How To Draw Caricatures

"Caricature" tends to conjure drawings of people with big, grinning heads and tiny, superfluous bodies you might buy from an artist at a fair or theme park. In all the many books I've read on caricature, I've never felt that any of them really did justice to such a vital aspect of art. Caricature is about bringing out the essential aspects of any subject, not just comically large noses. Lenn Redman's book How to Draw Caricatures does a better job treating caricature as an artistic principle that most every other book out there.Redman lays out a basic workflow; a set of guidelines that help you determine what parts of a subject you should exaggerate (or minimize) and how in a manner that can be applied to more than just ears and noses. Even though he never talks about caricaturing trees or buildings, you certainly could with Redman's method.The book contains a vast number of examples and doesn't stick to one set "style" of how to caricature someone. In some cases he even revisits a particular subject to show a different approach to drawing them. Redman also covers caricaturing bodies, something a lot of books skip completely.One negative mark on Redman's work is that his caricatures of children are rather lacking. Although that's a problem I've seen far worse in some other books, it does show that children is a subject that needs more in depth study in caricature books.Also, owing to the relative age of this book and the author, the book includes a wide variety of caricatures from the 1930's-50's that show the artistic range caricature can take but isn't often explored today.All in all, How to Draw Caricatures isn't the perfect book on caricature, but it's the best I've seen so far.

This is the most inspiring and educationally well written drawing art book I have ever laid eyes upon. The techniques and approaches will satisfy every true artist. Illustrations are top notch in terms of variety of styles even if the writer and publishers could have processed photos better. I only assume it is to prevent reuse in teaching. Furthermore, the writing artist's kindness, humanity and goodwill shine like sunrays throughout the book. I cannot recommend this more highly to artists and even historians and as far as Norman Rockwell fans. Non artists and public figures alike who would like to understand caricatures and find higher appreciation in the way artists see need looking no further. Greatly appreciated indeed.

Very helpful.

How to Draw Caricatures is a very nice book, filled with hundreds of examples. This book is fun and helpful in many ways. It gives you an overview of what caricatures are and how to approach drawing them, from using celebrity models to average citizen models. It lets you know how some people feel about their caricature. Some love them and some get very upset at seeing their faces blown all out of proportion. "no humor". tsk* I use this guide often even if it is just to look at the wonderfully drawn pages.

What I got the book for was really to look at Lenn Redman's art---having only just "discovered" him. I love cartoonist's art, especially those cartoonists who can really draw, as is the case with most if not all caricaturists. I wasn't disappointed, and he also offers some really good pointers in trying to draw people. The book also features some work by other artists, one of whose work stands out, James Montgomery Flagg, of the Uncle Sam poster fame, as super cool. I think anyone interested in cartooning, cartoonists, and caricature would love this book.

...I at least have to give this one a minimal "It's okay" nod for being the first effort at doing a book about caricaturing as a process, because in it Redman broke some ground in trying to give some form to the basic definition of caricature and some clues as to what we are doing when we draw caricatures. I disagree with a huge % of it, and have progressed beyond a lot of what he is saying here, but at the time he wrote this in 1984, I would have been in total agreement with some of the key ideas. I used to think the notion of comparing the caricature subject's face to a "neutral" or "in between" or "ideal" face and then exaggerating the differences was what I was doing, or at least, it was the best I could come up with to explain to cartooning students what they could try to do to get closer to doing authentic caricatures. Now I think it's a lot more complicated than that and better to compare two real (and very different) faces side by side than use a "null" face in order to get to a good caricature, if you need to use any such technique at all. And I would suggest many other changes and advances after 40+ years of cartooning and caricaturing. The old ideas in this book, however, have been echoed in subsequent books right up to the most recent ones, rather than improved upon. More recent books are more slickly packaged and have better quality printing and full color, etc., but repeat these same tired notions that a caricature is nothing more than a realistic portrait with a little exaggeration consciously applied.

This book has a very helpful section, 'Relativity" that explains relationships of things. This section has really helped me in drawing variations of characters, not just Charicatures.I use his "In Betweener" as a basis for varying the look of many fictional characters, that I want to draw. I think this section alone is worth the price of the book, to me.Ed