Buster Keaton...

Interesting eyes, nose, cheekbone, hair part....just had to draw him, after browsing through my Pinterest file of profile photos. Did a pencil sketch, scanned it and finished it in Photoshop.

This is the scan of the sketch:

Digital Wedding Caricature

 This was a digital wedding caricature commission, which was given by my client as a gift to the couple. Something that caricatures are perfect for--- gifts for those who are are hard to buy for!! :-)

60th birthday caricature at surprise party!

This digital caricature was a fun commission to do, for an old friend of my husband's...who loves his bayside house in NJ, even though the horseflies love it there too...;-)

 The easel provided by the venue was a little too large for it---people had to kneel to sign it!!! (I went with a smaller matt for this one since I knew the subject would prefer a not-huge rendition of himself)

 The cake was spot-on too!

 The part decor included masks of the birthday boy at different ages! Everyone was wearing one when he came in, what a hoot!

An NFC-East Wedding

What kind of caricature do you draw when a Philadelphia Eagles fan marries a Dallas Cowboys fan? How does this relationship even exist?

Well, I couldn't draw them killing each other, could I? So I did this digital caricature, using their respective football team's--oops, I mean wedding colors, which was used as their wedding sign-in!

  I also drew at their reception:

Time-lapse caricature!!!

PREGNANCY REVEAL CARICATURE!!!

As of this writing, the Eagle-Cowboy marriage is still intact, and the pregnancy-reveal folks have a baby girl. THAT'S HOW FAR BEHIND I AM ON MY BLOG!!!!! But I'm working on it ;-)

This Artist Finally Got Married...and yes, there were caricatures (and caricaturists!) at our wedding

My Other Half and I finally did it in 2015! 

We had a sunset wedding ceremony in November, in Valley of Fire State Park---which is about an hour northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. Joining us was a small group of friends and family. It was absolutely beyond beautiful. 

We highly recommend Scenic Las Vegas Weddings. :-)

After the ceremony, we had our wedding dinner at Mon Ami Gabi, which is directly across from the fountains at the Bellagio; we had a lovely view of them! 

Then we had a cozy reception in our hotel suite, which overlooked the famous Las Vegas Strip, and which is where the caricatures came in...

Four dear friends gifted us with various art forms:

My matron of honor, Celestia Ward, not only baked and decorated that fabulous cake, (it was a scrumptious vegan pineapple-upside-down cake, with bordeaux-maraschino-cherry layers) but she sculpted the witty little cake topper of us as well!!!! I can't thank her enough for all she did in helping us pull off our wedding. 

Another dear, dear friend and Master Caricaturist, Jan Opdebeeck, painted this fantastic digital caricature of us, which he sent to Celestia, who printed and framed it. The calligraphy on the mat was done by another delightful friend, Jeff Redford....I was so floored by all this! Then I cried!!!! (with happiness, that is!!! ;-)

Sooooooo us. Thank you, thank you, thank you, dear Jan and Jeff!!

We had all our guests sign it (and now it hangs in our bedroom.)

Celestia started it off the signatures, as was fitting, because she coordinated it.

Here's Marlo and her husband Nick doing the honors, in her dress and his tie adorned with Emily-and-John-faces (!!!!!!!) that Marlo made just for our wedding! 

Marlo was responsible for making me look the best I've ever looked in my life...she did my wedding makeup. (My hair was done by a gal in Shag Me Salon, home of great retro hairstyles. Dress was from Trashy Diva and my freshwater pearl jewelry was handcrafted by another artisan I've met through my work, Johnis at Lucky Find OCNJ).

I have such amazingly skilled friends. Just amazing. :-)

Our wedding favors for our guests were more little pieces of art. Celestia hooked me up with a local artisan, Beth Bishop, who handcrafts all sorts of interesting pottery.  I bought sake cups for everyone, since we planned for a sake toast instead of champagne. Then I folded up little gift bags (thank you, Pinterest!) tied with a tag featuring my pencil drawing of the bride and groom's eyes. ;-)

The last thing we did on our wedding day (it was almost midnight by then) was walk from Mandalay Bay to the Las Vegas sign for the obligatory photo. In sneakers, I might add!

On the first day of our marriage, we caught the Beatles LOVE Cirque du Soleil show. 

So perfectly fitting for us Beatlemaniacs!

Our honeymoon was a quick jaunt through some perfectly astounding natural wonders: Zion Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and finally, the Grand Canyon. Couldn't take too much time, because our whole wedding and honeymoon trip had to fit in with my gig calendar!!!

Yes, it was cold.

A  long time coming, but this new husband and wife are very happy. :-)

Now back to caricaturing!

Digital Wedding Caricature---on a bicycle built for two

The bicycle was a must-have for this bride and groom... in a recent cartoon-style digital wedding commission, against a background of their wedding colors. . :-)

Homeowner Man, High School and April Fool's Day

As an event and studio caricature artist, my clients can come from ANYwhere. They can be folks I know, folks who know people I know, or strangers. Or they can be folks I went to high school with...and due to life taking us in different directions, haven't seen since graduation day in 1982!! (ok well, Senior Week then. ;-)

Facebook has eradicated the oblivion that our generation's friends disappeared into, as adult life encroached. Unless you were an inveterate letter-writer or phone caller back then (when it used to be expensive) there were probably plenty of people you thought of fondly and wondered 'whatever happened to'. So, it's nice that FB reconnected so many of us.

I've done quite a few drawings for folks like that. All of them, until this one, were private commissions. Oh, I've displayed them on my blog, but didn't share who my client might have been...

This one is a little different.

This is Homeowner Man, the alter ego of my friend Steve. Since re-friending each other on Facebook, he's seen me do all manner of caricatures...and was inspired.
In the bowels of stately Homeowner Manor, he hatched a plan to dominate the blogosphere with his humorous Homeowner Man musings (which he's been penning for years) illustrated with a Caricature by Emily.  Read them, you will laugh! I like this one.

When he approached me about doing a caricature for him, I was excited. It's fun to do super-hero caricatures, even more fun when it's a completely hilarious super-hero with his own blog (not to mention the prospect of illustrating WifeGirl and SonBoy at a later date! ;-)

When I received the reference photos, I was floored. I already knew Steve looked like he'd aged about six months since graduation..but the photos were every caricaturist's dream to work from. You wouldn't believe how often we get postage stamp size, lo-res, super-pixellated photos of subjects (in harsh sunshine) from twenty feet away and we're expected to draw a caricature from that?? Steve's pics were hi-res and from lots of angles. These are just three of the dozen-plus he sent:

He said his son had fun doing a photo session for the project. So, thank you, SonBoy!

Steve pretty much allowed me to art-direct myself and was quite happy with the results, as was I. 

He was happy enough to give me a completely over-the-top review on my Yelp page:

Then Homeowner Man added his thoughts on his blog (skip the Yelp thing, he posts that too)...although his super-mind's remembrances need some calibrating because I definitely did not own the car he mentions. My bad. ;-)

It's April Fool's Day today...remember those reference photos for the caricature?

 Resourceful Homeowner Man found another use for them---taping them on doors all over his house and scaring the crap out of himself and Wifegirl, but not the intended victim, Sonboy! Haha!

Finally, there IS a photo of both of Homeowner Man and Caricatures by Emily, courtesy of my dear friend in the front row center. 

This group of seniors from the Class of 1982, (mostly newspaper staff---I was a reporter and cartoonist----tv crew, yearbook staff and other assorted geeks of that ilk) just about to graduate here, went on to become: an actuary, a dentist, a radio on-air personality, a psychologist, an attorney, a writer, an engineer, a marketer....and a blogger and a caricaturist. :-)

I love my job. 

"Baby, it's cold outside!"

One of the really fun-to-do digital caricature commissions I've had recently was this one: for a baby shower invitation!

Anytime I get to draw a high-kicking expectant mom wearing leopard print, I'm happy!

The artwork was my creation and the client did the wording (cute font!) and then used Vistaprint to have the invitations made. 

This was my feedback ( I'm blushing...) 

I can't stop staring at my drawing you made me!!! My baby invites are so cute thanks to you!!! Thank you again!!! :) You are crazy talented!

Thank YOU!!! And stay warm, we're heading into some bone-chilling cold here in this neck of the woods. 

3rd Birthday, Penn State style!

A recent party-style digital commission for a little guy whose family has made commissioning a caricature from me, for his birthday, into a tradition!

Happy b-day Aven! :-)

Flashback Friday…to a 1st Communion digital commission

Somehow I forgot to share this back in May…a digital cartoon-style caricature commission for this young man's First Communion party. :-)

A blast from the past: wedding caricature

I had a happy surprise last night: one of my earliest digital caricatures turned up, as I was checking out what the hashtag #caricature had to offer on Instagram: 

Not sure what year this was, (late '00's) but I recall using my very first Wacom Intuos tablet to do it, which has since bitten the dust. My comment got a lightning-fast response from the client, which I am sharing here.  

Point being: caricatures delight people for YEARS afterward!

Click here to see my Instagram page. 

Recent digital commission….of a group of beach-lovin' ladies

This is a recent digital cartoon-style caricature I did, of a group of friends, two of whom are sisters. (Can you tell which two?) My client sent me a photo of it on the wall, underneath what looks like another caricature!

Here's what she had to say:

 "It looks awesome! I can't believe how you've captured our likenesses. Thank you"

A 2nd birthday caricature for a toddler's baseball-themed party

A recent cartoon-style digital caricature for a cute little guy's 2nd birthday, featuring his favorite hat: