Now that you've drawn a few caricatures, let's
look at some points in caricaturing a bit closer.
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Pushing it |
 Really
"pushing" the caricature and stretching and distorting
to the extreme is quite fun, but it poses a lot of
challenges. If you want to really oversize an element of
the face, you have to know that it will effect the other
parts of the face. For example, if you draw the nose
really large it will seem like the eyes are closer
together, and the large nose will obscure the mouth.
Experiment with it, but I would suggest not pushing the
caricatures too far as you are learning. Pushing the
caricature could possibly kill the likeness. And I think
that likeness in caricature is more important than the
art itself. A really wacky caricature is useless if no
one knows who it is meant to be a caricature of.
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Do you see small eyes or a large nose? |
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Using the blending tool & pushing the drawing |
If
you have a mental picture in your head of what you hope
your final caricature will look like, it will help in
the drawing process. If you know that you want to give
your caricature really small, squinty eyes, most of the
other facial features will have to be drawn larger than
you think. To the right is a step by step demonstration
on drawing a caricature that's being "pushed".
In
addition to sketching in the shadows, another way to
create shadows is with a blending tool. This tool is
tightly rolled up paper about the size of a cigar. When
you buy a blending tool it's clean. But to make it work
for you, you have to get it "dirty". Take your 5B pencil
and tone a piece of paper by rubbing lots of graphite on
it. Take your blending tool and rub it all over the
graphite and really load up the tip of the blender with
graphite. With the blender full of graphite, you should
be able to "write" with it. Write your name in cursive
lettering on a blank sheet of paper with the
graphite-laden blending tool. Do you see what the tool
is used for? The more you use it the more graphite will
get on the blending tool and the better it will blend
the shadows of your drawing.
 Take
a caricature that you've drawn, and if you have shadows
drawn in around the eyes, take you blending tool and rub
it across the shadows. See what the blender does? The
blender will soften your shadows and create a middle
gray tone. Neat huh? Sometimes I use the blending tool,
sometimes I don't, it depends on the caricature and the
look I'm going for.
Begin
to develop your own style of caricaturing, but in doing
so, please PLEASE don't start drawing the same
caricature over and over. Don't draw the same eyes, same
nose and same mouth, only changing the hair to call it
another caricature. You'll find that if you do a lot of
caricatures, you'll use the same style, but please don't
keep drawing the same face. Look at what you're drawing
and conform your style to the face, don't conform the
face to your style. Always draw what you see.
Look
at the three caricatures to the right that I've drawn and see if you can
go through how I drew them. Look at how I've distorted
them and see if you agree with how I caricatured them.
Compare the photo to the caricature and look at how I
distorted the proportions to achieve a caricatured
drawing. Look at the photo, close your eyes and imagine
what your caricature of that person would look. How is
your caricature different than mine? Study other caricaturists and pick things
out that you like about their style. Draw the
caricatures that other caricaturists have drawn. If you
copy the drawing of others, you'll find that you begin
to really evaluate and transform your own style. See
that no two caricaturists would draw the same face the
same way, and further, the same caricaturist probably
wouldn't draw the same face twice the same way. |
