Thursday, August 23, 2012

THE RETURN OF THE STARBUCKS MONKEY

okay I KNOW that someone, SOMEWHERE is going to be offended by this picture so let me explain it right now before the fire starts, and even though I give an explaination I realize that sadly, I still wont satisfy some people......sigh.....
First off, Im a caricature artist. As such I make fun of FACES... not RACES, and EVERYONE gets slammed, especially when I see a face that reallllllly deserves it. Im not trying to be mean or make a statement just having fun visually with what I see at the moment. I notice also that some groups of people seem to be highly sensitive to being made fun of to the point of wanting to take serious issue with a drawing that was not meant in spirit to be derogatory. This happened to me once with a certain NYC Queens Congressman... but thats another story....

In learning to exaggerate, I sometimes see people as animals. I figure since there facial structure or vibe reminds me of a particular mammal, fowl, reptile, or fish, ill just draw them along those lines. It makes the caricature more powerful. Below is a picture of a young man I saw a few years back in Starbucks. he looked sooooo ridiculously ape like that I could NOT resist drawing him him full on as a Simeon!

Hope you guys especially my fewllow African Americans can appreciate this for what it is. Humour. If you attach anything else to it, Its YOU. not ME. Im just having fun.

Whether you agree or not, I DO welcome your responses or criticisms though!

The Christ Chronicles Comics Update


For the past couple of weeks I've had some down time which enabled me to work 
on some personal artistic projects, like my " THE CHRIST CHRONICLES COMIC" 
Project. The work is based on the adventures of Jesus depicted in the Biblical 
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I find the Biblical accounts as 
dividing as any adventure story I've ever read. It's an epic story containing 
heroes and villains, it's loaded with action, intrigue, horror and humor. I've 
taken creative license on character designs, removing them from the traditional 
ancient, biblical, Middle Eastern vibe, and replacing them with a more campy 
contemporary look. (what can I say? I am a cartoonist!) I gotta admit, John The 
Baptist was the most fun to do, and since the Bible does give more of a physical 
description of him, I decided to leave him as is!

The Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducces ,were a challenge to depict, until I heard 
Jesus refer to them as "blind guides" "teachers of the law" which made me decide 
to dress them in formal professor robes I'd recently seen at my sons college 
graduation. The cap covering their eyes, which adds to their inability to see.

This is an open ended project that I will continue to work on as time permits. 
I'm really having a lot of fun with it