1 study the person cautiously
My first drawings of a person are boring and conservative. I
am analyzing what makes the person’s features distinct from the average or
“ideal” proportions.
The first most obvious thing I noticed about this newswoman
was how long her face was.
I also saw that she has a long jaw and that her upper lip is
very close to her nose.
Her mouth and lips have a unique shape too but it’s hard to
put into words.
She has big eyes and heavy mascara too.
2 Exaggerate what I’ve analyzed.
I made the eyes bigger and the jaw longer but drew her
forehead too high – which lessons the effect of the long jaw.
3 Study more features more closely
It was a few weeks ago I first drew her. Today she was on a
news program again so I studied her some more.
I noticed some things that I missed in the first drawings.
Her eyes are lopsided. One is higher than the other.
When she speaks, one side of her upper lip stretches higher
than the other so I tried to capture that but didn’t go far enough to make it
noticeable.
4 Now try again to exaggerate what I’ve learned
Shorter forehead to contrast against long jaw.
Eyes more lopsided.
Lips more asymmetric.
I noticed something I missed before: her eyes bulge out.
5 Push it all further
I tried to make the eyes bulgy and even more lopsided.
The more I draw a person and get comfortable visually
articulating her/his features the easier it gets to exaggerate distinct
features.
Although in this case, I forgot the angle on her lips.
(I draw this stuff while the person is on TV talking in real
time and they keep cutting away to something else so when I look again she’s
not there.)
6 Get confident and let go.
The more I understand what is unique about somebody the more
I can distort and exaggerate.
There are still some subtleties I haven’t captured so I’ll have
to wait till she’s on TV again.
In the meantime you can watch Josh evolve from blandness to goofy:
