.
Hello and welcome to Drawing Characteratures for Parties and Conventions of the Front View.
What I'd like to do in this video is teach you the quick sketch caricature that can be
used at parties, conventions, art fairs, amusement parks, or any application that you can think
of.
Now the purpose of these kind of caricatures is a means of making money, so the focus will
be on speed and efficiency.
This tape is really an extension of my first video, the one minute caricature, which covers
the profile caricature.
What we will cover in this video are materials, basic drawing tips and proportions, exaggeration,
the drawing formula used for speed, and some examples of the fast sketch in action.
In the last two bonus sections of this video, we'll cover drawing two people on a page in
the application of color.
I will show you the materials that I have found to be the most convenient for the party
caricature and are the least messy.
And I also briefly describe other techniques as alternatives.
So in all, I think you will find this video informative and valuable in establishing you
as a professional party caricaturist.
Materials you need for the party caricature are simple.
I described them in detail in my first video, but I will briefly review here what you need
to get started.
To begin with, get a drawing board similar to this and put a vinyl placemat over it.
That will provide a slight cushion for your pen nib that creates a better thick and thin
line.
I use the black Design Marker 229LF for my pen.
It has a good nib that is great for these thick and thin lines.
Occasionally, I use the Rub-A-Dub laundry marker pen for the smaller details of the
face or when I'm working with color because they don't bleed.
And for shading, I use the black Conti crayon or black Prismacolor stick.
For paper, get some sturdy card stock found at your local paper supply warehouse.
I usually work on 8-1⁄2 by 11 or 11 by 14 for parties.
You can experiment with different textures.
And that's it for materials.
It's an incredibly small overhead expense for a business.
And with a little investment, you can be on your way to making the big bucks as a caricaturist.
But please don't confuse this with one of those get-rich-quick schemes.
You need to practice and spend some time working on your craft before you can start making
any real money.
It's good to review some basic portraiture as it relates to caricature.
And you can learn this from any good how-to book.
You should know these hints very well because they will help you create a better caricature.
Jack Ham's book, How to Draw the Human Figure, is one of the best books I've seen on this
subject and it comes at an incredibly good price.
Now this is the standard head or the everyman's head.
It's a medial conglomeration of all heads put together.
And the standard head is the benchmark from which we will compare all caricatured heads.
Our goal is to notice how the subject we are about to draw is different from these proportions.
Now this guy's features are normal, straightforward, and to be honest, rather boring.
Your subject head will differ from these proportions and we want to push that difference.
We want to exaggerate.
So as we can see in this standard head that the eyes are going to fall halfway between
the top of the head and the bottom of the chin.
The nose is going to fall approximately two-fifths of the way down from the eyes to the bottom
of the chin.
The mouth is going to approximately fall about a third of the way down from the bottom of
the nose to the bottom of the chin.
Now the eyes are going to be approximately one eye length apart and the wings of the
nose are going to line up with the inside corners of the eyes.
The ears will fall in between the eyebrows and the bottom of the nose and the hairline
is going to fall approximately halfway to three-quarters of the way between the eyebrow
line and the top of the head.
And the overall look of the face is going to be symmetrical.
That is that this side of the face is going to equal this side of the face.
All features are neither too small or too large and they are the average measurements
of all heads put together.
Now let's see how that compares to the proportions of the caricature head.
If we were to grid Jeff's head and compare it to the standard head's proportions, we
see that the lower half is longer, especially the jaw and chin.
The skull is thinner and the mouth is bigger and the nose even sticks out more.
Taking these proportions, we enhance the difference and in this case we stretch the chin,
squash the skull even more and make the nose more prominent.
Other enhancements include exaggerating the teeth and mouth shape, making the eyebrows
bushier and the overall angularity of the face more severe.
So you can see that this face wanders from the ideal standard head and its features are
pushed and pulled to exaggerate the difference.
Eventually, you will know what the normal standard head's proportions will look like
and when you go about caricaturing, you unconsciously compare the subject's head to the normal head
and see what stands out and differs.
Those are the features that you attack and you push them around until you get the right
likeness.
Let's review.
Exaggeration can be conceptualized by comparing the subject to the fictitious normal or standard
head.
We push the differences to bring out the uniqueness of a particular face.
Something is big when next to something is small.
Everything is relative.
Exaggerate the difference.
Knowing portraiture and the standard measurements will help you draw a better likeness and create
a better caricature.
When using a marker, there's a certain aesthetic quality that you want to achieve with the
line.
So practice your line by pushing and pulling the marker, zipping in and out like a professional
race car driver who knows exactly where he's going.
Add weight to the line by bearing down.
Letting up thins out the line.
Try to achieve a certain calligraphy quality to the look.
The trick with thick to thin lines is that we're going to start out heavy by bearing
down and letting up.
Bearing down and letting up.
It's also a good idea to draw parallel lines like that.
Gives you an idea of how to control the pen.
Now from thin to thick, it's just a matter of reversing everything.
Start light and bear down.
Start light and bear down.
And then thick to thin to thick.
Just a matter of bearing down, letting up, bearing down, letting up.
And you can vary the texture of that.
You can even try up and down movements like this.
So next we can try the squiggly line, which is a matter of random little half circles,
which are good for drawing clouds or trees.
And we have the textured line, which is also a random short stroke type of line, which
is good for drawing hair or grass or anything you can think of that requires this kind of
stroke.
It's also good for drawing mustaches and beards.
Now next we can get into shapes.
These exercises are very, very good and handy.
Doing circles, doing plenty of circles.
Try to use your whole arm when you're drawing a circle, lift your elbow off the page and
try to draw a circle within a circle, within a circle.
You can also draw circles outside of circles and try to get as much control over the pen
as possible.
After circles, we can try squares.
Close the shape in a nice neat fashion.
You can make them rounder.
And also a good exercise to do is to draw a square inside of a square.
After squares, we get into polygons or many-sided figures and close the shape like this, which
is good for drawing things like signs.
Then we have some form exercises, starting off with the cube
at different perspective angles.
Then we have pyramid.
So practice all kinds of forms, basic forms.
We have the cone.
And lastly but not least, we have the organic form, which is a matter of using overlapping
lines to push a form back into space.
You have something like that.
Practice these exercises as often as possible.
They will help you control the pen and create a more professional-looking drawing.
When it's time to draw in front of a crowd, it helps tremendously to know precisely how
you're going to execute a caricature or else you're going to fumble about and make a lot
of mistakes.
In order to gain speed in a caricature, you need to follow a kind of formula.
A formula allows you to know exactly where your pen will go next without any hesitation
because speed is very important.
In frontal views, it helps to turn the head slightly to one side so that the edges of
the features are more noticeable.
You can vary the procedure slightly from time to time, but it's best to have a firm idea
of how to go about sketching the face before you start.
After thousands of sketches, it becomes second nature and you don't have to worry about wasting
any time.
Your pen knows exactly where to go.
The front view takes slightly longer to draw than the profile, in my opinion, because of
the extra features that you have to draw.
Now I explained the profile sketch in detail in my other video.
If you really want to be fast, I recommend learning the profile.
But for those times when the front view is more desirable, here are some methods that
will reduce the time it takes.
Unlike the profile, there are several approaches to the front view that you can take.
One is working from the inside out and the other is working from the outside in.
Depending on how you like to work, either is just as good as the other.
The first method is to start out with the nose and work your way around the features
and then establish the outside edges.
So in other words, we can do something like this.
Move into the eyes.
Draw the outside of the features, the shape of the face, and then the forehead, ear, and
the rest of the hair.
The other method is to draw the outside shape of the face and fit the features inside.
So we have something like this.
We're fitting the features inside of the overall shape of the face.
Go into the eyes here and then the forehead, the ear.
Just like the other drawing, finish off the hair.
Now the only problem with this type of procedure is that when we're drawing a face and if we
really want to exaggerate the nose, we get into a problem with the nose intersecting
with the outside cheek.
And unless you compensate for it in the beginning, you'll end up having to squeeze this whole
nose inside that cheek area, which doesn't really amount to a good looking drawing.
The third method is a kind of combination of the two, which I prefer.
Sketch lightly the shapes and features of the face with a light colored pencil and then
with marker, finish off the drawing.
It takes only slightly longer to do and you can work out any drawing problems that you
may have before you commit to the permanent marker.
Now for the purposes of this demonstration, I'm going to use a darker colored pencil so
that you can see the procedure more clearly.
So using a rough sketch, you map out the features of the face and the overall shape, something
like that.
Draw the shape of the hair and once you're done with that, go in with the marker and
finish off the drawing.
Move into the eyes, eyebrows, and then we work out the outside shape of the face into
the chin, jawline, ear, and the forehead and the hair.
That is basically how I approach the face.
Now you should be able to do these in approximately three minutes or less.
Unless the person has outstanding features, the amount of exaggeration will most likely
be small.
You don't have time to do a full blown distorted image and besides, if you did, you could end
up with a very unhappy customer.
Extreme stretching of the features does not go over too well from my experience.
We're going to go into the parts of the face individually and we're going to start off
with the nose.
One of the problems with noses in a front view is getting them to stick out of the facial
plane.
So what we need to do is imagine the nose as a 3D shape with three planes, the top,
the bottom, and the side plane.
This will help us create a more convincing nose that will come out at us rather than
be more of a flat type shape.
To help you with this kind of thing, get a good portrait book and study nose construction.
Next thing we do is to sum up the overall prominence of the nose, whether or not it's
a very large nose in relationship to all the other features or whether it's very small
in relationship to all the other features or in between.
Next, so the noses really shouldn't take you all that long.
You have different kinds of noses.
You've got the bent nose or hooked nose.
You have very straight noses.
You have the turned up nose and the button nose.
Keep in mind the three dimensional form at all times when you're drawing.
You have very wide nose.
These are thick and thin strokes to describe form too.
Next up we have the mouth, and it's a good idea to study mouths from a good portrait
book, but basically you have a form that goes something like this.
There are different kinds of mouths that you will encounter.
Some will not have that bump in the middle.
Some won't even have the indentation on top.
There are different types of mouths in terms of the thinness or thickness, so we can represent
the thin mouth by doing something like that where we don't draw the color separation on
top and we just use a heavier line to represent the bottom plane of this mouth or this top
lip, and it creates a sort of a shadowed effect.
Then we can draw mouths that are open or smiling, so we want to represent the teeth a little
bit.
When we're drawing the teeth very lightly, draw the separations of the teeth.
Otherwise if you don't, the teeth will look too separated and will look kind of funny,
which is not what we need to do here.
The mouth, when drawing the mouth, we also need to determine its distance from the nose.
So in other words, we might have a mouth that's very close or a mouth that could be very far
away from the bottom of the nose.
That adds greatly to the likeness of a caricature, so be very careful of this distance and aware
of it before you begin to draw.
Another thing we want to do when we're looking at mouths is to determine the symmetry of
the mouth, whether it turns up to one side or whether it droops to one side.
Mouths are not always symmetrical, and that is also one of the ways of capturing a likeness
in a caricature is by trying to find out the expression of the mouth.
With eyes, we have to remember that we're drawing skin wrapped around this sphere or
ball, and we have to do that graphically with the design marker, and how we do that is draw
it slightly thicker for the top plane and thinner on the bottom plane, and then lightly
to represent the top eyelid and the bottom eyelid.
Now the reason why this bottom line is broken up like that is because that is the light
that's reflecting off of this surface, and this is darker because this is all in shadow.
So we're trying to represent this whole eyeball in a very graphic way that makes sense, and
it's also pleasing to the eye.
So once we have that, there are different types of eyes that we're going to encounter,
and one of them is the woman's eye, where we're going to add a little makeup to it,
and we're going to add eyelashes with the flick of the wrist and a little eyeliner on
the bottom, and that's how we can draw the female eye.
Now different types of eyes also with some of their very closed or squinty.
We just draw a slightly thicker line for the part where the eyelids meet, and the top eyelid
and the bottom eyelid, maybe a few wrinkles here, and when drawing older people, you can
throw in the wrinkles, but don't do too many and just indicate them lightly, not too heavily,
and don't draw too many, or else they'll end up looking like 2D tattoo marks on the face.
Now eyes are going to fall into certain categories.
You're going to have the eye that will slant up, and you have the eye that will be right
on top of the plane horizontally like this, and then the third possibility is drawing
an eye slanting down.
So be very aware of the angle in which the eyes fall on the facial plane.
Adds greatly to the whole likeness of a picture.
Okay now with eyebrows, we have the same type of problem where we need to discover the angle
of the eyebrow.
You notice that some eyebrows will follow in something like that, angling down, and
then some eyebrows will turn up like that in some kind of quizzical expression.
And other eyebrows will just follow straight across on a horizontal line.
So be aware of the angle in which the eyebrows fall on, because they really add greatly to
the likeness of the individual sitting in front of you.
The different kinds of eyebrows that we're going to encounter are, well if we're going
to draw the female eye, we have her eyelashes, eyeliner, and a lot of the times the eyebrow
is thinned out, and what we'll do is just with a flick of the wrist, taper it off nice
and easy in order to get that look that they have with the eyebrow.
Then of course we have different eyebrows in terms of their thickness.
We have the very bushy eyebrow, just a matter of rapid short strokes, tapering off.
And then we have the thinner type with short strokes.
And another type of eye we have, especially for kids and babies, very lightly, you indicate
their eyebrow with a few light strokes.
Now let's get into the hair part.
With hair we have to take and see how the overall two-dimensional shape of the hair
looks at first, and describe it in terms of its form.
So what I mean by that is taking the two-dimensional shape here and translating it into 3D through
the use of the overlapping lines that we talked about before, and drawing it something like
this, drawing the hair masses and the hair clumps together.
For example, we have someone's hair like this.
See how the 2D shape can be translated into 3D.
Just be aware of the overall mass of the shape of the hair before you begin to draw.
And don't be particular about any individual hairs.
Just draw the form of the hair rather than the individual strands.
Now also when drawing hair, if we have long hair, use nice long sweeping strokes of the
pen to describe what you're seeing.
Different kinds of hair that we're going to encounter are the curly hair.
And that can be done with the rapid squiggly lines that we talked about earlier in your
line exercises.
And we have the short hair, someone who might have a kind of crew cut.
Using rapid random strokes, try to avoid using repetitious shapes that are equally distant
in shape.
What you need to do is bury them so they look more interesting.
This is monotonous, this is interesting.
Also with the hair, we have facial hair of course.
The same thing in the direction of the hair, try to describe what it's doing with these
short strokes.
And we are representing the whole shape of the beard graphically by using these type
of strokes.
Another trick that we have when we're drawing hair is to use a slightly thicker outline
for the outside of the hair and inside use thinner strokes to describe
the turning of the form and individual hair clumps.
So it's a little bit thicker on the outside.
Illustrators often use this technique to add interest to their drawings.
The first thing you do when a subject sits in front of you is to sum up the overall shape
of the face.
Is it long?
Is it round?
Are there any outstanding shapes or features that you can accent?
For example, bushy eyebrows or big noses, jutting chins.
Let's try some real life examples.
Dave has a roundness to his face that I need to keep in mind while I'm drawing.
He also has a silly expression that I want to capture.
I usually use a light blue pencil to start out with as I map out the features.
And for these illustrations, I'm using red, which you should see a bit more clearly than
if I was using blue.
After I've made my blueprint, or red print in this case, I start in with the pen, always
with the nose first.
I exaggerate the size and round shape of his nose.
Next step is to go into the mouth, simplified here for a cartoon smile.
The eyes are done next, and I do these nice and big.
And because his eyes are dark color, I fill them in with black.
Next step is to go into the eyebrows.
His eyebrows are thin to medium, so I use the short strokes that we covered earlier
in the video under the line exercises.
His cheeks are nice and round, so I extend them and simplify them so that the features
fall well inside the face shape.
I complete the face mask area that is framed by the hair.
After the face mask area is done, I complete the head and the hair at the same time, keeping
in mind the full volume of his skull.
Because he has a beard, we go into the beard next using the short random strokes, also
covered earlier under line exercises and under hair.
Always stroke in the direction of the growth of the hair, keeping in mind the volume and
the design of the beard.
Next step is to go into the glasses.
Your circle exercises will come in real handy here.
Try to do them in one stroke.
At this stage, I'm going to bring in the black prismacolor for the tones and shading.
I shade to create form.
I use shade to create color values, especially in the hair and the lip area, using shading
under the brow and under the nose to create the illusion of form.
Darkening in the beard color and then going back and making the hair a little bit darker.
Now we have a picture that has a little bit more of the feeling of three-dimensionality
using the black prismacolor.
Next I'm going to add a body to show you how the body attaches to the head.
Bodies are taught in my first video, the one-minute caricature, so if you want to learn how to
draw bodies, that's the video to have.
And now we have Bronnie.
Again, map out the features.
Always start with the overall shape of the face.
I'm drawing the chin, the jaw, eye line.
Now I'm drawing the hair, top of the head, side of the hair, the neck, going into the
nose, placing the nose, placing the mouth, indicating where the eyes go in the eyebrows.
Now we're ready for the design marker.
Going into the nose, I pull out the nose here a little bit, making sure that I get the bump
and the egg shape for the tip of the nose and the thinned out wing.
I give her a smile, turned up to her left corner, giving her thicker lips, done lightly
with the design marker.
She has small squashed almond-shaped eyes.
Keep that in mind as we draw.
She also has blue eyes, so we want to keep the iris part white so that we can go back
later in with the prismacolor and give it a nice gray tone color.
She has raised eyebrows.
They're thin, short strokes.
We're jutting out chin.
We extend that a little bit more than what we see, squared off at the end, nice round
full cheeks.
At this point, we're drawing the mask of the face, which is framed by her hair, throwing
in some freckles as we go, touching up on the eyes.
Now we go into the bangs of the hair with long curvy strokes.
I'm also exaggerating the shape of her bangs and her forehead area.
It's okay to exaggerate hair, too.
It's part of her character.
Nice long, sweeping strokes for the pen.
A little thinner strokes in the middle of the hair to add variety and interest, through
in the character of her smile.
And when we draw the neck, we must make sure that the neck connects well to the head.
Imagine the neckline's connecting to either ear to avoid that head-on-a-lollipop-stick
look.
So now we go into the hair with the prismacolor, giving it the color value of her hair, using
the side of the crayon, giving her lips the color value, leaving a little bit of a highlight
for the lips.
Next, we go into the eye shadow and the eye color.
Then we give form to the nose by giving some tone to the under plane of the nose and also
in other areas like the cheek, underneath the lips, darkening the hair, and then going
into the neck area, creating a little bit of a shadow, all to enhance the illusion of
form, doing some touch-up on the eye makeup.
So that's basically how we approach the face.
That's our finished head.
Lena has a square theme to her face, so we're going to keep that in mind as we draw her
face mask area, drawing the hair in the bangs right now, doing the side of her hair, indicating
her neck, eye line, doing the nose, placing the mouth, she has an open mouth, got her
eyes and her eyebrows.
So we take the design marker, go straight for the nose, it's a tiny bump on the nose,
very angular for the tip of the nose.
There's a thicker line for the top of the lip, indicate her teeth and her bottom lip,
keeping the strokes elegant and simple.
Her smile line adds to her character.
I'm going to draw her eyes nice and big, I'm going to draw some attention to it.
The other side.
Again she has blue eyes, so we're going to leave white for the blue color.
She has thinned out eyebrows, we're going to do that with one stroke, picking up her
eyelashes here, make sure that we have the eyeliner.
This is her cheek muscle, her dimples, her chin, keep it small, squared off.
Now we're doing the whole face mask area here as we draw.
Again it's framed by the hair, part of her ear showing through.
Then I go back at this point and draw in the eyelashes, adding eyelashes actually add beauty
and enhance the glamour of the eyes, so it's a good idea to do that if it's pretty obvious.
Now we go into the hair, do the bangs, nice loose curvy strokes, thinner in the middle,
add fullness to the hair and her neck, making sure that the neck connects well to the head.
Now I'm going to throw in the body, show you how the hair would fit in the back.
Your basic sitting body that's been covered in the first video, the one minute caricature.
She has frills which you can't see.
Now we're going to add some teeth very lightly with her pan and a gum line.
We don't want to make that too heavy or else it's going to draw too much attention to itself.
So now at this point we go into the hair with the Prismacolor.
Usually like to start off with the hair first.
She has blonde hair so we're going to use the tones very sparingly just to show the
highlights and some shadowed areas.
Also we're going to add some color value to simulate color like in the shirt and the lips.
Also for the eyeshadow.
Color of her eyes.
Bottom plane of the nose, getting form to the cheek, face area.
Adding more form to the hair, shadow.
Making the drawing look pretty at this point.
And eventually you'll have to put the person's name on there so we're going to find a space
for the name.
And I usually like to use large block letters for the first letter and then plain letters
for the rest of it.
Next we have Jordan.
Jordan is a child so we want to make sure that we have cute.
Parents want cute so you have to make it cute or you're just not going to sell these cartoons.
So that means a larger forehead, smaller jaw area and smaller chin area.
Here we're indicating the eyes, eyebrows, bangs of the hair, ear, top of the head and
the neck.
So now we're ready to go into the nose with the design marker.
All round, slightly squared off for the nose.
Little button nose.
Tiny mouth, simplified here.
Keeping the mouth closed, make it easier for myself.
Top lip done very, very lightly.
Indicating a chin.
These big eyes, again they're blue so we're going to leave the iris part white so that
we can go back in later with the prismacolor.
Very light strokes for the eyebrow.
Children don't have very dark eyebrows for the most part.
Nice full chubby cheeks, small chin.
His chin is a little bit squared off so we want to keep that as part of his character.
Bangs of the hair will frame the face.
So we're looking at the whole shape of the mask area of the face as we draw and keeping
that in mind when we draw the particulars.
The cheeks, the chin and the bangs of the hair.
Now overlapping forms or overlapping lines to indicate the hair.
A little bit of cowlick and then we're done with the head.
So now we're going to go into the body right away.
Tiny body.
Next we're going to put a prop.
We're going to use a tricycle as the prop.
And props are covered in detail in the one minute caricature.
That's my first video.
Now we're going back and strengthening some of the lines.
And we put in the name at this point.
Big block letter for the first letter.
Plain letters for the rest.
It's a matter of personal preference.
Now we're ready for the black prismacolor.
We're going to do it with sparing strokes because he has blonde hair.
Color of his eyes.
Under plane of his nose.
Shadowed area of his brow.
Color of his lips.
Using the side of the crayon.
Giving the shirt some color.
And the tires some color.
And maybe some background sky color.
We added extra details and we're going to be done with this picture.
Next up is Don.
Don is an older gentleman.
He has a square theme to his face with a block for his nose.
This is what I keep in mind as I draw.
The whole square theme is indicating the shape of his face as I draw.
Placing the nose here.
The mouth.
Placing the eyes.
This whole process should take no more than 30 seconds.
Just lay it down very quickly so you know where your pen will go when you lay in the
design marker.
Indicate the glasses.
So as I said before I see the nose as sort of like a block of wood with all three sides
showing.
Top plane, side plane, and bottom plane.
Helps me visualize what I need to draw.
Next up is the mouth.
He has a very thin mouth.
Thin lips.
Indicate the beginning of his cheek muscle or his chin muscle.
Going into the eyes.
Because his glasses give the illusion that his eyes are a little bit bigger we draw the
eyes slightly bigger.
Going to the eyebrows.
Done very thinly.
The eyebrows will be mostly covered up by the glasses.
Next we go into the shape of the face with the whole face mask area.
I see the chin as a kind of ball making sure I capture that volume.
Going into the hairline of the forehead.
Always keeping in mind the shape of the forehead as I draw.
Negative and positive shapes here.
Go into the jaw line.
Touch up on the chin.
Into the hair.
Into the ear.
Finish off the hair using overlapping lines.
Our glasses are slightly square so your square exercises will come in very handy here.
Try to do that in one stroke.
Lace his neck.
Furrows of his brow done very lightly.
Adding a few character lines.
Be very sparing in your wrinkles.
You don't want them to draw attention to themselves.
Use very very light lines.
Next we go into the hair with the prismacolor.
Because his hair is so light we use it very sparingly.
Bottom plane of his nose.
Underneath the lip, chin.
Eyes eye color.
Inside of the ear.
All your shading techniques can be learned from a good how to book on how to draw.
You notice that the side of the nose was done and really pulled out and gave the nose some
three dimensionality.
Now because this person was done live and in the studio I asked him to pick a sport
or hobby.
And he chose golf.
So I throw in a body and a gag.
Now if you have my book 101 gag ideas you have access to over 100 proven gags to use
at your next gig.
And how to construct a gag for the quick caricature is also covered in detail in tape number 1
the one minute caricature.
So now we're throwing in a golf club here.
And he's getting ready for his putt.
But there is one problem.
He's in a pool of water.
Find a place for his name.
So at this point I go back into the body with the prismacolor.
Give him some golf pants here.
Add some color to the water.
Sky.
Give some stripes on his shirt.
You'll notice that when I've used the prismacolor it's almost at random and I do it when I feel
I need to enhance the form.
So let's review.
Having a formula helps you to speed up the process so that you can get to your customers
more quickly.
The more you practice the easier it gets.
It's kind of like learning to juggle.
Have a pretty good idea of how you want to draw your subject before you begin.
Know what you want to exaggerate.
Learning how to draw realistically gives you an advantage in creating and convincing caricature.
Oftentimes you need to draw two people on a page.
The key is to draw the closer person first, usually the one with the longer hair.
Be sure to leave enough room on the page for the second person.
Also the necks and bodies of the two subjects need to be positioned correctly so that the
gag idea will work.
So let's draw our first subject here.
Usually the person with the longer hair is going to be the woman.
Leave enough room for the hair.
Go into the eyes.
Okay and then we'll do the rest of the face here.
Okay now that we've established the first person in front we will do the other person
in back.
Usually we either have them peeking out over the side of this person and we can draw it
something like this.
Roughly indicate where the person will be.
indicate the nose where the eyes will go.
Finish off the rest of this head like this.
So you can see that you don't have to draw the entire face of the second person.
Now the gag that I'm going to do in this one is have them both driving in a car.
We draw the car in.
And he's going to be pointing this way.
And she's not knowing where she's going.
She's going off the cliff.
And then you find some place where you can put their names.
Some more examples of the double portrait.
Let's review.
So remember do the girl first or whoever has the longer hair.
Leave enough room for the other subject and keep in mind the gag idea so that you know
how to position the neck and bodies.
When adding color to the party caricature your aim is to get it done as fast as possible
yet still satisfy your customer.
Colored pencil sticks are the preferred medium for this method.
They are wax based and don't smudge and generally don't make a mess as far as I know.
Barrel makes the only ones and they're called prismacolor sticks.
I found that these sticks produce rich enough color without the messiness of pastel or chalk.
No cleanup is involved.
Although the color effect is not as saturated as say magic markers they are far less expensive
and last a very long time.
So the benefits outweigh the negatives.
For quick cleanup and inexpensive color try these sticks.
To make your color smooth and more uniform put a vinyl placement underneath the paper.
It allows your color stick some extra give for a better body in your stroke and you will
not pick up the graininess of the board or paper underneath.
Okay I'm going to outline the outside edges first to give some definition and form.
Making it a little bit darker on the bottom planes of the face, places that the light
does not reach.
Trying to leave some white highlights where the light hits the top most of the forms of
the face.
Adding pressure where we needed to make the color darker.
With the blush color we're going to go into the lips.
And for the ladies we can add a lipstick color pink or red whatever she happens to be wearing
at the time.
Put a little blush color in the cheek area where it gives somewhat of a healthy look
to it.
We're going to give this person brown eyes and we're going to give this person dark brown
hair.
Fill in the beard here.
Adding pressure where there's darker areas.
And use some strokes with the stick to indicate hair strands.
Then we'll choose a color for the shirt.
And for the pants we'll just do a gray.
And we'll do gray for the tennis racket here.
A little shading here and there.
For the background color use the side of the stick.
Lightly go over the background.
Be careful not to mix it in with the rest of the color.
Just kind of work it away adding variety in texture.
Some white spots for atmosphere.
And then we'll go into the ground here, the tennis court.
Make it green.
We can add another shade of green if we like to give it more luminance.
As a finishing touch we can add another color into the letters here.
Let's choose a good color here.
How about yellow?
See how that looks.
A little red thrown in.
And that's it.
Here's your color caricature.
You are by no means obligated to use just this technique.
I've seen other methods that are just as valid but in my opinion take longer.
And since the purpose of drawing caricatures is to make money, faster is always better.
However, I will describe the other techniques to you so that you can pick and choose and
experiment with what works best for you.
Watercolor.
This technique takes a certain amount of expertise in the medium of watercolor.
The results are quite striking as you can see.
Watercolor is not easy to master so make sure that you can handle a brush and mix colors
well before you venture into this technique.
You need a good French easel and other equipment to take with you.
Setup time is usually longer and the time it takes to finish a caricature may take longer
too.
Markers.
Try these for a very saturated color.
These can be expensive but the results are pretty beautiful.
One note however that black design markers tend to bleed and blend with some color so
try the Rub-A-Dub laundry marker pen for the black outline.
That seems to work best.
Pastel.
Large cakes of pastel are used and rubbed into the drawing with the finger.
Some artists use a white glove and assign a color for each finger.
This is a very quick method, portable and inexpensive.
However, it can be messy and the results are less saturated and more pastel like.
Review.
Use a vinyl placement underneath your paper for smoother, more saturated color.
Work with the lighter tones first and then the darker tones to avoid dirtying the color.
Use the broad side of the stick for covering wider areas.
Work in the direction of the form with each stroke of the stick.
Other techniques for coloring are valid but there are trade-offs.
Well that's it for the front view party caricature.
Not everyone draws the same way.
This video was meant to serve as an inspiration and a starting point.
I'm sure that you will find your own unique way of drawing caricatures and injecting your
own style and sense of humor.
If my video helped in any way I'm happy for it.
So enjoy your drawing and I hope your efforts are successful.