Wednesday, March 24, 2010

So you Don't want me to exaggerate?


here's a bit of a switch, just a regular old portrait. Done in Drawing class, i imagine this is what i'll look like if i ever get a mugshot taken. It was actually a nice break from drawing still-life's every week, and some good practice with non-caricature drawing.

6 comments:

Espen said...

I see your point, but as I went through three years of art school with only still life and real life portraits, I got tired of drawing everything as it is and I have finally the freedom to draw what I like. I think a caricature is much more funny to look at :D
But nonetheless - the real life drawings is perfect training, no doubt!

BOD said...

Very very interesting. I think that good caricaturists are good portraitists before all. I think too that a caricature is much more difficult than a portrait, don't you ?
Love your work again...)

em... said...

I agree with Bodard - it's pretty much the same skill set to be good at caricature and portraiture, with only the level of emphasis on the features being different.

In fact it's been shown that people think a mild caricature is a better likeness than an exact portrait.

(which is just one of the many reasons I disagree with tracing and gridding)

wrodcarica said...

Great sketch...Congratulations !!!

Will Appledorn said...

thanks for the comments, fellas. interesting discussion.

Espen- i can see what you mean, but after three years of drawing caricatures and cartoons, i'm actually happy to hone my skills a little with some more traditional work.

Bodard- Thank you. you're right, being good at caricature, usually means you pretty good at portraiture. Not as often does it work the other way, however. And in some ways caricature is harder, in that it comes partly from our imagination, but in some ways it's easier as there are less restricting rules to follow.

Em- i have definitely heard that before, caricatures make for much better likenesses when done right. there's a gray area between the two, and somewhere in the middle you can get away with calling it either. that's where i think Kruger's portraits lie, in between, and that's what makes them so great.

Wlamir- thanks man, nice to see you following my blog. hope you dig.

Espen said...

Hehe, yeah, as it's about two years since I went to art school and really worked hard on drawing things exactly as it is, and have been drawing almost nothing but caricatures since then, will probably make me hungry for those kind of works I did at school. I see your point, mate ;)

And it's interesting what EM... is saying, I've never heard it before, but it makes very much sense when I think about it.