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admin · Posted: Sat May 30, 2009 9:35 am Post subject: Caricatures by Stan Levine

When I was a student at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, I took a class called How to Draw Cartoons taught by Disney artist Tanya Ericson. http://molokinistudios.com/resume.html
When Tanya worked at Disney, she was the manager of up to 20 people. As my drawing instructor she pushed me to break new ground in my drawing ability. I learned to work under pressure by developing a sequential process for drawing in the cartoon/caricature style. A simple black Sharpie Inked line can express much of the form of any subject matter in a caricature. Some of the greatest caricatures have been done in under 7 lines. It's important to simplify, because there is usually a line of people waiting to have their caricature done at party events where I work. Color is applied using broad tipped Prismacolor Ink Markers.
A caricature is a comical representation of someone or something. When I draw a caricature, I always start with the eyes, or the center focal point of interest. While the face is a 3 dimensional shape with many plane shifts, it helps me to treat it as a series of graphic shapes that fit together in an off beat proportion. If someone has tiny, squinty eyes, and a really pointy small nose, I'll abstract it with a huge mouth to make it funny and interesting. Features of a face are expressed in variations of triangles, circles, parallel and perpendicular lines. I use this visual vocabulary of shapes as my tools for expressing the anatomy of each caricature.
I started drawing caricatures in 2008 around town where ever I would go. I had my sketch book, and my sharpie pen, and I would walk around a mall or busy park and draw people at random. Then this woman saw that I had drawn her baby. She offered me $5.00 for it, and so I thought, "hey! I should do this for a living." I found clients on Craigslist, and from friends. I started out at $30 an hour. Then I set up a booth at the Independent Arts Expo at Dolores Park, San Francisco and drew them for $5 each from 10am to 6pm. After I had more experience, I raised my pricing to $50 an hour. I did my market research and discovered that the most experienced caricature artists charge up to $75 an hour. I plan on keeping my rate at $50 an hour until I have been drawing caricature consistently for at least another year.
Caricatures are usually hired at party events on weekends, so there isn't a lot of money to be made with this. I do it mostly for the kids. I take requests too. I've drawn children as pirates, princesses, knights riding on a horse to battle and much more.
Here are some samples of my work:

Click to see full size image

Click to see full size image

Have you ever drawn a caricature?
Find someone you know, and draw a quick and funny sketch of them. Then take a picture of it with your camera or scanner. Then upload it to this forum. Even if you have no drawing expertise, it's always fun to see how people draw each other.

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