Caricature Masterclass: Go Figure!

Approaches to Exaggerating the Body

Caricature that stops at the collar bone irritates the hell out of me. It’s such a wasted opportunity. Trying to capture something of a subject’s overall physicality is deeply rewarding, and makes for much better likenesses. So, I thought I’d put together a short article about how I approach the business of caricaturing the human body.

In caricature, the subjects’ heads are traditionally shown larger than they are in real life, in relation to the rest of the figure. Over the years, I’ve given a lot of thought as to why this seems to work so well, but I’m still not entirely sure. Obviously, there’s a humorous, ‘Uncanny Valley’ thing going on with it, but I don’t believe that’s the whole story. Perhaps it’s because caricature is so focused on faces and likeness that the body has to take a subordinate role.

If you think of stylized caricatures by Hirschfeld, the head and the body are always drawn as one, unified design, which can convey so much about a subject in terms of both their physicality and their character. I don’t often paint full-figure caricatures, as it doesn’t allow me to put the degree of emphasis on the face that I favour, within the confines of a painting. But I feel that including as much of the body as I can, without compromising the facial detail, is usually a good move.