I know you guys are itching to draw in her
eyebrows. She does look pretty bare without them,
doesn't she? I don't draw the eyebrows in until I've
defined the contours of the face and forehead. This is
because the... well uh, It's because... Heck, I don't
know why I do it that way, I just do.
 Get
your lap desk out and clip your unfinished caricature of
the woman on it and get comfortable in front of your
computer. Sharpen your 5B pencil and have your eraser
handy. If you'd like to print out the photo we'll be
working with, go ahead.
 Being
a redhead, she doesn't seem to have much in the way of
eyebrows, so this should be easy. Looking at the photo
you'll see that her right eyebrow starts just a bit
ahead of her tear duct. Just eyeballing the distance,
(without measuring) it looks like her eyebrow is about
half an eye above her eye. So just lay down some
graphite that start just in front of the tear duct and
is about half an eye above. Just lightly draw that
eyebrow shape. You notice, don't you, that her eyebrow
looks to be only about half there, so draw it that way.
Her left eyebrow is similar in that it's only about half
there as well. That one starts just about right above
the left tear duct.
EYEBROWS
This woman has somewhat different eyebrows because
they're very light and almost look segmented in the
middle. Drawing eyebrows isn't difficult, but with
anything in caricature, you may draw them so they look
"wrong". If the person has pretty dark eyebrows I
usually just create them using a shading motion and
start with the thick part of the eyebrow above the nose
and work my way back. If they have really thick, almost
square, eyebrows I'd draw a contour of it then fill it
in. If the eyebrow is shaggy, then I'd draw a contour
very lightly and shade only the bottom of the shape.
This will give the illusion of an eyebrow that "sticks
out". The effect works because if you leave the top of
the eyebrow blank, you have a highlight and the bottom
of it becomes the shadow. This then looks like light is
able to penetrate the top of the eyebrow, but the hair
is so thick that light won't get through to the bottom
of the brow.
OK,
while we're adding details, lets go ahead and add
shadows to the eyes and the bridge of the nose. Do you
notice that dark shadow at the corners of her eyes that
arches up and connects with the eyebrow? I see that
shadow all the time and draw it a lot. On her, it's
pretty prominent. So draw a shadow there that is darker
at the eyelashes and lightens up as it goes to the
eyebrow.
 |
|
Add shadow detail around the eyes. |
You've
already got some initial shadows at the bridge of the
nose. Now that the eyebrows are in place, finish those
shadows off. They'll connect the eyes with the nose.
Add
the little tiny wrinkles under the eyes. They could just
be single lines, and just hint at them. Notice that the
left one is darker than the right one, draw that line a
bit darker, then.
Lastly,
add the shadow on the left side of the nose that melts
into the cheek.
As you can see, adding shadow detail really helps to
connect the features to one another. Now the features
aren't looking like they're just floating in space. |
