Sunday Mailbag

Q: How about an article or two about how to caricature? I’m a cartoonist, but I’ve never been able to caricature well… I’d love to hear some of your tricks and tips. Thanks for the great blog!

A: Your welcome and thanks for the compliment.

I’ve been in the process of doing a book on drawing caricatures for a long time now, but I keep changing my mind whether I want it to be a ‘how to’ on drawing live caricatures, an overall thesis on caricaturing in general, or a combination of both. I’m afraid the combo would be confusing, as learning the art of live caricature has a lot to do with the “surface” aspects of the art (i.e. the mechanics and execution of the drawing) while caricaturing itself is much more about the “underneath” elements like exaggeration, structure and balance. I haven’t figured it out yet.

That said, I will have a series of caricature tutorials on the blog sometime. I don’t know how soon, but it will happen. The blog itself is enough of a time consumer when many of my posts are just “look at this” or brief articles on whatever… the tutorials take a lot of time and energy that I don’t often have to spare.

I guess the bottom line is: expect it to happen but prepare for a possibly long, patient wait.

Thanks to Steven Stwalley for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!