Note: The main ideas presented here come from a book by Tom Richmond called the Mad Art of Caricature and from my experience as a full-time caricaturist. Richmond’s work may be the definitive book on the subject of caricatures. I highly recommend it.
Often while I am drawing caricatures at an event, one of my subjects will stop and ask me what it is that I look for, primarily, in order to move forward with the drawing. My answer is always the same. I look first at the shape of the head. Bar none, it is the most important consideration. Everyone has a mouth, eyes and a nose, but if these are placed inside the wrong head shape, the likeness of your subject will never emerge. (Ears are also important but they are not instrumental in creating the likeness…even for Prince Charles whose ears rival an elephant’s…)
Tom Richmond suggests there are 5 basic head shapes. A rectangle, a circle, a triangle, etc. and some versions of these. When you draw an individual, you do not necessarily draw the head shape first, but it has to be held clearly in your brain while you begin to fill the head with the other features. If you produce perfect renditions of the eyes, of the nose and of the mouth, the likeness will still elude you if the resulting head shape is incorrect.
A second reason the likeness may falter is that while the head shape is correct and the features are drawn well, their proximity to each other and to the head shape itself is incorrect. The head shape can be correct, the features can be perfect, but their relationship to each other is at fault.
Those of us who have worked on a portrait for hours and were thrilled that the likeness of our subject was emerging even beyond our expectation, were devastated to experience that, in the final hour, somehow the likeness just vanished. What happened? Insert expletive deleted here.
What happened is quite simple: the proximity of the features is suspect.
Experiment 1. Look at a number of people and just draw the shape of their heads very quickly. For the inside features just use dots for the eyes, lines for eyebrows, a line for the nose and a line for the mouth. If the features are in the exact proximity towards each other, and if the head shape is indeed correct you will notice that their likeness begins to emerge —even in a simple drawing as that!
Experiment 2. Take photocopies of successful caricatures and cut them up so that the features are all single pieces. On a blank piece of paper, assemble the features together, trying to create the original caricature. As you move the features closer to each other, and then further apart, notice when the likeness emerges and then disappears again. Try this with several faces and you will begin to see how likenesses are found and lost!
The differences between us are quite subtle, really. Caricaturists pounce on distinctive noses, eyes, lips or eyebrows and use them as anchors for the rest of the likeness to emerge but the ultimate determiner is the head shape itself.
My suggestion to budding caricaturists: by all mean practice noses, eyes, lips, eyebrows, ears, etc. so that you excel at each feature. But do not neglect head shapes! Think of the features in someone’s face as orphans who need a home. And home is where the head shape is……..
P.S. Ever wonder why members of one race might be heard to say that individuals belonging to another race all seem to look alike? This is because they are not used to seeing the subtleties in the faces of another race. They have not spent time studying the proximity between the features common to the other race.
