The portrait that looks like a caricature: 60 minutes left
In the portrait practical, the model sits for 150 minutes. The room has a north window on the model's left and a tungsten bulb on the right at roughly 45°. The candidate has 60 minutes left, having spent most of the time on the eyes and hair. Symptoms: the rendered head measures about 1:6.5 of the figure although only head and shoulders have been asked for; the near eye is drawn larger but placed too high; the chin has been drawn receding, which is true of the sitter, who also has a slightly asymmetric jaw; the shadow side of the face has been filled with black; the warm light side has been built up with a great deal of white; the neck reads as a tube. The candidate fears the drawing "looks like a caricature" but does not want to flatter the sitter.
1. With 60 minutes left, what should the candidate correct and in what order? Justify why placement outranks finish.
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Placement outranks finish: a beautifully rendered eye in the wrong place is worth less than a rough eye in the right one.
- Re-establish the head unit. Only head and shoulders are required, so the unit just has to be internally consistent: head length = chin to crown; eye line at about half the head; nose base about halfway from eye line to chin; ear from brow line to nose base. Re-measure rather than trusting the earlier lay-in.
- One plumb line. Drop a vertical from the inner corner of the near eye and relate it to the near nostril and the mouth corner, allowing for the turn of the head. Compare the far eye horizontally with the near one - height errors read more strongly than size errors.
- Correct mass, not features. Fix the cranial mass and jaw first; move a feature only once the skull it sits on is right. Erasing and restating a whole shadow shape is faster than nudging an outline.
- Remaining time in order: (1) the shadow shape of the whole head, (2) near eye and mouth, (3) neck and shoulder junction, (4) hair as one mass with a few directional strokes at the silhouette.
Leave the ears last. A vague ear costs nothing; a misplaced eye costs the likeness.
2. The shadow side of the face is black and the light side is over-whitened. Explain how to rebuild flesh colour under these two lights without either fault.
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Black in a flesh shadow kills form and makes the face read as a mask; the room gives two coloured lights and therefore two reasons to use chromatic shadow.
- Choose one key. With a warm tungsten bulb on the right and cool north light on the left, letting the warm light dominate the lit side and the cool window fill the shadow gives the readable warm–cool passage examiners look for. The reverse is equally valid, but pick one and stay consistent for the remaining time.
- Shadow mix: raw umber with a little ultramarine, shifted toward violet with alizarin or toward green with a touch of viridian depending on the surroundings. Keep the value as dark as the shadow truly is - a correct value with a slightly wrong hue is far less damaging than a correct hue at the wrong value.
- Light side: white plus yellow ochre plus a little cadmium red is already as light as a forehead needs. Reserve near-pure white for the highest specular note on nose or brow.
- Neck: usually darker and cooler than the face because the jaw casts across it. Darken the existing mixture rather than inventing a new colour.
Check by squinting: if the shadow side still reads as a grey patch rather than a colour, add chroma, not black.
3. How should the candidate distinguish recording the sitter's real receding chin and asymmetric jaw from exaggerating them into caricature?
Read the worked answer
The difference between recording an asymmetry and producing a caricature is magnitude, and whether the rest of the drawing supports it.
- Measure the deviation. On a head roughly 22 cm from chin to crown, a jaw 3–5 mm out of symmetry is a real feature to record; the same jaw drawn 1.5 cm out has become an editorial comment.
- Test it against structure. A receding chin is legitimate if the chin still sits beneath the mouth and the ear–nose relationships are unchanged. If the receding chin has been achieved by shrinking the entire lower third, the head has been lengthened - and that, not the chin, is what the viewer reads as caricature.
- Vary the feature, hold the mass. Keep the cranial mass stable and use the far side of the head, which the model cannot easily distort, as the reference for the near side.
- Exam strategy: a portrait may be unflattering and still be accurate, but it is marked on whether the structure convinces. If time is short, state the asymmetry in the contour rather than reinforcing it with a heavy cast shadow that makes it look like a deformity.
Test: hold the drawing at arm's length beside the sitter and compare silhouettes only. Matching silhouettes with differing features means a measurement error; a bulging silhouette means exaggeration.