This caricature is another example of me being unable to find something to exaggerate.  When that happens, I just pretty much draw a portrait, although if I can make bigger hair or something I’m happy to do it.  Johnny Depp has big, expressive eyes and a tiny mouth, so it shouldn’t have been too difficult, but you never know where the muse is going to strike.

Chris Rock caricature by Tielman Cheaney.

So, teeth are one of those aspects of caricature that are hard to get right.  Try to clearly delineate every tooth, and you end up with a pretty weird-looking mouth.  It just looks like sloppily-made graph paper wedged in there.  Don’t put enough detail, and it looks like you forgot to draw something important.

Fortunately, I’m really making fun of his big teeth here.  So I just made them big, uneven, and prominent.  The lower lip overlapping the microphone was a mistake if I remember correctly, but it works.

 

Sure, I could have made the lips bigger.  But there are already plenty of caricatures of her with a life-raft for a mouth.  I’m being gentle.

This one’s pretty old.  I think it may have been one of my first caricatures every where I was really trying to exaggerate.  Prior to this, I was just trying to make it look like the person.  By any means necessary.

Here he is, the 42nd President of the U. S. A., Bill Clinton.

In caricatures, we’re always trying to spot the unique features on everyone’s face.  And with Mr. Clinton, there’s plenty of uniqueness.  His eyes are small, nose is large, eyebrows are nonexistent, haircut is signifigant, and face is red.  But there’s nothing to unique about his mouth.  So I just left it out.

As a freelance artist, I’m often tapped to draw political cartoons for people that want to make t-shirts and bumper stickers to promote their points of view.  During the Clinton years, I was approached time and again to make fun of the president.  The captions, situations, and angles of attack varied, but one thing was constant: Everyone wanted me to draw him with a cigar.  I can’t think of another representation of the years in office as iconic as that cigar.

Here’s the first caricature ever uploaded to http://cartoonvegas.com.  James Dean, by Tielman Cheaney.  Uploaded in 2008, I must have drawn this earlier, in 2006 or 2007.

I just learned two interesting things about James Dean:

1:  His front teeth were fake.  He would pop them out to surprise dinner guests.

2:  He died before Rebel Without a Cause, the movie that made him an icon, was released.  And, two hours before his fatal car crash, he got a speeding ticket.

 

When I was drawing this caricature, about three people walked past and said “Oh!  Owen Wilson!”  I thought I had a great likeness of Matthew McConaughey.  Caricatures can be frustrating.

If you’re drawing someone from a straight-on, frontal view, they’d better have an amazing face shape from that direction.  Matthew McConaughey does have a big, kind of square head, but I think it was a mistake to draw him from this angle.  His brow is so prominent and the straight shot doesn’t show that.  A 3/4 angle would capture more interesting details.