The Power of Caricature by Marco Bucci

Posted on 31. Mar, 2010 by DAS Team in Articles, Recent

Caricature and its Fascination

When the layperson hears the word ‘caricature’, more often than not, it will trigger the image of an artist in a theme park drawing a cartoon version of somebody with a big head and small body. While that certainly qualifies, it is unfortunately limited in its ability to describe the term, caricature.

Before I continue, please allow me to introduce myself. I’m an artist who is interested in many different facets of art. There was a time in my career where I focused exclusively on caricature, both as a live artist as well as a freelance illustrator. I was fascinated that it was possible for our brains to take an exaggerated drawing and instantly identify it as a likeness of a person. Not only that, but it seemed that a good caricature was, in some inexplicable way, more accurate in my mind’s eye than the actual person in real life! This was a power that I knew I needed to possess in order to grow into the type of artist that I wanted to become.

The Challenge of Caricature

The human brain is amazing. Among many things, it is superb at shape and pattern recognition. It is through shapes and patterns that we interpret everything that we see, from a landscape all the way to the likeness of a person. We’ve all heard the expression, “everybody is unique”, and this is true. Where we are distinguished, visually speaking, is in subtleties of our shapes. The shape that my eye-sockets create will be different from yours. And how that shape connects to the shape of my eyebrows will add to that difference. Compound those minute differences across the entire face, and you can quickly realize how infinite varieties are possible. Here’s the best part: our brains can remember this stuff! Isn’t that incredible?

You can prove it to yourself too: go pull out one of your elementary school yearbooks. Find that classic group shot of the entire class. I bet you’ll have absolutely no trouble spotting your friends from years past (even the ones you haven’t kept in touch with). Yet the reality is, you are looking at photos of heads that are smaller than the size of a pea, with barely any details whatsoever. This is the power of shapes.

Everybody has this ability. It comes standard with being human. Caricature becomes possible when one is skilled enough to convert that subconscious pattern-recognition into aware, conscious thought. The more skilled the person, the more powerful this connection becomes. When an artist has an understanding of these unique shapes and patterns at his disposal, a caricature of those shapes (and hence the person) can be created by simply exaggerating them in creative ways. You can choose to go wild with your exaggerations, or keep the changes more subtle. The point is, you are taking raw material, and adding your own ‘opinion’ to them. Of course, in addition to being able to recognize shapes, you also need technical, academic drawing skill to pull off the drawing (which is unfortunately a different subject entirely, and out of the scope of this article). The challenge is to train both of these skills, either separately or concurrently to become the best artist you can be.

It might sound daunting, but it’s a fun journey. After all, you are giving yourself a skill set that most people don’t have: the ability to instantly recognize the uniqueness of somebody, coupled with the power to do whatever you want with it. It should almost be illegal to possess that power.

How To Practice

Keep a sketchbook. Draw everywhere. If you haven’t done it before, it will feel awkward at first. But, like most things, the more you do it the better you will be. Since this is a website about digital art, one of the ways you can practice is to find a photo of your subject, and give yourself a limited amount of time to digitally paint a caricature of it. I’ve done lots of these studies.

FIG 1: Speedpainting Studies

The nice thing about these speedpainting studies is that you are drilling your shape-recognition skills, drawing skill, and digital painting skills all at once (kinda like those cardio & abdominal combo machines you see on late night TV). For example, I learned as much about brushwork from these studies as I did about caricature. Of course, they’re not all going to turn out in your favour, but that’s why you should do lots of them. After all, a skilled artist is simply somebody who’s done more bad drawings than you have.

You Can Caricature Anything

One of my pet peeves about the notion of caricature is that people seem to think that it’s relegated to the human face only. That simply isn’t the case. You can caricature anything. It’s all just shapes, remember? Like I said in my personal introduction, I’m interested in all kinds of art. I love to go outside with oil paint and capture the light that I see. When I’m back home at my computer, I like to paint completely out of my imagination. Here’s an example of one such painting.

FIG 2: Illustration from Memory

I didn’t have any reference for this painting. What I did have, however, is a library of light in my memory from the many paintings I’ve done outdoors (raw material). The shape of the house and trees are obviously caricatured, but the light is also caricatured. I wanted the light to have a certain glow to it that is just slightly more than what you’d naturally see outdoors. I was going for a tasteful sense of a fairytale magic realism, without getting cheesy. Caricature was the tool I used to help me achieve it.

Digital Painting Software

This is a topic that can spark massive amounts of pointless debate. So I’ll tell you what I use, but by no means do I think it’s the be-all-end-all of opinions. I like Photoshop, and I use it exclusively. I’ve tried many different digital painting software, including Painter, TV Paint, and ArtRage. They were all good. I just like Photoshop the best. Its interface suits my personality and by now I’ve spent so many thousands of hours using it that I can’t imagine switching to anything else.

I don’t use layers in my work; I like to paint on just one layer. The reason for that is that I am trained traditionally, and I like it when digital media closely mimics the traditional stuff. Your file is a lot lighter on your computer’s resources when you paint on one layer too. For commercial work that I know will be modified by clients, I do use layers, but only out of necessity. Sometimes I like to play around with photoshop’s adjustment layers on my work, but once I’m satisfied with the effect, I flatten it down. Some of these layer tricks are covered in my YouTube videos.

My Advice To You (and to myself)

Keep practicing! Nothing will substitute for it. We all have our own lives to live, and along with that comes the task of arranging your priorities. Art has always been high up on my priority list, and no matter what is going on in my life, I always seem to find time to do it. This is what makes me get better, and it will work for you too, if you have the desire. Surround yourself with good art. Buy DVDs and books from other artists and learn from them. And please don’t worry about your ‘style’. Style develops naturally. Skills are more important.

Lastly, be very critical of everything you see. Really try and analyze what makes a certain piece of art successful or not. It is not enough to know that you like a picture or not, you need to know why. Then, apply that same level of merciless scrutiny to your own work. I’ve found that if I approve of my own work, it’s likely that others will too.

For more information, visit:

Official Website: http://www.marcobucci.com

DeviantArt Link: http://marcobucci.deviantart.com/

Tags: caricature, comic, digital art, exaggerate, funny, marco bucci