Event Artist’s Job Volume

According the latest news, the world’s economy starting recovered from the previous’ economy crisis, thus in our events and entertainment industry was picking up as well.

Due to the economy’s crisis plus the H1N1 incidents, the market really quiet, many entertainers do not have much event booking, this is not a surprise due to our past experience of the SARS incident between the months of November 2002 and July 2003; in such circumstances, event entertainer’s booking definitely not much.

Usually due to such circumstances, you can see some new comers was anxiously asking around why they can’t get more job, I would say this is because they do not see what happen to the big environment, they did not understand the peak and down period of the event industry in Singapore as well, of course this is because due to they are too new and inexperienced.

The new entertainers starting suspect their competitors had been undercut them and they were trying hard to find out what was happening on their competitors.

In my experience, once the market down, all the entertainers will facing the same poor booking problem altogether, nothing about who is under cutting who (unless those really do so).

Technically, it was much tougher to gain more jobs in this industry whether you are part timer or full timer due to same type of entertainers was growing and had been crowded in the current market.

For example, in 1993, caricaturist who’s in the market including Einstein (the pioneer caricaturist in Singapore) from Norway, Eric Ng, Desmond Ng Cheng Eng, Saik, Chong Jit Leong and few more people.

In 2009 today, they are more than 28 caricaturist in the market including Kamal Dollah and his wife Roushi Ye (also known as Singapore Florism Artist),
Reggie Wan, William Lee,
Zaki and his brother Yunos,

Mat Tokang, Belle Kwan, Diana Lim,Mulan Tay,

new China immigrant Luo Yong, Luo Yong’s Father Luo Rui Lin,
mother Niu Quan Lian and Luo Yong's Husband Mr Liu who is a researcher in NUS,

Guinness’ World record of fastest caricaturist Peter Zhou (known professionally as Peter Draw), Wilson Lee, Shawn,
Oh Thiam Huat and his brother, Pak Ah Bee,

Joyce, Daniel Lim, Rizal Wahab, Arthority,
Hafiz Abdullah, Mohamed Izwandy,
CyBeriNa, Rohani, Noor Rahman Saini, dancerene and etc.

Doing Event in Costume

Except Chinese cultural theme related event like Chinese paper cutting or fortune telling, I seldom wear a special costume do my caricature or silhouette cutting during event, unless the costume was subsidies by event company or client.

Basically, I still wear a vest and artist hats with or without suspender, which is the basic event caricaturist or silhouette cutting artist’s professional attire.

Few years ago, I wear a vest for every of my event booking, then recently I wear artist hat for my event. More and more caricaturist wears hats while doing their events recent years. I am not the first one who wear hats doing events, I remember the first person I saw who wear his red colour artist hats during event is Eric Ng in about at least 12 years ago. Anywhere, the pioneer caricaturist Einstein in Singapore is an artist who never wear hat while doing his show in my memory (thought he wear colourful costume instead).

Quantity and Quality and Profession

Recently came across few guests mentioned about the quality about the artists they hired for their events; they told me that the event companies arranged a China silhouette cutting artist and one of the China caricaturist in their event was working in an extremely slow, not only that, during the few hours booking hour, did not see them around in their event! The China caricaturist was not on her desk most of the time, the roving silhouette cutting artist which was the old white hair uncle from China was almost ‘disappeared’!

So they want to ensure me and my friends must not do the same thing as these China artists which believe is the China father and the daughter who cheating the working time in their event.

I had tried my best to do the best for them of course, I also believed all the local Singaporean artists sure trying their best to serve their guests during the booking hours.

I had few teachers was came from China, all of them was really someone that I highly respect them because they were really hardworking and nice people, I also having China colleagues, they were working very hard as well!

Thought these China artists who getting complaint recently had spoiling the great representation of artists from China.

As an event artist, we always trying our best to behave ourselves, because there always people from the client side watching our performance, nothing can cheat during our booking hour.

I came across this unknown name young student caricaturist, she was working really hard to serve the guests, and her drawing was quite good as well, because she have the right attitude while she doing the job.

Singapore is a small country, the entertainment circle is small as well, anything you do it wrong will be spread fast from the guests and clients (especially the committee in-charge), not the event companies stuffs or artists themselves.

Hot Day for Caricaturists in Peak Period

As per every year in December which is the peak period for caricaturists’ demand due to many companies having their dinner and dance. This year’s hot day for caricaturist was 5th December, 12th, 13th December and 19th December.

As an event artist, you need to be super duple careful about your booking schedule, if you realized you are having double booking, that was no chance for you to find and replacement because all of your caricature friends also taken in these hot date! That will be a serious problem.

Nothing to envy, not because you are that highly demand but it just happened so many dinner and dance running at the same day, almost same timing which either from 6.00pm to 7.00pm or 6.30pm to 7.30pm.

I think as an event caricaturist, we only can pay extra attention to ensure do not have and double booking that’s all we can do, because the whole Singapore was having dinner and dance in many places at the same time! Meanwhile, no matter how hard we are trying to grab the job, we only able to do ONE show on that day, haahaa! That is part of our event artist live.

I would say, during the peak period, the jobs was looking for artists; during the down period, all the artist was seeking for jobs.

Morgan Chua’s Caricature

Passing by Popular book shop and saw Morgan Chua’s New book in Caricature displayed in the new book rack. I found his drawing was very nice and stylo. He is an expert! I should learn more from him! Heehee!

Caricature Drawing, Caricaturists In Singapore

Not only me, have lots of the artists in Singapore believed the best full time Caricaturists was Jit of Portrait Workshop. If I say he is the longest caricaturists who open a shop doing caricature, portrait drawing and illustrations in full time, who can be deny that? Maybe Einstein or Eric Ng or Pak Ah Bee (the long hair guy at Clarke Quay last time before this place gets renovated) was doing full timing that longer then him.

Many peoples had copying his drawing style, lots people tried to break his standard; if he not the best, why up to today still lots people keep copying his style? Haahaa! If you do some research, besides the newspapers and related editorial caricaturist, no matter how they claim they are having their own style, end of the day it was looks almost the same.

I didn’t copy Jit style, maybe that’s why I still in the rank at number 999; haahaa! I salut Jit, one of my brother, he is real cool, he do his own drawing and did not simply copy people’s work nor blogging style and so fort.

Thought the illustration and caricature drawing market in Singapore was real small, another thing was the customers who order caricature drawing, cant’ really accept too contemporary drawing style, ‘must be looks alike’ is the golden rules here, unless you are doing it for editorial, that was different matter, that could be the reason why not much caricaturist can break this rules.

Because by end of the day, after taking so much effort to do the drawing, you also need to ensure you can collect the payment, not like some artists get reject and put the drawing in the shop yet owing framing fees from the framing shops.

Art could be very subjective, sometimes you had taken lots effort to draw the guest, yet they could tell you that the drawing totally not looks like them at all, every caricaturists in the world sure experienced it and facing it once in a while, not because I am the only people who face this before (although I am in ‘rank number 999’) haahaa! So I would not like to talk bad about other artists to higher their own image, because it is equally laughing at you self.