Lesson 7: "Quality Time In An Antique Urinal" or... "Read Faster, I Hear A Banjo"

Week 3 Reflections: Part 2


In my last post I talked about the mental part of my first three weeks studying caricature in Tom Richmond's book, The Mad Art of Caricature. Who says you can't learn to draw from reading a book? Well, whoever it was, they were right.

An example of Woodshedding.

I figured something out early on. Drawing is hard and there is a reason we are all amazed at stuff like the Mona Lisa, Sistine Chapel and Mad Magazine fold-in covers. Not everyone can do it and those who can have spent a lot of time in the woodshed. Woodshedding... that's a banjo term, though it may have been a fiddle or trumpet term first (banjo players are notoriously sticky-fingered). By the way, I have decided that going forward I am going to 'draw' comparisons to banjo playing whenever it's pertinent or I need a cheap laugh. "Woodshedding" is when you stink so bad at what you are doing that your family sends you out back to practice in the woodshed so they don't have to listen to it. For those youngsters in the My Caricatour Posse who don't know what a woodshed is, it's the little building in the olden days where your dad would take you out behind to either spank you or teach you how to pee on two feet. Often one lead to the other, especially if you peed on the wrong two feet. As you will see in the upcoming posts, I have played my share of sour notes as a newbie draw-er. I started it all by getting out my book and trying to sketch a few of each facial feature as I learned about its particulars. Evidence of this can be found in lessons 1-5 below.


Next, I tried to tackle some caricatures. That is to say, I attempted to draw Tom's caricatures in the book exactly as I saw them. Remember, I said I needed to learn to just plain draw again before I could start improvising. Caricatures are somewhat cartoony so I thought drawing them would help me to get used to the techniques I would eventually need to develop more-so than doing straight portraitures of people. 

Caricaturists and banjo players
are two peas in a pod.

Caricature artists seem to have a formula for drawing the different features. Maybe they have 10 or 20 or 100 different noses they can pull from memory.  I don't know, I only have one to pick from so far and using a pencil on it makes my eyes water... Anyway, most noses these guys and gals see on their subjects are going to be "close enough" to plug a nose from their library right into the drawing. Kind of like banjo playing, (See, I warned you) you learn a few licks or riffs in the key of G, a few more in C and a couple in D. Play them over and over until they become automatic and then slap them together in different orders and you got yourself a bunch of banjo tunes. I know you thought that kid from Deliverance was a genius but it really is that simple.* 


It is obviously easier to draw exactly what you see than an exaggeration in your head but I'm struggling all the same. As I stated earlier, I haven't tried to hand-draw anything in probably 30 years. My frustration comes from knowing what I want to do but not being able to communicate that from my brain to my hand. Exactly how it was when I started playing the banjo... and pretty much how it still is after 8 years of playing the banjo. *sigh*


Tomorrow I will wrap up the Reflections Trilogy and we will move on to a few of my more pitiful drawings. I know the clever anecdotes have sucked you in but the trainwrecks are what you really want to see. Stay tuned!


*Ok, anyone who has tried to play banjo knows it's a little trickier than that but, in theory at least, that is what it boils down to in its simplest terms. True, I consider myself about as much of an expert on the banjo as I do as a caricaturist but if you're willing to bite, I'm willing to reel you in.