Drawn to Faces

By Nicole M. Miller

Scott Fertig likes faces. He's obsessed. He goes to the local Starbucks weekly for a face fix and a shot of caffeine as he surreptitiously draws in his sketchbook. Ten years ago, he found a way to feed his compulsion and make a little money -- all on the up and up.

Fertig is a caricaturist, specifically, a caricaturist who works the party scene. At a recent holiday party for C.W. Strittmatter, a trucking company, Fertig set up near the entrance, his homemade contraption of art supplies on his right, a marquee of caricatures on his left. As he worked, the likes of Tiger Woods, Cher, Jennifer Aniston and Mr. Spock looked over his shoulder. Soon Fertig was outlining the features of two brothers who'd sat down across from him. "I'm going to frame it for sure," said the boys' mother.

Mark Cornwell, whose wife works for the Strittmatter company, watched Fertig work.

"It's the little things that he does that bring it to life -- a little color on the eyebrows," Cornwell said.

Fertig uses pencils and pens, markers and paint to produce about 10 faces an hour. "I like to have a lot of different tools and mediums," says Fertig, 35. "If you get too used to one tool, you make things that look more generic." The artist started drawing when he was 3, he says, and never stopped. He studied art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he grew up.

Caricaturing isn't his only form. Fertig's landscapes and city scenes have been hung in galleries, including a 45-piece exhibition that ended this week in Pittsburgh. "If I don't do that, I don't feel like a real artist," Fertig says. "Since I was a kid, I loved cartooning and I loved Hudson River School paintings -- landscapes.

Each, he says, has its positives. He's less restricted when he's working on his own time, free to paint whatever he wants. With the caricature, he often draws what a subject wants to see. "At the old folks home, you don't draw every wrinkle," he says. "When I'm doing caricatures, I'm both an artist and an entertainer."

scott@scottfertig.com
or 703-731-9383

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