There's definitely a recognizable likeness there. But when I look closely, the features and even the forms themselves are vaguely indicated and a bit sloppy. It seems the expressiveness of the bold brushstrokes overwhelmed any attempt at indicating three dimensional forms. And that's okay. It can be a style choice to work that way. But if it were me, I would focus more on explaining the forms and planes of the face through careful application of the paint. Be more aware of your edge quality. And most of all - the actual drawing. For example, make sure the eyes are "his" eyes. And not just general symbols for eyes.

Thanks, Lasse!

I don't think I know how to answer that question. Caricature covers a wide spectrum of exaggeration levels and styles of rendering. That's not something which can be sectioned up and counted.

That's a pretty successful caricature. Good likeness and nice exaggeration. I'm sure most of us know what the actor looks like, but it's always best to post your photo reference next to your artwork so people can make more informed comments and refer to specific parts of the anatomy.

Haha. Do you? It's probably pretty rough.

You could certainly do it that way. It's probably easiest to do a tracing on thin paper or over a light box if using heavier paper. You could also just draw the final drawing on the same paper as the abstraction if you drew the rhythm lines light enough to erase.

It's easy to get tripped up thinking a lot about what the average face is. But don't put too much stress on it. It's not so much a scientific anatomical principle but rather a personal psychological construct. I think it's true, that, in general, most adult peoples' heads tend to follow the rule of thirds on the face (equal spacing from hairline to brow, brow to bottom of the nose, bottom of nose to the chin) and some other common qualities like the distance between the eyes being one eye width apart. And you can rely on a few of those big picture concepts when thinking about what to exaggerate. But what is more important than the "average head" diagram is your own personal gut feeling about what average means to you. For me, the average face is the average sum of all the faces I've ever drawn. I started as a live theme park and party artist and have drawn a hundred thousand people or more. So I have a pretty big reservoir to draw upon. The more faces you draw, the better your internal library of faces will become that you can base your exaggeration choices on.

Your abstraction lines are pretty solid. However, I don't know what your original sketch looked like before the abstraction. That's an important part of the process because it would tell me how well you used the abstraction to "fix" the original drawing. The construction of the Reilly head feels a little off. So perhaps you simply traced the rhythm lines over your original drawing, just reinforcing the inconsistent structure. The abstraction step is supposed to help you recreate the drawing in a simplistic way that allows you to find and fix minor perspective or construction misalignments. Again, I'm not sure if that was the case here, since there is no original drawing posted. Your final caricature turned out pretty good though. Good likeness. The mustache is kind of distracting though because it's floating in between his mouth and nose. I would move it closer to the mouth. Also, the mustache doesn't seem to follow the forms of the upper lip. The right side of his mouth is upturned so the mustache shape should be turned up on that side as well.

That's a great first piece doing digital paint sketching. But something to think about would be your values, first and foremost. It feels pretty low contrast right now and therefore not as three-dimensional and solid as it could be. It almost looks like a pastel drawing. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a valid style choice. Perhaps choose a more simple subject for future exercises. Just stick to heads and shoulders for now and focus on sculpting the forms with light and shadow. And stick with black and white paintings for now and don't worry about color until you have more control of working with pure value.

Hi Renee. I've done a little bit of people and pet portraiture. It's not my main thing. But some. Of course the first thing is making sure your skills and style are in a good place so that you have consistent style samples to show clients or put on a website. Also, work out a pricing structure that you stick to based on things like size, subject matter, media and so on. Maybe keep prices low in the beginning to help build your portfolio and gain confidence. If you don't have a lot of samples done in a consistent style yet, you'll want to do some practice pieces for friends and family. Regarding style, I find it's helpful to find inspiration in the work of others and maybe even do a few studies of their work.

The short answer - lots of practice. When I try to do extreme exaggerations, I try to make sure that no matter how large, small, stretched or compressed I make the various features, I still try to draw that person's features accurately. So, it's okay to make the eyes or nose massive. Just make sure that you are drawing their specific eyes or nose and not just general shapes or symbols representing the concept of an eye or a nose.

I love Rick and Morty! I have actually done a couple of realistic cartoon character interpretations in the past. I did a live stream about it last year. https://youtu.be/7jTUngpWIi8

To practice rendering techniques, I find it's best to keep the subject matter very simple. Spheres, cylinders, cones or really simple objects like eggs. You can gain all that you need to know by practicing on simple objects, even if they might be kind of boring to study.

Hi Tariq. Really nice! I like the style on Dwight and Stallone in particular. Almost looks like a finished illustration style. It seems like you had trouble with Tom Holland's likeness, just as I did in the stream! Also the caricature of Cynthia Erivo doesn't seem to have a strong likeness. One the caricatures you have trouble with the likeness, I would say to focus less on the exaggeration for now and just draw closer to portrait. And once you have a successful likeness, then try to caricature that successful sketch.

Sorry I didn't see this sooner. I would say that the rendering needs a bit more work The halftones look flat, especially in the forehead. The structure of the face is overly rounded, especially the lower half of the face. Find ways to add more straight edges. And yeah the ear is definitely not structured correctly. Be sure to add ear anatomy to your list of things to study. They're actually pretty simple to memorize. But most importantly, I'm afraid that I don't see a very strong likeness in here. I don't know your dad as well as you do. But judging from the photo, it doesn't seem to look like him. You changed the shape of his smile too much so that it doesn't look like his smile. And the shapes of the eyes and nose just don't look like the eyes and nose of the person in the photo. If you haven't done this already, be sure to flip your painting to look at it backwards and you will also notice some bad symmetry in the structure of the head. Caricatures don't always need to be symmetrical. But in this case, it throws off the balance of the head. I hope this doesn't sound too harsh. I can see you have a good hand for painting. You just need to focus on the structure and likeness before moving on to the painting stage.

Wow, really nice thumbnail sketches. They're all really different from each other. I would say that four of them could definitely be developed into nice caricature likenesses. The one on the upper left corner is probably the least successful. But the other four are very inspiring.

I love the head shapes you came up with. Great variety! And that is the biggest takeaway I want people to get from this lesson. At this stage, simply explore the widest variety of shapes that you can. Even if most of them are unsuccessful, that's okay. The point is not to get ten great sketches. It's to get just one decent sketch with some potential. And then use that one to develop into a rough sketch at the next phase.

The pencils were regular Staedtler brand. The charcoal pencils are Conte a Paris. Bic ball point pen. The brush pen was, Faber Castell. Maybe Pigma. I'm not sure. The greyscale markers look like Blick Store brand. But Prismacolor greyscale markers are great too.