Hello. Thanks for joining me in my third installment on the art of caricature. And with this video,
I would like to explore for you the behind the scenes look at caricaturing. What I mean
is a closer look at the actual creative process of capturing a likeness in a caricature. And
that would include all the many and varied rough sketches, failed attempts, and revisions
that would go into a studied caricature that could be used as an illustration for a newspaper,
magazine, or commissioned artwork. How I plan to do this is by placing a camera over my
shoulder and just let it run while I sketch away until I come up with a drawing that I'm
pleased with. What you will see is the edited version with comments from me about what I'm
thinking about as I'm drawing. So often while at art school I have learned so much by just
watching my teachers draw that I thought that this would be an ideal way to teach caricature.
By just eliminating the boring parts through the magic of video editing, I could accomplish
the same thing, only with more concentration. Often a student can pick up little nuances
and insights through this type of observation much more quickly than by the static lessons
in a book. I do not claim to be a so-called master at caricature, but I do feel that I
can offer the beginning caricature some valuable tips and hints that he or she would find extremely
helpful. Before I begin the actual demonstrations, I have a section on exaggeration. I will explain
the elements of exaggeration so crucial to getting a likeness and how they apply to caricature
and show examples of what I mean from other artists that I admire. So let's get on with
the show. Let's talk about exaggeration. There are many styles of caricaturing and for the
sake of brevity and time limitations, I cannot cover all the styles nor am I capable of drawing
them. I will show you what I have discovered about caricaturing and what it means to me.
I've been influenced by certain caricatures in the past and my work is obviously going
to reflect those influences. However, I'm constantly discovering new ones and I'm amazed
at the diversity of styles. When I'm particularly smitten by a certain artist's style, I will
copy the drawing to catch the flavor of the style and I encourage you to do the same.
Then I will apply that style to a subject of my own choosing to see if I've learned
my lesson. And in this example, I was studying Hirschfeld and wanted to try the self-portrait
in that style. You can see that I've tried to make the lines elegant and flowing so characteristic
of the Hirschfeld style. I would venture to say, however, that all caricatures have something
in common, mainly exaggeration. Since my involvement in the animation industry, there's a certain
term used frequently that I feel is appropriate for caricatures, squash and stretch. If someone
has a big nose, stretch it even bigger. Thick lips, stretch them out more. A weak chin,
squash it even more. Something is big because it's next to something small. Exaggerate the
difference. Pull one this way, pull one the other way, manipulate it like silly putty.
Steve Brodner's drawings are an example of squash and stretch. Just take a look at these
examples. Take a look at another artist, Philip Burke. Notice the squash and stretch. 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. Let's take Woody Allen as an example. If we grid his likeness,
we see that the top half is ever so slightly taller than the bottom and is wider. His nose
dominates with its thickness and its length. He has a larger forehead with receding hairline.
The eyes are far apart with big irises. The mouth is close to the nose with one side turned
up. Also, the droopy eyes are noticeable, and they have bags under them. The caricature
is going to enhance these characteristics. The relationship of the measurements, that
is, what is large because what's next to it is small and vice versa, will be pushed
and made more so. Look at the standard head next to the face, and we see how the sizes
change. All relationships were pushed to illustrate these differences. 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 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. I've put together a little animation to help illustrate the
idea of exaggeration. This is Jay Leno. Jay is lending his face for us today to show us
how we can push his features to make a caricature. You all recognize Jay as a late-night talk
show host on TV. First, we exaggerate his chin. It's the most obvious part of his facial
anatomy that lends itself well for caricature. Sorry, Jay, for the inconvenience. His hair
would be the next place we go. He wants out the rest of his face. His other features remain
about the same size, except we simplify it and make it more cartoony, especially the
mouth, which was made even smaller to capture his expression. Thanks, Jay, for your cooperation
for this lesson. Next up is a great exercise when you're stuck with a likeness. Try cutting
out the features and play with their positioning relative to the other features. This is especially
useful with the mouth or eyes. It could be a matter of adjusting them a few millimeters
here and there until you've got it just right. One of the tricks I use to find the design
of the face is to isolate the shapes of the face and translate them into purely flat planes.
For instance, if we were to take this face and overlay some transparent paper and trace
the outline of the face, for instance, the forehead, the nose, the jaw, the mouth, et
cetera, we would come up with something like this. The next assignment we do is then analyze
how we can caricature the shape. Obviously, it would be hard to exaggerate a square because
all the sides are equal, but once one side becomes larger, we can exaggerate the length
and stretch it out even more. So with this principle in mind, we can take this nose and
turn it into something like this. This lower half of the face, turn it into something like
this. And the mouth, we can caricature this shape, turn it into something like this. So
basically we take the essence of a shape and enhance its characteristics. That's one aspect
of it, however. We must then position the shapes together and see their relationships
to each other. In other words, this relationship could be exaggerated to become this, and vice
versa, this relationship can become this. So we're dramatizing the relationship of
the sizes to each other. In this portrait, we can enlarge the lower half in relationship
to the top half. So we have something like this, just working with the shapes that we
described earlier. And then we add the exaggerated nose shape and the mouth shape, and then we
can go into the hair. So now you get the idea how we've arrived at this. But we are not
finished yet. The 2D shapes must be translated into 3D, and this is where your drawing skills
come into play, turning a flat shape like this into something like this. Also, don't
be afraid to exaggerate depth or perspective. An example might be a nose coming at you in
this. So you have this nose here. We can exaggerate that by doing something like this. See if
you can find the 2D shapes from this modern master of caricature, David Cowles. One of
the other things to watch out for is the asymmetry of the face. That is, how one half of the
face will not mirror the other half. A smile might droop to one side, or an eyebrow seems
to be raised more than the other. Let's take this picture and divide it in half and mirror
one side of it and see if the personality changes. It's very interesting to make this
experiment on photographs of people. The results will startle you, even on people who you might
consider to have a well-balanced face. Compare the two heads and you can see the difference.
So the moral of this little story is, watch out for subtle differences in the two halves
of the face. Next up are some examples of caricature that demonstrate exaggeration well.
The faces are still instantly recognizable, which is the mark of a good caricaturist.
What Burke has done here is take Madonna's squarish face and pushed it even more. He
de-emphasized the nose and made the eyes the centerpiece of his focus, as well as other
parts of her anatomy. Risco chose to exaggerate the hair and lips in this treatment of Mick
Jagger. The eyes are reduced to mere rectangles, which is an attest to Risco's genius for reducing
a likeness to geometric symbols. Also pushed is a typical arch of Jagger's stance. Another
caricature phenomena is David Cowell's. Now talk about geometric forms. David has the
uncanny talent to see a face reduced to two-dimensional shapes. The same principles of pushing the
differences applies, except he goes one further. Ronald Reagan's hair is sagging ears and twisted
mountain. Large nose are emphasized in this picture. The eyes become stars and the cheek
muscle is reduced to just an oval shape, pushed up at exactly the right placement. Susan Sarandon's
hair is simplified to a wavy shape. Even the color of the hair is caricatured. Notice the
mouth. Now if the downturned corner of the mouth was not there, we would lose a large
part of her character. That's so important to the likeness. And the same applies to the
eyebrow where it turns up into the slightest scowl. Take it away and you just lose that
extra dimension of a likeness. These are the kind of subtleties that you look for and take
advantage of in a caricature. Brodner is the ultimate in squash and stretch. He knows exactly
where to pinch a form and blow it out. Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger. His forehead is
squared off to Frankenstein's proportions and the eyes are pulled apart and almost even
non-existent. Notice the mouth is not even symmetrical. One side of the lips is fatter
than the other. The ears are little leaflets peering out from behind his head. Now this
is exaggeration. Keep a clip file of caricatures that strike your fancy and study them. Try
copying the caricature and retrace the thought process that goes into a certain artist's
way of exaggeration. Then use a photo of a celebrity and imagine how a certain artist
would stretch the features to his own liking and proceed to draw it that way. Exaggeration
can be conceptualized by comparing the subject to the fictitious, normal, or a standard head.
We push the differences to bring out the uniqueness of a particular face. Something is big when
next to something 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. Exaggerating means squashing and stretching the features. Copying other styles
can help you understand how to exaggerate. Translate a face into flat shapes and play
with the relative sizes. Be aware of the symmetry of a face. And of course, Jay Leno has a very
large chin. What you're about to see next is a glimpse of the creative process that
is carried out when I draw a caricature. I have taken several easily recognizable celebrities
whose face I have not studied extensively before and attempted caricature of them from
the beginning. You will get to see all the failed attempts, terrible draftsmanship, and
near misses until I get to a final product that I'm satisfied with. My first subject
is Barbara Streisand. What I want to do first is to get some first impressions and explore
her face. The first attempt will be the most portrait-like of all the sketches. These sketches
are very small, about five inches or so, and are considered thumbnails. I spent quite some
time beforehand looking at her photographs and I've tried to get a sense of who she is,
her facial expressions, and her mannerisms. Often, like an actor or a stand-up impressionist,
I try to feel like the character. It might even act out some of her actions and the way
she sounds. I'll put on her albums while I'm drawing and totally immerse myself in her
character. I've worked from several photos from various magazine sources and the photo
you'll see is not the exact picture I used but is similar in angle and hairstyle. So
as you can see, I'm mapping out her features, trying to get a sense of how the features
are organized, using a loose, sketchy technique. I'm emphasizing the nose right away because
that's the most obvious place to start for exaggeration, especially for her particular
face. Adjusting the eyes here. Finding the placement of the hair groupings. To me, the
first sketch is basically a throwaway sketch. It's just to get an idea of who she is. Then
I take this drawing and overlay it with a clean sheet of paper so that I can see through
it and start pushing the relationships. At this point, I'm actually caricaturing my
caricature. I'm going over and trying to find out what it is about the first drawing that
I did and try to exaggerate that. Also, as I'm doing this, I'm strengthening the drawing
and the structure. I give her higher cheekbones, a bigger nose in relationship to the rest
of the features. Smaller eyes. As I go into the mouth, I try to see the mouth as two wings
emanating from one source point in the middle. Gives me an idea and helps me try to feel
out the design of the lips. All the while I'm drawing, I'm thinking of design, thinking
of abstract shapes, positive and negative shapes, and also thinking of anatomy too.
Now the pencil mileage for a small thumbnail sketch is low so that I can work rather quickly.
That's why I like to draw small in the beginning so I can get down my ideas fast.
Indicating some eyelashes, putting in the eyeliner, adjusting the eyebrows, constantly
adjusting, getting to know all the features.
The stage of the drawing is very exploratory. I'm going to draw the eyes, the eyes, the
eyes, the roundness of the finger print, and the finger distance. All of those are very
Let's try to give her more of a cross-eyed look here.
So what I do at this point is I take this drawing and compare it to the first drawing that I did and see what's the difference, how it's changed, where I'm going with the drawing and also to make any adjustments.
If there was anything about the first drawing that I liked, I'm going to put it back into the second drawing. In this case it was something about the nose that I wanted to change.
So after taking that drawing, the second drawing, I draw it next to it and I caricature that.
I try to find, because this is going to be more of a departure from the second drawing, I try to find and see what kind of design is taking place.
In this case I see that there's a diamond shape happening to the overall shape of the face and I'm going to use that as my theme.
So that means I'm giving it higher cheekbones, I'm making the eyes closer and even smaller.
Slightly cross-eyed for her eyes.
Making the nose even bigger, making it stand out.
And because it's so big I have to adjust the lips and make them come underneath it.
Softening the cheek line.
Adding more structure to the drawing.
Getting a feel for how the hair falls on her face.
Doing some shading also to get a feeling for the form.
Usually use the side of my pencil in order to create the tones.
Then I put in a rough indication of a neck and body.
So this isn't a bad start.
Getting to know the character a little bit more.
So from that drawing I decide that I really want to go for broke and really push the nose and see what happens.
I want to go to the point of ridiculousness.
I don't know the face, I think I know what it is that I want to exaggerate.
Now there were some problems with this picture.
This particular drawing did not make it for me so I decided that I had to trim back a little bit.
And so I discarded this drawing and it was a little bit too much for me to handle at this point.
So I take that other drawing that I did and I blow it up in a Xerox machine to full size,
the size that I'm going to be doing the color in,
and begin to trace over it.
So I strengthen the drawing even more, giving it structure and architecture,
cleaning up the lines, getting it ready for the final color version,
always adjusting as I go, making the drawing better,
giving it perspective.
All the tricks that you learn in drawing classes are all applied here.
This is the final version of the rough that I'm going to use before I go into color.
Everything has to be pretty accurate and there's no fooling around at this point.
I've also developed a body for the character, put her in a dress,
making sure that the body fit well to the head and that the proportions were all correct.
Add shading at this point in order to fill out the form so that when I go into color,
I'll understand exactly what I'm doing in terms of its values, in terms of its form.
Now if there's something wrong at this point, I'm not afraid to erase.
In this case, I'm trying to make the eyes a little bit cleaner, a little bit more accurate.
Again, I adjust the eye so that it falls on the eye axis a little bit better.
Give some shading to the lips.
Adjust the separation of the two lips.
It's a feature of her mouth that's very particular to Barbra Streisand and begs also to be caricatured.
There's a couple things about Barbra that we wanted to exaggerate.
Her nose, the closeness of her eyes, the way they seem to have a slight cross-eyed look to them, and the mouth.
We constantly adjusted them until we come up with a good combination that works.
Now I'm trying to find out where the hair groupings are, giving it some tonal values.
Then we're throwing in a microphone here to put her in some kind of environment to be in.
Putting her in some kind of a spotlight.
Increasing the three-dimensionality of her nose.
Here you see the final rough before we go into color.
And an extreme close-up.
So now we're ready for the watercolor and colored pencil technique.
This is the medium that I chose to do this in.
Now I chalk the back of the paper to act as a sort of carbon paper to transfer the drawing to the illustration board.
And then trace the drawing and what's left is an imprint of the drawing.
And then that is sprayed down with some spray fixative so that the lines won't run when we add water to it.
Now this is not a lesson in watercolor technique.
I just wanted to show you briefly how it's done and how we get to the final color version.
I'm laying in some color for the face.
Usually starting out with the lighter tones first.
Go back and strengthen some of the lines that I've lost.
And after skipping many steps, I'm about three-quarters done here.
Add some detail with a small brush for the hair.
And going back in with a colored pencil to add color saturation and to soften some of the forms.
Using a white colored pencil to add highlights.
I've used a frisket for the body so that none of the color would get in the way so that I have room to put in the color of the dress and also her skin color.
After a few steps, we get to adjustment of the darks.
And here's the completed finished piece.
Barbara Streisand.
The same beginning procedure is used here for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
I start out small exploring the face and just getting to know Arnold.
I try to imagine all his movies and run those pictures through my head as I draw.
Again, I immerse myself into the personality known as Arnold Schwarzenegger.
So first of all, we start out with exploring shapes and structure of the head, placing the eyes and eyebrows.
Slightly exaggerating what I see.
It's more of a portrait at this stage.
Going into the mouth, exploring the shape of the mouth.
Thickness of the lips and the gap between his teeth, which is a particular feature unique to Arnold that begs to be caricatured.
I give him a thick neck.
Trapezius muscles.
Adds more detail to the rough.
Again, these are only about five inches high, very small.
I can work very quickly.
Now we take that drawing and put a clean piece of paper on top of it.
Paper that's semi-transparent.
Again, we're doing a caricature of a caricature.
We're taking the shapes that we see in the first caricature and pushing them, exaggerating them.
There's a pattern that we see.
We try to push that pattern.
So we exaggerate all the shapes in relationship to each other.
Begin to see the mouth as kind of a bow tie.
I'm going to push that shape, make the eyes a little bit smaller, the eyebrows a little bit bushier.
We're also increasing, enhancing the angles and corners of his face.
Gives him a little bit more of a masculine look or feel to the drawing.
Again, we throw in the gap between his teeth.
Start to understand how the teeth work, how they're patterned, inside corner of the mouth.
Happens when we smile, we're exaggerating that.
Find out where the chin muscle starts.
Then we greatly exaggerate his neck, since he is a weightlifter and he's known for weightlifting, as well as his movies.
So next to that drawing, I've looked at that and tried to determine what's the predominant shapes
and what kind of direction that we're headed in, in terms of face shape.
So we're pushing the relationships here once more.
Exaggerate the relationship of the head shape to the jaw and mouth area.
So that means we make the forehead shape a little bit more squashed, a little bit smaller, and increase the size of the mouth.
Now at this point, I decide that when I look at Arnold, my attention goes to the mouth.
So I want to subordinate all shapes to the mouth.
We want the mouth to stand out.
I see that this is a good point for us to put our focus on, and this will be the focus of our exaggeration.
So that means we're going to play up the gap between his teeth and the smile
and the inside corners of his mouth that seem to reveal themselves when he smiles.
Also, we're increasing the length of his chin, making the eyes a little bit smaller, a little bit more squintier.
And this is the rough that we come up with at this point.
Now I blew up that rough in a Xerox machine to full size, the size that I'll be doing the color in.
And I'm going to tie down all the sloppy areas, clean up and define more carefully the forms of the face.
I'm still pushing the shapes. I'm just not tracing my drawing.
I'm making the drawing better as I go, giving it more structure, more perspective.
I'm not afraid to erase if I feel that something's not working properly.
In this case, I need to make the eyes a little bit smaller.
Here you see that we've really defined the mouth very carefully, widened the gap between his teeth,
making some adjustments to the mouth area.
All this is getting ready for the colored version.
Here you see a close-up of the final rough.
Now transferring that to illustration board in a similar manner that we did with the Barbra Streisand drawing, we go over it.
I know that there's still room for exaggeration and the tweaking of the features.
There's something about applying color that forces me to take a very, very close look at the forms.
I will discover new things as I go that I can incorporate into the final sketch.
So after transferring the drawing, I begin the colored pencil technique,
starting with the brown color to outline the face, shapes and forms.
I never lose sight of his personality.
In fact, I feel that I know Arnold a bit more now and I feel more confident about the outcome of this picture.
I'm building up the color layers using similar shades of flesh tones and browns with a few complementary colors thrown in.
Again, this is not an instruction on colored pencil technique.
I just wanted to show you how the constant revisions occur in a caricature, even in the color stage.
I'm continually building up the color and refining the features,
deepening the shadows, giving more color saturation, going into the darker areas,
doing the highlights with white paint,
adding a few finishing touches.
And here you see a close-up.
Notice how every nuance of form is delineated.
It's good to see the face as sort of a landscape that you can travel across with all its hills and valleys.
Liz Taylor provided an interesting challenge to me.
I wanted to capture her image as a glamorous screen idol, but in her middle ages, a more mature Liz.
Again, I have numerous visual references in front of me of the subject from various magazine sources.
The picture you see in the corner is representative of the age and expression that I wanted.
The procedure is much the same as the others.
The steps are more condensed and accelerated to main interest for the viewer.
So again, I get a feel for the subject's structure,
understanding how the nose works.
This is more of the portrait stage, but there is some slight exaggeration.
In this case, I exaggerate the lower lip.
Now I'm going into the eyes.
Already I've started to exaggerate her eyebrows, which is the most obvious part and point to start off with her.
With Barbara Streisand, it was the nose.
With Dr. Schwarzenegger, it was a little bit harder, but we started off with the mouth as a point of exaggeration.
And with her, I think the emphasis will be in her eye area, including her eyebrows.
Sometimes, as you'll notice, I've started out with a lighter colored pencil, in this case red,
then go over in graphite, picking up the more essential lines and darkening them.
I put in some color values for the hair, so I understand the whole design process.
Putting a clean piece of paper over that, or tracing paper in this case,
I try to abstract the shapes and see what kind of design comes out of that.
I want to get this ready for an airbrush painting, and I want to make it very graphic.
I'm thinking in terms of two-dimensional designs.
I give the tracing more form by doing some shading.
I fatten the cheeks here a little bit to emphasize, in contrast to the smaller chin area
that I see as a sort of dollop of whipped cream at the end of her face.
And I push the chin out to add more emphasis to it.
Again, using what I've done as reference and understanding the shapes of her face a little bit more,
I begin to explore a more severe exaggerated approach.
Again, this is a caricature of a caricature.
I see what patterns are starting to develop for the overall shape of the face,
and I try to push that shape.
In this case, I make the chin smaller, I make the lips fatter, especially the lower lip.
The eyebrows even thicker.
And now I'm trying a new hairstyle that I saw in another picture
that really seemed to capture the essence of Ms. Taylor for me.
Now, taking that picture, I clean it up once again in the same manner as before,
owning the shapes and the design until I come up with something like this.
And with that picture, I make a Xerox blow-up of it to full size,
and doing a tracing of that.
Now, I'm going to get more serious here.
I've got a good beginning, but I need to see it in the actual size
that I will do the color in.
Since it's bigger, I'll have more room to explore the details of the face.
My drawing doesn't have to be so cramped here, and I can free up my strokes.
The thumbnails were great for exploring shapes and design,
and went rather quickly, which is good.
But at this stage, I want to get into the nitty-gritty of her character,
so larger is better.
So I'm working on the eyes and eyebrows,
paying careful attention to detail and relationships.
I turn the paper over to see if there's any flaw in the structure,
and a perspective of the drawing, and correct it.
I decide on creating a hair curl that I saw in another photo
that gave more interest and broke up the shapes of her forehead.
Put it on a sexy body,
and here's a close-up of the black and white final stage.
This is the final rough.
I do a color scheme here to see what colors would look nice.
I chose a blue dress to complement her eyes.
I chose to do a rather flat trim in the color for this picture.
That means that my drawing had to be darn near what I wanted, and very accurate.
I'm cutting out masks that conform to the drawing rather strictly,
so there's no room for much adjusting of the features, as in the other techniques.
So spraying in color of the eyebrows and the eyebrows right now,
and then lifting up the frisket to reveal the graphic treatment of the eyes.
After similar treatments to the rest of the face using frisket,
I come to this near-completed stage.
Then I overlay a fresh piece of frisket so that I can cut out my background area.
If you need to learn about airbrush, there are plenty of books out there that can teach you this.
After cutting out the background area, I spray in a light color purple,
and now I reveal the background.
Then I go back in and touch up using a brush to add detail.
Now I'm strengthening the lines and contours with a brush.
And as a last and final stage, the mole.
And here's a close-up of the finished piece.
Let's review.
It takes many attempts to get to the final product, one that you will be satisfied with.
Worrying about perfect drawings in the beginning just tightens you up.
Loose exploratory sketches are better.
Using a light table or tracing paper to go over your favorite rough sketch makes it easier to clean up.
A Xerox machine can help you enlarge or reduce a rough sketch for later cleanup.
Be daring in your rough sketches.
Unlike the party caricature, you don't have to please anyone but yourself.
Here's a couple of tips for gathering references for famous faces if you plan to caricature celebrities.
Keep a clip file of cutout pictures gathered from various magazines or newspapers.
Create an alphabetical file and organize their names to be put in their respective places.
Subscribe to magazines like Us Magazine or Entertainment Weekly,
and make a habit of taking out the scissors and start snipping away.
Another idea is to have a master videotape of recorded celebrities.
You can freeze frame close-ups of the faces and draw from the screen.
This also gives you the advantage of scrolling through the tape until you get the right facial angle or expression.
Plus, you get to explore the personality and pick out certain quirks.
Or, if you have a computer, digitize the images, download the image to the computer, and print out the picture.
This next section was designed to inspire you to let loose and take some chances.
No pressure to get a likeness, just abandon yourself and your first impressions of a character.
Something about him or her that makes you laugh or inspires you to be cruel would be a good motivation.
So be daring and bold in your approach.
I did these drawings in order to blow off steam and not feel the pressure and tightness of getting a likeness.
Hey, if it didn't work, so what? I had fun trying.
I wanted to get it a little cruel here and really distort the nose and mouth as well as play up the eyes.
I've tried to imagine myself as a naughty tabloid reporter looking to cast an unfavorable light on her character.
I tried to make it fun for myself.
So I'm exaggerating the hook of her nose, the twist of her mouth.
These drawings were done for myself. They weren't to show anybody else except, of course, you.
These weren't meant for publication.
I'm trying to understand the shape of her face and feeling out her hair.
All these sketches take no longer than five minutes.
I limited myself to this time in order to get the most out of my reaction to the drawing.
I'm quickly putting in her eyelashes, distorting and giving her a very cartoony look to her eyes, distorting the angle of her neck, which was which I thought was typical of her body language.
There was no attempt to beautify or glamorize her here.
I adjusted the angle in which the eye direction was.
I'm lengthening her nose a little bit, strengthening some of the shapes and features.
Not a very pretty picture, as you can see.
Yet there's still something there I feel that I've captured about her likeness, so it still works as a caricature.
Next up is Steven Spielberg.
First I try to find out the shape of his face.
The most obvious place to go is to exaggerate the nose.
Going to the hair.
It seems like he rarely combs his hair, so we want to get the shallow look to his caricature.
So again I go a little wild and find a cruel streak in me.
I imagine myself being in a grade school picking out the flaws of poor Steven's face and yelling them out in the schoolyard.
And hey, look at your hair, what a mess.
Get a haircut, will you?
Wipe that silly grin off your face.
So you see, sometimes you can put yourself in a ridiculing state of mind.
You can find the right shapes and forms to distort.
I apologize to Mrs. Spielberg for my momentary insolence.
The disheveled hair.
Deepening the features.
Adjusting the color of his beard.
Working quickly.
Since I gave myself five minutes or so, I'm brushing myself to make sure that I get everything that I need to get.
Not belaboring over any one feature.
Working all around.
Finishing off his glasses.
Go back and adjust the width of his nose.
Just that slight adjustment made a bit of a difference and made the likeness even better.
Picking up some of the eyes, adjusting the size of the eye.
Giving the eyebrow more detail and emphasis.
Working on the expression of the eyebrows and eyes.
Tiny little subtle things can really add to the likeness of a caricature.
And that's it.
Now for Arsenio Hall.
Once again, feeling cruel, I decide to push the length of his face in almond shapes of his eyes.
Giving him little tiny ears.
Normal sized nose.
Adding wings for the lips.
I'm thinking more like Steven Brodner as discussed earlier. Thinking of the forms as a pliable, bendable shape, especially the back of the skull and the chin area.
Adding some shading helps me to see the design of the face a little bit better.
Giving him thick eyelids.
Adding up the anatomy.
Defining the ball at the end of his nose a little bit cleaner.
Clearer.
Defining the ball at the end of his nose a little bit clearer.
Adding a long neck.
Getting him large hands.
Adding some tone to finish off the drawing.
I hope you've gained a lot of insight into the creative process of caricaturing. It's an exciting field to be in whether or not you do it for financial gain or for your own personal enjoyment.
Caricaturing has seen a bit of a renaissance lately and there are many caricatures out there with varied styles. Study them and copy them. Maybe one of the styles will have a special connection with you and you can be influenced by that artist.
Eventually you'll be your own person with your own distinctive style. This video was fun to make. I hope you've enjoyed it. Good luck and have fun with your drawing.
Thank you for watching.