I’ll start off with a couple commissions.
Commissioned by an author - a portrait of her main character Kerrigan from description. I’ll be doing the other six characters over the course of the next few months.
A 5×12″ segment of a 24×36″ commissioned painting. This is really all that’s complete as of now. Waiting for some layers to dry.
A better shot of the 12×12″ watercolor.
And now on to the critique.
To make life easier, I’m going to name each of these by their position on the clock. So we have Noon up top, Three to the right, Sixie at the bottom, and Eight to the left.
The Good: So there are more differences between the caricatures than I realized at first glance. Three has a hook nose while Sixie has an upturned nose. Eight has thick eyebrows, Noon has no upper lip, and all of their face shapes are somewhat different. In reality, these were probably closer to portraits than caricatures. I also like their position. I actually had them line up before seating them, so their heights in the drawing are relatively accurate to their true height.
The not-so-Good: My style has always been a bit sketchier and a bit looser than some of my coworkers. I really wish I could focus on shapes and simplify. For example, the noses could have all been melded down to different shapes, but instead, they look somewhat alike here because of how I draw my noses. I’m pretty satisfied overall with how I draw mouths, but I could have changed up the sizes and shapes a bit more, and not given them all buck teeth. Face shapes honestly are what bug me the most. They look almost unprofessional. They’re kind of wonky and misguided. I’m only really proud of Three’s head shape, and I think it’s because it looks ideal. I could have simplified into shapes more and been far more satisfied.
The not-so-Ugly: The biggest issue is that this is more portraity. It’s supposed to be a caricature. I should have really hooked that nose on Three, made a pig nose on Sixie, Brought those eyebrows out on Eight and… well honestly, I can’t remember what really stood out about Noon. Maybe made the freckles go off of her face. Sometimes you get people that really have nothing big that stands out about them, but the key is to find the little things and really push them without losing the likeness. I think I got the likenesses… decently, but, from a distance, they look too much alike. Their mouths are all the same width. I know that Eight’s smile was thinner and wider than her three companions. I could have really pushed that.
Overall: It’s not quite as terrible and stamped as I first thought, but it shouldn’t take me really digging in to the image to see the differences. That’s what a caricature does - it brings them out. I should have taken better looks at them together instead of paying attention to their height and tried to simplify their features. I could have pushed the exaggeration a whole lot more. I just didn’t. Tired and seeing a lot of teens isn’t an excuse. I think I just ran through the drawing too fast to see the huge differences. Sometimes I’ll do that on a busy Saturday - and that’s the only day I’ll forgive these. The other six days, I need to be on top of developing my style so that, when Saturday hits, I can still turn out good caricatures, not stamps or portraits.
And that’s all for me today. Take care!
