How To Cartoon Or Caricature Anyone

by Mark Linley

In a few deft sweeps of your pencil, capture the character of your 'victim'. Use swift strokes to create a face that has instant appeal. Exaggerate the features to make a comical caricature. Brighten someone's day with your own tiny bit of magic. Mark Linley shows you exactly how in this book.

Genres: Art

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 10, 1998

Reviews

[Pete Wagner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the fact that he approaches caricature as a cartoon rather than a portrait or illustration, which the newer "how to draw caricatures" books written by those who base their "instructions" on methods they came up with for "training" theme park "artists" and "cartoonists" for the purpose of selling drawings at retail concession stands all do. The latter do this because it is very difficult to "train" someone to think in terms of an actual CARTOON. Most artistically inclined people can learn to do a simplified portrait or a very forced, contrived portrait that over-emphasizes physical features in order to do something that remotely resembles authentic caricature. But like any form of comedy, almost nobody ever can be "trained" to view the person being drawn with a funny point of view, nor can they be "trained" to draw in a funny way. The other recent "how to draw caricatures" books all are based on avoiding those subjects entirely and instead simply re-hashing "scientific drawing" methods that are normally applied to realistic portraiture. The readers who gush over these books are very right-brained about visuality but very concrete-sequential about approaching the crafting of a drawing, which spells death to anything that is supposed to be a cartoon or a caricature. This book by Linley is not at all a step-by-step "caricaturing for dummies" manual, not as well thought out or easy to read, but the basic spirit of it is more on the right track for those who want to try to get to where they are doing genuine caricaturing rather than portraiture or illustration or design that is really just a realistic view and slightly overemphasized or oversimplified treatment in the guise of caricature.