Tonight I offered my services to the UnitedHealthcare Children's Foundation. I had a great time drawing for them. As a self employed artist, I am one of millions in America without any form of Health care insurance, so I am happy to do anything I can to help out those in need. It is a sad, regrettable, and ultimately embarrassing fact that so many of us are in danger of losing our livelihoods and our homes, in what should be the greatest country in the world for reasons of health care. 

The right to a healthy life is a right, not a privilege, of any successful nation.

Gold Member of the ISCA

Check out Caricature.org, the home of the International Society of Caricature Artists where I am a Gold Member.

My new Work Station

This is my new easel!

I spent all day with my friend Conrad Meyers building it up. What it means for me and my clients is that I no longer need a table, or any special requirements to work! My footprint is tiny for trade shows, with no need to rent multiple tables or chairs. I can just pop this up, and work all of my jobs right from this. Best of all, it fits in a backpack, and the whole thing weighs very little, which is important as I fly around the US a lot for work.

It's made from a carbon fiber tripod from Calumet, and aluminum and steel fabricated pieces. The laptop is held in place with velcro, and the cintiq (the drawing pad on the right) screws right in to the top of the easel on a standard camera mount.

More photos Below:

For any sort of fabrication, Conrad Meyers is a master. He's built for a lot of museums in the Bay Area and makes his living building, whether it be homes or one of a kind projects like this. Contact him at fictivelife@gmail.com (Conrad Meyers) for any ideas you have in mind!

Doggies!

Shura Kelly had me over to draw for her "Yappy Hour". She's a well respected dog trainer and doggie day care operator in the Bay Area, with clients at Pixar and the Red Cross among others. I had a blast drawing these little guys! They have so much character, they were perfect to caricature.

Josh Radin's Bar Mitzvah

The Radin's are a family in the Bay Area who have hired me for the past couple years to draw for their son's Bar Mitzvahs. I drew nonstop for 4 hours, and got in about 50 people. This guy was especially fun to draw... It reminded me of the lessons from Steve Silver's great class at Schoolism.com that I took a couple years ago. If you want to learn more about cartooning in general or caricature in particular, Steve Silver is a great one to learn from!

Air BnB

 AirBnB is the coolest service I had never heard of. You can rent a room in a house literally anywhere, and put yours up for rent as well. The people I drew for were from all over the country (this lady, Chicago-- the bean is there!) and they rented out a room part of a month to pay all the bills, so that their income is extra cash. NICE! This is a great web 2.0 company.

Bay Area Caricatures brings 3 talented artists to a MindJet launch party in San Francisco!

Mindjet, an SF based tech company, hired Bay Area Caricatures to entertain for their launch party. There were thousands of attendees, so I brought along Marcus and Salah to help keep the party entertained! The digital files were sent via dropbox to the client that night, which they internally distributed to the employees. This is a unique, personal, and imaginative way to entertain and I look forward to more events with this great team of artists!

Some of my samples:

Some from Marcus:

And some from Salah:

If you have a fun idea that the team at Bay Area Caricatures can help make real, contact : JonCasey@BayAreaCaricatures.com

9/15/11 EVENTtoons draws for TRUSTe

A Flickr view of all the drawing, which you can download at the link below...

Thanks to EventTOONS! Visit the site to download your copy of the drawings.

An Illustration for the home page of a website

(Click for a larger view)

This is a project I have been working on for some time in between flying to San Diego, Virginia, and Phoenix for work. It will soon be on the front page of a website. Everything below the building will be out of sight at first, you will have to scroll down a bit to see it all.

The company this was done for specializes in web design, branding, and media for business. Not the iPhone, iPad, and iMacs, as well as a general "construction" feel to the drawing to suggest the wonderful work that they do.

A few close-ups so that you can see some more of the fun little details....

I really enjoyed working on this, as I was given free artistic control to interpret their goals as I saw fit. There was definitely some collaboration back and forth, and in the end I got to do an original piece of work which I love, as well as meet the needs of my client.

If anyone out there would like to discuss a project with me, please do get in touch! It's really great to show that although I love caricature, it is by no means the only style I enjoy working in.

Thanks Chloe for being so awesome! I'll post a link to the site as soon as this is up and running.