Tom’s Daily Coronacature- Marty Feldman!

Here’s my take on the late, great Marty Feldman.

When I posted the subject this morning, I noted that Marty was an “easy one”. That’s not entirely true. People who have very obvious features to exaggerate are sometimes just as elusive to capture as someone without an obvious “hook” because there’s a tendency to try and exaggerate it all, when you really want to concentrate on what’s most important. It’s a little like skeet shooting. When one target takes off you know to zero in on that one and shoot it cleanly. When 20 targets take off at the same time, if you try to shoot in every direction and get them all you sometimes hit nothing. Even with so many targets, you have to pick a couple and make sure you get them.

Marty’s eyes are the obvious feature to exaggerate, but he also has big nose, a tiny mouth, a very wide forehead. and a pretty substantial jaw. I decided I really wanted to try and capture that tight, compressed lipped expression he often has. I’m sure we’ll see a lot more exaggerated caricatures of Marty today than this one, but emphasizing expression and “presence” is just as important in a good caricature as making the eyes and big as you possibly can.

“Exaggeration for exaggeration’s sake is not the way to accurate caricature. A dedicated caricaturist does more than draw big noses. He reconstructs the head to make all his exaggerations work together, placing in sharpest focus those features he believes best capture the personality.”

– Mort Drucker via Nick Meglin in “The Art of Humorous Illustration”