Kevin Nealon - I Exaggerate: My Brushes with Fame

This book is dedicated to all of my subjects who either wittingly or unwittingly agreed to be a part of this collection of caricatures and witty anecdotes. This book would not be possible without many of you. You are all either wittingly or unwittingly good sports and I thank you in advance for not removing me from your speed dial.

When I was a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1986 until 1995, during the Wednesday-afternoon table reads I would sometimes drift off and sketch fellow cast members in the margins of our scripts. Whoever was sitting across from me, be it Chris Farley, Dana Carvey, Jan Hooks, or maybe even that weeks guest host, they became my unwitting subjects.

I first became interested in drawing at the age of eight when I discovered a sketch of a serviceman on a napkin left behind at a caf. I would spend many hours trying to re-create that drawing, an animated profile of a man with a cap, an exaggerated large nose, and a protruding chin.

Several years later, hanging over a dresser in my childhood bedroom were colorful pastel caricatures of my parents, each separately framed. These were no ordinary run-of-the-mill drawings but the work of a talented Parisian caricature artist. For years, as I lay in bed, I would stare at those brilliant caricatures, studying the exaggerations, colors, and contours, analyzing every stroke. As a child I was also impressed with the works of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld and Mort Drucker of MAD magazine.

Even as a child I was told I had a talent for drawing, but I never pursued it with much focus or passion until recently. The only pseudo art lesson I had as a child was re-creating maps in school. Our assignment often was to draw maps of various countries, their borders, and rivers. Under no circumstances could we trace the existing map. This was a great lesson in handeye coordination. I realize now that my drawings were unintentional caricatures of maps. Italy was a boot, but it looked more like a platform shoe from the 1970s.

In my late twenties I developed an intense interest in the nineteenth-century French Impressionist paintersspecifically Claude Monet, who I learned, to my surprise, was also a caricature artist early in his career. On occasion, I began to visit the museums in Paris and elsewhere to study their paintings, techniques, use of colors, and blending.

In more recent years, as I flew to and from stand-up gigs around the world, I would secretly sketch fellow passengers on a drink napkin or barfbag. I never showed them my finished work and they never knew. After my stand-up shows, I might meet the audience in the lobby of the club or theater and have my picture taken with themI would then go home and use these pictures of those audience members to practice my caricatures.

In the summer of 2019 I learned how to paint on a digital tablet, which is how Ive painted the portraits youll see in this book. Though I sometimes drew friends and strangers, I also found myself drawing celebritiessome of my famous friends, sure, but also some of my idols from my early years, and those from before my time. With each person, I discovered there was some deep or meaningful personal connection. A story beyond the painting itself.

The only downside of becoming a caricature artist is that, now, whenever I look at people, I automatically see their character traits exaggerated in my head. Every day I feel as though Im walking through a carnival filled with fun-house mirrors.

During the pandemic, since live stand-up was halted, I began sketching more and more. Drawing caricatures became a substitute for stand-up, a nonverbal form of comedy and a great creative outlet. I was immensely encouraged by how much my Instagram followers, and fellow artists, supported and appreciated my work. Its through their consistent encouragement, support, and generosity of knowledge that Ive continue to learn and grow as an artist. And Im not stoppingI look forward to painting more and more as my life goes on.

In this book you will see my paintings of celebrities or other notable people that have influenced my life. Each is painted with some degree of exaggeration, some more than others. I may have also chosen some because I have fun, meaningful, unexaggerated stories to tell about them. Others, maybe, because I thought their physical traits would lend to a humorous caricature. Interestingly and for whatever reason, I have rarely heard back from any of these subjects after posting on social media. Im OK with that, though. Everything is done in good fun and I appreciate that most people are good sportsthey may even be flattered I chose to paint them. In fact, I have also included a self-caricature I painted. Im not above making fun of myself.

Because I am still learning this world and not incredibly expedient in the process, I typically spend hours upon hours, sometimes weeks completing each caricature. I would venture to say that some spouses have not looked at each others faces as much as I have studied and examined those in the following pages. I hope you enjoy my exaggerated renditions of these icons, or at least recognize their likeness. They are each truly a labor of love.

1951-2014

This painting portrays the Robin I first met in 1979. I was still pretty much a newbie to stand-up comedy but loved it, so much so that I studied comedians and never missed my favorite comedians perform on TV. In my midtwenties, most of my evenings were spent at clubs in Los Angeles either performing at open mics or watching seasoned comics at the Improv or Comedy Store. There were as many good comics as there were bad ones; most comedians followed the traditional setup-and-punchline format. I thought I had seen just about every comic and style out there until the night I went to the Laff Stop in Newport Beach. The headliner was a guy I had never heard of: Robin Williams.

They introduced Robin and he moved to the stage, never quite getting there. He never used the microphone and instead projected his voice to carry into the audience. He was dressed in a tight, open-neck collarless shirt, very loose-fitting thrift store pants, and a floppy Shakespearean hat. That was his look. Everything about him was unique and memorable, down to his thick mat of body hair that mostly resembled fur. Even his fingers were bushy. By the end of his act, he was drenched in sweat.