Caricature art or cartoonistic portrait is the latest trend in Singapore, especially people in the cooperate world use it as a gift on various occassions such as farewell, birthday, promotion, long-service award & etc.They bring photographs of their colleagues to be drawn base on their request. Before I take on the job, I would normally check the resolution of the subject's photo. This initial part is very important as the result or the resemblance level of the caricature will be affected.
Caricature is a form of art which is extremely difficult to master. The artist not only need to know how to blow up certain prominent features of the subject but also has to make sure that the subject can be recognised immediately.Unfortunately, in Singapore or rather this region, people do not know how to appreciate it. Probably, they do not understand what actually caricature actually is. When I first started drawing caricature,I came across many of my customers especially ladies who tend to be very unhappy with the way I exaggerated their features. Although I personally think that there is a high resemblance, they would disagree & not paying for the artwork done. It really affected my livelihood then. In order to play safe, I've got no choice but to come up with what I call cartoonistic portrait. With minimal exaggeration of my customers' feature, I've successfully created my own version of caricature. It has been very popular ever since & has kept me going for a decade now.
Apart from drawing from customer's photographs, I can also draw people 'live' especially during company D&D,function,party,etc. To get a reasonably high resemblance, I spent around 5 t0 6 minutes per head.Meaning, in an hour, approvimately 10 persons can be drawn.To me, this is considered fast but surprisingly some event companys that hire my service do not think so.
They say somebody in the market can do 2 to 3 times faster. Although I tried to convince them to compare the standard of artwork, they still maintain that they want speedy artist,doesn't matter whether the work is good or not.This is a matter of principle, I don't feel good to give a substandard work to their guests just to see a dustbin full of my artwork at the end of the event.Eventually, it will affect my reputation as a caricature artist from Portrait Studio. It really gave me a lot of preassure in order to meet their demand. Practice was the only way for me to achieve what I can do now with minimal detail,20 persons per hour upon special request, phew!
Here are some of my works done recently for my customers from photos given by them. I've a total of 4 mediums for you to choose from, namely 1. Black & White (outline), 2. Black & White (Shaded),3. Color Pencil & 4. Color Marker. The rate will depend on the complication of your artwork.You can check it out from my website.
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This is Portrait Studio in 1998 , set up in the midst of the financial crisis. It was quite empty when I first started. Just couldn't think of what to put in this half shop in Far East Plaza (the one just beside Hyatt Hotel, not Far East Shopping Centre). On the left side wall, I pasted some of my portrait samples & on the left was totally empty 'cos at that time, I had no idea what caricature really was. After learning the art of caricature or cartoonistic portrait by observation, I managed to fill up the blank.
