supersketch

Portland, OR

2007-04-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

Portland is friggin beautiful. I love this city. Everywhere you go it's just so pretty everywhere and it takes your breath away. The air smells so good too. Not only pinetrees, but most places it smelled like a greenhouse. The air was perfumed like incense in some places even, I swear!

Anyways, we drove to the Pacific Ocean finally and it was BREATHTAKING. WAY prettier than I could have imagined! We went and saw a lighthouse and where the Columbia enters the Pacific (where Louis and Clark finally hit the Pacific actually) We crossed over into Washington State a few times too actually. We visited these tunnels under the city of Portland where people would get Shanghai'ed (kidnapped) and put on ships for a few years. Pretty shady shit. We even saw an old opium den that was underneath of a bar. Crazy shit... Only thing that sucks is that I forgot that my friend Art Ninja lives in Portland... I knew it was that part of the country but for some reason I have always confused Colorado and Oregon... DAMN MY FEEBLE MIND! = ) BTW, The guy in the photos that is NOT me is our friend Polock, AKA Mike "Gump" Rickouwskallalastickallyskibidibi who JUST HAPPENED to email me the night before we took off that he was visiting his sister there and was having a great time! We called him up and met him out there. He used to live there (He now lives in Boston) and he showed us around and made the trip even better! ... Well, here's the photos:

Opium Den...

Astoria, OR where GOONIES was filmed.

Haystack rock from about a mile away...

A closeup...

Stacie and Polock holding up a huge Sitka fir root...

My beautiful wifey.... = )

Tennessee again next week. Maybe we will have more awesome mountain pictures for you to peruse then too...

pictures and whatnot

2007-03-28T21:52:00.001-07:00

Here are some new photos of stuff too. Some caricatures and some scenery I saw last week. Hope you enjoy.

And for the scenery:

New videos

2007-03-28T17:46:00.001-07:00

I have put up some new caricature videos on youtube. Have a look if you want to:

There are some other ones. I don't know what all I mentioned here but these ones turned out pretty good considering the lighting was nice and bright. Stacie has been coming with me to gigs and I am coaching her in how to take photos and videos, so expect more in the coming weeks.

Of course, when I travel through the mountains I have to stop and shoot at least one more moment of zen as well = )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO3EAC5dl8o You have to find it. I couldn't find the embed code because it wasn't uploaded entirely yet or something. Hope ya dig.

2007-03-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of my work recently from a little girl's 9th birthday party. I must have forgotten to upload them to this blog even though I'm sure I uploaded them to the NCN site. Anyways, here are the photos. These were all completed within about 3-5 minutes.

(Note: Permission was granted by the child who was having the birthday's mother to put these photos online. If for any reason you would like me to remove them, please do not hesitate to let me know and they will be removed immediately. I don't wish to violate anyones privacy wishes.)

2007-03-18T16:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of photos: One from yesterday where I worked in Flannery's Pub, downtown cleveland on St. Paddys day. This is the only damn photo that came out...

Here is one from a few weeks ago at a convention:

The drunks were pretty brutal yesterday. I didn't stay out past 7pm. For the first time in YEARS I was home in the evening of March 17th.

nothing much new, just busy

2007-03-16T11:59:00.000-07:00

Been a while, huh? Here's some of what I've been up to, what I'll be doing and some press on me:

http://www.sonicbids.com/AdamPate

minicon photos

2007-02-12T22:34:00.001-08:00

Photobucket Album

Something to think about in the new year

2006-12-26T11:18:00.000-08:00

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."

"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

Albert Einstien

I'm SUPABAD!

2006-12-23T18:01:00.000-08:00

NCN Midwest Minicon

2006-12-23T17:38:00.000-08:00

There is a printable PDF of the flyer on my website if anyone would like to download it and help us to distribute it throughout the world.

http://www.adampate.com/links.html

This is an image of the flyer:

cose drawing is done finally

2006-12-10T14:57:00.000-08:00

This Tuesday is the end of the year COSE party and since I started this project in August... it was about time to finish it for them. I wasn't in a hurry because it was pro bono but I made a committment to do it and here it is finally. All of the caricatures were drawn live (except a couple that weren't there) in pencil wash as shown in one of my first posts on this blog. I took those drawings and traced them, laid them out with some idea of what the background was going to be, photographed the artwork and then colored it digitally. Another way I could do this is to trace each caricature in illustrator and put them all together digitally but it would have taken forever. The way it was done is how MAD magazine artist Tom Richmond has suggested he does most of his work for the magazine.

to hell and back

2006-11-27T15:30:00.000-08:00

So Last week I went on a cruise to Jamaica and the Grand Cayman Islands.

Stacie went to Hell.

It was fun. Thanks for asking.

Surprisingly, Jamaica is a lot like Hell.

new pumpkin carving photos

2006-11-09T04:14:00.000-08:00

New pumpkin photos. Enjoy. I'm off to Peoria Illinois for a couple of days to draw at a convention.

NEW VIDEOS!!!

2006-11-06T13:01:00.000-08:00

These are from a trade show and a customer appreciation party that were last week. Both were in the same building but a day apart. I'd really like to get more of these. I would like to have more videos and photos to show but too often i am by myself and have nobody to take the vids or photos. Stacie went along to the tradeshow and my friend Rick Smith Jr. took the ones at the party. Enjoy!

Musician

2006-10-28T19:16:00.001-07:00

Here's a caricature of a guy who is a musician. His name is Doug Wood. He will be representing me in the college market very shortly.

went a walkin

2006-10-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

Took some photos, made some movies...

2006-10-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

I just received this comment from the contact from Western Michigan University where I drew at thier "pep-fest" the weekend before last.

Adam-

I hope you enjoyed the event. The feedback that I was continually
getting was that we should have you at every event! The radio
station even asked about you and how you could be reached. I felt
that your skill and style was perfect for the event. Everyone that
wanted a picture got one and without having to miss out on any of
the other activities.

We even had the president of the alumni association board of
directors make a comment about how much he and his family enjoyed
getting the pictures!

In my opinion, hiring you for the event was the best thing that I
did. I could (not) have hoped for anything better, especially when you
were willing to walk around and find people to draw. We will
definitely keep you in mind for future events!

Thanks so much!
Heidi

Sorry it's been awhile...

2006-10-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty busy! Went to Orlando to the NCN Convention. Didn't place or win anything but I feel I have grown so much and learned so much from being there and meeting all of those inspirational people that I couldn't care less about not winning the speed comp.

When I got back I went to the Cose Show for 2 days and once again it was well worth every penny and minute spent there. I learned and gained so much from being there that I can hardly wrap my head around it!

Went to Michigan, in two weeks I will be in Peoria, illinois and then on the 18th I leave for Fla again to enjoy myself in a psudo vacation with Stacie aboard a tiny ship in the Caribbean! In the meantime I have to catch up on stuff and do enough work to keep up with stuff on the homefront! WOW! Busy!!!

I will post some art and photos from the con -taken by other NCN members- when I get a chance.

Friends, right now I want to share my feelings about the state of our union if I could. Sorry to get all political but something needs to be said and if you are reading this, you are an intelligent person who may not be completely aware of what just happened to Democracy and freedom. I am in shock right now honestly...

A fatal blow has just been dealt to America-by it's esteemed leader. Or should I say Dictator?... Please pause to consider the gravity of the situation and let the facts from the next few posts sink in... You may be amazed.

______

Keith Olbermann gave a stunning commentary on the death of the principle of Habeas Corpus, a cornerstone of civilization since the 1200s.

watch it and weep for what we (Americans) have lost while we were eating Cheatos and watching Dancing With the Stars.

click here

(JD on NCN Forum)

( My reply)
Re: death of Habeus Corpus

That's a freaking genius bit right there John. An inspiring commentary. I was actually thinking about posting it myself. Thanks for beating me to it. Here's another from earlier:

<click here

(Later after somebody from Ohio said they weren't going to vote for Bush-I assume to try and be funny...)

That's cool Dave but maybe you shouldn't vote Blackwell either! That guy is a maniac and played a key role in getting Bush elected 2 years ago as well as most of the GOP currently in congress.

I'm not normally the guy who talks politics in a place like this but I'm just in awe!

J. Kenneth Blackwell... Talk about a conflict of interest... Let's see, he's the Secretary of State, head of the Republican Party in Ohio AND owns a TON of stock in Diebold. (you know, the company that manufactures the electronic voting booths we use? He tells them what to do). This guy has done nothing but play games with voter registrations and polling locations in broad daylight and there's no telling what he's done behind closed doors... He's even been trying to dictate what will and will not be acceptable as a vote and as a registration at the state level as if the Federal guidelines don't apply to his offic. Since his office is the one that sends registrations to you in Ohio, he sends the unacceptable registration cards to "democratic" districts. He has played every trick in the book to make sure that people that might not vote republican can't vote.

Rumor has it that there is now a campaign to send a letter to registered voters in so called "democratic districts" telling them that their registrations might not be valid and that they should go into the county office and check on their registration status and make sure they vote at the right places. When they go in, supposedly they fill out another registration card and it will not get to them in time to vote. This will result in potential voters being given a provisional ballot which is then tossed away (probably because of hanging chads...) This is if they are actually allowed or able to get to the polls at all. He has demonstrated numerous ways to slow the polls in "democratic" districts so that there are 6 hour waits to get into the polling places. Is this how a democratic election should be run? How does this guy have the power to do this I ask you? Doesn't anybody see a problem with this?

This kind of crap is going on all over the place but Blackwell is a key player. How does Bush have the power to declare himself the new american Dictator? Hmmmm.... Maybe because all of his cronies have gotten elected this way, gotten rich and fat in Congress and done whatever he has asked... This is why you must VOTE November 7th, Dave. At least give democracy a fighting chance! Not that it will matter, I'm sure Blackwell has something up his sleeve.
__________________
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism-
Thomas Jefferson

(but more to the point...)

Sorry... I hate copying and pasting things like this but this is more to the point I was trying to make on a national scale. (Copied from the ACLU newsletter I got today):

Civil liberties suffered an historic setback this week, when President Bush signed the un-American Military Commissions Act of 2006.

The president now has Congress's blessing to hold people indefinitely without charge, take away protections from horrific abuses, use hearsay to put people on trial, authorize death penalty trials based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for those accused, lifting our time-honored habeas corpus rules.

"Nothing separates America more from our enemies than our commitment to fairness and the rule of law," said Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. "But the bill signed today is an historic break because it turns Guantánamo Bay and other U.S. facilities into legal no-man's-lands."

Americans across the political spectrum have serious concerns about this unconstitutional law. From now until the November elections, the ACLU is urging everyone who cares about justice and liberty to tell Congress we need them to stand up to the administration..not rubberstamp these abuses of power.

And voters in four battleground states have voiced a strong preference for House and Senate candidates who will oppose the president's policies on Guantánamo detainees, torture and CIA kidnapping, and secret searches of Americans' private records. Last week the ACLU announced the findings of a poll conducted in Connecticut, New Mexico, Ohio and Pennsylvania, four states that will play a strong role in the makeup of the next Congress.

What the poll found is heartening: Those of us who care about liberty and justice are not the minority. For most voters, no matter their party, protecting the civil liberties of all Americans and upholding the Constitution are key issues in the mid-term election. Now, it is essential that concerned citizens speak out as they head to the polls this November. You can take action today to help make civil liberties one of the top issues as people head to the polls next month. Sign our "This November, I'm Voting My Values" pledge and please ask your friends to sign as well.

click here to help

To see the detailed results of our voter poll, answer the questions yourself and compare your answers to official poll results online at:

click here to view results

finished with the bobbleheads

2006-09-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

This was a fun project. I'm glad I did it. I think in the future I will have to have stronger photos for this to work and I might try using Sculpey instead of the paper clay but I think the results are awesome. I am very happy with these. If I had to say what the weakest part of them is I would say that the profiles could be stronger. Anyways, here's the final result:

progress on the wedding cake topper

2006-09-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

Got some feedback from the client and she was unhappy about the size of the noses on the bobbleheads. I trimmed them down and slimmed down the bride. I think they look 100% better and am pretty excited about the outcome. I am painting them tomorrow.

The clay was a bit crumbly in parts and some worked just like really soft balsa wood. I liked it but obviously it was hard to work on the details where it got crumbly. I moistened it where it was crumbly and that's why I didn't paint them already. I figure one more day to dry should be good. Printed out the painting and it looks pretty good too. I'm ready to go with this.

wedding couple sculpture

2006-09-26T16:48:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of the progress. The clay is called Kneed-O and is paper based so it's (I assume) somewhat natural i.e. safer for use on a wedding cake in my assumption than the plastic cake. Although I could simply put a piece of cardboard underneath the plastic clay for future projects of this kind. This is a test run for something I have been wanting to offer officially on the website for a long time now. I did a few of these back in the day for friends of mine but have no photos that are good enough for the website.

In the first step, after drawing them up and studying their faces, I started on the heads. I did not go overboard with the detail because this clay will be painted and the little details will look much better painted than they will if I were to use this clay to make them. This clay is not the best for details. It's kinda, um... chewy for lack of a better word. It isn't as reliably pliable as I would have thought it would be (unlike sculpey). It dries out kinda fast and I have not worked with it before so even though the packaging says that it "dries like porcelain" I need to see it first... The hair was added a whole 12 hours or more after the head was created. I was hoping it would have dried out already. It didn't but was dry enough so that my messing with all the curls didn't wreck what I had already sculpted. You might also notice that I changed some of the features of the girls face so that it was a little softer. Here are the heads:

Once again, here is a picture of the bride to be and groom:

For the bodies, I definitely wanted to go for that big head little body thing which posed obvious balancing and structural problems. I lucked out and the first idea I had worked fine. I put a metal brace inside the body to connect it to the head which stabilized the whole thing. Here are the bodies:

My intention was not to make the bride look as thick as the sculpture seems to indicate at this point in production. It is difficult with this though because the bottom half of the sculpture has to support the heavy upper half. The groom looks to me to be pretty skinny or muscularly built and the body of his sculpture is somewhat heavier looking too. I hope that this translates as appearing "cute" rather than "fat". I plan on trying to slim her body down a bit when the clay dries enough that I will not crush everything I have done already when I try to carve into it. The dress was another problem...

Ugh... Nevermind the Chach, but this dress is a total pain to render in clay. I rolled the clay thin and scrunched it all up. It took several tries to get it as good as it is but I am still not completely happy with it. The way this dress is made could be a potential disaster to do in clay! I ended up smoothing it out so that it appeared to be all wavy and ruffled at the bottom without being distracting. Hope it is appreciated.

There were several obstacles to this project. The hair, the dress, the flowers and also the tiara. There is of course the absolute certainty that the bride will want to change something too... Ugh... I will post the painted sculptures when they are finished.

When they are done, I'll let you know. : )

been a while

2006-09-25T19:18:00.000-07:00

I have a couple of new things to post and some news... Here is the latest thing I have done. It is for a couple who is getting married this Saturday. It's for a sign in board. I am also going to do a sculpture of them for a cake topper which will be pretty cool. I've done these before but do not have photos of them so this is going to be for the website. The photos were not perfect and I had to guess on the bride's hair. I hope it looks right! I did it kinda dark so I didn't have to put much detail into the hair, but the sculpture is going to be a bit more tricky however... I'd like to offer a wedding package in the future with both of these and some other extras that you cannot find anywhere else for a set fee. I think it would help me push the weddings in the future and I really like to draw at weddings. They are so fun. It's like you are being invited to some families greatest party ever and everybody there wants to meet you! : ) I love being a caricature artist. I have such a skewed view of life don't I? Hee hee!

Here's a photo of the couple getting married

This wedding of course comes the day before the NCN Convention where I plan on being for all of next week and hopefully returning with the title of "world's fastest caricaturist". It's going to be a pretty big deal this year I think. Not that I have anything to compare it to but from what I have heard, this one is going to be really competitive. There will be over 200 other artists from around the world competing this year and I'm pretty sure that 14 seconds is not unheard of in this competition. I know I can do that but I am a little worried about what others are bringing to the table! *whew!*

Last week and a couple of weeks ago I had the oppertunity to do retail caricatures a couple of times for a guy named Jason. It was fun hanging out with him, Walt and my good friend Ron Kantrowitz too. I spent last weekend at the York County Fair and it rained almost all week long... It sucked. I had fun though and made out OK considering. Lotsa good stories to tell but this is the pro journal so I'll just keep them to myself for now!

Anyways, here is another illustration from a couple of weeks back that I thought I'd post. This client was one of the nicest clients I have ever had. Just nice as pie. Loved the caricature right off the bat. Paid upfront and gave me swell photos to use. Couldn't ask for a better client. This guy here was retireing.

lil kid

2006-08-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

I think that sometimes you need to post things like this too. I thought it turned out pretty well for a minor commission.

clowning

2006-08-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to throw this out there and see what happens...

I'm thinking of becoming a clown. Or, maybe doing certain gigs as a clown. Maybe advertising that I can do it at least. Anyways, I'm thinking about it... There it is.

There are lots of clowns around here making killer money and doing at least 10 gigs a weekend with all the face painting, magic, juggling and balloon animals and whatnot. I have lost track of what a "clown" is. It seems to me lately that a clown is an entertainer that (makes more money than me) does balloons, juggles, does magic and facepainting. I haven't seen a whole lot of silly clown stuff going on when I do gigs with them, you know? None of that disgustingly cutesy, dorky stuff that makes me want to puke. It seems that most often they are just whipping out product or strolling entertainers like me. They charge the same or more!

Stacie is thinking about trying to learn some of these skills while she is not "working". (she is quitting her job to explore other ventures-and not just clowing!) It would be a great way to earn a living if we can make it fly. Plus a fantastic way to stay home with the kids when that day comes.

I'm sure that with the contacts and whatnot that I have going for me that the transition to "adam the clown", "pate family circus", or at least getting Stacie started by entertaining however she likes would not be that big of a challenge.

I was thinking rather than being a traditional clown I might opt more for the "New Vaudvillian" style clown (see, I've been doing my research!) like Wavy Gravy or Penn and Teller are kinda clowns this way. They generally do pranks and mess with people or just tell stories to make them think. But I was thinking that in the way of caricatures, it might help me to really let loose on these occasions with my exaggerations. Since I will totally, obviously and undoubtedly be there to be funny... I can give em both barrels every time. I have been reading and apparently, most clowns feel special when they clown, like they are in a dream, or someplace or somebody else. I think this might really improve my work if I find that kind of connection with it! Since I'm fast, I won't have any problems keeping the crowd's attention while I'm doing it. I have lots of gags and lines I can use too. It's seems like it would be a pretty easy transition for me and I love to learn new stuff and entertain people too.

I'm thinking my costume and personality are going to be pretty down to earth and totally me. I'm going to be (if I do it) "SKETCHY" - Me and my trademark sideburns in a gorrilla suit, shirt and tie underneath with a bowler hat. Walk around caricatures, balloon animals, face painting and magic. Any thoughts?
__________________
I have been rubbed and scrubbed and you can eat my skin! What am I?

ideas

2006-08-21T10:17:00.000-07:00

My wife wants to become a clown, which is kinda gross but... She wants to learn to do balloon animals and face painting. I do henna tattoos and stuff on top of the face painting too. The clowns, face painters, balloon twisters that I know around here are busy non stop so I think this is a very positive move. Now, does anybody have ideas on how to get started? : ) All this on top of caricaturing will be the coup de gras!