Part Four: Drawing Eyes

I’ve written in past tutorials on drawing caricatures that you can’t really teach someone to draw caricatures… that is more about developing their “sight” and observation skills and also developing an ability to find that which make an individual face unique and exaggerating it. Since every face is different this is an exercise in personal observation and decision. Therefore after I have gone over the information in my pervious tutorials, I switch gears an concentrate on teaching rookie live caricaturists how to draw the individual features, both how to see them, exaggerate them and how to draw them in line to best effect.

Here is where style becomes an issue. What I have written about previously can apply to almost any style of caricature, from the richly painted to the most minimalist of line. In these next series of tutorials some aspects of what I talk about will relate specifically with a style of caricature like my own… based on cartoon line either inked or in some other medium. Therefore those with different sensibilities and styles can take from it what they will and apply what makes sense to them, and ignore the rest. I will try to center my discussion on that which applies to a broader range of styles than just my own.

My method for teaching the individual features begins with a lesson on real anatomy. I’m not a big believer in memorizing every anatomical name but I do believe you must have a good working knowledge of how a feature is put together in order to have a good command over the drawing of said feature. Following the anatomy lesson, I talk about different techniques to help “see” the shape of the feature and understand how to draw it, including realistic proportion. Finally I talk about interpreting the feature in terms of exaggeration and incorporating it into the whole.

Points of Reference

Seeing and drawing anything is all about shapes and the correct drawing of them or in the case of caricature the correct drawing of the exaggeration of them. Either way you still have to “see” the object you are drawing and understand it’s form first. We have all seen depictions of artists on TV raising their arm outstretched towards their models with the thumb out from the fist and squinting their eyes before drawing. That is supposed to represent an old artist’s trick of using their thumb, or hand, or pencil or some other object to measure their subject’s features relative to one another, or to see angles or other relationships. The thumb is supposed to be a “point of reference”… a constant that is used to make accurate observations of the subject. Establishing points of reference in the face is key to helping to “see” shapes and make observations. With each feature and the face overall I will suggest several things I use as constant points of reference, which I can then use as a starting point from which other observations are based. Any kind of drawing can benefit from this simple concept.

Our first feature is the eyes. I’ve always felt that the eyes of a caricature are the center of everything, literally the center of the face but figuratively the center of expression, personality and “life” as it were. Therefore I’ve always place special emphasis on the eyes and begin and end with them, after the head shape, as the focus of almost any caricature. (more…)

Part Three: The Importance of Head Shapes

When I first started drawing live caricatures I felt that the eyes were the most important part of the face, and I put a lot of emphasis and focus on them. I still think the eyes are a crucial element, but over the years I’ve come to believe that the head shape is the most important part of a caricature.

The head shape is the fulcrum upon which a caricature hinges. The heavy lifting of all exaggeration is accomplished via the shape of the head, and it is more easily accomplished that way. Considering that the head shape is a single shape, it is easier to recognize how that shape differs from “normal” and it is easier still to draw a corresponding simple shape that exaggerates those properties as opposed to the more complex multiple relationships of the features. By stretching and exaggerating the head shape, you create the framework within which your other features and their relationships are drawn to achieve your caricature.

I have spoken of the “5 Shapes” and the importance of their relationships already, but digging a little deeper it’s accurate to say that the head shape is “Shape 1″ and the other four shapes are planets to it’s sun, working within it’s all encompassing field of gravity. If a caricaturist can “see” and exaggerate the head shape, all the other features fall into place and follow along. In the last lesson I talked about the “T” shape being a focal point of the basic caricature, but it’s really the “T Shape” and the head shape together as a whole that acts are the basic foundation of a caricature. With those shapes and their relationships established, the rest of the caricature quickly follows suit.

Seeing the Head Shape

I talk endlessly about seeing shapes within the features and the face, and the importance of drawing those shapes accurately to capture likeness and to create a convincing drawing. Again, it’s difficult to teach anyone to “see”… that ability is developed over time via practice and hard work. Still, there are a few techniques and tricks I have learned that can help artists to better see what is in front of them, and better interpret it in their drawing. Many work for any feature or “shape” within the face, but some are specific for individual features. Head shapes have several of these tricks for both initial observations and exaggeration.

Classic Proportion

As with Redman’s ‘”Everyman” concept, it’s important to have an understanding of classic human proportion an anatomy to have a springboard from which observations can be made. This is important both for helping to see what makes a given face unique by comparing it to those “normal” proportions, and for helping to exaggerate those unique aspects by giving the artist a “starting point” from which to depart as much as possible.

The classic adult head is an oval, slightly flattened along the top. The head is exactly divided in half at the eyes, meaning there is equal distance from the horizontal line of the eyes to both the top and bottom of the head. The head is five eye widths wide, and the widest point is typically at the temples, but can be anywhere from the cheekbones to just above the ears. The distance, or more accurately the “mass” of the head above and below the eyes, and how those two areas relate, is a crucial part of the head shape as it relates to caricature. I will refer to it often. (more…)

Part Two: Relating the Features

Previously I mentioned how the relationships between features are the driving force behind caricature:

“Caricature is not about choosing one feature and making it bigger, it’s about all the features together and how they relate to one another.”

Actually caricature is about changing the relationships between features, meaning their distance, size and angle relative to one another, from what they truly are and what is considered “normal”. Deciding what relationships to change and how much to change them is one of the caricaturist’s most important jobs, and one of the most difficult to “learn”. The actual difference between the relationship of features of most humans does not add up to much in terms of physical measurements… a “big” nose may be only a fraction of an inch larger than a “normal” nose. Yet we can see different feature relationships on almost everybody, some which seem very pronounced. That is because we spend basically our entire lives looking into people’s faces… we go it when we interact, work, play, go shopping or to church… we are social beings and our faces are both our identities and our method of communication. Our ability to observe minute differences becomes very fine tuned. Mostly it’s unconscious, but we see that fraction of an inch larger nose as “big”, or we see this person’s eyes as large or this person’s mouth as small based not on physical measurements but on our overall perception of the features and how they relate to one another. Consciously making those observations, especially for those faces in which the unique aspects are not obvious, is the most difficult part of drawing caricatures. There are some techniques and methods you can use to help make those observations. (more…)

Part One: Basic Theory and the Five Shapes

This is the first of a series of articles I will post here on The MAD Blog about my theories, methods and processes concerning how to draw caricatures. A lot of this information is part of what I teach my theme park artists, so it is derived partly from the approach of doing live, quick-draw caricatures. However all of that can be applied to more studio orientated caricature work and I have also added points and concepts directly from the less time-constrained world of caricature illustration. Therefore this is not instruction for just the live caricaturist but for any artist interested in caricature for any purpose.

These kinds of things always start out with a definition, but “caricature” is a hard thing to pigeonhole into a single sentence. How can you, when the word encompasses the elegant, minimalist lines of Al Hirschfeld to the lavish, value and color soaked paintings of Sebastian Kruger to the graphic, geometrical collages of David Cowles and everything in between? Despite the wild differences in style and technique, “caricature” is the tag that is placed on any of these works of art without hesitation. Obviously there is a connection beyond a common technique, school or format. So, what are the universal elements all caricatures have that identify them as caricatures? I would say there are three essential elements that transcend style and medium and must be present in a caricature:

• Likeness- If you can’t tell who it is supposed to be, then it is not successful. All good caricatures incorporate a good likeness of their subjects.
• Exaggeration- Without some form of exaggeration, or a departure from the exact representation of the subject’s features, all you have is a portrait. The level of exaggeration can vary wildly, but there must be some departure. A straight portrait is not a caricature.
• Statement- I believe a caricature must editorialize in some way. The artist must be trying to say something about the subject. It might be something to do with the situation the subject is drawn in, it may just be a play on their personality through expression or body language, it might be a simple as making visual fun of some aspect of their persona or image. Exaggeration itself can accomplish this in some cases. The best caricatures say something more about the subject than that they have a big nose.

By my ‘definition’, a successful caricature therefore looks like the subject, is exaggerated to varying degrees and also has something to say about the subject… some sort of editorial comment. In “live” caricature at a theme park, that third item is often turned way down or ignored completely, but in the case of caricatures for illustration, it’s an important part. (more…)

Rendering with Washes

Now begins the real painting. We’ll start out with the fleshtones. It’s a simple matter to mask off the flesh areas, as they are all defined by the base color we applied.

Before we proceed, I’ve uploaded my basic Photoshop color swatch palette for those interested to download. It’s not very well organized, as I add colors to it as I work on pieces that I might need to use a lot and then never erase them, so everything is all over the place, but here it is.

Click for the palette file

Mac users just click the palette image and choose where to download it to. Windows users right click it and choose “save target as” and the location. Place it in your “presets” folder in the Photoshop application folder of your hard drive, and then you can load it as you wish in Photoshop.

First making sure I am on the “Figure” layer, I select the Magic Wand Tool and click within the flesh areas to select them. You can click each individual area while holding down the shift key , but it’s easier to go to the Photoshop menu bar (when the Magic Wand tool is active) and uncheck the “Contiguous” checkbox. Now one click of the base fleshtone will select all the base fleshtones in the image. (more…)

Applying the Base Color

When coloring I start by applying a base color for each area of the illustration. The color is a mid value, which will allow me to work both darker and lighter to achieve a range of values. Since I am not working on a layer with lines to contain the colors, I cannot use the Fill tool, but have to apply the color ‘by hand’ using my tablet and pen. Actually I use a Cintiq tablet from Wacom, which is a combination pressure sensitive tablet and display, where you draw and paint right on the screen using the special stylus/pen. I reviewed the Cintiq here, and it’s a terrific tool, but a regular Wacom tablet will do fine.

The base color has no opacity variances, but is a solid color. This makes it easy to select with the Magic Wand tool, so I can mask off any area I am painting with just a click. Like I mentioned, I keep the values of these base colors at about the mid range of the value of the object or area it describes. That way I can paint in one direction or the other, value wise, to render the area and create some depth and interest.

My first step will be to create a layer for each different group of areas I am going to color. I used to just apply all the color on the background layer, but lately I’ve learned the value of working on different layers. It’s much easier to make corrections that way. I still keep it simple, because it’s too easy to get mixed up on which layer you are painting on and cause problems. Usually I think in terms of depth of field with respect to the objects in the illustration when determining my layers… one layer for foreground objects, one for mid-ground, etc. For this simple piece, in order of topmost to bottom-most, I will create a layer for the taboret, one for the figure, and one for the table and chair. I’ll use the background layer for the floor shadow and color elements I’ll put behind everything. The topmost layer is the linework “Inks”, but later we’ll add some highlight layers on top of that. (more…)