Jeremiah Teutsch is patiently explaining to me how he creates fascinating caricatures for the San Antonio news and political website called Plaza de Armas.
"So you lay it all out in pencil and then you draw a final sketch of them in pen. Then I scan them all into the computer and I color them."
In front of him are different pencil, pen and computer versions of the same caricature. It features images of Mayor Julian Castro and Assistant City Manager Sheryl Sculley wearing Groucho Marx-type glasses and moustache disguises and pointing fingers at former Deputy City Manager Pat DiGiovani. The story it illustrates is about city ethics violations.
"I wanted them to be sort of in disguise but still recognizable."
Teutsch works at a wooden table in the old warehouse in Southtown which has been converted into a studio/apartment. Next to his 15-inch MacBook Pro is a stack of drawings.
The 30-year-old started drawing caricatures only in the last few years, beginning at the San Antonio Current.
"I can turn them out in two, three hours or four hours, depending on how extensive it is."
Teutsch tells me that he's now completed about a hundred of the caricatures. Some are of national figures, including Richard Nixon and Gore Vidal, but most are spot-on renditions of local San Antonio characters. City Council members and arts leaders are most prominent, along with law enforcement officials.
While it takes him just a few hours to finish one, he says they're not easy.
"It's tough man some of the guys locally they're tough to draw, mostly cause I don't know them. And if you only get a couple of fuzzy, pixillated pictures on the internet, you can't really get a good reference point on what they actually look like."
But you wouldn't know that from his work. The drawings exaggerate different parts of each person, but are perfectly identifiable, so I ask him what he focuses on when caricaturing someone.
"It kind of depends. With like (Julian) Castro, you notice he's got kind of a pointy head and a really big mouth.
And (Sheryl) Sculley. She's got crazy drawn-on eyebrows and like really big mascara so I try to focus on that and her crazy haircut."
He also may find it easier to focus since he works at home in a growing art-friendly part of town.
"Southtown is great it's up and coming, stuff happening all the time."
Some of that stuff is very loud. Our talk is interrupted a few times by the blare of a train horn coming from the railroad tracks right outside his window.
"It's not distracting anymore. I don't even hardly notice them. Unless I'm being interviewed.:
And this interviewer also noticed what else is on his table. Scotch.
"I do have scotch. Very important for a political drawing. Loosens you up and you don't have to worry about insulting people 'cause you're hammered when you're drawing."
That's a joke, by the way.
And it turns out caricatures aren't the only artwork Teutsch creates. A few blocks away in a house-turned-studio called Sala Diaz, he shows me an incredibly realistic wax effigy of himself in a coffin.
I can tell you it's as good or better than anything you'll see in a wax museum. So I ask if he's had people tell him he should work at a wax museum.
"I've heard that a lot. I've heard you should work at Madam Tussaud's. The mortician that let me borrow the coffin, that guy told me I'd make a really good mortician."
But he's sticking with the art thing. And he plans to stay in San Antonio, though he hopes to see his caricature work in national publications.
"Eventually I want to submit these kind of illustrations to The New Yorker and hopefully get on the cover one of these days."
Looking at his work, I think he's definitely ready.
You can check out his work at http://plazadearmastx.com and at http://cargocollective.com/Jeremiah/following/posts.
He also happens to be in a band called Wolverton.
