This caricaturist sits for a caricature...in Bangkok

Usually, I'm the one to be found drawing caricatures---but not this past weekend. My son, my Other Half and I found ourselves in Jatujak Market in Bangkok, one of the biggest (35 acres, thousands of vendors and stalls) open air markets in the world. Of course, in a selling atmosphere that large, you're bound to find a few caricaturists plying their skills...

My Other Half, myself and my son waiting to get a caricature

We chanced upon three caricaturists in a large tent, along with a freehand henna tattoo artist.  Many people, mostly tourists,  were patiently waiting their turn, seated in little child-sized chairs, with smells of tantalizing foods of every description wafting over us.

The word "cartoon" was shown more prominently than "caricature" in their display... they didn't seem to go in for much exaggeration...and they use a pencil I wasn't familiar with, a Mars Staedtler EE, a nice, soft, very dark lead. 

We decided to go with this artist, Mr. Kang, based on his self-caricature:

We watched him draw the people ahead of us, a cute Thai same-sex couple. He made the girly one carrying the boy-ey one in her arms!

When it was our turn, my son, who is fluent in Thai, asked which one of us the artist wanted to draw first (we all wanted to be in the same drawing...I know, I know, more people are harder!  But the pricing was by the person, so he wasn't losing money for squishing us all in. And that's without saying anything about how difficult my face is to draw, or so I've been told ;-) 

We decided not to put him on the spot by telling him that I shared the same job description.

He wanted to draw me first:

Then my son:

And finally my Other Half:

While my son was sitting there waiting, he gave the artist plenty to work with for a body situation:

(don't try this at home, kids, he's a yoga teacher)

So this is the end result!

Tee-hee! I really enjoyed his take on my son. And I thought it was quite a good stab at me...except he gave me my hair color from ten years ago :-) As for my Other Half, we found the pot belly to be funnily exaggerated!! :-) We finally let on that I was an artist too, and I had my son tell him about the International Society of Caricature Artists...and gave him a card with my info and ISCA's. To my knowledge, there are no Thai members; I hope he looks us up!

The other hilarious thing about this drawing is that my son's foot seems to be touching the top of the wat (Buddhist temple) and that is a big "no-no" in Thai culture... the foot touching anything, is disrespectful. Or maybe it's just perspective!!!! :-)

ขอขอบคุณคุณ (Thank you) Mr. Kang!