How to Exaggerate Head Shapes When Drawing Caricatures

A caricature is an intentionally distorted likeness of a person and is meant to be humorous, never mean. Drawing in caricature lies somewhere between portrait painting and cartoon-style drawings. A successful caricature is one that is instantly recognizable as the subject and is funny. An exaggerated head shape is a vital part in creating that likeness, and here are some tips to get started.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Practice in daily life before you start drawing in caricature. As you go about your day, look closely at different faces. Note the features that stand out the most, and which stand out the least. Pretend you're drawing a caricature and are defining the shape and size of their forehead, ears and chin.
2. Try to capture proportions in relationship to a person's face. If you have portrait or life drawing skills, this will be much easier, but can be a great place to start even if you don't. There are typical proportions to the human face, and in caricature, you simply distort those proportions to create an effect.
3. Choose a subject that will either never see the drawing or isn't easily offended when you do your first few caricatures. People are often surprisingly easily offended and prone to cry if an insecurity is made into a visual joke, so choose features to exaggerate wisely.
4. Determine the subject's head shape and features before you begin. Play on basic proportions and maximize and minimize features depending on their relationship to each other. For example, if the size of their head is small compared to the size of their ears, make their head a little smaller and their ears a little larger to capture their likeness.
5. Distort one or two noticeable features in the shape of a person's head. It's a good idea to keep an artist's repertoire of basic head shapes and eyes, ears, chins and the like so that when in doubt you can mix and match basic pieces that you know how to draw to get the basics down when drawing in caricature.
6. Avoid going overboard. The key to drawing caricatures is to pick one or two features that define the face and exaggerate those features while keeping the rest of the face in proportion and fairly simple.

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