer. Would she like me to crank his neck through 180 degrees or caricature the back of his head?
What do you think of the graphic on the front page? My very good friend lee suttey should shortly be turning it into an animation for me. I don't tend to draw celebs because I find myself heavily stacked with commissioned pieces although I was recently asked to draw Rooney doing something unspeakable to Ronaldinho. I have thus far avoided Beckham due to there being very little about his face (or indeed personality) that would make a good caricature, now his wife is a different matter....
A very successful gig drawing traditional style caricatures at a wedding in Hemel Hempstead. My Tom Tom attempted to take me through the site of the oil depot where the roads are all still blocked! I get about 4 minutes with each client which can often turn out to be an interesting snap shot of that persons life. It turned out i was drawing the MD of the Priory who's chairman was the one involved in the cash for peerages row - sorely tempted to draw him in irmine with a wedge of used fifty's in a brown envelope. I think he might have been the best pic of the night.
Email from Alison and Craig (though mostly Alison I suspect) who's wedding I attended on the 10th June
Dear Tony
Wanted to say a huge thank you to you as I missed saying goodbye. You went down really well with our guests and not only are your caricatures superb everyone commented on your lovely manner with your subjects. If we ever need a caricaturist again we will definitely contact you. Thanks again, Craig and Alison.
...Aw guys - I gone all red!
Some thoughts on the phrase 'last minute'
Hi Tony Could you draw a caricature of our boss that we could print out and get framed. He loves football and cricket. The only trouble is we need it for tomorrow morning!......
Gonna cost ya fellah!
Sat 3rd June
Drawing traditional style at A terribly posh wedding in Newmarket. The Marquee was actually held in the paddock of the brides stud farm - do you know they had a special machine they tow behind the tractor for picking up horse poo? Some splendid corpulent sherry red faces- why do aristocrats have eyebrows that grow horizontally?
My girlfriend's fed up with me working through weekends and has gone to Barcelona with a mate. Layla (our big wooly alsatian) has gone to stay with my dad where she gets a master class in begging.
This is the first entry in what I hope will be my ongoing blog. I have been a professional caricaturist for the last four years and people seem to be interested in the unusual way I earn my living so I thought it might be interesting and informative to jot down the occasional anecdote as they happen. Most weekends I draw caricatures at live events, weddings and party's. I'm often found at the centre of a crowd of fascinated and sometimes shocked onlookers as I ply my bizarre trade. I often drive to events (certainly those outside London anyway) and therefore tend to stay sober while the guests around me forge on into alcoholic oblivion - it's like being trapped in a Hogarth painting. I shall try and update it weekly - watch this space.