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Howdy all,
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this months
newsletter will superficially be about caricaturing late night T.V.
and comedic improviser extraordinaire Conan O'brien. I mention improviser
because that's what Conan is and that is exactly what you
are as a caricaturist: an improviser. You take what you're given,
you react and you remain honest to your gut reaction. As a comedy
actor / improviser you react with some sort of gesture: you make
a facial expression, you blurt something out of your mouth, your
body contorts. As a caricaturist, you draw a line on the
page.
See, you're
an improviser. And this is especially true at gigs. The extra pressure
of working a gig actually makes it easier to make that mark on the
page: because you have to. It's so much easier to waffle
and even avoid drawing altogether while you're in the safety of
your home. But I'm not here to talk about that today :-) I'm here
to keep it simple. Sort of. Yep, I'm here today to walk through
what makes Conan O'brien caricturable. And I'm not even going to
draw a caricature. Maybe next month.
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Conan
O'brien
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I also say superficially
when I mention caricaturing Conan O'brien. We're going to go through a
rapid fire review of using comparison when caricaturing. "Compared
to what?" you're probably asking. Well if you're a YouCanDraw.com
veteran this'll all be review. And you also know it's good form to review
and rehearse those basics. OK, that still doesn't answer the question
of "compared to what?".
Comparison
Well, let's go down
the list: compared to Mr. Average, compared to Bill Maher, or Ani DiFranco.
Compared to anyone. It's when you compare one person's look, their visage,
their face to anothers, it begins to become clear - or at least
clearer - what makes them unique. Getting something to compare
to in your head, or better, emblazoned on your brain, like the proportions
of a Mr. Average allows you to have at the ready a small bank of measurement
you can rapid fire run through to size up your victim. (Sorry about the
huge run-on sentence there.) Hang on now, we're going to blaze through
this just like you were at a gig. So let's dive in.
Here's a couple views
of the "Cone Man":
Boyish good looks,
the poster boy picture of Irish-American optimism, healthy, a guy truly
enjoying his life. Trademark
big hair.
Where do you start?
Where do you start?
Probably not with the hair, but we will make a note that we need big
hair, a real flame of a tuft of hair at that. Another thing we can note
is the overall shape of the head: Mr. O'brien has an amazingly square
head. He makes fun of that all the time himself - and the relative pure
size of it. Ok. Is that enough to get started? Well I'd note it along
side the big hair and hold off drawing just for another second.
Square head
Compared to this trio
of Bill Maher caricatures, would you agree the shape of Mr. O'brien's
head is probably more square like? Note especially the two left most pictures
of each - look up and down between Mr. Maher and the Cone Man and see
how amazingly square headed Mr. O'brien appears in comparison:
We've established
the square head fact. Now back to drawing...
where do you place the eyes when you start drawing on the paper?
So where would you
start drawing already?? OK, when I draw a face I almost always start with
the eyes. Why the eyes? It just gets you (and me) inside that empty page
of drawing paper and gives me/you a great place to build around. Where
do I put them? (The eyes that is.) I place them centered roughly about
2/3's the way up from the bottom of the page. After you've done enough
of these you'll get a feel for how much space to leave around the eyes
for the rest of the face and a small body...
OK, start with
the eyes. How to draw Conan's eyes?
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Squint your
eyes and ask yourself
which appears as more dominant:
"the colored part of the eyes, or the
eyebrows and eyelashes?" |
With hair so light,
so fair, at times almost invisible, the eye brows, and eye lashes almost
disappear. Someone like say Frank Zappa, with black hair, has a firm framing
around the eyes. With such light hair Conan's eyes could almost appear
beady. Squint your eyes while looking at this picture just above and see
if you don't see what I mean: some very light shadow with some relatively
very dark irises (irises are the colored part of the eye.)
After drawing in the
dark of the irises, I'd be moving on to laying down lines for the nose.
I'd start at the root of the nose (right between the eyes), and extend
that down to the tip / bulb / nostrils of the nose - and mostly by laying
down shadow shapes.
How big to make
that nose? How long? How narrow? Well let's compare Conan to Mr. Average
- but first review the main "horizontal landmarks of Mr. Average:
The five main horizontal
landmarks of Mr. Average
Now, in this next
picture, I'm warning ya, things could get a little confusing. In a word,
it's just a comparison of a few of the horizontal landmarks that are helpful
for trying to decide how long to make the that nose. (If it's too confusing
return to the reference sections listed below for review.)
Roughing out proportions
OK, what's all this
confusion about? (In the picture above.) Well, to make sense of this picture,
let me tell you what I'm comparing. If you start with the Mr. Average
head on the left, the yellow lines roughly compare the distance
between the middle of the eyes and the bottom of the nose. They're proportionate
in this comparison. But look what happens to the distance between the
bottom of the nose and the upper lip: on Conan, this space is a lot narrower.
Now I aligned / sized Conan and the Mr. Average on the right by
eyes and chin. This distance is the same - but look how the different
features (mouth and bottom of nose) line up. This time Conan's mouth lines
up a bunch higher on the face compared to Mr. Average. (I also realize
that the "Mr. Averages" aren't even the same - the one on the
left is a little wider).
Again, the blue lines
on the left hand Mr. Average compare the space between the bottom of
the nose and the top of the lip (the blue line from the left
hand Mr. Average to Conan's bottom of nose is partially obscured
by the yellow line...look close). How do they compare? The
gap between Conan's upper lip and the bottom of his nose is narrower when
compared to Mr. Average. Compare this same space with the Mr. Average
on the right. Same deal. So what would you do when drawing this?
That would cue me to start cramming together the bottom of the nose and
the mouth.
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References
Starting to
get the idea? This should be review -- (we've gone to ridiculous
detail in the book about Mr. Average in the main section on Shapes
of the head and in the
Ani
DiFranco in-depth lesson. You
can also review this and and run through a unique, one of a kind
Flash
exercise on internalizing these Mr. Average
proportions.
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The differences are
subtle! But this is the core of drawing faces, portraits, and caricatures:
honing up your powers of observation to a very high degree.
In the next trio of
pictures, compare these lines: the middle of the eye line, the
bottom of the nose line, and middle of the mouth line. Starting
to see the differences? Point here is -- if I haven't lost you -- is to
1) shoot from the gut: how does the
person you're drawing strike you at first observation? (e.g. big nose,
long nose, with pointy tip, big chin, wide cheek bones, lotsa teeth, no
teeth, full lips, thin lips, no lips, deep dimples, large forehead...etc...)
...and, if you're
getting stuck, 2) comparing the face
you're drawing to a face like Mr. Average. Now go compare these proportions
in this next picture:
Compare those horizontal
landmarks and their proportions from face to face
What did you come
up with? What do you get when you square up Conan's chin with Mr. Averages?
I'd say definitely bigger than either of the Mr. Averages but certainly
nowhere the proportion of Mr. Zappa's. How about the angle of the
jaw back there by the ears - or more accurately just under the
ears? I'd say Conan has much more of a sharp angle than does Mr. Average.
Now, if you draw an
imaginary horizontal line from those same corners of Conan's jaw (below
the ears there), and compare that line with the bottom of the nose
line, can you roughly see that gap? Do the same with Mr. Average. Where
do the corners of the jaw (under the ears) line up when compared to the
middle of the mouth? That space is much larger in Conan. I would say.
(Put a piece of paper right up to your screen on the illustration above
and use it as a ruler if this isn't making sense to you.)
On to the vertical
landmarks
What about widths?
Say like, how wide would you make the mouth in comparison to the eyes?
The Mr. Average rule is basically this: the corners of the mouth align
roughly with the center of the eyes. Compare these two in this illustration:
"Proving"
the mouth is small
Here you can see the
corners of the mouth come up a little on the narrow side (of course Conan's
expression narrows his mouth even more, but if you watch Conan and look
at other pictures I'll bet you'll come up with the same conclusion: his
mouth is proportionately on the small side. The nose is on the narrow
side too. Soo...draw the mouth small and the nose narrow (regardless of
the length you make the nose).
One final observation
OK, here's the last
little snippet of overall observations. Notice how Mr. O'brien's head
keep's getting wider as you head up towards the hairline. Squint and look
back and forth between Conan and Mr. Average. You'll see the square overall
shape, the tall forehead, the angle of the jaw under the ears - and low
at that. The Mr. Average head rounds off at the top and is much less angular
around the corner of the jaws - in fact Mr. Averages entire face has more
rounded curves.
Sum it all up:
Big hair! High forehead;
almost beady looking eyes, narrow nose with a slightly bulbed tip that
pushes down onto the mouth, small mouth with narrow lips, strong jaw that's
very squared. Strong cheekbones (made more obvious with shadowing) - which
set the nose and mouth up to be made even narrower. Sum that all up and
here's our man: .
The aggregate Conan
O'brien caricature
Now lastly, here's
a link to a fine airbrush caricaturist: Will Terrell's Lucid comics. He
does some great airbrush and caricature work. Check him out:
Will
Terrell's Lucid comics
Assignment:
Click this next page link for Will Terrell's Conan O'brien airbrush caricature.
Your assignment is to figure out how you could make Conan look even more
like Conan (hint: review the lesson above :-):
Will
Terrell's caricatures version of Conan O'brien
Stay cool those of
you in the northern hemisphere, stay warm if you're south of the equator
and all of ya's, keep on drawing!
Warmly,
Jeff
Kasbohm
& Company's
Drawing-Faces-and-Caricatures-Made-Easy.com
and
YouCanDraw.com
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All rights reserved 1997-2005
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