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A caricature is a portrait, painting or cartoon that exaggerates or distorts certain features of a person or item to generate an easily identifiable visual similarity.

Caricatures can be discourteous or complimentary and can serve a political point or be drawn solely for entertainment. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in editorial cartoons, whereas caricatures of movie stars are often found in entertainment magazines.

The word is derived from the Italian caricare- to charge or load. Thus, the word “caricature” essentially means a “loaded portrait”. Strictly speaking , the term refers only to depictions of real-life people, and not to cartoon fabrications of fictional characters.

However the world-renowned animator Walt Disney claimed that his animation work could be likened to caricature, saying the most difficult thing to do was find the caricature of an animal that worked best as a human-like character.

One of the earliest instances of a caricature has been discovered in the ruins of Pompeii where a graffiti caricature of a politician had been carved on a wall.

Moving forward nearly 1500 years but remaining in Italy, Leonardo da Vinci was an dynamic proponent of the art. He actually sought out people with some kind of deformity to use as models.

The purpose of a caricature was to offer an impression of the original which was more striking than a portrait. Diodemmar Casem, one of the great early exponents, claimed to be able to sum up a person in ? three or four strokes of the pen?.

Caricature experienced its first successes in the closed aristocratic circles of France and Italy, where such portraits would be passed about for mutual satisfaction.

Mary Darley was one of the first professional caricaturists in England and about 1762 published the first book of caricature drawing in England – A Book of Caricaturas

However, the two greatest exponents of the art of the caricature in the 18th century were Thomas Rowlandson and James Gillray. Their styles of output were in great contrast. Rowlandson was the more artistic of the two and took his inspiration from the public at large.

Gillray, on the other hand, was more interested in the political scene and used his art to lampoon political life. Being contemporaries they became great friends and used to spend a great deal of time getting drunk in the taverns of London.

In drawing a caricature the caricaturist can choose to either gently mock or cruelly wound his subject. Drawing caricatures can merely be a form of entertainment and amusement ? in which case gentle mockery is in order ? or the art can be employed to make a significant social or political objective.

A caricaturist draws on (1) the natural characteristics of the subject (the big ears, long nose, etc.); (2) the acquired individuality (stoop, scars, facial lines etc.); and (3) the vanities (choice of hair style, spectacles, clothes, expressions and mannerisms).

Although caricaturists like Gillray raised a lot of controversy in the 18th century by their portrayal of the Royal family and especially George III, it was nothing compared to the present day uproar in the Muslim world brought about by cartoons caricaturing the prophet Mohammed. So the contemporary day caricaturist continues in the satirical mode of his illustrious predecessors.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on many topics but is presently concerned with Kitty Cannon 3. If you would like to read more, please go over to our web site entitled Kitten Cannon 3.

It is vital for everyone, even babies, to have somewhere safe and secure to sleep. I say ‘even babies’ because it is simple to think that babies are not quite conscious, but closer contact makes the observer soon realize that babies have a sense of security. For instance, they may cry if one stranger comes near and smile if a different one comes near. A bit like animals, they have instincts.

Well, they are animals and so are we adults, so that should not come as much of a surprise either. Babies require warmth and softness and something akin to a nest. Naturally, parents have realized this for thousands of generations and the way we have dealt with that need for thousands of years is by wrapping babies up and putting them in cribs or cots.

In other words somewhere safe and secure. Even though they do not know it, they have a feeling that they are in a walled enclosure where animals cannot see them without difficulty and they cannot drop out of either. a crib or cot permits a baby to sleep comfortably as if it is hidden from danger.

However, as they get older, they become more adventurous, which is precisely why they require ‘walls’ around them, which make them feel safe and frustrated at the same time. This is obviously the time when toddlers are at their most vulnerable, because they want to explore but are not very aware of the dangers of the world. Every parent worries about their children wandering off.

When a child can walk and scramble is the time when it has to be removed from a crib that is off the ground to a safer bed, from which they cannot climb out and fall.

These beds are often called toddlers’ beds, but now the sides have to be high enough for them not to be able to escape from – a type of pen.

Some cribs can be converted and although they might seem more expensive at first, they can be cheaper in the long run.

It is one of the most hazardous times for babies and one of the most worrying times for recent parents too. Putting the toddler’s pen in the parents’ room is an easy trap to fall into, because it can make the eventual necessary break moving the child from the parents’ room to the nursery all the more a problem when the time ultimately comes.

However, that time will come when the child has to sleep in a room of its own either with other brothers and sisters or not, but the fact of the matter is that parents have to have their sleep as well so that they are alert enough to both earn money to support their family and be awake enough to watch over their offspring.

If you are concerned about child pool safety or Child Safety in general, please visit our website.

Patch work quilts are ageless, are they not? Patch work quilts have been manufactured for hundreds of years, because in essence a patch work quilt is manufactured from off-cuts of cloth. A housewife would make a set of curtains and store the off-cuts. Then she would make some clothes and store the off-cuts. And so on and so on until she had enough off-cuts to create a quilt, if she required one for her household.

This old-style of constructing bedspreads or quilts always manages to look conventional and contemporary at the same time. A specialist variety of this old-style is the American tradition of women embroidering off-cuts of cloth in order to create a quilt as an excuse for a social life. These days there is more money floating about in society and the patches on the quilt can be more personal and more complicated.

There is also a great deal more choice of fabric about than there ever was, so it is not always necessary to embellish a swatch of cloth to make it one’s own. Someone may always use blue and white stripes as a signature or green and black squares for instance. Most individuals make a patch work quilt of uniform squares, but others will use squares with curved corners and even rectangles, rhombuses, circles and triangles.

Some patch work quilters like to select a theme whilst others are happy to let numerous participants sew in any patch that they like. There are also patch block patterns. The four patch scheme is almost certainly the most common, but the nine patch scheme is also fairly common.

A four patch scheme is achieved by dividing the quilt into equal squares and then bisecting each square across the top and down the sides. Every block of four squares can then have a theme. The same goes for a nine patch scheme, but divide every large block on the quilt with two vertical and two horizontal lines constructing nine small squares in every large square.

You can design your quilt pattern on graph paper if you like. To do this, first work out how big you want your quilt to be. Then draw that on graph paper and divide your graph into the number of that you want. Learners might be better off using larger squares in the beginning and then increasing the number of squares by reducing their size.

Begin with a four block scheme and move up to a nine and then twelve block scheme. You can repeat the swatches of cloth at regular or irregular intervals and you can change the orientation of the swatch in your patch work quilt too. A patch work quilt can be well planned or completely random. Well planned quilts can be fairly dazzling, but even random quilts look fantastic.

Owen Jones, the author of that piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now concerned with the chenille throw blankets. If you want to know more, please visit our website at Woollen Blankets.

In all probability the first name that springs to mind when thinking of the history of cartoons is that of Punch.

It was a British weekly magazine of humour and satire published between 1841 and 1992. It was started in July 1841 by Henry Mayhew who, with Mark Lemon, was accountable for the editing, and engraver Ebenezer Landells who took care of the illustrations.

Its initial sub-title was The London Charivari, after a French satirical humour publication known as Le Charivari. Revealing their satiric and humorous intent, the two editors took the name of the anarchic glove puppet, Mr. Punch, of Punch and Judy fame as the title of the new publication.

On the other hand the name is also a play on words regarding the name of the co-editor Mark Lemon, in that “punch is nothing without lemon”. Mayhew did not stick with the publication for long. He ceased being joint editor in 1842 and became “suggestor in chief” until he departed in 1845.

Punch was responsible for the word “cartoon” in the sense of a comic drawing. In fact one of its most famous cartoons, drawn by George Du Maurier, the grandfather of the novelist Dame Daphne Du Maurier , gave rise to the phrase ?it is good in parts, like the curate?s egg?. The phrase derives from a cartoon entitled “True Humility”.

It pictured a timid-looking curate taking breakfast in his bishop’s house.The bishop says, “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones.” The curate replies, “Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you that parts of it are excellent!”

Yet probably its most well-known cartoon is entitled ? Dropping the Pilot? . This was a political cartoon by Sir John Tenniel, first published in March 1890. It depicts the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, as a shipping pilot, stepping off a ship watched by the German Emperor Wilhelm II. Bismarck had recently resigned as Chancellor at Wilhelm’s insistence.

After a very difficult start with much financial trouble and lack of market success, Punch became a necessity for British middle class drawing rooms because it not just displayed a sophisticated sense of humour and but did not contain the rude material so ubiquitous in much of the alternative satirical press of the time.

The Times utilized small parts from Punch as column fillers, giving the magazine free publicity and indirectly granting a degree of respectability, However respectability was truly achieved when it was learned that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were to be found amongst it readership.

The circulation of Punch peaked during the 1940s at 175,000 but thereafter fell into deterioration, until in 1992 ,after 150 years the publication was compelled to close.

In 1996, the Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed became tired of the many criticisms he had to put up with from the publication Private Eye and purchased the rights to the Punch name with a view to using it to combat his antagonist. He relaunched it later that year, but it never achieved any degree of circulation or profitability and in May 2002 it was announced that Punch would at long last close for ever

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An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn (or made with computers to look similar to something hand-drawn) film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some sort of story or plot (even if it is a very short one).

Animation itself can be described as the rapid showing of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of methods.

It is hard to believe but the very earliest examples of attempts to capture the impression of motion by drawing can be discovered in Paleolithic cave paintings. Here animals are shown with multiple legs in superimposed positions, clearly attempting to express the perception of motion.

Further examples can be seen on an earthenware bowl over 5,000 years old from Iran and an Egyptian mural of wrestlers in action, which is about 4,000 years old.

However these examples cannot really be described as animation as there was no means of making the characters actually move.

The first mechanical devices designed to provide the illusion of movement were developed for children?s amusement or as entertainment at private parties. These included the zoetrope, magic lantern, praxinoscope, thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, and flip book.

Charles-Emile Reynaud created the first animated film in 1892 while he exhibited an animated film consisting of loops of around 500 frames. This film is also outstanding as the first known instance of film perforations being used. His films were not recorded, but drawn directly onto the transparent strip.

But the first film which can truly be designated as an animated cartoon was ‘Humorous Phases of Funny Faces’ created by J. Stuart Blackton in 1906. It features a cartoonist drawing faces on a chalkboard, and the faces apparently coming to life.

One of the very first successful animated cartoons was “Gertie the Dinosaur” (1914) by Winsor McCay. It is considered the first example of true character animation.

All the main movie studios used animated cartoons of 5 to 10 minute lengths as ?fillers? before the main film was shown during the period of the 1930s to the 1960s.Theatrical cartoons were produced in colossal numbers and MGM, Disney, Paramount and Warner Brothers were the greatest studios producing these 5 to 10-minute “shorts”.

However the ever blossomingh popularity of TV and the subsequent waning in cinema going has meant that today most animated cartoons are produced for television.

The most well-known animated cartoon character of all is no doubt Mickey Mouse who was introduced to the world by Walt Disney in May 1928 in Plane Crazy but also starred some six months later in the first animated cartoon with sound – ‘Steamboat Willie’.

By the way, Mickey was originally christened Mortimer Mouse until Walt Disney?s wife persuaded him to make the change.

Mickey Mouse, predated by another cartoon animal called Felix The Cat, made his first appearance in 1919. However another all time favourite cartoon series Tom and Jerry had to wait until 1931 to put in an appearance.

All these characters and numerous more have long since made the transition from movies to television where, no doubt, they will be seen for many years to come.

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