Fu's caricature

Here is another personal project I made for a good friend of mine. I have added the full process for informative purpose and to demonstrate how I go about creating my caricatures.

Prelim work:

I start to gather photo references of my friend which are of a decent quality with a good form lighting, high resolution and not too grainy to the point that I lose some important elements of realism from the picture. I then look for photos which I believe is showing the most of his personality, body language and physical caracteristics.

My friend tends to be of a very enthusiastic and jovial nature and demonstates a lot of gestual while he talks. His mouth is one of his physical traits which accentuates his animated and warm character.  As I couldn't find the right gestual, I decided to take some shots of myself with the body expression which would convey my vision for this caricature and which would fit the photo I pre-selected...

The Sketch:

I quickly work on a draft in Photoshop which combines the photos I selected for this project. At this point, I am trying to nail my proportion, values and above all, exaggeration of some of his facial features by preserving the likeness of the subject. When satisfied with the result, I then set up my layer to a Multiply layer mode. This will allow me to introduce color later on, without affecting my line work... 

Color palette:

I, then, create a new layer beneath my sketch and begin by introducing a wash of color which will determine my basic skin tone for this painting. I ,therefore, selected a moderate orange for this purpose and compose my palette by varying its color temperatures and lightness. I also choose to contrast my background with a slightly desaturated cyan. Both colors seem to work perfectly as they are split complementary colors...

Painting:

I continue painting, but this time, on a layer which has been created over my sketch, covering my line work. Here, my task is to maintain my forms by painting with color, remembering to add some color satuartion in my shadows and not to fall within a monochromatic painting by paying attention to my color temperatures...

Refining:

Here, I am refining the details with attention to my hard and softedges contrasting between detailed areas of focus and areas of lesser interest, guiding and resting the eyes of the viewer to facilitate a better flow of information within the image. This has to apply to whatever images, either there is one subject in it or it is an illustration with a ton of them...

Last touches and adjustments:

I am approaching the end of the painting's rendering. I notice that the right arm's position is a bit off so I make a quick selection around it and place it to what I feel is more anatomically correct (that's the magic of photo editing software!). I create a new layer on top of my existing ones where there is some random photo texture and change its mode to soft light and play around its opacity. This is adding some surface texture and is getting rid of the very smooth feel that the entire painting had previously. I make some color and brightness adjustement as I intend to print it and remove the excess of brightness in the borders of my painting in order to create some vignetting which again is guiding the eyes of the viewer to the focal area of the painting. 

And that's it ...it is printed, framed and mounted on the wall "taking pride of place on my friend's landing".