You heard it when you opened this book. The shoulder-shaking, bellowed roar of laughter. That happy sound is embedded on every page. The printers, bookbinders, typesetters, and finally the editors, everyone that assembled the book you're about to purchase couldn't prevent their funny bone from being tickled. So impressed were they they purchased five, ten, fifteen even twenty or more books for birthday and holiday gifts. Investments in others' happiness rewards us in so many, immediately unseen ways.

Comics and caricatures, more creative than portraits, more artistic? Who says? The artist, that's who. Wander through a gallery, a museum, a government building. Glance at the portraits. That's the evidence: embalmed sitters hang on the walls ornately framed and remembered as serious dudes, not as practical jokers, lame brains or as folk who sneezed, coughed, and farted. Giggles and grins are verboten from portraiture but not from caricatures; there the artist's squiggly lines shows a distinctive mind at the helm of a crayon, pencil or brush. The caricaturist is the standup comic on paper,...

Nothing apparently special about penciled portraits: Few lines and little shading attempt to capture a subject's essence. it is, simply put, minimalism. It is also the basis of good or faulty logic. Insistence that a poorly rendered portrait is excellent reveals confused logic. Conversely, well- done portraits speak for themselves. Our youthful logic insisted the smiley face we drew was the spittin image of our brother. That logic gave way to complex and sophisticated logic of our adult portraits. Laboring towards precision in art is one way to develop visual and then social logic.