5 June 2002 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Your June 5th, 2002 YouCanDraw.com every other week caricature: |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Howdy all, In today's issue of the "Every Other Week Caricature" you'll see that old-son-of-a-gun Fidel Castro. I'm also going to issue you a challenge today. And what's that? It's this: No matter what stage you're at in your drawing, no matter how perfectionist you are, grab a caricature, any caricature and caricature it. That's right, caricature the caricature. It's great training and it'll really pull you out of yourself. A challenge It doesn't matter if the caricature isn't even a good one to start with, just grab the first one you see, take out a sheet of paper and draw. Don't worry (consciously), about where the horizontal and vertical landmarks line up. Don't worry about proportion, or line strength/weight. Don't worry about getting the highlights and shadows right. Grab a picture and dive on in! If the nose is the first thing you focus on, grab that. Heighten that. If it strikes you as bulbous, make it really bulbous. If the eyes seem to really get tiny, so be it. NO THINKING ALLOWED! Just do it. Draw. I'll tell you why you're doing this in a second. Put aside 30 minutes to do this and just do it! :-) No judging the results. Just accept and embrace them. You might be very surprised. You might be tickled pink. And that's just what I did for today's caricature. I found this picture of Fidel: http://www.nybooks.com/gallery/436 Amazing discovery... and I found it by accident in thee most incredible on-line library of David Levine caricatures on the whole planet! I'm a huge David Levine fan so you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled on to this. (I've been spending 5 bucks a month on the New York Review of Books to buy each issue's gaggle of 5-6 pictures, so this site is a real find). Check it out: http://www.nybooks.com/gallery/ The only problem is that you have to know who's in the library to find them. Hint number one: Look for literary or political figures (enter their name into the search field). Out of touch? Don't know who's who? (Like me) Just type in a high use letter, one that's found in so many names like "a" or any other vowel and you'll be amazed at the mother lode of results you get back. (I feel shamed by this guy's production over the past 40 years...it's amazing, simply amazing.) So why the assignment today? I was talking to a friend about Improv comedy (he's very steeped in it) and as he was telling me about it I realized how similar improv comedy and off-the-cuff at-a-gig caricaturing are. Both are about "getting in the zone". You don't get "in the zone" by talking about it, you get there by doing what you do. In his case, improv comedy. In ours, caricatures. Improv comedy and caricature What's similar? Taking what you're given, whatever you're given and saying "yes" to it. Following your gut's lead and if your body offers an answer (eg starts drawing one big funky nose without you really even thinking about it), you run with it whole heartedly. Whatever comes out, comes out. It may make no sense to you until you finish it (the scene or the picture) - but to the audience, a whole different, sensical story unfolds. When you feel finished with your picture or your 30 minutes is up, you get to play audience to your own picture - and I'll bet it makes much more sense to you from a distanced point of view than when you were drawing it. If not, so be it, it was only an experiment :-). So be brave! Dive in. Don't worry about the results. Trust your gut. You just might be amazed. If you just signed up Also, if you just signed up, make sure you get your Flash Downloads (they're the Flash Interactive Exercises). There's 4 of them, and here's the links to all (they're between 2 and 3 megabytes each): http://www.youcandraw.com/horizontal-landmarks2.exe http://www.youcandraw.com/ycd-flash-vertical.exe http://www.youcandraw.com/YCD-head-and-hair-for-road.exe http://www.youcandraw.com/ycd-features_shadows.exe They must be downloaded in their entirety to function correctly. Use this utility to assure a complete download: http://www.getright.com It's a shareware - so if you use it enough, honor these folks and buy it from them. Well that's all for today, hope you're all having a great summer! And keep on drawing. Warmly, Jeffrey O. Kasbohm Executive Director (952) 920-9827 6920 Southdale Road Minneapolis, MN 55435 http://www.YouCanDraw.com "Once and for all getting you drawing faces and caricatures" mailto:comments@youcandraw.com
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