
I
kept it simple for this year’s tribute to my favourite actor, Jim
Garner, just drawing one more caricature of him as Jim Rockford from
TV’s The Rockford Files. However, I thought I’d also give you all
some insight as to how I go about creating one of my celebrity
caricatures. As I’ve noted in past articles, I don’t rely on just still
photos to draw my subjects, preferring instead to study and sketch them
from video so as to get more of a sense of their overall design and
inner life and personality. But additionally I will go back and pause on
a few freeze frames in order to study the structure and surface details
in greater depth. Lately I’ve also been using my digital camera to grab
a few reference pics directly from my TV screen. Here are some samples I
took to develop this new caricature of Jim.
This first pic gave me the overall pose I wanted of Rockford with his familiar crossed arms looking very casual:

I
rather liked this expression, where Rockford is looking a little
concerned as to whether they’ve got a solid case against the guy he
suspects is a hired killer who’s attempted to kill his client:

I
took this shot specifically for the mouth position showing both sets of
teeth and tongue as he’s speaking. Also the head angle is closer to the
one I’m looking to draw:

Another pic that captures some of the overall expression I’m looking to depict in my drawing:

Like
I mentioned before, I am also watching the video in action as I first
gesture out my sketch, as that’s the only way I can get a real feel for
the personality and inner life of my subject. You can also see from my
rough sketch how I start by gesturing and blocking in very loosely with a
light blue pencil, then defining the forms with a soft black pencil
while always thinking of it as “sculpting” the form as opposed to just
drawing outlines. That illusion of solid structure remains an integral
part of the process for me. Sometimes I find I have to do a few
sketches, cobbling together elements from several in order to arrive at
the final sketch, but this time I was able to get it all done in one
shot:

Finally
I use a lightbox to lightly trace the image in pencil onto a sheet of
Bristol board, then tweak it a bit until I have the refined pencil art
that is then ready for the fun part – the inking with my brush!

Once
the line art is inked up, I scan that into my computer to colour it up
with Photoshop resulting in the final full colour caricature of Jim
Garner that heads up this post. Although I did decide to consult other
photos through Google Image Search to select the colours of his shirt
and blazer, as I’ve always preferred those 70’s earth tones that
Rockford wore rather than the grey outfit he’s wearing in my reference
photos above.
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