Name: 【TEDx】Caricature everything! | Signe Wilkinson | TEDxFreeLibraryofPhiladelphia
Uploaded: 2016-09-03T09:58:53.000Z
Duration: 14 min 2 s
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It's a real honor for me to be talking about cartooning,

here in the free library of Philadelphia.

I got my start here, in the second-floor photo room,

where I come in rifling through the photographs

looking for material to draw for my cartoons.

I believe the good reference material makes for good cartooning.

This was of course way back, in the last millennium,

when, if people advised young women what to do,

I almost got it right, I became a stereotypist.

And the topic of my talk today is in defense of stereotypes.

Now, we, cartoonists, stereotype everything,

A stereotype is just an image that comes to represent

a typical Philadelphia  TEDx audience member

and I drew that person as extremely attractive,

very well-dressed and highly intelligent, not to mention creative,

Well, a cartoonist's job is to keep the images and the stereotypes fresh.

Imagine if you had to create an image of a modern native American,

and you had to do it without using any of these images.

Well, this is how my very creative young colleague, Matt Boris did it.

"Non-white babies now outnumber white babies in America,

This cartoon went viral, not only because

it was a brilliant comment on the changing demographics of America,

but it was also a fresh and very different look

at what Native Americans, today, might look like.

This is a group which,  as you might all have known,

these are what the stereotypes of  often look like.

And when you compare them with what Matt did,

they become even older, more out-of-date and objectionable.

So, how do we keep things fresh? Well, we, keep our eyes open.

Part of creativity is just paying attention.

One of the great caricaturists  of America, Ed Sorel, once said:

"If I want to draw carrots,  I go get a bunch of carrots".

Needless to say, for a an editorial cartoonist,

However, I was doing some freelance work for an organic gardening magazine,

so, carrot-based humor became a necessity,

and I will just finish this, to see what a carrot looks like,

I don't usually draw standing up with my back to an audience,

I chose something  pretty easy to draw, let's face it.

But still, it's important  to get little things right,

like look at the little hairs at the end of the carrot,

that's important to get your carrots right.

And we don't just draw carrots of course,

but I always liked to drawing people and natural objects.

And when I got started, I had trouble with man-made objects

An architect friend of mine,  David Cronrath gave me the great advice.

He said: "Relax, caricature them,  caricature everything!"

And I tried to keep that in mind, and it came in very handy,

when the supreme court decided that corporations are people too.

So how does one draw the corporate personhood?

Well, here is the "Supreme Court  Guide to Evolution". (Laughter)

I've got to caricature fish, amphibians, primates, humans,

and now our highest life form,  the corporation.

And of course, I just had to look out the window

at the Comcast Tower to figure out which building to chose.

Unfortunately when I was first  getting started out at San Jose,

I totally ignored all this advice,  and brought my old images

"Sydney, you are not drawing California houses!

So if this is what a California house might look like,

Oh God! This is so hard, standing-up and backwards,

So that's great, we'll have the stoop steps coming up

and we'll have a window box if we're lucky,

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【TEDx】Caricature everything! | Signe Wilkinson | TEDxFreeLibraryofPhiladelphia

material

native

recognize

people