How to draw caricatures vẽ biếm họa

| mentioned a single word in the last paragraph that really is the secret to caricature as a whole no matter what technique or approach you intend to practice: RELATIONSHIPS It's the ma

HOW TO DRAW CARICATURES

This is the first of a series of

articles | will post here on The

MAD Blog about my theories,

methods and processes

caricatures A lot of this

information is part of what | teach

my theme park artists, so it is

derived partly from the approach

of doing live, quick-draw

caricatures However all of that

can be applied to more studio

orientated caricature work and |

have also added points and

concepts directly from the less

time-constrained world of

caricature illustration Therefore

this is not instruction for just the

live caricaturist but for any artist

interested in caricature for any

purpose

These kinds of things always start out with a definition, but “caricature” is a hard thing to pigeonhole into a single sentence How can you, when the word encompasses the elegant, minimalist lines of

Al Hirschfeld to the lavish, value and color soaked paintings of Sebastian Kruger to the graphic, geometrical collages of David Cowles and everything

in between? Despite the wild differences in style and technique, “caricature” is the tag that is placed on any

of these works of art without hesitation Obviously there is a connection beyond a common technique, school or format So, what are the universal elements all caricatures have that identify them as caricatures?

| would say there are three essential elements that transcend style and medium and must be present in a caricature:

e lLikeness- If you can’t tell who it is supposed to

be, then it is not successful All good caricatures incorporate a good likeness of their subjects

e Exaggeration- Without exaggeration, or a departure from the exact

some form of

representation of the subject’s features, all you have is a portrait The level of exaggeration can vary wildly, but there must be some departure A Straight portrait is not a caricature

e Statement- | believe a caricature must editorialize in some way The artist must be trying

to say something about the subject It might be something to do with the situation the subject is drawn in, it may just be a play on their personality through expression or body language, it might be

a simple as making visual fun of some aspect of their persona or image Exaggeration itself can accomplish this in some cases The best caricatures say something more about the subject than that they have a big nose

By my ‘definition’, a successful caricature therefore looks like the subject, is exaggerated to varying

degrees and also has something

to say about the subject

sort of editorial comment

some

In

“live” caricature at a theme park,

Ive been working with

young caricaturists at

theme parks for over two

decades now, and I've

learned one very important

lesson it’s impossible to

teach someone to draw

caricatures | can teach

them to DRAW that isn’t

so hard Learning how a

face looks and works by

learning anatomy, how

expression changes’ the

features, how the angle the

face is at changes the

perception of features, how

hair grows and falls about

the head those are things

that can be taught Drawing

caricatures, on the other

hand, is a lot more about

seeing what makes the

person ¡in front of you

unique and personal

interpretation than it is

about making good,

confident marks on_ the

paper | can explain to

someone exactly how to

draw a circle, but if | place

a circle before them and

ask them to draw it and

TEACHING SOMEONE TO SEE

they draw a square well, that is all about seeing and not drawing The ability to see, and after that the ability to exaggerate what you see for humorous effect in a caricature that has to be developed For most that means a lot of drawing and a lot of looking

Have you ever been walking along at the mall or where ever and = along comes somebody with some Crazy, incredibly distinct face that maybe Sports a gigantic nose or a Cro-Magnon brow or some other obviously out-of-the- ordinary features?

Caricaturists have a term for that kind of face it’s called a “field day” Think about it for a second why

is that face so ripe for caricature compared to the next guys? Are the features really that different? If you took a ruler and measured the size of

Mr Shnozzes's nose

that third item is often turned way down or ignored completely, but in the case of caricatures for illustration, it’s an important part

compared to Mr Normal, the difference would be minimal So why is he so easy?

SEEING a difference based

on perception, and that is

Because you are

giving you your springboard for a caricature One observation of what makes this person different from

“normal”, and you are off and running The obvious features are easy observations it’s Johnny and Susie Normal or, worse yet, Johnny and Susie Supermodel that are the challenge That is where developing an _ ability to

it see” „" becomes important There is no face that defies caricature, you just sometimes have to dig a little deeper to find the keys to unlock the more difficult

caricature, the old adage of

puzzle In

“practice makes _ perfect” has never been truer The ability to see doesn’t spring

up overnight, and | often

caricaturists they have

about 500 or so_ bad

caricatures in them they

have to draw out first

before they start noticing

the subtle things that hide

inside the “ordinary” face

Although | say it’s

“impossible” to teach

Caricatures, it’s not

impossible to help them develop their ability to draw them There are many ways and techniques to help an artist develop their ability

to see what is in front of them, recognize what makes what they’ see unique and then amplify that uniqueness to create a

successful caricature There

are general concepts that apply to the overall approach of a caricature as well as specific tricks and tips for individual features

elements that | will be Sharing over the multiple parts of this series of

articles.

THE FIVE SHAPES

The human face is perceived by many as an

incredible complex object There are about

52 muscles in the face, depending on your

source and its categorization Age, sex,

race, expression (the face is capable of

5,000

environment can all play a role in the look

about expressions) weight and

and perception of a given face Sounds

pretty complex Not really Every building,

no matter how complex, starts out with a

foundation and framework Look at this

simple drawing:

Show that drawing to any human being in

the world and ask them what it is Barring a

language barrier, they will tell you it’s “a

face” No other information needed In it’s

most simple form, the human face is made

up of only five simple shapes:

The 5 Shapes

l HEAD SHAPE

2.EYE ONE

What does that have to do with caricature? Everything | mentioned a single word in the last paragraph that really is the secret to caricature as a whole no matter what technique or approach you intend to practice:

RELATIONSHIPS

It's the manipulation of the RELATIONSHIP

of these five simple shapes that create the foundation for your caricature In fact, I'd argue that 90% of the entire caricature

resides in how you relate these five simple

shapes to one another It is the foundation

upon which the rest of your building is built,

where the real power of exaggeration is

realized Make it good and almost all the

heavy lifting is done, the rest merely

referring to details What do | mean by

“relationships”? | mean the distances

between the five shapes, their size

relative to one another, and the angles

they are at in relationship to the center

axis of the face Distance Size Angle

In traditional portraiture, the head is divided

into “classic proportions” (we'll get into that

more next time), meaning the relationship

of the features are within a_ certain,

accepted range of distance to one another,

size and angle relative to the face and head

shape You achieve your likeness in a classic

portrait, in it’s most basic form, by correctly

drawing the shapes and then the details of

each feature according to the model in front

of you while staying within the framework of

the “classic” proportions Of course each

face varies minutely here and there, but still

you do not stray far from the classic

formula In a caricature, like a portrait, the

likeness is also achieved by drawing the

features as they really look but you

change the relationship of the features

based on your perceptions of the face The

relationships you change are as | listed

before: distance, size and angle Look at

these VERY simple drawings — that

demonstrate how you can change the relationships of the five shapes and create very different caricatures:

Some Simple Variations

of the Relationships of the

Here are some quick studies of the 5 shapes beneath a few caricature sketches:

The relationships differ in distance, size and

angle from one another The bigger the differences are from “classic” proportions, the more exaggerated the caricature It’s much easier to see the differences when the details are removed and only the 5 shapes are left It's also much easier to create those differences at this simple, fundamental level It’s easy to get caught

up in details when the important information rests beneath the rendering How does one determine the “correct” changes to make to a given person’s feature relationships to make a good caricature of them? Well, that’s the trick, isn’t it? That is were that pesky “seeing” comes in In his book “How to Draw Caricatures", Lenn Redman uses a concept called “The

Inbetweener” as a basis for almost every

observation It is basically the classic

portraiture relationships used as a point of

reference for making observations Every

caricature begins with the observations the

artist makes about the subject, and how

their particular face is perceived by them

MAD legend Mort Drucker has_ been

it

quoted as saying that there is no “one

correct way” to caricature a subject Any

given subject can have several difference

interpretations with respect to the

exaggeration of the relationship of their

features and each may be as successful

as the other That’s one of the unique things

about caricature as an art form Portraiture

is basically absolute Your drawing either

looks like the person with the correct

features, proportions and relationships, or it

does not Caricature is subjective to a point

The artists’ goal is to draw how they

relationships between features are the

driving force behind caricature:

“Caricature iS not about choosing one

feature and making it bigger, ita€™s about

all the features together and how they

relate to one another.”

Actually caricature is about changing the

relationships between features, meaning

their distance, size and angle relative to one

another, from what they truly are and what

is considered “normal” Deciding what

relationships to change and how much to

change them is one of the caricaturist’s

perceive the face, and exaggerate that perception The result may be different than how others perceive that face, but if the three elements we described in our definition are present it’s still a successful caricature Hirschfeld used to say he once drew Jimmy Durante without a nose at all, yet it was still recognizable as Durante That’s not to say that any observation is appropriate after all you can’t give someone with a small, button nose a gigantic potato schnozz and call it

“exaggeration” That’s not exaggeration, it’s DISTORTION You can, however, choose NOT

to exaggerate the nose’s smallness but rather find something else to exaggerate That is the caricaturist’s task, to find what it

is about the subject’s face that makes it unique and alter those relationships to exaggerate that uniqueness

PART TWO:

most important jobs, and one of the most difficult to “learn” The actual difference between the relationship of features of most humans does not add up to much in terms

of physical measurements a “big” nose may be only a fraction of an inch larger than

a “normal” nose Yet we can see different feature relationships on almost everybody, some which seem very pronounced That is because we spend basically our entire lives looking into people’s faces we go it when

we interact, work, play, go shopping or to church we are social beings and our faces are both our identities and our method of

communication Our ability to observe

minute differences becomes very fine

tuned Mostly it’s unconscious, but we see

that fraction of an inch larger nose as “big”,

or we see this person’s eyes as large or this

person’s mouth as small based not on

physical measurements but on our overall

perception of the features and how they

relate to one another Consciously making those observations, especially for those faces in which the unique aspects are not obvious, is the most difficult part of drawing caricatures There are some techniques and methods you can use to help make those

observations

CLASSIC PORTRAIT PROPORTION AND OBSERVATION

It's important to start somewhere, and the

best place is with what is considered

“normal” relationships of features for two

reasons First, knowing these classic

proportions will help you as a caricaturist to

observe where your subject’s face might

differ by providing a point of reference to

compare it to Second, once you've made

these observations you can use that same

point of reference, the classic portrait

proportions, as a guide to get as far away

from as possible to create your caricature

Let’s start out looking at the classic human

proportions in traditional portraiture (this is

boring, but it’s important) One method that

has been used for centuries is by using the

width of an eye, from corner to corner, as the primary frame of reference:

Classic Portrait Proportion

In this method, the head is five eye widths wide, with a single eye width between the eyes, and between the outside eye corners and the outside of the head The nose is one eye width wide, and therefore the nostrils are equal to the corners of the eyes Another simple method for establishing the “normal” relationship between eyes and mouth is via the equilateral triangle that should be formed by the points of the outside corners of the eyes, and the center point of the bottom of the lower lip Every book on learning to draw the human face has some similar method of standardizing the proportions of the average face

Do human faces really conform to these exact relationships? No, of course not That’s the point There are differences from this face to that, some very slight and some more pronounced, and the caricaturist exaggerates these differences to create a caricature Knowing what is supposed to be there is half the battle of seeing where things are different.

Again, making these observations is the trickiest part of doing caricature, but the good news

Is you don’t have to come up with a shopping list of deformities in order to do a caricature In fact, all you have to do is come up with one good observation Just one and you can use that

as your cornerstone and build your caricature around it It could be as simple as: this person has a skinny face or big eyes or a small mouth or a Square jaw or a bent nose or whatever More than one is better, but just one will suffice?

ACTION AND REACTION

Why is only one observation enough?

Because “no feature is an island” What |

mean is that all the features relate to one

another fundamentally, and you cannot

make a change to one feature without it

affecting the others This is one of the few

constants you can rely on with respect to

drawing caricatures: Action and Reaction

In physics every action causes an equal an

opposite reaction In caricature the action of

changing the relationship of a single feature

to the others causes the others to react in

often predictable ways You cannot change

the eyes without affecting the nose, mouth,

head shape, etc and how it affects those

other features follows (for the most part) a

predictable path

Say we make an observation about our

subject that the eyes seem far apart If we

move the just the eyes farther apart and

leave the rest of the face untouched, we have a bizarre looking result:

There is awkwardness to the “caricature”

We can’t ignore the effect on the other features The act of moving the eyes father apart forces the other features to react Typically when the eyes move father apart, the nose moves closer to the eyes, the mouth moves along with the nose, the head

becomes wider and, in turn shorter:

The features work

better together here

Additional

observations can

change the path of the

reaction Say our

observations are that

the eyes are far apart,

but the mouth is also

far from the nose

Because of that action,

the lower part of the

face must be longer,

and therefore the top

part of the head

THE “T” SHAPE

| have talked a lot about simplifying the face by boiling it down into the 5 Shapes, but

it can get even simpler than that in terms of both making observations and in playing with the relationships of features to make a caricature In fact | believe there are two absolutely crucial, key

components to any caricature: The head shape and the “T” shape These are the two elements of a face

| look at first and try to make observations about, because with them | can push, stretch and exaggerate the face to great effect

with relative ease

When | talk about the “T” Shape | am Speaking of the geometric shape created by the eyes and nose as a single unit In simplest terms they create a capital “T” Sometimes the

“T" can be short and wide, sometimes it can be long and thin, or somewhere in between The angle at which the eyes rest to the center axis

of the face can change the “T” into more of a “Y”, or more of an arrow Shape | treat the “T” not as a set of simple lines but as a contour shape with thickness, therefore the stem (or nose) of the “T” can be thicker or thinner at one end or the other, and the arms (or eyes) of the “T” can also change in thickness to accommodate big round eyes or narrow, squinty ones Imagine a contour capital “T” drawn around the eyes and nose in varying relationships

The shape of the “T” reacts to

changes you make to the

relationship of the eyes and

nose In most cases the eyes and

nose work ¡in a predictable

tandem within their relationship

Imagine that the eyes and nose

are connected by a string that

travels through a two_ wheel

pulleys located in the center of

the eyes The length of the string

is constant If the person’s eyes

are moved farther apart, the

string pulls the nose closer into

the eyes If the nose is made

longer, then the eyes are drawn

closer together All of this takes

place within the “T” shape

The mouth, nose and chin have

a similar connection They have

a constant amount of distance

between each other If the

mouth is perceived as_ being

close to the nose, the chin

moves a little farther away as a

reaction There are similar rules

that apply to the head shape,

which we'll get into next time

This is extreme simplification,

but | have said before the

simpler you can make the

shapes you are working with, the

easier it is to exaggerate them

and create your caricature If

you imagine a shape as simple

as a “T"”, it’s very easy to

exaggerate that “T” shape and

then plug in the features as they

really look within your simple

Shape and you have your

caricature Take a look at these

caricatures and the “T” shapes

within their head shapes:

The “T” Shape and head anatomy, expression, skin,

Shape combine to create hair and other details work

the base of your caricature, to create the likeness and

further define the structure to life It’s still all

over them the 5 shapes bring

features, and over the 5 foundations

shapes the features |

themselves are drawn and exercise to forget about

things like bone structure, rendering

underlying

details caricatures for a moment and fill up a few Sketchbook pages with nothing but the head shape and “T” shape of the faces you see when paging through a magazine Draw one quickly using just your initial observations and first impressions of the _ face

Then look back at it and try it again, this

to see where it differs from

the “normal” template of

exaggerating your first try

Do this with a dozen faces a

time ability to “see” the

caricature in a given face develops

classic proportion, then try day, and see how your

PART THREE: THE IMPORTANCE OF HEAD

SHAPES

When | first started drawing live caricatures | felt that

the eyes were the most important part of the face,

and | put a lot of emphasis and focus on them | still

think the eyes are a crucial element, but over the

years I’ve come to believe that the head shape is

the most important part of a caricature

The head shape is the fulcrum upon which a

caricature hinges The heavy lifting of all

exaggeration is accomplished via the shape of the

head, and it is more easily accomplished that way

Considering that the head shape is a single shape, it

is easier to recognize how that shape differs from

“normal” and it is easier still to draw a corresponding

simple shape that exaggerates those properties as

opposed to the more complex multiple relationships

of the features By stretching and exaggerating the

head shape, you create the framework within which

your other features and their relationships are drawn

to achieve your caricature

| have spoken of the “5 Shapes” and the importance

of their relationships already, but digging a little

deeper it’s accurate to say that the head shape is

“Shape 1” and the other four shapes are planets to

it’s sun, working within it’s all encompassing field of

gravity If a caricaturist can “see” and exaggerate

the head shape, all the other features fall into place

and follow along In the last lesson | talked about the

“T” shape being a focal point of the basic caricature,

but it’s really the “T Shape” and the head shape together as a whole that acts are the _ basic foundation of a caricature With those Shapes and their relationships established, the rest

of the caricature quickly follows suit

SEEING THE HEAD SHAPE

| talk endlessly about seeing Shapes within the features and the face, and the importance’ of drawing those shapes accurately to capture likeness and to create a convincing drawing Again, it’s difficult to teach anyone to “see” that ability is developed over time via practice and hard work Still, there are a few techniques and tricks | have learned that can help artists to better see what is in front

of them, and better interpret it in their drawing Many work for any feature or “shape” within the face, but some are specific for individual features Head shapes have several of these tricks for both initial observations and exaggeration.