Sometimes by Thursday I’m nearly sapped of mental energy. Got some big ideas for the weekend, though.

Long day; figured I’d just do a quick sketch of Dave. Unfortunately, by the time I quit, Ferguson was on. Yaawn.

My apologies for my strict adherence to the “all cartoon characters have crossed eyes” crutch.

(Cue Steph unfriending me on all major social networks.)

Legit Stephanie for reference:

Edit 10/27: By popular demand, here it is with her eyes uncrossed. Okay, they’re still a little crossed. I realize I have a problem. I can quit anytime.

Ah, the caricature. Seems there’s no easy route to grasping it; like everything else, it’ll just take practice. Before tonight’s attempt, I watched some YouTube videos by this kid Sycra Yasin, who makes everything look way too easy. He seems to have many different approaches to caricature, but the one I latched onto was breaking the face into geometrical planes. For example, here’s evidence, roughly traced from a photograph, of how I earned the childhood nickname “Squarehead”:

Of course, you wouldn’t really sketch it out like a creepy kabuki mask, but the point is, breaking down a face like this gives you a sense of why certain features fall in certain places, much moreso than the typical cartoon method of tacking 2D features onto 3D spheres.

That’s not to say I got it right, but I feel like I’m making progress. And I’m eager to learn about other methods of approaching caricature (paging Aunt Susie).

Also, I’m too close to the current subject (and he keeps eating all my food), so if you’d like to volunteer to be amateur-caricatured, let me know.

The great thing about classic art is that it gets a pass for weird shenanigans that in modern times would get you banned from the Super Bowl halftime show. This here is “Andromeda and the Sea Monster” by Domenico Guidi. As usual, my attempt to render details in a little sketchbook with soft graphite proved to be a bit muddled, but then again, even the statue seems muddled when you first walk up to it. And definitely crazy.