Caricatures at Orange Jar

When you think about caricatures, you always thought of drawings with oversized heads, above normal nose, and hips as small as your fingertips. However, the artist behind the caricature of Dubai Lime's team on this page does it differently. Ria Mendoza captures the fun and lighter side of the team without exaggerating the size of their lips.

Here is an article by Ria Mendoza on how OrangeJar.com started.

OrangeJar.com

by Ria Mendoza

I have an artist friend who does caricatures for a gift shop. When she got too busy to do the caricatures, the shop approached me because they know I also draw as a hobby. That was seven years ago in Los Banos, Laguna when I was still managing a cafe and restaurant which I co-owned with friends. My caricatures back then were made with pen and ink and used the cross-hatch method. When I moved back to Manila, I wrote full time for magazines and online publications and supplemented my income with caricatures which soon branched out to book illustrations and artwork for newsletters, souvenir programs and other publications. It was fun so I kept doing it.

When I moved to Dubai in 2004, I soon found that there's nothing much to do at night especially during the summer months. On my second year here, I thought of starting caricatures again. By that time, I've started using Photoshop and Illustrator regularly so I thought of making my caricatures more bold by finalizing them digitally. But it wasn't until my second year that I thought of turning my personal website, which served as my online cv and portfolio, center on my artwork. Then about mid last year, I bought a domain name - OrangeJar.com, had it hosted by WebConnectPh.com and seriouly thought about marketing OrangeJar.com for fun gift ideas. But it wasn't until earlier this year that I was able to go through with it.

Coming up with a domain name was quite difficult because a lot of the dot com names were taken already. Even my own name wasn't avaible anymore! I've taken a liking to burnt orange so I decided to have 'orange' in the name and eventually ended up with OrangeJar.com - a jar full of color and fun. I offer caricatures, illustrations and free photos. The photos are free to use, as long as it's not sold per print and I or the wesbite is given credit. I know some of it have been printed, framed and used as office wall hangings.

My work is different from the usual caricatures that you see around. By definition, a caricature can either be a critical or complimentary representation of someone by giving emphasis on the person's most distinctive feature. However, I do not like the 'sarcastic' way the usual caricatures look so instead of emphasizing on the most obvious feature, I treat each project like a simplified portrait and the result is more like a cartoonized version of a person placed within a fun and colorful setting.

My friends are of course, my first circle of clients. I started offering free caricatures to very close friends and from there they recommended me to people they know and thankfully, the circle grew from that core. Recently, I started posting OrangeJar.com ads in DubaiLime, Facebook and other Dubai-based sites which also bring traffic and clients my way. I've also been recently commissioned to illustrate for a children's book but I can't say much about it right now. Hopefully, within the next two months, I'll be able to announce more on OrangeJar.com and DubaiLime.com. But right now, I would like to concentrate on caricatures, illustrations and (free) photos - because that's what OrangeJar.com is all about, a jar full of color and fun.

Get your own company, team or personal caricature at orangejar.com

Comments (2)

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Meeting cartoonists
written by Jobrooker , May 12, 2008

HI

I would like to know how many cartoonists and caricaturists are in Dubai. I was a member of the Australian Cartoonists Association for twelve years. Is there any clubs for cartoonists here in Dubai and if not, maybe we should start one! The ACA had members of all the top professional media artists as well as members just starting. It created a great mentoring service for new artists as well as some memorable award nights!

Please check out my nearly finished web page for samples of my artwork .

www.thebrookerstudio.com