Developing Your Style by Studying the Masters
Assignments
Your assignment is to choose a caricature by another artist you admire and do a study of it, focusing on copying the shapes and values as best you can. It’s not important to use the same materials the artist did. If the original is a painting or a sculpture, you can still use pencil or charcoal to do the study. The important takeaway from this exercise is in studying how that artist exaggerated his or her shapes and to a lesser extent, how they rendered the forms. And if you are able to find the original photo reference they used, that can help give you some additional perspective into the artist’s decisions as well.
One of the most time-honored methods of art training throughout history has been studying and copying the works of the Masters.
A lot of students have questions about developing their own style in the art of caricature. It’s my belief that your own individual artistic style is mostly a result of your instructors, your artistic influences and, to a lesser extent, the mediums you work in. Today, we’re going to focus on your artistic influences. Now, it’s one thing to just look at art you like and hope it rubs off on you, but it’s another thing entirely to get a pencil or brush out and actually try to make a copy of it. When you make a copy – or a study – of another artist’s caricature, you end up feeling what it’s like to move your hand the same way the original artist did.
There are lots of artists I admire and look up to for inspiration – from both the caricature world and the more traditional schools of art. You shouldn’t only look at and do studies of just one artist’s caricatures, or there’s a danger of becoming a clone of that one artist. Study and copy from several artists so that you absorb the best qualities of each.
In the premium course, I demonstrate making copies of several artists’ caricatures. But in this main lesson, I will be studying a painting done by the original Karikatur Kaiser, the Grand Master himself, Sebastian Krüger!

Let’s Steal Some Mojo

I begin by finding the biggest shapes first, which is the silhouette of the head and hat. I don’t draw the exact outlines, but a simple abstract shape that encompasses the entire subject without any details. Keeping it to this level of simplicity makes it easier for me to judge the overall height and width of the original. Once that is in place, I start dividing it up by finding the next biggest shapes of the hat, hair and profile. Remember, starting with big blocky abstract shapes first is the best way to make sure the proportions will be accurate without spending time working on any details. And accuracy is everything in a master’s study. You don’t want to distort or exaggerate the shapes further. You’re doing master studies to understand their drawing choices.
Now, I divide up the inside shapes like the hair, jawline, and collar, which are the next biggest shapes. In your own drawings, I hope you take the same approach of blocking in the biggest shapes first and then working your way down to smaller and smaller shapes and forms. To make an accurate copy, or to draw anything accurately, it helps to have a process – an order in which you do things. Don’t just jump around different areas of the face, drawing elements randomly. As you continue, you will be able to accurately measure and place more of the features.

And now, fairly confident that my outer contours and inner shapes of the face are accurate, I finally commit to those decisions with darker lines. As I darken my lines, I’m thinking more consciously about my calligraphy, or the quality of my lines. Some lines are thin and crisp while some are soft and more diffuse. Krüger’s painting is my constant point of reference for those decisions. His painting is in color, but I have to ignore the colors and just focus on the values of those colors and the edges between his shapes.

However, I still have to keep focused on what I’m doing and not get ahead of myself, because the values need to be judged and placed accurately. As general rule, when working in charcoal, like I am now, I like to build up to my darkest darks. If I go too dark too soon, it’s really hard to erase an area with heavy charcoal applied if I need to show some reflected light in the shadow area, for instance. It’s easier to show reflected light in the shadows, like on the back of Wagner’s neck, if I keep that value a bit lighter initially, then add the darkest darks in the areas around it. If it’s still too light, I can always darken it with another pass of the charcoal pencil. But it’s much harder to lighten it with the eraser if I decide it’s too dark later on. If pressing too hard, the eraser creates a smudged area and damages the grain of the paper so that it looks different from the rest of the drawing.
Creating the texture of the hair and beard is a little tricky. It requires a bit more patience than the rest of the forms because it involves leaving some thin strands lighter while darkening others. And at the same time, I try to keep an eye on the overall effect of the values. Don’t fall into the trap of rendering each individual hair at the expense of the big picture. If an area of hair is in the shadow, all of that hair must stay below a certain dark value. I find it’s helpful to stay leaned back in my chair, far away from the drawing while working on details. Our instinct is to move in close. But that can make you myopic, which means that you focus on the tiny thing at the center of your vision, while ignoring everything around it.
As I approach the end of this exercise, I can see areas where I distorted the shapes and proportions just a little bit.

And of course not every line and strand of hair is in the same place. But that’s going to happen. And it’s okay. We’re not trying to create an exact forgery here. The point of this lesson is not to be a copying machine, but to try to capture the spirit and quality of the original artist’s work so that you can understand what the artist did and even perhaps take some of what you learned into your own caricature work.
And he still runs yearly caricature workshops every fall in Germany you can attend called the Krüger Masterclass. This painting of Wagner was actually done as a live demo in one of his previous Masterclass workshops. To check out his work and find out about his workshop, visit his website.

Premium Content
In the premium version of this course, you can watch several more videos where I do studies of other Master Caricature Artists’ works, including Jan Opdebeeck, David O’Keefe and others, all while explaining my own thoughts on the process. Get access to lots more example videos, longer versions of the lessons and other bonus content when you get the premium caricature course.
Critiques
Instructor critiques are a crucial part of an artist’s education. For a chance at having your caricature Master studies included in an upcoming critique video, post the original Master caricature, your copy of the Master caricature and the photo reference, if you have it, to the Caricature Proko Facebook group. Or email your submission to submit@proko.com
Assignments
Your assignment is to choose a caricature by another artist you admire and do a study of it, focusing on copying the shapes and values as best you can. It’s not important to use the same materials the artist did. If the original is a painting or a sculpture, you can still use pencil or charcoal to do the study. The important takeaway from this exercise is in studying how that artist exaggerated his or her shapes and to a lesser extent, how they rendered the forms. And if you are able to find the original photo reference they used, that can help give you some additional perspective into the artist’s decisions as well.
Filed in: Caricature • Videos