Lesson 10: "Hairs To Ya" or... "Leaving the Nest"

Here is a copied caricature
I drew of David Caruso
in his CSI Miami garb.

Ok, so I have covered most of the facial features required in caricature. At some point we will go over hands and necks and body types and the rest of it but since I am focusing on faces we will put that stuff on the back burner. 


One thing we haven't covered is hair. Hair is very important in caricature. It is extremely variable and one of the few features that can change by the minute. It is very individual and lends itself well to Rule #1, Recognition.

I copied the head
of this guy but came up
with the rest on my own.

Drawing hair poorly is not that hard. Drawing hair well is difficult and time consuming. It's not just a bunch of lines scribbled on top of the head. That was kind of my thought going in and that's pretty much how I am still doing it. Why? Because I am concentrating on faces right now and I could spend years working on doing hair right. As it turns out, drawing hair correctly as Tom Richmond explains it, requires multiple levels. First you draw the foreground shapes (locks of hair) then the middle shapes and finally the background shapes. Then you make the locks flow around, in front of and behind each other. This builds depth to the hair and makes it look more realistic. Once I get my eyes and mouths straight I will concern myself with all of those hair shapes but until then I'll get by with scribble hair.

This a copied caricature
of Jason Lee from
My Name is Earl

I copied this one of
Daniel Craig but no
one recognizes him.

This will be the last post showcasing my copies of caricatures. From next post on I am going to leave the nest and try to fly by drawing my own caricatures from scratch. I expect a quite a few crash landings. The book says I can expect 500 crappy caricatures before I get the hang of it so I will be counting down from there. Maybe I'll get my start at the family Christmas party tonight.

Happy Holidays everyone!