Hey folks, I recently done a series of pictures caricaturing the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. I didn’t get too much critique on these but I’m usually concern with drawing/painting fundamentals, but I also want to specialize in caricatures. Please let me know what y’all think of these.
Thank You.
I’m not a sports man so I don’t know any of these players, but it does seem like they all have very individualistic attributes that you captured well.
It seems to me your forms are conveyed pretty well, and the caricatures are effective, exaggerating the right parts that don’t detract from the likeness. There are some issues here and there with how the forms read–specifically, the rate of turn on some forms aren’t accurate enough, with some curved forms appearing pinched (the fifth one’s cheeks, for example).
Your brushwork is a bit smudgy in some areas, and I think you might want to practice a more alla prima approach where you’re letting the brushstrokes lay on expressively with careful control, instead of going back and trying to blend/smudge too much, which tends to kill spontaneity and expressiveness. You should analyze master painters and see how they approach brushwork–especially watch videos of them painting live session. For example, Richard Schmid’s captain’s portrait DVD is extremely good at demonstrating how a master paints in a very short amount of time, an amazing portrait in real-time: http://www.richardschmid.com/product-p/stcp-0002.htm
His books are amazing too–particularly Alla Prima II and The Landscapes.
Other painters you might want to study: John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Joaquin Sorolla, Pino Daeni, Suzanne Lyon, Zhaoming Wu, Huihan Liu, Daniel Gerhartz, Morgan Weistling, Nathan Fowkes, Jeremy Lipking, etc.
For more commercial works, take a look at master illustrators like Haddon Sundblom, Gil Elvgren, J.C. Leyendecker, Norman Rockwell, Andrew Loomis, Harry Anderson, etc.
Thanks. I kinda felt that those picture were a less painterly too. I was more concerned with lighting than anything else cause the brush strokes felt difficult to mimic in digital. As much as I want to improve on direct painting those Richard Schmid are too expensive for me right now, but I checked out other painters you told me to look and I working on to achieve that type of work. Hopefully starting with the Kobe picture…
Found a brush in Photoshop and try to start with a traditional look to it. Half way done so far. Please let me know what you think.
Thank you.
Those wrinkles at the back of the neck look really severe. How much did you exaggerate? Some exaggerations will look more grotesque than humorous, and you need to ask yourself where you should draw the line.
The scalp looks like you tried to fuzz it up to make the edge less hard, but that’s not how you should approach brushwork. Part of the philosophy behind brushwork is to think about whether to stroke along or against a form, and in this case, the contour of his scalp obviously is very suitable for stroking along the form, since that makes the most logical sense when painting.
Also, you might want to read this post I made about brushwork: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=7290573&postcount=4
Thought about a lot of what said. Minimized the exaggeration of the back of his neck and think more about the form of his cranium than just pretentious brushwork. But I don’t possess the Richard Schmid book yet, so I brush the way I normally brush. Any thoughts on this before I move on to color?
Looks fine to me.
If you are trying to achieve expressive brushwork, it’s actually a bad idea to do values separate from colors. This is because brushwork often involves color changes conveyed through each stroke using different colors, such as subtle color shifts on the skin. If you watch a master portrait painter, you’ll see this—each daub of the paintbrush is actually using a different color each time, creating an almost mosaic effect that creates the illusion of turning of form and shifting of local colors.
Here’s a typical example of how that’s done:
I highly recommend you get the Richard Schmid DVD of the Captain’s Portrait–it is by far the best one I’ve seen compared to all the other similar painting demonstration DVDs. You will learn far more from watching that in a couple of hours than fumbling for years on your own, because the insights you get from a master explaining his thought process to you and showing you exactly how he does it far exceeds whatever you’ll discover on your own, since he’s conveying decades worth of insights and experience to you–things that you likely will never discover even after a lifetime of struggling.
Thanks again Rob. I really want to learn the alla prima method of painting, and I will definitely check out that DVD. I’m still at the beginning stages of painting at this point, so I really try to take as much time as I could thinking about color relationships and using a limited palette on his skin, but brightened his jersey. So I’m calling this Black Mamba Caricature done.
Why did you choose to blur the edge at the top of his head, while the rest of his contour has sharp edge?
Finally bought that DVD The Captain’s Portrait. Though it’s been a while because I had to take care of “life stuff” and work on some of my draftsman issues, but I’ll definitely make it worth it plus I got some work I’m planning to show you soon.
