On Caricature Portraits.

in cartooning •  6 years ago  (edited)

5.jpg
Ok. Let's start talking Cartooning. And let's open the festivities accordingly: With a carricature portrait of Mad Men's Don Draper character.
There is a general misconception that caricature is all about finding a defining characteristic of a person's face and really enlarging and elongating it. While in some cases that is close-to-technically true, it's way more of a balancing act of re-arranging one's features and proportions in a new narrative, one that somehow captures the essence of a person's face more accurately than a photo. Actually, the best description I 've heard of a caricature is "a portrait with the volume up".
I can't recall who said that, but this and many more gems of cartooning wisdom can be found in Tom Richmond's excellent book "the Art of Carricature". a thorough and illuminating study on the subject.
So what is my personal way of tackling this unique kind of portrait? Apart from the essential technicalities, I have one secret recipe : I always have a double reference system: On the one half, I have on my desktop photo reference of the person I want to "portray with the volume up". On the other half, I close my eyes and try to recall the mental impression the face of the person has left on my brain. Like, if I had no photo of said person at all, how would I draw him from memory? Think of it like I am both the eyewitness of a crime, and the police portraitist both at once. Then I try to reconcile the two versions, adjusting here and there until I am happy.
If I am successful, the subject of my art will be happy too.
If I am REALLY successful, that same person will hate me for life.

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

Awesome caricature and your last line is perfect :) Yeah if you are hitting that raw nerve and touching on the things someone is already self conscious of, you have done your job :) Welcome to steem

Thank you my one-eyed friend :)

OMG ANOTHER SPIDER

<3

hello !

and that is a wonderful caricature of don draper!!! and your last sentence cracked me up XD

WELCOME TO STEEMIT!!!

oh good you already saw the new spoder, was going to go tell you :)

Oh, let's form a clan :D

I was working on a commission of two Deadwood characters when I saw this and though to myself "Spiros would have had this done right in no time"

Awwww <3

Welcome to Steemit, I hope you will enjoy your time here on this platform :).            
               
Your caricature about Don Draper is pretty accurate, I can definitely tell his characteristics by looking at your picture.        
                 
-upvoted-          
                 

Thank you my friend! Yeah, I think I 'll enjoy this platform :)

  ·  6 years ago (edited)

i like his expression the most, he looks quite self confident :)
though it needs a little more care with the strokes, it is still a nice work
keep it up

Thank you Edanya. Yeah, the piece is minus it's polishing up (in this size it's definitely evident in the brow) but as far as expression is concerened, I 'm quite happy with how it turned out :)

What a beautiful caricature, @spi.der! Very good!

Oh, thank you very much :)


This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.

Great work and style! I love it :)

wow frecken awesome you are very tallented

Thanks!