Alex Heberling

As I’ve worked on my caricaturing in the last 6 months since the ISCA Con, I haven’t really been that satisfied with the majority of my work.  I think the real standout pieces I’ve done since the con are Elgin Bolling and David Dennis.

Something I’ve started to suspect since the convention is that the difference between caricatures and cartoon portraits aren’t that numerous.  And I’m starting to think that I shouldn’t make the distinction at all when I approach the artwork.  Because one thing I think I AM good at is cartoon portraits, be they my style or my Dollar Drawings.

Trying to approach a caricature as a gimmicky kind of thing is not really working for me.  I’m not trying to belittle the art form by any means, but I feel like I honestly already have a strong point of view as a character artist, so trying to switch my gears around so drastically to try to find this other voice in me has been hard.  It’s occurring to me that maybe I should try to draw caricatures from the perspective of my comics.

How would I draw this person if I were going to put them into my comics?  I think my most successful caricatures of the last 6 months have been good because I seemed to have this approach in mind, but subconsciously.  For example, Toru Tanaka.

Not very exaggerated, but it looks like him, and more importantly, it definitely looks like ME.

I did some sketches yesterday just to test my theory a bit, and I really think this is the direction I should go from now on.

So without further adieu, a face that I have found particularly hard to pin down: Jenna Fischer.

Much better.