Daily Coronacature- Eugene Levy!

Here’s my take on out first “Daily Coronacature” subject: Eugene Levy! I promised some process stuff:

Every caricature has two elements to it that contribute to exaggerating and capturing the subject. One is the “structural” element, or what I call the “under caricature”. This is the physical nature of the face, meaning the bones, meat and actual physical attributes. That sounds like a “duh” statement… after all what else do you look at when you are are trying to determine what you are going to exaggerate in a caricature?

Quite a lot actually.

The “under caricature” is the stuff that doesn’t change much with expression. Things like strong cheekbones or a big nose, or a long face. These are a kind of constant with a subject that is simply the way their face is put together. Your observations on how to exaggerate these elements has little to do with their “personality”.

The second element is what I call “surface caricature”. This is essentially recognizing and exaggerating what the subject does with their features. The raised eyebrow, and crooked grin, the squinty eye. This is the animation behind the purely physical part. It is what brings all those features to life and makes the meat and bones into a person. I call this “presence”. Your goal as a caricaturist is to identify what truly makes a person unique and exaggerate those elements. That’s not just a big nose or tiny eyes. It’s the expression, the personality, the “presence” behind all of that.

So, when I work out a caricature of someone I always start with the “under cariacture”, identifying the basic structure of the face and deciding how I want to exaggerate it. I do this with the “five shapes” technique I go on and on about in my book, with head shape being the starting point.

Let’s take a look at Eugene Levy:

Eugene has a rectangular shaped head, and it’s longer than it is wide. Most of the length of his face is in the nose, because he has a low hairline and therefore small forehead/top of cranium and a small chin. He also has fairly prominent cheekbones and his head shape is widest in the cheekbone area. It’s unusual to have a long nose AND to have eyes far apart, but he manages both.

Here is my “under caricature”. I keep the shapes I am drawing simple. I am trying to exaggerate the relationships between these shapes at this stage:

There is some expression sneaking in already because I have added some of the “surface” elements in already… the shape of the mouth and the eyebrows are the start of some of the “surface cariucature”

These pictures are of Levy in his role from the TV show “Schitt’s Creek”, so this is a caricature of that character as much (maybe more) than it is of Levy himself. He has a kind of confused, “having a hard time grasping what is going on” look, centered in his eyes and eyebrows, and in the slack, sort of downturned mouth. I’m basing my caricature on the wide eyed expression in the larger picture. That’s why I kept the eyes a little closer together than I might have in a different expression. The eyebrows are an obvious key element. Not only are they big and exceptionally dense/dark, but they curve into and away from the eyes asymmetrically, giving a very quizzical look to his expression. He has an odd shaped mouth with a bottom lip that almost disappears in the center and has more mass to it on the sides. Only his lower teeth are visible in the slight mouth opening, creating a slight “slack jawed” sort of expression. Those are the kinds of things you want to exaggerate on the “surface” side of things.

A fun face but a lot more challenging than it looks at first glance.

Today’s “Daily Coronacature” subject is “Knives Out” star Ana de Armas:

I will post my caricature of her tomorrow morning along with some observations.