Research Caricature:-
Find examples of contemporary caricature and identify the elements of drawing that help with the character recognition and where the caricature takes place. From the information contained in the drawing, how do you know who this person is? How has the illustrator exaggerated or embellished the visual information to provide a caricature? What are the connotations of their exaggerations?
What is caricature?
A picture, description or imitation of a person in which exaggerated characteristics are created to a comic or humorous effect, but the likeness stays the same.
Why is caricature different to portraits?
Caricature is a portrait but some of the features are distorted to a grotesque level to produce satire and humour. Like a larger nose, wearing something silly, props that have meaning, bulging eyes and big ears are all considered to represent caricature elements.
Symbolism is a big notion in caricature, using irony- the difference between how things are and the way they are expected to be, using an object to stand for an idea.
I have made a Pinterest board with some modern caricatures on it to identify what elements make them successful.
Sally field :-
large forehead, large eyes, scrunched up lower face, wide mouth and puffy checks, sweet and cheeky, you can tell its her by her distinguishing features and the rest of her is as she is in real life.
Her forehead is larger and the back of her head is larger than in real life, as well as her mouth, these are the areas where the caricature is aimed.
Pencil drawing – soft
Daniel Craig :-
Protruding eyebrows and mouth, exaggerated laughter lines, a bullet wound to the head, sticky out ears, you can tell who he is by the fact he is dressed as 007, serious and sad looking.
His front face is bigger than the rest of his body, this is where the caricature is aimed.
Background broken glass as though it’s just been shot through.
Julia Roberts :-
A very long neck, nose and chin long and pointy outwards, an exaggerated large wide mouth, very white teeth, smiling and happy, Julia is in her usual glitzy slender dress and has a red carpet look to her.
Here her nose, mouth and chin are the parts that the caricature are aimed
Background sky scrapers.
Ref
Caricature meaning dictionary
[Accessed 09/06/2022]
[Accessed 09/06/2022]
Exercise 4.1 caricature and character
Pick a well known television celebrity or personality who has a public persona on screen that might contrast with their private life or has a particular reputation – for example an aggressive interviewer, a philandering sports person or a vain actor. Your examples don’t have to be negative, but caricature tends to focus on peoples failing rather than their successes.
Produce a character portrait of this personality who has a public personality. Aim to make the portrait recognisable. This can come from both the portray; of the person and by adding in other visual clues. You may want to work from photographic reference material as a starting point.
Then produce a much more satirical caricature of the same person in which you use exaggeration to hint at the other aspects of their personality you know about. Try and maintain a level of recognition, so people know who you are drawing.
I started by looking at some well known caricature artists and picking one to look into further, I chose Thea Brine.
Well known caricature artists :- Gary Brown, Barry Fantoni and Thea Brine.
Thea Brine
Thea Brine is an artist and illustrator from Tunbridge in Kent UK, she specialises in portraits, and drawing people, and has worked for large companies like Glaxo Smith Kline and Aunt Bessies.
Thea has drawn illustrations for newspapers, The Guardian, The Times and The Financial Times, and has exhibited her work in major cities in the UK.
I found Thea’s work, portraits and caricatures more subtle than other artists I have looked at, she creates a really good resemblance to the people she id drawing and sketching. Thea has done a lot of work on character’s on TV like Eastenders and Coronation Street.
I especially like the context of these pieces:-
I like the way she has used collage in this drawing, and using mixed media to portray the characters from the programme. The subtle caricature elements of the piece is very spot on in the way the character comes across on the TV.
Here we have Kat who is very recognisable as her character in Eastenders, they exaggeration of the face she pulls is very on point. Although very subtle and less exaggerated than most caricatures it still reads well. The way she has layered the textures in her pieces is very good, and she has chosen patterns and prints that the characters would wear.
For my celebrity / personality I first thought of Piers Morgan or Richard Madly as they are quite controversial on morning television, but I couldn’t see much of a contrast between them ordinarily at home and how they are on TV, they are like that all the time. So I thought about some different areas of TV, then I thought about music or film actors, then I found a picture on Pinterest of Elton John as he normally is in real life, which is so different from his exuberance when he is singing on in concert. I decided to go with Elton John.
Elton John
Elton John born 25th March 1947 an English singer, pianist and composer, releasing over 31 albums since the 1970’s, and being one of the most well known artists of the age.
Digital sketching
I started with the face shape, then added the hair, eyes and ears, hoping to get some sort of likeness.
I think the mouth is the key to a resemblance here, I can see it looking a bit like Elton now.
I erased the oval for the head in the hair line, then added the glass and went over the lines in a harder line, I think this has some sort of resemblance to Elton John.
Now I need to make this into a caricature, I found a few reference photos of Elton wearing a hat, and some star shaped glasses, which I wanted to include in the caricature as the motifs that make it feel like Elton.
I started with the face shape again with the hat, I can draw the mouth again as it’s quite simple.
I drew a big leather coloured jacket, with a vest underneath, this was something Elton wore a lot of in the 70’s.
The eyes are the hardest part, but luckily Elton wears glasses so thy can be covered slightly by these.
I added the star shaped glasses, drew the nose and thick eyebrows.
Now I needed to make this drawing into a caricature, so I needed to emphasise certain areas. I decided to pick Eltons mouth, as it seems to me that’s quite a identifiable area, and also his star glasses.
I used the layers in procreate to go over and extend the chin and mouth in a different colour.
I then erased the original chin and mouth so you could see the new outline.
Now I’ve done the same with the glasses, made them bigger.
Then I erased the original glasses to show the new size.
I now felt as though the hat and body needed to down size to make the exaggeration of the face and glasses look more emphasised. I also felt as though his mouth and lips which were a unique feature were not quite right and had got lost in the drawing. So I decided to make these a lot thinner, which Eltons are.
I did this all the way through until I got to this point, so each change was made in a different colour. I needed to see the drawing in one colour to identify any other changes I wanted to make.
So I added another layer and went over the drawing in black pencil on the iPad.
You can now see the drawing with the exaggerated chin, mouth and star glasses, I just need to add a frame around the star glasses to make them look proper.
I think he still looks slightly like Elton John, I think the star glasses help to identify him.
I will now colour him in, so I can make him look more light Elton, by using bright colours, and sparkles!
I used the procreate pencil for this colour it has a nice pencil texture.
I felt at this point it wasn’t looking like Elton anymore apart from the glasses, so I added some hair under the hat.
I defined the laughter lines again and added in a tint on the glasses as they were looking flat, I tried to add more textures to this drawing as requested by my tutors feedback from the last section.
To make the caricature look and feel like Elton again, I decided to add some extra elements, so I used the piano and stool to link the caricature with what Elton does, as this was something we have learned in this section, using props to add extra information.
I used a crushed texture for the purple footstool cover so it looked very rich.
This is the finished caricature, I think it does look like Elton, having the extra elements and glasses definitely helps with giving the viewer the information. I am testing the theory out on Instagram to see if people can guess who it is!
Summery
What went well
I think the initial sketches went really well and I surprised myself in getting a likeness early on, I think breaking down the facial features helped, and knowing that the mouth was important helped me to focus on that area to exaggerate.
Using the layers on Procreate helped to exaggerate the areas I wanted and it was easy to expand or reduce the hat and body on the digital software easily, which saved time compared to hand drawing.
I felt using more textures worked in this drawing, especially the reflection brush on the glasses, made them look like glass.
What I would do differently or better next time
I think I worked on some areas of the brief but got lost with the satirical element of the caricature, thinking about it now I could have worked on the drama queen element, or the extravagance of how Elton spend money, I know a good few years back he spent thousands of pounds on flowers, so I could have added loads of flowers in the background. When I come back to this for assessment I do this.
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