I just completed this caricature course that I’ve been attending the last two months or so. Our teacher, Iraqi artist Abdulilah Al-Le’by, looked approximately like this:

In spite of me being brainwashed from making children’s comics for too long, almost having lost in the process the ability to make drawings representing reality, he actually managed to teach me some stuff:

1) Using the right drawing tools is important. Cretacolor’s Nero lead crayons (soft) and a pad of heavy smoothly surfaced A3 paper (NOT light paper or ruffly surfaced paper) will facilitate your chances of making better portraits quicker.

2) The most important features of a face is its eyes. If you don’t get the eyes right, it doesn’t matter how well you draw the rest of the face. The lookalikeness won’t be there. This goes for both traditional portraits and caricature portraits.

3) I really suck at shading. However, Abdulilah taught me what to look for, how to follow the muscles and shapes of the face to make it more “3D”. I have yet to master this, but I’ll definately hear Abdulilah’s words echoing in my mind the next time I make a portrait.