26 November 1999 ******************************************************************* YouCanDraw.com's Insiders Communique ******************************************************************* In this issue: 1) Political cartoons and caricatures 2) A Fun little cartoon site 3) Feature by Feature Mini-series ------------------------------------------------------------------ Hope all of you stateside had a wonderful Thanksgiving! And from all of us here in the US, we wish the rest of the world a Happy Thanks- giving too. 1) Political Cartoons One way caricaturist's make money (besides the party, nightclub, Bar Mitzvah circuit) is political cartooning. Not only can you get paid, but you can influence people. That's powerful stuff. I've included a few sites that grabbed my attention - comparing a couple versions of Hillary and Bill. One in almost pure cartoon format, the other more "realistic". Here's the cartoon-like caricature of Hillary and Bill (Hillary is captured in a bare minimum of lines) http://www.impolitic.com/add_cart.cfm?item_id=155 And here's a great example of a more "caricatured/realistic" Bill and Hillary. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger version - 95k). Bill's nose is amazing in this picture. http://www.impolitic.com/genn.htm Here's the HomePage for Impolitic.com - great site: http://www.impolitic.com/ For photos to caricature: Evote.com. A great site for political candidates and "player" photos: http://www.evote.com/ Looking at these cartoons it's easy to tell there's no strict line differentiating cartoons and caricatures. There are lots of other links here you can "link out" to from these pages too. Lots of great political photos to work from - and they're current too. Contains links to all the candidates home sites. (It was a chance for me to catch up on all the new candidates and their platforms - however nebulous their "platform" might be.) 2) Walking the line between realism and cartoon For contrast, check this out: a whole site full of great cartoons. You can examine these to see how facial features are "abstracted" in cartoon format: http://store.yahoo.com/cartooncafe/freeart.html 3) Feature by feature drawing assignment And last, but not least, for those of you who are following the "Feature by feature" one feature at a time mini-series here's an attached "minimalized" nose to practice drawing. It contains the three main wedges of the nose. Try drawing it 15 to 30 minutes until you've almost got it memorized. Try to do at least 2 sessions (hopefully 3 or more) in the next week to "burn" it into your brain. I've included the link to the nose chapter if youget real motivated and want to dive headlong into doing noses: http://ycdinsiders.digitalchainsaw.com/InsidersArtistLoft/noses.htm Until next week, keep on drawing and have a blessed holiday season. Warmly, Jeff