• Portrait Caricature

Sophistication or "knowingness" appears at every stage of the portrait caricature service. It assumes knowledge of portraiture conventions as it’s hard to distinguish the caricature from the sketch without it. Portrait caricature is an elitist art form for a sophisticated audience, just like verbal irony.

• Satirical Caricature

Satirical caricature may seem to require specialized knowledge, and undoubtedly has its share of inside jokes, but as a mode, its bias is essentially public. The myths it alludes to, the works it parodies, the expressions it quotes, and the figures it depicts are all (or were) in the public domain.

• Comic or Humorous Caricature

The irony generated by deflation of the caricatured portrait serves as a starting point for comic caricature. But caricature services do so only to delight in the absurdity of human nature. It is also an ideal comic carrier - any situation in which affection or pretense is at odds with "reality" is a staple of humorous caricature.

• Grotesque Caricature

Freelance caricature artists focus on limits and borders in this art form. Derived from the word grottesco, grotesque denoted a 16th-century style that combined plants, animals, and persons into a decorative design. Though it later referred to almost any fantastic or bizarre arts, grotesque caricature has always implied a breach of integrity, boundaries, or limits that are supposed to be sacred.