Artist Captures People in Cartoon Form

click on photo to expand
(top) Greg Shelton's self portrait.

(bottom) Brittany Starks and her caricature.

Photos by Linda Karn
(posted July 16)

Twenty kids filled the community room at the Pike Township Public Library to learn about caricature drawing. Greg Shelton demonstrated his caricature style that he called a "kinder and gentler" attitude when drawing caricatures. Shelton tries to capture people as if they were going to be in a "Disney film."

He said the nose functions as an anchor to the head and serves as a guide to develop the mouth. "The nose serves as an anchor because the artist needs something to compare everything else too."

One of Shelton's characteristics is to exaggerate the eyes because they convey expression. "The eyes are always a lot larger than in real life because most of the expression comes from the eyes." The eyes determine if a person is happy, sad or puzzled. As for eyebrows, those give the character distinction. Shelton demonstrated how the width of the neck can change the entire look of a character. A thin narrow neck gives a younger appearance while a wider neck gives an illusion of being older. "The necks gives a sense of volume or weight," he said.

Shelton can draw a caricature in about six and a half minutes.

Shelton, a 1965 Washington High School graduate, developed a passion for drawing caricatures in third grade when he started drawing his teacher. However, he went onto to be a languages arts teacher at IPS because he liked to tell stories with his drawings. Shelton has even dabbled in animation with an animated Christmas film called "Milroy: Santa's Misfit Mutt". The animation film about Santa's rescue of Milroy took nine years to produce and features Buddy Ebsen's voice.

"Not a whole lot has happened to it," he said referring to the project that started in the early 1990s. He said it was sold to a couple of companies, but never took off commercially. He said there are some copies floating around that people watch at Christmas.