How To Draw A Caricature Eyes

How to Draw Caricatures: Optics

June 30th, 2008 | Posted in Tutorials

This series of "How to Draw Caricatures" tutorials are a just a small-scale gustation of a larger and much more in-depth volume I wrote called The Mad Fine art of Extravaganza! The volume is 175 total-colour pages, lavishly illustrated and contains greatly expanded explanations of the concepts presented in these tutorials, as well and a great deal of additional material on caricaturing other facial features, posture, hands, expression and more than, techniques on drawing from alive models, doing caricature for freeplace illustration and for MAD Magazine. This is a must have volume for anyone interested in caricature, cartooning or humorous illustration. You can guild it online hither.

Part Four: Drawing Eyes

I've written in past tutorials on cartoon caricatures that you lot tin't really teach someone to draw caricatures… that is more most developing their "sight" and observation skills and too developing an ability to detect that which make an individual face unique and exaggerating it. Since every face is unlike this is an exercise in personal ascertainment and decision. Therefore after I have gone over the data in my pervious tutorials, I switch gears an concentrate on didactics rookie live caricaturists how to draw the individual features, both how to see them, exaggerate them and how to draw them in line to best effect.

Hither is where style becomes an issue. What I have written about previously can utilize to almost any style of caricature, from the richly painted to the most minimalist of line. In these adjacent serial of tutorials some aspects of what I talk about will relate specifically with a style of extravaganza like my own… based on drawing line either inked or in some other medium. Therefore those with unlike sensibilities and styles tin take from it what they will and apply what makes sense to them, and ignore the rest. I will try to center my give-and-take on that which applies to a broader range of styles than just my ain.

My method for pedagogy the individual features begins with a lesson on real beefcake. I'm not a big believer in memorizing every anatomical name but I practise believe you must take a good working knowledge of how a feature is put together in order to have a skillful command over the cartoon of said feature. Post-obit the anatomy lesson, I talk about different techniques to help "meet" the shape of the feature and understand how to depict information technology, including realistic proportion. Finally I talk about interpreting the feature in terms of exaggeration and incorporating it into the whole.

Points of Reference

Seeing and cartoon anything is all about shapes and the correct cartoon of them or in the case of caricature the correct drawing of the exaggeration of them. Either way you lot still accept to "see" the object you are cartoon and sympathize it'southward class kickoff. We have all seen depictions of artists on Goggle box raising their arm outstretched towards their models with the thumb out from the fist and squinting their optics before drawing. That is supposed to represent an former creative person's trick of using their thumb, or hand, or pencil or some other object to mensurate their subject's features relative to one another, or to encounter angles or other relationships. The thumb is supposed to be a "point of reference"… a constant that is used to make authentic observations of the subject. Establishing points of reference in the confront is central to helping to "run across" shapes and make observations. With each feature and the confront overall I will suggest several things I utilize as constant points of reference, which I can and then use as a starting betoken from which other observations are based. Whatsoever kind of cartoon can benefit from this simple concept.

Our first feature is the optics. I've always felt that the optics of a caricature are the center of everything, literally the center of the face just figuratively the middle of expression, personality and "life" as it were. Therefore I've always identify special emphasis on the eyes and begin and cease with them, after the head shape, every bit the focus of almost any caricature.

Anatomy of the Eye

The human eye is made up of an round orb (eyeball) that rests in and slightly protrudes from a socket of bone and tissue, surrounded orbital muscles and past covered by skin in the form of eyelids. The visible parts of the eyeball include the pupil (blackness circle in the centre of the eye), the iris (colored area effectually the educatee) which includes the stroma (the thread-like fibers that radiate from the pupil out to the edge of the iris), and the sclera (whites of the eyes). The tissue surrounding the eyes include the inner and outer canthus (the "corners" of the eyes), the caruncula (the small, reddish, oval shaped piece of tissue in the inner corner which is old incorrectly referred to equally the 'tear duct'), and the semilunar fold (where the eyeball meets the caruncula). The eyelids consist of the upper and lower lid plates (the actual eyelids that fold down and up to cover the eyeball), the eyelashes or cilia, which are attached to the free edges of the lid plates in a double or triple row and are short, thick and curved hairs.

Seeing the Eye Shape

Despite what I said nigh the importance of the eyes, the heart is still just another feature and it has a shape like any other feature of the face. When I refer to the "shape" of the eye I am talking about the visible portions of the eyeball, created by the space between the upper and lower lids.

The outside role of the eyes, similar the lids themselves and the area that environment the eye also are very important in capturing the heart itself, but information technology'south that initial shape that you lot use and a springboard for the rest of the middle. In order to "see" the middle shape, you must ignore the pupil, iris and all the lines and visual dissonance that surround the heart, and look at just the pure shape. Imagine an eye this pure white similar the Exorcist center… that white is the shape you are looking for. Remember also that the center is not flat, but protrudes quite a fleck from the face and the lids accept a definite thickness to them.

Typically the eye is Non shaped like a football or an almond. The upper and lower lids are non mirror images of each other. In fact, they are very different. The lower lid is usually much less of an arc than the upper lid, moving more than straight across from corner to corner. The upper lid overlaps the lower lid in the outer corner, and and is farther removed from the horizontal centrality of the eye, which is created by an imaginary line connecting the corners. This horizontal centrality, or "corner to corner" line, is a central part of making observations about the centre, it's shape and it's relationship with the balance of the face. More on that in a 2nd.

The center shape is more of an asymmetrical ying-yang shape that a symmetrical almond. The upper lid line rises somewhat sharply from the caruncula, peaks nearly 1/3 of the style across the middle and then arcs more softly towards the outer corner. The lower lid does the opposite, information technology's "peak" being it'due south lowest point, near not quite 1/2 of the way from the outer corner in, and arcing to the caruncula. In the simplest of geometric terms, the eyes are quadrilaterals with the four points existence the inner and outer corners, the highest point of the upper lid and everyman betoken of the lower lid. Naturally nosotros don't draw the optics with straight lines connecting the dots, just in "seeing" the shape in simple terms like this we tin use these points of reference to amend capture the shape of the optics, likewise as using them to dispense the characteristic for exaggeration purposes.

Let's get back to the "corner to corner" line I mentioned earlier. This is very useful in helping to make up one's mind not only the shape of the eye, but it'south relationship to the axis of the face up. Imaging the line going from the outside corner of each middle in to the inside corner and then onward to the center axis of the face, what we really have information technology the cardinal angle of the arms of the "T Shape" I talked nigh in an earlier tutorial. By looking at how that line intersects the eye itself, we tin can meet how much of the middle shape lies higher up the line, how much beneath, where the contour lines of the eye shape travel along that line. We tin also see at what bending the middle lies to the middle centrality of the face up. Are the outside corners of the eyes college than the insides? Lower? Fifty-fifty? Are they the aforementioned or is one different than the other? You can use the line to exaggerate the angle you see to great effect. The Corner-to-Corner line is a great tool for ascertainment and "seeing" the eye itself, also as a point of reference both both accurate drawing and observation.

Another method I use for understanding the eye shape is to look for any straight lines in the contour of the eye. Lines that are directly or virtually straight can be used equally another point of reference for seeing the residue of the middle and besides used as beginning points for the actual drawing of the eye itself. In many cases, the longer part of the upper eyelid, that from the "elevation" to the outside corner, is frequently close to a flat line. Await for directly lines and observe their relationships to the remainder of the centre shape'south contour to better "come across" the eye shape.

Exaggerating the Eye

The exaggeration of any characteristic must be washed with the whole in mind, and not be treated equally some separate entity. Seen in a vacuum, it might be tempting to exaggerate the size of the eyes because they have a circular and wide eyed wait. However when the rest of the face up is taken into account, information technology might very well be that the eyes need to be small and beady within a massive confront. Exaggeration in caricature is all about the relationships of the features to ane some other, and not the features themselves taken individually. However many of the observations you might make nigh the eyes can cistron into the essential whole, particularly the angle the eyes are at relative to the heart axis, and the shapes of the optics themselves.

The angle of the eyes is the easiest thing to exaggerate. If the outer corners are higher than the inner, then you lot simply make them higher still, and vice versa. Once you make the observation, doing the resulting exaggeration is piece of cake.

Exaggerating the shape of the eye is a little trickier. It tin be easy to compromise the likeness, simply when done right it actually enhances the likeness of the caricature. That's considering the shapes of features are too describing the expression of the subject, and exaggerating expression is a cardinal part of good extravaganza. If someone's optics become squinty when they smile, cartoon them squinty-er volition exaggerate their expression as well as their face, and expression is personality. Capturing personality is an essential goal. If your centre shape is squinty, brand it more squinty.

If it'southward wide open up, get in more wide open. They should still look like the eyes you are drawing, but with your observations as a guide you lot turn up the book a fleck… or a lot if yous can without losing the likeness.

Take this set of eyes that are very round and intense:

We can exaggerate the shape of them as well as their look by emphasizing the whites surrounding the pupil/iris, and the roundness of the lower heart. In this case I also exaggerate the angle of them past raising the outside corners. Non by much in either example hither… what I am really exaggerating and trying to capture is the intensity of the eyes themselves. Those petty observations combine to allow me to get that piercing gaze.

Sure styles of caricature volition get farther and "interpret" the shape and actually change it into a representation of the shape itself. Here are those eyes as might exist fatigued by Al Hirshfeld:

or Mort Drucker:

An artist'southward individual mode bated, information technology comes to the same… seeing the shapes and uniqueness of the features and drawing it in a manner that describes information technology for the viewer to understand.

As always, extravaganza is near PERCEPTION and not hard physical reality. In this picture, our perception of the eyes of this model is changed by the makeup surrounding them:

The heavy eyeliner and over-thick exterior lashes nearly the outer canthus make her expect like the inner whites of her eyes are much larger than the outer, giving her a "walleye" wait that we can make fun of:

Here are some caricatures from some of my sketches where the eyes are a central office of the exaggeration or personality of the subject field. Drawing eyes that really await back at the viewer can make for a startling upshot. Remember the exaggeration of the caricature involves all the features and their relationships. The eyes may not be equally important in another caricature, only as they are 1 of the chief agents of human being advice and expression, they are always important.

This "How to Describe Caricatures" tutorial and others of the same series on this website are part of a complete volume on drawing caricatures live and in analogy, entitled The Mad Art of Caricature!