Live Caricaturing II

Well, another day of live caricatures at Valleyfair. This time I fared a little better in the good drawing department. I did a few decent ones and was starting to the back into the swing of it. No more live work for me in the foreseeable future, as it’s back to a slowing mounting pile of freelance jobs on the drawing board.

Here are a few of the ones that turned out reasonably well today, with comments:

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This is Tim Howe, one of my artists in Minnesota this summer. He came in to get a drawing by me since I never work anymore. I did a small amount of pre-sketching on this one, which is why it is much more balanced than the others.??ᬨ‚Ć

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This couple had some fun features to draw. I squeezed the guy’s cranium in favor of more weight in the jaw, and tried a 3/4 view on the woman because she had a jutting chin.

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These two girls were next. The one on the left Is a good caricature… exaggerated in all the right places and she did that open mouthed smile so the expression was easy to capture. the girl on the right is not so successful. She needed a longer face and square chin.

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I liked this one when I did it but with the benefit of hind site it is pretty weak. She has a rounder, softer face and his lost some of the likeness in attempting to exaggerate his long face. Oh, well….

I was nice to get out there and do some live work for a change, but I’ll be glad to be back in the studio. For one thing, it’s air-conditioned! Secondly, no nasty, sticky-fingered kids asking me for change for the skee-ball machine. Finally, I much prefer to think things out and experiment with a face rather than going with observations on the fly. That said, doing live work really develops your observational muscles and only helps when you do take your time and sketch your way to a final result.