November 20th, 2002 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Your November 20th, 2002 YouCanDraw.com Caricature |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Howdy all, today's caricature is of Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge. I saw Mr. Ridge on CNN the other night and I couldn't but help but notice the literal wedge of hair and the deep "v" of his hair line in the middle of his forehead (I forget what that deep dip of hair line is called). What hit me as caricaturable in Mr. Ridge were the following: 1) Firstly, that big Cool Whip tuft of hair in the front, the scrubbed and groomed look of the hair - and of him (he's a cross between politician and military man, or maybe stuck there. I remember my military days where I prized that little tuft of hair in the front - easy to keep hid under my hat while the hair at the nape of the neck roils right down to a stubble). So I played with that a little. 2) He's got a strong forehead - even if it's not that Hollywood High forehead look with very squared-out male-pattern balding at the "corners above the ears. 3) He's got the Spartan Viking nose where all the lowest edges of nares, nostrils, and point of nose come to a "flat" in the same plane just above the apron of the upper lip. (Some people have a very obvious slope from the tip of the nose down, out and back to the corners of the nostrils). Which is why it was easy to make the back bone of the nose almost vertical - right up to where it appears out of his very bony brow. 4) The strong eye brows and slightly smaller than real eyes make for a more intense gaze (though I'm not sure if I captures that so well). 5) Speaking of the apron of the upper lip, making it proportionately larger than real only makes the already small mouth and chin appear that much smaller. But so as to not make him appear weak, the small chin attaches to long and strong jaw bone - it's (the jaw) made a lot stronger and more emphatic by several rows of hatching that, together look like different tones of gray. 6) by adding a strong jaw, throwing on a still stronger neck contributed to the overall strength of Mr. Ridge. Only problem with that is he starts looking fat - which he is not. So I missed the boat a little there. The big broad, rounded jacket also work to make him look fatter than he really is too. Overall, I still laughed at the outcome of this picture but I see where I need to get more realism in to it to make it more, well, real :-) If I look at a picture of Tom and look at my picture, I don't see him right away. Oh well :-) So enjoy, and learn what you can - and don't get hung up on getting it perfect. (I sure don't anymore.) The original was done in about 15 minutes in pencil on Grumbacher Paper for Pencils, scanned, shrunk to about 10 inches in height, retraced freehand then cross hatched in Micron Pigma Technical pens sizes 01 and 08 (the face hatches were in 01 and the hatches in hair and jacket as well as heavier outlining with 08 pen.) I did lots of pencil line erasing too. The hatching took a good 'nother 15-20 minutes. Here's a link to a picture that's like the one I drew - thought he's looking in the opposite direction, and just doesn't have the same hair flair as he was sporting on CNN: http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2000/07/07-10-00tdc/07-10-00dnews-1.asp For a whole gang of Tom Ridge pix, go to Google.com, type in "tom ridge" and click "images". There's' a lot! http://www.google.com/ So that's it for today. See you again in two weeks - keep on drawing!
Jeffrey O. Kasbohm |
