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.