Caricatures 6&7/500: Hey It's Me Again

The disastrous first try at caricaturing myself left me looking through old photo albums for an easier pose to capture. I found a couple of shots of me with different looks that appeared worthy of another attempt... or two.

The first one I tried is me at a San Diego Charger game. What they say is true about live sporting events adding 30lbs. So in this one I have a big round face with noticeable puffy cheeks and my patented chick-magnet dimples. Also worthy of exaggeration is the double chin and, as always, my upturned honker. I think it turned out to be a decent drawing. Not too detailed and a bit cartoony, the only problem is no one thinks it looks like me. It has more of a Hank Jr. feel to it.


The second one is clean-cut Mike. Here I was able to stretch out my chin and enhance my long face. Notice how much rounder my face looks with the beard in the above photo. I am pretty happy with the way this one turned out. I think I got the eyes and nose right and the chin was a good exaggeration. No one would recognize it as me because I'm wearing a suit but other than that I think there is a good resemblance. 

Much better than my first attempt.

My first "brush" with color.

Once I finished the drawing, I scanned it and brought it into Photoshop to try adding a little color. I can see that painting these caricatures is going to be harder than it looks. Ideally, the next step after drawing should be inking. This is when I get out the fountain pen and trace my sketch in black ink. The fountain pen will allow for different line weights which adds depth to the drawing. Then I scan it and finally apply color in Photoshop with a Wacom tablet. In my test I just used the airbrush tool in Photoshop which left it looking digitized instead of cartoonish or in the comic book style. It is not really possible to guide the mouse in such a way as to make effective artistic brush strokes. This was just a test to see how it works.