A box of white paper, four black Sharpie markers, an easel, five chairs and eager subjects sit under a tree between the Mary-Livermore Library and water feature.

Professional caricaturist Richard W. Cloudt, 43, drew 35 to 40 faces of UNCP students, faculty, staff and community members at Pembroke Day on Sept. 10 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

On average Cloudt said he completes 10 to 12 caricatures (of heads only) an hour, but if he draws heads and bodies he can finish six to eight an hour.

“I felt like I was drawing a little bit slow, and I had a bunch of doubles with babies and when I get that sort of thing I have to do it with the pencil first because children tend to wiggle around. So that slows it down,” he said.

The artist said he draws on an upright easel so people can watch while he sketches and the position is a better for his observation because both the subject and his paper are in the same plane.

“Right now I’m working with a busted easel. It doesn’t incline, sometimes I’ll incline the easel so I don’t have to hold my arm so high, but I can’t do that with this one,” Cloudt said. “Last year I was drawing a lot of people and my knuckles in my drawing hand got sore, but I haven’t had any problems yet this year. The main pressure is on my right shoulder; it gets tired because I have to hold my arm up.”

According to Cloudt, drawing for hours not only takes a toll on the body, but also on the mind. Because he draws portraits and caricatures, Cloudt has to be careful not to make a portrait look like a caricature or vice versa.

“I have to really focus when I draw and it really takes a lot of mental concentration, so my brain gets pretty tired,” he said. “I feel burnt after these events. I’d compare it to how you feel after you take a long test, like the SAT. Four hours is pretty long, five is about the longest I’ll usually work.”

Since most people want their caricature to look like themselves, Cloudt said that he focuses on getting a good likeness of the subject before he worries about exaggerating any features.

“There are a lot of caricatures that have a really slick cartoon style, much slicker than mine. Mine is more rough and realist,” he said. “Some subjects really inspire exaggeration, some don’t.”

The caricaturist said he draws his subjects from different views, straight on, right, left, or a three-quarter view depending on the person—he may even ask for a smile.

“If they really don’t want to smile I don’t push it. Sometimes it’s not in the person’s character. It can be funny if you get somebody who’s grumpy, like a child—a grumpy child can be hilarious.”

Cloudt has been caricaturing for 22 years and gets most of his work through entertainment agencies; he has drawn at UNCP events for 10 years.

“I’m an event caricaturist mainly…it’s like being a musician— you get gigs. UNC Pembroke, at least last year, was my biggest customer,” he said. “There are three to five different entertainment agencies that call me on a very regular basis and then outside of that it’s networking and passing out your card.”

In addition to working at events, Cloudt teaches drawing and cartooning classes at Sertoma Arts Center in Raleigh and the Arts Center in Carrboro.

“This week I’ve got a commission, it’s probably the most unusual I’ve ever gotten. They want me to paint this guy’s caricature on a surfboard. So he’s going to be riding a surfboard in the cartoon, but the cartoon is going to be painted on the surfboard,” Cloudt said.

Cloudt occasionally gets asked to draw portraits or cartoon illustration work, however, because of the economy he has been working at birthday parties and bar mitzvahs.

“Most of my work is in Raleigh and the triangle area. Chapel Hill has a bunch of fine arts people and maybe they look at caricature as a kind of cheap art form, but Raleigh and NC State have engineer folks, so they eat it up. Maybe they feel like it’s a simpler form of art they can understand,”Cloudt said.

Visit http://library.davidson.edu/archives/davidsonian/davidsonian_collection_1986.asp for more editorial cartoons and comic strips by Cloudt during his attendance at Davidson College.

Cloudt enjoyed art as a child and in high school began drawing cartoons for the school newspaper. At Davidson College, he worked on the newspaper staff drawing a comic strip and editorial cartoon weekly.

“I was really into it for a while and thought I wanted to be an editorial cartoonist when I got out of college. But I realized that I just wasn’t interested enough in politics.”

The artist’s first caricature job was at an art concession stand at Carowinds in Charlotte in 1986. Cloudt remembers that was when he started drawing live subjects with permanent marker.

“You learn fast, with a marker you either make a line or you don’t. You can’t really sketch with the thing,” he said.

Cloudt said that caricaturing has its own niche in the entertainment industry and that is one of the reasons he enjoys it so much.

“It sells and it’s popular mainly because it puts a person’s face on something,” he said. “You can sell artwork that has someone’s face on it because people like to see themselves”

A comic by Cloudt that appeared in a 1986 edition of the Davidsonian.