Caricature Creation Process

Been busy this week with getting back to work and doing promised guest cartoons for George Ford and Aidan Casserly. Also had some paying commission work as well. Claude Rieth contacted me via Google Plus and was gracious enough to let me share my work with you.

Here was his original picture he sent.

I thought look at that hair, look at the expression.  This one is going to be easy.  Ok I was wrong. I have never done that expression so getting it to look like someone was twisting their face on purpose is actually very hard to do.  So many attempts.  When I do commission work I tend to send a draft to the client so they can either approve or not.  If they feel I didn’t capture what they want in that draft I have no problem with them walking away and me not going any further.  As I have said, there are some people who I can’t capture a likeness.

So this is what I sent to Claude.

Given his expression I was hoping he would be OK with the more cartoony look but wanted to give him options.  Thankfully he was in agreement and with a little tweaking, you can see the final result.   Thanks Claude for being a great subject that challenged me and a better client.

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51 Responses to “Caricature Creation Process”

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  1. Deb says:

    This is awesome, Bearman! He must have been very pleased, you you should be with your work!
    Hugs xx

  2. bschooled says:

    Nice work, Bearman!

  3. Comedy Plus says:

    I think you did a fabulous job on this caricature. You can certainly tell they are one and the same person.

    Have a terrific day. 🙂

  4. Tony McGurk says:

    Great job on this one. I really love the bulging eyes

    • Bearman says:

      Me too. Liked that he was willing to let me go with it.

      • Tony Mcgurk says:

        Claude’s photo was almost pure caricature to begin with so yes I thought it would be easy too. Guess you never can tell till you actually start to do it. I drew one the other day of Karen Krittle running in a skirt. No matter how many times I tried I just couldn’t get the legs right. Even though it’s coloured & ready to post I’m still not happy with the finished product.

  5. nursemyra says:

    Hmm… you know bearman I usually think you do a great job catching a person’s likeness, even mine, unflattering as it was 😉 But this one doesn’t work so well. as you say, it’s a hard expression to capture

    • Bearman says:

      You are right. For this one rather than going for the likeness, I thought it was better to go for the essence of his expression and purposefully went even more cartoonish than I normally do. In the end, he loved it, his family loved it and his friends loved it so I guess that I was able to capture his personality more than his looks and it was a win.

  6. lisleman says:

    looks good. Those four options – is that an hour’s work? or more?

  7. jb says:

    I think you did a great job on the expresion and you captured his likness quite well.

  8. Lynn says:

    CooooL….. I like it! Nice seeing the transition too.

  9. MC/Curtis says:

    Great! You nailed it.

  10. Batman says:

    Nice work!

    BTW, you have two “Twitter-links” in your banner, where is those little picture links.. (RSS-Twitter-Facebook-StumbleUpon-Technorati) when you put mouse over, there is two Twitters 😉

  11. Top-notch, Bearman! Claude-tastic, in fact.
    (It was really cool seeing your thumbnails, too… I love the ‘behind the scens’ stuff – thanks for sharing those)!
    🙂

  12. MJ says:

    Ha! It’s like visiting Toon Town every time here. cartoon on my friend.

  13. Scholar Mel says:

    Just today I was thinking about asking to see if you wanted to guest post with this very topic… never mind.

    As always, good job 🙂

  14. I like the way you handle this caricature.

  15. DadaHyena says:

    Good one, Bearman! Looks like Tom Richmond’s book is really paying off (man, I forgot where I left my copy).

    Keep on drawing!

  16. George says:

    It looks pretty darned good, Bearman. You’ll find that you get better at capturing the tiniest nuances the more you practice at it. Once you stop worrying about what the subject thinks of the piece and just convey what you see, flaws and all, and eventually you’ll be downright perfect at it. 🙂

  17. George says:

    I suggest that you just find a picture of someone you don’t even know (use a Google pic or something form a magazine) and just make a caricature of that person. Pretend that the subject is never, ever gonna see your drawing.

    That way you can relax and not worry about offending anyone. That would be practice for you in the long run.

  18. Mark Stokes says:

    Love it, Bearman! That process stuff gets me charged up, thanks for sharing.

  19. Friggin Loon says:

    Um, what’s up with his eye?

    Sheez, if he complained I would be quite happy have sent him Kim Jong Loon. 🙂 Oh wait, it’s framed and hanging on my wall !!!!!

  20. Binky says:

    Is that his normal face, or that after he saw your bill?

  21. Claude’s caricature looks like Mel Gibson’s caricature.

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