Train Your Brain: How to Develop Your Caricature Instincts
 | |
| Author | Ed Steckley |
|---|---|
| Genre | |
| Published | EF Issue 2009.2 |
Publication date | Spring 2009 |
| Media type |
|
| Pages | 18-19 |
| Website |
|
Article Description. Should include author, brief description, issue number and page number(s).
Article Transcript
No matter if you are a quick-sketch party artist or an illustrator working in publication, the fun really lies in the whole drawing process by building on the basics of caricature.
We all learn early on how to draw a face, hopefully good enough to make a decent living at it. Two relatively side by side eyes, a nose somewhere below them and a mouth below that, and on and on (indeed, if you can get a decent likeness of a face that’s sitting in front of you, you’re more than welcome to stop learning right there and coast through the rest of your time as a caricaturist! I’ve known many who’ve done this, but hopefully you will want to rise above the average cookie cutter caricature shtick and push yourself to become the best artist and caricaturist you can be!)
The purpose of this article is to build on the basics of caricature that are already in place. The goal, of course, is to bring more to the table and create the best caricature of a subject as possible. This means going beyond being good at drawing eyes, noses, mouths, etc, and diving deeper into the character of the subject you’re drawing. Simply ‘grabbing on’ to one physical attribute and blowing it out of proportion is the easy way out of thinking critically about caricature.
To begin thinking critically about caricature then, you have to start 1) by looking beyond the face and using keen observation of the subject as a whole, 2) by understanding the importance of first impressions and using your instinctive (and automatic!) mental snapshot, you will use less obvious physical attributes such as posture, disposition and attitude to your advantage, and 3) by leaving your personal biases and agenda at home you will make this all work. (That last one is often the hardest for most artists, me included!)
Trusting Your Instincts, or stop second guessing yourself and your abilities
Picking up on the subtleties of an
individual is what we, as humans,
are instinctively good at doing.
Evolutionarily speaking, being able to
consciously and unconsciously read
people allows us to sense if someone
is a threat, if they’re approachable,
or even if they are someone we may
want to get to know better. (There
are probably some caveman/hunter/
gatherer evolutionary ideas in there
somewhere. This is the so-called
fight or flight response that humans
have acquired through the years. But
thinking about that hurts my brain
even more.) However, the ability to
harness this knowledge, bringing
it from the unconscious to the
conscious is what makes a mediocre
caricature artist a great one.
Trusting your instincts and remaining objective, though easier said than done, is the key to getting to the soul of the individual you’re depicting. Close your eyes, take a deep breath and relax for a few seconds. Open your eyes, look at the subject and let your pencil just draw. The more you agonize over every little line, the less successful the drawing will be.
The First Impression, or judging a book by its cover
After you gain more experience
and learn to let your instincts guide
your abilities, you’ll appreciate the
importance of the first impression.
The mental snapshot you strike
up in your head in that first split
second is just as important as careful
examination and study of
the subject, regardless
of whether you’re
drawing live or
from photos.
In addition to that,
it’s impossible to
stress enough
the importance
of character traits
beyond the basic
eyes, nose and mouth. Physical
attributes such as posture and
expressiveness of head tilts, and
hands, as well as disposition and
attitude, are more important and
lead to a more successful caricature
than simply drawing a big nose
on someone with a big nose and
hoping for the best. The more unique
qualities you can pick up about a
subject, the more successful you will
be. And the first impression is where
you can find most everything you
need to know.
A good way to practice using the first impression to your advantage is by doing gesture drawings. Go to a coffee shop with a sketch book (or I’ll see you at the bar). Quickly glance at someone across the room (who doesn’t know you’re drawing—no one likes a voyeur!) and immediately do a five or ten second sketch of that person’s silhouette, without looking back up until you’re done. Then try the same type of approach with someone’s face, and alternate between far away silhouettes and close up faces. Be as sloppy and sketchy as you want; the point of this is to teach yourself to interpret the instinctive mental snapshot and put only that on paper. In doing these, over time you’ll learn to trust your eyes and trust yourself. With lots of
See Also
External Links
This Navigation box may not show up on mobile browsers. Please see Exaggerated Features Issue 2009.2 for the full contents of this issue if the navigation box does not display.
 |
| | |
| |||
| |||
| |||
