Girona ISCA Minicon

Last week I went and looked in at the ISCA Minicon in Girona, Catalonia, Northern Spain. Basically I went to meet with Steve Hearn the president of the ISCA (International Society of Caricature Artists) I have already interviewed him for the Mac20Q podcast and so it was excellent to meet up in person.

The day that visited there were about 20 or so of the artists doing their drawings that contorted the features to make the victims – I mean subjects – Look funny. A number of the artists were owners of the iPad and I talked to them a little about how they use the ipad as an artist. There are some cool amazing iPad applications that let you create drawings on the iPad.

There were some people doing 3D caricatures using a modelling clay, good quality work, impressive. During the event they were having competitions to do likenesses of people and of course to make outrageous caricatures of subjects. At time they were working from photos and also from life. If you sat still in one place for any length of time you would have someone draw you.

It was interesting to hear some of the stories of how they were doing as artists and tales of seeing their work being used as examples by unscrupulous street caricature artists. There were some artists that were making a living from drawing caricatures, as does Steve Hearn. he goes to weddings and draws the guests and tells jokes while doing it.

One of the artist there was drawing on a tablet computer and printing out the finished images. The tablet computer was up on an easel and being used like a canvas. Then another had a Wacom Cintiq and was working on some virtual 3D caricatures using zBrush

I shot some video while I was there – Look here for when I have edited it and posted it here.