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September 29th,
2001 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Your YouCanDraw.com every other week caricature |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Hi all, Well I got back on the horse so to speak this week. I chose a fairly neutral subject to draw: country singer / songwriter and hell raiser Billie Joe Shaver. Frankly I never heard of him before - discovered him while paging through Tower Record's "Pulse" music industry magazine. (page 48-50 in the June 2001 issue. I've included a scanned photo of the original (by Jim Herrington), but I can't include the picture in the permanent archives: that would be copyright infringement. (In fact I'm coming pretty close to that right now including the original :-) Here's a link to Pulse again: http://pulse.towerrecords.com/ And here's a link to Pulse's online index of artists - it's a fantastic source: http://pulse.towerrecords.com/artistIndex.asp?index=A What I think is notable about Mr. Shaver's face I'm shootin' from the hip here, but this is what grabbed me - and I'll avoid any drawn out description: the hair. Billie's got a frock of white, fine slightly foofed- up hair and a goodly amount of it too! Note how far down the forehead his hair wants to march (at least in the "original" picture - see the attached picture that ends with "...\billie-original-rdy.jpg" or see the link at the bottom of this page). In comparison to the cheekbones and hair, the forehead seems narrow. Shrinking it and amplifying the mass of the hair would/could really add to the overall caricature effect. The eyes are dark and deep set with the brows riding right on top of upper lid (which is really much more deeply recessed then the bony brow). The nose touches on a pug look - with the narrow and straight bridge and middle "diamond" (the middle diamond" is the central geometric shape you can see between the "root" of the nose - where the nose pops out of the forehead - and the bulbous tip.) The tip of his nose seems to come to a fine point resting on a nasal base that's almost arrow shaped. (Remember, these are things that I think are caricaturable. also remember the nasal base is the part of the nose just above the upper lip.) He's got a really well defined "philtrum" - that little canal between the base of the nose and the upper lip. It's got subtle shadowing too. Which leads us to the narrow upper lip. Narrow in both height and in breadth. Don't miss those long lines that run down alongside both the cheeks (the naso-labial folds) and the corners of the mouth. These are mainly shadow shapes rather than lines. Look at the caricature to see how they were handled with cross-hatched ink technical pen. Squint your eyes to collapse "too much detail" into more manageable shapes. Lastly the chin is square with a good dimple. And speaking of shadow shapes, notice that almost half the chin (the lower half), is shadowed. There's no real strong highlight in this picture: thought the light seems to be coming strongest from the upper left - his right. And very very lastly, note the overall shape of the head: from chin to top of all that hair I see something of a "v" shape. How about you? Link to Mr. Shaver And here's a link to Billie Joe Shaver - and you know what? I'm adding this as an afterthought and the same picture I sent is right there at the web site! So you get double reinforcement. What a deal. :-) http://pulse.towerrecords.com/contentStory.asp?contentId=393&artistId=305 So that's it for today. Hope you're well and at least getting a little drawing time back in. Take care, talk you soon, Jeff
Executive Director (310) 676-2998 4702-C West 130th Street Los Angeles CA, 90250 http://www.YouCanDraw.com "Once and for all getting you drawing faces and caricatures" mailto:comments@youcandraw.com
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