I work at a caricature stand and draw funny pictures of people. They usually take 5 minutes per face... anyway I thought I'd post a caricature of my own face. Self-portrait. Why not? I see it every day in the mirror, so I've got it memorized for the most part. I did this tonight at work (trying to divert myself from the incident of earlier today... see previous post), on a whim. I'm still not good at filling in hair.
8 months ago, I knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about drawing caricatures. That is until I stopped in one day last summer and talked to the owner, Jim, and got hired soon thereafter. Of course, I still knew NADA. But Jim taught me the basics of observation, picking out distinguishable features, getting likenesses, etc. I'm still not all that good, but I know I've improved over time. I should find my first caricatures I ever drew, and post them up here. Atrocious!!!
We basically draw up the quick caricatures with graphite and then color them with airbrush. AIRBRUSH - I never even touched one before I started working there either. I should ALSO try to find my first airbrush tests and scan them for you guys to see. They're pretty gruesome. I'm pretty comfortable with it now, but still have a bit of frustration with the tight spots.
Caricatures - it's a great skill to have if you can draw. I've seen plenty of other blogs with caricature examples, and some of them are extremely good, others... embarrassing. But it takes practice, like anything else. I mean, I make freakin' money by drawing people! That's pretty good, right? Of course those slow days with ZERO customers can be a bummer, but busy weekends usually make up for that!
When I finally get some DECENT celebrity examples made up, I'll certainly post them here.
2 comments:
Here I got used to visualizing you as that 1930s era cow that you use as your avatar. You did yourself a disservice. First of all, drawing carictures takes a certain skill that, as you say, not everyone has, and it's one that has to make people still feel good about themselves, even after you've overemphasized certain features of theirs. Second, I saw your photo over on your wife's page, and you're much better looking than you drew yourself.
See you in the funny pages.
Well I'm keeping that avatar - it's a much better respresentation of me anyway, if that makes sense? :-)
You're right - I never wish to offend people sitting in the chair when I draw them. Even now, I don't draw caricatures as extreme as some of the masters do - my drawings actually end up looking like cartoon versions of the people, minus the over-emphasis. Which is good in some ways, bad if a particular person is wanting a crazy drawing of themselves.
It also depends on the person - if you just get an 'average-looking' person with no real distinguishable features, there's no fun in drawing them. But you get the guy/girl with the huge ears or the thick glasses, you can usually emphasize that one key feature and the rest of the drawing just falls into place.
As for the one I posted here, I make fun of myself, and it's self-amusement. Hopefully when I start posting some celeb caricatures on here, I can showcase some better likenesses and styles/mediums.
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