Good day all! Short and sweet today. Today's caricature - actually a series of three - is of actor John Goodman. You'll see we started today with a realistic rendering, then a slightly exaggerated picture, then finishing with a second even more exaggerated px, (the one with the "3" close by).

Actually, it's this third drawing that works the best of the three. Eyes that are too open lose their intensity in a smile - and that's one of the features that doesn't really work in the first two pictures. You want that lower lid to arch up some, obliterating a chunk of the lower iris in a smile (iris: the colored circular part of the eye).

We'll go into more detail about what makes the picture work/not work in the final exaggeration in two weeks. I'll say this though, Mr. Goodman is as fun to draw as anyone - with his big cheeks and friendly eyes. Specifically, things that stand out about his face:

-a deceptively thin upper lip, (actually it's there, it's just rolled a little out of sight under the apron of the upper lip - which is what happens to us all as we age: gravity works it's wonders);

-a nose that wants to dip low at it's tip, (more easily exaggerated by keeping the nostrils high),

-a slightly asymmetric mouth (the left side of his lip - as you view him - dips a little lower than the right),

-a large chin that's buried in his "double chin"

-The thinnest part of his head is at the level of his eyes (so if you wanted to you could run with an "X" type exaggeration. (B "X exaggeration" I mean this: picture his eyes at the criss-cross point of the "X" and amplify everything above and below that point);

-His big cheeks belie a large underlying jaw - so just blowing up his big cheeks isn't going to work unless you build them around a strong jaw. How do you do that? I think I started getting close to doing that in drawing 3.

-A full head of hair. Incidentally, I saw Mr. Goodman in the Cohen Brothers latest film "Brother, Where Art Thou?" this past Monday - didn't even know he was in it. I had planned to draw Mr. Goodman before I went so I was making mental notes every time he popped up on screen. What luck, eh?

Here's the link to the original picture I drew from:

http://www.viewimages.com/viewimage/?imageid=NM023248
&partnerid=2&promotionid=1

Or go to Alta Vista, click on "images", and type in "John Goodman" and you'll get all the same pictures I worked from:

http://www.altavista.com/

I've also included a couple other links:

http://www.fansofjohngoodman.com/main.html

http://store.corbis.com/prodconfig/image_details.asp?navid=
top25&imageid=11328689

(make sure you copy and paste that whole line into your browsers address line- even if it's not underlined in blue in your email - in order to get to the correct link.)

You can see what I mean about the nose dipping down in this picture:

http://store.corbis.com/prodconfig/image_details.asp?navid=
top25&imageid=11328686

Have a great week all, and keep on drawing!

Warmly,

Jeff

PS - here's the picture: