Caricature as a gift

Thabo

Thabo Matime of Pretoria loves braaing and potjiekos, is an avid collector and smoker of cigars, passionate about BMWs and his luscious beard, plays a bit of golf but is "a shocker" and is passionate about music and an aspiring closet DJ.

Konrad had never had a client that was so happy about the final artwork.

Editorial caricature

Licked

This caricature was drawn for a property economics publication's cover. The headline was, "How to lick the cap rate problem".

The caricature was of Erwin Rode of Bellville-based Rode & Associates, based in Bellville, Cape Town. He's been known for his sometimes cringe-worthy sense of humour by his family.

Caricature as retirement gift

The Godfather

Cape Oil, producers of sunflower oil etc., asked us to draw a caricature of a top manager who was about to retire. It was his farewell present.

We were given a few pictures of the manager, affectionately known among employees as "The Godfather", for his love of gambling and always having something up his sleeve when it comes to business. If you look closely at the full caricature, you'll see oil dripping from his sleeve.

Editorial caricature

Bishop Desmond Tutu

Something Konrad did in his early days (1997) as a caricaturist.

South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu  (sometimes lovingly referred to as "The Arch") has one of those faces that are a cartoonist's wet dream. The more expressive a face, the more you have to play with.

Tutu has played an important and constructive role in building democracy and is generally seen as one of those really rare species in politics, the good guy. 'Bad guys' are usually a better source though because you can get downright nasty!

Caricature of children

Business Kids

Business Kid is an organisation in Gauteng that promotes training for disadvantaged children who want to enter the business world, through interactive programmes, initiatives, workshops and awareness campaigns. Commissioned by Lucia Nteke.

Caricature as graduation gift

Nerita

Nerita Kluyts's grandparents in Durbanville commissioned this caricature as a graduation gift for their granddaughter on the day of her graduation at Stellenbosch University in 2019. She got her Honours degree in Accounting.

This was a particularly difficult caricature, as she was a highly attractive 21-year old woman. In Konrad's experience, probably because there's so much pressure on women to look beautiful, distorting features on a woman to make her look funny can be tricky. Luckily, the clients said he got it just right!

Caricature as farewell gift

Franco

Grey Advertising of Mowbray, Cape Town, called Konrad for his caricature artist skills – they needed a caricature of brand manager Franco Maria Maggi. It was given to him as a farewell gift when he left South Africa for Mexico.

Elements they wanted him to incorporate would be Franco's Italian ancestry (born & bred), his enviable travel history (he's been to just about every country in the world), his love of music, Heineken, and his cheekiness and kind, caring and witty nature.

So, Konrad made his jacket green for both the Italian feel and the Heineken brand colour - Heineken was his portfolio. The background was a cowboy flick sunset, "riding into the sun", with the odd cactus for the Mexican reference. The rest is obvious.

Editorial caricature

Tito Mboweni

Konrad's responsible for Rode & Associates' quarterly property research publication covers, and sometimes it means drawing caricatures of real people.

For this edition of Rode's Report on the South African Property Market, Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni had something to point out on the graph behind him. Please note, this was in 2006 – Mboweni, now Minister of Finance (2020), is quite a bit older today.

Caricatures for event invitation

Property economics conference 2008

This e-mailed announcement for Rode & Associates' annual property conference involved caricatures of the speakers – all expert economists. It was a great idea by Rode's marketing manager Lynette Smit, and we ended up with a colourful, eye catching e-mail.

Obviously we couldn't draw a detailed caricature of each speaker due to the budget involved as well as the small sizes, but we did relatively simple, scaled down illustrations that did the job.

It was quite difficult, as it was based on one photo of each speaker, often in bad lighting, missing detail and so forth, but we managed after Lynette sent back two caricatures for being ... less than flattering to the speakers ;-)

It is of course the nature of caricaturists to distort people's stand-out features, but one must find that balance between humour and flattery.

Caricature as corporate gift

BDO Spencer directors

Konrad was approached by chartered accountants BDO Spencer Ward's staff to create a group caricature of the directors of BDO. The budget was relatively small, so they wanted a line art group caricature.

Konrad was sent separate photographs of each director, which he then caricaturised and pasted into a group.

Caricaturing one face takes time, so in the case of a group, less time is spent perfecting each of the caricatures.

Thabo Matime
General manager, New Product Development, Netcare

"Konrad, wow!!!! I’m blown away. Thank you so much. I’ve always wanted this. I really love it."

Pieter De Waal
Sole proprietor, Hermit on the Hill wines

"A stickler for detail, Konrad appreciates the difference between good and great, and won't stop tweaking till the end-product meets his exacting standards.

"His offbeat sense of humour, coupled with his ability to transform this into his designs, makes it a pleasure to brainstorm new concepts with him.

"Konrad has been a key member in developing my brand, and I always look to him for inspiration and creativity."

Tania de Maine-Oosthuizen:
Manager, Tharagay Addictions Services

"We love his work, from initial ideas to final designs! What he has done for us, was simple, yet elegant, and purely beautiful".

Zeki Hilmi
Sole proprietor, Chelsea Village Framers and Antique Shoppe

"Konrad has this exceptional ability to develop illustrations.

"We were so thrilled by the work he undertook for us that we employed Konrad to design our wedding invitation, which, through collaboration and Konrad's outstanding knowledge of graphic design, he designed for us exactly what we were looking for. All our guests commented and said, "what an amazing wedding invitation!"

"I recommend Konrad to everybody and will use him in the future again."

Sanett Uys
Marketing manager, Colliers International

"The work Konrad did for us has been outstanding! His customer service is great and his creativity exceptional. He is willing to think out of the box and come up with new ideas, which we love."

Ursula Jensen
Blue Sky Towers

"That is AWESOME. We handed the caricature pictures to the 3 guys at a dinner and they were completely blown away. What a lovely surprise it was for them."