Salutations! Thank you for joining me.
Since last week I have enjoyed practicing caricatures on my close friends and family members. I have given another try at doing one of myself, and am much more pleased with the results than I was on my first solid try less than two weeks ago. Additionally, I figured out how to Photoshop a photograph of a hand drawn caricature to remove the shadow on the page and make it totally digital with grayscale and high contrast, as well as trying to color a caricature/cartoon digitally for the first time. Below I will post my self caricature without and with color.
I feel very content with my progress. I think I am getting much better at getting exaggerated yet understandable proportions, portraying a happy expression, recognition, consistency, and comprehension of facial musculature and how to depict these lines without aging the face with what appear to be wrinkles. Something I hope to work on is achieving more boldness and intention in my lines and curves, although this may partially be a matter or investing in a marker that is better than a Sharpie, perhaps with a brush tip. Coloring digitally was also more fun than I expected, and I am pleased with the results, especially for being my first attempt. More blending and use of color in the face are improvements I hope to make next time.
In addition to these caricature assignments, I was also asked to examine the goals I set forth in my first blog post and to pick 2-3 to elaborate and focus on. One desire that I mentioned was to experiment with different styles of drawing. To be more specific, I would like to gain experience drawing portraits and cartoons with a number of mediums including marker, charcoal, pencil, and digital. In particular, I wish to experiment with ways of depicting myself, since something I’d like to do in the next year or two is release an inspirational coloring book about my life with the message of following one’s dreams. I would love this book to have a different style on every page, much of which telling a story with a comic/graphic novel style, but not all. To reach this goal, I shall draw a face at least once every single day, trying a new style every week or two. I will try to depict myself as often as possible within this routine.
Another goal I have during the next few months is to better understand the proportions of the human body and better capture them in motion. To do so, I will continue to function as an observer of how bodies move during my day-to-day life, and will draw a body that is in motion at least three times a week. I especially would like to practice drawing dancers, as this is subject matter I would like to incorporate in my work. This will be done with a number of mediums. By the end of the semester, I’d like to be so used to drawing this that I can pull a believable pose/figure from my imagination. This will also be helpful in my comic/coloring book vision.
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