I think it’s a myth that women, particularly beautiful women, are harder to caricature than men. Women have the same sets of features that men have, but the need to differentiate the masculine from the feminine forces the caricaturist to modify his or her approach (in most cases) to the different sexes. That doesn’t mean that it’s more difficult to draw either sex than it is to draw the other, but you do have to keep the masculine/feminine difference in mind if you want to avoid the “drag queen” look that sometimes results in a caricature of a woman.

Superficially there are a lot of facial elements that identify a given subject as male or female. Thick eyelashes, full red lips, soft complexion, high cheekbones, more curved and thinner eyebrows… these are feature descriptions that are distinctly “feminine”.  You may notice these items have one thing in common… they are all features that women traditionally use makeup to accentuate or to create. If women don’t have them in abundance naturally many use makeup to create them or to accentuate what they do possess. Take your cues from what makeup artists do to see what kinds of features say “female” (and conversely what to avoid on a male caricature to prevent them from looking feminine). If I am drawing a man who happens to have thick, long eyelashes (many do) I will play that DOWN in many cases to accentuate the masculine in the drawing.

These are only superficial things, though. The real differences between men and women’s faces lay under the skin… with the bones and the skull. This is the basis of the “drag queen” look… the human eye and brain is able to differentiate between a male and female face based on difference and indicators that are more than surface features. Hence a drawing of a face with lot’s of female makeup level features on the surface but with the structure and other aspects of a typical male face looks like a man wearing makeup.

Skeletal differences between the sexes are well documented. It’s not just the different chromosomes that are behind it, either… the high levels of testosterone at puberty help enlarge the bones of males, while the high levels of progesterone also help develop male characteristics like greater height and a narrower pelvic bone. The differences also extend to the skull, which is actually the second easiest part of the skeleton forensic scientists can use to determine the probable sex of a skeleton, the pelvis being the first (learned that on NCIS!). In fact the mandible (jaw bone) alone gives examiners a 90% accuracy in determining the sex of a skeletal subject.

The female skull is generally smaller and lighter than the male’s. Elements like the brow ridge and mandible are usually less pronounced. The female skull tends to be wider than the male’s which leads to a general softness of features, more prominent cheekbones and a less prominent jawline. The areas above the eye sockets in men tend to be more blunt while the brow itself is more pronounced, but in women that same area is sharper (thus the purpose of “eye shadow”) while the brow protrudes less.

The jaw is actually a key element to the masculine/feminine definition of a subject, and represents the most dynamic differences between the faces of the sexes. The combination of the wider skull, the less developed mandible and the propensity of the female chin (mental protuberance) to be smaller and more pointed as opposed to a man’s wider and more square one makes the female jaw distinct from the male jaw. The upper (top part of the) chin is wider and higher vertically while a female’s is more rounded and shorter. In fact the male chin is generally larger in every dimension. Big, square jaws inevitably read as masculine and small, narrow and pointier ones read as feminine.

Jackie O’s features are classic feminine

Features themselves are also different, often as a result of the skull variance but sometimes of their own accord. Female noses, for example, are generally less angular and the tip is smaller and softer. They have a tendency to be pointier, narrower and vertically shorter (closer to the eyes) than a man’s nose.

Spencer Grammer has a small, understated nose, small chin and
wide face that says “female”

So, what does all this mean in terms of a caricature? Since caricature is all about exaggeration, it makes sense that if you want a subject to be more feminine you should downplay the things that make a face masculine and play up those things that make it feminine. Sounds like distortion, or the exaggeration of features based not on the what the subject’s features demand but on some other preconceived notion (which I constantly preach against), doesn’t it?

Some rules to drawing faces need to apply in order for the end result to be read as what it is intended to be read as. Drawing kids has certain rules you cannot break (or must break with only the most demanding of reasons) if you expect your caricature to look like a kid and not some weirdly deformed adult. Same thing with women. While it’s true that some women’s faces with bend and even break some of these “rules”, knowing the general rules will allow the observer to look for them and understand their meaning. If you are drawing a women with an enormous square jaw you can hardly ignore it, but you can look for the other typical female attributes you can then play up to balance things… or you can just exaggerate that enormous jaw and know your caricature is going to end up looking like Jessie Ventura in a wig. Hey, if the SUBJECT looks like Jessie Ventura in a wig you can’t do much about that. At least you know WHY the caricature doesn’t look feminine. You break the rules at your own risk, but you do have to break them when the situation calls for it.

Some examples of Breaking the Rules:

In this one of Rihanna I exaggerated her chin,
but the other rules are in place to help compensate.

This Lena Headley looks distinctly masculine… too many harsh angles

While the nose on Scarlett Johansson is not very feminine, the other features
compensate… cheekbones, lips, eyes, eyebrows. Chin is bigger but jaw still small.

So, what are the rules for making a caricature of a woman look feminine? The obvious thing is stay away from making the jaw, brow ridge and chin bigger or more pronounced in a woman’s caricature, and if possible even make these elements a little smaller. When possible play up those features that makeup is meant to enhance, like the sharper areas in the corners of the brows (eyeshadow), higher and more curved eyebrows (shaped eyebows), fuller lips especially the upper lip (lipstick), longer thicker eyelashes (mascara and eyeliner), higher more pronounced cheekbones (blush or rouge), less prominent nose (powder or base that used to avoid highlights that show the edges and draw attention).

Despite the “walleyes” this drawing shows the exaggeration and
understatement of the eyes, nose and mouth to accentuate the
femininity of the subject.

Personally I always strive to make a woman’s face SOFTER than a man’s. I stay away from harsh, angular lines and features in a woman’s caricature and use softer, more rounded lines and forms to define the face. I try to use fewer lines and elements that define edges of features.  With a linear style of drawing, In general the more lines you use in the face the more masculine (and older) the subject looks. If I want my subject to look more feminine, I will seek to define the features with are few lines as possible. It’s an old trick of filmmakers to use softer light and slightly out of focus (or vaseline-smeared lensed) camera on close ups of women to create a dreamy and sultry look to them… it eliminates the hard edges of features.

The ultimate feminine face? This caricature of Marilyn Monroe hardly has
Any lines inside the face. It’s all softness and suggested features.

Caricaturing a subject is, as always, defined by the demands the subject’s features and persona demand of the artist. However that does not mean the caricaturist cannot approach a subject a little differently, and look for specific things they might expect to see, based on things like the age or sex of the subject. Understanding human perceptions and what’s behind them with respect to things like male versus female faces only brings another source of observational power to the artist.

Here are some other examples of caricatures of women:

Kim Basinger has the eyes, brows, smallish nose, lips and chin
of the textbook female type

Fergie has a hard jaw, large brow and wide chin for a woman

Soft curves and understated features dominate this sketch of Lucille Ball

A somewhat hard chin but doe eyes and cheekbones make
this drawing of Winona Ryder look distinctly feminine

Another classic feminine face: Audrey Hepburn

Despite the bulbous nose, the other features of
Hayden Panettiere are soft and feminine

Part Five: Drawing Noses

In this next (and long delayed) installment of my “How to Draw Caricatures” series of tutorials we will examine the ever popular and often abused nose.

I think the most common feature that gets exaggerated in a caricature is the nose. Many people actually think the definition of caricature is a drawing with a big nose. What is it about the nose that makes it such a ripe target for exaggeration, so often picked on (pardon the pun) that even the layman notices? Simply put, the nose is the most obnoxious of features. It sits in the very center of the face. It is a very vertical feature when compared to the horizontal nature of the eyes and mouth. It sticks out radically from the plane of the face, much more in relief than any of the other features. It’s so prominent that it’s all too often used as a de-facto way to “exaggerate” the face. The fact is that the nose is like any other feature… its perceived relationship with the other features determines the extent and direction of the exaggeration. Many people have small, button noses that need to be made smaller by way of exaggeration. In some cases the end of the nose may rest close in between the eyes, and in others it’s very far way down the face. Some people have big, honking schnozzes that need to be stretched. In short, despite its prominence the nose is no different that the other features… it must be exaggerated and drawn in the manner the feature itself calls for.

The Anatomy of a Nose

The nose is a combination of bone and cartilage made up of various parts that while unique in appearance and relationship in the individual nonetheless, as in any feature, are the same in all people. Starting from the top, the area between the eyebrows is called the glabella. The area directly between the eyes is the root or bridge. The area extending from the root down towards the end of the nose is called the lateral surfaces. The end or “ball” of the nose is called the apex. The two “wings” of the nose, the areas that define the outside of the bottom of the nose and the outside of the nostrils are called the ala. The septum is the area that connects the apex to the face and separates the two nostrils, which are the cavities that open into the interior of the nose and the nasal passages. The alar furrow is the crease made by the separation of the ala and the cheek muscles. The nose “grows” out of the brow, and is connected at the top of the feature by the brow ridge and at the bottom, to the lips/mouth by the philtrum and the nasolabial furrow. The upper part of the nose, including the brow, glabella and root is bone… the “root” or bridge protrudes from the brow of the skull and then ends about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way down the nose itself. After that the nose is all cartilage and soft tissue. Because cartilage continues to grow throughout your life, your nose continues to grow and will alter shape as you age (ears are the same way). That is why many older people have larger noses, and why drawing a larger nose on someone makes them look older in the drawing.

Seeing the Nose Shape

Sam Viviano, acclaimed caricaturist and art director for MAD Magazine, once offered an explanation of how sometimes your reference can “lie” to you about your subject that uses the nose as an example, and that I now relay all the time to artists to describe the challenges involved with making accurate observations of this feature. Back in the 80’s there was a movie called “Roxanne” starring Steve Martin and Darryl Hannah. It was a modern retelling of “Cyrano de Bergerac”, with Martin in the Cyrano role. In Martin’s first scene he’s in a conversation with his face looking directly into the camera for several minutes. He looks normal. Then he turns to the side, and you see he has an incredibly long, Pinnochio-like nose. From straight on, it was impossible to see. That describes in a nutshell the difficulty of both observing and drawing the nose from a straight on, full face view both from photo reference or from life. The nose has no real edges between the root and the nostrils… it’s all curves and fleshy tissue. Foreshortening perspective and the lack of hard edges can fool the eye into not seeing the nose as it really is. This is easily remedied. When working from photo reference make sure you have adequate examples of the subject from many different angles so you have ample opportunity to see the nose from various viewpoints. Even if you are basing your caricature on a specific photo, it ALWAYS helps to have examples of different angles of the face so you can avoid being fooled by the “Roxanne Effect”. If you are working from life, ask the subject to turn to the side once so you can see their profile. Seeing the nose from both the front and the side will give you the whole story. Another complication of seeing and drawing the nose is how radically it can change with the angle of the head position. Of course all the features change with the head angle… but the nose’s high degree of relief from the plane of the face makes it the most susceptible to change. A person who’s head is tilted backward shows much more nostril, the apex is higher than the back of the nostrils, the septum is visible and the nose appears shorter. If the head is tilted forward, the apex drops below the back of the nose, the nostrils disappear, the nose seems longer and the space between the mouth and nose smaller. 3/4 views create even more variations on the shape. All this can make observing the nose and it’s shape(s) challenging but understanding the nose well will help make accurate observations. Because the nose doesn’t have any hard edges, especially between the root and bottom, I treat those two elements like bookends and fill the rest of the nose in between. The root and the nose bottom (including the ala, nostrils, apex and septum) have more definition than the softer edges of the nose’s lateral surfaces, which makes them easier to see and draw.

From straight on, the nose is a basic triangle and in most cases narrower at the root than at the bottom. There are exceptions to everything of course, but that’s a good generalization to begin making your observations. Actually some observations and choices about the nose should already have been made back when we looked at the overall face and the T-Shape, so these more specific observations are just building on our more general ones.

I look at three different “measurements” or relationships of the nose to understand it’s shape:

First, I look at the width of the root or bridge of the nose compared to the overall nose shape. It is usually narrower than the width of the bottom of the nose, but if it’s close to the same width the overall effect is a thick nose and I might want to exaggerate that. Some people have a very narrow root, looking like there is a pencil under their skin between their eyes. Others might have a wide root, with that thick nose look.

Next I look at the lower nose, and make comparisons between it and the rest of the face. Consider the relationship between the lower nose and the eyes. There is distance of course, although after our T-shape observations earlier we should have a fair idea of that relationship. How about the width? Where does the outside of the ala lie compared to the eyes? In classic proportion, the lower nose is one eye distance wide, making it’s edges even with the inside corners of the eyes. Is there a reason (or opportunity) to change this? If the nose seems wide, making it wider than the inside corners of the eyes makes for an effective exaggeration. If you observed earlier the face itself is wide and you drew the eyes far apart accordingly, then just drawing the nose width even with the inside eye corners will give you a wide nose.

The final relationship is the space between those “bookends”, i.e. the root to the lower nose. Again, this is part of that crucial T-shape I keep referring to, and much of what we do with the nose is predicated on that T-shape. Bear in mind that the distance you draw the nose from the eyes will affect the perception of the width of the nose itself. A nose drawn closer to the eyes will appear wider than one drawn far away from the eyes, even if the actual width of the nose drawn is the same.

As with any feature, simplification of the shape is the key to not only drawing accurately, but being able to more easily exaggerate the shape. Try to forget about all the wrinkles, freckles and other distractions of the nose. Imagine the basic shape that is created by the three measurements I mentioned above. Here are four different noses, each with a distinct shape, represented by the geometric shape next to it. The details of the nose are drawn within this shape. using this simplified shape we can more easily exaggerate it and simply plug in those details as they relate to your exaggerated shape.

I mentioned earlier that the angle of the head will make a big difference in how the nose is perceived and drawn. The nose has an angle of it’s own as well. Even from directly straight on, the apex of the nose rests at some angle to the back of the nose. While that angle can be of any increment, I’ve found it helpful to classify the one into one of three basic categories in terms of angle. This helps with observation as well as giving us a chance to exaggerate this angle if we feel it’s warranted. The three angles are pretty simple: Upturned, straight-on and down-turned.

An upturned nose is one were the apex is higher than the rear of the nose, where the septum meets the maxilla (area of bone between the teeth and the nose). You can see most or all of the nostrils with the upturned nose, and the maxilla area is totally visible and often looking large in area. Lots of kids have this type of nose.

The straight-on nose is when the apex is even with the rear of the nose, and is sticking straight out at the viewer. The septum is only visible slightly as it’s seen curving back under the nose to the maxilla. Some nostril is seen, usually as just a slit or narrow oval of darkness under and to each side of the apex.

The down-turned nose is where the apex is lower than the rest of the nose. The nostrils are not visible at all, nor is the septum. The apex often comes close to the upper lip, and some of the maxilla area is covered by the end of the nose. Many elderly people have this type of nose.

Identifying one of these three angles as relating to our specific nose and using it as a general guideline will help us make decisions and observations.

Drawing the Nose

Explaining specifically how to draw the nose is complicated as the different angles and variations of even a single nose with respect to head angle, rotation and drawing style makes for a lot of variables. Therefore in the interest of simplicity I am going to stick with a front view (which is the most difficult to do anyway) and explain how I would approach drawing a nose in a live caricature in my line style. Actually for you live caricaturists this step by step might be more useful than a lot of general drawing tips. For those who are working in different styles of rendering and drawing either live or in a studio, get from it what you can.

I draw live caricatures (and inked ones in MAD and other freelance jobs) with lines. The trouble with that is lines define edges, and the nose has very little in the way of edges, especially from the difficult straight-on angle. Lines are harsh things that demand definitions and are uncompromising. If I draw the side of the nose in line, it looks flat, if I leave the lines out, it looks undefined and shapeless. The trick is to make the nose look like it protrudes from the face, but have it still retain the rounded feel of a nose. There is a way to do this: using line weight variation and my secret weapon… I cheat.

That’s right. When I draw a straight on caricature, I cheat the nose slightly to to a 3/4 angle. In this way, combined with lighter line weights to define the area between the root and the apex, I can create the suggestion of a 3-D nose that is well connected to the face without a lot of rendering. The key is to establish a strong root and nostril/ala/apex area, then connect the two together and to the rest of the face.

We’ve got our eyes drawn already

1. Start with the root- When drawing live I work from the eyes down and then outward with each face, so I begin by drawing the root structure between the eyes. This is accomplished using 4 lines, the distance between which is that root measurement we observed before. The inside two lines define the upper edges of the root that connect with the brow. This area is thin skin stretched over the nasal bone, and has a more defined and stronger edge to it than the rest of the nose. The brow also tends to throw some shadows in here, which adds to the definition of the edges. I use fairly sharp lines here but not very bold. They curve coming down from the brow area and then start heading toward the apex, but taper quickly away to nothing. These lines define the upper plane of the root, connecting it to the brow and into the lateral surfaces.

The two sets of lines that define the root

The second set of lines bookends the inner lines just drawn. These represent the tops of the lateral surface, or the fleshy area of the sides of the nose leading into the cheeks on either side. The top edge of this line roughly coincides with the eye socket bone. These lines also usually define an area that is darker, directly underneath the thin light skin beneath the eye, which tends to catch the light. These lines start close to the inside line, but then curve away to suggest an oval as it tapers away about 1/3 into the eye width.

Some lines for shading

I often add a few simple shadow, light shading lines between the lines to add some shadow and depth on both sides. I will also occasionally add some light parallel horizontal lines across the root to establish some of the protrusion of the brow.

2. Next I move to the bottom of the nose- This is where that overall shape, the T-shape and all those earlier observations about the general face shape and decisions for exaggeration really come into play. In the studio I’d be sketching in the overall shape first and then drawing the lower nose within it, but drawing live I have not that luxury. I start by defining the length and width of the entire nose by drawing the ala on each side. These lines can be stronger as they have definite edges, albeit curved and rounded ones.

Drawing the ala lines defining the nose shape.

3. Draw the nostrils and septum (if visible)- In the case of a down-turned nose, you can draw one line from ala to ala, with the apex in the center of the line. The nostrils are the darkest lines of the nose. There is usually some separation between these lines, although the septum can be drawn as connecting he two nostrils.

Nostrils/septum distinctly separate

4. Draw the apex- This is tricky. there are no real lines to define it. Some apexes are round, some are oval. Others are boxy or triangular or even separate shapes split by a crease (the butt nose!). Looking at that profile again would help at this point. The lower half of the apex is the most defined, as the edge of the shadow from under the nose creates a more obvious plane. If the nose is straight-on or down-turned, you can draw a solid line for the bottom of the apex. Just remember you are using these lines to define the shape of the end of the nose, so if it’s a round apex than use a rounded line. If it’s square, use a straight line. I usually add some simple shading lines here, helping to define what might be a highlight at the end of the apex. The upper part of the apex is trickier. I usually just draw some very thin lines here, often two basically parallel ones that suggest the top of that apex shape without making it too harsh. The top and bottom apex lines can be further strengthened by the addition of side lines, but the apex would need to be a very strong and defined shape to do that.

Delicate lines “suggest” the rounded apex shape

5. Connect the root and apex of the nose- Here’s where the cheating comes in. I draw one line longer and more defined than the other side. This is a slight cheat to a 3/4 view that I incorporate into the straight on view I am drawing. It’s a subtle cheat, and will help the nose seem more substantial. There are much lighter lines, and must taper and fade away as they approach the apex. They should APPEAR to be heading for either side of the apex at the end of the nose, but disappear on their way there.

6. Connect the nose to the rest of the face- Draw the alar and nasolabial furrow lines (lines that extend from the top of each ala to wrap around the corners of the mouth) so that you tie in the bottom of the nose to the rest of the face. Working live I save these lines until after I have drawn the mouth itself. The root is connected to the brow by those first lines we drew. Connecting the nose into the brings it into the whole.

Conclusion

This is just one method of drawing the nose, from a specific angle and using a specific technique. Drawing the nose (and the face for that matter) from a straight-on is less interesting and effective as drawing it from some variation of a 3/4 view, but sometimes you need a straight on shot and that’s it. Especially when working live, most people like being drawn as they see themselves daily… from straight-on. In the studio, however, more interesting angles make for more interesting drawings, and it’s much easier to draw the nose from anything but a straight-on view. A profile is even easier. I will often decide to draw a given face at a 3/4 angle specifically because the subject has a great nose that needs that angle. Here we learned a simplified anatomy of the nose, suggested some categories of different nose types to look for and some key areas of the nose to make observations of to help grasp the shape of the nose itself and then to simplify it to aid exaggeration. We also took a page from the live caricaturist’s handbook to learn how to draw an effective straight-on nose in a live, line based style.

The nose is the literal center of the face, but not necessarily the center of the the caricature. It’s too easy and lazy to resort to abusing the nose with every caricature. Take a good look at your subject, decide what makes that face unique and put the attention and exaggeration on those features. If it’s the nose, then it’s the nose. As with any feature, always remember it;s the RELATIONSHIP it has with it’s neighboring features that is the crux of a good caricature, not the exaggeration of a single feature.

Here are some interesting noses from past sketch of the week and various other sources for you to look at and see what observations I made and exaggerations I decided on:

A: That question is difficult to answer because, like so many “how do I draw this…” inquiries, the answer is so dependent on the style of drawing. Someone with a more illustrative, involved style of drawing could not use the same techniques as someone who does a very cartoony style, or one that does a more graphic style. Therefore when answering such questions I invariably describe how I would do it, based on my style of drawing. You will have to take what you can from it and figure out your own solution. Many of the principals will apply to any style, though.

Drawing 5 o’clock shadow/beard stubble/beards on men (or on some ladies… now THAT is always fun) is not very difficult. It can be time consuming, especially the “3 day growth” kind of scruffy look, but the basics are constant and there a a few “don’ts” to avoid.

First off, you need to define what is the ‘beard area”. There are differences between men, but in general facial hair grows in the same places on all men:

With that in mind, you can just imagine the slow growth of a man’s beard from the first hints of 5 o’clock shadow to stubble to a multiple day growth to the beginning of a real beard. The trick is to make sure you shape the hair to reinforce the structure of the face underneath. Nothing flattens out a drawing more than facial hair that destroys the forms beneath it:

Let’s do this in stages, starting with 5 o’clock shadow.

5 O’Clock Shadow-

Of course men’s facial hair grows constantly and by the end of the day (given they shaved in the morning) many men have noticeable growth on their faces. This is especially true of dark haired men with light skin.

The thing about 5 o’clock shadow is that is really doesn’t register to the eye as hair.

When teaching live caricature I talk a lot about “distance specific” drawing. That simply means that although we know that things like eyelashes are made up of tiny little hairs, to the casual observer from a comfortable distance we don’t really SEE the hairs. What we see are shapes of dark values broken up by a few lashes that are visible. Likewise with beard stubble, it needs to be a day or more growth before the eye really recognizes the whiskers. 5 o’clock shadow is really just a color or value to the casual observer.

In black and white, this can be accomplished in a few ways. If you are drawing in a more cartoony style, a few crosshatched lines can pull it off:

If you are working with some kind of value technique (maybe lead pencil/graphite with a blending stomp) you can just add a darker tone in the beard area:

Finally, if you are working in color the 5 o’clock shadow is represented well as a blueish or greenish darker value over the skin tone:

Remember to keep the darkest values on the edges of the features, with the lighter areas away from those edges. That will help develop the structure of the lower face.

Stubble-

Once the hair on the face becomes more noticeable, you have to bite the bullet and draw them as hairs. However, to try and draw all the hairs would not only take forever it would ruin much the “distance specific” effectiveness of the drawing. It’s like drawing pores on the skin.. we know they are there but we don’t really see them.

The trick is to “suggest” the presence of the hair, but not to draw every whisker. You stick with the same concept as with the shadow, keeping the darker values to the edges of the features and leaving the center areas more clear. You also begin to break the edges of the face contours with some short hair texture:

Don’t forget to shape the hair. Facial hairs grown in various directions, so don’t draw them all in the same direction. Use that to help with the shaping.

Multiple Day’s Growth-

Same basic concept only longer hairs, and more of them:

Short Beards-

Ditto. The hair keeps filling the “beard area” until they become so close together they essentially obscure the skin entirely. Then they are beards, not whiskers.

Here’s a former sketch o’the week that has a lot of facial hair drawn in. Sometimes you just end up spending time on it to make it look convincing:

Thanks to Billy Melago for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!

It’s not that I hate crowd scenes. In fact, I like them. They are a LOT of work but when you are done with them they are always something you can sit back, look at and say “whew! That one was tough” but be pleased with the effort. In fact I’ve been known to do much more complicated scenes than the job might necessarily call for just because a really detailed crowd scene is always visually intense and affords the opportunity to make it dense with visual gags, cameos and other fun stuff that makes the viewer really look it over thoroughly. The dense, “chicken fat” technique of filling space with a lot of gags has always been one of my favorite parts of MAD, and is something I’ve always enjoyed incorporating into my work when I get the chance… MAD or otherwise. I’ve also always subscribed to the philosophy inherent in the famous quote by Wally Wood about doing very detailed and busy art: “If you can’t draw well, draw A LOT”.

I’ve been meaning to do a tutorial on how to do a crowd scene illustration, and in late November I was assigned a tough one for MAD that I thought afforded the opportunity to demonstrate how to approach and execute a crowd scene. In consideration of that thought, I saved conceptual sketches and stages of this particular job for MAD so I could use them to illustrate how I go about constructing a crowd scene.

Design and Layout

Crowd scene or no, the first step is the same as it is for any job… identify the object or end result desired and consider the most effective way to visually accomplish that result. If that means a crowd scene, then in most cases the scene itself is a means to that end. What I mean is that the crowd scene is merely the vehicle to deliver the message and/or the main focus of the illustration. There are key areas of the scene, those that deliver the main purpose of the illustration, which need to be incorporated into the greater whole in such a way that they act like individual spot illustrations throughout the busy main scene. Effectively they act like panels of a comic book page, drawing the reader’s eye across the image. The trick is to blend these areas into the larger illustration but still make them “stick out” is some fashion so they are understood to be more important that the surrounding imagery. I call these elements “principals”. You design your entire image around these principals, setting them up in the layout first and then adding the “secondaries” or “filler” in around them. This simplifies your layout because at first you just ignore the rest of the scene and concentrate on placing the principals.

The most important part of setting up a crowd scene is establishing the point of view (POV). You need to define this and keep it in mind as you set up the scene, and the POV must serve the goals of the project. In this job for MAD, the two page spread called for a massive crowd scene at Barack Obama’s inauguration, made up of multiple principals in the form of written gags/word balloons that would span the crowd. MAD’s original concept was for a POV from the back facing the stage, looking down slightly on the crowd.

The problem with that POV illustrates an important point about doing crowd scenes… “Crowd Mentality”. Crowds have two important elements to their makeup. The second one I will get into later. “Crowd Mentality” means that in a general sense most crowds follow a pattern where are all doing the same thing. Even truly random scenes like the floor of a large cocktail party will result in distinct clusters of people doing the same thing… in that case conversing. In the case of this scene, where Obama is giving his inauguration address, the crowd will all be facing the podium and listening to the speech. Considering that, a scene set up from behind the crowd would mean the viewer would be looking at the backs of everyone’s heads. That wasn’t going to work, so I switched to a POV from the stage, looking out over the crowd.

In general a crowd scene is going to call for a POV that is elevated above eye level. Anything too close to eye level will result it the obscuring of the people in the crowd more than about two people deep. This particular job needs a big crowd with lots of faces, so I will have to use a fairly high POV, looking down on the crowd and not necessitating too much in the way of receding or far distance figures. In fact I ended up going with an even higher POV in the final illustration than the one in the rough above.

One side note: there are many different types of crowd scenes. The crowd in the stands of a sporting event will not be the same as one in the a fore mentioned cocktail party. When laying out a crowd scene you must take into account the environment and purpose of the gathering. To that end the most effective means to do this is to actually imagine yourself in that environment, and take a “mental” look around to see what it’s all about. In the stands of a baseball game or other sport, for example, you are crowded shoulder to shoulder with the surrounding crowd. The stands/seats of the stadium restrict the crowds to rigid spacing and straight rows. Only elements like the height of the person, their posture and how they lean will dictate their relationship to their neighbors. In a more varied environment like a dance floor, the spacing and organization of the crowd is much less rigid, and there can be gaps at random all around. Likewise at that cocktail party, there will be clusters of people of various numbers interacting. What the crowd is there for also makes a difference. Who are they paying attention to? What is the reason for the gathering? Put yourself “in the scene” and try and understand what you are trying to visually describe.

The hardest crowd scene to do is the truly random one. I keep coming back to the “cocktail party”, but that environment is a good example of the most varied and therefore difficult of scenes… one that is without many rules or restrictions. Really dense scenes are also easier to do than more spread out ones. Why? The denser the crowd, the less you have to draw of the figures. It’s tough to have to map out figures that are partially obscured and make sure they are all working together within the same physical space. It’s easy to goof up and draw some figures that are too big or too squat or two SOMETHING and do not work with the rest of the group. Think about it… you are trying to draw dozens of figures all standing on the same floor and within the same space and make it all look convincing and natural. That’s hard to pull off. In the case of the Obama scene it would be natural for everyone to crowd in together, standing should to shoulder in a very dense mass. It would not be likely for there to be many gaps between figures. This actually makes things a little easier as we will be concentrated more on the faces and not needing to work out entire figures in the spaces in between.

Balance in Composition- Getting back to our layout, we have several principals we need to set up within this crowd scene. This is always the first step in placing figures and elements within the established POV layout. We need to define what the principal elements are and then place them throughout the layout, keeping in mind how the reader’s eye will be drawn across the scene. In this respect designing a crowd scene is really not much different that designing a comic book page… the composition should draw the eye across the page/scene so that the reader does not get confused as to where to start, what is next or how to follow along. This is accomplished by placing the principals around the page like a trail of breadcrumbs that will lead the reader from right to left across the scene. In the case of this project, we have thought balloons to accompany each principal, so it’s pretty obvious what is important and what is filler. However the same principals would apply in a pantomime scene. In that case the story would be told completely visually through action and expression of the principals.

Balance is important in a crowd scene. It’s easy to cluster too many principal elements together and leave too much of an area to filler. Placement of the principals should create a natural balance across the scene. For this purpose I always start on the outside edges of a scene and work my way in to the center, placing a principal first on the left side and then one on the right. It is NOT necessary (or desirable) to make the placement of the corresponding principals exactly symmetrical. You just need to provide a general balance to the piece. Like setting up a portfolio, it’s also a good idea to start and end the scene with your strongest pieces. i.e. the funniest or most impactful visuals of the bunch. Placing your principals will create a patterned path across your scene. The pattern can be most anything, but usually it’s a zig zag or meandering path that that starts in one of the left corners, instantly works it’s way from left to right, and ending in either of the right hand corners. The one rule that I never break is that I never cross the path. Once a reader has reached a point in the scene you cannot expect them to double back across a principal they’ve read to reach one that they have not read yet.

Executing the Scene

Once we have our principals and path mapped out we can start drawing in the details of those principals.

Principal Function- It isn’t enough just to draw the elements of our principals in isolation. We have to serve not only the purpose they are intended for (in this case to deliver the written gags) but they also must function as coherent elements of the scene itself, AND they must help the readers to follow the path we have established in our principal placement. We have to find a way to accomplish all three of these functions with a single principal image.

Again, the best way to do this is to imagine ourselves in the scene and think about what we would be likely see see there. In our current project the principals are made up of caricatures of various people and their thoughts at that moment. That implies unspoken communication with the reader, but does not necessarily mean we have to draw the principals looking directly at the viewer. If they were speaking to the viewer, then we’d have to provide that visual connection. As it is, they could be “thinking” at the viewer, or looking off at some other person or object, or just sort of retreated inward thinking to themselves. There are a few exceptions, like the appearance of “Spider-Man” in the crowd where the gag requires him to be looking at Harriet Miers. The individual thoughts need to be reinforced by the expressions and actions of those thinking, so we need to work our caricatures up to accomplish this. The McCains need to look unhappy or angry, Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers need to be looking at Obama with a kind of “what the?” annoyance. Paris Hilton needs her trademark empty headed striking a pose look. All these expressions can easily be done without violating their involvement in the crowd itself, so our first two goals are accomplished: delivering the gag and working within the crowd as a whole.

What about goal number three: helping to get the reader to follow the path we have established? That can be accomplished in any number of ways. Like a comic book panel, we can draw our principals so that they lead the reader along the path and across the scene. The eye will naturally follow the direction of a person’s gaze or some sort of action or directional interaction coming from a figure or group of figures. Something as simple as which way the person is facing can direct the viewer’s eye to the next principal long the path. Action like leaning, turning or moving will also move the reader along the same direction. You can also use props or other objects to draw the eye. Paris Hilton might be facing to the right but her dog draws the eye from her face downward and that leads to the next principal on the path. Most viewers will naturally move from left to right, so moving back to the left or downward requires a little more obvious force than just going to the right. Here are the principals drawing in the layout:

Click for a closer look…

Secondaries or Fillers- Once the principals are all mapped out and figured out, we can move on to the rest of the image… all the other characters that will make up the crowd scene. Here we must return to our imagining ourselves in the actual scene, and giving some thought to what we might expect to see. Again, in this case we are in a crowd of people here to listen to Obama give his inauguration speech. Our “Crowd Mentality” principal dictates that most will be facing the podium doing just that. However humans are an interesting lot. One can predict with great accuracy what a large group of them will do on an average basis, but on an individual level they are the definition of “unpredictable”. That brings us to our aforementioned second important element in crowd makeup: “Crowd Individuality”. That sounds like a contradiction in terms, but what it basically means is that in any large crowd you can expect randomness and individuality amid the herd. In the stands at a sporting event, not everyone will be staring fixedly at the field. Randomly you will see people leaning toward one another, facing other people. looking over their shoulder, putting mustard on their hot dog, taking a drink of soda.. etc. MOST might be paying attention to the game, but not all. Also people in a crowd will not be spaced evenly or hold the same postures or figure dynamics. They will lean. They will turn. they will hunch and crane their necks and scratch their heads. Really great crowd scenes will be made up of individuals that look as if they have their own little backstory should the viewer care to wonder about it.

In a scene like the one we are doing, it’s easier because for the most part people will be face the podium and looking at it. Not everyone, though. In fact those with thought balloons are not really paying attention to whatever Obama is saying, so we are free to make the look away as we want. Likewise some of the other filler characters will also be doing some random things. Here was have an opportunity to add some gags like cameos of other people we might expect to see in the crowd, possibly having them doing something funny.

Laying out the secondaries so they look natural means to avoid any obvious or predictable patterns in placement and look. It’s a little like drawing a starry sky. Drawing stars evenly spaced will not look natural:

Stars appear in clusters:

Likewise people in crowds also appear in clusters, and will vary in height, weight and posture. Making them look random and organic is crucial if you want the crowd scene to look natural… like a frozen moment of time and not some posed and phony picture. It’s a common mistake to draw people in a crowd in positions that are too similar and too evenly spaced. It’s also a common mistake to draw each person separate from their neighbors, when in a natural setting their will be overlapping and partial obscuring of faces and figures. The higher the POV, the less of this will occur, but there is always some.

In placing secondaries, what we don’t want to do is interfere with the principals, but simply add the crowd about them. We can add a little extra space around the principals so they are a bit more visible, but more likely we will just keep the secondaries interesting but not distracting. If we do add gags or cameos, they need to be ones that either are cross overs to be observed while traveling along the path, or else ones that would likely only be discovered with a careful second examination of the entire image. This spread features XX caricature of principals, and another XX caricatures of secondaries that are cameos and/or visual gags. The concept of this scene means we need to keep our secondaries as generally realistic people (Spider-man excluded) so we won’t be throwing Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck in there are random non-sequitors… although did you spot the clown?… and I don’t mean George W. Bush.

Placing secondaries also demands balance. While individually a crowd will have clusters and some small spaces between, overall a crowd scene needs to remain balanced across the image. That simply means to avoid elements like large empty patches or some visually demanding object in one area that is not balanced off on the other side of the image. The farther one of these elements might be to an edge of the image, the more demanding a balancing element is needed on the other side.

Here is the pencil sketch with secondaries in place:

Click for a closer look…

And here is our “path” through the crowd made by the principals:

Click for a closer look…

Final Art- Other Considerations

Once we have all our principals, secondaries and other goodies drawn out, we will start the finishes. Of course the final style could be anything, and depending on the final execution the “other considerations” will differ. They all have two things in common… they must serve the purpose of describing the crowd convincingly and they must provide (or at least not destroy) that all important balance. In this case it’s an ink line and color job. There are a few elements I will think about as I do the inking and coloring.

Spotting Blacks- Again, this is all about balance. Certain clothes or objects need to be black, so we start out with those and ink them in black. Then we need to sit back away from the image and get a good look at the scene as a whole. If we squint our eyes to eliminate the details, we can see where there appear to be big empty holes of white in the image. Spotting blacks here will balance out the scene. We can try and use black areas to help draw the viewer’s eye as well, but I generally only employ that trick in a crowd scene that has no word or thought balloons like this one has. In the case of a very ‘deep” crowd, i.e. one with a lower POV where we see out and into the far background, we would want to keep the heavy blacks in the foreground and lessen them as we go back, until the contrast of the furtherest figures are significantly less than the foreground. This is “atmospheric perspective”. In the final inks you can see how I spotted the black areas to balance the spread against the large darks of Obama’s trenchcoat:

Click for a closer look…

Color- Since we are coloring this image, we need to think about it’s application with regard to the crowd dynamic. Atmospheric perspective applies here as well, and the saturation and intensity of the color, as well as it’s value contrast, would lessen the farther back in the crowd we go. In this project’s case, there is little need for that as the crowd does not recede all that far into the background due to our higher POV. However I still adjust the color a little, and the figures and faces at the top of the page, being furthest back, have a bluish cast to the color that gradually lessens as we move forward.

One question I get a lot is if, when doing crowd scenes, I do caricatures individually and then scan them and place them in the crowd digitally, then draw the figures around them. I sometimes do this, and in this case I did a number of times as I used some caricatures I had already done in my sketchbook for many of the secondaries. However if I do this I always just do it for the rough pencil stage and then draw and finish the caricatures as a part of the entire single image. This is because doing them separately usually results in a disjointed or pasted in look to the caricatures you want to avoid.

Here’s the final of the Obama Inauguration spread for MAD (in case you didn’t see it a few days ago here):

Click for a closer look…

Drawing crowd scenes is fun but exhausting work. Here are a few I have done over the last few years for various clients (click on any of them for a closer look):

“A MAD Backstage Tour of the Family Guy”

“Entourage” parody splash from MAD

”Things Shouted Out to Paris Hilton as She Left Prison” (no larger image)

“A MAD Look Behind the Scenes of the Sopranos”

Recent Poster Illustration

Wrap-around cover of a CD

This job nearly killed me…

Easily the most asked question I get is “how do you draw caricatures?”. However a close runner up is “how do you draw hands?”.  I’m not exactly the king of drawing hands, but I have made a special study of them as they are very important when doing comic book type work… hands and their gestures are a big part of “acting” and therefore of storytelling.

Next to faces, hands are probably the most expressive and intricate part of the human form. In fact, humans probably spend more time looking at their hands than they do looking at anything else over their entire lives. Being that we are all so familiar with the way hands look, a poorly drawn hand sticks out like a sore thumb (sorry about the pun). Oddly enough, hands are something that most artists struggle to draw well. So, with that in mind I thought I’d do a tutorial on my approach to drawing hands.

I’m a cartoonist at heart, so the hands I draw are not realistic hands by most definitions. However my style of cartooning lends itself more to realistic representation than, say, a certain four fingered gloved mouse or other much more cartoony characters do. Therefore a lot of the information in this tutorial will apply to drawing hands realistically as well as in more cartoon form. I’ll attempt to explain the basic anatomy of a hand, things to keep in mind at all times when drawing them and common mistakes and issues that plague many artists when drawing hands.

Breaking Down Hand Structure

As with drawing anything, it all starts with an understanding of the basic form and structure of your subject matter. Hands are certainly no different. In fact, many of the most common problems with drawing hands stems from incorrect notions of the form of the hand. I’m not a big stickler for memorizing the names of muscles and bones because it seems to zone people out when you start tossing around “Carpal this” and “Metatarsal that”… however labels are something that some people need to be able to apply, so some general surface anatomy with layman’s terms seems to be the best approach. Here is a breakdown of a hand with the important surface elements labeled:

Not really much to it, is there? Everybody knows what knuckles and fingernails are. Where an artist gets tripped up is not understanding how they relate to one another, and how they move in relationship to one another when the hand starts doing it’s thing. Things like how the knuckles line up, where the pad creases fall, how the fingers bend and interact… these are all important elements to drawing convincing hand gestures.

These are the principal area of the underside of hand

Relationships of Hand Structure

I can sum up the biggest problem most beginners have with drawing hands in one word: CURVES. For some reason people seem to insist that hands are made up of straight lines.. fingers are parallel to each other (they are not), knuckles line up in a row (no) the edges of the hand are straight and parallel (nope!), Once an artist starts seeing the curves in the hands and thinking of them as flexible objects made of multiple parts, they quickly improve their hand drawings.

Fingers- Everybody knows (or should) that the fingers are not all the same length. Our naughty middle finger is the longest, and the pointer and ring fingers along side are almost the same length (ring is a little shorter). The pinky is the odd man out, being much shorter. That of course forms a curve along the top of the hand. What is often missed is that arc of that curve is not just a function of the length of the fingers, because the knuckles are also curved. Pinky therefore is not only shorter it’s set farther down into the hand, giving it the double whammy. Ring finger is actually the same length as pointer, but it appears shorter because it’s knuckle is lower on the hand than pointer’s.

Likewise the pads of fingers are not the same size, and the creases that define the separation between the pads are very staggered. Pinky’s first crease (down from the tip) lines up with ring finger’s SECOND crease. The tip of pinky lines up with ring’s FIRST crease.

Knuckles- Each finger has three knuckles on the back of the hand. The main knuckle is located at the base of each finger. The two minor knuckles farther up toward the tip. The main knuckle is knobby and has tendons that cross it creating a corded look running up into the finger. The second knuckle is covered with a very circular wrinkled surface, and the smallest final knuckle is indicated with some horizontal creases. You would think the knuckles would line up with the corresponding separations between the pads on the underside of each finger, but you’d be wrong. Curl your pointer finger and look from the side… the second knuckle and the pad crease under it exactly line up. However the smaller upper knuckle is more forward on the finger than the crease below it. That’s nothing compared to the main knuckle. Here is where a lot of people get confused with hands. Open your hand and look at it palm toward you. Look at the base of each finger. Many people think the knuckle of the finger rests directly behind the crease that represents the base of the finger right under the bottom finger pad. Now turn your hand around. That main knuckle is SIGNIFICANTLY lower on the hand. In fact it’s below the upper pad of the palm that curve below all the fingers. A lot more of your finger resides inside the palm/body than you might think. Understanding that is a big part of figuring out hands.

The Thumb- The thumb is a shorter, meatier version of the fingers. It has only two knuckles, one of which is hidden when extended. Compared to the fingers the thumb is much more diverse in it’s movements. It has a base that I think of as the meaty part of a chicken drumstick, and that drumstick can rotate inward, across and in circles from the palm. The “drumstick” of the thumb sort of coexists with the thinner drumstick of the outer part of the hand, which is a little like the bottom extension of the pinky. These two larger elements frame the hand and the palm. When drawing the thumb the curved vs. straight lines that define it’s form is important.

The Palm- This is the area between the fingers and the wrist, and the thumb and the outside “heel” of the hand. This is an often misunderstood area. Roughly square/rectangular in shape, it’s got asymmetrical curved sides, and is made up of three major elements: Thumb pad, outer pad and upper pad. Many drawing books want you to think of the hand as a rectangular block from which the fingers and thumb protrude, but that is where many people get into trouble. You must think of the hand as more flexible and curved than that. Think of the pads as three separate elements that combine to make that curves “shovel” shape. They can roll in on one another, and create a hollow pocket or spread out and be almost flat.

Fingernails- often glossed over, the fingernails have a curved, narrow base, straight sides that fan out as they approach the tip of the finger, then have a very curved top. Women’s nails are often grown out past the end of the fingertip. The are slightly recessed as they grow out from under the skin.

What to Look for When Drawing Hands

Trying to describe how to draw a hand in every imaginable position would be an impossible task. There are too many and hands themselves have different shapes and sizes. Fortunately you are never far away from a perfect source of reference for any hand position… the end of your arms, in fact. I have a small mirror near my drawing table and often pose my hands when I am struggling with a certain hand position. Still there are a number of tips and common issues that I would suggest an artist look out for when drawing hands in general:

CURVES- I cannot emphasize that enough. Knuckles curve when the hand is open or when it’s in a fist. Looking at a fist from the knuckles you see that the act of making the fist curve the back of the hand from thumb to pinky. Hands that are reaching or gesturing also have a thumb to pinky curve to them. Curves, curves, curves. Hands with more than just a few straight lines are stiff and unnatural.

Fingers- Remember that the length of the fingers are different, but the action of the hand also changes the way fingers relate. Fingers are rarely ever side by side. They tend to overlap and stagger their positions between each other. When you hold a curved object like a bottle, for example, your fingers overlap and your pointer tends to be back farther than the other three fingers, which crowd together. Look for that when you pose your hands. Nothing looks less natural than four perfectly parallel fingers. Even in repose, your fingers will not be parallel. In a relaxed state, they naturally separate and crowd each other at random. Your pinky tends to separate from the other most often but not always.

Remember the Meat!- That sounds graphic but your hands are made up of a lot of meaty muscle and padding. When they squeeze or clench or cup they pinch and gather all that meat in ways that make for a lot of creases, wrinkles and lumps. Remember the three important pads of the palm. The thumb and outer pads stay roughly that “drumstick” shape, but the upper pad does a lot more curving and bending, and it bulges up a lot as the fingers move toward the thumb. Your hand is thickest across the lower palm.

Men’s vs. Women’s Hands- Men’s hands are thicker, with bigger fingers and a meatier palm whereas women’s hands are slimmer, with thinner fingers and palm. They are also typically smaller than men’s hands. Women’s nails when long create difficulties drawing fingertips. I just give women pointy fingertips and suggest the nail rather than trying to articulate the end of the finger… unless it’s a close up of the hand and then I have to draw the whole thing.

In Conclusion

People hate it when I say this, but learning to draw hands is all about practicing. If you want to be able to draw something convincingly without relying on perfect reference, you need to develop an instinct for drawing that something… and that means drawing a lot of it. As I said before, you have the perfect reference source with you at all times. Spend some time observing your hands. Place your fingers and thumb on your dominant hand and move that hand around while you feel the muscles and bones beneath. Observe how the basic elements of the hand we have discussed move, rotate, flex and relax amid different movements. It’s funny, but the hands that people draw end up looking like their own hands… probably because they not only use their own hands for reference, but they have been staring at they hands for their entire lives and that’s what hands look like to them. If you ever meet Mort Drucker (a master of drawing hands) and look at his hands, they are the same hands he draws on his MAD men characters! Wide hands with thick, short fingers. The hands I draw have long fingers with knobby knuckles… just like my own hands. One exercise I do is to try and draw a hand in some position just out of your head, then pose your own hand and observe where you went wrong.

One piece of advice… don’t knock yourself out in your work trying to do some impossible hand gesture. Some had positions are simple awkward by nature, and even drawing them correctly looks weird. If a hand position just isn’t working, come up with a different solution rather than banging your head against the wall. Most people have a “repertoire” of hand positions and gestures they will use a lot, and stick with them. As long as your repertoire is sufficiently large and varied, you can easily get away with this.

The other thing to do is look at hands as drawn by others. You can see how they solved certain problems or positions and learn from it. There are a few books on the subject, but for sheer volume of example George Bridgman’s “The Book of a Hundred Hands” is a great one. Lot’s of impossible hand positions in that one.

Here are a bunch of examples of hand drawings I’ve done in MAD and elsewhere just for reference: