Train Your Brain: How to Develop Your Caricature Instincts
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| Author | Ed Steckley |
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| Published | EF Issue 2009.2 |
Publication date | Spring 2009 |
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| Pages | 18-19 |
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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 practice, you’ll eventually find that even if all your drawings are of people sitting, the differences between each person will be much greater than you may have imagined if you’ve never given the importance of the first impression a second thought. Eventually, translating the mental snapshot will become more and more instinctual and will eventually find it’s way into whatever type of caricature (or any art, for that matter) you are approaching.
Eliminating unnecessary biases, or Satire vs. Sarcasm
We all come to the table with biases,
both good and bad (though few would
be happy to admit it). With that
said, realize that a caricature
can and often does speak
as much about the
artist who created
it as it does about
the subject!
Generally, how an artist regards his or her subject will be reflected in their representation of that subject. Like it or not, the artist comes through. How much so is what we want to control.
If you’re in a bad mood when doing a caricature, that same caricature would have looked and felt very differently had you been in a good mood at the time! For example, drawings that come off as “mean”, regardless of their quality, are more often than not, a true representation of how the artist is feeling, whether it is about the subject in particular, or the artist’s disposition in general. That ‘mean’ vibe (the gut feeling it gives you) came from somewhere!
On that same note, an artist who is upbeat with a great sense of humor will have the tendency to create images that reflect this in the subject, whether intended or not. For a good example of this, look back at any 1950s horror comic by the great Jack Davis. Though the images are gruesome sequences of death, torture, suspense and murder, Jack’s legendary sense of humor and laid back nature somehow reassuringly peek through.
But, with all that said, the more objectively the artist sees the subject, the more the actual subject will shine through in the artwork, and the artist’s conscious or unconscious agenda will fade to the background, hopefully, subtly, merely enhancing the drawing for the better (as in the Jack Davis example), rather than overpowering it.
Although caricature is, by definition, an artist’s comment on a subject, and therefore biased, having a greater understanding of what you are contributing to the character of your subject is another thing that separates the good caricaturists from the great. Being true to yourself, understanding your feelings and how you relate to the subject from the beginning will help you more accurately control and manipulate your interpretation of the subject.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t have fun and give someone a big nose, for example, but there is a fine line between satire and sarcasm. Sarcasm, in this regard, being nothing more than satire with the addition of a (usually mean spirited) personal agenda!
Remember, knowing who you are and being honest with yourself as an artist, as well as viewing each subject as a clean slate are the keys to remaining objective and fair to your subject and this will, in the long run, make you a much better caricature artist.
See Also
External Links
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