Lesson Seven: How to Draw Babies
Drawing babies is just hard.
All the straight lines and even proportions we’ve been learning don’t work on babies. And for some reason, any little thing you get wrong is going to look much worse than any little thing you get wrong on an adult.
Lesson Six: How to Draw Fat People (Nicely)
The first thing I hear when someone sits in front of me for a caricature is usually “Make me skinnier.”
Well, that and “Make me younger.” And sometimes, “Make me prettier.” “Make my nose smaller.” “Make my boobs bigger.”
Lesson Five: The Basics of Women
Draw this woman 20 times.
The proportions of a woman’s face and a man’s are almost exactly the same. The difference lies in how you render it.
Lesson Four: Variety
Here are a whole lot of eyes.
I’m still following the formula. Every eye I draw has that thick line on top, the thin one on the bottom, and the shadow under the eyelashes.The variety comes out of line thickness and shape. The drawing method stays the same.
Lesson Three: What Not To Do
The Mouth: Smile Lines
Don’t do this:
Do this:
If you lay in those smile lines so dark, you’re going to end up with a pretty weird-looking face. Just about everybody has these lines, from babies to seniors, but I find it best to add them during the coloring process, not here.
Lesson Two: Formulas
“But I don’t want to learn formulas! I want to learn to draw.”
Drawing with a marker requires you to make a lot of very fast decisions. If you’re new to this, you can be overwhelmed and disheartened very quickly. This stuff is hard to learn.
Learning formulas to quickly draw features will remove one task from your crowded brain. You’ll be more able to focus on placement, line weight, shapes, planes, and carrying on a conversation.
Once learned, these formulas can be adapted to any face, changed, or forgotten. The important thing is that they make your task more endurable now.
Lesson One: The Basics
If you’re going to learn how to draw caricatures and cartoons, you need to start by drawing this, the Most Average Guy In The World:
Grab a marker and paper.
- No pencil
- No eraser
- No underdrawing.
Draw this guy exactly as he appears. If you can do it, skip ahead to the advanced lessons. If you can’t, do it nineteen more times. I make all Cartoon Vegas employees go through this exact exercise.
“Why should I do this?” Three reasons: