Sunday Mailbag: What to Start With? (w/Videos!)

Q: When you draw caricatures, do you start with the shape of the head or another feature, i.e. the eye and from there work around it?

A: When I am working in the studio on a caricature I always start with the head shape, then work in the basic shapes of the eyes, nose, and mouth. Then I continue to add more and more details until I have a finished drawing:

When working live, I do the opposite. While I THNK about the overall head shape and how the interior feature shapes fit inside of it, I draw from the inside out, starting with the eyes, then nose, mouth, etc:

Okay, that’s not really a “live” caricature since Einstein has been dead since 1955 and I doubt he sat for many live caricatures even when he was breathing, but that is my basic live caricature process. That video is from 1993, BTW. That’s still TWENTY FIVE YEARS OLD! It’s obviously time lapsed as opposed to speeded up, but you get the idea.

Thanks to Daniel Sowerby 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!