'I like to honour the person as well as make them laugh!' Meet a Smethwick caricature expert
Ben ‘Pen’ Jones loves bringing smiles to people’s faces with his funny caricatures.
For more than a decade he has been capturing likeness and personality in his quick cartoon portraits.
“I was pretty obsessed with drawing from an early age,” says Ben, who draws caricatures, cartoons and illustrations for a range of occasions, including birthdays, special days and weddings.
“The first caricature I drew was when I was eight or nine. It was a caricature of my dad and grandad coming back from the pub a little worse for wear. I don’t think they found it funny, but everyone else did.”
“It cracks me up to think I’ve been taking the mickey ever since,” he adds.
A love of both art and animals led Ben to study scientific and natural history illustration at Blackpool & The Fylde College.
He was working in London 2010 when he decided to try his hand at being a street caricaturist, in order to make some extra money to help pay his rent.
“I decided to use my artistic skills to make a quick buck,” says Ben, who lives in Smethwick.
He made his own sign offering caricatures for £5 and set up his stall on a footbridge over the River Thames.
Ben started to improve his drawing speed by sketching people as they walked by - but his riverside pitch wasn’t without its challenges.
“It would get so windy that my sign was like a sail and I would have to grab it to stop it going over the railings,” he recalls.
One day, a passerby asked him if he drew caricatures at weddings and without hesitation he responded ‘yes’.
