 |
|
A portrait. |
|
 |
|
A caricature |
The key difference between caricature and drawing a portrait
of someone is the intentional distortion of the subject in
caricature. This distortion is difficult because the features
of the subject are what makes the subject recognizable, when
you start fooling around with these features, then you run the
risk of loosing the likeness of the subject. So in order to
keep the likeness you must minimize features that are
minimized on the subject and maximize the features that are
maximized on the subject. If you go against the grain and
minimize a person's large mouth you will loose the likeness.
Who ever heard of a drawing of Mick Jagger with small lips and
mouth? Or Jay Leno with a small little baby chin? It just
wouldn't look like Jay or Mick. What
is caricature?
Here's a dictionary
definition of caricature:
car·i·ca·ture (kr-k-chr, -chr) n.
1. A representation, especially pictorial or literary, in which the subject's distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic or grotesque effect.
2. The art of creating such representations.
3. A grotesque imitation or misrepresentation: The trial was a caricature of justice. Being able to
draw portraits of people and knowing and understanding the
human face is pretty central to being able to draw a
caricature of someone. All the techniques taught in the DRAWING
PEOPLE section of this website can be applied
to caricature with some additions to the technique. For these
caricaturing lessons, I'm going to assume that you already can
draw a portrait, or at least, that you've looked at the DRAWING
PEOPLE section
of this site.
We're
pretty much concerned with the "artistic" definition
when we say caricature on this website. Let me say a few
things about what I see a caricature as:
First, let's learn how to say the
word caricature. It's pronounced CARE - ick - ah - chur. Or if
you're British: CAR - ick- ah- chah.
 |
|
Click to see a larger version. |
I think caricatures and cartoons are
the same thing. The difference between the two that I see is
this: a caricature is simply a cartoon of someone or something
that the viewer can recognize as a specific someone or
something. As soon as someone known by the viewer is seen in a
cartoon, it becomes a caricature. Here's an example to the
right. This is a cartoon of a basketball. If you take that basketball
and draw a stovepipe hat on it and give it a beard, it goes
from a cartoon of a basketball to a caricature
of Abraham Lincoln. It's recognizable as Lincoln even though
it doesn't have a face. But the addition of
"Lincoln-like" props give the basketball a
recognizability as Lincoln. To
confuse the issue, a caricature doesn't necessarily have to be
a cartoon, it could be a painting, or a sculpture, or even a
photograph. You could draw what you thought was a portrait,
but if the proportions are incorrect, but it was still
recognizable as the person you were drawing, then it could be
seen as a caricature. I think a caricature is a caricature if
the artist intends it to be a caricature regardless of how it
was made. On this website I'm
going to teach how I create caricatures. So the definition of
caricature that will work for this website is the one that
says that caricatures are intentionally skewed portraits of
people drawn in a somewhat cartoony style, because that's how
I do it.
|
