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…)