Drawing Caricatures - The Thumbnail Sketch

Art of Caricature

Fundamental Skills(60 Lessons)
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Thumbnail Sketch

Drawing Caricatures - The Thumbnail Sketch

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Drawing Caricatures - The Thumbnail Sketch

193K
Mark as Completed

Assignment

To practice what you learned in this video, gather several photos of a subject that interests you. When doing a Google Image Search, restrict your search to only large images. You’ll get higher quality photos to work from. You can also specify if you want color, black and white, or even restrict your search results to photos of just the face. Then fill up a page or two of loose quick thumbnail sketches, exploring the shapes. Make exaggeration your top priority. Each time you do a new thumbnail sketch; try to design a completely different head shape. This is the stage where you can take big risks. Don’t worry about failing or making every sketch great. If you get even one successful thumbnail sketch out of ten, that is a great accomplishment.

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Newest
Felicitas
This is my first try at caricatures. Pretty hard to wrap my head around exaggerating facial features, as I usualy tend to draw realistically. But that is why I am here in the first place. I am struggeling with capturing the likeliness of a person. So I thought, learning to recognize the features that make a face distinguishable might work best when learning caricature. As my first muses I chose Willem Dafoe and Charles Gray. Are there any rules concerning posting reference fotos?
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Martha Muniz
Hey there! A tip I found for getting down likeness in realism is to take a look at the distribution between the thirds of the face. The loomis head guide divides the face into perfect thirds as a reference, but each person has a different proportion between the landmarks (forehead to brow ridge, brow ridge to nose, nose to chin). Noticing the person's deviation from the average perfect thirds can really help get the likeness into place. There's a video that goes more in-depth into the topic: https://www.proko.com/s/xU4i But focusing on caricature for now, I see you're trying out different face shapes, which is great. You could also focus on a different feature that you think stands out, e.g. a big nose, an angular chin, small eyes, etc. each time to see what you feel takes it into an interesting direction.
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Vue Thao
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Martha Muniz
Very cool! I really enjoy the last two especially--it's very interesting how they seem the total opposites in terms of face shape/weight distribution yet they both have great resemblance to the same person.
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Jesper Axelsson
Hi @Vue Thao, nice work! I'm not an experienced caricaturist, but I took the course back in 2020, so I'll do my best to help. I tried doing a caricature of A1 to see if I would make any different choises. Recently I've been trying to draw with more gesture, thinking of it as a river flowing through the body. I try to follow the approach Glenn Vilppu demonstrates in this Drawing Demo by Glenn Vilppu, at timestamp 21:00 for example. Starting with the flow, then containing it with forms. When I did my version of A1, I focused on the gesture and thought of the mass of the head as a lump of clay, that I would push in the direction I would exaggerate the gesture. From time to time I would, switch to thinking more in shape, to get a fresh perspective, but at the heart of my design was gesture: The chin was being pushed down the chest The nose hanging down The non hairy part at the forehead, diving into the hair area His shoulders pushing up and to the right, and their mass spreading out widely His hair flying up, then diving quietly into the neck I kept going with the same approach on details The eye brow curving up The eye lid curving up The upper lip almost flying The lower lip hanging Wings of the nose large and high, nostrils almost opening up Hope this helps :)
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Vue Thao
I can't join the Caricature group in Facebook because it's on pause mode. Whoever did this, not cool. smh
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Jesper Axelsson
I think it's been paused since its been replaced by the new proko website
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Ana
11mo
Great lesson, thank you so much!
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Howard Embleton
Really helpful.
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@smpalacio2013
Hello everyone, excited to start this journey. Obviously very beginner. All feedback is welcome.
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@minbu0416
like #6 the most.
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Jesper Axelsson
Hi @smpalacio2013, great start! I like how you dared to experiement with extreme head shapes. Nice job! I'm not an experienced caricaturist, I took this course myself 2 years ago, but I'll do my best to help: - To me, it seems like the eyes of the person in the reference are small and close together in relationship to the brows and eye sockets . This is something you might want to try caricaturing. - In all of these you're making the head taller than the avarage head. It would be interesting to see you try the opposite, making it wider than the avarage. I think it could work for a caricature of this person. Hope this helps :) Keep up the good work!
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Ariel Dollopac
Hi Guys, please leave comment on how i could improve catching the essence on my thumbnails. Cheers.
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Ariel Dollopac
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Samuel Lemons
Here is my thumbnail sketch assignment.
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@alanr
After watching Court Jones recent live stream of doing Conan O Brian on Procreate decided to take my own take on Conan. He has ver distinct features which call out to be caricatured. These are some of the studies I been exploring at this stage. I found more success with number 1, 5 and 7 for being able to be loose varied in shape design. Any feedback is most welcome. Thank you
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João Bogo
Very nice studies. They are fast but they communicate an idea and an opinion on the subject. I like the shape design on 3, the exaggeration of hair in 5 and the angle of the head in 1. I think you can try doing more explorations. While you explore well the head shape, I feel that most of the size between features didn't vary much. While his hair is perhaps his more distinctive feature the corners of the jaw and the chin can carry a lot of his likeness, specially when his throwing his head back. It's important to explore and iterate a lot on this phase. Even if you do a lot of versions that don't look right, you'll be more certain of the final decisions you make. Keep drawing and best regards
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Sue Ahn
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@myccal
Hello, I’m a hobbyist and wanted to try my hand at caricature. Here are some thumbnails I was trying of Robert Downey Jr. I’m pretty sure I’m missing the mark. So any input it very welcome. Thanks.
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DoodleMick
Ok, to me, the sketch on the first page, Top Row, Center shows the most likeness to Robert Downey Jr. I think he has a more square’ish forehead, and that’s what your missing in the other sketches.
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@tibonb
Thumbnail sketching done a few weeks ago. First sketch done in graphite, the others done with black pen. Harder to get it correct in terms of anatomy, but maybe easier to try and exaggerate as much as possible. What do you think ? (thanks again for these really interesting videos on caricature, helped me improve a lot !)
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About instructor
Freelance commercial illustrator and caricature entertainer. He’s done a lot of editorial and product illustration and concept work for film and TV.
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