Occasionally people ask if they can get a discount on my party caricature prices. I usually will give some kind of a break to charity organizations, but my prices are already more than competitive enough for private & corporate clients. It's been years since I've been able to raise my prices. I wish my landlord could say the same thing. If you can get him to give me a discount, I'll give one to you.

Here's a few stories I should add to my FAQ page soon:

People sometimes ask who's the most famous person I've ever met & drawn caricatures of. I've actually met some extremely famous people, but did not have the opportunity to do caricature drawings of many of them. Here are some stories about a few celebs I did get to draw.

Many years ago I was doing caricatures at a Bat Mitzvah on the upper west side of Manhattan. I think the location was Mendy's. One of the guests had a date with her & asked me to draw them as a couple. I was half way finished when I finally recognized the very scruffy looking (to put it nicely) young man sitting next to her. It was personally frustrating to me. My drawing looked like the people sitting before me, but the guy at that moment & in my drawing did not resemble his public image. The guy was  Macaulay Culkin.

On another occasion some years later, I was doing caricature drawings at an office holiday party in mid-town. I think it was on Park Avenue below Grand Central. As I was drawing, I heard someone behind me being addressed as, "Senator." Eventually some guy with his wife on his lap sits for one of my caricatures. She had her head leaning against his. I was probably about finished before I ever recognized who he was. When she stopped pressing her head against his, I could finally see his taxicab door ears and realized it was former NY Senator Al D'amato. Again, this was personally frustrating because without the ears, I did not feel my drawing resembled the public image of this guy.

The first time I ever did a Bar Mitzvah in Poughkeepsie (close to my home town of Hyde Park, NY) was a very interesting experience. It was at a place formerly known as the IBM Country club, a place I'd always been curious about since I had one of the few Dads in the whole Mid-Hudson Valley who never worked for IBM. The highlight of the evening was getting to meet & draw the great uncle of the Bar Mitzvah boy, Al Lewis, aka: Grandpa Munster. He insisted I keep the drawing saying he has tons of stuff like that in his home already. He was nice enough to autograph it for me. I know I still have it somewhere, but I'm afraid it's buried in some poorly organized box of clutter somewhere in my apartment. It was also a slightly disappointing experience only because meeting someone like that rattles me a little so I don't think the drawing was as good as my caricature work usually is.

More recently, I was hired by the David Letterman show to draw a few caricatures during a remote segment they taped to profile a somewhat notable person in NYC. The segment was hosted by Letterman's stage manager, Biff Henderson. They told me they'd let me know if & when the segment would air, but I've never heard from them since. I've recorded & searched every episode of the show since missing very few, but I've never seen the segment. I'm not supposed to put the drawings on my website before the segment airs, but if I ever catch up with posting the thousands of caricature drawings I still have backlogged for my website, I will also post my drawings of Henderson & Co. It will probably be at least a few years between that & the taping, so I don't think anyone will mind.

I just remembered another interesting little anecdote. A couple years before the Letterman thing I was hired as the caricaturist at a party for Steve Madden, the guy with the shoe company. I beleive I did meet & draw him that evening at his favorite restaurant in Astoria. It took place shortly before he began serving his sentence for something like investment fraud. I think he's out by now.

Last year the Tyra Banks show hired me to do caricatures of some women who were getting makovers. I was paid well, but they never got around to actually letting me draw anyone since their schedule that day ran into several delays. I also didn't get to meet Tyra, but while I was waiting to meet the crew in Columbus Circle, something else very amusing happened. I sat there next to a sign with my name on it. A couple from LA sat next to me. The guy says to his wife, "Well, here we are. This is Columbus Circle and this must be Dale Gladstone." I said hi & asked where they were from. Then I told them one of my friends in LA directs movies like Usual Suspects, XMen, Superman Returns... just as I was about to, the guy says, "Bryan Singer."  He then asks me if I've heard of Glenn Ford. I said yes and he introduces himself as Glenn Ford's son, Peter. He told me how Warner Bros. contacted him to get photos of his Dad for Martha Kent's house in Superman Returns. We had a nice chat.

A LITTLE ADVICE FOR ANYONE IN THIS BIZ OR THINKING ABOUT GETTING IN:

Be careful about taking advice from your colleagues. I've often been told by my peers to raise my prices. Occasionally I do, but only when I decide to, not when someone else tells me to. My experience has been that people usually tell me to raise my prices a little higher than the prices they actually charge. Nice, huh? Even though I use very expensive digital equipment to do my party caricatures, my base price is still competitive. In fact, on the rare occasions when anyone insists I do conventional, non-digital caricature drawings (so far only 2 clients have placed such an order, The David Letterman Show & The Tyra Banks Show), I charge more because I hate working that way at events. However, working digitally allows me to offer a greater selection of options I could not offer any other way. My customers often order these options so my hourly rate typically ends up 50% or more higher than it used to be. Without raising my prices, I have raised my income all the same. Since going digital, my gross income has gone up about 20% each year more than compensating for what I've spent on digital gear & supplies. Plus, I enjoy my work about 1,000% more. That's what you get when you're too smart to let everyone else tell you what to do.

If any party caricaturist tells you they draw faster than me, they're probably lying. In all the 20 years I've made my living in this biz, I've worked with a lot of other artists. Haven't met any yet as fast as I am.

Too bad you didn't hire me this year to draw caricatures for your Oscar Party guests, but the writers' strike probably made it difficult for you to plan a proper celebration. Just remember to have your people call my people in time for next year. Don't ever change!

Yet another thing that sets me apart from other caricature artists is the vast number of caricatures samples you can see on my website. I doubt any of my competitors shows as many samples of their work as I do. For that matter, beware of how many caricaturists, not all, but many will use art they spent days on to advertise their party caricature work instead of samples of what they can actually do in the limited time available at parties. The work I show on my Party Caricatures web pages truly represents what I do at parties & trade shows. The work I spend more time on is seen in a completely different part of my website.

I finally got around to posting 2 samples of my caricatures with airplane backgrounds on my website. I can't post links to my site here, but just do an internet search for me or eMail me to get my website address. Anyway, I have a number of different re-usable backgrounds for my caricature drawings available whenever someon happens to ask for one of those backgrounds. If they ask for something I don't already have in advance, I just draw it then, of course. Meanwhile, I've been wanting to prepare a bunch of aviation caricature backgrounds for a while now because I love airplanes. I did one in 2006 for an annual fundraiser I do on the USS Intrepid. I drew a Douglas Dauntless SBD (single engine WWII US Navy dive bomber) flying above the Intrepid. I love the contours of the Dauntless' blended wing. I also admire the historically pivotal results they achieved at the battle of Midway. More recently, I thought the next aviation caricature background I should do would be a colorful, fun, nostalgic Stearman Biplane. So, I did. Soon I hope to do jets, racing planes and fighters. As for other subjects, I also have backgrounds for horseback riding, golfers, firefighters, train engineers, pirates, New Yorkers, Basketball, beach bums, swimmers, sports car & race car drivers and yacht passengers. So far, I haven't gotten around to showing many of these backgrounds on my website, but I rushed the aviation images up for my enthusiasm on that subject.

The secret is out! I previously blogged how today I was scheduled to be a guest speaker at a school in Brooklyn. It went well, it's over so now I can talk about it. The Yeshiva of Flatbush (try singing that doo-wop style) has a thing every year where they invite 3 guest speakers to appear before a large audience of students. Today, I was one of them. The whole thing is like the old TV show, "What's My Line." A panel of people ask us questions trying to figure out what we do for a living. The first guy was an air traffic controller. No one guessed it right. The 2nd person was an FBI agent. Somehow they figured her out after 2 questions. Maybe undercover work isn't for her. Then there was me. Hints given were that I watch people very carefully and see people very differently. I didn't make those up, the M.C. did. I was surprised no one guessed I was a musician (most everywhere I go that's the assumption) but the hint mislead people to think I did security work. Ultimately, no one came close to guessing my profession of a caricaturist. By the way, other funny guesses they made were they asked if I was a forensic scientist or if my work had anything to do with dead people. The closest they came to guessing correctly about my occupation was asking if I worked with advertising. Then they lost their way again asking if I worked with hair or clothing design. I suppose that was flattering but I really didn't look good enough to fit those professions. When the guessing was over, I drew a caricature of a popular teacher, projected live from start to finish on a big screen. It all went well. I'm just glad now I can finally reveal the whole truth.

The Mythbusters Mythtanic conclusion (busting so-called "myth" of people being sucked down when ships sink) is wrong, but I haven't yet found anyone else on their site giving the correct reason why. It isn't the danger of gas bubbles or the angle of sinking or the number of pieces a broken ship sinks in that sucks people down. I love the Mythbusters show, you guys are very clever, but you don't seem to be familiar with displacement, a concept any naval architect must know inside & out. I'm no architect of any kind, but here's the thing:

People are sucked under by sinking ships because all large ships built in the last 100 years or so have been built with several separate water tight compartments to limit flooding in case of a leak & therefore reduce the risk of sinking. That's why Titanic was believed to be unsinkable. Unfortunately for her passengers & crew, sub-standard rivets or whatever allowed a few too many compartments to be flooded. Several compartments remained watertight, but not enough to keep Titanic on the surface. When she sank, the weight of the flooded compartments dragged the (not so whole) ship, airtight compartments and all, down to the bottom. This is what happens when any large ship sinks due to hull damage. People are sucked down with the ship because the airtight compartments (being dragged under by the weight of the flooded compartments) displace water. When the airtight compartments pass below, the water they displaced rushes back in to the space previously occupied by the airtight compartments. Think about it, if you force sealed, empty 1 gallon milk jug under the surface of a pool, it will be a different experience than if you turn that jug into swiss cheeese and let water flood into every part of it's interior.

The Mythtanic had no large, if any, airtight compartments intact when she sank, so of course there was no suction. If you do sink anything large with a barely insufficient amount of airtight compartments on board, you will find suction very unlike the results of the entirely incorrect Mythtanic test. I dare you to ask any ship captain, Naval officer, Coast Guard officer or Naval architect to see what they think of this.

Dale Gladstone
New York City

Note to self, gotta renew my ringer music.

Done & done.

Caricatures still are great for Bar Mitzvahs, but they're also really super for trade shows, holiday parties, barbeques, picnics... you name it.

Last year I drew caricatures at 4 weddings. In my previous 19 years making my living in this business, I don't think I did that many weddings all together, but why not? It's a great idea for receptions, bridal showers, bachelor parties, rehearsal dinners... etc. Caricatures, they're not just for Bar Mitzvahs anymore.

One of the many things that sets me apart from other caricaturists is how I'm one of VERY few who actually advertises prices on my website. Most other caricature artists I know will try to feel you out first & charge whatever they think they can get from you. The quality of my work & my reputation keep me busy enough so I can stick to standard prices. I don't have to cut my colleagues throats to pay my bills. I don't have to gouge customers with deep pockets to get ahead. I don't have to pretend to give you a discount to close a deal.

Speaking of crowd control, if you do wish to hire more than one caricature artist, I can help you find more after you book me. Just so we're clear, I make referrals, not reccomendations since there's no accounting for taste. Always see samples before hiring any artist. Also, when I make a refferal, that's it. I take no further responsability for the contracts of other artists.

Sometimes party guests get a little out of control fighting over who's turn is next to get one of my caricature drawings. If you feel that might be a problem at your event, you can either arrange to have someone manage a list or hire more artists to absorb the work load. Either way, if I have to settle disputes over who's turn it is or if I have to manage a list, I'll have no time to draw anyone. That's why my contract clearly states I get paid only to draw caricatures, not to do crowd control.

When a new customer sends me eMail, it usually ends up in my spam folder. Sorry, nothing I can do about that, but I always search my spam folder several times each day for non-spam. Your chances of being noticed & distinguished from spam would be greatly facilitated if you type a subject line that conspicuously & distinctly does not look like spam. Include words like your name, CARICATURE or others very specific to the subject of your correspondence.

Want to see how fast I can draw caricatures? Then, sit still. You don't have to freeze like a statue, just don't spend the whole time turning away from me. I'm always amazed at how many people have no clue how to pose for a caricature. It's only going to cost you 5 minutes out of your whole life to get my drawing. Cooperate already...

Next week I'll be a guest speaker at a school in Brooklyn. Can't say more about it until after.  Google me or eMail me for more info about the party caricatures I do for trade show booths & events of all kinds anywhere.

CARICATURES by Dale Gladstone are the coolest thing you've ever seen at any trade show, party or event. Hurry up & book me for your date before someone else does.