Introduction: Traditional painting translated to Photoshop

- So, what I'm going to do today is a caricature of my dad. I chose him for obvious reasons, he's quite the character, real nice expression, something fun. And that's another part of this: I wanted to have a lot of fun. And it's always fun to have fun at your dad's expense. The other thing is, there's a lot of hair, and I really... One of the things I love about caricature, and one of the things I enjoy is when I get to have fun with things like hair, like pointing character to that. I think there's some fun things I can do with this, so that's basically why I chose it. First thing is, I'm just going to start doing thumbnails, and the important thing for me when I do that is, I don't want focus on any details, I don't want to be distracted, so I don't need to see the reference very close up. I'm just looking at shape right now, and what I can do for fun. I want to play with the shapes. So, this doesn't look like much right now, but to me, it's like notes. And what I'll do is, I'll get rid of it, and now I've learned something about my dad's face, and I've learned something from doing that. So now, I'm going to try to take what I've learned and do something different with it, and see what else I can come up with. So I know this right now doesn't really look, I don't know if it looks like a thing, but to me, I'm already starting to see this is my dad a lot more than this first doodle. Well, I don't know. We'll see, I guess. That's why I do this. I think that the reason I'm so adament about the thumbnail process is because I used to just start sketching and then stick with it. The reason I got into doing thumbnails and trying to work out ideas first is, I was doing a job where I had to paint George Bush, and I had some extra time on the job. The first sketch was good, and then I decided, "You know what, I'm going to see if I can do something more with it." So I decided to just have another go and draw him again. And what ended up happening was, the next one was better, and it was funnier and it was more creative, and I thought, "Well, what if I do another one?" And they just kept getting better and better and better. And so, I realized I'm giving myself an advantage over people that don't study or explore or try different things. I'm starting to get an idea here of what I'm going to do. One of the things I used to do earlier in my career, too, is that I would notice that when I would do a detailed sketch, the exaggeration would always scare people and they were like, "It looks good, but could you just pull the exaggeration back just a little bit." And I'd be all, "Sure." But the thing is, what I would actually do is, when I started to paint it, I would push the exaggeration even more, and they would never notice, because the more that it was exaggerated, for one thing, it would always look more like the person because more of the truth was being pushed out, but secondly, because of the way I would paint it, they would say just how realistic it looked, and they didn't notice that it was exaggerated more. So, I started doing that on purpose. I would exaggerate as much as I wanted in the sketch, and when it came time to do the painting, I would push it even further. That's a tricky thing, too, about caricature is, how much are you going to push and exaggerate? I think some people exaggerate way too much, and when you do that, you can easily lose the essence of the person. My main focus on every single caricature that I ever do is, I want it to really feel like the person. It's easy to lose that if you're not careful. So, I'm trying to be careful with that. I want it to really, 100% feel like him. One of the things that's really, for me, that's challenging about, especially drawing my dad with this expression is, it is a little bit overwhelming because he's so goofy looking already, and there's so much character that... Sometimes when you're drawing someone like that, it's hard to figure out where you should go with it. Because there's so many elements that you could push and pull. One of the issues with this one, for example, is he's got this forehead that's very prominent, and I could probably exaggerate it even more if I wanted to. But also, because of his beard, his chin looks bigger than it is. But I know my dad doesn't have a huge chin, he's got kind of a smaller chin, but with the beard, it appears that way. So, where do I want the weight to be? Do I want to push it on the bottom, on the top? And again, I think what I'm trying to do with this one is, my dad does have a very prominent nose, and I probably could make his nose bigger, but he also has the weight of his forehead, he's got the weight in the bottom, and I want to show that I'm seeing his head as being really big. (chuckles) Right now, I'm wondering, if I push this out too far, is it making his forehead not seem as big? If I pull this in tighter, if his forehead seems bigger, which it does. So I'm probably going to do that. One thing I could do is, because of his eyebrows, I just do this thing where it's just woo! Like crazy. But then, all the structure in his face is going to go, and is that the most important thing? Or, is all the character important? But I'm also trying to have fun, I want it to be funny. I don't want it to be too portrait-like. It can be easy to all of a sudden be too much like a portrait as well. I know that my dad, like I said before, he's got a very prominent nose, and some people that would draw my dad right now, would caricature him, would give him this huge nose. And you could do that, and like I said, I could give him that small chin. I could pull his chin down to here, which makes his nose look bigger. So that's something I've been wondering about, if I should do. You notice that if I get rid of that, all of a sudden, his nose doesn't look as big any more. But if, all of a sudden his chin goes to here, his nose appears bigger. But my worry, if I make his nose too big, it might make his face seem more narrow, and his face isn't really narrow. So, there's a lot of decisions that I think about while I'm drawing to figure out what version of my dad do I want to tell right now? So I can make another layer, and just experiment. I can put his chin here. If I draw it here, it's going to affect the size of the face. The face isn't going to feel the way I wanted before, but truthfully, his chin probably is here. If that makes any sense. Go like this. So, actually, I think I do like making his chin a little smaller, so I think I'm going to stick with that. And I'm just going to sketch in the rest real quick here. So, as I said before, since I'm going to paint, I'm not going to go in and draw the eye exactly how it's supposed to be. It's pretty much just suggested marks so that way, I'm going to be painting it anyway, so there's no reason to do it twice. And there's a huge difference between this and doing a drawing. If I was going to do a drawing, then I would slow down, and I would sit here and I would draw. I would get in here, and I would draw this a lot more accurately. But since I'm going to be painting it, I'm treating it like a painting, and the way that I like to paint is, I like to step back and look at things from a distance and try to work with the larger shapes first and then break it down to the smaller shapes. There's no real need to do that if I'm going to be painting this one. It's interesting, when you see this up close, how loose and scratchy it really is, but that's all I need.