March 18th, 2002 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Your 18 March 2002 YouCanDraw.com every other week Caricature |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Howdy all, hope you had a jolly and safe St. Patrick's day weekend! Today's caricature is a pencil of Canadian and former grunge-turned-rock singer Alanis Morissette. I stumbled on to a decent picture in a British Music Magazine which I had never seen before: "Q4Music". The photos in the magazine are generally superb - which made it worth the $8.50 price tag. On page 108 there's an excellent photo of today's subject (Feb 2002 issue). What's unique about Alanis (I think) is her long almost boyish face, the long nose, the rounded chin, wide mouth - which can be problematic for drawing: a wide mouth and a narrow face. But she's lean so her bone structure shows through well - and because she is lean you can make her face more angular than you would say Rosanne Barr and fit in a larger than "Mr. Average" mouth. And of course she has oodles of long straight hair. I think her mouth is the her most interesting feature and especially at the line where upper and lower lip meet. Why's this? It's the almost Mona Lisa -like ascending curve it makes. I can't put into words exactly what it is, it's almost a touch of a smirk. (Though the model for Mona Lisa was claimed to have some kind of incurable disease - the reason given for her unusual expression.) The corners of her mouth are also interesting. I've included along a small photo, a scan actually, of the original picture. (I probably shouldn't be doing that but when I finish up the sketch in ink maybe I'll go to Q4music Magazine for permission...and some free publicity :-) Worth a try anyway. Her eye's are large, but for a woman she has fairly low eyebrows (at least in this photo). Low bushy eye brows are generally a more masculine trait so I tried to add larger lashes to make up for the more than just a little manly appearance she was taking on in my drawing. The shading's a little rough in the mock-up pencil here and, now after scanning it, I see I even forget shadowing on the side of the nose where her hair comes tumbling down as well as it's shadow (the hair's shadow that is.) Well give her a look and give me your feedback - or take a stab a drawing her yourself ( a member recently told he was going to do a Larry King caricature and I promised to display it for all to see when he completes it - no pressure E. :-) Here's a link to a picture of the Mona Lisa and Leonardo da Vinci (who, as you know was an amazing artist...and you can see for yourself again the unusual mouth): http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftptoc/leonardo_ext.html And, if you like, here's some more Alanis Morissette pictures: http://musicfinder.yahoo.com/shop?d=hc&cf=la15&id=1800274561&intl=us
Jeffrey O. Kasbohm
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