Learn How To Draw

A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates the pronounced characteristics or facial features of a person. It can either be flattering or offensive to the subject depending on how it I drawn but a good caricature artist will almost always capture the personality of a subject.

To learn to draw caricatures, you must diligently study people. Observe their facial features and small details within but also study how they carry themselves and their general attitude. Anyone can pick a prominent facial feature like a bulging nose of a person and exaggerate it to draw a caricature. What separates the pretenders to real caricature artists is the ability to capture the essence of the person you are drawing.

Because you are going to be exaggerating the prominent facial features when drawing caricatures, you will want to use pencils that will make blunt and dark lines, such as 5B pencil. Thick lines will allow your caricature to have that cartoonish and larger than life appearance.

Simplify features like hairs. You certainly don't need to draw every strand of a person's hairs as you would in a realistic portrait. Cartoonish style such as blocky and chunky hairs works great.

Once you've picked out facial and/or body features that you want to focus on, go nuts! If the subject has a strong jaw, exaggerate it and make it look bigger than his/her body. Small forehead, large ears and thick eyebrows are just few of the features you can exaggerate wildly. Possibilities are endless.

While drawing caricature, alternate the thickness of the lines and your strokes. This will give depth to your caricature and prevent it from looking and dull and flat.

Celebrities and public figures are obviously the easy targets for your caricatures but that shouldn't limit you from drawing your friends and family members. Caricatures of people close to you can be great gifts!

While you learn to draw caricatures, your first few attempts won't be satisfactory. Keep practicing ad use a many people with different key features as your subjects. Caricature is not an exact science so let your creativity and imagination run wild and try many different approaches and techniques. Most important of all, have fun!

Quick Tip #1: Breaking It Down

Break the subject you are drawing into simple basic shapes such as square, oval, oblong, triangle, and circle. It doesn't matter whether you are drawing an apple or a dragon. If you break your model down into basic shapes and use them as an outline, you are greatly simplifying the process of drawing.

Quick Tip #2: Outside In

Draw from outside in. What I mean by this is you should always draw the outlines of your models first then cramp all the details within those outlines. Drawing facial features such as eyes, nose and mouth before setting facial line is a huge no-no.

Quick Tip #3: Upside-Down

One exercise that will improve your drawing skills is drawing an upside-down image. This may seem a bit weird at first but try it! It'll develop and improve your visual mode.