Day 21 and I have yet to do a good exaggeration caricature with good resemblance. This one (as so many other have) started out in the exaggeration direction, but still ended up too realistic for my purposes. Even adding the ape body didn’t help much.
Ben Stiller with ape-like features enhance for cheap “chimp” joke. Sorry Ben, nothing personal.
We finally went to see “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” last night, so that may have had some effect on today’s caricature. I know I wanted to go simpler and cartoony with this one and this was a good way to do a bad pun on a rotund celebrity.
Ms. Kendrick proved to be elusive as a caricature subject. I thought she may be easy, with her bold features: strong jawline, high cheekbones, perfect eyes and very specific nose with noticible nostrils. If I were doing a portrait or usual cartoon portrait type caricature I think I would have been done quickly, but I struggled to find an exaggeration that kept the whole resemblance, once again. THe first sketch here looks NOTHING like her and it wasn’t until I played around with the eyes that a resemblance began to take hold.
Once again, I spent more time on the rendering that gettting that initial, great resemblance and it shows. I mean, I thought it was pretty good when I went to bed, but waking up and seeing it in the cold light of a new day, I think it’s another swing and a miss. But a closer swing this time. I think it also has to do with her face being more difficult to pin down, despite my early expectations to the contrary. Or it could just be that I’m not very good at doing these kinds of caricatures yet.
I really tried going big on the exaggeration this time. I really did. I started out with this huge nose and a mouth that was way off to the side and tiny, sad, close-together eyes. But it did not look like him, and it bugged me. I ended up moving some things around, making the nose smaller, the eyes wider, the mouth closer and voila, I have arrived at yet another barely-exaggerated caricature. I was proud of the painterly rendering I spent a long time on, but even after all that the resemblance doesn’t jump out and say, “oh yeah, that’s him!” to me.
So here’s another one, and it’s a good thing I’m getting all this practice in, because apparently, I need it.
Sketch
Michael Cera caricature final by Brent Brown
Michael Cera caricature final with background by Brent Brown
Some of those more rendered caricatures were taking up a lot of time, and I’m not sure the end product ended up being worth the effort. So this time, I did a quick rendering with flat color. The animation look it had (as well as the meanness of the lame joke on his name) made me think it could be one of those cheap shot gags they cut to quickly on Family Guy.
Jonah Hill sketch
Jonah Hill caricature color. Created on iPad Pro with MagiPad? I can’t remember the name, some Asian app that is free, but has awesome comics tools and the best brush strokes for pen inking so far in any iPad app I’ve found.
Jonah Hill final alternate colors
Another day, another actor, another comic book character to try to link them to. Emma Stone played the blonde girlfriend of Peter Parker in the next to most recent Spiderman movie franchise, Gwen Stacy. Strange, because she is a natural redhead and yet the people who did the next to next most recent Spider-man set of movies picked a natural blonde (Kirsten Dunst) to play redhead girlfriend of Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson!
Anyway, I digress. I kept her natural locks, but put her in the famous Gwen Stacy outfit she wears when (spoiler alert!) the Green Goblin kills her. I tried more extreme exaggeration on her, and I think it still looks like her, but oftentimes my sketches get a better resemblance the the final, color versions do. Not sure why.
Emma Stone sketch
Emma Stone final
Emma Stone alternate
Keeping with the comic books theme as often as possible, I forewent any Zuckerberg roles for Mr. Eisenberg and focused on the one he was inexplicably chosen to portray in the current Superman movie franchise, Lex Luthor.
Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor sketch
Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor final
I tried to go with more exaggeration with this one, but even though I emphasized her mouth and teeth and tried to capture that vacant look in her eyes (and acting style) I don’t know that this looks like Kristen Stewart any more than it does Katy Perry.
This is all good practice though.
rough sketch, created on iMac in Clip Paint Studio.
Kristen Stewart inking over sketch
Kristen Stewart final color
Chris Hemsworth as Thor was a given. I decided to draw him as Thor from the comics, since that costume works better in this style.
Chris Hemsworth final caricature
Day 12 calls for Robert Downey Jr. Of course, everyone is going to do him as Iron Man now (although I considered his role in Weird Science) and I’m not different in this case.
Since I’m doing most of these in the iPad app, Procreate, I have the option of uploading the “video” of the screen capture that the program automatically makes. I did that in this case, so you can see the process of the sketch, but spared you the much longer video that shows the whole thing from the sketch to the ink to the color.
Procreate sketching process (Click to see the video, it’s only 41 seconds!)
RDJ as Tony Stark ink
RDJ as Tony Stark color
