The Complete Book of Caricature

by Bob Staake

Explains the role of caricature, tells how to develop a personal style, and includes profiles and work by top caricaturists

Genres: Art

134 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Bob Staake has authored and/or illustrated more than forty-two books, including The Red Lemon, a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year. His work has graced the cover of The New Yorker a dozen times, and his November 17, 2008 Barack Obama victory cover was named Best Magazine Cover of the Year by Time magazine. He lives on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Pete Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am actually one of the artists who has a caricature in this book. Staake, when he was putting this together, was bucking for a national reputation (as many of us did--I got tired of it after a short time and shifted to focusing on a local/regional audience and enjoyed a lot of success with that), and it seemed to me he was using the book largely as a stepping stone, so tended to bring in a lot of illustrators and a few cartoonists and caricaturists who were there more to help him with his networking and professional ambitions than to do a really great book about the topic. An indordinate amount of stuff here is self-promo, his own drawings, etc. In spite of that, it has a lot of good points. The particular examples he selected do show something interesting to me that most readers might not notice: there was this trend at the time this was written/compiled among illustrators to attempt to draw what they thought of as caricatures that evinces the ongoing failure of most right-brained visual artist types to really comprehend what a caricature actually IS. At that time, if you look at what they were doing, they thought it was all about doing a line drawing with clever flourishes. WRONG. Before long, they all gave up on caricaturing and went back to the kind of illustration that they were really cut out for. Today there is a new kind of WRONG drawing being misnomered "caricature." This aspect of the book as a marker of an era makes it worth knowing about and seeing, especially for educators or art historians who want to have some knowledge of the medium.

[Michael Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not an instruction manual. Lots of good examples by professionals. Fun to read.

[J Crossley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book provided the history of the art of caricatures. There were examples in this book; however, they seemed detailed and difficult. This book would be good for the experienced artist or someone interested in this art form.

[LEX · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is an entire book on the history of caricature, not how to like I wanted... I really only skimmed, ad really to me these were elaborate, but a bit distorted, pencil drawings. They were very high end... portriture.

[Idhar]

may i get thuis book ? that is good book