Q: I’m enthusiastically working through your book. Aside from enjoying the art and fantastic tips, I’m really interested what you said about it taking 500 faces to really get the nuances of caricature / portraiture.

So to fully understand…. maybe naively so, I have set out to draw 500 faces. I really want to at least begin to recognize all the subtleties you mentioned… and to overcome some of the challenges I’ve faced while drawing portraits. A friend of mine said that it takes 1,000 attempts at a particular activity to beome an expert. My goals isn’t really to become an expert (a half expert is fine with me) so much as to further my own art and to help me grow as a hobbyist.

What else would you recommend artists do to grow and become better at achieving a likeness?

A: I think you are mistaking the difference between caricature and likeness. Here is the quote from the book to which this question refers:

The Mad Art of Caricature, Page 12:

In caricature, the old adage of “practice makes perfect” has never been truer. The ability to see doesn’t spring up overnight, and I often tell eager young caricaturists they have about 500 or so bad caricatures in them before they start noticing the subtle things that hide inside the ordinary face.

By the term “see” I am talking about not necessarily the ability to DRAW or to capture a likeness, which can be done without any exaggeration. I am talking about the ability to observe and notice the things about a face that makes it unique—the things that a caricaturist is going to want to exaggerate to create a caricature as opposed to a portrait. The “500 or so bad caricatures” I say a new caricaturist has in them is not about improving drawing skills or capturing a better likeness, it’s about developing your eye to notice those unique things through the simple medium of observing and then drawing what you observe. Of course the act of drawing over 500 caricatures will also improve an artist’s drawing skills as well as their observational skills as it pertains to simply seeing the facial features that a likeness requires be accurately drawn immensely, but it’s the development of the ‘eye’ to which I refer in that quote.

Additionally, those 500 drawings are not a threshold wherein drawing number 501 is like some switch was suddenly switched on and an artist’s drawings suddenly become successful. I actually use that number with my new theme park artists as saying that is about when they stop fighting with the tools and medium, start getting comfortable in the chair and faces start to look different to them as things jump out that previously went unnoticed. It is still an ongoing process, and at the end of the next 500 drawings, number 1,001 will look very different than 501 did as long as they continue to apply themselves.

Now, as to your actual question about what else (besides practice) an artist can do to improve their ability to capture a likeness…

Nothing. There is nothing else besides unyielding dedication and sheer, unrelenting observing/drawing that will help an artist become better at getting a likeness. Studying and incorporating different techniques are important, and can help an artist along the way, but there are no shortcuts. No amount of studying, reading, watching videos, listening to lectures or other sources of information on drawing can replace the act of drawing and what that does to your ability to make your eyes, hand and brain work together. It’s like swimming. You can read about how to swim, you can look at diagrams of the action, you can watch videos and have classroom instruction in swimming. Until you actually get in the water and start moving around, you will never be able to swim.

That is advice nobody really wants to hear, but it is the absolute truth. Talent is only part of the recipe. The most talented artist in the world would not be more than a mediocre artist if they never bothered to work at developing their skills. Modest talent with enormous work ethic and determination will beat out enormously talented but lazy artists every time.

Thanks to Steven White 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!

Click for a closer look…

In the next few weeks I’ll be posting a few sneak peeks at some of the pages in my upcoming book The Mad Art of Caricature!, ordering of which will debut at Comic Con in less than two weeks! Here is the opening of chapter one. The chapter consists of 12 pages and contains over 25 illustrations.

Chapter one includes my definition of caricature, what I think a good caricature needs to accomplish to be successful, what makes a bad caricature and how to avoid it, and the process of developing your “eye” for caricature.

You can pre-order The Mad Art of Caricature! here. Shipping to commence immediately after printed books arrive in late September.

The book proceeds apace, but it’s slow going as I keep having to put it aside to work on jobs. In fact, plans to have the printed copies ready to go at the San Diego Comic Con are now nixed, which sucks. No helping it, though. It makes no sense for me to turn down paying jobs in order to finish it, because the book will get done eventually and I won’t sell any fewer copies if it ships in August rather than July. Bills continue to be due. My theme park crews are getting mad at me as they haven’t seen me in weeks. I’ve got a six-page MAD parody, character designs for the first episode of season 2 of MAD on the Cartoon Network, a job for SI Kids, a workplace poster and a bunch of art for Jeff Dunham on the board right now. Whew.

All that said, the book is very close to being done. 100% of the writing is done and copy edited. The entire book has been designed and laid out in Adobe InDesign. 50% of the illustrations are done and placed. Many of the remaining 50% of the illustrations are done and just need tweaking, production and placement. I was not planning on releasing the cover until after the book had gone to press, but as it’s now delayed past the planned Comic-Con debut, I thought I might as well show it on The MAD Blog. The cover, including the back, is done, proofed, and already at the printers.

So when will the book be out, and when will people be able to order it?

July 21st, one month from today.

It will be at the printer’s the second week of July, and actually printing during Comic-Con. I still plan Comic-Con as the debut of ordering the book, but I refuse to accept pre-orders until the book is done and at press. On July 21st, I will post a link to the ordering page here, where you can go to order the book using a credit card or PayPal. There will be a few different ordering options, which I will detail later, but the base price will be $24.95 USD plus a flat shipping cost for continental U.S. (I’ll figure out international shipping also). That same day I will be at Comic-Con in booth #4616 with at least one actual proof copy (I’m hoping for several proof copies) for people to look through and taking on-the-spot orders with the special Comic-Con deal of free domestic shipping when ordered there. Credit cards will be taken at Comic-Con.

As for book details, it is 184 pages, full color and includes several hundred illustrations. The information in my tutorials were used as only the base of some of the chapters, and they are greatly expanded upon with new illustrations plus the addition of much, much more information. I expand and add other theories on caricature as a whole, get more in-depth on drawing and caricaturing individual features, continue on to the rest of the face and head beyond the on-line tutorials here, discuss important considerations like the difference in caricaturing men vs. women and other topics, go into specifics on my live caricature techniques, have a chapter on applying caricature in illustration work, and a chapter on how caricatures apply to doing work for MAD, including a complete breakdown of a MAD job from blank layout through pencil rough, sketches, inks and color. The forward is by long-time MAD editor Nick Meglin, and the afterword by veteran MAD artist and current art director Sam Viviano.

In short, it’s worth $24.95.

So, there you have a book update. It’s actually going to happen. I promise. Now get back to work.

This series of “How to Draw Caricatures” tutorials are a just a small taste of a larger and much more in-depth book I wrote called The Mad Art of Caricature! The book is 175 full-color pages, lavishly illustrated and contains greatly expanded explanations of the concepts presented in these tutorials, as well and a great deal of additional material on caricaturing other facial features, posture, hands, expression and more, techniques on drawing from live models, doing caricature for freeplace illustration and for MAD Magazine. This is a must have book for anyone interested in caricature, cartooning or humorous illustration. You can order it online here.

Part Five: Drawing Mouths

Like all features, mouths follow certain tendencies with regards to the subject’s sex, race, and age. More so than the other features, the mouth changes RADICALLY with expression. It is by far the most expressive part of the face, even more than the eyes. As a result, drawing the mouth becomes not only an exercise in observation of its structure, but sensitivity to its projection of the subject’s emotions. The real key to capturing “personality” in a caricature rests in the eyes and mouth. When a live caricaturist hears the magic words from the friends of their subject exclaim: “He ALWAYS has that look on his face! THAT’S HIM!” you know you just read the subjects expression right and captured it in the drawing. That is what you strive for… not just the likeness, and not just exaggeration, but CHARACTER… PERSONALITY. That is what makes a drawing come to life and spring from the surface of the paper. Mouths are a central part of this, both in and of themselves and more importantly how they are relating to the rest of the face.

The mouth is a complex feature. It’s made up of bones, muscles and tissues that create many distinct elements like teeth and lips, which vary widely with variables like age, which in turn interact in many different ways depending on expression. When I talk about the mouth, I am also including the musculature around the mouth, connecting it to the nose, cheeks and chin. Drawing the mouth basically finishes off the interior of the face, the center of likeness and expression.

The Anatomy of a Mouth

As with all features, it is very useful to understand the structure and anatomy of that which you are trying to caricature. Knowing the names of the muscles and bones are not really important, but understanding where they are, how they work and what you are really seeing is the best kind of foundation for a good drawing of anything.

Let’s start with the underlying anatomy, the teeth and surrounding bone (fig.1). The Mandibula and Mandible (jaw bone) is the only movable bone in the face/skull. It has several specific features, including the Ramus (The rear jaw that connects to the skull), the Angle (point at which the jaw angles toward the chin), the Mental protuberance (chin), the Mental tubercle (hollow area under and behind the chin) and the Lower dental arch (area below bottom teeth). The upper bones of the mouth are part of the larger skull. They include the Upper dental arch (area just above the teeth), the Maxilla (area above dental arch, under nose and nostrils) and the Coroniod and Condyliod processes (where the law bones and skull connect.) Humans have two sets of teeth, (three if you count dentures), that appear at different points in their lives. The first set are deciduous or temporary (baby) teeth, and the second are permanent teeth. There are 20 deciduous teeth and 32 permanent teeth. They all have names and distinct positions and features, but for our purposes there are only six teeth that are prominent and visible enough for us to be concerned with in the adult mouth. They are the upper four incisors and first two upper cuspids, commonly called the canines or eye teeth. These six teeth generally are what you see when a subject smiles. Other teeth are not as important to a caricature as what little of them might be visible are overpowered by the prominence of the afore mentioned six. Still, if you want to learn the names of all the teeth, knock yourself out. Your dentist will love you. (more…)

This series of “How to Draw Caricatures” tutorials are a just a small taste of a larger and much more in-depth book I wrote called The Mad Art of Caricature! The book is 175 full-color pages, lavishly illustrated and contains greatly expanded explanations of the concepts presented in these tutorials, as well and a great deal of additional material on caricaturing other facial features, posture, hands, expression and more, techniques on drawing from live models, doing caricature for freeplace illustration and for MAD Magazine. This is a must have book for anyone interested in caricature, cartooning or humorous illustration. You can order it online here.

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.

(more…)

This series of “How to Draw Caricatures” tutorials are a just a small taste of a larger and much more in-depth book I wrote called The Mad Art of Caricature! The book is 175 full-color pages, lavishly illustrated and contains greatly expanded explanations of the concepts presented in these tutorials, as well and a great deal of additional material on caricaturing other facial features, posture, hands, expression and more, techniques on drawing from live models, doing caricature for freeplace illustration and for MAD Magazine. This is a must have book for anyone interested in caricature, cartooning or humorous illustration. You can order it online here.

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…)

This series of “How to Draw Caricatures” tutorials are a just a small taste of a larger and much more in-depth book I wrote called The Mad Art of Caricature! The book is 175 full-color pages, lavishly illustrated and contains greatly expanded explanations of the concepts presented in these tutorials, as well and a great deal of additional material on caricaturing other facial features, posture, hands, expression and more, techniques on drawing from live models, doing caricature for freeplace illustration and for MAD Magazine. This is a must have book for anyone interested in caricature, cartooning or humorous illustration. You can order it online here.

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…)

This series of “How to Draw Caricatures” tutorials are a just a small taste of a larger and much more in-depth book I wrote called The Mad Art of Caricature! The book is 175 full-color pages, lavishly illustrated and contains greatly expanded explanations of the concepts presented in these tutorials, as well and a great deal of additional material on caricaturing other facial features, posture, hands, expression and more, techniques on drawing from live models, doing caricature for freeplace illustration and for MAD Magazine. This is a must have book for anyone interested in caricature, cartooning or humorous illustration. You can order it online here.

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…)

This series of “How to Draw Caricatures” tutorials are a just a small taste of a larger and much more in-depth book I wrote called The Mad Art of Caricature! The book is 175 full-color pages, lavishly illustrated and contains greatly expanded explanations of the concepts presented in these tutorials, as well and a great deal of additional material on caricaturing other facial features, posture, hands, expression and more, techniques on drawing from live models, doing caricature for freeplace illustration and for MAD Magazine. This is a must have book for anyone interested in caricature, cartooning or humorous illustration. You can order it online here.

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…)