For this research task, I was asked to look at contemporary caricature artists and analyse their work to identify the elements that help with character recognition. Further, to also look at how they exaggerate these elements.
I have previously looked into artists who have created caricatures. So this time around I wanted to look at a broader range of artists and approaches to caricature.
Tom Richmond
Tom Richmond is a former MAD Magazine artist and expert caricaturist. His approach is a more traditional one (if you can call caricature that), and is expertly observed. His approach seems to have a very robust knowledge of facial proportion. By closely observing his subject, he seems to concentrate on the overall shape and presence of the person, and then exaggerating them.
On top of this overall shape is where he then places the features. He then uses distance to exaggerate the core facial markers, thinking about how the exaggeration also has effect on the features around them. This means his caricatures always still seem to be believable, that they have mass and volume that still make sense.
Lastly is then where he looks at the nature of the features and pushes them to their limit. The relationship between the head shape and the key features is what allows him to achieve such believable likenesses.
Christian Adams
Adams is a cartoonist for the Evening Standard paper. I really like his style, with thick inky lines. Even if it appears he creates a lot of his work for the paper digitally, I get the sense that he works with ink a lot in his other work. He is not going for a realistic interpretation and works by taking key features as well as recognisable gestures, mannerisms and clothing choices. He exaggerates these but also simplifies them. He has to communicate a lot of information without a lot of fine detail.
When it comes to body shapes and proportions, he generally takes a simple approach. The bodies are generic within an exaggerated category - tall, thin, plump etc. and he seems to use a lot of shape language in his caricatures to infer characteristics or emotions. By themself, they would not lead to much character recognition, but when applied with his selection of key characteristics, it allows the reader to scan in and infer who the person is pretty quickly - especially the more prominent they are.
His work is political, yet it seems to have a generalised exaggerated style, rather than using caricature in a spiteful way. Everyone seems like fair game, and it reminds me of Spitting Image in that regard.
Chris Riddell
Chris Riddell is a renowned illustrator as well as for his political and satirical caricatures. When I look at his caricature work it seems to be exclusively politically-focused. Of the contemporary caricature artists I have researched, Riddell's work feels to me the most inspired by the 19th-century satirical style. His observation skills are amazing, and he has a very fluid, almost gentle style to his mark-making. Text features more prominently in his caricature illustrations, often written over characters and objects to make his metaphors and allegories explicit to the reader.
Given that he publishes his caricatures in more left-wing-leaning publications (which I assume aligns with his own beliefs) the level of exaggeration differs depending on the target of the satire. He seems to paint more right-wing figures in a more grotesque light. He exaggerates facial and body features as well as clothing but when targeting a right-wing personality he turns these up to 11, turning them into grotesque parodies. His disdain for these personalities feels palpable in the way portrays them, and he combines these savage portrayals with a cutting wit.
It is clear that Riddell clearly understands the issues at play in his satirical caricatures, and he uses this to use exaggeration as a tool to highlight hypocrisy, incompetence and absurdity,
Stephen Collins
Another cartoonist whose work I enjoy is Stephen Collins. An illustrator and cartoonist, he produces short strips for The Guardian newspaper. He works with gouache and pencil, and his cartooning style in the paper is very simple indeed. Despite the simplicity, he has an uncanny ability to caricature personalities as well as make them recognisable.
When I was doing my research I was interested to see an older cartoon of his where his style was very different (and closer to the one he employed for his graphic novel "The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil"). It was useful to see how people's approach changes over time, even when they are seasoned professionals.
What makes his caricatures identifiable are shapes and key facial landmarks. Rather than exaggerated, his caricatures emphasise simplicity. Only a few key elements are selected, and then just enough detail is given for us to infer the identity. I admire how he selects these elements. In the first image, it's the grey streaks in the hair. In the second image, Gove is the most exaggerated, yet it's Cameron's caricature that I admire the most. The combination of nose, chin and head shape communicates the identity succinctly.
The connotation of this kind of exaggeration combined with simplicity is that there is little room for mistakes. If you miss any key feature, then the caricature quickly loses any sense of specificity.