I Still find something a little flat and strange about your eyes. Now, I'm not much of a caricature artist myself, so forgive me for my not all that great example. I probably picked the weakest one of the bunch, which is on purpose, as it best illustrates whats falling short.
So a few things.
There is a reason that almost every caricature artist I've ever seen seems to go apeshit on old dudes, and thats because the wrinkles in their face make their geometry both really easy to see AND strait forward to represent in a drawing. You can present a bunch of wrinkles in and old man face and sort of round it up to good, and you can go crazy on them while having things still look "accurate". When you switch over to women, people tend to think that once you add a bunch of lines, you will then have unattractive, wrinkly women, which isn't really true. If you add a bunch of random, inaccurate lines, it will be, otherwise its mostly a style preference.
When I see this image:
I see the lines following along with the creases on the face, but not necessarily an understanding of the form. In a way, it sort of fakes it
For me, I think there's a bunch of specific things that happen to break down in each picture. In some, you are over simplifying the contour of the eyes, in others, I feel like you are letting stray strokes get in the way of things. In a drawing with super low line economy, you need each line to deliver good information to your viewer. If you let things be wiggly and lack confidence, you are going to miss opportunities to deliver very specific information without adding much shading. Important information is things like "This is the lip of the bottom eyelid" or "The facial hair points this way because the form is shifting and it is there to specify the topography"
I am not a inker/line art person anymore, so unfortunately my examples are painterly and therefore not specific to your situation, but hopefully what I'm saying makes sense despite that. Of course, speed is also a factor in this work, where I am not pressured by that fact when critiquing.
Wow, thanks for the crit, Iruka! I appreciate this. Line economy (and line, for that matter) have never been my strong points and I can see how the structure is kind of falling apart. Maybe doing longer head studies will help me build a better foundation for these quick drawings. I'll keep working on speed, too, and hopefully see some improvement over the summer.
No shame in trying different media, as well. I will always make sort of whispy hairy lines with my mechanical pencils, but if you switch me to ink, I will think differently. Sometimes you have to force your mind to change camps. I still make super shitty ink drawings, but I am at least not nearly as afraid to approach the page as I was before. I try not to be afraid of making bad drawings, which I think is pretty helpful when you are learning line economy. You're going to fuck up some of these faces, but when you make that mistake and really feel it as you do it, you'll start to build the right reflexes.
I would mix any longer studies with quick drawings, and try and come at the problem from different angles.
Been kind of self-conscious about posting because it doesn't seem like I'm getting any better, then I realized how stupid that is.
Drawing people at the farmer's market has been really fun! I'm the only caricature artist there, apparently, so business has been good. I still don't feel great about the quality of the product, but the fact that it's just for tips is some comfort. Some people are incredibly generous, others are... less so, and it all kind of evens out. One lady paid me with fresh corn, which was kind of awesome. Still, I'd like to put some more work into improving (while still giving priority to other art stuff). I should really invest some effort into learning to use ink... it just terrifies me.
Anyway, been meeting some of the coolest kids there! Here's one from the other week (redrawn from memory).
Thanks! Spent a bit longer on that one, which makes a difference.
Here's a WIP, small spot illo for a kid's magazine. Feeling kind of stiff and lifeless... Not due for 5 more days, so I might try some different things. Crits welcome!
So I'd been commuting to my day job for a while. That got old pretty fast and I lined up another job closer to home and submitted my notice. On the honeymoon, I found out the new job had fallen through. That's when the new husband found me a despairing mess on the couch and basically said: Now is the time to do full-time Art - no day job.
I don't know where he gets his confidence (in me, no less. Special cereal, maybe?) But we're actually going to try this. While terrifying, it's also been pretty cool so far - better to be working full-time for part-time wages than working a part-time job I don't care about. Revisiting Artist's Corner, I'm reminded of all of the enrichment stuff I should be doing to get better, so thanks for the inspiration!
Here's a recent commission.
In my head it was going to be really cool, flat, quirky and stylish... hopefully I will get there. Crits welcome.
Meanwhile, any advice on going full-time? Definitely lacking direction right now. For the 1st time it feels like I could do whatever the heck I want, and I'm not even sure what that is...
that's really cute. You should start posting regularly again, your thread was fun to look through, though short.
I feel like the image could be...sharper in some way? Perhaps more contrast? I also have a sense of excess space in the family's area - perhaps because the boy to the right has a gap between himself and the rest of the family, whereas everyone else overlaps and is placed closely together.
As for your question for going full-time, I am not yet very experienced with that myself, but having spent a lot of time researching freelancing resources, I can at least tell you there are a lot of resources for finding work for short-term projects, some of which could lead to full-time established employment if your clients like you well enough to hire you on permanently. Here are some I've found:
I'm sure there are others, and people in this forum might even have experience with some of the above sites. Your local Craigslist Gigs > Creative might have something from time to time as well.
Thanks, Ollie. I hadn't looked at craigslist for a while so I hopped on there today and found myself a little gig drawing caricatures for someone's chalkboard wall. Serendipitous.
Here's a silly thing I did today. Happy Valentine's!
I think those lobsters are really cute, and the family tree is nice! I would say that if there's something you see a market for, and you want to get involved in, start just making some work that fits into the right category. If you want to mock up a children's book, do it. If you want to make editorial illustration, try your hand at illustrating some articles. You are going to have to build your own base of clients, and showing them what you are good at in the context of the product they want to create is the best way to go about it. Don't shy away from making assignments for yourself.
Hoping that if I start drawing more animals, they'll start coming out more in random doodles and adding variety to my lazy default mode of all human faces all the time.
Been spending a little time each work day doing quick studies like these. I feel insanely lucky to even have time for this kind of stuff right now. Trying to make the most of it!
Wedding invite for my cousin. It was a lot of fun, but I accidentally put 2014 at the bottom and nobody caught it until they were all printed. I felt horrible! She's getting the super extreme family discount now.
Sucks about the mistake, but things happen. Its a really nice invitation, you should feel good about it.
I was thinking of you when I wrote the Book Cover and Album Cover assignments. I think it would be a really good way to push yourself forward to create more things that would apply your skills other than personal commissions.
Oh, sweet! I was wondering what happened to the monthly enrichment thread and it turns out there's a whole section now! Currently running out of work and approaching the point of having to make my own, so this should be really helpful. It's always more fun when someone else is giving the assignments - even made-up ones.
Portrait of a sensitive, spoiled-rotten, yet somehow adorable chihuahua - a gift for some dear friends who are in love with their dog, as well as a sample custom pet portrait if I ever get around to opening an Etsy shop. While I don't expect this to be my bread and butter, I'd be glad to make a few dollars from it here and there if I can.
Any crits before I print? I'm curious if the ear overlapping the border bothers anyone. I added a little drop shadow under it, but it doesn't seem to be showing up.
You've probably already printed this, but I feel as though his legs/sweater are a little overly rough compared to his face. A little cleanliness and confidence in the lines on the sweater would go a long way.
Aviator avatar! I wanted to make a new, more professional-looking one for social media. Also because my husband complains that I always draw myself really derpy. (But really, what's an artist supposed to do when God gave her an overbite?)
Anyway, I feel like it might need more contrast and some more do-dads to really read as steampunk and tell a story about the character. What do you think?
Shrunk and cropped:
Don't have any really good ref, just pieced together several photos and looked in the mirror a lot, but I'm not too concerned about the likeness part. Mostly, I'm just hoping to improve on my current avatar (which doesn't really say 'I can draw'):
The body feels really... small? and yeah, I think it's going to be about embellishment to really sell steampunk as a specific part of the image-- maybe more in texture than in doodads. The cap could read a little more as "leather" without a lot more twiddling, for example.
but yeah, that's leaps and bounds forward in terms of selling the illustration component. Really nice work!
I'm feeling pretty done with this one, but I'm not sure whether that's the healthy 'let's move on to the next thing' or just being lazy. But more rendering/painting over the lines is definitely a direction I'd like to explore in upcoming paintings.
These are some awesome caricatures! Really like them mate, do you perhaps have some tips on making them? Caricature is an area I fail miserably at, I'd love some tips on it if you could spare some.
I'm feeling pretty done with this one, but I'm not sure whether that's the healthy 'let's move on to the next thing' or just being lazy. But more rendering/painting over the lines is definitely a direction I'd like to explore in upcoming paintings.
Sweet. I really liked your finished paintings in the beginning of the thread. Taking things to polish can be a real pain in the ass, but its nice to push now and then. To be fair, I like the process of rendering though, some people loathe it.
@Mabelma , thanks! I'm really struggling myself to get the hang of caricatures and don't have much to offer besides 'look at a lot of work by amazing caricature artists and try to analyze what they do.' Jason Seiler is one of my favorites. @pineappleherb hasn't updated in a while, but you should check out his thread if you haven't already.
@Iruka I agree. Part of the problem may be that in school I consistently pushed myself so hard that I eventually burned out a bit and have been running away from rendering ever since. But I think it could still become a strength if I really embraced it.
Here's a little acrylic, oil & Prismacolor walrus commissioned by a friend for her mom for mother's day. (I guess she has a thing for walruses??) I really had fun doing it and may have also had an epiphany: along with rendering, I've also been running away from this goofy style (which is sort of what happens naturally for me) and trying to create a new and better style out of nothing, and it just doesn't work that way. I've also been running away from acrylic painting (which can be intimidating and really, really tedious sometimes). But there's also something about it that I really enjoy and even feel I could become really good at. So... I still want to pursue digital painting but I also want to get back to my roots with some more acrylic painting. And I've got to stop worrying so much about style and just focus on making stuff.
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Speaking of acrylics, here's one I did a few months ago for my hipster friends who had a baby. This one is on charcoal on cardboard, which had kind of an interesting texture but gets muddy really fast, making it difficult to build up smooth lighter values.
It really got me going, though, on the idea of making a series of woodland creatures to sell as nursery art prints or what not. I've been caught in the concept phase for a while now wondering whether to anthropomorphize or not, how simple or complex they should be, what age group would my style possibly appeal to, and most of all how to make something pleasant enough to look at that someone might actually want to put it on their wall. It feels kind of forced and backwards approaching it this way, but I'm hoping at the very least I'll learn something while producing some new art.
Thanks! I've got some sketches going I'll post later.
Meanwhile, my cousin commissioned me to paint her kids. Going semi-realistic on this one just because caricatures are so dang hard. Do the eyes look off? Crits welcome!
Wanted to apply for an ongoing caricature gig I saw advertised, then realized there isn't any caricature in my portfolio, so I made this to send them. Definitely need to push myself harder if I really want to get good at this, but it was a fun exercise.
I've been struggling to come up with ideas that will work really well together as a series with the moonfox. None of them are terribly original, but there are some I'm pretty excited about painting. They're pretty rough at this point but I'm wondering: are any that you prefer over others (especially among the bear and bunny options)?
Possibilities for a second non-woodland series:
And some outliers that might stand on their own or become their own series:
Next: refining compositions and designing the animals so they all fit in the same world, stylistically. Then some tighter color comps. Then painting, hopefully.
Posts
So a few things.
There is a reason that almost every caricature artist I've ever seen seems to go apeshit on old dudes, and thats because the wrinkles in their face make their geometry both really easy to see AND strait forward to represent in a drawing. You can present a bunch of wrinkles in and old man face and sort of round it up to good, and you can go crazy on them while having things still look "accurate". When you switch over to women, people tend to think that once you add a bunch of lines, you will then have unattractive, wrinkly women, which isn't really true. If you add a bunch of random, inaccurate lines, it will be, otherwise its mostly a style preference.
When I see this image:
I see the lines following along with the creases on the face, but not necessarily an understanding of the form. In a way, it sort of fakes it
For me, I think there's a bunch of specific things that happen to break down in each picture. In some, you are over simplifying the contour of the eyes, in others, I feel like you are letting stray strokes get in the way of things. In a drawing with super low line economy, you need each line to deliver good information to your viewer. If you let things be wiggly and lack confidence, you are going to miss opportunities to deliver very specific information without adding much shading. Important information is things like "This is the lip of the bottom eyelid" or "The facial hair points this way because the form is shifting and it is there to specify the topography"
I am not a inker/line art person anymore, so unfortunately my examples are painterly and therefore not specific to your situation, but hopefully what I'm saying makes sense despite that. Of course, speed is also a factor in this work, where I am not pressured by that fact when critiquing.
No shame in trying different media, as well. I will always make sort of whispy hairy lines with my mechanical pencils, but if you switch me to ink, I will think differently. Sometimes you have to force your mind to change camps. I still make super shitty ink drawings, but I am at least not nearly as afraid to approach the page as I was before. I try not to be afraid of making bad drawings, which I think is pretty helpful when you are learning line economy. You're going to fuck up some of these faces, but when you make that mistake and really feel it as you do it, you'll start to build the right reflexes.
I would mix any longer studies with quick drawings, and try and come at the problem from different angles.
Drawing people at the farmer's market has been really fun! I'm the only caricature artist there, apparently, so business has been good. I still don't feel great about the quality of the product, but the fact that it's just for tips is some comfort. Some people are incredibly generous, others are... less so, and it all kind of evens out. One lady paid me with fresh corn, which was kind of awesome. Still, I'd like to put some more work into improving (while still giving priority to other art stuff). I should really invest some effort into learning to use ink... it just terrifies me.
Anyway, been meeting some of the coolest kids there! Here's one from the other week (redrawn from memory).
More to come soon...
Also, adorable.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Here's a WIP, small spot illo for a kid's magazine. Feeling kind of stiff and lifeless... Not due for 5 more days, so I might try some different things. Crits welcome!
I don't know where he gets his confidence (in me, no less. Special cereal, maybe?) But we're actually going to try this. While terrifying, it's also been pretty cool so far - better to be working full-time for part-time wages than working a part-time job I don't care about. Revisiting Artist's Corner, I'm reminded of all of the enrichment stuff I should be doing to get better, so thanks for the inspiration!
Here's a recent commission.
In my head it was going to be really cool, flat, quirky and stylish... hopefully I will get there. Crits welcome.
Meanwhile, any advice on going full-time? Definitely lacking direction right now. For the 1st time it feels like I could do whatever the heck I want, and I'm not even sure what that is...
I feel like the image could be...sharper in some way? Perhaps more contrast? I also have a sense of excess space in the family's area - perhaps because the boy to the right has a gap between himself and the rest of the family, whereas everyone else overlaps and is placed closely together.
As for your question for going full-time, I am not yet very experienced with that myself, but having spent a lot of time researching freelancing resources, I can at least tell you there are a lot of resources for finding work for short-term projects, some of which could lead to full-time established employment if your clients like you well enough to hire you on permanently. Here are some I've found:
MAQ Consulting http://www.maqconsulting.com/
Creative Circle https://www.creativecircle.com/
Outsource https://outsource.com/
oDesk https://www.odesk.com/
I'm sure there are others, and people in this forum might even have experience with some of the above sites. Your local Craigslist Gigs > Creative might have something from time to time as well.
Here's a silly thing I did today. Happy Valentine's!
I think those lobsters are really cute, and the family tree is nice! I would say that if there's something you see a market for, and you want to get involved in, start just making some work that fits into the right category. If you want to mock up a children's book, do it. If you want to make editorial illustration, try your hand at illustrating some articles. You are going to have to build your own base of clients, and showing them what you are good at in the context of the product they want to create is the best way to go about it. Don't shy away from making assignments for yourself.
Hoping that if I start drawing more animals, they'll start coming out more in random doodles and adding variety to my lazy default mode of all human faces all the time.
Been spending a little time each work day doing quick studies like these. I feel insanely lucky to even have time for this kind of stuff right now. Trying to make the most of it!
Wedding invite for my cousin. It was a lot of fun, but I accidentally put 2014 at the bottom and nobody caught it until they were all printed. I felt horrible!
I was thinking of you when I wrote the Book Cover and Album Cover assignments. I think it would be a really good way to push yourself forward to create more things that would apply your skills other than personal commissions.
Any crits before I print? I'm curious if the ear overlapping the border bothers anyone. I added a little drop shadow under it, but it doesn't seem to be showing up.
Doggie ref:
Anyway, I feel like it might need more contrast and some more do-dads to really read as steampunk and tell a story about the character. What do you think?
Shrunk and cropped:
Don't have any really good ref, just pieced together several photos and looked in the mirror a lot, but I'm not too concerned about the likeness part. Mostly, I'm just hoping to improve on my current avatar (which doesn't really say 'I can draw'):
but yeah, that's leaps and bounds forward in terms of selling the illustration component. Really nice work!
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Sweet. I really liked your finished paintings in the beginning of the thread. Taking things to polish can be a real pain in the ass, but its nice to push now and then. To be fair, I like the process of rendering though, some people loathe it.
@Iruka I agree. Part of the problem may be that in school I consistently pushed myself so hard that I eventually burned out a bit and have been running away from rendering ever since. But I think it could still become a strength if I really embraced it.
Here's a little acrylic, oil & Prismacolor walrus commissioned by a friend for her mom for mother's day. (I guess she has a thing for walruses??) I really had fun doing it and may have also had an epiphany: along with rendering, I've also been running away from this goofy style (which is sort of what happens naturally for me) and trying to create a new and better style out of nothing, and it just doesn't work that way. I've also been running away from acrylic painting (which can be intimidating and really, really tedious sometimes). But there's also something about it that I really enjoy and even feel I could become really good at. So... I still want to pursue digital painting but I also want to get back to my roots with some more acrylic painting. And I've got to stop worrying so much about style and just focus on making stuff.
It really got me going, though, on the idea of making a series of woodland creatures to sell as nursery art prints or what not. I've been caught in the concept phase for a while now wondering whether to anthropomorphize or not, how simple or complex they should be, what age group would my style possibly appeal to, and most of all how to make something pleasant enough to look at that someone might actually want to put it on their wall. It feels kind of forced and backwards approaching it this way, but I'm hoping at the very least I'll learn something while producing some new art.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Meanwhile, my cousin commissioned me to paint her kids. Going semi-realistic on this one just because caricatures are so dang hard. Do the eyes look off? Crits welcome!
Wanted to post reference, but I'm not sure she'd be cool with me putting pictures of her kids on the Internet and I feel weird asking.
Possibilities for a second non-woodland series:
And some outliers that might stand on their own or become their own series:
Edit: Now easier to see, hopefully
And some color possibilities:
Next: refining compositions and designing the animals so they all fit in the same world, stylistically. Then some tighter color comps. Then painting, hopefully.