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The first caricature you'll draw won't really be a caricature.
What I want you to do is "dumb down" a portrait so
we can get a caricature style of drawing going.
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Draw this face with simple lines and
shadows. |
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Does your drawing look something like
this? |
Get your lap desk out and put a sheet or two of paper on it and get comfortable in front of your computer. Sharpen your 5B pencil and have your eraser handy. If you'd like to print out the
photo we'll be working with go ahead. I want you to draw the
woman here with the simplest lines and shadows you can. Draw
her in correct proportion, but do it with as few lines as you
can. If you need to review how to measure
the facial features to get correct proportions check out that
section of DRAWING
PEOPLE. To
draw this woman, take as long as you need and erase any lines or shadows you
don't like. Start with her eyes, correctly space the eyes,
then draw the nose, then the mouth, then the chin, then
enclose the whole thing with the hair. Measure all these
features against one another so you keep correct
proportion. The goal here is to learn a style of drawing that
would be useful in caricaturing. Draw and shade simply as you
can.
Does your drawing look anything like the one I did? If not,
that's OK, I want you to develop your own caricaturing style
anyway. But let me explain the features of my style and how to
create them.
Bold Line. Unlike portraiture, caricaturing should have
an element of "cartoony-ness" to it, and cartoons
have simple, bold lines. The lines you draw should really
separate one element from another and be fat, dark and
confident. Notice the line that is her chin. It's darker and
more defined than that area on the photograph. And the lines
that make up the nose are bolder than they are in the
photograph as well. Thick lines create shadow without all that
involved, time consuming, gradient shading stuff. Be confident
in your lines and don't timidly sketch them, really mean it
when you put a line on the paper and do it with one long and
heavy stroke.
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Detail of her right eye. |
Shadow. You're going to draw shadows to complement your
bold lines, but the shadows shouldn't be overpowering to the
line. Look at the way I drew the shadows on the woman. Rather
than do heavily gradient shadows, just hint at them. Draw the
main shadows that will define the face, but don't draw every
shadow. The way your subject is lit in the photograph is going
to determine how you do your shadows. That's why I'd rather
draw a pretty evenly lit photo, like the one above, than one
that has really heavy shadows.
Hair. Even the hair will get "dumbed down" in
caricature. In portraiture you never draw each individual
hair, you draw the shapes and shadows that the hair creates.
You do the same thing in caricature, but the shapes and
shadows you'd draw would be simpler than they would be in
portraiture. In the example above I have about three gradients
in the hair: White for highlights, dark for the hair that is
visible behind her head, and a middle tone for the rest of it.
In straight hair, you'd lay down shadows that go in the
direction that the hair falls. I drew straight lines in the
direction the hair was going, but I didn't draw each hair, I
just hinted at the shadows created by the dark hair.
Your assignment: I'd like you to draw some other faces to try
and develop a "caricature style" of drawing. Like
above, don't try and do a caricature by distorting features,
try and draw a face with the correct proportions, but draw it
with simple, bold, lines and with minimal shadows. Rather than
spending an hour or two doing a highly detailed drawing, try
and draw a face in under a half hour. First, sit in front of a
mirror with your lap desk and draw yourself. If you'd like to
keep going and working on your drawing style, find a
photograph online or in a family photo album. The face has to
be large enough that you can see all the facial details. My
rule of thumb on face size is that the face in the photo can't be smaller
than my thumbnail.
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