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Let's draw her again |
Have you settled on a way you'd like to draw her? Ok, let's do
it. We'll start with the eyes. The eyes should be placed a
little bit above the middle of your paper and try and space
them so you'll have enough room to get all her hair on the
paper without running off. Try and visualize the size of the
completed drawing on the paper by using the photo as reference.
In the photo, her eyes look like they're just slightly above
the midpoint of the photo. So in order to fit the whole
drawing on your paper, start by knowing that you'll put the
eyes slightly above the midpoint of you paper.
I almost always start with the subjects right eye, so that'd
be the eye on your left. Draw the arch that would be the upper
lid, then lightly draw the lower lid, which would be an almost
straight line. This shape that you've drawn, this will be your
standard unit of measure for this drawing - the
"eye". With your pencil,
measure the width of her right eye in the photograph. Holding
that measurement, slide to the right and see if her eyes are
"one eye" apart. By my measurement, she has slightly
more than one eye between her eyes. Now, on your
drawing, measure the eye you just drew. Holding that
measurement on your pencil, slide over to the right a bit more
than one eye and mark that point. Now draw her other eye,
putting the tear duct at the mark you just made. Even though
this is caricature and the object of the game is to NOT do
exact proportions, it's best if you do still have the correct
distance between the eyes, it just looks better. At the
outside corners of the eyes, thicken up the line you drew to
indicate the eyelashes.
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The eyes, nose and some shading. |
Now, on the photo, with your pencil, measure her right eye
again to get your "standard unit". Holding that
measurement, turn it 90 degrees down and see if her nose is
one eye long. I get that the nose is slightly longer than one
eye. But, my goal in this caricature is to shorten her nose a
bit, so I'm going to make her nose exactly one eye long. So
make a mark on your paper that is one eye down from the eyes
so you know where to draw the nose. Draw the bottom shape of
the nose which is sort of "U" shaped. Do you see
that the ball of her nose is another "U" shape above
the other shape? Draw that shape in. Now complete the nose by
drawing the two lobes, which are sort of "C" shapes.
Are you using nice, bold lines to draw the nose? In my
drawing, the overall size of the nose is pretty much the
correct size and not exaggerated much.
Lightly shade in around the eyes and and also the contours of
the nose. The nose bone isn't prominent with her, so I'd just
lightly shade to define the sides of the nose.
Now the mouth. I'm going to exaggerate the corners of the
mouth coming up so I'm going to make the corners parallel with
the bottom of the nose, when in reality, they're not. I'm going
to just eyeball the placement of the mouth and not measure. Draw
a wide "U" shape in one stroke that will be the top
of the mouth. Draw a similar shape below that one to represent
the lower line of the mouth. Now draw a third curved line
below that one to represent the lower lip. I'm going to put
some shadow in the corners of this lower lip. Shade in the top
lip area.
Now that you have the nose and mouth drawn, you can draw in her
laugh lines which are pretty minimal. They almost look like
two right angled lines that bracket the mouth. See how the
laugh lines are deepest right at the corner of the mouth and
then they get shallower as they get farther away from the
mouth? Reflect that in the line you draw by making the line
lighter at both ends than at the middle.
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Adding the mouth and chin. |
The chin is next. I said I was going to minimize the size of
the chin. So, if I measure the photograph and see that the
chin is about one eye below the lower lip, in the caricature, I
should put the chin at about half an eye below the lower lip.
With a nice heavy line, draw the
contour of the chin. Don't
draw the jaw line, that comes later. As you draw the chin, see
the dimple in her chin and that it causes a slight curve in
the line that is the chin. In caricature, you have to pick up
on all the facial features that make this person look like
this person, including dents in the chin.
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