Hey. Court Jones here and welcome to the Student Critique Video for lesson 14 on studying the
masters of caricature.
Now in the main lesson I had talked a lot about doing master studies of famous caricaturists
for the purpose of improving your own personal style, so hoping the master artist's style
will influence the look of your own drawings.
But it actually goes beyond that.
I was really hoping the main point of the lesson that you'd get would be that doing
master studies, when it comes to caricature, is a little different than when you study,
you know, a traditional artist.
And when you do caricature studies of artists you admire, what I'm hoping you'll get out
of it is actually helping you to figure out how they exaggerated, what their exaggeration
choices were, how they made these wacky choices be so amazingly successful.
Because if you're like me, you know, you have a certain way of doing things, a certain road
or a path you stay on and you evolve over time slowly, but you sometimes see an artist's
work you just are amazed at what they did and you wonder how they did it.
Well, when you do a study of their work, when you break it down, when you block it in, do
a sketch of it, and then try to finish it to a rendering, you get inside their head
a little bit and hopefully a little bit of what makes them who they are will rub off on you.
Not that you want to be a clone of them or draw exactly like them, but I just want these
master artists to have a good effect on you.
And the more of these studies you do from various artists, the more you'll sort of pick up.
So you don't want to add to their exaggeration, you don't want to distort things or caricature
them even more, you want to just get from them what they put into the drawing and take
that back with you.
You don't want to add your own statement to theirs.
So some artists have a little bit of trouble doing that and some troubles with accuracy.
At the end of the video I'll talk about some of the traits in common people had when they
were doing these studies.
So anyway let's take a look at some work and see what we can find out what people did.
All right, and here we have Danilo Hokama Goveia's, study of Euan Mactavish's, Burt Reynolds.
It looks like Euan's work is on the left here and there wasn't a photo reference posted
with this in the original Facebook post so I just found my own Burt Reynolds' photo just
to give people sense of what he looks like even though it's not the exact same angle.
I see here Euan's original sketch and Euan's painting.
And what you've done is actually do a line drawing, like an ink style drawing of it and
that's fine.
And, in fact, I do encourage people to do more drawn studies of other people's work
rather than attempting paintings before they're ready.
But that said, your ink drawing, your lines are a little stiff, a little bit lifeless
and there are some general problems on the small scale with how you render the features
and the forms.
Some forms are more exaggerated and distorted in your sketch, and some are sort of under
exaggerated, or under indicated, or simplified, I might say, like with Burt Reynolds' eyes here.
So if you take a look at your eye compared to the eye in Euan's drawing it's just a little
bit simplified, and I guess that's perhaps just your style.
But I would try to get a little bit more naturalistic feeling and you can do that with your line
quality and also just the subtlety of the shapes that you draw, just a little bit more...
slightly more complexity to them, not overly complex.
Because, you know, Euan has a style that's...well, he is simplifying the forms quite a bit and
redrawing them in his own language sort of in the style of like the way David O'Keeffe
does where he redesigns more graceful shapes than are in the original sketch or that are
in the original photo reference, I should say.
So think about that too, think about that where you want to put curved lines next to straight lines.
Perhaps is not that clear from my overdrawing just because there's a lot of complex shapes.
But what I'm trying to show you with this is how you render the individual lines and
the strokes that you do, since you're working with ink in a real limited fashion, every
single line you do matters even more than it does in something like the original painting
that Euan did or the original sketch because he has a lot more lines and shadows and half
tons of things to work with.
When you have such a limited line language like this, when you're drawing more like Hirschfeld
does, every line matters and you have to put a lot more thought into what you do because
there's less there for the viewer to latch on to.
So everything that you do is an indication of body type, of the shape of the feature
or if someone's angular or rounded.
All those things are gonna have to be really clear in your line drawing.
Is this a rounded form?
Is this a straight form?
You know, can the lines be designed any more gracefully than what I've done or do they
feel sort of non-committal and haphazard and a little sloppy?
In line drawing, you can't be super sloppy unless that's your particular style you're
working towards, like a jittery line, sort of like the artist John Cuneo or Cuneo, has
a really fun ink style that's almost like done with a trembling hand but it's done consistently
and it's intentional.
It's part of his look and his style.
Where someone like Tom Richmond, has an ink style that's a lot more deliberate and more
controlled lines where there's thick, where there's thin lines, and the lines are very
well designed.
So you want to decide what kind of ink artist you want to be and work towards that and be
more careful about how you lay in your lines.
That being said, I'm not sure if I mentioned you did get a good likeness on him though
and you could tell it's Burt Reynolds.
It's a pretty reasonable approximation of what the original artist did.
Just watch out that you're not exaggerating the forms or distorting them more than the
original.
You know, I can see his...another thing that just jumps out at me right now is his cheek
on the far side on Euan's original drawing is much more of a graceful question mark shape,
you know, sort of a curved shape and you've got these compound lines here where it's sort
of like one, two, three, four, five and it's just sort of broken up and the contours are
exaggerated.
Whereas in reality you want to do something a little bit more graceful and simple leading
in from the cheek down to the chin.
So just little things like that.
It's just about subtlety, it's about, you know, paying attention to those smaller details.
Because they're small in their details but they add up and they multiply on one another
to create, overall, an effect that drifts away further and further from the original that
you're trying to replicate.
Here's another study that Danilo did of Mactavish, sketch of John Dillinger.
Good likeness. Again, you're doing that sort of stiff ink drawing style and, you know, I do kind of
like the way this one's going. This feels a little bit more deliberate than the Burt Reynolds.
The lines feel more controlled like you have more of a vision for what you're trying to achieve.
Mactavish's original sketch is a little bit more organic, more sketchy and yours is reduced
to just simple lines and that's totally okay.
But just, like I said, with the other Burt Reynolds sketch you have to really pay attention
to the quality of each line where it's thin, where it's thick, where it's straight, where
it's curved. It's a challenging way to work, you know, if you're not just
doing a pencil sketch replication of someone's work but actually redesigning them into your
own brand of inking, that's sort of a...it's a tough task you're giving yourself.
If that wasn't your intention, if you weren't trying to redefine this Mactavish caricature
into your own visual language if that's just the way you work, maybe think, you know, about
going back to a pencil look where you're drawing more organically and more sketchy the way
the original artist did and try to replicate that as best you can.
But that's just, you know, just a suggestion it's not really necessary to the exercise.
I think you overall did a really good job and captured the look of the original sketch
and got the likeness.
It's just, you know, I don't see all the same kind of structure because you're using different
visual language than the original artist did so I don't see the half tones or...you know,
you got some of the half tones indicated with cross-hatching lines but then there are other
places where like, you know on the left side of the face you have cross-hatch shading on
your sketch.
But on the right side you're missing that cross-hatching because, you know, the artist
didn't do it in the original but there is sort of a painted half tone in there that
you could be using your own ink lines to define those plane changes and you're not, so it feels
a little incomplete maybe in that respect on your study.
And here, Danilo went the extra step and actually created a new original caricature in the style
of Euan Mactavish using the lessons he learned from doing those studies to create his own original.
And that's great, this is the complete assignment that I was hoping everyone would do.
Now it suffers from that same problem though, that I mentioned earlier with you translating
a likeness into simple ink lines.
And I have a lot of experience doing live quick sketch caricatures, which is what this
is similar to as far as the level of completion, where it's just bold black outlines.
And you have some wrinkles and a few other details in there that I maybe wouldn't do
in quick sketch, but it's hard to tell if you are actually creating Euan's style in
this ink drawing way.
You may, like I said, want to explore pencil sketching and rough sketching rather than
doing a ink style drawing.
So with that being said, pretty reasonably good likeness of Mr. Hong.
This is character actor James Hong, been in a lot of movies, funny guy, a really good look too.
And overall, he did a good job.
It's just that I think some of the features could use a little bit of work like the nose
and the eyes, don't quite feel like this actor's nose and eyes.
It might be because you're just reducing the forms into really simple almost abstract lines
and it could use a little bit more description, a little bit more shading, a little bit more
cross-hatching, that might help.
But the eyes, especially, I think, are lacking sort of the quality of the original
actor's shapes.
If I were to do a quick tracing, you know, I could show you what I mean.
So I see Mr. Hong's eye on the right is more open than the one on the left, it has a more
graceful curving arc whereas you made it sort of squared off.
And you're also missing the quality of his epicanthic fold, it doesn't quite look like his eyelid.
And if you're going to do the winkles from the eyes
his wrinkles aren't very prominent in this photo because of the lighting.
But I would connect them to the corners of the eyes rather than having the wrinkles just
floating out in space.
That's sort of a design choice but it makes it look a little bit more intentional rather
than just having them sort of randomly floating in the middle of the form.
You can see almost all of the pupil and iris because opening he's opening his eye quite a bit.
And then because he is raising...his eye's open because he's raising that eyebrow in
the right and you can raise your eyebrow a little bit higher too in your original sketch.
He has a pretty thinly spaced hairs on his eyebrows, they are not very heavy.
Just keep that in mind too, that you're trying to capture the quality of this person's features
and not just their shape and placement but how they're actually...how they're specific
to him.
Because of the lighting...the lighting is coming from the right there's more of a shadow
on the left here.
If you are working with lines here, if you don't want to do too much actual, you know,
shading and keep it simple just think about how you would represent that lighting
with the simple ink style.
Personally, I would actually drop down the nose a little bit more.
I mean, I like the long philtrum you gave him, the long upper lip and we have to lower
the lower face to make that still work with a longer nose.
I just feel like you gave him too short of a nose for his facial type.
I think a longer nose is in order.
But that's just me, that's my own personal opinion on the exaggeration, doesn't mean
I'm right and that's the only way to do it.
I'm just reacting to what I see here in this particular situation.
So I'm not gonna redraw the whole face just a little portion here, just some of the problem
areas I was seeing.
Just keep that in mind when you're doing your own drawings.
Once you've got the big shapes figured out, the placement of everything, then you have to focus on the
quality of each feature and how each one is rendered, where the thin lines are, where
the thick lines are.
And then the shape of each feature, where the high point is of that eyelid, where the
low point is, you know, how much of the iris or the pupil can you see, what it's the quality
of the eyebrows, all those things I went over.
It's really important in caricature to get those things figured out especially when you're
using such a simple visual language like this pen and ink style because you have so few
lines to describe, to tell the viewer who this is, and what their physicality is like.
Also one more thing, I wanted to go over a list of several other caricature artists who
we didn't get a chance to study in the main lesson or in the premium videos, but they
definitely deserve your attention or a look if you don't know who they are.
I wanted to expose you to some new artists that you might find inspiring as well.
Someone you could take a look at is John Kascht, did a lot of illustration work over the years.
He has a really graceful, beautiful watercolor style.
And then there's Dan Adel, who's an illustrator and portrait artist who, he doesn't exaggerate
a whole lot but his editorial work, the bodies and situations that he does with his caricatures
are just phenomenal and tell a great story.
He's really inspiring to look at.
Mort Drucker, the legendary "MAD" magazine artist who really started it all and was the
inspiration for a lot of us.
You definitely need to be familiar with Mort's work.
Jason Seiler, probably one of the best caricature illustrators working today.
His paintings, his portraits, his illustrations are all really great to look at.
A really nice guy and you'll appreciate his work.
I'm sure you all know it already.
Bruce Stark, is more of a classic character illustrator guy from back in the day and he
has a lot of great stuff that has a sort of a "MAD" magazine feeling but really inspiring
watercolors. Just take a look at his work, you won't regret it.
Dominic Philibert, is another artist an illustrator whose work is just amazing, just tremendous
exaggerations and his paintings are so realistic while at the same time being expressive and
highly exaggerated.
Tom Fluharty, is another caricature illustrator you should take a look at.
His paintings are just phenomenal, his drawings and sketches will just blow your mind and
really fun stuff.
David Cowles or Cowles, not really quite sure how to say his last name, more of an abstract
caricature artist, but there's a lot that you can learn from the abstract artists even
if you're not working on that particular style.
It's actually a lot harder in many ways than doing traditional drawings.
So definitely take a look at David's work for some inspiration.
Herman Mejia, is another artist whose work you should check out.
His water colors are great, and he even does...has done some sculpted caricatures that are just
phenomenal.
Steve Brodner, is another artist you should look at, does a lot of political editorial
caricatures, with a really unique visual language that he puts into his work and they're very
simple and just so so effective.
Jota Leal, is a caricature fine artist whose work I think was originally inspired a lot
by Kruger, but now he's really gone off and done his own thing and his caricatures are
just super unique, and really really inspiring to look at.
John Cuneo or Cuneo, I love his work.
He does a lot of pen and ink and watercolor work that has just such a particular and unique
style that's a little messy, a little sketchy, but that's what I really like about that.
He does that sloppy sort of style really well.
Then there's Xi Ding, who's a Chinese born caricaturist living in Austria whose paintings
are just phenomenal.
He does a range of styles but more lately he's been getting into doing simplified anime
or animation style caricatures.
But his lighting and the techniques he uses to build his paintings are really something
to check out.
And then there's of course historical caricature artists, artists who aren't around anymore
like Al Hirschfeld, who was sort of the main caricaturist of the 20th century.
His simple really just elegant line work was the inspiration for a lot of artists getting
into caricature.
And going back a little further there was a French artist Daumier, who did a lot of
editorial work back in the, I think it was in the 1900s or 19th century and did a lot
of sculpted caricatures too of different character types and they're just so fun and really cool.
And then there's the famous French impressionist Claude Monet, who in his early days did caricatures
for money on the side, I guess, but he was really good at them.
Kind of wish he'd actually stuck more with caricature, he could have gone really far with that.
So there's a lot more that I'm not mentioning that I've probably forgotten.
And forgive me if there's artists you like that I didn't bring up, but that's just a
few that I think you should check out if you don't know, you should really know their work
because they're true modern masters of caricature.
So that's just a quick taste, a sampling of what the premium students get.
In the premium version of this critique video, I go over a lot more students' works
where they study master caricatures. Some of the problems I noticed
in common with the students doing these studies is that the drawing wasn't done carefully enough.
That they seemed to maybe rush through that to get to the painting or to get to the inking or whatever
the finished medium was. And there were inaccuracies and distortions
or just outright exaggerations on top of the original caricature.
And for this exercise, I want you to think of it more like a portrait exercise
where you're trying to capture exactly what the reference material is.
It's just that in this case the reference material is someone's caricature.
I just don't want you to add to it or distort it accidentally.
What you're supposed to do with these is figure out what the original artist was thinking,
how they made their exaggeration choices.
And by going through the same motions, by drawing those shapes yourself, hopefully
some of that intuition will be absorbed by you so that you can
regurgitate that... incorporate some of that into your own original caricature work.
Thanks for joining me. Thanks for watching.
And thanks for everybody for submitting their master studies.
It's pretty challenging and most of you did a really good job.
The drawing really is what matters, it's all about drawing.
Really with every lesson that should be the main point, is drawing, but this one especially too.
Because accuracy is really a concern when doing master studies.
But I hope you had fun with it and I'll see you next time.