Category: caricatures
A Dutt
On one hand he was acquitted from the Tada court, but was held guilty under the arms act section 3 and 7 for possession of an AK-56 rifle, a prohibited weapon and a pistol. Under section seven, he is liable for a maximum of ten years in jail or a minimum of five years, while under section three, the term is going to be maximum three years or a minimum of one year.
This blog-post is the result of a persistence demand from my bro. He had been pestering me to give him fundays on drawing a caricature. I will try to be as systematic as I can be. Before going ahead with the fundays, let me first define what a caricature is, for those who are not too sure.
I am going to talk about the ‘pictorial’ representation in this post because that is where I am good at. By the way, I guess you have figured out already that ‘exaggeration’ is the key here. But how does it happen that even when you do not draw someone the way that person actually looks like, people still end up recognizing him/her? This is the art! And this is what I’ll ‘try’ to teach in the rest of the post.
I have used Fabre Castle Water Soluble Colored Pencils to make the sample caricature here. You can use any other material that you are comfortable with (like sketch pens, water colors, poster colors or just plain graphite pencils). The basic rules remain the same. So let’s now go straight away to the steps.
Step 1
Choose your subject. My subject here is the face of a known Indian personality (once again on my bro’s request). I could have chosen to draw a caricature of something other than a human face, like say a monument. But drawing facial caricatures is what really gives me a kick because it certainly is the most difficult thing to do amongst all the options. It is difficult because you never know if at the end, the caricature will finally look like the real subject or not!
Study your subject’s features. Give some time to just looking at the subject, and try to work out the various features which have a scope for exaggeration. A long nose can always be made longer, and a round face can always be made rounder. Try to visualize the yet-to-be-made-caricature in your mind. High cheek-bones? Wide lips? Thick eye-brows? White teeth? Once you have some clue on what to ‘attack’, you are ready to move on to the next step.
Step 3
It’s action time now. Pull out a pencil and draw those first strokes. Try to give an overall shape which is not the same as the real thing, but also not completely off the mark. I have made the face slightly thinner here and stretched the nose a little too much. But remember not to mess with each and every feature. You have to be careful in selecting the features which are easiest to distort without affecting the resemblance too much. Keep trying for some time, using as light curves as possible, till you are sure that what you have drawn is a decent stuff to proceed with.
One tip that you might find helpful is that it’s always too risky to mess with the distance between the eyes and eybrows. Sometime’s you might be able to pull that off, but in general its safer to play with nose or jaw or lips. But then, you can always experiment. 🙂
Step 4
Once the rough sketch has been rendered, show some confidence and draw bolder lines and kind of settle down on how the caricature is going to look. You can add some more details which were missing in the initial stroking stage.
It’s coloring time guys/girls. Pull out a couple of more shades and fill up the areas lightly. It’s always fun to begin with hairs because even if you mess with them, it wont affect much! 🙂
A lot of people get confused when it comes to drawing hairs. What they draw doesn’t look like real hair. Here’s the tip. Draw them the way the hairs actually are, i.e. if the hairs are long, use long continuous strokes (like in this caricature) and if the hairs are short, use shorter strokes. That’s the only trick, or so have I always believed! 😛
Step 6
You pretty much know what follows next. You gotta complete the coloring thing. Shading the face is slightly tricky but with practice you will kind of get the funda. Some parts need to be darker and some portions need to be lighter. Look at the original picture to figure that out and shade accordingly. It’s easier to begin with the lighter parts. Once you have touched the lighter areas, you can proceed with darkening the remaining areas.
A lot of people hesitate to go for really dark strokes. But it’s not a good idea. At few places you have to use the darkest possible strokes (can you notice some of them in the figure shown below?). Once again carefully observe the original pic and you can work that out yourself. It’s mostly about careful observation than anything else.
The seventh and the last step is always about the finishing touches. This is important if you really want your work to look like a professional visual piece. Since I used water soluble pencil colors, I picked a wet brush to remove the pencil lines and add softness to the caricature. I also did some more pencil work here and there, and of course added my stupid name! 🙂
That’s it. The caricature is done!
Go ahead, try out few caricatures and let me know if my fundays were helpful. By the way I agree that this caricature is kinda not so Hrithik-like! But then, remember this always: you never really know how much the caricature that you make will finally resemble the actual subject (till you have become a true professional of course). But it’s okay. Even after having drawn plenty of caricatures myself, I still fail so often (like you just saw :P). That however, has never prevented me from trying with more and more subjects and that’s what I would ask all you guys to do! Have a nice time.
You can see other caricatures that I have made by browsing through the caricatures label.
If you would like me to do a caricature for you, let me know about it by leaving a comment.
Peace Please
Ok, don’t take it too hard. The caricature that you see above is that of Bangladeshi Muhammad Yunus, the combined winner of Nobel Peace Prize 2006 who shares the prize with his brain-child, the Gramin Bank.
It’s not very clear why an economist (yes he is a Professor of Economics) who used micro-credit to deliver loans to poor, was selected for a ‘peace’ prize and not for ‘economics’! Micro-credit after all, is all about economics! This one line put up on the Nobel Prize website, tries to explain the logic: Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty.
Well, this logic still sounds kind of far-fetched to me.
Smile Smile Smile
Something has gone wrong with the comp that I had been using and it just doesn’t start. And so when I had no net to consume my time, I made some quick colorful caricatures yesterday night. Would love if you could tell me whose caricatures are these. I bet that wont be too difficult!
One of my best friends in IIT has recently gone crazy over her.
I wanted to read a book written by him, recently released, but haven’t been successful so far in my nobel wish.
And this one is a school-mate and the latest star on the pitch!
And of course, the common theme that connects all three of them is the “smile”. I love smiling faces! Smile, all the time! 🙂
Funaart
Beating around the Bush
Laka Laka Laka Laka Laka Laka…
There are somethings which I could never have known, had I not been in Chennai. The power that Rajni commands among his fans, is one of them.
It was during the last semester, that his latest Tamil block-buster Chandramukhi was shown in the OAT(open air theater in IIT Madras). I do not understand Tamil but I did go to watch the movie.
Rajni had the grandest of the grand, entry in the movie; one of those typical filmi entries where the hero is shown more powerful than Superman, smarter than James Bond and more unbelievable than Neo. It was the first time that I saw people screaming with passion and hysteria for Rajni. I had always known that he was worshiped like God in South, but to actually see the God getting such a passionate ovation from his admirers was a rare experience.
Looking forward to Rajni’s latest flick Sivaji, though it will take some time before this movie is finished.
Hope you liked his caricature that I made.
Make a guess: who is HE?
Nana karte pyaar tumhi se kar baithe
I have literally fallen in love with this man’s performance. There was a time, when I was so sure he could deliver only one type of show, the type that he had himself estabilishd in Krantiveer.
Nana definitly proved me wrong. He was simply amazing as the corrupt politician in Apharan (and rightly deserved the Filmfare award for the best actor in a negative role, which he got two days back) as well as the comic character in Bluff Master. His level of acting in both these movies is unmatched.
And the latest flick that I am looking upto is Taxi No. 9211. Anyone seen it already?
Update: See what I discovered: Nana’s blog
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