6 October 2002 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Your 6 October, 2002 YouCanDraw.com every other week caricature |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Howdy all, today's caricature is well, not quite a caricature yet, but a mock-up pencil drawing of R & B singer Macy Gray. In the next issues we're going to little by little exaggerate Macy into true caricature form. (Look close for the border of the fur coat and the hair) - this was a fairly loose "interpretation" for a realistic drawing, and it's easy to see how realism and caricature are pretty close cousins in the early stages. Early stages of what? The early steps in exaggerating Macy - and that's kind of predicting the caricatures that are as of yet undrawn will be good caricatures. So I'm betting on myself here. :-) Here's the game plan: 1) First the pictures need to capture a little more of Macy's femininity (some- what lost in the this first picture), so I'll keep that in mind as I go; 2) Then, I'll open this caricature in Photoshop, add more contrast then print it out. Then I'll take the print-out and pull out an old trick I haven't used in a while: the tracing paper. 3) I'll place the print under about 4 or 5 pages of tracing paper. Then I'll flip four of the pages up so there's only one page of tracing paper between me and the drawing. I'll copy what looks good (minimizing repetition), then little by little I'll redraw the caricature on each page of tracing paper as I flip each sheet of tracing paper back over the latest reproduction exaggerating those things I think are caricaturable. Does that make sense? By flipping the pages of tracing paper over each "finished" caricature, the picture stays centered and because tracing paper is almost transparent I can compare the progression right through it. 4) If 5 pages isn't enough I'll take the last picture and place it under 3,4,5 more pages of tracing paper and repeat the process. So this is an old caricaturing trick - it's great for easing your way into exaggeration if you find that a little intimidating. And it's also a way to increase your own production. :-) Lastly, today's drawing was sketched out on plain old newsprint stock that costs about 5-7 dollars for a pad of 100 pages (you don't have to feel too bad about going right through page after page) with a good old fashion 4b pencil. Macy was actually about 17 inches tall in this drawing - you might see the leftover lines from the different scans. To see the original picture this version of Macy was drawn from click right here: http://www.hiponline.com/artist/music/g/gray_macy/ To see more pictures of Macy, type in "Macy Gray" at Google and click on "images": http://www.google.com/ Until next time, keep on drawing! Warmly,
Jeffrey O. Kasbohm
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