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A Master Piece with Joe Bluhm (view source)
Revision as of 18:08, 3 August 2020
, 18:08, 3 August 2020no edit summary
his process of
drawing a caricature, from start to finish.
Let’s get in our heads. It’s GAME DAY!
Creating a caricature from scratch, digitally, in under an hour, what that means, and what you could possibly be thinking.
Caricature is tough, you all know that. What makes it so tough (aside from the blatantly obvious artistic skill requirements and problem solving needs) is the decisiveness of it all. Making decisions. Decisions are a product of wants, needs, experience, expectations, and perhaps the most heavy factor, taste.
Along with all these ingredients, there is the EXPERIENCE of the artist. I once heard someone (unfortunate that I can’t remember who, I apologize) relate that artists don’t have a “game day.” It’s true. Most don’t. Okay, there’s the theme park or party caricaturist who entertains and can succeed with a diving one-handed leap into the end zone as they place the huge swoop of an under-bite while uncle Phil spits his beer laughing. And there are those lucky talented few like Dan Dunn and Stephen Fishwick who draw live in front of the wealthy or a stadium of fans, slinging paint on a portrait of Elvis for their third “perfect game” this year. But most of us sit quietly and contemplate every whim and decision with doubt as we move along our path towards being “sort of okay with’” what we produce. Even the rock stars have to do that in order to get to the stadium paint-flinging thing! I know those punks spend weeks and months perfecting their process. Not glamorous.
So that’s what I’m going to do – I’m going to walk through my process in creating a digital caricature in under an hour. This often-called “speed paint” will be a vehicle for talking about our decisions, choices, tastes, shortcuts, habits, and whatever you deem worth reading between the lines.
Let’s start. It’s late Spring in the year 2014. I am Joe Bluhm, living in Louisiana and working at an animation studio. I have not done many caricature illustrations or portraits in a while, so I’m excited to simply be doing one. But I have to be excited throughout the process, because as I know from my years doing editorial illustration, it gets very boring when you are laboriously rendering an expression, face or personality which BORES you. So, nothing boring. But what bores me right now? I don’t know.
Not the usual celebrity! Let’s start there. Hmm. Who looks interesting. Louis C.K.? He’s one of my absolute favorite filmmakers and comedians... No, I’ve seen a lot of him done lately. Ummmm... Donald Draper (Jon Hamm from Mad Men). I just finished watching the season!
No... I’ve seen even MORE of him done. I feel like it’s an easy target at this point. Well at least I know that I’m interested in the content of recent entertainment. Television and good storytelling is something that’s reaching out to me lately, and I like the idea of the “character” within the caricature, even if it’s subtle, not just a portrait of the subject. Okay, so I’m into these storytellers or story lines. So who could I do that would hold my interest? OOH! Roger Sterling! He has expressions, he is attractive, he is subtle, he has some lines in his face! I’ll look up some photos of the actor John Slattery, portraying a character in one of the more interesting story arcs on television in the last decade.
Okay... Lots of great photos on Google. I could grab a DVD and pause it, but I told myself this is a speed painting, an exercise. No need to go that far.
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If you do a quick search on Google there are tons of photos that would work. [Editor’s note: Due to copyright restrictions we were unable to print the photos here, so please feel free to follow along with your own Google search!] Let’s choose one. I could pick a dynamic ¾ or profile view – this guy has a GREAT nose and forehead – however his character is looking towards me on the show a lot. It’s part of his character on Mad Men, and that’s what drew me to him. Hmm... I want him to be recognizable, and I could try a profile, but I feel like his steely little questioning eyes are such a huge part of his character, and I don’t want to lose the chance to illustrate that. Okay, I realize it’s a bit less risky, and maybe less material for dynamic illustration, but I’m going to choose a front-view of this dude. The photo I choose has some great lighting anyway.
Now I’ll keep the other photos up so I can look at them from time to time, as the nuances and intricacies of his face are not always obvious, and definitely get lost when staring at one mid-res photo for an hour.
Okay, ready to go. I’ve been using Adobe Photoshop almost non-stop for five years. My job demands it, and the speed and efficiency of digital is very important to me, so I am quite comfortable with it. I haven’t been painting portraits or caricatures as much with it, so it’s a fun fresh thing, using it for something that is not what I do day-in and day-out. So, Photoshop it is, with a front-view of John Slattery as Roger Sterling, and I’m going to go ahead and use a pencil-like brush to sketch, then a large painterly brush to paint. I’ll stay in the comfort zone so it’s all about my decisions. Keep it simple, Stupid (that’s me).
Dude has a tall head. Or a narrow one, at least. So I’m grabbing onto that. From there, I’m finding where the features lay... perhaps higher ears, implying his light head-tilt (I love how he nods his head forward slightly and stares a bit up with a skeptical look at... at who? Who knows... usually Don Draper). So I’ll block in the shoulders, hair, ears, eye position, and general proportions of the face. From here, I go right into refining the drawing. I think of this as though I’m doing a technical drawing. Much of it can be done like a sketch of a new car or a transparent cube. Looking at the form and letting scribbles and contour lines define form and shape, even if they collide. This is good. The information is just a starting point, a record of a thought that will be refined later as I go. Every pass has something added to it, so it doesn’t need to be perfect yet. I just need to know that I feel good about what decisions I see SO FAR.
Cool, I have the sketch and I’m happy. I have been doing character design under the gun for years now, so I have some fast ways of laying down form in Photoshop. Underneath the layer of the sketch I’ll block in just a few colors—local colors, just to give value to the overall piece and start my palette. Since I want this to be quick and simple, I’ll stick with the reference. I sometimes use the eyedropper tool to sample colors from the photo, but mostly I eyeball what I like about the reference and go from there.
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